Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Murray Rothbard and the Slaughter of the Gingers.

From Murray Rothbard's "For a New Liberty"
Does anyone else think this might be where Parker and Stone got their idea for the "ginger-kid" theme in some of their South Park episodes?

"Let us consider a stark example: Suppose a society which fervently considers all redheads to be agents of the Devil and therefore to be executed whenever found. Let us further assume that only a small number of redheads exist in any generation — so few as to be statistically insignificant. The utilitarian-libertarian might well reason: "While the murder of isolated redheads is deplorable, the executions are small in number; the vast majority of the public, as non-redheads, achieves enormous psychic satisfaction from the public execution of redheads. The social cost is negligible, the social, psychic benefit to the rest of society is great; therefore, it is right and proper for society to execute the redheads." The natural-rights libertarian, overwhelmingly concerned as he is for the justice of the act, will react in horror and staunchly and unequivocally oppose the executions as totally unjustified murder and aggression upon nonaggressive persons. The consequence of stopping the murders — depriving the bulk of society of great psychic pleasure — would not influence such a libertarian, the "absolutist" libertarian, in the slightest. Dedicated to justice and to logical consistency, the natural-rights libertarian cheerfully admits to being "doctrinaire," to being, in short, an unabashed follower of his own doctrines."

2 comments:

  1. When I was a kid I planted ornamental gingers in my grandparents garden. My grandfather enjoyed them but my grandmother wanted to get rid of them. She made the best banana pancakes though so I had no problem over looking her poor taste in plants.

    In South Park another episode which comes to mind is the one when people from the future traveled back to the present in order to find jobs. It comes to mind because they all looked alike...so it's hard to see your example of ginger people as being much of an issue in the future.

    Another South Park episode that comes to mind is the 1% vs the 99%. We always look to blame people for our problems. In some cases the blame is justified...in other cases the blame only reflects our own lack of understanding.

    If you get a chance you should do a post on selling votes. I'd be interested in hearing whether you support the concept.

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  2. Also, if you get a chance do you think you could join the Ron Paul Forums? I think you would add quite a bit of depth to the discussions there. All of the threads I post are in the political philosophy section.

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