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Bill Kauffman, author of Ain’t My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism, discusses the different categories of anti-war and anti-empire individuals, the uselessness of the label “conservative,” how Bush’s false promises of a humble foreign policy helped expose him as a prep-school cheerleader rather than the cowboy he claims to be, John McCain’s lack of character, the history of our empire, how the war party has betrayed the legacy of George Washington, the founders’ anti-militarism, the theft of Hawaii, how one intervention usually leads to others, how ex-commies hijacked the conservative movement in the 1950’s, Pat Buchanan’s journey to the peace camp and the smearing of the America First Committee by the Roosevelt camp.
***
Doug Bandow reviews Ain't My America at AntiWar.com.
Other Things... Pat Buchanan attacks Bush's ignorant use of the "Hitler Card" of "appeasement." | Mr. Buchanan on his New Book. | See Mr. Kauffman TAC article "When the Left Was Right." | "John McMurder Wants More War" by Charles H. Featherstone. | Rothbard Explains US Wars and Empire. | Outside the war topic, see Lew Rockwell's "Everything You Love You Owe to Capitalism." | Robert Higgs on "Why Progressives Won the Presidency – They Had Better Slogans".
[This entry was typed up as a follow-up to the Nock entry on education: Sacred cows are everywhere. Albert Jay Nock saw the fallacious ideas that surround the system of education. It is a system, like so many other sacred cows, that gets opulent support by its attachment to egalitarianism and democracy. Like most things called "progressive," it is a backwards and profligate system; hardly to be looked at as a truly progressive thing.]
“One of the best ways of regarding the problem of compulsory education is to think of the almost exact analogy in the area of that other great educational medium----the newspaper. What would we think of a proposal for the government, Federal or State, to use the taxpayers' money to set up a nationwide chain of public newspapers, and compel all people, or all children, to read them? . . . Compulsory public presses would be considered an invasion of the basic freedom of press; yet is not scholastic freedom at least as important as press freedom? Aren't both vital media for public information and education, for free inquiry and the search for truth? It is clear that the suppression of free instruction should be regarded with even greater horror than suppression of free press, since here the unformed minds of children are involved.”
A Glance at the Rise of Modern State Education
Murray Rothbard's excellent monograph Education: Free and Compulsory (you can buy it at Amazon) surveys how compulsory education was not started up, either in Europe or America, as some kind of wonderful, enlightening, and altruistic thing. A compulsory and statist system was started up for far more sinister reasons. From the very start it has been an ideological and religious weapon. (How could it not?)
As I tell my fellow Catholic friends, a major impetus to compulsory and statist education was aimed against the Church.
"The first modern movement for compulsory state education," Rothbard says in Education, "stemmed directly from the Reformation." Martin Luther and John Calvin both called for compulsory state education. They saw it as a force to mold obedience to their religions and to the State.
In Germany, Luther demanded that it be used to fight against "the devil." This included, writes Rothbard, "not only Jews, Catholics, and infidels, but also all other Protestant sects." In 1524, in response, Gotha created the first public school and Thurungia in 1527 started their own. And 1559 Wurtemburg created the first compulsory system.
Calvin in Geneva, a town that previously revolted "against the Duke of Savoy and the Catholic Church," was able to create "a number of public schools, at which attendance was compulsory."
Prussia became the "first to have a national system of compulsory education." It is not surprising, Rothbard notes, because Prussia was the most "despotic State in Europe" and that its "original inspiration . . . was Luther and his doctrine of obedience to State absolutism." It was also in Prussia, with King Frederick William III, that "progressive education" came.
France, touched by the French Revolution and its egalitarianism, with Napoleon brought compulsory State education.
With this other nation-States followed along, including England, whose "tradition of voluntarism was ... strongest."
What about America?
In the majority of American colonies, education was in the English tradition, i.e., voluntary parental education, with the only public schools being those established for poor families free to make use of the facilities. . . . The crucial exception was New England, the sparkplug of the collectivist educational system in America.
This exception was due to their Calvinist ideas. Thus, in 1642 they implemented compulsory laws and then in 1647 created public schools. Massachusetts Bay Colony first governor John Winthrop expressed this ideology well. He, says Rothbard, "regarded any opposition to the policies of the governor, particularly when he was governor, as positively seditious."
To try to remain still brief in this entry, Puritans expanded the locations they lived and with them expanded their views on education. Only Rhode Island in New England was the exception.
The Prussian System, and hence not only Calvinist ideas, as well had an influence in shaping the development of statist education in America. Later, and after the Revolutionary War, special interest groups offered it as a role model to adopt. Calvin E. Stowe (using very similar tyrannical rhetoric as Luther), a major statist educational pusher, did the same.
Rothbard says that "professional educationists were the major force, assisted by the trade unions, in imposing compulsory education in America."
Two central scholars that helped shape public opinion, being preeminent in the newspapers, were Frances Wright and Robert Dale Owen. Both were radical socialists. While, fortunately, their full dream was not realized, ideas of "absolute equality and uniformity" did, to a great extent, come about. Major "educationists" including Horace Mann, Henry Barnard, Calvin Wiley, and others advocated this goal of equality and uniformity. That is, to take a diverse people and "mold them into 'one people,'" and to instill with them (their) "moral values." Along with this was their ridicule of private schools.
Rothbard on Education and the Individual
First thing is first. Rothbard, in Education: Free and Compulsory, overviews that the growth of a new person in the world is chiefly of intellect. Learning is a 24-7 thing, so to speak, in which the child learns from his environment. This environment consists of the natural world, man-made things, and by observation of the interactions and associations of men. Most fundamentally, learning starts at home.
Learning and growing up is therefore something above and beyond just formal education. Moreover, education and the formation of personality, while developed by the impact of others of course, really comes down to the individual person. It is he that will ultimately decide upon the ideas formed in his head.
The need for formal education and schooling comes with assimilating intellectual knowledge. This knowledge requires a systematic and logical progression. The most important of this being reading since it opens the doors to other subjects of knowledge.
Because mankind is not made up of equals but persons of infinite differences, the best education is the one specialized to the given child. This is what, Rothbard says, makes individualized homeschooling superior to all other forms of formal education. It can directly target and accommodate the needs of the child. And who but the parents know this best? (Most of the basics the average parents have the ability to teach.)
The next best system would be an individual tutor. Private schools, with an instructor teaching many students at once, would be the next (but last). The problem here is that individualized education becomes less and less possible. It is for this reason that, by inevitability, it will be comparatively inferior. However, seeing that these schools work in the free market, they would allow greater specialization and individualized focus in comparison to a statist system, with its top-down approach and its collectivistic uniformity.
To Rothbard, the issue is: The Parents or the State? Who is going to have authority? We know what the socialist will say. For the freedom-lover, the answer must be the parents.
(Their authority is clearly the natural authority. Hence, giving the State the role of being father is to dismantle the family and its natural authority. It is the alleviating of investment in children by collectivizing or socializing them. How could this not produce a decline in the family? It must, like all forms of socialism. Some conservative, though, cheer on their socialism all the same. [The conservative moral socialist who thinks the State can bring about a paradise of virtue is as fanatic and deluded as the liberal economic socialist who sees the State bringing about a Garden of Eden paradise.] Mr. Sobran once said in an interview: "Americans believe in education. It is one of those strange features of American life; that we accept the principles of communism when it comes to schools.")
Rothbard vs. "Progressive" Education
The step to today's compulsory system was bad enough. But it did not end there. With an ever-expanding educational Leviathan came increased collectivization, centralization, and "progressive" ideas. (And there went the Great Tradition. "In one century we went from teaching Latin and Greek in high school," Sobran once wrote, "to offering remedial English in college.") Murray Rothbard, of course, was no fan of these trends. In a nutshell, he said, there are five general things that have happened.
For one, in "progressive" education there has been a letting go of systematic thinking and learning. The emphasis increasingly has been more to let the child "do what he likes" and on "the group." The "three Rs" have been more neglected. All of this has resulted in a perversion in the development of intellect.
Secondly, there has been the idea for education to promote "equality and uniformity." Everyone is viewed as equally educable and, thus, the teaching standards have been pushed down to the lowest common denominator. Even the most uneducable of children are forced into the system. Silly ideas of "grading subjectively" versus objectively have been propagated at times. And, additionally, it is seen as a big objective to prepare children for democracy. Children, however, are not taught systematically the subjects of history, politics, or economics to have informed views on the subjects that pertain to democracy. Instead what they are given is statist slogans and propaganda.
There is also, Rothbard went on, an "emphasis on 'frills'" in school. All this has done is further lessened formal education.
Fourth, it is seen that education must educate the "whole" of a child, beyond and above formal education. This whole idea replaces the family with the State.
And, finally, there has been a surged dependency on the State from all of this. It is the natural and logical result.
Rothbard vs. Voucher Welfarism
The last thing worth going over quickly is Rothbard's views on vouchers. To this end let us turn to the essays "Vouchers: What Went Wrong?" and "Education: Rethinking 'Choice'."
As I have said before, there was a brief time I thought they were a good idea. But then, alas, I found out that they were really another welfare program based on egalitarian ideas, and something that extends governmental control to private schools. (I should have thought: Many socialists, and neocon groups like the awful Heritage Foundation, like this idea, therefore it is probably bad.)
"Vouchers," Rothbard writes,
would greatly extend the welfare system so that middle-class taxpayers would pay for private as well as public schooling for the poor. People without children, or parents who homeschool, would have to pay taxes for both public and private school. On the crucial principle that control always follows subsidy, the voucher scheme would extend government domination from public schools to the as-yet more or less independent private schools.
Especially in regard to the suburbs, the voucher scheme would wreck the fairly worthwhile existing suburban schools in order to subject them to a new form of egalitarian forced busing, in which inner city kids would be foisted upon the suburban schools. A most unwelcome "education revolution."
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn:
“There can be little doubt that compulsory education was an extremely important step towards the totalitarian state—a step whose significance was by no means universally recognized.
“The very idea lying at the basis of compulsory education has, naturally, to be found in the notion that the children belong to the state or to ‘society’ rather than to their parents. De Sade, the ‘divine marquis,’ insisted that the children are a property of the republic. Jeremy Belknap in an ‘Election Sermon’ preached before the General Court New Hampshire in 1785 advocated equal and compulsory education for all, emphasizing that children belong rather to the state than to their procreators. Benjamin Rush wanted general education for the establishment of a more uniform, homogeneous and egalitarian nation. In 1791 Robert Coram, significantly, proposed schools in which religion, dead or foreign languages (!) should not be taught—the dream of Hitler and Nazi school reformers. Frances Wright, in the middle of the nineteenth century, campaigned for the compulsory education of all children by the state; they should be trained from the ages of two to sixteen in state boarding schools. Food and clothing, as well as the intellectual fare, should be entirely standardized. . . .”
(Liberty or Equality: The Challenge of our Time, pp 63 - 64)
You can listen to this [mp3] 1999 audio recording, from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, of Mr. Ted J. Smith, III speaking about the distinguished conservative scholar Richard M. Weaver (1910 - 1963), author of the influential Ideas Have Consequences, among other works.
What follows in this blog entry are (mainly) some notes from the lecture. The last section addresses what I believe is a weak point in traditional conservatism, particularly of the "Kirkian" variety.
Initially Richard Weaver, like many others, started out politically as a socialist (though, maybe it should be footnoted, not in a "neocon-way"). Weaver was quite the radical, although he did not care for
the different personalities in his radical-socialist circles. In spite of his then difference of opinion and incredulousness towards agrarians, he did find agrarians people he liked personally. It was later, as Smith explains, that Weaver would agree with them and become a conservative or, as Dr. Joseph Stromberg labels Weaver, a libertarian-conservative. From there he developed a Platonic view, exhibited in Ideas Have Consequences and The Ethics of Rhetoric, and then finally shifted out of that back to focus more on agrarianism.
The Culture of the South
Weaver's Ph.D. thesis said that there were four primary characteristics that distinguished the culture of the South:
- The culture was stable with status and social ranks: It was agrarian, hierarchical, and heterogeneous versus homogeneous in mass of persons. In a nutshell, it was feudalistic. (See part three of this.)
- People were guided by a moral belief of chivalry.
- Education's ideal and focus was on virtue and making leaders; it was not vocational.
- Man's principle beliefs in religion were accepted more dogmatically as against rationalistically.
With this were four features of the mind of a Southerner:
- There was the acceptance, having a frame of mind that was "complex and nuanced" (says Smith) in looking at the world, of the mysteriousness of different aspects of life, which encompassed both nature and the supernatural. And this frame of mind accepted the idea of absolute principles.
- Man's looking at the world emphasized intuitive insights over pure abstractions.
- The Southerner had an aversion concerning materialism, and a skepticism regarding the idea of progress being exclusively a materialistic thing or something consonant with the Whig theory of history.
- He had a natural habit of piety. This fourth feature is very important for Weaver; it is a sign of self-restraint based on respect.
Yet, Richard Weaver did think there were problems. For one, in the South there has been a tendency toward romantic fundamentalism. And, worse, the
characteristic principles that made the culture of the South
conservative were slipping away due to a lack of defense in support of
these principles, especially after the War for Southern Independence. Nonetheless, Weaver did judge that the South could provide a model example
of cultural conservatism because of its generally non-materialistic philosophy.
Ideas Have Consequences
All of this studying of the South is what led him to write his most famous book, Ideas Have Consequences. (According to The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 by George H. Nash, the original title was The Fearful Descent. The publisher, Chicago University, changed the title.)
Instead of defending the culture of the South, the book was a critique against modern and Northern culture. As you can guess, Weaver attacks squalid modernity. He believed that the deterioration of culture in today's society resulted from the abandonment of logical realism and the acceptance of nominalism.
Logical realism, in short, is based on dualism and universalism. It is about the essence of things and that things have actual, real existence. That things are intelligible and thus able to be discerned by man.
Nominalism is the opposite: It says, for example, that generalizations do not have any real existence. Nominalism then leads into empiricism, positivism, and materialism. In addition, he thought, it leads to atheism because truth is seen to be only attainable through the senses. With this, also, comes viewing science as an end to itself. Man, and his nature, gets lost to it.
There is a linkage, thought Weaver, to the loss of distinction and hierarchy in culture to the loss of realism. This is why he thought there has been a degeneration of art and what he saw as the degeneration of music through jazz.
(In regards to jazz, his writing on that made me "laugh out loud" a bit. I think he goes too far. His criticism, if you ask me, applies far more to other "music" out there: "jazz, ... seems the clearest of all signs of our age's deep-seated predilection for barbarism. The mere fact of its rapid conquest of the world indicates some vast extent of inward ravage, so that there was no real barriers against the disintegration it represents." It repudiates "restraint by intellect, and by expressing contempt and hostility toward our traditional society and mores, has destroyed this equilibrium. That destruction is a triumph of grotesque, even hysterical, emotion over propriety and reasonableness. Jazz often sounds as if in a rage to divest itself of anything that suggests structure or confinement...")
Other shifts expressing decline included the adoption of "progressive" education, the "fragmentation" of society, and what he called "the spoiled child" mentality. They are symptoms that nominalism has won.
The journey back to the right track of logical realism and a healthy culture requires three things, says Weaver:
- A reinforcement of private property, what he called "the last metaphysical right." It is private property that gives man a sense of responsibility, stewardship, and a commitment to something beyond himself. It gives man the ability to practice virtue. The tie between a man and his personal property furthermore brings a sense of honor and in so doing so fights against dishonor and sloth. (See the informative essay "Richard Weaver and the Metaphysics of Property" by Ralph E. Ancil.)
- Language needs to be refocused away from pure sensationalism and back into the "metaphysical community." There needs to be a rediscovery of the power and value of language, both domestic and foreign, in poetry, rhetoric, dialectic, etc.
- And, of course, there needs to be a return to piety. Man must have piety towards other men, nature, and history.
Rhetoric, Dialectic and Visions of Order
Another major book of Richard Weaver's is The Ethics of Rhetoric. (This book I have not read.) As Mr. Smith describes one topic in it, Weaver at that time thought there is a hierarchy in the different sorts of rhetoric (rational and ethical persuasion).
In descendent order they are: argument from definition or principle; argument from analogy; argument from consequence; and argument from circumstance.
Visions of Order is a magnificent book that expands on the themes from Ideas Have Consequences. Weaver examines the nature of culture. That it is hierarchical and exclusive, and that it has both status and function. He speaks about how culture can be corrupted and can then turn society to tyranny. He links total war and "progressive" education with modernity. And so forth.
A major topic is on dialectic and rhetoric.
Dialectic, according to Weaver, has been a major predicament in society because it has been eating away at genuine culture. An example of this is how it has been applied to general semantics. That is, it has been used (being of neutral nature) to try to do away with any kind of pre- emotional and/or judgmental aspect that is a part of words.
But, essentially, dialectic cannot be applied to culture. Smith, in the lecture, gives the example of holding the door for women. We cannot explain that "rationally" or "logically," but it is something definitely worth doing and defending. So the incorrect usage of dialectic can perversely dismantle culture piece-by-piece.
***
Some (Layman) Comments on Conservatism vs. Systematic Thought
Listening to the lecture was informative and worthwhile. At the end, nevertheless, I had one possible problem. Just because Marxist philosophy tried to construct itself systematically does not mean that systematic thought is therefore flawed.
Dialectic and rhetoric do have a balance, one should not take over the other, and rationalism, too, has a limit. To my mind, every society needs a kind of "conservative" temperament and frame of mind, especially as it relates to social and cultural manners. (Which, by the way, is not, as some suggest, a view of believing in a kind of top-down conformity and uniformity. It is based on believing in a principle of variety. Burke's "little platoons" of civil society are an organic down-up thing.) Anything else invites anarchy, chaos, and decline. But I am not at all convinced by is the almost complete conservative temperament, at least from some corners of conservative thinkers, to dismiss reason and systematic thought.
(This is really not directed completely at Richard Weaver, although he will partially fit in. As my notes cover above, he was not against reason and logic. Weaver, as I have covered before at this blog, was even a supporter of Austrian economics and praxeology.)
It reminds me of what Ms. De Coster wrote on Russell Kirk, who was very against "ideology," at LRC.
She quoted Mr. Rockwell in saying that "In Kirk's hands, conservatism became a posture, a demeanor, a mannerism."
But, by rejecting reason, what are we to say about the (ideological!) position that rejects reason? And, without a clear set of consistent and logically thought-out principles, how is statism going to be combated?
How is the position of rejecting reason to be justified a priori? It sounds like it is ideological to me and hence contradictive. To say that conservatism is not an ideology appears to be itself an ideological statement. On the other hand, if you say that this statement is not ideological, then it would be like saying that the statement itself is not true and the whole pure Kirkian view falls apart.
I am reminded of a speech by Dr. David Gordon. He gives the example of the contradictive statement "there exists no fixed laws about anything." Put another way, it is like saying that it is true that truths do not exist. The question that should come to man's mind is this: But is that statement a truth?!
Dr. Hans Hoppe in his works makes the argument that since man can act and because he can argue, there must be presupposed truths about these activities. He even goes as far to say that from these starting points you can construct a complete ethical system.
Now Mr. Smith, in the Weaver lecture, is right that syllogisms can construct a logically consistent system but be fatally flawed. How? Because the starting points of this system might be wrong.
Marxism was wrong because it had wrong starting points and because it was based on not logical deduction but muddled polylogism. And it is something you can attack systematically and logically with the usage of reason. Ludwig von Mises demonstrated that without private property there is no pricing system, and thus socialism will lead to chaos.
Before I end this section let me please note that despite my harsh criticism of this aspect of traditional conservatism (especially directed at Russell Kirk), as I understand it, I have much respect for it (and Kirk). At the same time, there is no substitution for a system of clear thought when it comes to fighting against statism. It requires more, much more, than just a temperament or frame of mind.
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," says 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 writes, 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 turns to William C. Wooldridge and his book Uncle Sam, the Monopoly Man.
For example, a body of private law for merchants 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 persons.
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 elucidates 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 goes 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 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 (as Hans Hoppe says) 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. Those rules would be null and void. In a case like this justice would demand that it be returned to the victim. The same is true with State property, strictly speaking. It is illegitimate because 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 as it relates to the usage and management of public property, which I do believe in, the issue gets a little fuzzy. But this blog entry is not the appropriate place to talk about that. Instead see this.]
Ludwig von Mises, the great classical liberal, said that the essence of liberalism was private property. Everything in old-style liberalism logically followed that principle. The same can be said of libertarianism, and even more so because libertarian political philosophy takes this principle and applies it to its ultimate and logical conclusion as it relates vis-à-vis the State.
Man's house, as they say, is his castle. Private property therefore means, unlike democracy, exclusivity, difference and even hierarchy. No one "puts it up for a vote, " and to the extent that this has happened in modern society it is only a sign of how much the private property ethic has been lost. The owner of his house can also enter into contractual (covenant) agreements with other households to create private law and order in the neighborhood or community. This can allow man to create conservative and moral communities. Violators of the covenant would be kicked out. Those that live under an owner’s house must follow his rules, or leave. The same is true for any guest who wishes to visit, who must first get permission to enter. Otherwise a man who did not get permission first would be trespassing.
Certainly no man has any kind of "right" to trespass into or violate another man's private property. There is accordingly no right to be on someone's private property (on any space of it). 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. That is to say, if they choose to discriminate against red heads, they will then have 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 whatsoever because that would offend the majority of their customers if they let in, for instance, very rude people.)
An invited guest that enters another man's property has to follow the rules. These rules can be anything up to the point of forcing the guest to stay. If the guest does not like the rules at some man's house, he can then leave and go to another place or back to his own place. An owner of his house has no right to force any guest to stay. And any guest has no right to stay at another's property and invade and violate it.
--------------
A Couple of Articles to Read:
"Market Chosen Law" by Stringham
and "Natural Order, the State, and the Immigration Problem" by Hoppe.
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