Guest Column: Lawless Roads

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Brian Wright

America’s everexpanding torture matrix
Chris Floyd

“How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.”
— Henry David Thoreau

In two brief posts over the past week, Scott Horton at Harper’s gives us a harrowing sketch of the entrenchment and ever-spreading expansion of the Torture Matrix that now sits enthroned at the very heart of the American state. This entrenchment and expansion has been carried out — enthusiastically, energetically, relentlessly — by the current president of the United States: a progressive Democrat and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Continue reading →

Book Review: Max Perkins: Editor of genius (1978)

Posted on April 6, 2012 by Brian Wright

by A. Scott Berg
Review by Brian Wright

“The more a man is, the less he wants.” — Max Perkins

Having recently been overwhelmed by Woody Allen’s masterpiece of Francophilia, Midnight in Paris, I was excited to know more about the several leading authors brought to the center of the world stage there. Particularly, Ernest Hemingway, whom the actor Corey Stoll absolutely nails… well, at least in writer/director Allen’s eyes; as a man, I cannot help feeling a little surge of surrogate courage when the character talks so forthrightly yet kindly about love, bravery, honor, and death. [Come to think of it, Woody Allen’s Play it Again, Sam offers a similar sendup of an inspiringly masculine and creative force in the cinematic community: Humphrey Bogart.] Sorry, this dalliance with hero-worship isn’t to the point. The point is realization of literature and grand world literary figures of the 1920s and 30s. Continue reading →

Movie Review: Drive (2011)

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Brian Wright

Cross between Bullitt and Sin City ___ 9/10
Review by Brian Wright

Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
Screenplay by Hossein Amini
Book by James Sallis

Driver: [on the phone] There’s a hundred-thousand streets in this city. You don’t need to know the route. You give me a time and a place, I give you a five minute window. Anything happens in that five minutes and I’m yours. No matter what. Anything happens a minute either side of that and you’re on your own. Do you understand? [pause]
Driver: Good. And you won’t be able to reach me on this phone again. Continue reading →

Guest Column: Are You Libertarian Enough?

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Brian Wright

Time to man up for the Freedom Philosophy
Anthony Gregory

So-called political compromise is upheld as a high virtue. To be an ideologue is a great vice. The old mantra that the problem in American politics is everyone is an extremist and no one is willing to meet halfway persists, despite its transparent inapplicability in the real world. The distance between the two political parties is small enough to smother a gnat.

For many libertarians there is no worse a sin than to stick stubbornly to purity of principle, to make the perfect the enemy of the good. We never get anywhere because we refuse to budge. We want the whole loaf. This is an old theme. Continue reading →

Human Interest: Sound Wall When?! — Part 1

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Brian Wright

“the quiet enjoyment of one’s property”
by Brian Wright

private nuisance:
n. the interference with an individual’s peaceful enjoyment of one’s property, which can be the basis for a lawsuit both for damages caused by the nuisance and an order (injunction) against continuing the noxious (offensive) activity or condition. Examples: fumes from a factory above the legal limit, loud noises well above the norm, directing rain water onto another person’s property, operating an auto repair business in a neighborhood zoned residential, or numerous barking dogs… [and government-highway noise?]
—courtesy law.com Continue reading →

Movie Review: Dr. Strangelove (1964)

Posted on March 28, 2012 by Brian Wright

Harbinger of 2012 October? ___ 10/10
Review by Brian Wright

Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Written by Stanley Kubrick

The subtitle for Dr. Strangelove is ‘How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.’ The form of which I find comes in handy for any number of acts of state excess: e.g. “how I learned to stop worrying and love drone surveillance,” “how I learned to stop worrying and love my RFID biochip,” “how I learned to stop worrying and love my FEMA internment camp”… you get the picture. In the 1950s and 1960s the threat of ‘nukuler war toe to toe with the Rooskies’ was a constant anxiety among all segments of American society, and no doubt other countries in the line of fire. It sure the hell scared the hell out of me. Continue reading →

Guest Column: Whackjobs for War vs. Iran

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Brian Wright

America Gone Stupid Over Iran [1] – An Analysis
by Lawrence Davidson

An excellent column sent my way via Gerhard Fuerst, occasional contributor to these pages. The alert liberals are usually on top of the threats to peace; I only wish more than a handful would come out and admit they were wrong about Obama. Not so much for voting for him in 2008, but for thinking he hasn’t brutally betrayed every shred of support he showed for peace, civil liberties, and even a semblance of economic sanity. Again, due to the urgency of the message, this column is an excerpt without asking for direct approval from the author. He of course retains all rights to the piece.

It is estimated that up to a million people died as a function of George Bush Jr.’s decision to invade Iraq. According to Bush, that decision was made on the basis of “faulty intelligence.” This is the ex-president’s way of passing the blame. The decision was made by Mr. Bush’s insistence that the accurate intelligence he was getting from traditional sources was false, and that the lies he was being told by other parties (for instance, Iraqi con-men such as Rafid al-Janabi) were true. Continue reading →