TGIF: Thomas Szasz – Unappreciated Libertarian

TGIF: Thomas Szasz – Unappreciated Libertarian

by | Apr 19, 2024 | , , , ,

I maintain that mental illness is a metaphorical disease: that bodily illness stands in the same relation to mental illness as a defective television set stands to a bad television program. There is no psychology; there is only biography and autobiography. --Thomas Szasz (1920-2012) Monday, April 15, was the 104th birthday of Thomas Szasz, the late great debunker of the system of social control perpetrated, in cahoots with the state, by institutional psychiatry, the mental-health establishment. That system has included among its methods lobotomy, electroshock, involuntary "hospitalization"...

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More on Immigration and Public Property

by | Apr 16, 2024 |

Inspired by scholar Simon Guenzl, it occurred to me that regarding "state-claimed" so-called public property, people have been wronged not primarily as taxpayers but as potential homesteaders. (See Guenzl's "Public Property and the Libertarian Immigration Debate," Libertarian Papers, 2016 vol. 8, no. 1, and listen to his conversation with Bob Murphy's Human Action Podcast.) Guenzl properly distinguishes between state-claimed land and state-seized land, such as that acquired through eminent domain. In the latter case, government personnel took land from identifiable owners, but state-claimed...

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Thomas Szasz: Champion of Freedom

by | Apr 15, 2024 |

Today is the 104th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Szasz (1920-2012), the great if unappreciated libertarian and defender of individual autonomy and dignity. A psychiatrist by profession, for over 50 years, Szasz was the foremost critic of the social-control system we call institutional psychiatry, or what we could call the government-medical complex. He called it the Therapeutic State. He opposed involuntary mental hospitalization, forced medication, the insanity defense, prescription laws, drug prohibition, laws against suicide, and the psychiatric position (until the 1970s) that...

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TGIF: Why Isn’t Antifa Marching for Apple?

TGIF: Why Isn’t Antifa Marching for Apple?

by | Apr 12, 2024 | , , , , ,

I was all ready to don a black mask for the Antifa demonstration when I realized that the self-styled antifascists hadn't planned a demonstration. What are they waiting for? After all, the national government has just started a new fascistic crusade. You'd expect the guardians against fascism to be out of the gate with great dispatch. But they aren't. You haven't heard about the latest fascistic crusade? It's the Justice Department's antitrust suit against Apple for "monopolizing" the smartphone market, or maybe it's the "luxury" smartphone market. The government is keeping its options open...

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Israel, Zionism, Jews, and Anti-Semitism

by | Apr 7, 2024 |

"In some quarters anger at Israel's brutal occupation has undoubtedly spilled over to an animus toward Jews generally. But however lamentable, it's hardly cause for wonder.... Should it really surprise us if the cruel occupation by a self-declared Jewish state engenders a generalized antipathy to Jews?... [I]f many Jews themselves repudiate any distinction between Israel and world Jewry, indeed, if they denounce such a distinction as itself anti-Semitic; if mainstream Jewish organizations lend uncritical support to every Israeli policy, however, criminal, indeed, abetting the most virulent...

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TGIF: Static Analysis Clouds Immigration Debate

TGIF: Static Analysis Clouds Immigration Debate

by | Apr 5, 2024 | , , ,

Opponents of people's freedom to cross national borders to where the best jobs are, aka open borders, make a rookie error: they engage in static analysis and overlook the dynamism of social processes that freedom produces. I was recently asked on Facebook: "Are you enjoying Biden open borders?" There's the mistake right there. People who ask that question look at a bad situation, say, the mess at the southern border; imagine one policy change, namely, the removal of restrictions on movement; and stop there. It's as if that policy shift would prompt no changes in how people, including...

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Why I Pick on Israel

by | Apr 4, 2024 |

People close to me ask why I criticize Israel while ignoring the other bad governments in the world. (I guess they don't count the U.S. government as bad.) I have many reasons, but here's a big one: no other government (besides the U.S. government) claims to act in my name. I object to that. (For the record, years ago I declared my exit from the disparate worldwide collection of people that Israel presumptuously claims to speak for.)

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The Logic of Eradicating Hamas

by | Apr 3, 2024 |

Is genocide logically required by Israel's stated objective of eradicating Hamas? It looks that way. Israel demonstrably believes that to wipe out Hamas, it must use overwhelming and indiscriminate force in the Gaza Strip, killing tens of thousands, wounding and starving so many others, and destroying homes, hospitals, and infrastructure. If that is not, in effect, a massive recruitment campaign for Hamas, what would be? So what to do? Simple: wipe everyone out so the inevitably traumatized kids won't grow up radicalized and join Hamas to seek vengeance for their dead relatives and miserable...

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