5 posts tagged “monarchy”
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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".
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.
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
Joe Sobran wrote:
I knew Bob Nisbet slightly, and he was kind to me, especially considering what a young fool I was. He had the wisdom to know that a young fool can often be transformed by time alone. Or, as the poet William Blake put it, “If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise.”
The reason I start this entry to The Paleo Blog with a quote from Mr. Sobran is because people can change politically to see the light. He went from more of a (semi-)neoconservative to a paleoconservative and finally to a paleolibertarian. (Read “The Reluctant Anarchist” by Sobran.) Young conservatives are bombarded with the likes of Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity. Confusion and naiveté is to be expected. Left-liberals can turn around too, but the probability is probably slightly lower.
Education to change the statist ideas people have is essential for those of us that embrace Liberty and Freedom. Starting with the young is most important. The job of those that seek to educate them is not to lecture down to them or anything of this nature. Doing that can have a negative impact of the encouragement of them to study the classics of old style conservatism, classical liberalism, the “Old Right,” and libertarianism. Not only that, someone becoming politically aware needs to know what is happening now in the world. I truly believe that the more someone becomes politically aware, the more they will see the dangers, at the very least, of statism. From that they will understand the need to cage or (even better) kill Leviathan.
Politics is like a game of musical chairs. We switch back and forth between the major political parties expecting a difference. At least, some people believe this. Those that buy into the propaganda of the political hacks do. It is a funny sight to see people buying into the horsepucky that there exists a difference between today’s left and right. What exists now is a constant cycle of moving from the Republican Party to the Democrat Party and back again. The Republicans get into office and they mess up. The Democrats get voted in and the same happens. It is the very nature of the game. Playing musical chairs between politicians and parties will never solve the problem. The problem is the power.
Scary thought: Almost everyone wants to expand it! The average man on the street says he does not trust politicians. He thinks they are all the same. ... But what does he do? He keeps voting them into office! He also has a wish-list for the politicians to perform.
Is the average man this dumb? Guess so.
Robert Nisbet said Ronald Reagan is the perfect example of the mind of the American people. People curse government. Reagan cursed government. --- But people ask for more government. --- But Reagan gave us more.
As has been stated here on this blog and by people like Murray Rothbard and Hans Hoppe, people have a stake in government. Many have an invested interest. This is what makes democratic states so power. Its “open entry” increases people’s investment. No monarchy can ever get to the level of democracy. This partly explains why classic monarchies are always more preferable to democracies.
Can a reawakening of Liberty and Freedom come to be?
Murray Rothbard was more optimistic then I. (I am more pessimistic.)
Some people talk about a collapse. This would force people to reconsider the State. It could push man to think about smaller governments controlling smaller spatial territories. Maybe. But I question if some kind of collapse will come as soon as they may believe. No, they don’t think it is coming tomorrow. But, still, I get the impression they believe it is on the horizon. People always think that a collapse is in their age. Too often these kinds of predictions turn out wrong.
Capitalism is a powerful force. It may be kicked and shackled. It may also be tied into governmental activities. However, the smart man will avoid taxation and regulation as much as possible. Wise people seek shelter from state interference. He develops techniques to go around the Leviathan. In this sense the civilized form of life, capitalism, helps prevent an immediate collapse. Let me explain.
States exist as a parasitical institution on capitalism. The amount it extracts effects its long-run operation as a state. By definition governments are aggressive. They extract through coercion. The degree to which they do so will either cripple the population, and thus itself, or they will extract a small dose on a more productive population. The actual amount will be somewhere in the middle for smarter governments. However, there is always that desire for increasing the amount of extraction.
Governments that are very oppressive will not be powerful in the long-run. Governments that are more “libertarian” will become more powerful. But as these more “libertarian” governments gain more power and more dominance over the world, they will have less incentive to be gentler to the population. This is the trend that the United States is on right now. All empires bankrupt themselves. The U.S. will be no different in the long-run. (But who knows about time frames...?)
What are needed are good ideas. They need to be circulated. This is why the Ludwig von Mises Institute is so important in the battle of ideas. The day of the Internet makes this Institute a force. With all of their online articles, e-books, audio & video lectures, books, etc.
After doing some random viewing of some other blogs, I was struck by the use of “we” as a substitution for the word “government.” Are “we” really the government? Is the government “us”? Surely no.
When we go to the store---this simply means that the subsets of "we" are going to the store. Each has chosen entrance into this superset---“we.” When a government (even democratic) taxes me or tells me what to do by various regulations, I am not some kind of subset. If the State throws me into jail for failing to pay taxes, then “we” did not agree to this act. There is a clear distinction between me and the government. I am not the government. It is not me. “We” are not together.
(From this, we should gather, even 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.)
As Murray Rothbard wrote in one of his classic essays, “The Anatomy of the State”:
The useful collective term "we" has enabled an ideological camouflage to be thrown over the reality of political life. If "we are the government," then anything a government does to an individual is not only just and untyrannical but also "voluntary" on the part of the individual concerned. ... Under this reasoning, any Jews murdered by the Nazi government were not murdered; instead, they must have "committed suicide," since they were the government (which was democratically chosen), and, therefore, anything the government did to them was voluntary on their part. One would not think it necessary to belabor this point, and yet the overwhelming bulk of the people hold this fallacy to a greater or lesser degree.
Rothbard continued:
We must, therefore, emphasize that "we" are not the government; the government is not "us." The government does not in any accurate sense "represent" the majority of the people. But, even if it did, even if 70 percent of the people decided to murder the remaining 30 percent, this would still be murder and would not be voluntary suicide on the part of the slaughtered minority. No organicist metaphor, no irrelevant bromide that "we are all part of one another," must be permitted to obscure this basic fact.
And (as Rothbard quoted) here is the great H. L. Mencken:
The average man, whatever his errors otherwise, at least sees clearly that government is something lying outside him and outside the generality of his fellow men – that it is a separate, independent, and hostile power, only partly under his control, and capable of doing him great harm. Is it a fact of no significance that robbing the government is everywhere regarded as a crime of less magnitude than robbing an individual, or even a corporation? . . . What lies behind all this, I believe, is a deep sense of the fundamental antagonism between the government and the people it governs. It is apprehended, not as a committee of citizens chosen to carry on the communal business of the whole population, but as a separate and autonomous corporation, mainly devoted to exploiting the population for the benefit of its own members. . . . When a private citizen is robbed, a worthy man is deprived of the fruits of his industry and thrift; when the government is robbed, the worst that happens is that certain rogues and loafers have less money to play with than they had before. The notion that they have earned that money is never entertained; to most sensible men it would seem ludicrous.
The (paleo)libertarian, unlike other political ideologies people subscribe to, like conservatism or liberalism, applies the standard moral code consistency. As I believe us here at The Paleo Blog, at least conceptually and intuitively, have established is the inherited natural rights that all men have. That is, the freedom to person and property. We have also seen that these principles must be applied universally to all. To deny this would be to say that some men have more nature given rights than others, a priori. But this is not so.
If they are true morals (ethics), then they must be applied consistency. For example, if a given activity is by definition theft and if it is immoral, then it is not possible to deny that this immorality of theft applies consistently without throwing out the first starting principles. When someone robs or kills another’s person and/or property this is unlawful and evil. It does not matter if someone has a fine hat or badge or whatnot. No man has more rights than another that grants him the power to violate natural law, i.e., kill or steal. Nor does the State (composed of individual people) have extra or special rights. Nor does a “we” (composed of individual people) have any more rights. Neither does a majority mob that forms get granted from the heavens any extra rights to forget and then violate natural law.
The approbation on gang-activity (group-activity) of rioting and looting must be condemned. It is a curious phenomenon. Besides people’s acceptance and passivity of the State’s trampling on human liberties, many people accept or partially excuse the destruction of private property by rioters if it is in the name of civil “rights.” This brings to my mind the lawlessness and looting that occurred in New Orleans. If one individual was stealing from Wal-Mart, this person would be rightly condemned as a villainous criminal. But somehow because a group of criminals committed this immoral act, then this is suddenly excused by some leftists. (Picture again a reporter filming a smiling looter taking a television set.) Paleo talk show host Charles Goyette was stunned at the reaction by his largely leftist audience on Air America Phoenix on this issue. To any sound-mind it should.
