The Editor’s Notes

Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

This weeks’ motto, “Like boils and tumors, tactless people don’t care where they appear.”, is from Lucia St. Clair Robson’s The Tōkaidō Road (1991). That is also where I found the quote from Bashö which graced the last issue. Since we don’t yet have any actual alien races to learn about aliens from (OK, maybe dolphins), Japanese culture would be a good proxy for exoanthropologists. (Did I just coin a word?) This novel about revenge and duty is an excellent place to start.

The first of our links this week is a link only because I can’t find a way to ask Dr. Wolf for permission to reprint it. Some of it will be familiar to TLE regulars. What’s important is not so much what is said as who said it: Naiomi Wolf, Oxford D Phil, Victorian poetry.

Yeah, I could mock her for having a doctorate in Victorian poetry. But I won’t. Very few people can overcome their backgrounds and come to this sort of conclusion. Don Kates was a constitutional law professor, and an old-fashioned liberal: he rode the buses in the South in the 1960s. In doing so, he learned about southern blacks and guns. He research the Second Amendment, and overcame his prejudices. It was liberals like Don Kates who put together what we now call the Standard Model of the Second Amendment: that it is an individual right guaranteed by the Second Amendment. The Standard Model in turn lead to the Heller and MacDonald Supreme Court decisions.

Dr. Wolf has come a long way. Maybe she’ll bring others with her.

This week’s Blast From the Past uses a movie from the 1940s about a family — and a house — in 1903 to make a point about the high cost of government. And it’s gotten worse since Neil wrote this in 1997.

Our publishers set forth their editorial policy. It might be a good idea to read it before you send anything for publication.

We have Howard McFadden returning with some thoughts on being a good person.

Last but not least, Sean Gangol takes on folly in Ukraine policy.

Links

“The last thing keeping us free in America, as the lights go off all over Europe- and Australia, and Canada – is, yes, we must face this fact, the Second Amendment.”
— Dr. Naomi Wolf
https://naomiwolf.substack.com/p/rethinking-the-second-amendment

Remember how Americans are paying more for energy so we can reduce carbon dioxide emissions so we can save the planet? Right. It now looks like China and India will increase coal production by nore than the US produces, thereby negating all the US coal reductions. (And the article misses the fact that Wyoming coal is much cleaner than Indian or Chinese coal.) https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2022/06/03/india_and_china_coal_production_surging_by_700m_tons_per_year_thats_greater_than_all_us_coal_output_835483.html

Uvalde Shows Once Again That Cops Are Just Armed Bureaucratshttps://reason.com/2022/06/10/uvalde-shows-once-again-that-cops-are-just-armed-bureaucrats/

Alan Dershowitz is (or used to be) an American liberal. But he’s been good on Second Amendment issues. And now here he is on Newsmax. And he’s taking on Nancy Pelosi’s January 6 panel. Hmmm…. https://www.newsmax.com/politics/alan-dershowitz-newsmax-donald-trump-jan-6/2022/06/10/id/1073948/