BradSpangler.com

Just so you know — yes, it’s true. I’m one of the two diabolical bastards behind a new social bookmarking site for libertarians…

freedomSLUT: Sites, Links, URLs and Tags

The other one being, well, one of the usual suspects.

Here’s the news release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
06/01/06
POC Thomas L. Knapp
admin@freedomslut.com

NEW SITE IS FAST, EASY AND GETS (THE WORD) AROUND

The libertarian web community’s newest networking tool — a politically specific social bookmarking site — debuts today at www.freedomSLUT.com.

“Get your mind off of smut — it’s not slut, it’s capital ess ell ewe tee” says Thomas L. Knapp, one of two bloggers behind the effort. “For Sites, Links, URLs and Tags.” But, he admits, he intends to capitalize on the acronym in advertising and promotion.

Knapp, publisher of libertarian sites Rational Review and Kn@ppster, and Brad Spangler, who blogs at BradSpangler.Com and consults for several movement sites and organizations, developed freedomSLUT on the open source Scuttle platform and plan to promote it to the libertarian community as a resource for “finding or flogging” anti-state, pro-freedom bloggage, news and commentary.

“The net is in continuous transition,” says Spangler. “A tool pops up in a discrete community, spreads to the broader web, then gets specialized again. Social bookmarking started out as a tech/geek thing, then went pop, and now we’re bringing it back to a specific group whose members will find it extremely useful.”

freedomSLUT allows for private and public bookmarking, and offers browser and blog template tools to make sharing links easy and convenient.

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Web sites mentioned in this release:

freedomSLUT — http://www.freedomslut.com
Rational Review — http://www.rationalreview.com
Kn@ppster — http://knappster.blogspot.com
BradSpangler.Com — http://www.bradspangler.com/blog

For more information on the software used, Scuttle, check out this Newsforge article.

Complaints can be directed to the circular file.

An intelligently written new blog definitely worth following is mAtt in Switzerland’s After:All.

Let me highlight one piece right off the bat: Economics: The Market as an Inevitable Result of Individualism, subtitled “Or, Anarcho-Communists Can in Fact Be Regarded as Pro-Market“.

Many State socialists and anarchists within the socialist tradition condemn economic competition as it appears on the market as being cruel. They say that we should abolish the market if we want to live in harmony with each other. I am not going to point out the many advantages of the free market and as a result of it the many advantages of competition. However, I will explain why even fully State socialist or anarcho-communist societies could not get rid of the market, even when it comes to producing essential goods, as the market and competition is a logical consequence of individualism.

I would add that the most essential thing, in my own opinion and regardless of ideological labels, is commitment to voluntaryism and development of a broad consensus on where the rightful bounds of individual autonomy are. I would also say that’s particularly important with regard to scarce material resources, as disputes over those are inevitable in any society. The only question is whether such disputes can be peacefully resolved when they arise.

No — it’s not that I’m obsessed with money, secretly want to be Donald Trump and slink back to my evil master’s secret base underneath the Rockefeller mansion every evening to report back.

Rather — we are material beings and people argue, and sometimes fight, over material things. Without a broad consensus on how to determine who rightfully decides what about what, bloodshed and slaughter are the inevitable consequence. If peace and freedom matter to you, then “property” ought to matter — regardless of what negative associations one might have with the word.

As recommended by Wally Conger, do catch Stefan Molyneux’s latest podcast on the contradictions, impracticality and impossibility of minarchism — or “why libertarianism as a political movement doesn’t work”.

Molyneux elegantly shows through relentless, unflinching and beautifully simple logic and historical example that it is not anarchists who are being “unrealistic” by seeking the abolition of the state. Rather, this charge is far more applicable to those who themselves most commonly level it at us — those who assert that states can be effectively restrained or tamed for any considerable length of time, minarchists.

The third podcast episode from The Enochian Apocalypse E-zine is now out. Download it direct in MP3 format here.

Enochian Apocalypse bills itself as “The best in electro, EBM, industrial, darkwave and goth music” and I’m not inclined to argue with them. The first episode of their podcast introduced me to Combichrist, with an opening track called “This is my rifle” that would make a fine soundtrack selection for a dark, dystopian, futuristic and extraordinarily violent action movie.

Here’s their podcast feed, but do check out the articles on the site as well.