Kym Robinson | The Libertarian Institute

Reinhard Heydrich: Nazi Hero, Moral Monster

by Kym Robinson | Jan 26, 2022 | Featured Articles

Martyr of the State Known as “The Butcher of Prague,” Reinhard Heydrich was for the government of Nazi Germany an accomplished senior figure. He had the preferred look that many racialists enjoyed, clean cut and Germanic. A man that Adolf Hitler had described as having an “Iron Heart." For many of the monumental events in the history of the Nazi government, Heydrich had helped organize or participated in them. From the 1936 Berlin Olympics to the Kristallnacht persecutions, he was a crucial element of the prewar government and its growth. Heydrich was an excellent administrator and would be...

The Sapper in the Sewer

by Kym Robinson | Jan 12, 2022 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

“The enemy was nowhere, but everywhere.”- Dan Rather, CBS News Report, Saigon, 1968 As the world approaches a period of unmanned systems, automation, and perhaps in many fields human obsolescence, warfare marches into its own future of certain uncertainty. Despite the great leaps in technology, warfare is very much the domain of the imperfect human. Perhaps in the not too distant future artificial intelligence will guide and “man” killing machines against one another and human beings. Engineers and geniuses will create and devise such killing machines to ensure that governments stay standing...

The Human Under the Numbers

by Kym Robinson | Dec 30, 2021 | Featured Articles

The story of Anne Frank is tragic. If not for the words that she wrote in her diary, she would be a digit of history. Her diary is relatable, and the thoughts that collected inside her being during a horrible time in history gives the reader an idea of who she was. She is immortalized because of the little things that she wrote, not because of any great deeds recorded by others. As a victim of tyranny she is remembered as an innocent murdered. She is a story found inside the numbers. Thanks to her diary, we have a human figure to know and mourn, despite the mechanized bureaucratic...

Australia’s History of Benevolent Fascism

by Kym Robinson | Dec 1, 2021 | Featured Articles

You can read Part I of this essay, published in September 2021, here. Australia has had a history of complicated relationships between the governments that ruled over its vast sunburned lands and the individual citizens subject to such rule. The states and territories of Australia have had a degree of autonomy when it comes to how they may exercise control over the individual. The police have been an integral tool for these state governments to violate human rights and individual freedom. As is always the case a context of crisis is used and even when emergency powers are not directly cited,...

The War on Drugs for Her

by Kym Robinson | Oct 14, 2021 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles

She had just turned fifteen. She was a good girl, though some of her friends had a wilder side. They did like to party. She was excited to attend a music festival, a large one geared to people under eighteen. While she was there the police were conducting an operation to curb the use of recreational drugs. Twenty or so teenagers, including herself, had been taken almost at random by the police officers. It was a hot day, so she had worn very little. As she was taken away she was roughly handled. The police officers accused her of being in possession of drugs, a girl who had not even tried...

The Exchange: A Citizen and a State Agent in Victoria, Australia

by Kym Robinson | Oct 5, 2021 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles

Footage of police violence and the tantrums of the mob during the recent lockdown protests, not just in the Australian state of Victoria but the world over, depict a division between the powerful armed professionals of the government and the angry rage from some parts of the citizenry. The narrative can suit ones own partisan bias, media habits, and how much the lockdown has influenced you. Captured recently was an interaction between police and the citizen dissenters. It is a human moment. Behind the dark military armor, the helmet, and the badge lurks a man. Alongside him an almost naked...

The Benevolent Fascism of Australia, Part I

by Kym Robinson | Sep 9, 2021 | Featured Articles

Australia is in the news. The images of police officers imposing themselves on the citizenry has drawn the attention of international critics. It has also raised admiration for those who have big government inclinations. Some have declared that Australia has fallen as a free society, that it should now be considered a police state. Australia, however, already had a history as a police state. The balance between individual freedom and an overbearing government has been one of constant, uneven sways over time and it usually takes a crisis to bring down the full weight of authoritarianism. And...

Child Killer

by Kym Robinson | Sep 2, 2021 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”- Howard Zinn It is hard to imagine that a healthy mind would consider the murder of a child to be a justifiable action. It is the frightening action of monsters, the child killer. Not much is more pariah in a civilized society than such a being. As one series of wars slowly wind down, the drums beat to the distant call of likely more wars. It is the routine conduct of some nations to always be in a state of war, always to be "over there." And no matter how many innocent are killed, how many children are murdered,...