14 posts tagged “democracy”
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So What Does Democracy Have To Do With Liberty?
Democracy, contrary to left-liberal and neoconservative propaganda, has nothing at all to do with freedom, liberty, the rights of man, or security. Spreading democracy, Wilsonian-style, neither has anything to do with "making the world safe."
Democratic majority opinion of the generally unthinking and mostly feeling masses who parrot the current ethos, obtained from the educational system and the mainstream media, does not make a wrong a right. Voting therefore has nothing to do with liberty or morality. Those things should never be put up for a vote.
Under democracy legislation increasingly replaces the law implied in private property. Law becomes something that is "made" versus something to be discovered. The tradition of common law [pdf], which due to its spontaneous nature was largely libertarian, has consequently evaporated.
Man's perception of law then becomes that it is a something that is artificial; that law and ethics is nothing but relativistic. State legislation might say that one activity or action is legal today but tomorrow it might say that it is illegal. How then can there by anything really right or wrong? The answer is that there cannot be.
From this, culturally speaking, nihilism and moral relativism takes over man's minds and hearts. Economically, legal uncertainty raises time preferences and diminishes capital investment. The importance of status and function lessens. As the number of State made laws develop, the number of State defined crimes increases. A process of decivilization must occur.
Kuehnelt-Leddihn has asked [pdf] the question: Wasn't it democracy that killed Socrates and the Son of God?
It is true that I am not a monarchist, but I'll take a classical and traditional Christian monarchy any day over democracy (or a republic, which really is a democracy just the same). In that monarchy is more inline with private ownership and the incentives thereof it is closer to a purely private property society. It couldn't be any worse than what we have today; in fact, I'll say it would be a lot better.
Imagine an old time dynasty regulating by compulsion where people can and cannot smoke tobacco! In contrast, it is easy to imagine a majority gang-mob dictating that question by the barrel of the gun. It has happened and is happening. Moreover, most in the mob do not even see the freedom crushing methods to their madness.
To quote Mr. Lew Rockwell in his essay "Why Hate Monarchs?":
So many people associate democracy with freedom and monarchy with tyranny that any attempt to revisit pre-democratic systems of government is regarded as evil. ... Sheer nonsense. Freedom was nurtured in Europe under the decentralized monarchies of feudalism, which served as the political basis of decentralized federalism in the US. Unlike our own presidents, who are experts in passing the buck, the monarch tends to take personal responsibility for the fate of his domain. Upending a personal tyranny is much easier because you know whom to blame and whom to overthrow. ... [H]istory suggests we often have less to fear from monarchs than we do from democratically elected tyrants...
And as Dr. Hans Hoppe says, democracy allows "for A and B to band together to rip of C, C and A in turn joining to rip off B, and then B and C conspiring against A, etc."
See: The Paleo Blog's "Are ---We--- the Government?", "Ideas, Consequences, and Libertarianism", "Freedom is the Answer --- Not Just a Return to the Constitution".
The fairly new ISI web journal First Principles features a classic 1997 essay by the late aristocrat Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn on American liberalism.
It is worth reading.
Mr. Horton, of AntiWar.com Radio, talks with Mr. Jim Powell, author of Wilson’s War: How Woodrow Wilson’s Great Blunder Led to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin and World War II, on how
American intervention, not a lack thereof, that created the circumstances which led to the Second World War and the unbroken chain of U.S. intervention overseas from Woodrow Wilson’s breaking of the stalemate of 1917.
Listen Here [MP3].
The Old Right is correct. It is a gross distortion to say that the United States government (empire) has followed a non-interventionist foreign policy up to the point of World War II. What is moreover ironic, when put into the context of neoconservative ideology and policy of today, is that the Wilsonian legacy of spreading democracy, the sacrosanct form of government claimed to be better than an aristocratic republic or monarchical government, is what bred the likes of Hitler. Constant perpetual war and interventionism has gone hand-in-hand.
Of course, demagogues like Sen. McCain will not speak of this. In the last Republican presidential primary "debate," McCain compared Rep. Ron Paul's anti-war stance on the Iraq War to the rise of Hitler. In a nutshell: If you are against the Iraq War, then you are pro-Hitler. This cannot be anything but a joke. Saying that Saddam Hussein was the Hitler of the Middle East can only be described as a fairy tale. He posed no threat and had no desire to pose a threat to the U.S. (See "McCain's Mangled Metaphor" by Justin Raimondo.)
See Also: This entry has a sub-note on how the U.S. was in a kind of "cold war" with Japan. Oh, did I tell you that I dislike democracy? Bad [mp3] enough that we have it here.
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One More Note: It has now become the fashion for neoconservative pundits to talk about the "grand" new achievements due to the surge
in Iraq. Looking deeper, however, reveals that this is a myopic view.
They do not mention that this year has been a bloody year for the
troops. Neither do they mention that the relative calming down in areas
of Iraq is the result of Shi'ites getting rid of the Sunnis out of
places like Baghdad. They wanted "peace," well they are getting ethnic cleansing.
What would make democratic government bring more "freedom"? So if "we" just give them the vote, they will turn into a splitting image of ourselves? Voting will just transform a people? This is an unproven and vapid assumption of neoconservative left-Wilsonism. It is also questionable to assume that democracy is a good in itself. Who says that this is the best form of government? Not the "founding fathers" of the U.S. Constitution. Not I.
You cannot just go swooping in to impose something from the top-down. I am not, exactly, understanding of how such a thing would be conservative. Things happen from the bottom-up. Such happenings, for the conservative (or the "conservative" libertarian anarchist), are the outgrowths of natural or organic institutional developments.
Saddam Hussein was obviously an evil man. He was a politician. But one thing he did do was hold together in place the many different factions. A more pure form of democracy would just increase tensions between those factions, very possibly resulting in a more tyrannical government. Under Hussein's rule there was a respect for the freedom of religion. Christians were able to live there. Today that freedom has withered away. It is no longer possible.
Iraq also had classically liberal gun laws. Think about that. Many cities in this country are hysterically against the freedom to own a gun. The only freedoms these cities support are arming the State with a monopoly of guns. (Hey, all of you left-liberals: Let's give all the guns to Bush! That would be great, huh?)
The streets were relatively safer. . . . Today chaos and violence, a great breeding ground for terrorism. Is that so arduous for neoconservatives to understand? What has been created is a caldron.
Far from turning into a paradise to end terrorism, like the neoconservatives spoke of, this war has created a setting that is nourishing the development of terrorism. The Bush administration and its top supporters in power have always had it as a higher priority to build-up, maintain, and increase U.S. Empire hegemony opposed to a policy to go after Osama bin Laden. (Or is that "Osama bin Forgotten"?) So there we have it. The government went into Iraq. And now it desires going into Iran. Almost the same kind of rhetoric and the sequence of how it is being spread, that was used during the lead-up to Iraq, is being used to justify an attack against Iran. It is deja vu.
It appears that the supposed war on terror is another distractive crusade akin to the Cold War. But of course government loves it. Its military-industrial-complex loves it. It might diminish our freedom today and our economic prosperity for tomorrow, but it benefits them. That is all they care about.
However, empire is never and was never sustainable. The dollar has been in free-fall, and the chickens will sometime or another come home to roost. A dollar backed by nothing is really a dollar that is nothing. The State loves to fight against reality, but reality catches up in the long-run. Who knows when, but it will.
Before there was the fear that communism was going to take over the world. That the Soviet Union actually posed a direct threat against us. Nonsense. The former Soviet Union was an economic basket-case. It could never be anything but an economic basket-case. Many conservatives pride themselves as economically literate, but if they saw the Cold War as anything but a scam then maybe they do not champion or understand markets and liberty as much as they think. In addition, the former Soviet Union could not have lasted as long as they did if the United States did not bail out or subsidize it. And, by the way, there was also a time when the U.S. considered it a "friend."
Looking at Vietnam, for example, one sees a trading partner. One sees a country embracing more capitalist ideas. So much for the domino theory. East Asia in the next fifty years may just be the leading spot in the world because they are radically departing from us. They are embracing free markets and individualism. Now where this might lead is another question. If statism gets a hold, I then can easily make a prediction of what will happen. But, until then, the point is that they are starting to embrace what we held the flag high for----at least in terms of an idea or ideal.
It is difficult to say if Russell Kirk was for or against the Cold War. Maybe as I read more of him I'll find out. Or at least get a hint. The late Kirk did reject the first Gulf War. He spoke of the irrationality of the Middle East and the blowback the U.S. government is causing. But Robert Nisbet, I do know, was very skeptical of the Cold War. You probably could go as far as to say he was basically against it. He saw through the smoking mirrors. (Read The Present Age by Nisbet, which is hard to recommend more highly.) Though both men would have seen through the smoking mirrors of today.
Saying No to Democracy.
Yes, it is certainly accurate to say that I am not a fan of voting, the voting process or democracy. As I have typed here, returning to a comparatively more free society would mean returning to a republic or a more aristocratic government (if we must be content with a government at all, or be confined to a non-monarchial government form). Access to voting should go back to being much more restrictive and discriminatory, more so. For example, no welfare bums or government workers should be allowed to vote. Only land property owners should be given access and newly arriving ('legal' and 'illegal') immigrants should be blocked from access.
And, while we are talking about striking down democracy, ballot propositions (see my Paleo Blog entry on this here), which do more to increase government than to decrease it, should be ended too. The democratization that occurred with mass popular elections of senators, for another example, should also be ended. Simply put, the de-powering of democracy. It is better if the United States be a Republic once again and not a Democracy.
Voting ---- Lesser of Two Evils? Which is the "Lesser"?
“Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.”
While I am not fan of the democratic or voting process, if I do get the opportunity to vote for Ron Paul in the Republican primary, I have decided that I will.
Now I think I was probably mistaken on being so critical or harsh to those that do vote, as I have in the past. In The Ethics of Liberty, Murray Rothbard quotes Lysander Spooner on why a man voting for candidate X does not therefore mean that the voting man gives X a complete pass or acceptance on everything he does. And, as the great Walter Block has written at LRC: "If a slave master allows his property to vote between a harsh and a more humane overseer, we are to blame to slaves for choosing the latter? This is a perversion of libertarianism."
The issue I want to address here, for those that do vote, is how some people believe that they can only vote for someone who "has a chance of winning." This leads some people to reject such candidates as the principled and independent old fashioned conservative or minarchist libertarian Ron Paul. Why do that? Now, if your goal is to vote for someone who "has a chance," why not just vote for the candidate who you believe will win the election, despite, or leaving aside, his positions or views on the political issues of the day? It appears as if one who votes according to "who has a chance" might as well do this.
Besides, when the choice "of having a chance to win" is between, at the end, between Republocrat A and Republocrat B it is difficult, if you vote between them, to figure out who is the "lesser of evil." It as if one is going to risk a lot of money at a casino. Who is the lesser evil? It is hard to tell.
As talked about before, in the 2000 presidential election with George Bush and Al Gore it would be understandable how someone could have said that Bush would be the "lesser of evil." Today it is difficult to say that. Bush's rhetoric was in promotion of a more non-interventionist foreign policy (unlike Gore, who belonged to an administration which behaved exactly the opposite) and whose rhetoric was more limited government (again, unlike Gore). Half-way decent rhetoric in 2000 turned into political policies that were the polar opposite under this nightmare administration.
In retrospect, Gore would probably have been relatively better, be it only by a small margin. All modern Republican presidents have grown government faster and more than Democrat presidents. As for war, the political parties take turns on this one, it appears. There is all the reason in the world, plus more, to suspect that if Gore were president there still would have been a war in Iraq. Would it be more limited or would it end sooner, though, is anyone's guess.
If you think the Democrats are so different on the Iraq War issue, you are kidding yourself. They now have the majority, and what to do they? Expand it. They are nothing but power-hungry unprincipled politicians. They are also sitting in the sidelines twiddling their fingers when Bush and the neocon echo chamber is pushing a war with Iran.
(By the way, maybe people should think twice before being spoon-fed the neoconservative lines for the reason "we" "must" attack Iran. They do not have the best record when it comes to these matters.)
Neoconservatives claim that the Democrat Party gained the majority due to Bush's growth of government. No, the reason related to war issues. As people voted in the Democrats, who appeared the "lesser evils," nothing has changed or is changing in regards to Iraq and little pressure is being applied to the Bush administration in the possibility of war with Iran.
In this case, the possibility of war with Iran might be slightly less with more Republicans in office. This is because they would be more seen as the cause for the war and this would make them more conservative in deciding the proper course of action.
So the "lesser evil" is a lottery game. It is a waste. The Republican and Democrat parties are just part of the Washington Party. Voting between is just a vote for the Washington Party. If you must vote, vote for the politician that is the most independent and principled. This may require voting third party in all elections, but so be it. Maybe by doing that, it might lead to some good impact. To win people over to Liberty is to engage in the war of ideas. Good libertarianism, property understood, is the anti-politics philosophy. As a late libertarian said, it seeks the death of politics. The political process might not be the first choice of many libertarians (me included), but Ron Paul has opened up a lot of individuals to the philosophy of liberty. It has made a lot of people excited about these ideas.
Rush Limbaugh-style "Left" versus "Right" is Nonsense
And this "lesser of evil" is a complete distraction from the left-neocon establishment.
Democracy and the voting process pushes into this stupid debate. Turn on Rush Limbaugh to constantly hear about it. Read a neoconservative blog. Or turn on Air America Radio. Or read a left-liberal blog, who also keeps on the message of "Democrat, basically good. Republican, basically always, bad." To these people that is what politics is all about. It is about partisanship and drinking the "kool-aid." Who can stand that stuff? Why do so many people? These people are cartoon characters of one another, sorry to say. Not only do they make usually false statements about the supposed "other side," but they themselves typically have no guiding principles.
This is one of the things I very much dislike. The establishment tries to pin everyone down into this erroneous "left" versus "right" debate. As if the establishment of what they define as the "left" (i.e., Democrats) and the "right" (i.e., Republicans) are actually fundamentally different! A scam this is. A point that Paul Gottfried has been making is that you will virtually never see (with a few rare exceptions) a paleoconservative or a paleolibertarian in the media. Left-liberals are completely happy to engage with neoconservatives, because they are not much different in their views (as they wish and daydream).
To illustrate politics today, Mr. Charles Goyette and his son wrote a great article during the 2004 presidential election. Here is an except:
"Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Election"
"Did so!" "Did not!" "You're a liar!" "You're one, too!"
The presidential contest sounds so much like your kids in the backseat on a long road trip, that you almost expect them to break out in chants of "I'm rubber and you’re glue!"
It is in this atmosphere of elevated public debate that my 11-year-old son Steven and I decided a convincing case could be made that this is the Winnie the Pooh election. While this may be the Fifty State Nation, not the Hundred Acre Wood, we believe the comparison is otherwise uncanny.
That is politics. And that is the debate of politics. Turn on talk radio, read the neocon-liberal blogs, et cetera.
[I have a habit for going a bit on a tangent, but sometimes for the good. In this free-riding entry I go over a few of the lessons that really should have been seen as it relates to 9/11/01 and where we are today. I also explain the logic behind the rise of fascism, from the frame of reference of the State, and how that applies to today's department of homeland "security." I also briefly talk about the democratization of war. I am sure there are several articles and blog entires online on 9/11, my focus might be somewhat more unique in the areas I chose to focus and zero-in on.]
“It is in war 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.'”
--- Murray N. Rothbard; War, Peace, and the State
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Six years later, where are we today?
For one thing, it does not feel that it has been that long. The government and its ever-willing media make the tragic affair feel like it was merely two or perhaps three years ago. They exploit the event as much as possible for their gain, to further encroach on the liberties of the American people, and not to mention to further encroach on the liberties of other peoples of the world. Sept 11 was nothing more, for the government, than a pretext to thrust the agenda of neoconservative global hegemony, the expansion of the warfare-welfare state, and the domestic police state.
Robert Higgs is the author of Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government. War really is the Health of the State, as Randolph Bourne said in an uncompleted essay. History has never failed to show otherwise, as people like Dr. Higgs have shown.. It is in times of crisis and war that State power explodes. Since democratic government is all about rallying people to its causes under the illusion that “‘we’ the people” are the government, the State will do its best to meliorate its hold of power in times when people are most likely to rally together.
Many of men often talk about a so-termed “New World Order” or a “World Government,” but I exhort to those individuals that this is not entirely accurate. The powers that be see they, themselves, as the global controllers of the United States (Empire). They see themselves as the power holders. It is not as if they want to hand over power to the United Nations, unless they themselves control it. Ditto goes for the idea of a “North American Union.” Even if it be they in charge, this should not diminish any of our views of what that would mean and entail, to those truly concerned about freedom. Clearly this is of a most dangerous scenario, because it is a growth function of democratic government to mass centralize in this fashion----to centralize in a way that no classical monarchy could ever.
This is not just some cooked up rhetoric about neoconservatism and those that subscribe to this ideological creed, though. Mr. James Bovard makes the point in his excellent latest book, Attention Deficit Democracy, that the parallels of speech and written word to dictators like Benito Mussolini and neoconservative Bill Kristol, who the late Sam Francis called the “neoconservative sex god,” is very clear and vivid. There need be no dramatic hyperbole. Kristol, for example, in 1996 spoke of how the U.S. should exploit its "military supremacy and moral confidence" to achieve "benevolent global hegemony." (What is "benevolent" about that, I am unsure.) Or take William Buckley, who has called for (his very words) "a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores" to fight the Soviet Union-------only this attitude or view did not end after the Cold War.. Today, like it or not, this is what conservatism means in the modern world.
Security and Transportation
Government’s supposed job, which people say needs a monopoly over a geographical territory (but, interestingly and paradoxically, it is suggested by nearly everyone that there not need be a monopoly over the entire world, contra their logic that would suggest that), is of “protection.” Of course, government failed miserably on 9-11. It monopolized security in regards to airports and airliners. Its control gutted airliners to look after their own interests. Interests of which they have a direct and immediate concern about, unlike government which only has an indirect and secondary (at best!) concern about. They were not allowed to do the things they would have otherwise been allowed to do. Government’s banning of the airliners possessing a gun for protection is a clear example. There is a direct concern for private enterprise to protect their paying customers and to continue to do that for new potential customers. They have to respond to the free market and guard against the possibility of losses; chief among them would be the possibility of hijacking. Instead, government took this transportation industry off the gird of the market, so to speak. Failure was not punished, as in what happens to a free market enterprise that fails, but instead the State was rewarded with more power and control. Imagine, from this, the incentive system that the State has! It is of no accident that so-called government provided “services” are the areas of life that are the worst.
One of the lessons that should have been figured out with the events of Sept 11th, 2001 is that government provided “security” is not security at all! What should have been demanded is that the government get out of the business altogether. All that has been “gained” with government getting even more involved in security is airport authoritarianism.
This does not only go for the governmental operations in the area of transportation and the security thereof. The State’s myopia fills all of the diverse departments that are supposed to “protect” us. All of them did not accomplish the task and made us all the more vulnerable. Instead of being deprived of funding, they were only expanded. Even new departments were created to add to the mess after 9/11. Departments, that for all obviousness, are nothing but pork. Today’s so-called conservatives, one thought, are supposed to condemn such government projects. The matter is entirely different, of course, and they gladly cheer on the most extravagant (in ugliness) of government programs.
Homeland “Security”
As Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo writes in “The Fatherland Protection Racket,” the pork projects that fill the department of Homeland “Security” are so visibly pork that one wonders why there is hardly the outrage against this department that there ought to be. Believing that this department “protects” us is delusional. (More on this later.)
The Rise and Reason of Fascism
Individuals qua government officials who seek power via political contra economic means, motivated by the same basic interests and desires as all other men, while at the same time under the identical economic laws and limitations, understand that the best way to facilitate government power is not through socialism. Socialism’s bankruptcy only produces bankrupt states. The former Soviet Union, while internally aggressive and oppressive to the people under it, had only consequently weak hosts to live parasitically on. This explains why, relatively speaking, the former Soviet Union was never as imperialistic or aggressive, outside of “its” territory, as the United States, which is (relatively) internally less aggressive or classically liberal. Such states, as the U.S., will therefore tend to turn into empires. The record only bears this out for today’s empire (the U.S.) and ones past.
Thus, with the above acknowledged, such political individuals will try to “harness” the abundance of wealth that is created under the “engine” of society, i.e. of capitalism. This will generally turn capitalism, under statist conditions, into fascism (i.e., anti-capitalism). In such a case, the alliance between big government and big business is amplified and enlarged. Mythical attacks in which left-liberals have against capitalism for being nothing more than fascism is utterly nonsense then, because there is a clear and definitive difference between the political versus the economic means for an individual to obtain wealth: one of taking (stealing and coercion, i.e. political) or mobbing out competition (closing the door for competition via coercive regulations, i.e. political) and the other of producing wealth (production and voluntarism, i.e. economic). Fascism is the only natural course for Leviathan Statism. One has to actually abolish the idea of coercive and monopolistic “protection” and socialist (state provided) “law and order” to get rid of the natural flow of statism and accordingly its flow to the rise of fascism.
(People will take the easier or shortest route, after all. The man that is offered $X dollars by the government will take it. The man that is offered to regulate his competitor out of business will have the urge and strong desire to take it. There is no polylogism or polyeconomic analysis for men directly working in government, either. No wishful thinking by even non-Austrian analysis can change that.)
This explains the reason of the existence of such departments as Homeland “Security” and why they are heavily protected against those who call for it to be destroyed. It also applies as well to the entire military-industrial complex.
Homeland “Security” Continued
What has the “Fatherland Protection Racket” brought? Far from protection, it is another racket of fascism. To quote DiLorenzo:
As for the pork, a few examples will give you the flavor of how out-of-control it has become:
* Boeing was given a five-year, $1.37 billion contract to equip U.S. airports with "bomb screening devices" that experts say are "laughingly ineffective."
* Northrop Grumman "landed a $350 million contract to construct a DHS data network.
* "First-responder training facilities are springing up like toadstools after a rainstorm. The Nevada Test Site . . . which trains 3,000 fire fighters, paramedics, and policemen annually, is slated to quintuple that number as the DHS money rolls in."
* The new Hampshire town of Bennington, population 1, 272, spent part of its Homeland Security grant to buy chemical weapons suits – just in case bin Laden chose Bennington as his next maximum impact target.
* Local police departments in New Hampshire will get access to "satellite television channels that transmit continuous news," courtesy of a DHS grant.
* Colchester, Vermont, population 18,000, received a DHS grant to purchase a "search-and-rescue vehicle" that "can bore through concrete and search for victims in collapsed buildings."
* Thanks to the influence of Dick Cheney, "Wyoming receives more money per capita than any other state in homeland security grants."
* And naturally, "a non-state – the District of Columbia – is far and away the biggest recipient of homeland security grants per capita," receiving more than twice as much as Dick Cheney’s home state.
* Citgo, Conoco-Phillips, and Shell received tens of millions of dollars in DHS grants for "refiner security," something they are very well equipped to finance themselves.
* The former mayor of Washington, D.C., Sharon Pratt, received a no-bid "bioterrorism consulting contract" for $236,000.
* Forty "young people" in Washington, D.C. were paid by a DHS grant to "rap and dance about emergency preparedness."
This is the reality of such wasteful programs----programs that have nothing to do with “protecting” us. From one perspective, this can be viewed as a slap in the face to the families that suffered because of the event of 9/11. They were obviously looking to the government (even if it be misguided) for the role of actually cleaning house and setting up a system of real protection. Instead, what they got was this neo-con abomination.
(See Also: “The Security-Industrial-Congressional Complex (SICC)” by Robert Higgs)
Such government programs can never do the job of protection. The torpor of such programs can only be worse with their expansion or the implementation of additional departments (programs). Providing security, like all other goods and services, is under the reality of scarcity. The direction or allocation of any good or service can never be directed or allocated under statist conditions because there is no rational way to do so. There are no prices; no profit--loss; and so forth. Resources require as a requisite markets and by definition they are absent under statist conditions. Hence, production will always by necessity be irrational; up to the whims of government officials. There will always be “too much” or “too little” of production, with a constant state of flux between the two, and shades of the two in regards to the various tasks that these programs are supposedly designed for. Nor is there competition. The production of security, then, will be one of ever decreasing service and production, while at the same time increased costs. Instead of a Soviet Union-like government program for the allocation of food, which resulted in chaotic conditions; there will be, mutatis mutandis, these conditions for protection and security.
Osama bin Laden and Terrorism
Six years of the government supposedly going after Osama bin Laden and catching him “dead or alive,” has proven fruitless. Allegedly he was the mastermind of the event, but instead of the government putting its resources in trying to capture him; government officials have diverted their limited resources to even more reckless actions of interventionism, and have incited more levels of hate and anger against the U.S. Resources were diverted into Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11, and has only contributed to the problems, and possibility of another attack. It has made the region more unstable, and, unlike the propaganda from the neoconservatives, the ground is not being “transformed” into peace and light void of terrorism (so far from!), but, instead, is being filled with the squalid atmosphere much friendly for terrorism and its growth.
Government politicians, officials, and the neoconservatives working in their various “think”-tanks are once again setting the stage, before our very own eyes, for another aggressive, interventionist, and nation-“building” war in the Middle East. Although, it is hard for me to personally put down odds on such an event, others with far more knowledge than I, like Pat Buchanan, believe that the odds are sadly quite high. (Read “Phase III of Bush's War.“) Thus, far from learning from experience and history, the setting of the stage for another potential war, this time with Iran, is in the works! It is true when they say that the only thing we learn from history, is that we do not learn from it. To call this administration and President Bush mad is to put it mildly.
Terrorist organizations are stronger than before because of all of this. Indeed, as Mr. Scott Horton writes at AntiWar.com, the concept of the mass of people (a complete democratic construct of reasoning, especially in wartime) in the Middle East hating our (decreasing) freedoms is nonsensical. The increase of hatred of larger bulks of people is tied with our interventionism. They set their aims for the United States and not Switzerland or Sweden. The very first conflicts were directly involving U.S. presence; not attacks on the shores of the United States. Indeed, writes Horton, “Ayatollah Khomeini spent the 1980's railing against American culture and the entire region yawned. Osama bin Laden, on the other hand, kept his pitch straight and to the point – and it worked.” [Emphasis mine.] Bin Laden's focus has been on occupation. For example, his 1996 “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places...”
The focus was, as Horton writes in his important article, on {1} bases in Saudi Arabia; {2} support for Israel (a bizarre neoconservative love affair, clinging to the love of the totalitarian form of government known as democracy); {3} no-fly zone bombings and trade sanctions, killing hundreds of thousands of people (the monster Janet Reno said it was “worth it” on TV); {4} direct support to the various dictators in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, etc.; {5} control and manipulation of the prices of oil; and {6} giving support to Russia, China and India in their wars against Muslims.
And as Mr. Horton says, “by studying every single individual suicide bomber on Earth between 1980 and 2004 – the one characteristic that all suicide bombers have in common is the presence of foreign combat forces in their country – not Islam.”
U.S. Imperialism
State wars are unjust and immoral. And will always be that. The State, despite all of the rhetoric to hide the real nature of this institution, is nothing but a “bandit gang writ large.” And as Russell Kirk wrote, "there is no tyranny more onerous than military life."
It requires quite a large leap to see how so many “anti”-abortion folks (I myself am no fan of abortion, as you could guess) are so pro-war, who give the State a complete and utter pass in literally butchering so many innocent civilians, including children and women, caught in the bombardment. How any mind, any sense of decency could do that is thankfully, thank God, beyond me. I agree with Mr. Jeffrey Tucker, “I have nothing in common with these people [the mainstream conservative of today]!” (See also “The Violence of Conservatism.”) Maybe there is something in the Republican kool-aid?
In the claimed mission to bring justice after 9/11, a majority of the U.S. government’s killings have been against innocent bystanders (“collateral damage”). In today’s “progressed” age of the democratization of war, has come the melting pot of togetherness in favor above and over the “dark ages” of making a distinction in war between combatants and noncombatants. Surely the numbers of murdered civilians by the U.S. government surpass the number of al-Qaeda. The majority of its killings have not be directed against those involved with the planning and implementation of 9/11. (And torture, is, well, A-OK too. And its use is far from being a few tinny incidents. Nor is Bush administration unconnected with its implementation.)
Of course, mentioning this in our democratic age of nationalism and left-neocon state worship is completely taboo and absolutely forbidden. Thanks go to the embodiment and exemplifier of this transition in the leftist and egalitarian French Revolution, what traditional conservative monarchist Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) called a “sadistic sex orgy.” This transformation of war brought us such war crimes as the dropping of atomic weapons in World War II, where today, wrote Richard Weaver, "the word 'noncombatant' [has] almost [reduced] to meaninglessness."
Democracy and a Wilsonian foreign policy go hand-in-hand. It is the ideological cousin of democracy. So ignorant are today's conservatives, who cheer on any and all wars, of their own foundation of thought, that Russell Kirk's words on Wilsonianism is lost:
The political wisdom of the Federalists and Burke was diluted, in Wilson, by a dose of doctrinaire liberalism. In the hour of criss liberal abstraction prevailed over conservative prudence.
According to Kirk, one of the main principles of conservatism is prudence. It is obviously lost today.
Civil Liberties & Power
This would take an entire new entry to go through everything here, but I find it humorous how the conservative of today claim to be for economic liberty, but see civil liberties as fundamentally different. Government that invades us economically is bad, but government that invades us in our privacy is somehow not bad or relatively not as bad. As if they be two separate issues or birds, detached from property rights! (Talk about polylogism!)
Restriction of power or "limited" government is a foreign idea to President Bush and neoconservatives. If it be Bush using “sticky notes” a.k.a. signing statements, to rewrite a law to whatever suits his command and fancy, or the power to declare martial law. Or we could be talking about warrantless wiretapping for our “protection.” Habeas corpus, a constitutional right? Well, not according to the Bush administration. . . . . Who will protect us from these so-called "protectors!?" (So-called "protectors" who will even take the guns away from people, and practically put into place a police state, during a crisis, à la New Orleans.) Suffice to say, the record of abuses is long. All I can recommend is for people to buy a couple of books by James Bovard, who does such good work in this department.
Is There More to the Story?
I personally do not believe 9/11 was a complete “inside job” by the government. I have not seen evidence to convince me of that. However, interesting anomalies and questions have arisen. They should be looked into. Debate is healthy and it should be encouraged and not censored. Also, all of the records that government has should be released on the matter. When government creates a black void, that void will be filled with conspiracy theories----some maybe correct or partially correct or completely false.
I certainly, however, do not say that we should support the official story that government has spoon-fed us. Instead of white-wash commissions and other sorry excuses, government should be demanded to open up the books, at the very least.
Is there more to the story? Yes, there is a very good chance that there is more to the story. My guess it is more in the “middle ground.” Only one who is badly informed (kiddy cons) about government and history would think that there could not be more to the story. See Robert Higgs' "Another 9/11 – in a Long Series."
[Word War II is case-in-point. President Franklin Roosevelt promised (in the politician’s dictionary it has a different meaning) the American people that he would be "neutral" and stay out of the war, but behind the scenes did everything he could to get into it. Moreover, the U.S. and Britain government decoded their marine code (JN-25), monitoring the coming Pearl Harbor attack. While fascist FDR promised not to get involved and respect the put-into place Neutrality acts, he was engaged in a kind of "cold war" with Japan. {Supporting China, by selling them military equipment (so much for neutrality); increasing naval military outfits; renouncing U.S.-Japan Commercial Treaty of 1911; implementing an embargo and freezing assets (in particular oil, something much needed----a very provocative act asking for trouble); allowing U.S. pilots in the China air force; etc. The U.S. crippled Japan. Either they would have to give up, talk with the U.S. (an impossibility with FDR not allowing talks), or attack.}]
[In this sense, WWII was not much different compared to WWI. Wilson, too, did everything he could do to get involved. Of course, the ideological war of spreading democracy, maybe something we should take note of today, back-fired completely. Hitler could never have arisen if it not for Wilson.]
See FDR, Pearl Harbor and the U.N. by John V. Denson
2001 . . . 2007
Six years later, we are ever more vulnerable, helpless, and defenseless. Anyone, if they wanted, could just walk through the artificially created open borders. Airport security is not only a shamble, but a laughing stock. Terrorists, six years later, are ever larger in number, have increased support from the Middle East public, and are ever more capable in engaging in terrorist acts (indeed numbers have skyrocketed in the Middle East). Killing and bloodshed is also, obviously, higher than ever. The U.S. government continues on its expansion of imperialistic actions. Needless to say, or at least it should be needless to say today, it has just been an utter disgrace. This is not even to mention the atrophy of liberties at home.
I agree with what former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter says, it is not so much that the American people are waking up, but that we are not winning. The American people, far from tired of empire, only are against it if it appears to be failing. How much government intrusions into our lives, families, churches, and communities will the American people stand? And how much innocent bloodshed will the American people stand? With presidents from Wilson to FDR to Bush, I think we know the answer. To quote the great Joseph Sobran: "Democracy has proved only that the best way to gain power over people is to assure the people that they are ruling themselves. Once they believe that, they make wonderfully submissive slaves."
***
Being
generally on the pessimistic side when it comes to political matters
(one must remember that there is more to life than politics), there
still may be some hope that things may change. The cycle of relatively
great freedom to tyranny is cyclical. States rise and fall.
Civilizations rise and fall. My personal feeling is that the only
possibility of the U.S. empire ending is in bankruptcy, joining the
rest of the bankrupt empires of past in history. And then the cycle
starts again. However, one thing to note is that during a major
economic crisis (even catastrophic ones) an even more despotic
government can emerge, as the ignorant and power-seeking erroneously
fault the free market for the dilemma. But, then again, capitalism
might win out. The more complex and diversified the market becomes, the
more it requires social peace free of coercion. (But will the State
allow capitalism to get that far? Capitalism is no longer capitalism
today.) Well, history will judge. I hope Ron Paul is a sign.
Prior to the bloodbath of Statism that we have today, the prerequisite for the shift from an ideology of individual liberty to statism required a change in the ideology of the majority of people. Contra some paleo beliefs in the supposed goodness of “populism,” which I relatively find more wickedness than goodness, shifts in ideology arise out of elites and intellectuals. Society is hierarchical (more or less), even in a stateless society. The great mass of people chase inline the ideological trends of the establishment. They parrot what the leaders (elites, intellectuals, and/or government officials) say. It is a rare man who truly thinks of something genuinely new and/or revolutionary. Even those that “lead” typically just gather their thoughts from an assortment of other elitist men.
Man is born unequal to each other. Man grows and develops unequal vis-à-vis each other. Some men will accomplish much and some little in their lives. Out of these men what will arrive are natural elites and intellectuals, but they are the rare breed. Equality is a myth and is antagonistic towards human nature. It is these natural elites and intellectuals that play a primary role in mending minds. Those “higher on top,” so to speak, can help ideological changes. Transformations in ideological compositions require that the new ideology be institutionalized.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe explains in his essay “Natural Elites, Intellectuals, and the State” that exogenous origins of governments is faulty. Instead Bertrand de Jouvenel presents that governments came about, says Hoppe, through “the monopolization of the function of judge and peacemaker” from naturally arriving noble families. Private property is hierarchical. Family is patriarchal. It is understandable how natural elites could form into monarchies, if they, as they could, institutionalize the idea that it would be better for them, the people, to only come to one noble family for protection and resolution of deputies. This natural elite would shun out all the others with the support of the majority of the people. This began the march towards statism.
It can sheds light on how to move back to individualism and freedom. To quote Hans Hoppe:
The mass of people, as La Boetie and Mises recognized, always and everywhere consists of "brutes," "dullards," and "fools," easily deluded and sunk into habitual submission. Thus today, inundated from early childhood with government propaganda in public schools and educational institutions by legions of publicly certified intellectuals, most people mindlessly accept and repeat nonsense such as that democracy is self-rule and government is of, by, and for the people. Even if they can see through this deception, most still unquestioningly accept democratic government on account of the fact that it provides them with a multitude of goods and benefits. Such "fools," observed La Boetie, do not realize that they are "merely recovering a portion of their own property, and that their ruler could not have given them what they were receiving without having first taken it from them." Thus, every social revolution will necessarily have to begin with just a few uncommon men: the natural elite. [Democracy - The God That Failed, p 92]
Hoppe recommends that one withdraw oneself, as much as possible, from any connection to or support of government. Libertarian intellectual elites (or elites in the business world) must pursue not only uncompromising intellectual radicalism but also must live morally outstanding lives. This institutionalization of libertarian ideas must get to the public. He suggests that it must be radical and simple for the message to get out:
In fact, there must never be even the slightest wavering in one's commitment to uncompromising ideological radicalism ("extremism"). Not only anything less be counterproductive, but more importantly, only radical----indeed, radically simple----ideas can possibly stir the emotions of the dull and indolent masses. And nothing is more effective in persuading the masses to cease cooperating with government than the constant and relentless exposure, desanctification, and ridicule of government and its representatives as moral and economic frauds and impostors: as emperors without clothes subject to contempt and the butt of all jokes. [p 94]
Classical Liberalism
Leaving aside the question of how classical liberalism was born, it was institutionalized. In the North America it was institutionalized in the Declaration of Independence, but also in the culture: writings, plays, music, etc. This ethic is sometimes called the “Protestant Ethic.” So too was statism institutionalized for it to come into being.
But, firstly, how did classical liberalism decline?
“Mr. Libertarian,” the great Murray N. Rothbard, has addressed this topic in-depth. The answer is that it lost its radicalism. It started to seek power in the Leviathan State. Liberalism became pragmatic and hence utilitarian. It lost its natural rights tradition.
Losing its radicalism made it permissible for socialism to take over as the new ideal of hope---the new radical ideology. Liberalism then started to associate itself with conservatism and defending the status quo. The switching of the ideological terms “conservative” and “liberal” occurred. The aims of classical liberalism were morphed into the aims of the new statist liberalism, where collectivism would “free” the man. "[I]t tries to achieve liberal ends by the use of conservative means," wroth Rothbard.
The "basic reason," wrote Rothbard, for the decline of liberalism
was an inner rot within the vitals of liberalism itself. For, with the partial success of the Liberal Revolution in the West, the Liberals increasingly abandoned their radical fervor and, therefore, their liberal goals, to rest content with a mere defense of the uninspiring and defective status quo. Two philosophical roots of this decay may be discerned. First is the abandonment of natural rights and "higher law" theory for utilitarianism, for only forms of natural or higher law theory can provide a radical base outside the existing system from which to challenge the status quo; and only such theory furnishes a sense of necessary immediacy to the libertarian struggle by focusing on the necessity of brining existing criminal rulers to the bar of justice. Utilitarians, on he other hand, in abandoning justice for expediency, also abandon immediacy for quiet stagnation and inevitably end up as objective apologists for the existing order. [Egalitarianism As A Revolt Against Nature, pp 25-6]
The second reason, said Rothbard, was Social Darwinist Theory. It saw the future as always progressing forward. For this reason liberal ideas would manifest themselves through time by default. Consequently it established a Whig Theory of history as truth in intellectual and ideological development as always evolving, in the long run, towards progress. Of course, using history as a guide, anything but progress has occurred in the struggle between chaining and unchaining man.
Errors of Classical Liberalism
Perhaps even more fundamentally and deadly to classical liberalism were some of the thoughts it held were erroneous and for that very reason doomed to failure. The only exception, that I am aware, of a classical liberal being a libertarian was Gustave de Molinari (1819-1911). Beyond him, the acceptance of a State to provide law and order was universally accepted without question.
However, as people like Rothbard and Hoppe have shown, a coercive monopolist providing law and order will distort law and order continually in favor of itself. Monopolists will cause the price of their services and/or products to rise and the production and quality to fall. The allocation of government’s protective functions will be uncoordinated and distorted because they do not have to respond to the real demands that people have (i.e., the market price signals that exist). The very idea of a State to be a protective institution is in error. It exists contradictory to protecting the lives, properties, and pursuit of happiness of individuals. Governments do not exist as an institution of defensive protection but of exploitation and aggression. In order to “protect” someone, it must first act in violation of its goal of protecting people from aggression!
And, as Hoppe has written extensively about, democracy was accepted as an improvement over classical monarchy. This is yet another error. Instead of the entry to government to be of a selected noble family, it was opened up for competition. Competition in the production of governmental functions is to improve those very functions of exploration and aggression. Mass democracy stirs up openly competing groups to acquire its power to rule over others. Secondly, democracy is akin to a publicly owned government. Its aggressive actions will be less calculating than a privately owned government. It will take the short-term look versus the long-term look. A monarchy is not a temporary ruler. Instead it wants to preserve the family rule for the future. That is to say, a monarchy owns the government in a private way. It not only owns the present use, but also the future. This gives a monarchy, unlike a democratic government, the incentive to be more conservative. Thus, under democracy, its control of individuals will invariably explode irrationally. The market place will be severely distorted and will throw man into a habitual political animal.
Social Environmentalism and Egalitarianism
Government has an interest in institutionalizing its existent and its expansion. Shocking this should not be. No further explanation is required here. Democracy compounds this process. The ideology of egalitarianism is party to blame. But, as paleoconservative Sam Francis suggested, it is not so much that egalitarians themselves subscribe to its philosophy, but use it to lure the dull masses.
One of the leftist creeds that I have not really written about on The Paleo Blog is the creed of environmentalism. No, not the communist anti-human Mother Nature worshipers, but an ethic that denies individualism.
It says that all the individual is is but a product of his environment and no free will or individuality exists. This thought gives rise to the inspiration of social engineering. It says that all problems one individual may have, is not his doing but that of society. (How much better is it for one to blame others for one’s problems then to blame oneself!? Democracy is a great way for those to express this infantile emotion.) Frank Chodorov called this the “Freudian Ethic.” This ethic denies any inborn traits. We are all “equal.” And any inequality or differences is consequently due to society and its environment. It is this environment that, the statists claim, can be molded by calculation to bring about “equality.”
"[T]he whole trust of environmentalism is toward relativism, the denial of moral absolutes, and behaviorism," wrote Francis. This is particularly pronounced in the court system. Lawyers use to to try to excuse, for example, murders to be just the product of their environment. And hence claim that punishment would be cruel. But, as Francis, so correctly stated: "it does not seem to have occurred to him [the given lawyer] that their executioners could equally claim to be merely their victims of their own environments."
Egalitarianism played a central role in the Progressivist ideological challenge, and the main form it assumed in the early twentieth century was that of "environmentalism"----not in the contemporary sense of concern for ecology but in the sense that human beings are perceived as the products of their social and historical environment rather than of their souls, or their innate mental and physical natures. Egalitarianism was implicit in environmentalist ideology. If the natural or inborn traits of human beings according to class, race, sexuality, nationality, culture, etc. is rooted in social environments rather than nature, then human beings are conceptually reduced to a set of identical reflexes and may be said to be "equal." [Shots Fired, p 209]
It has been taken to justify statist interventionism at all times and places. And from the welfare state has created a class of people that are dependent, who have lost all independence in reason and action, and have moved man to become increasingly political than productive. It has turned him into an inferior person intellectually and morally. As the welfare sate rewards failure and unproduction, it punishes success and production. Proliferation of the former role will increase.
By politics and maybe this form of environment ideology, says Chodorov, we now see handouts as due:
Society----that indefinite something that is more than the sum of its parts, and has an existence quite apart from that of the individuals, who compose it----owns us all a living. . . . If a man is provided with all the comforts of life, with little or no effort on his part, his psyche will demand more of these comforts----free gratis, and he will lose that independence of spirit that only through the exercise of will in overcoming obstacles to the satisfaction of his desires. He is likely to become like an animal waiting for the food that is thrown to him, unable to forage for himself. He is likely to become a malinger. [Out of Step, pp 20, 22-23]
Embracing Freedom --- Not Ideology
To come back to the beginning of this entry to The Paleo Blog, one must take Hans Hoppe’s advice and distant oneself from all political institutions. Libertarianism must be radical and embrace complete Rothbardism, least it becomes less radical and deteriorates any more than it has. It must be anti-establishment.
One must recognize that the State is not an institution of peace or order, but war and chaos. Free markets bring peace and order, States destroy it. One must also embrace the social intermediate institutions of society: family, kinship, church, community, etc. These things bring order and a moral society (a culturally conservative society). The State detaches and atomizes the individual, as the great paleoconservative Robert Nisbet has taught us, from these naturally arising market institutions. By doing this, the government destroys order and takes away social-cultural restraints to allow anti-natural behavior of man. Hence the State is not only a institution of war and chaos, but also moral degeneration.
Only
groups and institutions that support dismantling the States should be
supported. There is no way to reform governments. (E.g., “fair” tax
proposals, social security reforms, etc. must all be rejected.) One
must only support ideas that actually eliminate government functions.
Decentralization and all secession groups must be supported.
Often you hear or read how the United States is meant to be a Republic and not a Democracy. This is terminologically true back when the constitution was written. When Benjamin Franklin was asked what kind of government was founded, he answered; “A Republic, if you can keep it.” It is less true technically. A republic is still a semi-democratic state because principally it has some kind of open entry. It is also still publicly owned. In a republic, the government, unlike a monarchy, is not privately owned.
These two things have an effect on the course a republican (democratic) government will take, as the brilliant paleolibertarian Hans-Hermann Hoppe has written and lectured extensively on. Open entry will stir up competition in the production of governmental functions and activates. Competition to try to improve government’s functions and activates is to improve government’s evils. Publicly owned government is a government that cannot rationally calculate and therefore leads to ever increasing deficits and irrational economic behavior.
As I wrote in “Are ---We--- the Government?”:
[E]ven a democratic form of government is not “us.” Like a monarchy it is detached and separated. The difference is that one has a kind of “open” entry, which produces competition to stir up the masses in habitual wealth redistribution and destruction.
Now to quote Hans-Hermann Hoppe on redistribution in democratic governments:
One-man-one-vote combined with "free entry" into government democracy implies that every person and his personal property comes within reach of and is up for grabs by everyone else. A "tragedy of the commons" is created.* It can be expected that majorities of "have-nots" will relentlessly try to enrich themselves at the expense of minorities of "haves." This is not to say that there will be only one class of have-nots and one class of haves, and that the redistribution will occur uniformly from rich to poor. To the contrary. While the redistribution from rich to poor will always pay a prominent role, it would be a sociological blunder to assume that it will be the sole or even the predominant form of redistribution. [Democracy - The God That Failed, p 96]
*[Footnote 4: The "tragedy of the commons" refers to the overutilization, waste, or depletion of resources held in common (as publicly owned goods).]
Here are some suggestions that all paleos (paleoconservatives and paleolibertarians) should be able to support:
- All politicians running for office should not be allowed to vote in elections. After all, why should they vote in elections they are running in? They are our, at least in theory, our employees. (Please note that I emphasis in theory, even though it really does not work out this way.)
- Extend this to all government workers and politicians of all stripes who live off the taxpayers. They make their living by working for us. This is why, for the same reason as number one above, they should not be grated the "right" to vote. This includes government workers from public government school teachers to social welfare workers.
- People that receive welfare handouts. They too live (fully or partially) off the taxpayers. Taking away their "right" to vote may help get some welfare recipients off the welfare system. But, this even more so, would also cut down on all welfare since those voters wishing to vote for welfare for themselves would be taken out of the political system. This would be a great boon to the cause of Liberty.
- As in the past, only allow those who actually own actual land property to vote.
- I mention this because there have been reports of this happening. All illegal immigrants should not be granted the "right" to vote. (A side effect being that by allowing the vote to illegals, increases their movement to the United States artificially. It is a recipe for disaster.)
- I admit my ignorance on the next extension of number five. I am not exactly sure what the process is for (new) legal immigrants when it comes to voting. But what I will say is this: extend the waiting process several years. Actually, no, take voting privileges away completely.
Here is what Hoppe says about early democracies in "Natural Elites, Intellectuals, and the State":
There have been exceptions [to the fact that mankind has been more subject to monarchical rule then democratic], of course: Athenian democracy, Rome until 31 B.C., the republics of Venice, Florence, and Genoa during the Renaissance, the Swiss cantons since 1291, the United Provinces (the Netherlands) from 1648 until 1673, and England under Cromwell. But these were rare occurrences, and none of them remotely resembled modern, one man-one vote democratic systems. In Athens, for instance, no more than 5 percent of the population voted and was eligible for positions of rulership.
Extensions to even more severe discrimination of the requirements to vote would help put more shackles on government. However, it is hard to at this point suggest trying to allow only “natural elites” to vote, whereas only five percent of the "top" would get to vote. This is due to the fact that the wealthiest people today owe their wealth less on productive efforts and more on unproductive governmental efforts. But it is time for paleoconservatives all the way to (real) libertarians to support restricting voting access. Yes, it may be some kind of "mechanical solution." Normally I am against mechanical solutions in general, but this is a step towards some kind of decentralization and depowering people with Leviathan. So I believe it is in a different category.
(It will never happen, but it would be a wise step to take.)
Reading Material:
- The Paleo Blog: Are ---We--- the Government?
- Down With Democracy by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
- -- Natural Elites, Intellectuals, and the State