UNR Students for Liberty » Nevada Sagebrush

Our First Political Cartoon

Barry Belmont — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 16:18:16 +0000

The Nevada Sagebrush has done us the honor of parodying our parody and taking the caricatures, the issues of black and white, and absurdity to another level entirely. In a word: awesome.

“What do you mean we’re not getting ASUN club funding?

Love us or hate us, you can’t say we aren’t trying

Mary Hunton — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 05:04:43 +0000

There has been a bit of an uproar concerning our latest shenanigan. If I thought the Abolish ASUN festival was getting us enough attention as it was, making our Abolish ASUN petition public to the wonderful world of the internet was the icing on top of the cake. By announcing the festival we got a lot of oohs and ahhs. By announcing the petition I’ve noticed a different trend. People seem to either really support us or really oppose us. For those who support us–thank you! I’m glad you see where we’re coming from. For those who don’t–thank you, too! By being so avidly against our cause you are inadvertently raising more awareness about it.

Regardless, this blog post isn’t meant to defend our position. There really isn’t much I need to say that hasn’t been said already. We know where we stand and why we do. Mostly this blog post is to point out that, no matter how much people may disagree with what we are doing, at least we are doing something. Believing in a cause one thing–acting on it is quite another.

From the comments on a variety of different venues (Facebook, The Nevada Sagebrush, email, our own site), I’ve come to the conclusion that most people don’t understand what we’re trying to do. After all, we are just a bunch of “self-glorifying dumbasses” (damn, you pinned us spot on, you anonymous Sagebrush commenter, you). Clearly we haven’t thought any of this through…

But we have. If we hadn’t, this festival and this petition wouldn’t even be happening. If we didn’t think about these things, we’d be sitting back and doing nothing. We’d be the students who bitched and moaned and expected problems to fix themselves. Well guess what? Problems don’t fix themselves. We’ve done everything from suggest changes to the club commission to try to get into office. Neither of these tactics was effective. So what’s left?

When something is broken and you can’t fix it, maybe you’d be best served to just throw it away and start fresh.

On that note, The Nevada Sagebrush has been kind enough to feature us again, this time not for the festival, but for the petition. You can read it here.

Cheers!

Diversity as Viewed by a Sample of UNR

Barry Belmont — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 02:24:30 +0000

This is not a joke. Try, as an academic exercise, to see why we think diversity initiatives are both counterproductive and a contemporary form of racism/xenophobia/prejudice of all kind. It tries to teach that You + I > Them for our “enlightened” thinking. This is straight from the Sagebrush whose recent issue we will probably be discussing at length.

But first: a sample.

“Diversity is a tolerance of all people and an understanding of different cultures.”

“I believe that diversity is the most important thing in the whole world.”

“Diversity is a collaboration of people of different backgrounds that come together.”

“I believe that the University of Nevada, Reno has a lot of diversity which is good for our generation.”

“Diversity is very important in our county, but it isn’t as represented as much as it could be.”

“We need to acknowledge other races, other cultures and we need to accept them.”

“I really believe that UNR doesn’t have enough diversity. It’s a lot of kids who look the same.”

“I believe that diversity is not recognized enough on campus. Not as much as it should be.”

“We really have to accept diversity. There’s no sense in having a garden of all the same flower.”

…yeah, people you go to school with said these things.

It’s one thing to “accept” differences among skin color and religion and life styles and sexual orientation and quite another to point at these things and say, You are different from me and I (in my exalted wisdom) am willing to let that be okay. The elitism inherent in the position of “accepting” in the sense that one “accepts diversity” is disturbing and unnecessary. One does not need to “accept” another student as “black” or “a man” or “vegetarian” anymore than one needs to “accept” that air is there. Diversity is all around us and, yes, an appreciation of the cultures of the world is potentially beneficial, but, like air, it goes without saying. Diversity is a word that has no place in any respectable society.

And correct me if I’m wrong, but we’re all equal right? Me = You. Me + You = Us. Me + You + You + You =Us. There is no Them.

The UNR Students for Liberty get an article in the Sagebrush

Barry Belmont — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 04:18:00 +0000

About two weeks ago the local paper The Nevada Sagebrush had an article criticizing my Anarcho-Capitalism lecture entitled “Libertarianism: Rearing its Ugly Head with Faith in ‘Free Market.’” Figuring this deserved a response, I wrote one and it was published in the Sagebrush.

It can be read at the above link as well as below. But on the Sagebrush site there have been numerous back-and-forths with those that (for some reason) didn’t like the article. You can have your two cents there or here. Please do enjoy.

A Libertarian Conversation
By Barry Belmont

To be justified in believing in any philosophy means to follow its premises to their logical conclusion. For libertarians there are, at base, two undeniable tenets: 1) the right of self-ownership and 2) all interactions between people (self-owners) must be voluntary.

In short, the entirety of libertarianism can be summed up as “you can do whatever you want, just keep your mitts to yourself.”

In a recent article, Nevada Sagebrush writer Lee Hampton attacked libertarian ideas, claiming they hinge “upon a blind, fanatical and theological faith in ‘free markets’” and that libertarians are somehow bad for doing this.

While the words “blind” and “fanatical” are inflammatory and used for offhand dismissals rather than legitimate criticisms, it can rightly be said that we libertarians do have faith in the free market. Free markets are nothing short of the sum total of all free and voluntary human interactions.

If you can’t have faith in this, then what hope is there of ever improving the human condition?

Some might say that the hope lies in governments and that governments must step in to change individual human behavior for the better. But to believe the government is something different from the same individuals who compose markets is absurd. Who are these angels so full of benevolence? The government is composed of the exact same people as those who make up free markets with one important difference: They have no incentive to do anything well because they can use force.

On free markets, how much a service benefits society correlates to the amount of money gained. This is why Apple and Google do so well and why Paint-a-Pet stores generally go out of business. Where Apple and Google make their money by directly serving customers, governments get the same amount of money no matter how poorly they do their job.

In fact, the converse can be seen: The more poorly a government does its job (that is, by allowing crime rates to rise, causing economic strife, etc.) the more money it gets in the name of “solving” the problem.

In essence, advocating for free markets is advocating for personal responsibility, triumphing personal liberty and holding that though there are some greedy, mean and bad people, the vast majority of people are good. Sure, there might be an Enron or an AIG fiasco on the free and open market, but these singular bad instances are overwhelmed by billions of everyday cooperative interactions.

Think of how much cooperation went in to making what you are reading: I wrote this article, an editor edited it, someone placed it in the newspaper, the paper in your hand was made from trees which were transported vast distances by trucks and planes, the ink had to be manufactured, printers had to place it on the page and so on. Thus, faith in free markets is simply a faith in free individuals.

This is what the University of Nevada, Reno Students for Liberty believe and support.

To learn more, or to read the full version of my lecture “Anarcho-Capitalism II: Justice & Defense,” visit www.UNRforLiberty.com.

So, we were in the paper…

Barry Belmont — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 05:44:00 +0000

I almost forgot to mention it, but we (The UNR Students for Liberty) were in the Nevada Sagebrush last week. You probably won’t be able to get yourself a hard copy unless you come to us (we cut out enough to keep all our mothers happy), but the story can be read online.

This reporter was a really cool guy and I really appreciate the time and effort he put into this article.

Unlike this asshat who couldn’t be bothered to change his bland, preconceived, hackneyed, one-sided blogpost that didn’t care to look into anything deeper than McCain v. Obama. There are more important things to do with our time than wax pointlessly on the already well-waxed.

So yea, check any of that out if you want. Or not that’s cool too.