This was my first ever WTF moment on LewRockwell.com:
http://www.whooknoo.com/indoor/top-20-best-bar-fights/
Honestly, if a real bar fight breaks out you don’t want to have anything to do with it or be anywhere near it, they are no good for anyone; and the sad fact of the matter is, the people who end up in the best shape after the fight are usually the thugs and barbarians who love to cause “totally awesome” bar fights.
Yes, I too fail to see any reason for this to be posted on LRC.
A bar fight is a violation of property rights (the bar owner’s). It is also animalistic and destructive. Maybe a Keynesian would support it so that the bar property has to be replaced and the doctor gets new patients.
I thought a decent WTF moment was the heavy strokes of orthodox conservatism that some articles display in there.
Yea, how the hell did that get in there? Need to sell ads? Mistaking Selma Hayek for F.A. Hayek? Pretty strange.
I’m far more baffled by David Kramer’s incomphrehensible obsession with the Rockefeller and Rothschild families, personally. Or the fact a good 15% of the site is now advertisements for this-or-that natural/biomedical health plan/praise of the Neanderthal diet. Whatever happened to the LRC I knew, the one which was nothing but interesting philosophical-historical explorations and satire of Obamaites?
My guess is, the whole article is a “Hoo-rah” part and parcel of the growing “Guide to Manly McMan’s Manly Manthings of Man: Rated M For Manly” trend that I’ve been noticing in recent articles. Probably trying to widen the audience to young white males and athletic types.
It’s just an extension of the idea of a duel. Yes, fighting in the bar after the bar owner asks both parties to leave is a tort and violation of the bar owner’s property rights, however, it is one of the central mistakes of modern jurisprudence to deny the right of hotheaded males (or females) to settle their disputes through martial contest (duel), if they so choose.
Clayton -
Bar fights are pretty awesome if done volentary in a areas specified by the property owner. Fun to watch, and they won’t be picking fights with other people who maybe don’t wanna fight on there way home…
David Kramer is about my favorite poster. Maybe they are trying to broaden their audience to younger males. I don’t mind the ads. They’re targeted to the LRC’s audience, which is primarily men over 45 years of age with no kids according to Alexa: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/lewrockwell.com#
Barbarians and thugs do not give one iota about any dueling concepts or “dispute settling”; they just like to F stuff up for the lolz. Do not think these people are rare birds either, they aren’t.
Also, not that it matters, but fighting in a bar before the bar tender asks both parties to leave is in violation of almost any bar. There is no fighting in bars allowed, period. Any bar regular knows that. Usually signs are posted in the bar itself stating that fighting will not be tolerated. And to think a bar owner would care about the “rights” of “hot headed” males to duke it out anywhere near his establishment is folly.
This isn’t about dueling or jurisprudence, it is about the fact that bar fights are not “totally awesome”, just because it isn’t government subsidized violence (such as war) doesn’t make it “better” or more “civil”, it is the same thuggery on a smaller scale and bystanders can still get hurt in the process.
@Dondoolee: Calm down, I’m not saying you should like bar fights. All I’m saying is that natural law society would likely recognize a right to duel since participation in the legal system would be voluntary and people would participate in the legal system exactly because it is less costly and risky than settling your disputes through violent confrontation. In the modern age, we are stuck in the mindset of coercive law whereby participation in legal resolution of disputes is mandated. In a natural law society, this would not be the case. If Peter has a dispute with Paul and both parties agree to physically fight in order to resolve the dispute, that would be their free choice. When duels were legal, there were a lot of rules regarding what constituted a lawful duel versus an unlawful disturbance of the peace and social norms in a natural law society would likely result in some similar restrictions.
Clayton -
They aren’t settling any real disputes but they are fighting for there own amuzment.
That I don’t understand how a real fight can be amusing doesn’t make that goal less valid.
(Edit: Actually I do understand it at least on a scietific level. Fighting releases massive amounts of pleasure hormones in the brain. In some people so much that it induces a state of euforia and becomes psycologically addicitive)
Some people agree on a field in the middle of no where to duke it out 20 vs 20. Everyone that is there comes becuase they find it amuzing, I don’t see the problem.
But with everything that is illegal there will be problems and collateral fallout. Since it is illegal to beat people up whether they are willing or not not everyone take such great care about where they fight or whether the other party is a willing participant. You have gangs of hooligans fighting in the middle of town for any reason they can find and so forth.
What we need to do is to legalize consentual fights. Then these people will have a proper outlet for there entertainment and it will be more of this in a field in the middle of nowhere or in designated bars and less of fighting anywhere where some bystander might get involved or hurt.
a)I didn’t know I wasn’t calm. I certainly didn’t mean to sound belligerent or angry in tone
b) To clarify: Bar fights one should actually worry about (not some drunken fratboy or yuppie wannabees going at it) seldom involve any concept of dueling. Most of the time most of the people involved certainly would not care about a “field of honor” type approach. For example, some particularly nasty bar fights start between two (perhaps coked up and usually drunk) non regulars in a crowded environment in a lightning quick heat of the moment flash; usually started by some form of a behind the back “sucker punch”. The fact is one party not agreeing (or knowing) about a fight is a major advantage to most fighters (that they rightfully relish in). Fights you should worry about do not start in some stare down front to front pissing contest, they start (and usually end) with a knife in the back.
Also, it must be realized bars can be a powder keg that can easily turn into a riot if one is not careful (and sometimes even if one is). You are dealing with mixed groups of people on leisure consuming a social lubricant. This is a different social scenario than a dueling mindset, this is a “riot gear” or mass hysteria mindset a bar owner or employee must have.
Bar fights one should worry would not be solved by any dueling principle. It is an imperfect system of trial and error of keeping the barbarians at the gate with unwanted patrons and preventive measures that, in some cases, can never be fully solved.
But that type of fight is extremly uncommon, at least in my city but I would think there are not so many non-warzones where people just get beaten up at random frequently. Attacks on random people are extremly uncommon and carried out by people who are completley mentally deranged, attacks like this also happen to settle some underground crimeworld score.
Every non gang fight I have seen and it is quite a few and every fight people have tried to pick with me have started as pissing contest. It does not get phyical until booth sides have insulted eachoters manhood and mommas quite a bit.
The gang fights are usually arranged as well and bystanders don’t get involved. I know we invited some Nazis to present there ideology to our local libertarian group once (mainly as a freedom of speech ploy). The Nazi in question did bring a lot of muscle for some reason we did not understand … when we left however there where leftist in ambush positions with bats and lead pipes outside. One of them came up a bit closer then shouted to everyone to stay back cause we where not “them” … ideologically they hate us just as much. So the only reason I can think of they didn’t attack us is we where not there to fight, would not have given a good fight back and would have called the police at first sign of trouble.
Nielsio wrote the following post at Wed, Jun 2 2010 9:20 AM:
Yes, I too fail to see any reason for this to be posted on LRC.
A bar fight is a violation of property rights (the bar owner’s). It is also animalistic and destructive. Maybe a Keynesian would support it so that the bar property has to be replaced and the doctor gets new patients.
I almost choked with my food, man. Don’t do that hahahaha.
But that type of fight is extremly uncommon, at least in my city
While this may be somewhat of a demographic or market based question, I can promise you this type of fight is not extremely uncommon. I can also promise you that no insignificant number of bars have to calculate degeneracy into there plans or suffer business breaking consequences. This isn’t about “random” attacks as much as it is about drunken attacks in an impersonal social environment.
The gang fights are usually arranged as well and bystanders don’t get involved.
I am talking about fights in a bar. Outside people will get involved if you let them, trust me. Not only that you must consider regulars who may want to “help” by getting involved but only add fuel to the fire.
Every non gang fight I have seen and it is quite a few and every fight people have tried to pick with me have started as pissing contest
And that is fine. But bars, on average attract more degenerates who are not trying to get in pissing contests. To be honest, I don’t really consider the “stare down” thing as something to worry too much about. Even if it ends up in a “fight” (which is fairly rare) it is usually easily broken up by the four or five people trying to prevent it anyway.
The closest thing to a “pissing contest” where something actually happens that is worth considering is a heated brief exchange (usually caused by some random immediatly preceeding incident, such as an accidental “bump” or hitting on another dudes girl) followed by a sucker punch, which is a bit of a different set up and can escalate rather quickly if the people were with groups.
Dondoolee man, where the hell do you live? 
Yeah where the hell do you live?
Sure it can start with an accident, there are some people who don’t seem to be picking fights as much for the endorfin rush of the fight itself but for some other need to assert themselves as the alpha-male and only know how to do it with violence. Still they will not hit you if you just apologize (wheter it was your fault or not) and walk away, all they want is for you to yeild. Hence all bar fights are pretty easy to avoid…
Sure a lot of retards don’t get this and will talk back even if they don’t wanna fight and will get punched in the face. But they are just dumb and don’t know how to deal with these other retards…
Dondoolee man, where the hell do you live?
lol, I am actually an upper middle class aristocratic kid. I just happend to used to live in and own a bar in (to be very general) the Detroit region. It was more fun and peacful than I make it sound though (though the fights, among other things, were extremly stressful). But trust me, my bar was far from the worst and worrying about major fighting incidents is part of the territory with a significant number of bars, and fighting is not something to take lightly; in fact it was for me (aside from maybe government regulations) the biggest stressor of the business.
Another fact is, when a new bar owner takes over a bar, it is not uncommon that he has to clear out a plethora of degenerates (which is no easy task), these degenerates are usually not very peaceful by nature.
Quote by hkarnoldson: “But that type of fight is extremly uncommon, at least in my city but I would think there are not so many non-warzones where people just get beaten up at random frequently. Attacks on random people are extremly uncommon and carried out by people who are completley mentally deranged, attacks like this also happen to settle some underground crimeworld score. Every non gang fight I have seen and it is quite a few and every fight people have tried to pick with me have started as pissing contest. It does not get phyical until booth sides have insulted eachoters manhood and mommas quite a bit.”
What city do you live in? For me I’ve seen those types of fights happen a whole lot(I live in NYC). It really starts up for no reason, some guys just come in all like “yo I haven’t had beef in a long time”, they just want to hit somebody and get into shit. No insulting of each other’s manhood or mommas or anything like that, just a punch to the jaw and it begins, they don’t even say shit to you. Real assholes, so you learn to recognize those types.
Of course thats pretty rare in any of the nice NYC neighborhood bars, but the bad areas of new york kinda suck.
I suspect the article is nothing more than Mr Rockwell’s particular sense of humour.
He usually posts lots of articles that merely interest him that don’t necessarily bear any relation to libertarian or economic philosophy. No one is completely one-dimensional afterall (Mises and Rothbard had interests beyond economics). Occasionally there are articles all within the same theme, such as the current ‘art of mannliness’ fixation. Some of the articles aren’t always my taste either, like the leftist rants of Eric Margolis and Glen Greenwald and a couple others, but I still appreciate the site nonetheless.
The blog section is a little more haphazard because of the range of authors and regularly become the focus of people’s ire with angry emails and equally affronted responses. Sometimes it’s fun to read them, too.