Has anyone heard about Frank Miller's new book about the struggle for liberty?

Miscellaneous Current Events
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The Life And Times Of Martha Washington In The Twenty-First Century

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1593076541/ref=pe_5050_12373090_snp_dp

Description from Amazon:

A masterpiece nearly twenty years in the making, this archival, oversized, and slipcased hardcover volume contains the complete life story of Martha Washington, the twenty-first century freedom fighter created by comic-book megastars Frank Miller (Sin City, 300) and Dave Gibbons (Watchmen). Our story begins in the squalid corridors of a maximum-security housing project, where a young girl will rise from the war-torn streets of Chicago to battle injustice in a world insane with corruption. Her fight will take her far, from the frontlines of the second American Civil War, to the cold, unforgiving reaches of space. She will be called a hero, a traitor, and nearly everything in between, but all along the way, her courage, her integrity, and her unwavering commitment to that most valuable of rights - liberty - will inspire a movement that will never surrender!

Miller is kind of hit or miss, but this could be the best thing to happen for the liberty movement in a while. I’m hoping that it’s not anti-capitalist. I don’t think Miller buys into socialist of fascist economic systems. To be honest, he probably knows little about them. Still, he definitely seems to recognize the divide between the state and regular society, and rarely apologizes for the state’s existence. Most of his works (Batman for instance) have focused on vigilante justice, due to either state corruption or ineptitude.

On a discouraging note, here is a quote from his wikipedia page:

Nobody questions why we, after Pearl Harbor, attacked Nazi Germany. It was because we were taking on a form of global fascism, we’re doing the same thing now … It seems to me quite obvious that our country and the entire Western World is up against an existential foe that knows exactly what it wants… For some reason, nobody seems to be talking about who we’re up against, and the sixth-century barbarism that they actually represent. These people saw people’s heads off. They enslave women, they genitally mutilate their daughters, they do not behave by any cultural norms that are sensible to us. I’m speaking into a microphone that never could have been a product of their culture, and I’m living in a city where 3000 of my neighbors were killed by thieves of airplanes they never could have built.

Hopefully, the book is anti-statist, good, well-reviewed, and turned into a movie that doesn’t get severely neutered of such elements.

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Wow, this looks really good!

I worked in the youth justice system for some years and the movement is more oriented in making neighborhoods a prison. The prison system is so flooded and the placement facilities reach capacity and over-flow at times (they set-up beds in gyms and other rooms in some facilities until other facilities are found and open beds are arranged). Because of this youth are pushed through the system quickly and sometimes even if they were to go to jail instead of a placement facility they don’t. What is happening now is to try to put more on probation with ankle bracelets and these youth have to go to certain classes at an neighborhood agency and have to be home at certain times from school or other leisure activities for a social worker or probation officer to meet with them and go over some things with them. The justice system is explicitly advocating and is now applying it more and more to instead of bringing youth to jail or a placement facility to instead coordinate efforts in their neighborhoods. If they are found to go a certain distance from home this is a probation violation. If they are not home or go to scheduled meetings this is also a violation. Too many of these violations either shrink their geography to house arrest or if they violate this too much, then they do go to jail or a placement facility. They are trying to deal with the over-flow of considered criminals by making their neighbors the prison structure. I have often wondered by this logic how far this will go and to what extent will the structures in communities form to adapt to such policies. I have imagined walls build around certain neighborhoods if the considered crime level increases. Of course my imagination is stretching this a bit probably, but the justice system is turning the neighborhood into the prison but how far this will go who knows.

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Jeez. I never really thought about all that.

All I know is the fence they want to build on the Mexican border will be much more successful in keeping Americans in than Mexicans out.

4

In terms of super heroes that mesh well with libertarian Ideoligy there is always one that comes to mind… Rorschach from Watchmen. Never give up, never surrender. He blurs the lines a little with his sort of moral absolutism (i.e a strong hatred for prostitution and drug use) but all in all he appears to be a Libertarian of sorts.

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Ok, this seems like a book containing previously released stories. Check this out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_Me_Liberty

Story seems strange and disjointed for the most part. I’m not sure its completely anti-statist, only anti-bad-statist. In any case, it does not portray the state in a good light, but for that matter it doesn’t display anything in a good light.

But check this entry out:

Give Me Liberty was followed by:

  • a five-issue series entitled Martha Washington Goes to War in 1994, which was closely based on Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. In this series, Rexall’s increasingly corrupt government is subverted by the Surgeon General, who attempts a coup. With Martha’s help he is foiled by his own artificially-intelligent supercomputer, which betrays him and takes over in his place.