Blotter Paper

Wherein I free-associate after reading books.

Now that’s what I’m talking about…

Posted by R. H. Kanakia on February 4, 2009

This ballsy college student bid $1.7 million for oil leases he couldn’t afford in order to disrupt a Dept. of the Interior auction, figuring that if he could just delay things thirty days, the Obama administration wouldn’t continue with the Bush administration plan to sell off federal lands in Utah.

Now, the kid is probably going to be prosecuted, and I would not be surprised if he ends up in jail for fraud. But that’s what civil disobedience is. The whole point is to get arrested. You’re supposed to break unfair laws, and in being punished, expose the government’s moral shortfalls. You’re supposed to martyr yourself.

That’s the kind of conviction that I rarely see mustered (and that I will probably never muster for anything), because it’s alot harder than writing a letter to your congressman or attending an anti-war protest. Not that those things can’t do a little bit of good…but this shows that there’s a whole lot more good out there that can be done, by a sufficiently committed person.

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One Response to “Now that’s what I’m talking about…”

  1. howdoyoulivewithyourself said

    Yeah. I went to a talk on Tibet this week at Columbae (my first mistake), and for some reason the concept you just mentioned was eluding nearly everyone.

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