Category: Personal Reflections and Diary

  • Untitled

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2EesuvK_QQ

    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-15 21:42:00 UTC

  • Scotland. The rain. A small farm. A few highland cattle. A couple of woolly pigs

    Scotland.

    The rain.

    A small farm.

    A few highland cattle.

    A couple of woolly pigs.

    Silly exotic chickens.

    Pheasants.

    A pair of retrievers.

    And a goose to keep everyone in line.


    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-15 03:31:00 UTC

  • UPDATE: Well, I’ve let myself get distracted a bit by the sheer entertainment of

    UPDATE:

    Well, I’ve let myself get distracted a bit by the sheer entertainment of criticizing rothbardian adherents to the NAP/IVP. It’s been a useful distraction from the stress of waiting for Russians to invade Ukraine. And it has helped me simplify the arguments. Although I have to say that Eli Harman has helped me a bit too over the past few weeks.

    I feel bad if I just mention a few people, because then all the others who have helped me might feel slighted. And I can’t really list everyone. So thank you to everyone who’s given me time, advice and criticism.

    The combination of testing and marketing campaign seems to have played out pretty well. I really started in November/December and now five months later I feel pretty comfortable that I’ve made the noise I wanted to, and tried my arguments out well enough that further work really isn’t helping.

    Roman I met this weekend, and it’s time to get back to working on serious stuff.

    We are planning a writing retreat. I can’t wait. A few weeks out.

    Now I have to switch gears and put more focus on the book. And honestly it’s pretty hard to concentrate when this kind of stuff is going on in your country. And it’s much more fun to socialize argumentatively than it is to write formally. But fun is fun and work is work, and it’s time for work.

    I need to stay healthy because I just can’t work hard enough in that condition. (Almost back to normal now. Another week I bet.)

    Cheers

    Curt.


    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-13 10:06:00 UTC

  • Curt Doolittle shared a post

    Curt Doolittle shared a post.


    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-13 07:48:00 UTC

  • Curt Doolittle shared a photo

    Curt Doolittle shared a photo.


    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-11 06:52:00 UTC

  • Curt Doolittle shared a post

    Curt Doolittle shared a post.


    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-10 08:15:00 UTC

  • (private)(diary) Went to work. Big mistake. Not up to it yet. Too likely to spre

    (private)(diary)

    Went to work. Big mistake. Not up to it yet. Too likely to spread the bug. Went sulking home like a schoolboy.


    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-07 10:43:00 UTC

  • (still sick as a dog. can’t go into the office. can barely walk around. pretty m

    (still sick as a dog. can’t go into the office. can barely walk around. pretty much drinking from my inhalers. managed to walk across the street for bottled water. bought some cookies. decided I didn’t need them. gave some of them to two workmen doing wall-repairs, who were surprised but pleased. gave the rest to the girls when I got home – who were surprised and pleased. then fell hard and fast back to bed. seems like I’m just catching a bunch of bugs in serial. plus I’m not crazy about our new neighborhood. its too far from the office, and doesn’t have nice yuppy coffee shops. but at least it’s out of downtown if the crisis goes like I think it will. right now i miss the west coast. not the predatory government that i hate with every fiber in me. but the people. the silly oblivious, naive, egoistic, ignorant americans and all the irrelevant nonsense that they talk about and do. all their selfish moronic status seeking. but you know, at least there aren’t tanks on the border, even if there are even more thugs in the streets.)


    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-05 08:32:00 UTC

  • ILLNESS AND PRODUCTIVITY I’ve been sick since, what, the 27th? Maybe 26th? But d

    ILLNESS AND PRODUCTIVITY

    I’ve been sick since, what, the 27th? Maybe 26th? But damn. It’s been a productive period. I think it’s because the UK trip was so important for me.

    Want to thank a few people for seriously improving my thinking while in the UK:

    Don Finnegan and Andy Curzon. They have strategic intuitions I know how to give voice to. I would not have done this work as I have without something Don said to me a few years ago in Bodrum. I’m sure he didn’t know what impact it had on me. Andy confirmed it and gave me a brilliant strategic direction to work in last year.

    Want to again than Sean Gabb for helping me understand the current state of libertarian thought from his perspective.

    And of course Ayelam Valentine Agaliba for giving me homework assignments on how to improve my arguments. 🙂

    A apologize to Jan Lester who was kind enough to fit me in, but I somehow fouled communications and missed him. London is big and it takes longer to do everything, and I could not get my phone working reliably.

    Forever in your debt.

    Curt


    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-04 09:28:00 UTC

  • THE CURRENT CANON (in suggested reading order) Note that I do not list the usual

    THE CURRENT CANON

    (in suggested reading order)

    Note that I do not list the usual works of ‘lament’ about the fall of the west. I assume that we all understand that. But understanding it isn’t a means of countering it. Countering it requires we understand the origins of liberty, the constitution of liberty, and act to restore our liberty. As such I focus on how to construct and reconstruct informal and formal institutions that will do a better job of protecting our liberty than did classical liberalism. However, doing so requires that I dismantle the fallacy of rothbardian ghetto ethics, and german rationalism, and instead, rebuild the case for liberty on science and history.

    THE RESTORATION READING LIST

    Ricardo Duchesne: The Uniqueness of Western Civilization

    JP Mallory: In Search of Indo Europeans

    John Keegan: A History Of Warfare

    Joseph Campbell : The Hero’s Journey

    Karen Armstrong : The Great Transformation

    William Tucker: Marriage and Civilization

    Emmanuel Todd: The Explanation of Ideology

    Emmanuel Todd: The Invention of Europe

    Daniel Hannan: Inventing Freedom

    Alan MacFarlane : Origins of English Individualism

    Gregory Clark: A Farewell to Alms

    Matt Ridley: The Red Queen

    Dale Petersen: Demonic Males

    Steven Pinker: The Better Angels of Our Nature

    Daniel Kahneman: Thinking, Fast and Slow

    Francis Fukuyama: Trust

    Sam Harris : Lying

    Steven Pinker : The Blank Slate

    Jonathan Haidt: The Righteous Mind

    Stephen Hicks : Explaining Postmodernism

    Hans Hoppe: Democracy The God That Failed

    Doolittle: Propertarianism. High Trust Ethics Necessary for Anarchy

    Hoppe’s Other Publications

    ————-

    A theory of Capitalism and Socialism

    The Political Economy of Monarchy and Democracy, and the Idea of a Natural Order

    The Economics and Ethics of Private Property

    On The Origin Of Private Property And The Family

    Property, Causality, and Liability

    The Idea of a Private Law Society

    The Private Production of Defense

    The Right To Exclude,

    Natural Elites, Intellectuals, and the State


    Source date (UTC): 2014-05-03 14:05:00 UTC