The Black Libertarian

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Quote of the Day

It is remarkable that American libertarians—so often eager to discuss freedom in nearly every conceivable iteration—rarely address African-Americans and the struggle for civil rights in America. Slavery is long gone, but it is hardly coincidence that the descendants of slaves have accounted for disproportionate percentages of Americans in poverty and incarceration in the 150+ years hence. Save Emancipation and America’s reluctant recognition of the 14th Amendment by way of Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s, the government has consistently (though not exclusively) been a boot on the necks of African-Americans, hindering progress and true equality. Yet libertarians tend to shrink away from acknowledging race for fear of involving themselves in “identity politics” and thus rarely discuss the government’s legacy of racial oppression.

~ Jonathan Blanks

Dr. Walter Williams on Libertarianism

               

Walter E. Williams is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. He is an expert on discrimination, labor policy, regulation, and South Africa as well as a well-known columnist and the author of South Africa's War Against Capitalism (1989), The State Against Blacks (1982), and More Liberty Means Less Government (1999).

 In this lecture given at a Libertarian Party of Georgia event on March 23, 1991, Williams talks about libertarianism generally and relates his own moral arguments against state coercion. Williams also briefly suggests a few things he thinks libertarians should be doing if they want the libertarian movement to grow. 

Download the .mp3 version of this lecture here: http://bit.ly/GJgX7h

Thomas Sowell debates the dynamics of welfare

40% of Americans Now Make Less Than 1968 Minimum Wage

Black Libertarian: The Story of Zora Neale Hurston

Marcus Epstein Like it or not, it is Black History month, a time when the establishment celebrates Marxists such as W.E. Du Bois, Angela Davis, Huey P. Newton, and an assortment of other radicals. Most mainstream conservatives search to find famous blacks that they can trumpet as conservative heroes. Neoconservatives do this by promoting the cult of Martin Luther King Jr. and have nostalgia for the "golden era" of the civil rights movement that never existed. 

Any genuine conservative or libertarian does not need to be told that King was clearly always a man of the Left who supported democratic socialism, reparations for slavery, and affirmative action. Others properly look towards Booker T. Washington. However there is one African American who is widely ignored by the Right, largely because she has become a hero to multiculturalists and organized feminism. That woman is Zora Neale Hurston.

Hurston was born in Eatonville, Florida, a small self-sufficient black town. Her father was a Baptist minister who would later become its mayor. She educated herself before attending high school in Maryland and then college at Howard University, where she was inspired to start a literary career. She transferred to Barnard College, where she studied under Franz Boas. For several years, she traveled around the South, Hati, and Jamaica to collect local folklore.

Read more: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/epstein2.html