Pirates, Dictators, and Longing for Security
Whenever I’m in the Mediterranean I’m reminded of the rich lore of piracy. In the popular imagination, piracy is associated with the Golden Age of Piracy in the New World between about 1650-1726. The genesis of the public’s fascination with pirates was the 1883 publication of Treasure Island, by Robert Lewis Stevenson, which has inspired dozens of books and films, most recently the Pirates of the Caribbean. Johnny Depp’s portrayal of Captain Jack Sparrow may explain why, in a recent survey, women claimed to find the archetypal characters of pirates and vampires the most sexually attractive.
The Mediterranean’s has a long history of piracy going back to the ancient world. Piracy presented a major headache for the Roman Republic until the Senate granted Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (known in English as Pompey) special power in 67 B.C. to assemble a large expeditionary fleet and wipe out piracy throughout the Med.
Pompey performed this task with extraordi
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LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
