This Generation

The Kids are Alright

This video is so hopeful it may bring tears to your eyes.

 



 

Sick of the ads

This is the kind of spontaneous, grassroots expression of support for a candidate one likes to see:

What is less welcome is the non-stop string of obnoxious political ads clogging the Massachusetts airwaves from both parties. That ominous music playing behind the Coakley attack ads is so corny, and Scott Brown's wife should have forbidden him to wear that ugly grey sweater he wears in all his ads.

Yet this is what we always say we miss in Massachusetts, where in most races the Republicans spend no money because they figure they can't win, and the Democrats won't spend any because they think it's not necessary since they can't lose. Now with a real horserace on our hands, we are finally seeing all this campaign money being spent on our airwaves for a change, which just goes to show - beware what you wish for.

I'm not sure what this book advertised in the window of Northampton's gaystore is about and I'm a little afraid to find out.

 



I'm happy to see from this poster that the band Yes is touring and people still say yes to Yes.

Yes had a great string of albums in the early 70's before they were mercilessly savaged by punk enthralled critics who felt they had to despise anyone who could play their instrument. May their longevity be their revenge.

Meanwhile Northampton's Orphan Glove Project has provided a field day for pranksters.

In a cynical mood, Paolo Mastrangelo once called this tune the Northampton theme song. 

UMass First Amendment Criticism

Angela Davis caused a UMass free speech controversy in the 70's.

Nationally respected free speech advocate Harvey Silvergate weighed in on the recent free speech controversy at UMass over the cancelled invitation of a leftist terrorist. Not surprisingly, Silvergate supports the free speech advocates, but also scolds campus liberals for their failure to defend free speech for non-leftists on those occasions in the past when they were shouted off the stage. As Silvergate says in the Boston Phoenix:

If free speech is what gives value to the campus "marketplace of ideas," UMass Amherst would long ago have gone bankrupt....

For freedom of speech to function, its supporters must be willing to apply it equally, especially to speech with which they disagree. Though the Levasseur incident saw faculty asserting its academic freedom rights — as the UMass administration kowtowed to outside pressure — it also exposed the professoriate as one-sided. Defending only controversial speech on one half of the political divide is a formula for hollowing out this time-tested constitutional guarantee and academic axiom.

In the late 1970s, Angela Davis, a Communist activist, was invited to speak at UMass. The administration — equally at odds with First Amendment freedoms as the current leadership, but leaning to the political right — forced Davis to pay for her own security. It's only a matter of time before what goes around comes around.

There is a certain irony, then, in seeing a faction of the UMass faculty appear to come to the rescue of free speech and academic freedom, knowing that the same faculty cannot be counted on when political speakers whose views they disapprove of are threatened. And so, when dealing with that hotbed of censorship known as UMass Amherst (faculty, administration, and even many students, alas), not to mention the governor and the US Parole Commission, all one can do is hearken back to Shakespeare, who succinctly observed (and we paraphrase): a pox on all their houses.

Never Forget

UMass put up this display to honor the anniversary of the fall of Germany's Berlin Wall. 

It is a rare that we have a chance to test political theories with the same rigorous precision that is used in the hard sciences. However that opportunity emerged after World War II when Germany was divided into two nations, each with the identical history and culture, the only difference being that one half embraced free markets and the other embraced socialism. Forty years later, the capitalist half of Germany was one of the wealthiest and most powerful nations in the world, while the socialist half was a poverty stricken police state. 

It's Coming

As it becomes increasingly apparent that the incompetence of the Republicans under Bush is only being surpassed by the incompetence of the Democrats under Obama, the disillusionment and disgust of the public with the two major parties is reaching historic levels. Hopefully we are hurtling towards the so-called "libertarian moment" when the American people will finally decide, "To hell with the liberals, to hell with the conservatives, let's choose freedom instead!" Predicting the arrival of this happy day is the hiply influential business magazine Fast Company:

If the two-party system is ever going to be seriously challenged, this is the moment. The GOP, the stall-tactic party, is reeling. The Democratic administration is struggling to turn around the economy. And across the country, creative, engaged folks are increasingly feeling politically homeless. More Americans consider themselves independents (39%) than Democrats (33%) or Republicans (22%) -- and the gap is widening.

Who will fill that void? The best third-party contender already exists. The Libertarians, like so many independents and disaffected Democrats and Republicans, are fiscal conservatives and social liberals -- and no one has yet built a lasting coalition out of this growing force....Seize the moment, Libertarians. You're not going to get a better one.


Around Amherst

Some tombstones make you wish you knew something about the lives behind the stones, such as this one in West Cemetery.

 

"She Went Out in a Blaze of Glory!"

 

Is there a reader of this blog who knows something about this person?


Stone orbs hold open the door to a downtown shop. 

Wheels on fire. 

Side street leading to the UMass library.

Radio station broadcasting from campus today.

Today's Video

If you get confused listen to the music play.

 

Leary in Springfield

His Childhood in the City of Homes

 



Probably the most infamous person to ever come out of Springfield, Massachusetts was Dr. Timothy Leary, the internationally known LSD advocate once called "the most dangerous man in America" by President Nixon and who once occupied the prison cell next to Charles Manson.

But before all that drama Leary was a resident of Springfield and a graduate of the former Classical High School Currently I'm reading the 2006 book Timothy Leary: A Biography by Robert Greenfield. When I finish it perhaps I'll write something about the book as a whole, but today I just want to share with you a few of the most interesting passages from the book relating to Springfield and what it was like to grow up in the city in the 1920's and 30's.

The title of the first chapter is called Dreaming of Heroes: Springfield, Massachusetts, 1920-1938. It begins:

Late at night, a young boy lies in bed in his room. By all rights, he should be sleeping. Outside his window, the streets of Springfield, Massachusetts, a small industrial city ninety miles west of Boston, are quiet. All the movie theaters have already let out for the night. The restaurants have long since locked their doors. Even the trollys have stopped running. Because Prohibition has been the law of the land for more than a decade, there are no boisterous downtown nightclubs or loud neighborhood bars where people can drink legally. Yet as everywhere in a nation that professes one code of morals in public while practicing another in private, many of the good citizens of Springfield are out drinking just the same....

Each week, the boy checks out and reads ten books from the public library, a big granite and marble building constructed with Carnegie money.... Flesh of the same flesh and blood of the same blood, the boy and his father, Timothy Francis Leary - called "Tote" by all who knew him in this city where he was born and who now works as a dentist at 292 Worthington Street - share the same name. In speakeasies all over Springfield where people drink openly but not legally, Tote is well known. Late at night, after the speakeasies close, he can often be found buying liquor on the darkened front porches of nearby houses in Winchester Square, where bootleggers live. What began as a fondness for drink has become for Tote Leary in the past few years something darker and more self destructive.

Classical High School is described in the book as "a four story yellow brick building with a long vaulted roof topped with steeples and a green copper trim that looked like part of the Sorbonne. Behind a high wrought-iron fence, stately steps led up to three sets of glass doors above which the words "Classical High" were carved in stone. At the time Tim enrolled as a freshman, there was no more prestigious high school in the country. Alumni of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton regularly named Classical High as the number one college preparatory school in the nation."

What a sad reminder of how far the Springfield school system has fallen since Leary's days. There is one minor detail in the description of the building however which the author Robert Greenfield got wrong. He describes the "wrought-iron fence" in front of Classical, but actually that fence never existed when Classical was a school, but was added as a security measure after it was closed and turned into condos in the 1980's. Here is Classical as it appeared in the 1930's when Tim Leary attended. Note that there is no fence.

This is the fence and wall that was added after Classical was closed in 1986.

Leary would clash with authority figures his entire life, and his years at Clasical were no exception. The authority figure at Classical was the principal William C. Hill, whom Greenfield describes as "a towering man with a Supreme Court Justice shock of white hair whose influence with the deans of admission throughout the Ivy League was legendary." The book gives this account of the Hill/Leary confrontation:

Classical Principal William C. Hill

It was Hill's custom to welcome each new freshman class to Classical High by elaborating on the school motto: "No one has the right to do that which if everybody did would destroy society." In his autobiography, Timothy Leary calls this the "Kantian Categorical Imperative." Although Kant phrases the concept in different ways, the actual Categorical Imperative reads: Act only on that maxim that you can at the same time will to be a universal law." For Kant, the Categorical Imperative was the supreme principle of morality, a philosophical rephrasing of the Golden Rule. 

While escorting adult visitors around the school, Hill would often stop students in the hallway and have them repeat the schoool motto from memory. As editor in chief of the school newspaper, Tim wrote what he would later call "a particularly fiery editorial suggesting that the Categorical Imperative was totalitarian and un-American in glorifying the welfare of the state over the rights of the individual." His real aim in the editorial was to challenge the principal by attacking the philosophy on which the school was based.

A strict authoritarian who demanded utter respect from all his students, Hill immediately summoned Tim to his office. Pointing out that Tim has skipped school during his senior year more than any other student in his class, Hill said that he could and should expell him. Because he had known Tim's family for a long time, Hill explained that he had decided to spare them this crushing pain. Instead, Hill told Tim not to ask him for a letter of recommendation for college. On June 14, 1938, when Timothy Francis Leary graduated from Classical High, he had already been rejected by every Ivy League college to which he had applied.

Of course ultimately this did not stop Leary from successfully moving on to "higher" education, but since I haven't finished the book as yet I'll stop here. No doubt I will have more to share about Springfield's least favorite son later. 

Shop Whole Foods

Hey, shopping at Whole Foods Supermarket in Hadley helps to fund libertarian causes! According to OpenSecrets:

A LIBERTARIAN STREAK IN WHOLE FOODS: As part of an hour-long interview with libertarian media outlet Reason TV this week, John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods discussed the role of the private market in the health insurance reform debate. The Huffington Post notes that during the interview Mackey also disclosed that he was both fond of 2008 Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and that he ultimately voted last November for Libertarian Party nominee Bob Barr, a former Republican Congressman from Georgia. Mackey's libertarian-leanings may not come as a surprise to reviewers of campaign contribution records. According to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis, Mackey's sole contributions to federal candidates and committees have been to Libertarians.



Two Hamp Residents

Man with a smile.

Man with a hat. 

Today's Video

Bob Weir joined the Grateful Dead when he was just 16 years old. As Weir himself likes to put it, he ran away from home to join the circus - and did indeed find the Greatest Show on Earth. Robert H. Weir turns 62 years old today. 

Subversive Massachusetts Duo

Carla Howell and Michael Cloud.

 



Carla Howell (above) is the President and Co-founder of the Center For Small Government. In 2002 she also ran as a candidate for Governor of Massachusetts. In 2000, she ran against Senator Ted Kennedy and won 308,860 votes - the highest vote total of any third party U.S. Senate candidate running against both a Democrat and Republican in recent history. In 1998, she ran for State Auditor and received the endorsement of the Boston Herald.

Michael Cloud is Co-founder of the Center For Small Government. In 2002 he also ran for US Senate against 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, winning 19% of the vote - the highest vote ever received for a Libertarian US Senate candidate.

Together they are two of the most subversive activists in Massachusetts politics. Their latest delightful endeavor is to force down the state income tax by putting a referendum question on the ballot. The only issue is to cut it by how much.




I say abolish the tax entirely, but at the very least the current unjust increase cannot be allowed to stand. In the meantime, at Northampton's Happy Valley novelty shop the repeal has already occurred.

How appropriate to have a game featuring a donkey - the symbol of the Democrats - right by the sign.

 

No Comment

 



Colonel Capers

 



I like this Dann Vazquez video about the Northampton Kentucky Fried Chicken and Taco Bell on King Street in Northampton. 

 

Today at UMass

A day-glo Buddah.



A dead duck by the Fine Arts Center. 

This weekend UMass is hosting the Northeast Organic Farming Convention. Many of the participants like to sleep by the campus pond in tents.

Relaxing in the tent city.

Today's Video

August 9th is the anniversary of the death of Garcia.

We miss you Jerry!

Young Libertarians

The Future Belongs to Them 

 



Much has been made among commentators about the seeming inability of the Republican Party to successfully reposition themselves for a future comeback. Actually the answer is simple, they should jettison the religious right and recommit themselves to the principles of a free society. Now they have an additional reason to choose the freedom path - it puts them in harmony with the views of today's young people. According to the Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel:

America's Generation Y (born between 1980 and 1995) is the first to have grown up with the Internet, which leaves it the most liberty-loving generation since the era of Andrew Jackson.

What does it mean to have been weaned in an environment -- the Internet -- virtually free of government interference? Millions of Gen-Yers have grown accustomed to making purchases online tax-free. They download movies and music (much of it pirated), read their news online for free (to the detriment of print media), find recipes online and network with friends and relatives online.

In short, they love their freedom.

This love of liberty translates into a unique political composite. Gen-Yers are less nationalistic and more likely to see all politicians as corrupt than older voters. They support liberalization of drug laws and would prefer to see marijuana legalized. And they are much less likely to support restrictions on immigration than older voters. ...

But they are also free-traders, much more supportive of globalization than older voters. They're optimistic, overwhelmingly believing that they can change the country for the better. And in the most recent surveys, they support proposals to privatize Social Security, which few believe will be there for them when they retire.

...Weaned on the Internet, they understand what our founders understood and what classical liberals [libertarians] since have preached: that Social Security and the Internal Revenue Service represent big, intrusive government, but so, too, do a massive military, snooping spy agencies and national identification cards. They don't want the government taxing their Internet purchases any more than they want a government agency assigning them a doctor.

It's the classical liberalism of Milton Friedman, who argued that political and economic freedom are deeply interrelated -- that one cannot exist without the other. They've grown up with that kind of freedom, and as voting adults, they have come to expect it.

The first party to understand this and adjust will dominate America's political landscape in the future.

Are you listening, clueless Republicans?

Hamp Scenes

On Memorial Day I took this picture of the parking lot of the Hotel Northampton. Looks like there weren't a lot of people traveling this holiday weekend.

I like this weird mural on a wall in an alley off of Market Street.

It seems to be trying to tell a story, but if so I can't figure it out.

Purple people on a trash can.

A monster on a tree stump. 

Today's Videos

 



Paolo reminded me today of this great video by a talented Holyoke duo calling themselves Paper City's Finest. What happened to them? There was a CD at one point called "Big Dreams" but it doesn't seem to have gone anywhere. When the following video first came out in 2006 we were all amazed and impressed, expecting it to be the beginning of a whole new creative scene involving cool and informative videos coming out of the Valley's inner-city neighborhoods. Yet that really hasn't happened. In fact, three years later this is still the best music video of its type to come out of the Pioneer Valley so far. 

Here's something recent by somebody out of Springfield.



 

This would apply to newspapers as well. 

The price of a postage stamp went up to 44 cents this week. Isn't that unbelievable? They said they had to raise the price because fewer and fewer people are using the mail these days. That's government thinking, isn't it? "Hey, nobody's buying our product. Let's raise the price." -- Jay Leno, May 12, 2009.

 

Freedom Fighters

Top 10 Libertarian Celebrities

 



Everybody knows that Hollywood loves the Democrats and that the Country/Western music scene is full of Republicans, but who are the leading celebrities who are considered libertarian? There are more than you might think. I made this top ten list from a much longer list of well-known libertarians to be found at the Advocastes for Self-Government website:

CLINT EASTWOOD

Over the years, Hollywood icon Clint Eastwood has uttered many memorable lines in many memorable movies. "Go ahead, make my day," in Sudden Impact. "You've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?" in Dirty Harry.

But the most revealing line Eastwood ever uttered may have been to USA Today (January 25, 2004), when he said, "I like the libertarian view, which is to leave everyone alone." The quote confirmed that Eastwood is not just one of Hollywood's most honored and longest-lasting stars, but perhaps America's highest-profile libertarian.

 

DENIS LEARY

If Denis Leary's only claim to fame was "The Speech," he'd still be a hero to many libertarians. Leary delivered "The Speech" in the 1993 science-fiction movie, Demolition Man.

"I'm the enemy because I like to think. I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech and freedom of choice. I'm the kind of guy that could sit in a greasy spoon and wonder, gee, should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbecue ribs or the side order of gravy fries? I want high cholesterol. I would eat bacon and butter and buckets of cheese. Okay? I want to smoke Cuban cigars the size of Cincinnati in the nonsmoking section. I want to run through the streets naked with green Jell-O all over my body reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I might suddenly feel the need to. Okay, pal?"

While perhaps as much libertine as libertarian, Leary's speech perfectly encapsulated the persona of the Massachusetts-born actor and comedian; he's a rebel outsider who relishes the opportunity to defy authority.

 

JAMES D. WATSON

James D. Watson, the Nobel Prize-winning co-discoverer of the DNA molecule and one of history's most important scientists, says he is "very libertarian."

In the January 2007 issue of Esquire magazine, Watson declared: "I'm basically a libertarian. I don't want to restrict anyone from doing anything unless it's going to harm me. I don't want to pass a law stopping someone from smoking. It's just too dangerous. You lose the concept of a free society."

 

MARK CUBAN

Add Mark Cuban -- billionaire businessman and owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team -- to the list of people who credit novelist Ayn Rand with inspiring them to become American success stories.

Cuban read Rand's The Fountainhead "three complete times and untold number of little snippets and segments," he said in an interview on C-SPAN (March 26, 2006). He first read the book in high school, and it taught him that "it doesn't matter what everybody else thinks -- it's how you see yourself and what your own dreams are."

Rand's freedom-loving philosophy apparently also encouraged Cuban to become a libertarian. In the Austin American-Statesman (May 19, 2006), Cuban said his politics are "independent, leaning to libertarian. I vote for the candidate who I think will do the least." 

 

BILLIE JOE ARMSTRONG

Call Billie Joe Armstrong a punk, a neo-punk, or a post-punk popster -- but however you describe him, there's no denying that his band Green Day has had an enormous influence on popular music. However, what fans may not know about Green Day's front man, the funny and charismatic Armstrong, is that he is a registered Libertarian voter in California.

 

JOHN C. WRIGHT

Imagine a libertarian utopia. Now imagine that utopia a million years in the future. That's what science fiction writer John C. Wright does in his Golden Age trilogy -- and his daring feat of imagination has earned him respect as perhaps "this fledgling century's most important new SF talent" (according to Publisher's Weekly), and acclaim as one of the genre's most exciting libertarian authors.

In an interview on the jefallbright.net blog, Wright said the books are a rebuttal to socialist science fiction writer Olaf Stapledon (1886-1950), who also wrote epic, galaxy-spanning novels that took place in the distant future. "My ideas of law and economics are the opposite of Mr. Stapledon's, and so my utopia has in it everything he would leave out of his," Wright said. "He proposes a communist utopia, blissfully without private property. I propose a libertarian utopia, blissfully without public property." 

 

ROY INNIS

On February 4, 1998, Roy Innis, nationally known civil rights figure and head of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) joined the Libertarian Party. CORE is the third-largest civil rights organization in America, and differs from more traditional, left-leaning civil rights organizations in its emphasis on individual liberty -- CORE's mission statement says in part that "the most fundamental freedom for all people is the right to govern themselves."

 

PENN AND TELLER

Las Vegas headliners Penn & Teller are often described as the "bad boys of magic." You could also call them the "bad boys of liberty" -- since both the bigger, louder half (Penn Jillette) and the smaller, silent half (Raymond Joseph Teller) of the award-winning magic team are self-proclaimed libertarians.

As befitting his "loud" status, Jillette talks about his political beliefs at the drop of a rabbit-filled hat. In an interview with the Boston Phoenix (July 2-8, 2004), he said, "Well, I'm a real total-freedom nut, a libertarian, and I'm one of those crazy optimists. Let people do what they want and everything will be okay."

On the FilmForce.IGN.com Web site, Jillette said, "I'm a hardcore libertarian. I want everything legal." (October 13, 2003.) And in the Cato Institute's Regulation magazine, he described himself as "a Libertarian, pro-freedom, governs-least-governs-best, free market advocate." 

 

KURT RUSSELL

It's easy to see a libertarian streak in many of the characters movie star Kurt Russell has portrayed over the years. That libertarian streak is no coincidence; Russell himself is one of Hollywood highest-profile libertarians -- one who has talked about his pro-liberty beliefs on numerous occasions.

Russell wasn't always a libertarian. He told the Toronto Sun (August 4, 1996), "I was brought up as a Republican. But when I realized that at the end of the day there wasn't much difference between a Democrat and Republican, I became a libertarian."

 

HOWARD STERN

Stern has more than once -- both on the air and in print -- explicitly called himself a libertarian or made statements that were strongly libertarian in nature.

For example in 1984, Stern said, "I'm for personal freedom. I'm for freedom of the marketplace." In 1991, when a caller suggested that Stern pay more attention to the Libertarian Party, Stern answered, "I guess I really am a libertarian..." In the early 1990s, Stern called for privatizing many government functions and quipped, "If Donald Trump delivered the mail, you could send letters for 12 cents -- and also gamble with the stamps."

 

Smart Move

Finally, the Obama Administration is making a policy change we can applaud. According to the L.A. Times:



U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. said Wednesday that the Justice Department has no plans to prosecute pot dispensaries that are operating legally under state laws in California and a dozen other states -- a development that medical marijuana advocates and civil libertarians hailed as a sweeping change in federal drug policy.

In recent months, Obama administration officials have indicated that they planned to take a hands-off approach to such clinics, but Holder's comments -- made at a wide-ranging briefing with reporters -- offered the most detailed explanation to date of the changing priorities toward the controversial prosecutions.

The Bush administration targeted medical marijuana distributors even in states that had passed laws allowing use of the drug for medical purposes by cancer patients, those dealing with chronic pain or other serious ailments.

While this is an improvement, it is still ridiculous that drugs that are almost totally harmful, like booze and cigarettes, are legal while marijuana, which has medicinal value, remains under government attack.

Gypsy Heart

This afternoon I stopped in at the Gypsy Dog Gallery in downtown Amherst.

It has this weird contraption in front that doesn't appear to do anything except look cool.

The gallery is named after a dog called Gypsy, shown here with her human named Chip. 

The gallery has lots of weird and wonderful art. 

Stop by and check it out. 

Two Irishmen were sitting in a pub having a beer and watching the brothel across the street. They saw a Baptist minister walk into the brothel and one of them said, “Aye, ‘tis a shame to see a man of the cloth goin’ bad.”

Then they saw a Rabbi enter the brothel and the other Irishman said, “Aye, ‘tis a shame to see that the Jews are fallin’ victim to temptation.”

Then they saw a Catholic priest enter the brothel and one of the Irishmen said, “What a terrible pity - one of the girl’s must be quite ill.”