#robert murphy

Oh shit.

#OTD in 1978 – La Mon Restaurant Bombing | Twelve people, all Protestant civilians, were killed and 23 seriously injured when an incendiary bomb exploded at the restaurant of the La Mon House Hotel, Gransha, near Belfast.

The La Mon restaurant bombing was an incendiary bomb attack by the IRA on 17 February 1978 that is widely considered to have been one of the worst atrocities of the Troubles. It took place at the La Mon House hotel and restaurant near Belfast. The IRA left a large incendiary bomb, containing a napalm-like substance, outside one of the restaurant’s windows. There were 450 diners, hotel staff and…

In a free society where pieces of property are all assigned ownership to specific individuals, there would be no such thing as a person having his "right to walk around" revoked — because there's no such thing as a "right to walk around" in the first place. Rather, what could happen is that someone is considered so dangerous that all of the reputable health agencies place him at the top of their lists, and they hold news conferences, send out emails and faxes, etc. to alert the relevant owners to look out for this person. Major property owners would probably have prearranged agreements on how to deal with cases like this, so that the response could be coordinated.

Private businesses aren't stupid; they don't need the government to order them to keep lepers away. And if a particular church, say, wants to open its doors to such a person, that's perfectly within their rights. (As a matter of courtesy, we would hope this policy would be announced to others who might not want to visit the same building.) Indeed, the final repository for such people would be buildings where the owners thought they could safely contain the disease. And the common name people would use for these buildings is "hospital." In a free society, to be "quarantined" would simply mean that most owners (of roads, sidewalks, malls, hotels, factories, etc.) would refuse access, and so a contagious person would have few choices outside of treatment facilities.

In any event, the bogeyman of a self-centered fugitive carrying a highly contagious disease is a bit unrealistic. As Andrew Speaker himself has said, he was furious when he was told that he might be a danger to others — because had he known that, he wouldn't have been in the same room as his fiancée's young daughter! Those with communicable diseases are people too, and they don't want others getting sick. On top of that, if they want to be treated, they need to go to the hospital anyway.

CONCLUSION

The free market could deal more effectively with contagious diseases, just as it beats the government when it comes to computers, cars, and crops. The very idea that we should give the government the right to lock somebody up because it classifies him or her as a health risk sounds pretty sick to me.

#OTD in 1978 – La Mon Restaurant Bombing | Twelve people, all Protestant civilians, were killed and 23 seriously injured when an incendiary bomb exploded at the restaurant of the La Mon House Hotel, Gransha, near Belfast.

The La Mon restaurant bombing was an incendiary bomb attack by the IRA on 17 February 1978 that is widely considered to have been one of the worst atrocities of the Troubles. It took place at the La Mon House hotel and restaurant near Belfast. The IRA left a large incendiary bomb, containing a napalm-like substance, outside one of the restaurant’s windows. There were 450 diners, hotel staff and…

#OTD in 1978 – La Mon Restaurant Bombing: Twelve people, all Protestant civilians, were killed and 23 seriously injured when an incendiary bomb exploded at the restaurant of the La Mon House Hotel, Gransha, near Belfast.

The La Mon restaurant bombing was an incendiary bomb attack by the IRA on 17 February 1978 that is widely considered to have been one of the worst atrocities of the Troubles. It took place at the La Mon House hotel and restaurant near Belfast.

The IRA left a large incendiary bomb, containing a napalm-like substance, outside one of the restaurant’s windows. There were 450 diners, hotel staff and…

#OTD in 1978 – La Mon Restaurant Bombing: Twelve people, all Protestant civilians, were killed and 23 seriously injured when an incendiary bomb exploded at the restaurant of the La Mon House Hotel, Gransha, near Belfast.

The La Mon restaurant bombing was an incendiary bomb attack by the IRA on 17 February 1978 that is widely considered to have been one of the worst atrocities of the Troubles. It took place at the La Mon House hotel and restaurant near Belfast.

The IRA left a large incendiary bomb, containing a napalm-like substance, outside one of the restaurant’s windows. There were 450 diners, hotel staff and…

Robert Murphy, via the book Totems and Teachers

There are few high-quality images of Murphy on line. Murphy was a WWII vet who studied anthropology at Columbia and did fieldwork in South America. He was a Marxist whose battled structuralism (or anything that wasn’t materialism) in a frank, not-boring style. 

Murphy developed a tumor on his spine which rendered him a quadriplegic. He wrote a book about his disability, The Body Silent, which was I believe an important early work in this area.