Darien Sumner – Page 5 – Bumbling Bees

Last Week in Weird

20 March 2017 by Darien Sumner

Public goods

As any fule kno, the problem with us stupid libertarian ideologues is that we refuse to accept that there are certain things out there that people need, but that simply cannot be provided on the free market. The big one, of course, is roads — regardless of what clueless rubes say, there’s no possible way that free men acting on their own could figure out how to get a stretch of relatively flat, clear ground between you and Wal-mart. Also, can you even imagine a way that mail could be delivered without government? Impossible! Public safety is another one; who has more of the knowledge and incentive necessary to keep your neighborhood safe: your neighbors, or faceless bureaucrats in Washington D.C.? It’s the bureaucrats all the way, of course.

Put those three things together and you have an obvious no-brainer. Who can keep the roads safe so the government mail can get delivered? Only the government, obviously. It’s too large, too expensive, and too complex an endeavor for anybody else to manage. Well, anybody else except for PornHub, anyhow.

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Last Week in Weird

13 March 2017 by Darien Sumner

Divide et impera

Hollywood leftists have had a rough year. First, they had to deal with the fact that their newly-annointed Ultimate Supreme Executive Chairman wasn’t the one they wanted, which I guess is a real blow to the ego if one is bizarre. Then there was that bit about how they had all threatened to leave the country if that happened, which bluff was very thoroughly called. Then there was the fiasco at the celebration of left-wing political grandstanding that used to be the Academy Awards.

Still and all, if there’s any Hollywood celebrity who’s having an even worse year than the average Hollywood celebrity, it could only be alleged famous person Shia LaBeouf, whose "art installation" consisting of a camera was repeatedly trolled by people more interested in pointing out that he’s a clownshoes than in announcing that "he will not divide us," whatever that means. After he got out of jail for losing his mind and physically assaulting said trolls, LaBoeuf relocated his "art installation" to that world-class center of metropolitan art and culture, Albuquerque, New Mexico, where it lasted less than a week before being taken down again. For his third trick, LaBoeuf changed the format of the exhibition: instead of an invitation for other clueless rubes to protest being divided, the camera merely pointed up at a "he will not divide us" flag silhouetted against a featureless sky. Clearly this exhibition is troll-proof!

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Last Week in Weird

6 March 2017 by Darien Sumner

Public service

It’s been only a few short weeks since the eight-year horror that was the Obama administration gave way to the new and exciting horror of the Trump administration, but I bet you’d already forgotten about Joe Biden. No, admit it, you forgot. Well, uncle Joe’s been a busy man, starting a new career for himself at the University of Pennsylvania, where he’s been named the "Benjamin Franklin Presidential Practice Professor," a gigantic mouthful of syntax stew with no clear meaning. What does it mean to be a professor of "presidential practice?" Does the University of Pennsylvania have a "Being the President" major? Was Benjamin Franklin ever president? These questions, and many more, are in need of answer.

Don’t ask the university, though; they’re as clueless as we are.

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Last Week in Weird

27 February 2017 by Darien Sumner

The spirit of progress

The American left continues to spiral down into madness, unable to cope with the reality of life here in the grim darkness of the far future. Everything president Trump does or says sends them into paroxysms, which is great fun for those of us whose job it is to make fun of stupid things people said last week. Particularly fun is the president’s ongoing feud with the news media, which has recently reached such a pitch of hilarity that the president has actually begun banning the mainstream press from official White House news conferences, preferring to rely on so-called "alternative" news outlets and the endless stream of comedy that is his personal Twitter account.

The mainstream media being so thoroughly demonized and disgraced is rather a new experience, though it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving bunch of worthless petty tyrants. Why do I say that? Well, here’s MSNBC’s other resident hag, Mika Brzezinski, to explain for you.

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You Might Want to Start Writing Your Angry E-mail Now

24 February 2017 by Darien Sumner

Because, since apparently nobody else is willing to do it, it falls to me to defend Milo Yiannopoulos. After years of gleefully dismantling the shibboleths of political correctness and getting away with it, Milo has finally gone too far; in a podcast appearance recently, he had the audacity to poke at the taboos surrounding pedophilia, which was, to be sure, a very poorly thought out decision. Milo, of course, is used to having the correct identity cards to say outrageous things and get away with it; in this case, he probably should have considered that the homosexuality card is a positive detriment, as homosexuality and pedophilia have been linked in the popular imagination for so long that a prominent homosexual playfully discussing pedophilia pushes all the wrong buttons with the conservative crowd. That is the politically correct line you do not want to cross.

Yet cross it he did, and the reaction was swift and fierce: his CPAC speech was canceled, his book deal was withdrawn, and he was resignated at Breitbart. Milo is sufficiently energetic and sufficiently entrepreneurial that I suspect he’ll survive it, but he’s lost a lot of cachet over this, to the point where even his friends seem to be distancing themselves from him. Since I’m already a pariah, though, I don’t fear the hornets’ nest; I’ll dive right in there!

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While I’m Talking About It

23 February 2017 by Darien Sumner

I’m not prepared to let go of this Richard Spencer thing just yet. Sorry, everybody who’s desperately sick of it, but it’s hip, topical stuff that exposes a quite frankly worrying trend in the liberty movement. Quick recap for the benefit of anybody who has wisely ignored my previous diatribes on the subject but who has foolishly chosen to read this one: The International Students For Liberty Conference was this past weekend, and a faction of students in the SFL calling themselves the "Hoppe Caucus" invited Richard Spencer to come get together with them at a bar near the conference to discuss his ideas. Mayhem then ensued, Jeffrey Tucker got involved, and then everybody got kicked out, which is a win for liberty because it made it harder for Richard Spencer to talk to people who wanted to talk to Richard Spencer, and I guess we’re supposed to think that’s absolute aces.

That’s not really what I came to talk about today. I came to talk about this one narrow little concept that I’ve seen echoed in a lot of libertarish responses to the Spencer fiasco. Because he’s handy, I’ll pick on Robby Soave again, but this is purely illustrative; Soave is nowhere near the only person saying things like this.

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With Thunderous Applause

22 February 2017 by Darien Sumner

We all had a good laugh at Jeffrey Tucker’s expense the other day, when he got the usual Bumbling Bees treatment: I found a goofy picture of him, artlessly slapped a DC Funk Parade foam finger on it, and then made fun of a stupid thing he’d done. I was prepared to leave it there; I’m a merciful guy, after all, and I’m sure that, now that he’s been shamed in Last Week in Weird, Tucker will renounce his madcap ways and return to being an actual principled libertarian with a functioning sense of irony.

Then Robby Soave had to open his big mouth.

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Last Week in Weird

20 February 2017 by Darien Sumner

A man and his dream

The International Students For Liberty Conference has been an annual event for ten years now. The conference, organized (expectedly enough) by Students For Liberty, is a three-day event featuring a number of libertarian — and, let’s face it, libertarish — speakers on a wide range of topics. It’s open to the public; one doesn’t have to be a student to attend. Indeed, the conference web site positively encourages attendance by non-students, as it suggests that one of the primary goals is to connect young libertarians with established "professional" libertarians. Networking, I think the buzzword still is.

So. Aces. It’s also worth noting that Students For Liberty has anticipated the factional squabbling among libertarians; they state unambiguously on the conference web site, in response to the goofy question "Am I ‘libertarian enough’ to attend":

Definitely. Students For Liberty prides itself on taking a "big tent" approach to promoting liberty. This means not only that pro-liberty people of all types and backgrounds are welcome to join in the fun, but also that there’s no requirement to have prior knowledge of libertarian thought, economics, or any particular approach to liberty. We’re all here to learn and ISFLC is meant to bring together many different approaches to liberty. We’d love to have yours represented!

So everybody is welcome, regardless of his ideology.

Everybody except Richard Spencer, that is.

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With Friends Like These

18 February 2017 by Darien Sumner

Contra Reason’s Nick Gillespie, the best thing that happened for the liberty movement in 2016 — indeed, arguably the only good thing in what was otherwise a catastrophic year — was the sudden explosion in popularity of the wonderful libertarian mantra "taxation is theft." In addition to being absolutely true and correct, this is also a powerful slogan that portrays libertarianism at its best, as a philosophy that does not waver and does not compromise with evil for political expediency.

So, naturally, there are libertarishes who hate it.

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