Miscellany
I relaxed with the older kids last night and watched Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. I thought it was going to be a humorous, campy movie, but it wasn't. It was a true horror flick. The premise: The South is controlled in large measure by vampire plantation owners and slave dealers, who use the blacks as a steady source of blood, and Lincoln's civil war efforts were largely driven by the desire to destroy the vampires (one of whom killed his mother). That's not a bad movie premise, and it's about as accurate as what many history textbooks teach about this era. * * * * * * * I haven't had much time to read lately, but I'm greatly enjoying the early pages of Patrick Geary's The Myth of Nations. The thrust of his book is that the idea of European nationhood is a fiction. Europe has always consisted of migrating groups (tribes, clans, hordes, etc.). The nations of "England," "France," "Germany," and the others were artificial constructs of European governments (and their intellectual backers) that wanted to increase state power during the Enlightenment. De Jouvenel makes similar points in his On Power. I'm really looking forward to moving into this topic more.
Speaking of which: In a time when the relentless march of statehood continues, it's no wonder politicians hate libertarians. The libertarians, I find, are the only lay people who understand--or at least intuit---that something has gone horribly awry with government. It's not surprising, therefore, that at least one politician in New Hampshire is horrified that a group of libertarians is trying to make the state a bastion of, well, freedom. From Tom Woods: "New Hampshire State Representative Cynthia Chase is appalled that people who believe in nonviolence (i.e., people who belong to the Free State Project) are moving to her state. She suggests that the way to keep freedom-seeking people out of the state is to take away some of New Hampshire's freedom."
