121 posts from 2008

Classic Article on A Christmas Carol: Read Butler Shaffer's "The Case for Ebeneezer" at LRC.

VDare.com is having their annual War Against Christmas Competition. See Tom Piatak's report.

The Bubble Economy.

Read "Evidence that the Fed Caused the Housing Boom" by Robert Murphy.

In February look for a book on this economic depression by Thomas Woods. I am happy to report that a mainstream publisher, Regnery, is publishing it. This will increase the book's exposure to people who are unfamiliar with Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.

Listen to the 1992 Mises Institute conference on Money and the Federal Reserve.

Read Peter Schiff at Taki's Magazine.

Hear the great Jim Rogers on The Lew Rockwell Show.

"Barack Obama," Chris Brown writes, "plans to initiate public-private partnerships."

"Obama's 'New Deal'" by Jeffery Kuhner.

"Garet Garrett knew where FDR's policies—and Bush's—would lead," says Justin Raimondo in The American Conservative.

George Smith writes about the evil Alexander Hamilton, founding father of crony capitalism.

The Fascist Market: Timothy Carney, author of The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money, is interviewed in The University Bookman.

In my view, this deep alliance is a topic that too often gets overlooked, even by those who claim to be supporters of the free market. It can drive one mad how so many men frame arguments around the premise that today's economy is "free," or around the premise that the regulatory state was primarily created to "protect" consumers or small upstart businesses.

One gentleman, it is said, that explodes these myths is Gabriel Kolko. In Murray Rothbard's writings you will sometimes find references to his works, even though Dr. Kolko is a Marxist------By the way, read the new article, which mentions Kolko, by Dylan Hales called "Left Turn Ahead."

For example, in "Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty" Rothbard wrote:

In The Triumph of Conservatism, Kolko traces the origins of political capitalism in the "reforms" of the Progressive Era. Orthodox historians have always treated the Progressive period (roughly 1900–1916) as a time when free-market capitalism was becoming increasingly "monopolistic"; in reaction to this reign of monopoly and big business, so the story runs, altruistic intellectuals and far-seeing politicians turned to intervention by the government to reform and to regulate these evils. Kolko's great work demonstrates that the reality was almost precisely the opposite of this myth. Despite the wave of mergers and trusts formed around the turn of the century, Kolko reveals, the forces of competition on the free market rapidly vitiated and dissolved these attempts at stabilizing and perpetuating the economic power of big business interests. It was precisely in reaction to their impending defeat at the hands of the competitive storms of the market that big business turned, increasingly after the 1900s, to the federal government for aid and protection. In short, the intervention by the federal government was designed, not to curb big business monopoly for the sake of the public weal, but to create monopolies that big business (as well as trade associations of smaller business) had not been able to establish amidst the competitive gales of the free market.

When a man says we "must" have this or that regulation against laissez-faire capitalism, I often wonder: Who will regulate the regulator?

H.L. Mencken Club.

In late November they had their very first annual meeting.

Addresses Online:

• “Hear No Genes, See No Genes, Speak No Genes--the Jargon of ‘Culturalism’” by John Derbyshire. (The text of Mr. Derbyshire's speech is just excellent. I am not sure how he writes for National Review.)
  
• “The Decline and Rise of the Alternative Right” by Paul Gottfried.
  
• “Greek to Us: The Death of Classical Education and Its Consequences” by E. Christian Kopff.
  
• “The Old Right and the Antichrist” by Richard Spencer.

Secular Right.

Even though I am not an atheist, I'm okay with cooperating with those who are (in a non-militant sense). It is independent of being opposed to fascism and socialism. There were, of course, plenty of nonreligious gentlemen in the Old Right. (Rothbard, one of my heroes, was an agnostic.) However I agree with paleoconservatives when they say that traditional conservatism----in a cultural sense----cannot be atheistic. If it is to conserve the natural, the good, the transcendent, and the normal, then a conservatism that defends Western Civilization cannot leave behind its religious roots. That should be obvious.

Take a look at Joe Sobran's 1999 article "Christianity and History."

James Bovard: "Are Democrats Better on Privacy and Surveillance?" Ha-ha.

"Police Have Killed 400 With Tasers Since 2001."

"Obama Finds Favor with Neoconservatives," writes Paul Gottfried.

"Blagojevich, Obama, And The Diversity–Fueled 'Chicago Way'" by Steve Sailer-----And see his new book America's Half-Blood Prince.

"In Praise of McCarthyism" by Justin Raimondo.

Ron Paul is interviewed at Huffington Post.

Patrick Keeney writes about Theodore Dalrymple's new book, The Politics and Culture of Decline. He is additionally the author of In Praise of Prejudice.

See Clyde Wilson's "Nathaniel Macon and The Way Things Should Be" at Chronicles.

Stateless Proprietary Communities: I was going to type up a separate larger entry on this but decided not to. Instead, please allow me to leave you all with a few articles by anthropologist Spencer Health MacCallum on this subject...

• “The Enterprise of Community: Market Competition, Land, and Environment.”
• “Land Policy and the Open Community: The Anarchist Case for Land-Leasing versus Subdivision.”
• “The Quickening of Social Evolution: Perspectives on Proprietary (Entrepreneurial) Communities.”
• “The Social Nature of Ownership.”
• “Werner K. Stiefel's Pursuit of a Practicum of Freedom.”

I am typically (gasp) discriminatory when it comes to listening to music. Give me Bach or Beethoven any day over much of today's modern stuff. Generally in the car or the parlor I have classical music on. During this time of the year, though, instead of primarily listening to the classical radio station and (when I can stomach it) the talk radio stations, I'll have on the classical rock radio station that switches to playing Christmas music 24-7.

For fun, the following are some Christmas-related YouTube clips of "The Three Tenors":  José Carreras, Plácido Domingo, and the late Luciano Pavarotti.

(Personally, I am not that interested in opera plays; only individual arias. See pages 545 to 547 of A Mencken Chrestomathy.)

Three Tenors sing Jingle Bells
Watch Here.

José Carreras sings Ave Maria
Watch Here.

Plácido Domingo sings White Christmas
Watch Here.

Luciano Pavarotti sings Panis Angelicus
Watch Here.

Three Tenors sing Happy Christmas / War Is Over
Watch Here.

Merry Christmas!

Maintaining The Paleo Blog for two years has been a fun and interesting Internet experience. It is my hope that the few readers out there have found this blog informative and enjoyable. Writing the various entries has benefited me in that it has sharpened my analysis on the various subjects that are covered here. To some degree it displays the evolution of my political thinking-----when I started this blog I just turned into a "Rothbardian."

I will be retiring The Paleo Blog in early 2009 and directing a greater amount of my time to other more important things. Please have me in your prayers. That would be very kind. And let me please emphasize my thanks to the few readers. I think, despite its obscurity, it has been a worthwhile activity.

For those who wish to contact me, you can use the private messaging system at VOX.

An Internet pen pal was kind enough to put together what he thought were the best or most interesting entries of this year. Besides the links below, I also put together an informal "studyblog" of Dr. Hoppe's A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism. You can find that here.

• You Can't Escape "Anarchy"
  
• "Not So Wild, Wild West" Justice
  
• Some Thoughts on Technology and Community
• Libertarianism, Freedom, and Lifeboat Situations
• Visions of Order by Richard Weaver
• Libertarian Communities--- A Few Articles and Remarks
  
• Reparations and Private Property
  
• Edmund Burke: A Young Anarcho-Capitalist?
  
• Private Island Thought Experiment and "the Lifeboat"
  
• Weaver: Southerner, Conservative, Rhetorician
  
• Aggression, Defense, and State
  
• McNeocon, Abortion, Insurance & Discrimination, Death of West
  
• Power Destroys Civil Society
• Culinary Conservatism
• Society's (Good) Conformity
  
• Money and Civilization
  
• Beyond Economic Man
• Heroes and Villains
• Don't Give the State Consent
• Notes on the Election, Democracy, Secession
  
• Monarchy > Democracy
• Normality's Enemy, the State
• Some Analysis on the Logic of Private Property

My many thanks to Mister Gaurav Ahuja for the list.

Mr. Ahuja is an anarcho-capitalist and a race-realist. He believes that historical revisionism and Austrian economics is lacking in today's world. He lives in the New York metropolitan area and is proud to be the most pro-White, non-White defender of European mankind. Contact him via p.m. at realliberal.vox.com.

Dr. Thomas E. Woods, Jr., one of the most prolific writers, created a guide for those of us who want to learn about liberty.

See "Learning for Liberty."

Mr. Rockwell writes in his piece "The Myth of Good Government": "If ... money is used to prop up failing companies, that's particularly bad since it is an attempt to override market realities, an attempt that is about as successful as trying to repeal gravity by throwing things up in the air."

Redirecting the market economy to have resources flow out of relatively sound lines of production and into relatively unsound lines of production cannot possibly speed along the recovery. As Henry Hazlitt said, doing this will drive capital and labor "out of industries in which they are more efficiently employed to be diverted to an industry in which they are less efficiently employed. Less wealth is created. The average standard of living is lowered compared with what it would have been."

Government interventionism that does this, in essence, rewards those who have used their resources and money unwisely and punishes those who have used their resources and money wisely. No sound economy can work on this principle without bad consequences.

When you think about this, it becomes apparent that this is how almost all statist interventions work. Many of the government's operations work on a principle that has the effect of rewarding losers and punishing thrifty individuals. Jeffrey Tucker's wonderful article "Good Kids, Bad Kids" does a great job illustrating this point; a point that I have been recently talking about to a friend.

As a young man I have seen how public education reacts to students who should not be there. If you are around my age (or younger), then you know what I mean. In no sense should these specific youngsters be at school. But compulsory education forces them to be there, despite their loutish behavior and almost complete uninterest in academic work. On net they contribute more negative than positive to the environment.

Instead of a system that expels them (punishes them), and thereby forces them into the workforce to develop productive and civilized skills, the system practically allows them to get away with their conduct and/or places them into "special education." This not only brings down the environment, and thus hurts students that should/can be there, but it additionally has a bad impact on these youngsters as well. They are allowed to "free ride" the system and do not get their just ejection which would have forced them to mature. As a whole, society is hence made worse off. This entire system sets into motion an increase of uncivilized behavior and decrease of civilized behavior.

To return to Mr. Tucker's article, he mentions that inflation is a prime example of how the State "discourages goodness and subsidizes badness." That it is. Nothing is so forcefully fused into the market economy than monetary socialism.

Money, as you all know, is what makes the market work. It is what allows transactions to develop without the need to constantly pray and hope for a double coincidence of wants. Money integrates the economy. It is similar to language. Furthermore, it is what allows the vital importance of cost accounting (calculation) to develop.

Thus to impose socialism in this vital area----the economy's "lifeblood"----is only asking for trouble. And, yes, trouble is what we have got from this arrangement. Financial incompetence is what monetary socialism rewards. Society becomes a credit card society. "It rewards," Tucker writes, "short-term thinking and punishes long-term thinking. It rewards debtors and punishes savers. To that extent, it degrades our characters and causes cultural decline."

One of the side effects of inflation is the distortion of cost accounting. Murray Rothbard wrote in What Has Government Done To Our Money:

“By creating illusory profits and distorting economic calculation, inflation will suspend the free market's penalizing of inefficient, and rewarding of efficient, firms. Almost all firms will seemingly prosper. The general atmosphere of a 'sellers' market' will lead to a decline in the quality of goods and of service to consumers, since consumers often resist price increases less when they occur in the form of downgrading of quality. The quality of work will decline in an inflation for a more subtle reason: people become enamored of 'get-rich-quick' schemes, seemingly within their grasp in an era of ever-rising prices, and often scorn sober effort. Inflation also penalizes thrift and encourages debt, for any sum of money loaned will be repaid in dollars of lower purchasing power than when originally received. The incentive, then, is to borrow and repay later rather than save and lend. Inflation, therefore, lowers the general standard of living in the very course of creating a tinsel atmosphere of 'prosperity.'”

Why, this is (sadly) easy to apply to today's situation.

What's more, monetary socialism leads to chaotic booms-and-busts in the economy. Jim Cox writes in The Concise Guide To Economics:

“When an artificial increase in the money supply through the banks occurs, this increases the available money in savings and depresses the interest rate, thereby encouraging an artificial increase in spending which is highly sensitive to the interest rate--capital spending. This run-up in the capital goods industry is the boom, and the subsequent depression results when consumers reestablish their consumption to saving ratio--thus revealing that the capital goods boom was indeed artificial. The only way to prevent the depression is to pump another dose of new money into the system to maintain the higher savings ratio, but eventually this must end or there will be a runaway inflation.

“The artificial increase in the money supply therefore is a government subsidy--through monetary policy--to the capital goods industry. Naturally the subsidy stimulates production in the capital goods industry. Once that subsidy is removed by consumers reestablishing their preferred saving ratio, there is a crash in the capital goods industry.”

Dr. Cox gives the popular analogy of a drug addict. Meaning, we as a society are a bunch of drug addicts when it comes to credit. (This is what monetary socialism brings about.) It is the Federal Reserve's pumping of credit into the market that brings the "high." Sustaining this high requires more and more pumping. However, as the author mentions, there is a limit to this. Near the end of the road either this pumping must be stopped or hyperinflation will occur. When the pumping stops pains of withdrawal occur.

These necessary pains are when the market adjusts back to reality, and away from the artificial high. As the credit (money) expansion flows through the entire economy, the real consumption-saving ratio will be reasserted (with men spending this new money) and the government-generated bubbles and distortions then dissolve.

A (general) deflationary credit contraction is another possible ("secondary") happening in a recession/depression. To be concise, this occurs----besides the (specific) unsound naturally falling----because banks are generally more conservative during this time, and this thereby lowers the supply of money. Additionally, demand for money generally increases. This happening is actually a good thing. It increases the speed of the recovery since it helps reverse inflationary effects. Thus it gives an additional push for men to save and invest more in capital production, and helps to purge malinvestments. (On deflation, read Deflation and Liberty [pdf] by Jörg Guido Hülsmann. And read Rockwell's latest article "The Force Is With Us": "falling prices are an important means for flushing economic error out of a system that is rife with malinvestments generated during boom times." If this deflation will last, is another question...)

In terms of our current economic predicament, not only has the Federal Reserve's Soviet-like management of the economy created massive misallocations (which brought us to where we are today) but the economy's ill-health has been further augmented by the moral hazard created by government protected (and created) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the forcing of banks to engage in uneconomic affirmative action policies. Government, because of this, created a competitive field where it became necessary for banks to engage in bad loaning practices. In other words, the State encouraged bad behavior and discouraged good behavior. Realizing this does not require reading a 1,000 page economic treatise.

For today's economy to be healthy it goes without saying that government should not be subsidizing badness. So exactly what should it do? The answer is nothing. Doing something is what brought us here. Doing nothing would let the market's pricing system, and its checks and balances (which the government ceaselessly attacks), rediscover what is truly sound and what is truly unsound, and let men act accordingly. As Mr. Tucker says: "Laissez-faire is sometimes seen as an 'anything goes' philosophy. It might more accurately be described as a 'reap what you sow' philosophy."

The government, nevertheless, can help the adjustment process along by cutting spending, regulation, and taxation across the board. These actions would be compatible with it "doing nothing." Ending monetary socialism, especially, would be a great thing to do. It would prevent future bubbles. The allocation of resources in higher and lower order industries would be untainted with artificial tamperings of the interest rate.

The last thing the government should do in this period of market correction, according to Rothbard in America's Great Depression (a must read), is to "prevent or delay liquidation," "inflate further," "keep wage rates up," "keep prices up," "stimulate consumption and discourage saving," or "subsidize unemployment." Any of these interventions will only prolong and deepen the adjustment process. These things promote badness, and therefore can turn a year recession to a ten year depression.

Not that the government is likely to listen to those who predicted today's mess, viz., the Austrians and Austro-libertarians. But we all can hope.

To use the lines of libertarian activist Ernest Hancock: "Freedom is the Answer. What's the Question?"

It is freedom, and freedom alone, that brings us financial affluence.

***

See the Following:

• "The Austrians Were Right" by Ron Paul.
• "How the Government Wrecked the Economy": Rockwell interviews Peter Schiff on why we are here and what is to come. (A must listen.)
  
• "Von Hayek in 1975": An interview with Hayek on inflation. (Keynesian nonsense is all over this interview, e.g., trading off unemployment for inflation.)
• The Depression Reader at LRC.
• The Bailout Reader at Mises.org.
  

***
Is Freedom of Speech "Democratic" and an "Absolute"?

"Freedom of speech" is not necessarily "democratic," in spite of claims to the contrary. It is amusing, for me anyways, how often the phrase "democratic rights" is used inaccurately. When freedom of speech is properly understood as just one of the infinite subsets of man's right to his person and property, we can call it a "liberal" right in the classical (correct) sense of that term. On the other hand, it is not a right derived from being inherently democratic. Democracy, indeed, can vote to end liberal freedoms. It is therefore fully compatible----as opposed to classical liberalism----with hating free speech.

No doubt the explanation for this is that men in this day and age consider democracy a "good." Because freedom of speech is "good," it is presumed that it must therefore be "democratic." Such is the sad present state of ideas.

Another common error, which I have typed about on this blog before, is how many men view "freedom of speech" as fundamentally existing in an "absolute" sense. This is not the case. If you are a visitor in my house and you then call me rude names, it would be in my right to kick you out. Doing that would not diminish your freedom whatsoever. Again, freedom of speech is derived from being a subset of man's right to his person and property. It does not exist on its own, detached from private property. Therefore, no additional laws need to be made to enforce or, at times, restrict freedom of speech.

(And, as I will indirectly show below, with the help of Hans-Hermann Hoppe's work, it is impossible to conceive of it as existing apart from private property. Ethical discussions are present because of scarcity and the possibility of conflicts developing over such scarcity.)

Blackmail and libel are two other subjects that cause great confusion with many people: See my review of Defending the Undefendable by Walter Block. And see Dr. Block's "Toward a Libertarian Theory of Blackmail" [PDF].

***
Coercion without Violence?

A earnest caller on a talk radio program was attempting to argue that "coercion" not only applies when man B forces man A to give him his wallet, but that it applies just as much to when man A, owner of a store, refuses to hire B as an employee. But this cannot possibly qualify as an ethical theory. B aggressively forcing A to hire him would be coercion. No coercion is involved if A simply refuses to hire B. In the latter case, there is no (uninvited, non-voluntary) physical invasion or force (or any substitution thereof) involved against either A's or B's private property. The former case does.

Man C, under this caller's theory, can claim that A hiring B would be "coercive" vis-à-vis him because he then could not get the job position. And, taking this theory at face value, C could thus force A to hire him rather than B. Since this is the case, this theory cannot rationally solve who would be "in the right." (B can claim the same thing C does.) This theory would result in unsolvable conflict and, for this reason, cannot qualify as a theory of ethics.

Similarly, imagine man A builds a house, X, in the forest. B comes along and says he wants to buy X for a dollar. A, naturally, denies this transaction. B could then, under this theory, say that A is being "coercive." If this is so, law enforcement can steal X to give to B. But then A can come along and then do exactly what B did to him, and on and on to infinity.

Obviously this would result in ethical chaos.

(To note in passing, in following this line of reasoning, we can disprove the whole notion of what is often called "positive liberty." It is a self-destructive and illogical theory in comparison to what is called "negative liberty." So-called "negative liberty" is internally consistent.)

***
What Determines Just-Ownership?

The goal of ethics----political philosophy and law more specifically----is ultimately to resolve conflicts, and hence to avoid chaos. Actual, physical conflict can only develop, with a number of men greater than one, over the usage (control) of one scarce, discernible, controllable, and "tangible" good, X. The question, then, is of asking who owns X.

The answer, I think, is perfectly clear: It is the first person in its appropriation. Avoiding conflict accordingly means that property be privately owned by the first user-controller.

X not only can be a good, it can refer to a specific spatial location that is homesteadable, e.g., land. (Down below I will try to cover ownership of man's physical body. While, I reason, you can generally say the same exact principle applies in regards to self-ownership, one has to be more precise of what just ownership means in terms of who the first user-controller truly is in a direct sense versus indirect sense.)

Only original appropriation, covered above, can determine just property rights. I don't think you can say otherwise.

A second person who, in a manner of speaking, later arrives cannot be said to be the just owner of X. This would imply that the first person was not the just owner of X and that ownership comes about from the second person, i.e., a late-comer who comes after the first. Now if this is the case, then how did the first person get to his position? What right did he have to homestead and control X if it is not his? He would have no right. (Otherwise we would be back to the problems in the above section of this blog entry. We would have ethical chaos.) Saying that the second person is the owner implies that it must be considered un-just if the first person did not get approval from the second-comer qua just-owner. But how can one determine who the late-comer is before the fact? And what about another late-comer's claim to just-ownership relative to the second-comer, i.e., a third man relative to the first? Logically one must ask this question for the third, fourth, fifth, ... nth person. Society would die out and ethics would not exist.

Man cannot determine the answers to these questions ex ante. Getting the consent of late-comers is impracticable. No man could act from the beginning on with an ethic that goes against original appropriation. Man cannot conceivably wait for late-comers in acting and living. Likewise, man cannot physically jump into the air a second time without jumping a first time prior to the second. (This is logically true a priori.) Homesteading and the principle of original appropriation therefore cannot be, as Hans-Hermann Hoppe says, "timeless." (In addition, it is praxeologically implied that man understands the temporal order of things because he is an actor who acts towards goals in the future.) In fact, the whole notion of exchange and contract works because acquiring property happens at specific points in time. This is demonstrated in that man must first acquire property from a state of nature prior to any possible voluntary exchange or contract of property.

Furthermore, and implied above, conflict would be created (not destroyed, which is the goal of ethics) if we were to say that the late-comers get partial control over X. This would be equivalent to saying that more than one person can stand at the exact same spatial location without conflict being (potentially) created.

Neither can it be rationally argued that everyone owns everything as a collective. Conflict would not be taken off the table. Thus, this theory fails too. Conflict would increase manyfold. And, even more deadly, when we consider applying this ethic to our individual physical bodies, it would demand that an individual person get permission just to walk across the room. But even to make the request would, at the very least, require the use of one's own vocal cords. So this must ultimately be ruled out as preposterous as well.

Even solely applying this principle to alienable property, while hence ignoring ownership over inalienable physical bodies, makes no logical sense. Conflict could still technically occur over a man's standing room----and this infers that moving around would still require collective permission----and would doom civilization. Man cannot wait for collective approval to use property "outside" of his body. Man must, for example, eat. And he must be able to move around. He cannot wait. This principle would not allow man to act from the beginning on. It would be impossible to implement this collective idea (including or not including physical bodies) without consent already being there to do so a priori. That is, it must assume a "collective-mind" existing from the start to direct activity. Since it does not exist, this whole idea must be rejected as nonsense on stilts.

(Other ideas must be rejected as mixtures of these false ideas.)

In regards to the more specific issue of self-ownership, every man has a natural and logical right to his person. There is a direct biological or physiological connection to a man's consciousness and his body. Who has a right to a given man's physical body but him? Another man can try to control this body, but he can only do so indirectly with the usage of his own body which he controls directly. Ownership is consequently established through direct use. Denying this is self-defeating because the denial itself would implicitly admit this principle true. One would be engaging in a "performative contradiction." (By the way, if you disagree with me, then why are you arguing with the usage of your own physical body? I thought you said you do not have self-ownership. Further, it is interesting that when you argue with me you implicitly admit that a principle of "non-aggression" is correct.)

From the very beginning of mankind on, man has had to directly own himself to act; thus, to assign property rights that go against self-ownership makes very little sense.

Read the Following Hans-Hermann Hoppe Material (References):

(My attempt to prove original appropriation, while substantially helped along by Dr. Hoppe's work [to say the least], does not, unless I am mistaken, require argumentation ethics. I only applied "AE" when it comes to self-ownership.)

• His book, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property. (Here is an excellent review of it. It is available at Amazon.)
  
• "The Ethics and Economics of Private Property."
  
• "Does the State Resolve or Create Conflict?."
• "From the Economics of Laissez Faire to The Ethics of Libertarianism."
• "Four Critical Replies."

Some Side-Notes:

It's important to keep in mind that man can only own the physical integrity of private property; it is not possible to own its "value." Ex ante, we have control over our actions in terms of aggressing or not aggressing against the physical integrity of another man's property. We don't have control, though, if our actions affect the value or price of another's property. Values are dependent on what others think in their head. It would be impossible to know ex ante if our actions would change values. In order to act man would need the permission of everyone. This, just like the idea that first-comers need the permission of late-comers, would doom mankind and must be rejected. Besides the links already provided, see "On Property and Exploitation" by Block and Hoppe.

What about conflict over property with a non-human entity? Dr. Hoppe would reply, correctly I think, it's only possible to say such an entity is "equal" to man if it is a rational agent that can engage in argumentation. The reason we all are talking about this subject is because we are all rational agents who are engaging in argumentation; hence, the answer. Ethical theory does not come from fish. It comes from man using his rational abilities to argue ethical theories. It is this----the engagement of argumentation---that displays our (mankind's) rationality. Murray Rothbard wrote: "There is, in fact, rough justice in the common quip that 'we will recognize the rights of animals whenever they petition for them.' The fact that animals can obviously not petition for their 'rights' is part of their nature, and part of the reason why they are clearly not equivalent to, and do not posses the rights of, human beings."

The question of air or noise pollution goes back to homesteading and original appropriation. Once we focus our philosophical lenses on this we will arrive at the answer. Someone, for instance, that builds a factory in the middle of nowhere, before anyone else, and emits air pollutants gets an easement. Read Rothbard's "Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution."

On the topic of "intellectual property," read "Against Intellectual Property" by N. Stephan Kinsella. I read this about a month ago and found it brilliant.

***
Is Government Compatible with Private Property?

The late-comers, typed about above, are actually the equivalent of men of State. That is, they fit such classification. They claim to be the "real" owners of all property as indicated by their claim to tax persons without their individual consent, despite the logical impossibility of them being the just-owners.

They thus have no natural authority or legitimacy. All States are illegitimate and unacceptable. Private property is supreme. All forms of government are incompatible with it. "[T]he State," wrote Murray Rothbard, "is nothing more nor less than a bandit gang writ large." They are in a position that magically grants them so-called "rights" to do things that you and I could never do or get away with. Imagine if the persons of the State were forced to behave in the way we all behave!

To quote Albert Jay Nock:

“[The State] forbids private murder, but itself organizes murder on a colossal scale. It punishes private theft, but itself lays unscrupulous hands on anything it wants, whether the property of citizen or of alien.”

The State cannot even be close to being called a "private club." A man that joins a chess club does so voluntarily. It does not grab him, enslave him in the club, and then force him to pay monthly dues. A man that joins a chess club does so voluntarily. The chess club recognizes man's right to his private property. Unlike the State, it behaves (or can behave) in a way that is fully compatible with original appropriation.

The State can neither be called a "private firm." One solitary man or a group of men can boycott a private firm at any time and for whatever reason. A man can cut off his relationship with a firm. The State, on the other hand, can violently lock such a nonviolent man in a cage for his State boycott. A man can defend himself against a mugger on the street. The State, on the other hand, can attack such a man on the street and lock him up if he tries to defend himself and his property from its attacks. A private firm cannot enslave a man to do its biddings. The State, on the other hand, can enslave a man to do its biddings.

Once the State is rid of its cloak, all that is left to be seen is an organization that is based on violence. It primarily engages in violence against the non-violent. As a criminal organization it lives in direct contradiction to private property.

(Take a look at "Anarchism and Minarchism; No Rapprochement Possible" [pdf] by Walter Block.)

Joseph Sobran has thus asked: "[W]hy pretend such an evil is a positive good?" Even if the State is "inevitable," man should not pretend that the State is something that it is not.

Nonetheless, as Rothbard would say, the existence of the State does not prove it is essential to society or that it is "inevitable." Just because the State does Y activity does not mean that only the State can do Y or that civil society has necessarily failed in Y.

Perhaps the biggest claim is that the State is needed in the development of law. But here is what Rothbard had to say in his Ethics of Liberty book:

“For most law, but especially the most libertarian parts of the law, emerged not from the state, but out of non-state institutions: tribal, custom, common-law judges and courts, the law merchant in mercantile courts, or admiralty law in tribunals set up by shippers themselves...”

Many traditional conservatives look to the Middle Ages because, among other reasons, it was not based on atom-like individuals, as we have today. Many anti-state libertarians also look to specific periods of the Middle Ages because it was a time when there was no State, at least nothing touching what we have now in terms of sovereignty in Leviathan form. In the place of a sovereign State was a polycentric order of law and judicial services.

Persons that instinctively reject a private property society without a State should do some research on the matter. There are (literally) hundreds of reasons---both historical and theoretical----why one should not automatically castoff this idea. There is an amazingly large amount of literature on the subject, waiting for you to explore.

(Leaving aside my personal pessimistic feelings and reasonings on the prospects of a stateless society [for the upcoming generations], I do not believe that my view is "utopian." Instead, I think those who believe the State can be used as a force for good are the real utopians.)

John T. Flynn

“The test of fascism is not one's rage against the Italian and German war lords. The test is – how many of the essential principles of fascism do you accept and to what extent are you prepared to apply those fascist ideas to American social and economic life? When you can put your finger on the men or the groups that urge for America the debt-supported state, the autarchial corporative state, the state bent on the socialization of investment and the bureaucratic government of industry and society, the establishment of the institution of militarism as the great glamorous public-works project of the nation and the institution of imperialism under which it proposes to regulate and rule the world and, along with this, proposes to alter the forms of our government to approach as closely as possible the unrestrained, absolute government – then you will know you have located the authentic fascist.

“But let us not deceive ourselves into thinking that we are dealing by this means with the problem of fascism. Fascism will come at the hands of perfectly authentic Americans, as violently against Hitler and Mussolini as the next one, but who are convinced that the present economic system is washed up and that the present political system in America has outlived its usefulness and who wish to commit this country to the rule of the bureaucratic state; interfering in the affairs of the states and cities; taking part in the management of industry and finance and agriculture; assuming the role of great national banker and investor, borrowing millions every year and spending them on all sorts of projects through which such a government can paralyze opposition and command public support; marshaling great armies and navies at crushing costs to support the industry of war and preparation for war which will become our greatest industry; and adding to all this the most romantic adventures in global planning, regeneration, and domination all to be done under the authority of a powerfully centralized government in which the executive will hold in effect all the powers with Congress reduced to the role of a debating society. There is your fascist. And the sooner America realizes this dreadful fact the sooner it will arm itself to make an end of American fascism masquerading under the guise of the champion of democracy.”

~ John T. Flynn (1882 - 1964), As We Go Marching (1944).
[See excerpt of book: "What Is Fascism?"]

Charles Burris in his LRC essay "Obamascam" gives the above quote and asks: "Will no one in the mainstream media call Obama and his emerging regime by its rightful name?"

A Few Essays on Flynn:

• "John T. Flynn: Exemplar of the Old Right" by Justin Raimondo.
• "A Tribute to John T. Flynn" by Adam Young.
• "John T. Flynn: Enemy of Militarism" by Dan Spielberg.
• "Hating 'That Man in the White House' All Over Again" Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
• "John T. Flynn and the Myth of FDR" by Ralph Raico.
• A David Gordon Review of The Roosevelt Myth.

See Online Flynn Literature: Here.

Available Flynn Books: Here.

A good deal of the establishment reacted with consternation when the majority of the public, notwithstanding their vote for Mr. Barack Obama, once again rejected so-called "gay marriage."

Even though I am an opponent of democracy in all of its progressive forms, it is arguable that this is one wholesome thing that has come out of the recent elections. What can be called the "gay agenda" has more to do with increasing the State than decreasing it. It is more about empowering statism than disempowering statism.

Ask the average American if he advocates using physical violence against homosexuals or those who engage in homosexual "sex." You would find that the vast majority do not, and correctly so.

What Murray Rothbard wrote in 1993 for the Triple R remains true today. Christians are not seeking the use of the State as a weapon against gays. The vast majority of people do not want to have the government go door-to-door to see what people are doing in their bedrooms. They do not advocate throwing such people in jail, or anything of that nature. Homosexuals have the liberty to live together, sleep together, or even to call their relationships legitimate and moral.

So contrary to the proclaimed goal of freedom and liberty, the gay agenda is about imposing, with the force and backing of government, their "morality" on everyone as a collective. It is about forcing the recognition of such relationships as being morally legitimate, being exactly identical to normal, heterosexual marriage----which is what obviously sustains civilization through time----and so forth. To find a direct example of the gay agenda crushing liberty, just look no further than Massachusetts. According to the June 30th issue of TAC, Catholic adoption agencies were forced to shutdown because they discriminated against homosexual couples.

Here we come to the left-liberal view of freedom. While the real advocate of liberty asserts that marriage should have nothing to do with the State, they see freedom as originating from the government. This is why they seek the State as the enforcer of "gay marriage." With this view of "freedom," it is no wonder that they so often attack various forms of private authority in the social and civil order. For them it is fine to use the State to bring about leveling and the smashing of differences or distinctions in a monolithic way. In addition, it becomes okay to use the State to radically redefine the traditionally developed and naturally evolved definition of marriage and family.

Joe Sobran writes in "Hijacking the Conservative Movement":

Whereas the liberal wants to impose "gay rights," by law and coercion, the [traditional] conservative sees homosexuality as a defect, which to some extent can and must be tolerated, because it can't be "eradicated," but it can't rationally be exalted to the plane of normality; and he knows that all talk of "same-sex marriage" is nonsense, like trying to breed calves from a pair of bulls.

On the one hand, the left-liberal perceives all lifestyles being the same and equal to each other. Thus, it follows, that moral standards and norms don't exist. Moral relativism and nihilism are absolute. (The astute reader will find that in itself paradoxical.) All values are purely subjective and there exists no such thing as a hierarchy of values. Personal freedom and indiscriminate tolerance, they say, should reign.

But, on the other hand, a man who advocates traditional norms is condemned, regardless of their view that norms are purely in the air, subject to mere taste. That is to say, while they call for (rhetorically, at least) personal freedom and tolerance, they will intolerantly condemn those who use their personal freedom to advocate traditional ways or who live such a life by discriminating against untraditional ways.

A priest that advocates withholding Holy Communion to someone who supports abortion is targeted, despite his right and liberty to do so. And anyone who use's his personal freedom to question politically correct leftist dogmas (e.g., racial and gender egalitarianism) is always targeted. For a recent case, think of Walter Block; or think of James Watson.

Their dislike of a private, bourgeois order makes them turn to the State. Since the majority of men have formed a cultural ethos that actually has (one or two) moral standards, many left-liberals see the State "freeing" individuals (e.g., homosexuals) from it. Not only do they see the State "freeing" individuals, they see public education as a tool to spread anti-norm ideas. Heterosexual white men are told that they should feel guilty as a collective for insensitivity and sins against homosexuals (and other minority groups). Institutions that stand in the way of this "freeing" must be demolished or, if not that, shunned publicly. And any person who has culturally conservative "prejudices" is seen as someone who has an illness which needs to be cured via the managerial and therapeutic state. [For those of you who are interested, I highly, highly recommend you read Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt by Paul E. Gottfried. One of the central things he does is tie the development of a liberal Protestant ideology to the development of political correctness and multicultural programs. Today's ethos itself has been turned progressively more towards the "politics of guilt." It is not just "outside" groups attacking within, so to speak. The managerial and therapeutic state requires those "within" to maintain it. Here is a review.]

It is interesting to make a note of how, with the pushing of the statist establishment and mainstream media, we as a society have moved from classifying homosexuality as being pathological to classifying those who view homosexuality as such as being itself the real pathology; hence, the establishment created word "homophobic."

Given this frame of mind, it is no wonder that some extreme left-liberals delight in perversity.* The unnatural and abnormal becomes glorified,** even beyond a lifestyle egalitarian outlook. Single motherhood is exalted at the expense of the importance of fatherhood; sexual promiscuity and free love is exalted at the expense of restraint and monogamy; and then there are traditional groups such as the Boy Scouts who are looked at as "nefarious."

*(There is an unambiguous dissimilarity between heterosexual marriage and homosexual relationships; hence, they are not the same or identical. If homosexuality was really normal, then civilization would die out and there would be no discussion of this topic; hence, homosexuality can only be considered unnatural vis-à-vis heterosexuality. Catechism of the Catholic Church #2357: "Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that 'homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.' They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a general affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.")

**(Sometimes I wonder: In a couple of decades from now, will the establishment portray sexual feelings of pedophilia as "natural," "normal," "moral," "healthy," etc.? It might be a bridge too far, but you never know. Parallel to this, I wonder if left-liberals will declare that the love between a father and his biological son/daughter [of adult age] can be turned into an actual "marriage." Will they label those who morally oppose this as "bigoted," "phobic," "hateful," etc.? Perhaps the specific left-liberals that would support this would label the other left-liberals that do not support this as being "bigoted," "phobic," "hateful," etc.)

This kind of lifestyle egalitarian outlook revolts against nature because lifestyles are not equal and the same. Nor are all peoples, ideas, cultures, religions, et cetera equal. Only the government can attempt to promote egalitarianism in any meaningful sense because it is not natural in a state of nature, so to speak. It requires a Leviathan State to continuously engineer society with the use of force. Correspondingly, dislike of all private authority turns into like of political power. The late, great Robert Nisbet was right when he said that a left-liberal as a "lover of political power ... is the knee-jerk adversary of all moral authority."

Today's disintegrated society is in no small part the result from the incessant centralization and monopolization of governmental power. This trend you see in history has rid much of the social order's plurality and concentricity of private authorities. Many of the specific authorities, functions, and roles that have existed in the fabric of the various networks of social relationships (e.g., familial, religious, communal, economic), which have existed----because, among other important reasons, we live in an uncertain and scarce world that requires law and order----between the government and the individual, have been taken over by the State. These voluntary networks (groups, associations, and institutions), said Nisbet, "not only [serve] as buffers to the state but as nurturing beds of moral and social character, of the disciplines and incentives which manifest themselves in human conduct."

It is no wonder, then, that we see the development of all of these very atomistic ideas. That is, ideas which see the individual as living in a cultural and social void. Common sense, however, should tell us that, from a macro view, and contra some libertarians, that Nisbet was also right when he said that: "It is the family, not the individual, that is the real molecule of society, the key link of the social chains of being."

Only the modern age could ignore the vital importance the traditional family institution has on the development of the individual and how this, as a whole, temporally shapes the development of civilization. Historically speaking, private property is intimately related to the family. This should be no surprise because both property and family are the foundation to civilization and its continuation. Even an imaginary "post-scarcity" world could not really change this. Left-liberal notions of the "family" cannot objectively be said to be on the same playing field as the traditional family.

By the same token, only the modern age can ignore the mass synergetic affects that language and other cultural phenomena have on the individual. Without such a cultural-social context, individual liberty cannot truly exist. (For example, even to speak about individual liberty presupposes the cultural-social context of language.)

Take a look at Bruce P. Frohnen’s lecture, “T.S. Eliot on the Necessity of Christian Culture.”

You can read it here.

Also: Listen to Russell Kirk's lecture "Civilization without Religion" here [mp3].

Bush's Broken Record.

He Fought the Wars and the Wars Won
By Gary Brecher
Empty flight suit.

Full Faith and Bad Credit
By Patrick J. Deneen
Fiddling while Wall Street burns.

A Long Train of Abuses
By Alexander Cockburn
On civil liberties, Bush followed Clinton.

Discounting Family Values
By Allan Carlson
Terror War trumps Culture War.*

Conservatives Follow the Leader
By Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.
Anything for the White House.

*(On the family, see also "George Bush, the Anti-Family President" by Bill Kauffman.)

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