In Law and Liberty, John Bicknell reviews the influence of Edward Abbey, author of The Monkey Wrench Gang, which advocated “active measures” to sabotage the machinery and works of industrial civilization such as major hydroelectric dam. Despite Abbey’s contradictory and even offensive views – he was openly racist and sexist – his influence was profound, and is still producing devastating echoes in bitter conflicts like pipeline sabotage in British Columbia.
Blueprint for Alberta?
Writing in Jewish World Review, Frederic Fransen reminds Americans of a key lesson from Revolutionary War-era pamphleteer Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. “The colonies need to declare independence,” Fransen summarizes Paine, “because so long as their goal was seen as reconciliation, foreign governments would consider the Americans as rebels and the conflict an internal affair.” But a unilateral declaration of independence, Fransen notes, instantly converts mere complaints from an aggrieved group into a negotiation between sovereign states.
