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Brian Doherty on the Trouble With Governments and Benefits of Anarchism
Sunday, October 21, 2012 – with Anthony Wile
Brian Doherty The Daily Bell is pleased to present this exclusive interview with Brian Doherty (left).
Introduction: Brian Doherty is a senior editor at Reason magazine and Reason.com. Doherty is author of the books This is Burning Man (2004, Little, Brown; paperback BenBella, 2006), Radicals for Capitalism: A History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement (PublicAffairs, 2007) and Gun Control on Trial (Cato, 2008). From 1994 to 2003, Doherty worked as associate editor and reporter for Reason, writing a variety of stories on topics ranging from the Americans with Disabilities Act to pollution-credit trading to the independent rock scene. Doherty's work has appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines. He has been a commentator on hundreds of radio and TV shows and was the Warren Brookes Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in 1999. He served as managing editor at Regulation magazine from 1993-94.
Here's a brief snippet:
Daily Bell: You received a Bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Florida. What do you think of Western mainstream journalists and media?
Brian Doherty: First, I advise strongly against journalism school, even though I graduated from one. It's unnecessary, since any alert and careful reader of journalism should be able to figure out the secrets of the trade, such as they are. It is not a technical school such that specialized education is necessary for it. That said, and although the business end of traditional journalism is in a panic these days for justified reasons, the amount of information and analysis available to consumers of news thanks to the Internet is huge and growing and of quality at least comparable to if not exceeding that of some imagined golden age of American journalism. Read More
Who Watches the Watchers?
Sunday, October 21, 2012 – by Staff Report
Recently, an ill-planned SWAT team raid ended with a young child ending up in the emergency room. A 12-year-old girl was sent to the hospital with second-degree burns after an officer with the Billings, Montana Police Department detonated a flash-bang grenade into a bedroom in a home where they were executing a warrant. No charges were filed by the raid's end. – RTAmerica
Dominant Social Theme: SWAT raids are necessary to keep people safe.
Free-Market Analysis: The militarization of the US police continues and with it these tragic incidents. If people are not being outright killed by mistake, they are being badly hurt.
And for what? To put people who make or take "drugs" in jail.
By now enough has emerged about the pharmaceutical industry to provide us with insights that legal drugs are not, in many cases, any safer than so-called illegal ones. But this does not apparently slow down police attacks – and the inevitable mistakes that arise as well. Watch Video