The Paleo Blog

Two articles I would like to bring your attention to.

“Is Libertarianism Amoral?” by Ralph Raico is the first. It was originally published in the New Individualist Review in 1964. In it Dr. Raico replies to some common criticisms in opposition to libertarianism from both traditionalists and fusionists. And he attempts to sharpen any kind of "fusionist" (libertarian-conservative) political philosophy analytically.

The second one fits right into a recent entry on The Paleo Blog. It is by Anthony Gregory. It is called “In Defense of Rules.” This article just came out on LRC. Mr. Gregory explains that libertarians are not against rules because if we were we would not be against statism. He says that libertarianism is for private rules and that this champions "private and community rights," while "respecting each other's boundaries."

This sure is a fun month for paleos! There is of course Ron Paul's The Revolution. Justin Raimondo's Reclaiming the American Right is coming back into print. Bill Kauffman, author of books such as Look Homeward, America, has a new book that is out called Ain’t My America: The Long, Noble History of Anti-War Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism. George Panichas' Restoring the Meaning of Conservatism is finally out. Patrick Buchanan has a new book coming out, Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. And, who knows, there might be a surprise or two from the Mises Institute.

It is actually overwhelming. But I am happy to see so many books this past year that focus on the Old Right, not only for my benefit but for young people like me who have not had the opportunity to read about the original Right. Although, for those that get their "education" on conservatism from talk radio (imagine what Russell Kirk, author of The Conservative Mind, would say about that!) there exists no such thing as the Old Right or the "Traditional Right." It is, I suppose, a "commie leftist" invention.

Thomas Woods reviews Ain't My America.
Joseph Stromberg reviews Restoring the Meaning of Conservatism.
Scott Horton reviews The Revolution.

I.

Libertarianism applies the general ethical code, which the majority of man believes as it relates to their personal activities and the actions of other private persons, consistently. It goes without saying that most men find things like robbery, rape, murder, and so on something that is hostile to any kind of "natural" code of ethical behavior as it relates to private interactions. We can rationally say, then, that this code is generally in the intuition of man because if this were not the case we could expect that the condition of the world would be something different than it is today. That condition would be a world where man would be nothing much more than an animal beast. Civilization as we know it could not exist anywhere.

This is why the majority of mankind finds it appalling, and rightfully and thankfully so, when man B goes out and kills his neighbor man A for no other reason than B hating A. Undoubtedly a civilization that found this acceptable would not last very long. On the contrary, most men believe that A has every right to defend himself from the invader, B. The only reason that this is so is because it is natural that A has a right to himself; since if he did not there would be no justification for his self -defense and -preservation, but that would be contradictive, not the least of which would include the fact that it would imply that B somehow has given rights that are not considered rights for mankind.

It is in the self-interest of mankind to recognize private property. This is because it allows mankind to earn the great awards and benefits from social cooperation in a division of labor. To trade X and Y implies an understanding of the principles of private property and how coercion is against those principles. As the great, late Murray N. Rothbard, one of my heroes, writes:

Man is born naked into the world, and needing to use his mind to learn how to take the resources given him by nature, and to transform them (for example, by investment in "capital") into shapes and forms and places where the resources can be used for the satisfaction of his wants and the advancement of his standard of living. The only way by which man can do this is by the use of his mind and energy to transform resources ("production") and to exchange these products for products created by others. Man has found that, through the process of voluntary, mutual exchange, the productivity and hence the living standards of all participants in exchange may increase enormously. The only "natural" course for man to survive and to attain wealth, therefore, is by using his mind and energy to engage in the production-and-exchange process. He does this, first, by finding natural resources, and then by transforming them (by "mixing his labor" with them, as Locke puts it), to make them his individual property, and then by exchanging this property for the similarly obtained property of others. The social path dictated by the requirements of man's nature, therefore, is the path of "property rights" and the "free market" of gift or exchange of such rights. Through this path, men have learned how to avoid the "jungle" methods of fighting over scarce resources so that A can only acquire them at the expense of B and, instead, to multiply those resources enormously in peaceful and harmonious production and exchange.

This, as Rothbard explicates, is what Franz Oppenheimer called the "economic means" to procure wealth. It is this method that adds to the overall wealth, meaning it is not parasitic on or subtractive from the overall wealth. This, unlike versus forms of socialism and aggression against private property, makes it meet the Pareto-criterion.

To iterate, a world without recognition of self-ownership and private property would be a world of chaos. Man would be in the jungle. There would be man constantly trying to take another man's possession of tangible property and the other man fighting to take it back. A civilized world, in contrast, could not stand for this. There is only one principle that works, and it works from the very beginning of mankind on, without running into contradictions and irresolvable conflicts; conflicts which are possible because of the reality of scarcity making any ethical theory by necessity a property theory.* This is the principle of self-ownership and the first-come principle of homesteading tangible property, i.e., taking a state of nature and transforming it into one's control and thus ownership. Implied in this is the right to voluntarily give away (or contractually rent-out) tangible property to others.

*If there was no scarcity, then conflict would not be possible. My usage of X would have no impact on my future supply of it or on anyone else's present or future supply. It is when X is scarce that conflict is possible and when there is, as a result, a need for rules in regards to X.

II.

Man A has every right to his physical body. He is the first direct user of it (and the only possible direct user), and therefore just owner, whose spirit is "fused" into his body. In the case that man B attacks A, A has every right to defend himself against B because A has self-ownership and therefore has the right to deny B's attack. (Just imagine the logical consequences if this were not the case!)

The same private property rights are at play with A's tangible and alienable property he acquired either through homesteading or contractualism.

Good X is taken away from A by B. Is this necessarily theft? It of course depends on who has the real title ownership (A or B?). Assuming that A has the actual title ownership the answer would be that this would be a case of theft. A would have every right to take back X from B. He would also have the right to hire C to take back X from B.

Recovering stolen property does not mean, however, that A can go out and kill and/or rob C and D, as "collateral damage," to get X from B. This would make A either just as evil as B or perhaps even more evil than B. Nor can A take E and F and involuntarily draft them to go after B. Drafting, when we take away Orwellian language, being nothing more than slavery.

Neither is it acceptable for and ethical for A to engage in a "preemptive attack" against B because A feels B looks bellicose, muscular, and so forth. It would be evil for A to aggress against B because A just thinks that B will attack him sometime at an unknown date and time in the future.* This idea would allow for everyone to attack anyone else if they just think that another given person will attack them sometime down the road. All that this would infer is that everyone can attack everyone else whenever they feel like it. Clearly a man who thinks and feels that another man will attack him in the future does not imply that it will actually happen. All a preemptive attack is, is a form of unjustifiable aggression. He who engages in it should suffer the same consequences as he who does violence against another man for other reasons.

The world with the "preemptive attack" rule being acceptable would make it that if A feels that B will attack him in the future, he will consequently start planning to attack B before that might happen. B will likely feel the same thing and get ready to attack A first. A, following the preemptive attack rule, would likewise keep the fact that B would be likely thinking about such a thing and as a consequence try to beat B by attacking him even sooner. And B would do likewise and so on. This madness would turn man into a savage and bring him to the jungle.

Preemptive attacks would not prevent conflicts or lower them. All that would be done is an increase of conflicts. Only the insanity of the modern age would think otherwise.

We can call a "Just War" one of private institutions and individuals who directly target their aggressing enemy, say made up of outlaw private (or State) institutions and individuals, who let us also say took by force a large amount of goods and land property. This Just War would be one of high discrimination between combatants and noncombatants. Killing innocent people** who had nothing to do with the original aggression would be considered murder. (See above.) A Just War would be voluntarily funded and the forgotten conservative laws of war from the past would have to be upheld.

*Now obviously there is nothing wrong with A arming himself, hiring private security guards, securing his house in one way or another, or something like this in case his emotional feelings turn out to be accurate.

**One might reply with an example from Walter Block and ask what about a terrorist armed with a bomb who has a hostage that is about to blow up a hospital. If a security guard killed the terrorist and was forced, by necessity, to do the same for the hostage, should this be prohibited? Dr. Block would reply that this is a case of "negative homesteading." For example, A grabs B. A threatens B and tells him to kill C. A tells B that if he (B) does not kill C he (A) will kill him (B). The libertarian answer appears to be that B must not kill C. He cannot "spread the misery." In the case of the hospital, if it is impossible to kill the terrorist without killing the hostage, Dr. Block would argue that this would be acceptable in this "extreme" case because the "misery cannot be spread."

III.

The very legitimacy of the State itself relies a great deal on the estimation that the solitary way to provide and supply security, law, and judicial services is with this institution. An institution that is unique compared to all other societal institutions in that it maintains itself by coercion as a monopoly and has the ability to unilaterally without permission to tax men over a certain geographical territory.

Unmistakably all States must share these defining characteristics. Competition over the ability to tax others would produce a situation where everyone could tax everyone else. There would not be much of a society left after that. A State must eliminate all competition, if taxation is to happen. Therefore the only way for a State to maintain itself is if it is in a monopolistic position. It is a monopoly of violence. Officials in the State must tell others that what they (qua State officials) do is acceptable and approvable but not for anyone else. For anyone else it is unacceptable and un-approvable. It is, actually, a great evil. They must be locked up.

And what does this say about the State itself? It exists in contradiction to the laws it makes because it, itself, does not abide by them.

The injustice of taxation (and related things), which all States must have to maintain themselves as compulsory institutions, generally will not persuade the ethical and moral relativist to reject statism as an evil enterprise.

So libertarianism is unique in the fact that it applies the ethical code consistently. Robbery or slavery is not just wrong if a man in a dark alley commits such an act against another person who has the misfortune to meet him. It is also wrong for an organization or institution called "the State." We would not give a pass to Wal-Mart if it robbed people that entered its store; anymore than we would give it a pass if it went house-to-house to do likewise. Strangely enough, though, most people give the State a pass.

But it is said that the only way to have peace in society between persons is if there is a sovereign, otherwise man will live in the jungle. Firstly, the first main section of this blog entry seems to suggest that the idea of peace between private persons is generally a "natural" thing, more or less, that most men have, even though we will always have a small minority of thugs, con artists, murderers and the like. Mankind would probably have disappeared if this were incorrect. Secondly, in times of the Middle Ages, for example, the idea of sovereignty did not exist. It was then thought by all that everyone was under the law and that there was no "sovereign" above it. Thirdly, the idea of a sovereign creating peace or being the fountainhead of peace is illogical for several reasons.

For the second, we can turn to Marco Bassani and Carlo Lottiri. They write, in The Myth of National Defense, that the modern State is an example of modernity because in feudal times it did not exist. There was a libertarian "polycentric juridical order." Plus It was something very much compatible with old style conservatism.

there was no single source of law and order: the production of security was never considered a distinct institutional affair, but rather a concern of the while community. For several centuries, customs, traditions and ancient Roman laws worked together in assuring a juridical order. Law in the Middle Ages was a way of resolving conflicts, but it was kept a more or less private business. There was no organic conception of the "social body," and thus crime remained a private matter to be taken care of with well-defined rules. In other words, crime was never considered a social problem, a wound inflicted on the collective body. This, in turn, implied that the victims were the center of any lawsuit; redress was done from the point of the view of the victims, never of a supposedly wounded collectivity.

...Prior to the rise of the State, law and its interpreters had to recognize the existence of traditions, ethnic and family ties, and customs and culture. Law was mostly unwritten; it coincided with customs, and therefore it existed in a series of concrete cases that were outside the control of any political authority.

For the third, if Hobbes was correct, then a sovereign State could never itself come into being.* For peace to be made between persons it is claimed that there must be a sovereign legally-binding force which would come about through agreement with the public. But how did the State come into being? There would have had to be some outside binding force to make the agreement happen to create the State, with Hobbesian logic. This assumes a State before a State. Hence, to have first created a State implies that peace is possible without a binding force. Moreover, all States exist in more contradiction to this claim of the need for a State because they all exist in internal anarchy. Sovereignty is made between subjects under a State but not for those in the State. Internal rule is nothing more than a kind of "vigilante justice." This is because there is not another external binding making the binding within the State anarchy free.** There is also external, international anarchy between different States because there is no World State.

In the attempt to get rid of international anarchy, for instance, would require a World State, or at least approaching one. Nonetheless getting rid of this anarchy would produce a greater chance of internal corruption within the World State and a greater chance that it will be more aggressive to its subjects. The latter is because no one can "vote with their feet" and move to less aggressive States as one can with international anarchy. The greater number of States, and the smaller they are, produces a tendency for them to be less brutal to their subjects and requires them to avoid implementing protectionism. As there are less and less States, which get larger and larger, the incentive to be less brutal lowers and the incentive for protectionism increases. The same goes for moneys. A greater number of moneys means a greater competition and pressure for sound, commodity-based moneys. By lessening international anarchy there will thus be a tendency for more aggressive and brutal States. Greater international anarchy must then produce a tendency for better conditions than less international anarchy.

And just like there is anarchy between different States in the world, there is anarchy between subjects of different States in the world. Conflict can happen between two subjects under one State and it can happen between subjects of different States. These kinds of disputes happen in international anarchy and are generally resolved, which again is in contradiction to Hobbes. (Below we will try to explore this more and relate it to how a natural order of private property would resolve disputes.)

Hopefully as you can see, one of the big lessons that should be learned from all of this is that a sovereign, monopolistic institution of security production is really only possible because of public and internal support of opinion. Furthermore, looking through the various holes of the State's existence and the various anarchies that by necessity exist helps show how a pluralistic system of private property agreements, free business enterprises, firms, voluntary associations, groups, covenants, localities, intermediate institutions, and things of this nature could fill the role of security provider and producer. I would also point out that this system is not based on the notion of some pseudo-idea that individuals are atoms. Instead it fully sees that they are a part of family and that their interactions in society are based on an institutional framework (which is anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian).

*It is funny that one would say this because it forgets that man is not an atom and is born into a family. How is peace possible there? Robert Nisbet writes: "The awful power that Hobbes gives to his Leviathan, as the only means of combating the forces of disintegration and anarchy, which, Hobbes thought, dominate man's life outside of Leviathan, has for its necessary consequence an elimination of all the differences and inequalities which compose the social order." Rousseau and his "General Will" was only the next natural thing after Hobbes.

**There might be a hierarchy to this, true. But this is the case with everything, and therefore the point remains accurate.

IV.

"It is in war," wrote Murray Rothbard,

that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society. Society becomes a herd, seeking to kill its alleged enemies, rooting out and suppressing all dissent from the official war effort, happily betraying truth for the supposed public interest. Society becomes an armed camp, with the values and the morale – as Albert Jay Nock once phrased it – of an "army on the march."

As Rothbard said, war is without question the worst display of statism. It is mass murder on the grand scale. Nothing should be clearer to the genuine libertarian than this.

"Just War" and the State do not go together, for the State is an institution that monopolizes aggressive violence. Not only does it apply it on its "given" territory, i.e., "vertical violence," it many times even goes beyond its given territory to apply it on other places and other people, i.e., "horizontal violence." State rulers no doubt like the idea to expand their territory because they can then control a greater amount of people and tax them. The same is true with those in the business world that are connected with the State. We call this the military-industrial-complex.

Increasingly in modern society there has been the idea, by both left-liberals and neoconservatives, that there is some kind of collectivist "world community," like the United Nations (or the United States, for that matter), that is supposed to organize States to police the world to freeze the status quo. State A attacks State B and then States C, D, and E are supposed to come to the defense of B.

There is an attempt to make this analogue to private persons by classifying these States as the actual just owners of the territories they occupy. The area a State occupies, however, is parasitic on the natural owners of private property. It is they that "own" the territory, not the State. On top of this, it should be pointed out that State territories are not something that is written in stone. It is something that is arbitrary and fuzzy. State A might have, in the past, had its control over the area that State B now has. In addition, in most of these wars who is the greater aggressor is ambiguous. (E.g., Japan's attack on the U.S. government was the result from previous provocation from the U.S. There has never been a legitimate case for U.S. warmongering with other States.)

What is more, if States C, D, and E do get involve, this will then increase aggression vertically in those respected areas with the people that live there, because taxes will have to be increased (if not directly, then indirectly through, e.g., inflation). Aggression would as a consequence expand. The idea of the world collective holding together the status quo would set into motion an ever enlarging amount of peoples getting forced into the conflict either directly or indirectly. It is for this reason that this must be opposed.

State wars, also, generally imply mass, democratic wars. When State A is fighting B the rulers know that B is dependent on its citizens in productive civil society. B knows the same is true for A. (I.e., that the funding of the war comes not from the State but those under it in the market.) Therefore statist wars produce a tendency for war against all and lose discriminatory features. This means that wars start to increase the number of mass bombings. These war measures are not targeted and will almost always imply the mass murdering of noncombatants. Because everyone is forced into paying taxes for the war, everyone becomes a target from the frame of reference of the opponent.

Given that States and wars do indeed exist, the most important thing that must be done is to limit war as far as possible. No State should be allowed to expand their monopolization of violence for the reason that this would only expand violence both for the given subject's tax payers and for those private citizens who would be caught in the war outside that group of tax payers. Subjects of a State should always put as much effort possible to prevent war or, if it has occurred, to end it.

If war sadly breaks out, then it must be limited as possible. War must be as discriminatory and "conservative" as possible. No other State should get involved in the war by following "laws of neutrality." This implies that no State should ever give foreign aid to other States (because that would expand aggression in the given State, give more power to another State to be aggressive to their citizens, and will have other unintended consequences, viz., probable resentment and blowback).

"In condemning all wars," writes Rothbard,

regardless of motive, the libertarian knows that there may well be varying degrees of guilt among States for any specific war. But the overriding consideration for the libertarian is the condemnation of any State participation in war. Hence his policy is that of exerting pressure on all States not to start a war, to stop one that has begun, and to reduce the scope of any persisting war in injuring civilians of either side or no side.

Certain weapons, especially nuclear, must be condemned which imply the mass killing of innocent, since they cannot be targeted weapons. For this reason, as Rothbard says, getting rid of them must be high on the agenda. As the great conservative Richard Weaver said, the past use of these weapons "are so inimical to the foundations on which civilization is built that they cast into doubt the very possibility of recovery." A civilized world must do its best to get rid of them.

Zero tolerance can exist for any kind of imperialism or empire. This implies that if a private man, from State 1, goes to another State, he then takes the risk of going to S2. In the case that trouble happened in S2, S1 cannot come to his rescue.

Additionally this means that if during war State S1 invaded and now occupies part, P, of what was previously in control by S2, S2 has no right to take over P. On the other hand, those in P can have a targeted revolution (i.e., a vertical conflict) to unite with S2. Private groups in S2 could voluntarily help the revolutionists in P. Such vertical revolutions can theoretically be justified because they can be targeted against actual aggressors and be voluntary, whereas horizontal conflicts cannot be.

Also, S3 and S4 cannot target P for "liberation," for reasons covered above. Just as important, we cannot call "liberation" S3 getting rid of S1 to then put those previously under S1 under its own rule. Freeing another implies that man A frees B from the slavery of C. It does not mean that A frees B from C only to take B for his own domination.

V.

Rothbard explains in "Society without a State," a classic 1974 essay/speech, that we can look to both historic and modern day examples of how law and order can be handled without a State. To this end Rothbard turned to William C. Wooldridge and his book Uncle Sam, the Monopoly Man.

For example, a body of private law for merchant in the Middle Ages was developed that only used social ostracism. And, for modern examples, today we have seen the rise of many private insurance companies turning to private arbitration services through the American Arbitration Association (AAA). The advantages of the development of private law here is clear: the cost of time is lowered and arbitration, working in a division of labor, allows for specialization.

The very nature of States is aggressive violence and for this reason it seems that war is in their nature. There is no reason to blindly trust human goodness and incorruptibility, but this is what most do with the State. Since all States can externalize the costs of war, States will be more likely to engage in war than other institutions. Any institutions that provide defense, law, and order voluntarily on the market (and accordingly are non-monopolistic) cannot externalize the costs and will, hence, be less likely to engage in war or any other kind of aggression against innocent.

One only has to think about Iraq. Imagine if individual and family households could withdraw paying taxes. How likely would the U.S. government still be in Iraq? The question answers itself.

The classical liberal minarchist, as Rothbard elucidated in Power and Market: Government and the Economy, who is both a supporter of the free market and the State as protector is "caught in an insoluble contradiction" because the minarchist "sanction[s] and advocate[s] massive invasion of property by the very agency (government) that is supposed to defend people against invasion!" This is what libertarianism avoids. Man and his family have a right to private property or they do not. Free markets are supreme or statism is.

In addition, Rothbard went on, they are confused and tangled because they normally do not push their own logic to its ultimate conclusions. As we covered, there exists international anarchy. But if these minarchists complain about the "anarchy" of statelessness, surely they must then want to get rid of the anarchy between various nation-States. Nonetheless, "limited" State advocates hardly follow their own logic.

Conflict that happens between A, from S1, and B, from S2, is done through this anarchy without an ultimate sovereign. Both go to their respected courts. If both courts reach the same conclusion, then the verdict is in. If they reach different conclusions, they then go to arbitration and the case is resolved there.

Under a natural order of private property this is what would be resembled. Man A can be with private defense agent X and man B with agent Y. If X and Y disagreed, then what? What would result is the development of independent, third party arbitration services. Customers and private institutions knowing this possible situation, would work out these details in their contracts (generally) beforehand.* (This will happen as long as the majority of the public is not made up of warmongers. However, to repeat, with whatever level of warmongering ideology, the chance of battling out is more unlikely under the free market because it is very costly and it is impossible to externalize the costs of aggression. See this.)

These third-party arbitration services would have to remain independent and fair because otherwise people or other protection agencies would not go to them in the future. This means there is a great incentive for fairness and independence. And, if the individual protection agencies become corrupted or whatnot, people could go into relationship with one of their competitors.

One reason that this is better than the current system is that arbitration in the free market really is a third-party, independent service. There exists no true arbitration service within a State controlled area. All such services are part of the same monopolistic institution. It is preferable to have competitive market conditions than to have a society stuck with one agent. One agent is an agent that can get away with more corruption. You cannot end the relationship. Everyone is forced into a relationship with it as agent, and because of this it can act more aggressively and at the same time need not worry about acting in an economic manner to cut costs. That is to say, it will be tend to be less competent with judgeship and economically inefficient creating lots of extra expense for its "customers." What's more, a State provided law system gets to deal with cases in which directly involve itself. The outcome of which will be to award itself in these cases. Thus, statist management will then tend to be even more aggressive.

Oppositely, private defense agents, courts and arbitrators, like all other goods and services, would work on the open, free market and would be in constant competition with each other. The voluntary setting and the market competition would award those private enterprises that performed this best for the public and the others would be driven off the market. Earning profit and staying in business would require serving the needs of consumers, viz., sound judgment, impartiality, expertise, efficiency, low costs, etc. Under statist monopolistic conditions, we see the quality go down and the prices go up. But under free non-monopolistic conditions, we can expect to see the quality go up and the prices go down.

Complex societies, as you know, heavily rely on insurance and credit reports. It can be pretty much predicted that a free society would have develop private insurance defense companies. Being insurance companies they would insure one's property from outside aggression. This means that, if one is the victim of a thief, the insurance company would pay the victim. This is obviously not something that the insurance company would want to do. Consequently insurance companies would do their best to prevent aggression. They would have to do this to remain financially viable. These companies would also have great incentive to go after the thief and force him to pay the victim, so they do not have to.

Contrast this with the State: Do they lose money if they do not prevent crime? The answer is no. (Which is then better?)

The State is not only bad at preventing crime and recovering stolen property, it has progressively outlawed gun ownership making people helpless and more vulnerable vis-à-vis private criminals. What this has done is increased the State's power relative to civil society and greatly increased man's dependency on them (the State) for protection.

With private insurance companies: The better protected their customers, the better they are off as well.

For that reason private insurance would have the exact opposite incentive because a better protected customer is less likely to get attacked and thus less likely to be indemnified. (So those better protected---who, for example, own a gun---will be offered lower premiums.) Moreover, they would require their customers to engage in peaceful rules of conduct. This is because the only way to insure something is if it is more or less random and uncontrollable. To insure someone who engaged in aggression against someone else would be equivalent to insuring people from burning their own house on fire; an impossibility that would make the insurance company go bankrupt.

We have to remember that State courts do not provide or guarantee impartiality. There is nothing magical about them. Instead what they do provide as impartiality is for the State monopoly, as consumers are stuck to deal with them and only them. A free market is what provides real "checks-and-balances" because there is competition. Instead what we have today under a statist system is no checks-and-balances because the court is one monopoly. That is, all courts are part of the same institution. While corruption is possible in both a statist system and a non-statist system, since there is competition and market checks we can say that there would be less in a non-statist one.

To quote Patrick Tinsley in "Private Police":

In fact, it is the public police that stands to profit from look-the-other-way law enforcement. After all, arriving at its funding, as it does, from (coerced) tax revenues, the public police will not endure economic hardship if and when it fails to arrest the onslaught of crime. Therefore, it pay for its officers to accept bribes from the perpetrators of crime, offering in exchange clemency.

*Hans Hoppe says: "On the one hand, [this] system would allow for systematically increased variability and flexibility of law. Rather than imposing a uniform set of standards onto everyone (as under statist conditions), insurance agencies could and would compete against each other, not just via price but in particular also through product differentiation and development. ... There could and would exist side by side, for instance, Catholic insurers applying Canon law, Jewish insurers applying Mosaic law, . . . all of them sustained by and vying for a voluntarily paying clientele. . . . That is, no one would be forced to live under 'foreign' law . . ." And  "On the other hand, a system of insurers offering competition law codes would promote a tendency toward the unification of law..." in "foreign" conflicts.

VI.

In conclusion, the path to peace and good defense is a path to a stateless society. It is not the answer to all problems nor is it perfect, mankind always being what it is. But, Rothbard writes,

in a stateless society there would be no regular, legalized channel for crime and aggression, no government apparatus the control of which provides a secure monopoly for invasion of person and property. When a State exists, there does exist such a built-in channel, namely, the coercive taxation power, and the compulsory monopoly of forcible protection. In the purely free-market society, a would-be criminal police or judiciary would find it very difficult to take power, since there would be no organized State apparatus to seize and use as the instrumentality of command.

Just to be clear, when it comes to internal rules on property, the only way they are just is if and only if the given property is privately and legitimately owned. A thief that stole land property from someone else cannot be said to have the right to apply any legitimate rules on it. In such a case they would be null and void. And, furthermore, the given property should be returned to the victim. Moreover, State property, strictly speaking, is also illegitimate. It was either stolen from someone else or the "virgin" land was transformed into non-virgin land by stolen money.

[In regards to "second best" rules in regards to public property, which I do believe in, the issue gets a little fuzzy. This blog entry is not the appropriate place to talk about that. Instead see this.]

The great classical liberal Ludwig von Mises said that the essence of liberalism was private property. Everything from that logically followed. This would also be a good summation of libertarianism, and even more so because libertarian political philosophy takes classical liberalism and applies it to its ultimate and logical conclusion.

It means, unlike democracy, exclusivity (and even hierarchy). Man's house, as they say, is his castle. It is not something to be "put up for a vote." This means that he is able to lay down internal rules to it. He is, you could also say, the king of it. As the private owner of his house he can also enter into contractual (covenant) agreements with other households. Those that live under the household must follow his rules, or leave. The same is true for any guest who wishes to visit, who must first get permission to enter. If he did not first get permission, then he would be trespassing.

Because certainly no man has a "right" to trespass into my private home or any other private property. There is thus no right to be on someone's private property (on any space of it). And the private property owner has every right to kick out an intruder, even with force if absolutely necessary.

(Similarly: It should be equally clear that a restaurant, or any other place, has no obligation to let you in as a customer. They have every right to be as discriminatory or nondiscriminatory as they want to be. Although, whatever policy they choose does not shield them from the consequences. I.e., if they choose to discriminate against red heads, they have then that much less in customers, and other restaurants will have that much more in customers. But, at the same time, they would not be fully open without any discrimination because that would offend the majority of their customers if they let in, for example, very rude people.)

An invited guest that enters another person's property has to follow the rules. The rules that can be applied can be anything up to the point of forcing the guest to say. Thus if one does not like the rules at my house, then one can leave an go to another place or back to their place. I have no right to force a guest to stay. And a guest has no right to stay at my property and invade it.

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Article to Read: "Market Chosen Law" by Dr. Edward Stringham.
(Even though I think this is an important essay and ties in some things I am saying here, there are only two major things that, in my opinion, are missing: For one, a common/natural law in the backdrop because internal rules cannot contradict the basis of making rules in the first place and because not everything will be contractually predetermined. For the second, I think what he says about the laws of property apply more to the internal rules of a property. In terms of courts, I do not believe you can say that each property would have its own contract that says go to X court. On the free market there would tend to be centralization of these kinds of things with insurance companies.)

The Democrats Must be Stopped!

In a way, it is somewhat amusing, when I turn on talk radio, how many political partisans say that we require a Republican in the United States Empire's imperial thrown in 2009 because that would, allegedly, turn around the current economic recession (and it is one) sooner rather than later or perhaps even end it in contrast to a president with a "D" by his (or her) name. And all this time I thought there was a Republican currently in the thrown, with the economic results and consequences of his policies before our very eyes.

Dr. Clyde Wilson, over at Chronicles Magazine, is right. As usual, Republican grassroots will drop any sense of principle (if we grant that they ever had such a thing) because Obama/Clinton must be stopped. They must be stopped at all costs! So forget about upholding the notion of having any real principles.

Because, well, we might see welfare increases which would knock your socks off; a new, Great Society might get through; taxes might increase (a good rule of thumb: taxes, in the long-run, are equal to the amount the government spends----which, of course, helps to show Bush's tax "cuts" in a new light); God forbid we might see Dictator Hillary Clinton believe that she is above the law; who knows there might even be enlarging of the Marxist department of education and D.C. dictating to all local schools what to do; there might be increased welfare for the rich; or camping finance reform (oh wait, doesn't McCain somehow fit with this?); the State might even think about getting into the private affairs of families; maybe the airports will be further socialized; foreign aid would most definitely increase; there might even be more protectionism; the Mexico-US borders might become wide-open; and who does not fear Obama at the helm of a future police state? And, my goodness, there might even be housing troubles with a Democrat's economic policies!

But we all know the truth about why the Republican grassroots, made up of what Mr. Llewellyn Rockwell has fittingly called "red state fascists," will support John McCain. Because, behind all their rhetoric, their commitment to the principles of limited, constitutional government is pusillanimous and vapid. There is one paramount thing that amalgamates today's self-described conservative Republicans, and that is war and the police state. It annihilates any of their fictitious devotion to the Old Republic. For war, as the great Old Rightist Frank Chodorov said, "is the apotheosis of power, the ultimate expression of the faith and solidification of its achievements."

While I have not been won over, a few traditional conservatives have given some reasons why paleos should support Barack Obama. I grant that he would probably be relatively better than McCain, who is not tough competition. But picking between the "lesser of evil," to me anyway, is playing a game of Russian Roulette. My advise is not to play. I have no intention to vote in November, even for a third party. And do not believe I will ever vote in any future election. Nonetheless, if you must vote, my advice (for what it is worth, if anything) would be to vote for either the Constitution Party guy or the Libertarian Party guy. But I would not recommend anyone to vote for McCain.

Sen. McCain is the embodiment of militarism, empire, and all-around Bush-type policies. It makes him a fitting descendant of the Bush administration. Even if we could imagine---by some miracle---that McCain would actually be a good "economy president," war is the most important issue. Things like taxes do not compare with State murder. Taxes hurt but they typically do not kill. War, on the other hand, does kill. After all, you cannot bring back the dead. They have a different weight, and we must rank our hierarchy of values correctly. Too bad that the "booboisie" cannot easily do that in the modern world.

Abortion: Statism vs. Private Property Society.
Pro-Life Should Not Use Leftist Rhetoric.

It goes without saying that as an individual I am sympathetic to the "pro-life" side and consider myself generally on their side, opposed to the "pro-choice" side in the abortion conundrum. Insofar as abortion relates not to personal morality versus immorality but with common/natural law and ethics, my libertarian views are derived from the principles implied in private property, although this makes my views somewhat more "nuanced," I guess you could say, contrasted with your average pro-lifer.

I should mention that the great libertarian Dr. Walter Block has outlined an argument that puts libertarianism, properly speaking, in the middle ground. It "compromises the uncompromisable." It makes barbaric practices like partial-birth abortion illegal. Listen to this [mp3].

(Either way, if you agree with Block's position or the late Rothbard's, one thing all libertarians should agree on is the fact that the issue should be localized as much as possible and be out of the hands of the federal government.)

In terms of morality I am pro-life. Moreover, as I argued in this entry (please take a look at it) I believe that a stateless society gives pro-lifers the best environment. Not only would there be no collective reinforcement or subsidization of abortion in a free society, private law agreements and covenants can ban the practice and help cut it down, and more so than the current statist environment. A free society with a variety of authorities and group associations increases "social power" away from the centralized, top-down, and all-or-nothing managerial State. There is nothing more conservative than this feature of a free society. Libertarianism does not mean, as some suggest, a democratic or egalitarian free-for-all or an ideology of saying that all life -choices or -styles are "equally" good.* Neither does it necessarily reject a natural moral order making it "relativistic."

*[It is a clear confusion when a conservative, paleo or otherwise, says that anti-State libertarianism is for getting rid of stop signs or saying that something as despicable and evil as child pornography is a good and would be allowed all over a libertarian society. The first one does not need much comment. It does not take much thinking to see that a private road would lay down rules to maximize profits and minimize costs and traffic accidents. The second one should be thought of like this: If you were to enter into a private law enforcer would you sign up with one that said this was okay? Also, would you move into a community covenant that said this was okay? Or would your senses tell you not to do such a thing? My guess is that your senses would tell you not to do such a thing. 99.9% of the population agrees with you and me that it is an evil. The remaining one-tenth of a percent would find themselves having to conform with standard morals. They would have to civilize themselves or would be banished from society. Not only would private law agreements and community laws ban the practice, there could be other methods of public ostracism as well. A private property society would have "bilateral law." This would mean people would have to assimilate to more traditional norms of the community. There should be little question that child pornography would be at the top of the list to condemn and "fight against." See, especially chapter ten, Hoppe's Democracy – The God That Failed.]

(And as Mr. Joseph Sobran has said, in an essay about ending the war on drugs: "Informal social sanctions, as always, did most of the work of governing society." Today, unfortunately, we think that everything should be political.)

Exploring my newly received Nisbet book from Amazon, Prejudices, he has some very illuminating comments on abortion, even though I cannot say I agree with his position fully. (Paleoconservatives should note, Robert Nisbet was one of the three leading lights in traditional conservatism and he was not what we could call anti-abortion. According to Nisbet, antiabortionists "strike at the very heart of both family and individual rights.") One of the things he says is that State laws against abortion is a sign of how the State has weakened the family's authority. Once the State interferes in internal family affairs, says Nisbet, this is a sure "sign of despotism."

Never have so many laws been passed, first by the states, then the federal government, prohibiting so many actions which for thousands of years had generally be held to fall under family authority. It can be fairly argued that the present infirm state of the family in Western society is the consequence as much of moralistic laws assertedly designed to protect individual members of the family from one evil or another as it is of anything else. Current efforts to prohibit abortion categorically and absolutely might be viewed in this light. It is not so much the "women's right to choose" that is being assaulted as it is the ethic of family and its legitimate domain. . . . But all such attention by law and religion has to be seen in the context of the considerable number of actions along the same line----against alcohol, tobacco, prostitution, sex for pleasure, profanity, and others, all novel utilizations of the law and religion which would have been deemed egregious by earlier generations. . . . The use of sovereign powers of the states to achieve success in this crusade was manifest in the epidemic of so-called Blue Laws in America. . . .

Abortion became front and center, he says, when the issue was nationalized. States have used abortion "to weaken the hold of the family over its own."

Instead of internal disputes in family households being rightfully settled by the head of the house who lays down the rules, there has been a shift to the democratic State. We have replaced family patriarchy with politics. An attrition of the family occurs. And instead of internal extended family disputes being attempted to be solved internally within its hierarchy, we have the democratic State. The natural bonds and connections, inequalities, societal institutional frameworks, autonomies and social pluralities have been replaced by the anti-plural State to atomize the individual so that it has authority and power over him. In the name of "freeing" the individual, what we have left is Leviathan. Without a multitude of bonds and institutions of various authorities all that is ever more left to confront situations and challenges in life is the political. In absentia is the State.

While abortion may be debatable vis-à-vis the State, I would say that many traditional or paleo-conservatives (e.g., Mr. Patrick Buchanan) have only hurt their social and cultural causes by powering Leviathan versus what Nisbet would label social pluralism. Say what you will about "natural rights," individualism or John Locke, it may be time to think about rejecting statism and its entire work, like great conservatives as Mr. Sobran. If not be a "libertarian," then, I exhort, be a conservative anarchist.

[Maybe time permitting in a few weeks...I'll get around to typing up an extended blog entry on this important subject and some of its related subtopics. So, as always, please stop by The Paleo Blog once a week.]

Anyways, now what I would like to point out is that Mr. Marcus Epstein, over at Taki's Magazine, is giving some good advice for pro-lifers when it comes to arguing for the pro-life position. There is this sad tendency that you find in the framing of arguments so that they are politically correct and egalitarian. This is no way to defend the pro-life position, if you come from a paleoconservative perspective or, like me, a paleolibertarian-Blockian one.

Hail, Discrimination! in Insurance (and everywhere else)

A Leviathan filled with hundreds of politicians is a sure way to guarantee liberty and security, huh!? (Ha-ha. Who in the world thought this?) Politicians are always looking for new ways to be busybodies so they can expand the political circus in civil society. That's their job. How many times do people (left-liberals, for example) complain about politics only to ask for politics to enter more areas of life? This will only result in one thing: A process of accelerated increase in the politicization of society. And as the politicians get more power their potentiality to abuse it, as monopolists, increases.

But of course anything in the name for "evil" discrimination... Who could allow that? That would mean that people would have the freedom to choose. It would be too pro-choice, wouldn't it?

The House of Representatives, according to Dr. Rozeff, voted in favor 414-1 and the Senate 95-0 for a new bill banning discrimination based on genetics. With those bipartisan numbers it is a fair bet that the bill, as one conservative would say, is both evil and stupid. (But thank you, Rep. Ron Paul, for your lone vote against it.)

Something like this, I am positive, definitely feeds into the emotions making it an easy sell for the public. However, this is not something that we should want at all; on the contrary because it will just result in ever more problems in health insurance. Ceteris paribus, there will be ever higher costs, more waste, less private research, and the collective subsidization of sickness.

(Ms. Karen De Coster on her blog adds: "Of course, the most notable aspect of this debacle will be how 'genetic disease' will be defined.")

In brief, insurance is about pooling homogeneous risks because otherwise what would be happening is not insurance but redistribution. The groupings of persons in health insurance, as far as everyone could tell, would have the same individual chance of getting sick and thus needing insurance money. The less these groupings are homogeneous, which means that certain subsets get sick more often, premium rates will be higher for the bulk of those in the given group outside of that particular subset. Therefore, if we had a free market in insurance, those companies that became more and more precise in groupings would tend to out-compete those that did not. One way these groupings would be done is through genetics. And there are many positive things that would come with this. The tendency would be that there would be no net redistribution, the lowering of expenses, the lowering of premiums, increased research, and so forth.

I'll point out that Dr. Hans Hoppe has given a lecture on this. You can listen here [mp3] In it he explains, the mountain high stack of statist regulations has pushed into motion a situation where expenses continually rise because discrimination has become less possible. This promotes increased costs and hence higher premiums. A side effect of this is a relative increased number of those dropping out of the system. Hence prices are pushed up even more. Next, it can be expected, that the State will force, by the point of the gun, everyone into the system. Then you will see price controls because of public outrage of these artificially high prices. Gross misallocations will happen, including shortages. And then political (mis)allocations will dictate everything that happens in healthcare. Et cetera. . . .Although, I am sure, these problems are just a sign we need more socialism. . ., according to those that worship the nightstick.

(This is not to mention all the other problems in healthcare, like the statist/fascist AMA.)

The Death of the West.

In cerebration I do not find it any surprise that Occidental society is committing suicide. Today we find a corrupt culture filled with lots of bad ideas and values, a massive welfare and managerial state engineering society, and a massive warfare and empire state. Combined with this is a wide open border, which is only asking for trouble. And, in my view, it seems that it is only natural that there is a wide open border with today's perverse statism. It is a sign of a falling civilization, and for this reason nothing will probably be done about it. In Mr. Buchanan's seminal book The Death of the West he explores our age of Cultural Marxism and how birthrates have fallen to the point of where the West will perhaps be no more.

Buchanan writes in a recent article of his:

Hopefully, the peoples of Asia, Africa and the Middle East, who are about to inherit the earth as we pass away, will treat us better than our ancestors treated them in the five centuries that Western Man ruled the world.

Otherwise, we all go out with a bang.

But, alas, the "libertarian" magazine Reason is not celebrating.

[In addition, I bought Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary by Robert Nisbet and The Commercial Society: Foundations and Challenges in a Global Age by Samuel Gregg. Both of these books I'm looking forward to as well. The late Robert Nisbet is one of my favorite conservative intellectuals. As Mr. Daniel McCarthy, an editor of The American Conservative, has said, while Nisbet never called himself a libertarian, nonetheless, the implications of his work is highly libertarian, be it a kind of (and, I believe, rightfully so) "anti-atomistic-individualistic" libertarianism. Just read, for example, Twilight of Authority to see what I mean. His work has had a great impact on my thinking about a free society and what that means.]

Not an election season goes by without the usual political rhetoric about "fixing" the education system. News from the boob tube incessantly recounts on how the system is broken. Politicians promise more and more money (and we are all stuck with the bill, if we have children going to a public school or not). They recommend one change and tinkering with the system after another. The masses crescendo cries and complaining rarely takes a holiday. All of this money spent, with the pot seemingly growing every year, and with one tinkering and another to the system the complaining and problems persist.

Just perhaps, as Albert Jay Nock (1870 - 1945) argued, there is a more fundamental problem in which no amount of readjustment, realignment, or other mechanical reconfiguration will produce anything but a vacuous effect. After all the effort in the world a machine that is based on an erroneous theory will only produce a defective machine.

This is what The Theory of Education in the United States by Albert Jay Nock is about. It is a very short book which can be read quickly. The book is based on a series of lectures he gave in 1931 at the University of Virginia.

Who was Nock? He was a man, and one of the most striking and interesting figures, of what Murray Rothbard called the Old Right; the Old Right of forgotten memory with men like Nock, Chodorov, Flynn, Garrett, Morley, and even (strangely enough) Republican politicians like Buffett and Taft.

Nock's Our Enemy, the State, his magnum opus, overturns any notion that the Constitution did anything but crush liberty. It was nothing but a coup d’état of power grabs away from the superior Articles of Confederation. Real liberty never had anything to do with the Constitution. Real liberty is the antithesis of the political state. Nock's Memoirs of a Superfluous Man is filled with insights, from a master of the pen. The great Robert Nisbet said that he "practically memorized" this work.

(Some of his other books include, but not limited to, On Doing the Right Thing, Jefferson, The State of the Union, and Snoring as a Fine Art.)

And how can any man carrying on the tradition of the Old Right not love Nock's mind and personality after reading his "Anarchist's Progress" article? He was a master of parable.

As for Nock's views of education, his views will sadly not get anywhere in an era of leftism and egalitarianism. His views would no doubt be shocking to the prosaic masses of a statist culture. And to say that he would have seen right through President George Bush's "No Child Left Behind" would be an understatement.

What is the theory behind education today? There are three basic principles, accepted without much question. The first is based on egalitarianism. It is said that everyone is educable. Who knows, maybe with just the right training or education we can turn the average streetwalker into a Sir Isaac Newton or a Ludwig von Mises. The second one works hand-in-hand with the first. It is based on the notion of democratic rights. The third is based on the idea that a literate population produces a "good" government.

Individuals who wish to become teachers today are not given education but instruction, says Nock. After a certain period, and tests based on this instructional knowledge, they then receive a certificate. However the only thing that a certificate like this really says is that they are instructed persons, not necessarily educated persons.

An educated man is one who sees things as they really are, as Plato said. Such a man is able to learn "formative" knowledge and digest it without any bias or emotional reaction. This is quite different from an instructed man. Virtually all men can be instructed, but not educated. "The ineducable are among us as the sands of the sea for multitude." (p 116) The educated man is assimilated in the classics, in what Nock calls the "Great Tradition."

The Great Tradition is a fixed and invariable education. It is not composed of any electives or vocational training. Nor is it suited to the person. The educable person must become suited to it. It takes man back to the literature and thought of Greece and Rome, "the longest and fullest continuous record available to us, of what the human mind has been busy about in practically every department of spiritual and social activity." (p 52) It is what makes a mind an experienced mind. It gives him a record that "covers twenty-five hundred consecutive years of the human mind's operations in poetry, drama, law, agriculture, philosophy, architecture, . . ., everything."

How did this work in the old days?

After the three Rs, or rather for a time in company with them, his staples were Latin, Greek and mathematics. He took up the elements of these two languages very early, and continued at them, with arithmetic and algebra, nearly all the way through primary, and all the way through secondary schools. Whatever else he did, if anything, was inconsiderable except as related to these major subjects; usually some reading in classical history, geography and mythology. When he reached the undergraduate college at the age of sixteen or so, all his language difficulties with Greek and Latin were forever behind him; he could read anything in either tongue, and write in either, and he was thus prepared to deal with both literatures purely as literature, to bestow on them a purely literary interest. He had also in hand arithmetic, and algebra as far as quadratics. Then in four years in college he covered practically the whole range of Greek and Latin literature; mathematics as far as the differential calculus, and including the mathematics of elementary physics and astronomy; a brief course, covering about six weeks, in formal logic; and one as brief in the bare history of the formation and growth of the English language.

Those that could not do it were dropped out or were kicked out. There was no stigma about that because there was no illusion of the nature revolting ideology of equality.

Other subjects were considered vocational, for other institutions. Nock said that there was no teaching, for example, of political economy. It was expected that topics like this, educable and inquisitive minds would learn on their own, and that, no doubt, Nock did.

"The educable person, in contrast to the ineducable, (p 124)

is one who gives promise of some day being able to think; and the object of educating him, of subjecting him to the Great Tradition's discipline, is to put him in the way of right thinking, clear thinking, mature and profound thinking.

Thomas Jefferson, despite being so well known for his support of popular education, seemed to have basically the right general idea when it came to issues of equality. His idea was that all children should be given the "three Rs." And then, from primary school, only the brightest would be sent into grammar school for one to two years. Those students would then be sent away except, said Jefferson, "the best genius of the whole." (p 32) His education would go on for another six years. "By this means," wrote Jefferson, "twenty of the best geniuses shall be ranked from the rubbish annually." And at the end of these six years the ten out of twenty would be sent to William and Mary College.

As you can see, there appears no conspicuous egalitarian sentiment with Jefferson here. (Moreover, Jefferson himself was against compulsory school laws.) On the other hand, Jefferson did believe that a literate mass was needed to produce "good" government. It was this that Nock vividly disagreed.

One only has to look at what the masses do read. The things, as Nock put it, which makes up the "furniture" of their minds. He also paraphrases Joseph Butler in saying that "the majority of men are much more apt at passing things through their minds than they are at thinking about them." (p 43)

For Nock, the masses can be literate (or be instructed to be so), and all for the good, but they were not literate in the true sense of the word.

Unlike many traditional conservatives, Nock did not criticize vocational instruction. He criticized the idea that many traditional conservatives have about the possibility of educating the masses in the Great Tradition. Once you start doing that, it will only be natural that education will have to be dumb downed to the lowest common dominator, and that the Great Tradition will be increasingly replaced with vocational instruction.

All for the good that Bob, who is ineducable, can get vocational training and work in the market place. Indeed, writes Nock, "society is better off for having its ineducables as well trained as they are capable of becoming." (p 112) It is when the State tries to educate everyone that you have problems.

Our system is based upon the assumption popularly regarded as implicit in the doctrine of equality, that everybody is educable. This has been taken without question from the beginning; it is taken without question now. The whole structure of our system, the entire arrangement of its mechanics, testifies to this. Even our truant laws testify to it, for they are constructed with exclusive reference to school-age, not to school-ability. . . . The philosophical doctrine of equality gives no more ground for the assumption that all men are educable than it does for the assumption that all men are six feet tall. (p 30)

It is then that "Gresham's Law" (p 140) kicks in. In political economy it relates to how government drives out good money and subsidizes bad money. Here it relates to how equality pushes down development to the "dreadful average"----the bad wins over the good.

Democratic values have only compounded this (p 38):

The popular idea of democracy is animated by a strong resentment of superiority. It resents the thought of an elite; the thought that there are practicable ranges of intellectual and spiritual experience, achievement and enjoyment, which by nature are open to some and not to all. It deprecates and disallows this thought, and discourages it by every available means. As the popular idea of equality postulates that in the realm of spirit everybody is able to enjoy everything that anybody can enjoy, so the popular idea of democracy postulates that there shall be nothing worth enjoying for anybody to enjoy that everybody may not enjoy; and a contrary view is at once exposed to all the evils of a dogged, unintelligent, invincibly suspicious resentment.

The whole institutional life organized under the popular idea of democracy, then, must reflect this resentment. It must aim at no ideas above those of the average man; that is to say, it must regulate itself by the lowest common denominator of intelligence, taste and character in the society which it represents.

The democratic and egalitarian age in schooling took off by the politicians feeding off of and manipulating a noble idea. Parents want what is best for their children and want them to have more than they have. They want them to have the best chance in life as they can possibly get. Politicians fed on this, says Nock. There was an ethos of urgency. And it was felt that vocational education was the answer to all the ills.

This developed the idea that schooling was "common property" to all and that all children had a "right" to it. Education became nationalistic and collectivistic. And the educable elite are lost to it.