Tag: the state

Thoughts on Egypt

I know that everyone is suddenly saying, “oh…I’ve got some thoughts on Egypt” or “I’ve always had a feeling about Egypt…” but hey, if you’re here reading my blog it is because you like what I say, so you might just appreciate my thoughts on the Egyptian crisis. Frankly, I haven’t thought much about Egypt before. It is like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I vaguely knew they existed, but it wasn’t until everyone started talking about it that I got interested. I was watching some of the footage from it last week. I have mixed thoughts about what’s going…

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Violence Against Cops

There has been a lot of uproar about police officers being targeted by criminals lately. Apparently 11 officers have been killed in the last day or two. And this is troubling. Saddening. And wrong. But I want to offer a “middle ground” between two extremes that I’ve encountered. Extreme 1: Government is evil. Cops work for the government. Therefore all cops are evil people. There’s this mentality of “well, they deserved it because they are government officials out to get my, ahem, illegal vegetation, or because I didn’t wear a seatbelt.” Extreme 2: Government is wonderful. Cops work for the…

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Mr. Madison’s War

I’m doing a history class this week on the War of 1812. This war has confused me and I’ve never been sure what to think of it. There are some very interesting things I’ve discovered so far. – Madison knew he wouldn’t have a chance for reelection unless he found some way to unite the country and better his public image. – The First Bank of the United States had just been disbanded, but the new owner of it (Stephen Girard) was very good friends with Madison’s Secretary of Treasury, Alexander Dallas. Girard funded about 95% of the War of…

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New Stuff

Please sign up for my email newsletter/updates over there ————————>>> If you do, you’ll get the latest before it goes public (like when my book is coming out…) and you don’t have to keep remembering to check my site. I really would appreciate you signing up, just to make me feel good. And of course, I won’t be sharing your info with anyone else. 🙂 Other news: – Some time ago I did a “Shameless Self-Promotion” post which was much more popular than I anticipated. I converted that into a page that you can find under “About me.” It has…

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Report on First Mises Academy Class

If you know me on Facebook then perhaps you were following my saga last night which went like this: 12 hours before class: “Bad news: FB finally forced me to get the new profile. Dislike. 🙁 GOOD news: Mises Academy class starts TONIGHT!!! YAY!!!!!!!!!!!! :-)” 3 hours before class: “Class starts in 3 hours. I’ve got about 18 more pages to finish reading. This is really, really great though. I’m uber-excited!!! :-)” 10 minutes before class started: “This is great! I’m attending the first session of the Intro to Logic course!! It is AMAZING!! If you haven’t taken a Mises…

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Mises Academy Class Starts Tonight!

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I think the most exciting thing for me this week has been the prospect of taking this course on logic from the Mises Academy. As I’ve said before, I’m a little nervous about it, but I’m not in it to get the best grade but to learn, so even if my essays are horrible but I have learned from it, then it will be worth it. I’d like to see you at this class too, there’s still time to sign up! On other subjects, I’m finally contemplating the idea of getting my driver’s license. I’ll be able to do it…

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Get your economics questions answered!

During the holiday season it is hard to think about school and studying and all of that. But now Christmas is behind us and we need to start making plans. And what better addition to your 2011 learning than personalized tutoring in Austrian economics? And if you’re not sure if you’d really enjoy it, or if you’re not sure it will work for you, try it free for 2 weeks! This offer is good until January 1st, 2011. Simply email me at econtutor(at)savannahliston(dot)com to reserve your place. You can redeem the 2 weeks of tutoring right now or schedule it…

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Most Exciting News

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In a couple weeks I’ll be taking David Gordon’s “How to Think: An Introduction to Logic.” Words can’t describe how excited I am. This is like telling a kid, “hey, you get to go to Disneyland for 7 weeks!” or, well, I’m not sure what can compare to the uber amazing thought of taking this course. David Gordon wrote a great article about his course for Mises Daily, you can read it here. That’s what got me really going about how fantastic this course will be. I took a formal logic class a couple years ago and really loved it….

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The Ritual

Here is another performance of the ritual wherein I open up my “Add New Post” window between 8 and 9am and stare blankly at the screen for 3 minutes and 47 seconds, after which I bleakly begin an unoriginal, boring and pointless blog post so I can say that I have posted something every day. It really is good discipline. I tend to think that one needs to write only when you are “inspired.” Of course, I make myself inspired pretty quickly if I need to…but that only applies to fiction, so I’m a little lost when it comes to…

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To Try…Essayer

The word “essay” comes from the French, “essayer” which means “to try” or “to attempt.” I haven’t written many essays in my lifetime. Maybe 10 at the most. And a few of those would probably be more correctly called reports. Today I enrolled in the “Introduction to Logic” course that the Mises Academy is offering for January. When I was looking at the course details of it a couple weeks ago, I got worried when it mentioned something around writing essays. I love writing, but as I’m sure you understand, writing fiction is so much different than essay writing. No…

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