14 posts tagged “nisbet”

A "conservative" ethos is necessary for the presence, in both a real-world and literary sense, of heroes and villains in society. Man could not develop in his mind and imagination what is defined as a hero if he had a relativistic outlook on moral norms. Neither could he have an image of a villain. Without men in society developing (to use the language of Richard Weaver) a "tyrannizing image" that is non-relativistic in its ability to have standards, heroes and villains are unthinkable. Men must have the ability to compare and contrast based on a common standard. They must be able to form a tyrannizing image that is able to define what is truly good and, as its opposite counterpart, truly evil.

Robert Nisbet in Twilight of Authority explains that "In the Greek, heros refers to the perfect man, the expression of the highest ideals of the community from which he springs." It is when we have "moral norms and ties of trust so real," Nisbet writes, "so widely accepted and understood, as to make identification of the heroic and the villainous possible."

"To read about the great villains in the epics, melodramas, and tragedies of other ages," says Nisbet,

is to be put in touch with the same greatness that we get in the great heroes, but of treachery, lust, dishonor, instead of virtue. ... A villain is by nature villainous, as the hero is by nature heroic, and throughout history we find, in art, literature, and religion, that in his own way the villain is just as important a symbol in human life as the hero.

Nisbet continues,

As the one is, through unique possession of virtue and strength, an exemplar of good, a spur to achievement, and thereby a vital source of creative meanings, the other becomes for us a model of all that is ultimately destructive of the fabric of morality. By that fact, the villain in his way serves the social bond...

Squalid modernity has promoted all of the things that are hostile to the formation of heroes and villains. Literature written now lacks the qualities of the literature of the old in this regard. Moral relativism is widespread. Religion, having retreated into modernity as well to a large extent, has lost its authority and role in society. The sacred has been lost in much of religion. It fails to inspire man and thus does not give man a conception of religious heroes and villains. Secular humanism is the model at present. Neither do we find clear heroes in other areas of modern life. We do not find heroes in the movie business. It is likewise for great men of business. Finding individual heroes in sports is also difficult. They get lost to the group and commercialism.

It is the same for the sciences. Galileo Galilei, Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Albert Einstein, as Nisbet reasons, have been looked to as heroes because of their great work they created as lone individuals. As individuals, they were not micros lost in a collective. But in the present age science research is collective. For this reason, today "it is unlikely that individual heroes will emerge again from the mass."

Robert Nisbet believes that the villain, too, has been lost, as he explains in his book Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary. The villain qua criminal, for instance, has lost his role in society. Punishment of crime use to be an important ritual function of community. The "drama" of crime in community, says Nisbet, "is one of the most powerful in respect of the development of morality and the preservation of social order."

These days, however,

The entire ritual of crime and punishment is being lost, the recurrent, stabilizing, and reinforcing drama of crime followed by hue and cry, by search and capture, by trial, judgment of guilt, and then punishment. ... The community of moral and legal elements which once characterized crime and punishment has been fragmented, and in the process the individuality, the distinctiveness of crime, especially murder, has been lost to human contemplation.

With the crime rates that we have today, crime gets lost to the crowd. The individuality of crime disappears. No longer, except in extreme cases, is there interest from men in the goings-on of a crime case from its beginning, in public announcement, to its end, in final punishment of the criminal. The "functional reciprocity between the deed and the punishment" in community has faded.

Besides centralization of governmental power and the creation of public police forces (which, by the way, have not always existed---even in areas with a state), I judge we could also definitely argue that the creation of an ever flexible and erratic statist list of "victimless crimes" and the continuous creation of governmental legislation has added to the decline Nisbet is talking about. Indeed, legislation is based on a relativistic view of "law." There is thus, with this kind of frame of mind, no such thing as truly unlawful or lawful.

"The community of crime and punishment," writes Nisbet,

will be missed. It has been a building block of society. Durkheim referred to crime as both necessary and, in proper degree, desirable. Only through an individual's flouting of a sacred value, such as the sanctity of life, can people remind themselves from time to time of the value itself and of its indispensability to the community at large.

Losing this function of community, Nisbet believes, is not incidentally related to the rise of crime. Not only has the idea of crime become relativistic, as I have argued, but nowadays Nisbet says it is looked at as a sickness, not an evil. Hence, iniquity is an illusion. The rise of the therapeutic brings the fall of just punishment.

It is hardly putting too strong a light on the matter to say that America has lost the villain, the evil one, who has now become one of the sick, the disturbed, demanding therapy or at worst incarceration in an asylum... America also lost the victim, who is more likely to be denigrated for having gotten in the way of the disturbed one than to receive commiseration. America has lost the moral value of guilt, lost it to the sickroom. And finally, America has lost the most vital element, punishment.

"It is no small thing," he continues, "in a social order to erode away the ethic of guilt and replace it by the ethic of nonresponsibility for one's acts in matters of crime. Responsibility lies on the other side of the coin of individual freedom."

The idea of social environmentalism has therefore gained ground. Volition is promoted as not real. Criminals are excused, especially by certain left-liberals, as simply being products of their social environment. They are seen as mentally disturbed----but not evil. (Although, it must not have come to their minds that acts of evil are by definition, so to speak, mentally disturbed acts!) Because of this, muddled rehabilitation theories of justice have been developed, and real justice gets lost to them.

To relate this overall decline and decivilization to the literature of crime fiction, Robert Nisbet remarks, "The almost epiphenomenal relation that so long was peculiar to the classical murder mystery and to actual life is gone completely now."

All-in-all, at least for the most part, this is just another illustration, I believe, of the consequences of destructive ideas that have taken over man's mind and heart. (Ideas, it should be mentioned, that have been interwoven in statist and egalitarian thinking. This is not an accident.) Relativism and historicism are top among those destructive ideas. The loss of ideals and transcendental values has corrupted man. In the place of a general belief in some enduring moral order, man searches in vain and finds vacuity. Heroes and villains, as discussed above, have no place. Even objectively classifying a criminal qua criminal & villain has no place. Good literature, which is meant to reveal truths and (as T.S. Eliot put it) the "permanent things" about human existence, nature, morality, etc., has no place. Moreover, social environmentalism portrays man as having no nature, thinks of him as but an animal, and sees man as able to be molded into whatever image is wanted by the use of Leviathan. Consequently, it is clear what ideas and values need recrudescence.

See Also: The Paleo Blog's "Man and Modernity."

Even though he was not an "anarchist" or a philosophical libertarian, the great Robert Nisbet's central insight is that Civil Society, made up of the so-called intermediate institutions which persons are naturally born into and are a part of (viz., family, locality, church, etc.), and the State are inversely related to each other in terms of strength and the role they play in society.

It is consequently when the state is small and weak that social authority is vibrant. The more functions and roles the state takes on, the less civil society has to take on. A powerful managerial state always results in imposing a top-down, monolithic-coercive control, breaking down pluralistic authorities, autonomies, communities, institutions, traditional norms, and ultimately thereby isolating and detaching the individual from civil society. All that is left after this process is Leviathan and atomistic, detached, and "loose" individuals. Once this has happened the state has what it wants, i.e., control over isolated and weak individuals.

Extending and furthering this analysis, we can understand how increased democratization and centralization of state power directs man's activities increasingly at using this apparatus. This not only must be done at the expense of civil society, since the state's relationship with civil society is parasitic, but also cause conflict between those trying to use power, which is monopolistic, for their own purposes. These men will be constantly fighting to control this coercive power for their own ends and at the expense of other men. Politicalization in increased areas of life will only result in a greater amount of people joining in this infighting (with the upshot of man investing and producing less in civil society). It actually becomes a necessity, if only as a means of (pseudo) "self-defense." All of this further feeds the growth of politics. And the distinction between civil society and state will fade away. In addition, they will blend together as many former civil society institutions attach themselves or ally themselves with statism. States ultimately consume civil society.

(This will even have a major change on the culture regarding the individual character development of men. The character characteristics that man will develop will tend to be those that define a politician rather than a gentleman.)

Indeed, today every nook and cranny Leviathan has its hand in. No wonder, as Robert Nisbet says, we have moved "from a highly traditionalist, hierarchical, decentralized, and inegalitarian society to one that in our time approaches the diametrical opposite of these qualities." [Quote from The Present Age.]

Now the objective of this Paleo Blog entry is to attempt to show, using insights from Nisbet, Murray Rothbard, Russell Kirk and Robert Murphy and also going through some economic analysis (which has been greatly influenced by Hans-Hermann Hoppe), how power destroys civil society. The topics covered may be loosely organized and assumes the reader has some knowledge about the possibility and logic of a private law society, but it is my hope that it provides some insights into this important subject.

Authority versus Power

"[L]ibertarians," writes Murray N. Rothbard in Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature (p 152, n 1),

accept the authority of sound values, civilization, and especially reason; it is those who refuse to accept such authority who turn instead to outside coercion and violence. On the confusion between authority and power, see the brilliant article by Robert A. Nisbet, "The Nemesis of Authority," The Intercollegiate Review (Winter-Spring, 1972): 3-13.

Happily the 1972 article is available online here [pdf].

In the article Robert Nisbet removes, as Rothbard explained, the common misperception between authority and power. Power, not authority, amounts to the usage (or threat) of physical force or coercion. It is civil society, he goes on to say, that you find a multiplicity of authorities:

Civil society, in whatever degree it may be said to exist at all, is a tissue of authorities, however loosely knit these may be in times of stress. Authority, unlike power or coercion, is not rooted in force, or threat of force. It is built into the very fabric of human association. Authority exists in the very roles and statuses of the social order. It is no more than an aspect, though a vital aspect, of the social order. . . . Freedom, in any positive, creative sense, is inseparable from a structure of authority ---- of rules, norms, roles, and statues ---- which can alone give the stamp of character to the free mind. No mistake could be greater than that of counterpoising freedom and authority. Freedom and power, freedom and coercion, yes. But not freedom and authority.

(There will be more on this specific article later.)

Children and the Family

Out of all the intermediate institutions, obviously the most essential and basic building block in society is the family institution. Individuals do not exist apart from family, which, by the way, includes even Robinson Crusoe. The atomistic individual is just a myth. And, incidentally, the reason for Rothbard's footnote was to defend parental authority, as long as it does not contravene the foundation of self-ownership and private property rights, over those who say it is (somehow) "un-libertarian."  After all, a child is under the private household rules of the father, who is the owner of the household and accordingly has patriarchal authority and control over it. Private property (which is inegalitarian, hierarchical, exclusive, undemocratic, etc.), outside of our physical body, is not a "given" to us as we are born into the world. We must earn it and therefore must work within the framework of families and authorities in civil society.

This framework is essential to society as a whole. The family, that is. As Robert Nisbet says:

[A] well-attested fact [is] that whenever there is private property there will be a strong family system. After all, the origins of private property lie in clan and kindred; and even after the conjugal family, the household, became the chief element of kinship, its relationship to property remained very close. As Joseph Schumpeter noted in his Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy*, it was not the isolated individual . . . but the household that was the main engine of modern capitalist development. Not economic man but, quite literally, the head of the household working for the present and future of the members of his family, and hence saving and investment. [Twilight of Authority.]

Traditional family households hence promote a low time preference. Their success and longevity depends on this fact. It brings stability to society and capital growth, which advances the capitalistic process. This is what makes genuine capitalism and family mutually reinforcing. It was what, in the past, allowed only the father to enter the job market.

However, it becomes almost unavoidable, in modern society, that both father and mother have to enter the workforce due to the taxation, regulations, and inflation that eats away at persons' wealth. Procurement of wealth has been made comparatively more costly because income used in production has been made less, as it is expropriated by way of taxation, and the opportunity cost for non-production has been lowered. The destruction and blockage of contractual relationships between parties, due to thousands of pages of regulations, lowers market transactions, and thus investments and wealth. And inflation, in particular, is a direct assault against the family institution because, by continually lowering the value of the dollar, savings and long-term planning is discouraged. Consumption, leisure, short-term thinking and planning are encouraged. All of which are to the damage of capitalism and family.

Soon a major social and cultural transformation took place with the increased socialization in society. The belief and value in the father working towards a family wage to provide for the family vanished. Home mothers became stigmatized by ideological feminism, the sexual revolution, and Cultural Marxism. The ideas in the minds of men changed and the course of history assimilated those new values. Entering the workforce became more important than becoming a wife and mother. Womens' investment in the latter areas declined. Job advertisements took on a shift as this transformation took place, and was given additional thrust by today's sacrosanctity of civil "rights"** laws. Old advertisements, with an ethos of strong family values, labeled "Men Wanted" and "Women Wanted" was deemed illegal because it was discriminatory.

Statism has alleviated, to a high degree, father and mother their function and role to raise, care for, and teach their own children. In replace of these functions and roles, that naturally reside in the family institution, has come the state. Put in another way, these functions and roles have become socialized. Children are thrown into the statist education system, where they are fed anti-family, anti-market ideas. Parents can no longer raise their children in a manner they want to and instead must accept school teachers and social workers as the ultimate judge and authority. There is thus less parental investment in children, the family structure, and the next generation and their development. Under statist conditions the internally weak family is promoted and encouraged vis-à-vis the strong family for the reason that investment is made more costly. Natural authority is zapped-away and parental irresponsibility, neglect, and abuse is encouraged because it is made less costly. The natural bond and attachment between parents and children falls. A decline and degeneration must follow.

The externalized value and cost of children also decreases the attachment and bond between mother and father. This encourages an increase in divorce rates. At the same time, divorce courts have become one-size-fits-all and "no-fault." Marriage contract and covenant has been taken away and placed into the control of the state. Mothers, moreover, have a court that is biased to them and, by default, negative to fathers. Added with numerous interventionisms into civil society, there is subsidization of single mothers at the expense of non-single mothers. This is nothing but the collective reinforcement of such lifestyles, illegitimacy, irresponsibility, divorce, and so on.

By socializing the costs of children, the incentive to act with sexual restraint declines. Continuing this socialization will push man to an animal looking to fulfill his appetite through his next "free love" conquest. The animal side and sensationalist side of man replaces the rational side.

Children, in the governmental schools, lose attachment to family, their heritage, and family values. These schools elevate and promote collectivism, uniformity, egalitarianism, "political correctness," and anti-moral values. Schools, in their raised position relative to the family, create dependency between children and the state. Permissiveness is promoted from the diminishment of parental authority. Children, who are under a collectivistic rule, are set "free" and an increase in crime, drug use, and all-around juvenility occurs. They become a lone grown-up drone in the masses attached and dependent on the government, in view of the fact that their early development was deformed (to some degree) to the state's image and its wants.

In addition, as children are forced into the educational system, child labor laws further decrease children's attachment to civil society. Their value to the family household is lowered, as they cannot contribute to it financially. Because their prospects of entering the workforce at a young age has decreased, they will be less likely to develop good work ethics, the skills of being independent or responsible, or have a respect for (non-statist) authority.

Far from being any kind of supporter and up-lifting institution, the State is the enemy of the family. A weaker family is one less bulwark the state has to confront in its desire to enlarge its power vis-à-vis the individual. It is those who want to give the state more power, for whatever reason (even in the name of "saving" or "protecting" the family), that are ultimately empowering an institution that is the enemy of the family.

Sub-Notes:

*Schumpeter believes that, paradoxically, while the family is a backbone to capitalism, capitalism will ultimately hurt this backbone leading to an anti-capitalist mentality. With the analysis in this blog entry, this seems to be un-true. As Jeffrey Tucker says: "Where Schumpeter went wrong was in believing that advanced capitalism itself contributed to undermining the family (thus his pessimism regarding the future of free economies). In fact, if we look at the case of the United States, it is easy to see that it is not the market, but government policy that penalizes marriages by directly and indirectly discouraging their formation."

**Statist and managerial elite, by programs such as affirmative action, have managed to push this process via social engineering. Collective women rights were deemed to exist in which the central state has to enforce and impose on all, contra to private persons and their properties. And those critical of this are labeled as mentally ill and persons of "hate," needing therapeutic help from the establishment. Helping along feminism, of course, has been the neoconservative right; claming that it is only the new "radical" feminism that has corrupted this ideology. (This is no different than their view on civil rights. Paul Gottfried has thus said that "On almost all social issues, starting with Third World immigration, feminism, and civil rights, neoconservatives are far closer to the Left than they are to the Old Right.")

War, Culture, and Community

Centralization is always the stamping out of community and locality. Returning to Nisbet, he saw that the reason modern man has become preoccupied with community is for the very fact that community has waned. Unfortunately, this desire to restore community has not resulted in man endeavoring to reestablish genuine community, which has nothing to do with political power, but the seeking of community by the use of the central state. Yet all this has done is further the erosion of community. According to Nisbet, there is nothing more fraudulent or dangerous than a "phrase as 'national community.'"

This "quest for community" can be seen in times of war. There is probably nothing greater than war that brings out the mass mobs in modern democracy, especially today's Limbaugh-type conservatives or kiddy-con conservatives, with their nationalistic and patriotic spirit banging on the drums and labeling war skeptics as "unpatriotic" (or worse).

Ironically, this patriotic or nationalistic spirit, having everything to do with glorifying Leviathan than anything else, is in all probability the result from the loss of any genuine conservative community. This is why states like a community void. Man has become increasingly detached and atomized from others. This makes, at least at first, the masses gung-ho about war. Just remember back to the first days of the Iraq War. War for a moment brings a sense of community and connection. Certainly those in actual combat feel a sense of community with their fellow soldiers. Those at home feel a bit of that as well. A little later, nonetheless, it dries up because it is a shallow and false collectivist and statist community.

In response to those that judge military life as beneficial to the development of a young man, conservative Russell Kirk said that "there is no tyranny more onerous than that of military life." Military life does not build character, strength, or independence of mind. It does not make a man "a real one." That kind of life, due to its socialistic nature, is antagonistic towards these characters. It is "military discipline," says Kirk, that is "crushing to self-reliance."

"In military life, distant from home and most of the forces of social opinion, there is every inducement for an average young man to sink into indolence and indulgence and every reason for him to rely increasingly upon the state for very existence."

So life in the military does not resemble community at all. Not only does it distort the development of young men, life in war and military tears families apart. It discourages old taboos on morality, including sexual relationships. War encourages promiscuity. And this has been multiplied many times over by unnaturally allowing women in combat.

"War and the military are," writes Robert Nisbet,

without question, among the very worst of the earth's afflictions, responsible for the majority of the torments, oppressions, tyrannies, and suffocations of thought the West has for long been exposed to. In military or war society anything resembling true freedom of thought, true individual initiative in the intellectual and cultural and economic areas, is made impossible---not only cut off when they threaten to appear but, worse, extinguished more or less at root. ... Nothing has proved more destructive of kinship, religion, and local patriotisms than has war and the accompanying military mind. [Twilight of Authority.]

And it is in times of war, Nisbet says, that the welfare state proliferates. Around "75 percent of all national programs which have been instituted in Western countries during the past two centuries to equalize income, property, education, working conditions, and other aspects of life have been in the first instance adjuncts of the war state and of the war economy." [Twilight of Authority.] War, socialism, and "progressive" movements are bound at the hip.

The Natural Community

Natural authority is not only found in the family and its extended outgrowths. It is found in businesses, churches, firms, associations, schools, and other places. In communities you generally find natural leaders (or, if you will, aristocrats). These are families who are good at organizing community functions and resolving quarrels. The majority of the town respects their position and abilities. In community you find differentiation and distinction between individual persons who possess different levels of authority and who play different roles (occupations) in the community.

One aspect in the development of community or neighborhood is the stabilizing effect that businessmen (working within the community) have on it. For instance, Robert Murphy's The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism points to how

public safety is best ensured when people voluntarily look after their own streets, and where stores, bars, and restaurants (open night and day) and public spaces are all jostled together, because it gives residents, business owners, and customers a mutual interest in ensuring safety, a complex interaction of unexpected "neighborhood watch" mutual support.

What takes this away, Dr. Murphy says, is forced and top-down planning by the government. It "breaks up this mutual support." All of this has led to is increased crime rates and the annihilation of natural community development. It cuts off the bonds between men in community.

Again, this is exactly what the state wants. Any private functions and roles communities takes on, power in the state is less. Any kind of private authority is a threat to the state. Thus to gain power, the state must crush community development. Community functions and roles the state must take over. And when this happens man increasingly turns to the state for the answers to all problems. (The more centralized this state, the worse.) It becomes the center of society and existence. Instead of seeking private solutions, state solutions are almost always sought. This unties the structure of civil society. The atomization of individuals from all cultural and social restraints takes place. Hierarchical outgrowths of pressures and competing authorities atrophy. There has been hence the development of the ferine and democratically "equal" mass of individuals with "equal" authority in relation to each other. And hence the increase in immoral, "alternative," and destructive lifestyles.

Socializing personal morality and conduct to the state can only result in a decrease in the importance of civil society's role to "regulate" these matters. It is then that the family loses authority. Churches, in the realm of personal or individual morality and conduct, get hurt as a source of authority in society. Social pressures lose their value. So it is the socialization that lowers investment of civil society's institutional and associational presence in these matters. As a consequence, statism will actually tend to increase destructive behavior all-around on net. What is defined as "good" and "bad" will be state defined. Man will increasingly depend on the state for the guide to what morality means. Morality will enter in a state of flux, ever changing, and ever relative.

Under a free society, on the other hand, and implied in the above analysis, social and cultural restraints would be restored. Families, in both the nuclear and extended sense, would regain their natural authority. Churches can gain functions and roles in communities. Without a central power, communities can be restored in vigor. A person's membership in various intermediate institutions would be reestablished (or created anew) to his natural position in its hierarchical structure. A pluralistic society would develop. There would not be any collective, systematic subsidization of harmful lifestyles or activities with the welfare state gone. Property owners would regain the right to discriminate, and implied in that would produce an increase in civil behavior by the joining increase of the ability to discriminate against uncivil behavior. And so on.

Moreover, instead of public laws there would be private laws. Laws that would arrive out of civil society; not the state.

Murray Rothbard writes that "Under total privatization, many local conflicts and 'externality' problems ... would be neatly settled.

With every locale and neighborhood owned by private firms, corporations, or contractual communities, true diversity would reign, in accordance with the preferences of each community. Some neighborhoods would be ethnically or economically diverse, while others would be ethnically or economically homogeneous. Some localities would permit pornography or prostitution or drugs or abortion, others would prohibit any or all of them. The prohibitions would not be state imposed, but would simply be requirements for residence or use of some person's or community's land area. ["Nations By Consent: Decomposing the Nation-State"]

"In a country, or a world, or totally private property,

including streets, and private contractual neighborhoods consisting of property-owners, these owners can make any sort of neighborhood-contracts they wish. In practice, then, the country would be a truly "gorgeous mosaic," ... ranging from rowdy Greenwich Village-type contractual neighborhoods, to socially conservative homogeneous WASP neighborhoods. Remember that all deeds and covenants would once again be totally legal and enforceable, with no meddling government restrictions upon them. So that considering the drug question, if a proprietary neighborhood contracted that no one would use drugs, and Jones violated the contract and used them, he fellow community-contractors could simply enforce the contract and kick him out. Or, since no advance contract can allow for all conceivable circumstances, suppose that Smith became so personally obnoxious that his fellow neighborhood-owners wanted him ejected. They would then have to buy him out----probably on terms set contractually in advance in accordance with some "obnoxious" clause. ["The 'New Fusionism': A Movement For Our Time"]

Sub-Notes:
 
1. A free libertarian society would therefore not only consist of a horizontal "convivial order" made up of natural law. Vertically on top of this would be the development of the "social order's" voluntary positive law. For more on the difference between the "convivial order" and the "social order," see these notes from the PFS.

2. The communities that would develop would be diverse and this would allow people to live by those of like-values. Interventionists, as Rothbard said, would have no place in a libertarian society however. This would remove a major source of conflict in society. If communists want to a have voluntary communist community, then it does no harm to me (but only them).

3. Nonetheless, communities would tend to develop homogeneously. Today, even in a statist world, neighborhoods and towns that are wealthier and that have a stronger level of trust between neighbors are homogeneous versus heterogeneous. A free society would amplify that tendency. In particular, argues the great libertarian Hans-Hermann Hoppe, insurance companies would encourage this development:

"Heterogeneous" risks either cannot be insured or must be insured separately (in different pools, jointly with other homogeneous risks, and at different prices). Ethno-cultural homogeneity of neighborhoods, then, is simply a device for making insurance against external threats and interferences possible and thus lowering the cost of residential property protection. Homogeneity facilitates mutual property insurance. Capital-based insurers will charge lower premiums for clusters of homogeneous territories (while at the same time revealing the different ranks in cultural development of various ethno-cultures, as reflected in the price-spread of the premium charged at different locations.)

The process to a free society via secession, says Hoppe, "Rather than promoting a downward leveling of culture as under forced integration, ... stimulates a cooperative process of cultural selection and advancement."

The Authority of Culture, Language, and Reason

To loop back, in the first article linked-to above, the "authority of language," especially, is shown to be of great concern to Robert Nisbet, for it is language that is the most basic social and cultural bond between men. This is not only limited to verbal language but also the "silent language" of physical expressions. Language as well, as a means of communication, expresses itself in mathematics, music, paintings, et cetera. It is the essential foundation to any civilization, and therefore encompasses "nearly the whole of experience and reality."

With that in mind, there is a direct correlation, Nisbet believes, between the loss of authority in language and the increase of power and the decline of culture. Specifically, he points to George Orwell's work. Orwell said that in politics you locate "phrases tackled together" made up of meaningless abstractions and generic terms. In political discussion, for example, you find interminable phraseology that is vacuous: "human rights," "democracy," "social justice,"* "civil rights," "diversity," and so on. (With pro-empire Sen. Obama we can add the word "change," which is a political word that is as empty and lifeless as them come--------no wonder he is so liked.)

*(On "social justice," Irving Babbitt wrote: "Every form of social justice ... tends toward confiscation, and confiscation, when practiced on a large scale, undermines moral standards, and, in so far, substitutes for real justice the law of cunning and the law of force.")

"A generation," writes Nisbet, "that has formed itself linguistically around the primitivism of 'like,' 'cool,' 'man,' 'feel,' and, above all, 'you know' will not be a difficult generation to enslave politically, socially, and culturally." As a matter of fact, in the article he points to a study that reports the average Englishman and American recycles on a daily basis only "thirty-four basic words."

One author Nisbet finds loathsome is Richard Poirier and his book The Performing Self. Poirier disapproves of the "waste" of language and believes it must be personalized to the "performing self." All constraints and authority must be removed. Nisbet replies that this is not how genuine culture works. It is not how the genius develops or how the genius flourishes.

Creativity in high culture

is never the consequence of nihilistic rejection of the forms and structures which the creative mind finds around him. It is invariably a working from, and generally through, these to new forms and structures: forms and structures that may be so original indeed as to make their relation to past seem highly tenuous. That creative minds do indeed reveal capacity for liberating themselves in some degree from accepted modes of intellectual order, as a means of quickening the search for other modes, in no ways means that passion for disorder for "waste" is overriding. Least of all does it mean passion for "self-watching."

"The basis of any culture," says Nisbet, "is the presence of values which have external force in the individual's life, which reflect a power greater than anything that lies in the [single] individual alone." [Emphasis mine. This, separate quote, from Twilight of Authority. The above one, of course, is from Nisbet's essay on authority.]

Robust culture in literature rides the tides from the point of the Greeks. That is, of their techniques, forms, styles, and structures. Developing culture is the outgrowth from them. Not only is today's language untidiness caused by the denunciation of authority, the authority of reason has been waning.

In the West man finds the "acceptance of objectivity as at least a worthy goal." Our philosophical literature, says Nisbet, has looked for the objective in the order of existence, rather than the subjective or the "cult of individuality" of one's feelings. And it is this objective search that "declare[s] something of superlative nobility."

Without the authority of reason comes irrationality. It has thus been at the university where you find "feeling, through sensitivity and encounter sessions, ... exalted, in those wide spheres of the arts ... where preoccupation with self, with display or exhibition of self, takes the almost invariable form of display of the least rational, the least reason-oriented..."

In regards to the decline of the arts, for example, Murray Rothbard agreed. Rothbard saw nihilism forming in the arts:

The art-for-art's sake scam that permeates the modern liberal world-view, was launched by nineteenth-century aesthetes as a camouflage of their own morbid, nihilistic, pessimistic, and violently anti-traditional outlook: the French poets Baudelaire and Rimbaud, the Impressionists, Dadaists, and later the Bloomsbury Set and the literary and art critic Roger Fry. Since they could not get anywhere at the time by openly advocating their nihilistic values and epistemology, or their "alternative life-styles," they pushed – unfortunately with great success – the "art has its own reasons" rationale.

First, the left-liberals preached l' art pour l' art in aesthetics, and as a corollary, in ethics, trumpeted the new view that there is no such thing as revealed or objective ethics, that all ethics are "subjective," that all of life's choices are only personal, emotive "preferences." ["KULTURKAMPF!"]

This, according to Robert Nisbet, makes our age a "critical" one. Saint-Simon said that there are two types of ages: "organic" and "critical." It is in organic ages that the authority of culture, reason, and language is dominant. The age of our time is critical because these intellectual and abstract authorities are weak. We are in a "twilight of authority." And it is no quirk that with this comes the rise of Power.

Methodological Individualism and Intermediate Institutions

Man is obviously not an island all alone to himself. This is a fact that is a given in libertarianism or "paleolibertarianism," properly understood. No man or men could live in that kind of state, unless their wish is starvation, death, and extinction.

For man to fulfill his natural instincts of preservation, contractual and covenant marriage comes about. As the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises reasoned, the division of labor for sex under capitalism brings about "traditional" marriage and fosters it.

Man wanting to enlarge his family's wealth, for that of his wife and children and their future, and not to live a minimum and brute life cannot happen without voluntary cooperation with other men under an economic division of labor. This cooperation under the division of labor represents the source of civil life. It brings a natural social order of free market activity and capitalism.

Building up material wealth also allows man time to fulfill his religious and spiritual needs. (State fiat requiring man to work from dawn to dust leaves little time for religion, family, or such things! In the same manner, involuntarily forcing both parents into the workforce lessens the family structure.) Man's "quest for community," too, is fulfilled in this cooperative, non-political atmosphere. Intermediate institutions, or social intermediate institutions, absent monopolistic statist power and dictates, fill the necessary need for social, cultural, and economic authority and "regulation." They provide a framework to a world of uncertainty and scarcity.

This brings us to the first article. In the Mises.org Daily Article “What We Mean by Individualism” by Adam Martin, the author explicates why supporting subsidiary institutions requires the understanding that the building blocks to all institutions is that they are always and by necessity composed of individuals. For intermediate institutions to be present, they cannot be divorced from the actions of individuals, nor could they possibly be formed without individuals.

This is why a methodologically individualist stance must be taken, both metaphysically and morally. Once this is grasped, then the idea that there is a battle between intermediate institutions, community and individuals (if the terms are properly defined), as Mr. Martin writes, is theoretical nonsense. To organize and form institutions is only natural to man. They make an atomistic individual with no attachments nonexistent. Because of this, attacks against libertarian individualism, by such gentlemen as Russell Kirk, are falsely premised.

This understanding also amplifies important insights from the great Robert Nisbet. The State is not just at war with the lone individual and his liberty and property. This is to miss the full picture, perhaps most interestingly the most important aspect of the full picture. The State is also at war with all societal institutions and associations that men----individuals----form. One individual is alone and weak. But institutions---be they a business enterprise, a church, or family---are not. This proper frame of reference allows us to understand how to strengthen these institutions and associations (and, at least in purely economic terms as it relates to some of these institutions, why they exist in our scarce world).

A Layered Society: Individual, Nuclear Family, Extended Family, Clan, Nation

Roland Watson's LRC article “State vs. Community” makes a conceptual framework to understand community and its relationship to separate, unique individuals by that of a layered onion.

At the very center of this onion there is the individual. It is what makes you, you and me, me. It expresses our individualism and the "something" that makes us truly human.

Family is the nearest layer to this center. It is nearest to us. It provides the nearest support for the individual. This natural attachment and its impact on our development, too, make us truly human. Without it, we would be gone. In this layer there is an internal authority vis-à-vis the individual. Most importantly to any society, it is the institution that supplies and supports the development of children into adults. Its role in this process is to provide love and guidance. It supplies, among other things, economic and emotional support, education, the teaching of moral and religious values, work ethics and guidance for children to learn individual responsibility. It is thus the most important layer to nourish the individual core, the center, of the onion.

To continue to apply Mr. Watson's framework, let us say that the extended family is the next layer. It adds another layer of support to the individual, and to the nuclear family. Another layer would be the local community, which is filled with neighboring family households, friends, church and church leaders, community leaders, businesses and business leaders, and so on. Moving even further we enter into the very outer layers which include that of the region or nation. Those outer layers can be defined by the bond of language, ethnicity, and a discernible culture.

Community vs. State

“Let’s Gut the Political Community” by P. Andrew Sandlin contends that during the past three hundred years the political community has reigned supreme; whereas before, to differing degrees, governing was more left to non-coercive forms of management and governorship, such as kinship and religion. Along with kinship and religion communities, today, if we got rid of the State, we could introduce the "economic community."

Mr. Sandlin writes:

When left unhindered [e.g., "strong families, churches, and businesses"], they tend to assume most of the legitimate responsibilities in human society: nurture, education, bread winning, communication, health, transportation, wealth creation, and so forth. Just remember: in principle, what these communities do, the state doesn’t get to do. And what the state does, these communities don’t get to do. Why should we want the family, church, business, and other non-political communities to assume these responsibilities? Because these other communities are voluntary and non-coercive. You can ... walk away from a family. You can walk away from a church. You can walk away from a job. But in today’s Western world, try walking away from the state. Because these communities are voluntary, and non-coercive, they also do a better job of fulfilling their responsibilities in human society than the state does.

He continues that "It is a strong, non-coercive institution that binds a society together." For this reason they are "bulwarks against tyranny." And, unlike some critics from the "paleoconservative" side, we "need more small, family businesses" just as much as "we need big businesses." "'Big Business,' like 'Big Family' and 'Big Church,' is a great check on 'Big Brother.'"

The very last thing to do, as a result, to strengthen social intermediate institutions, like that of family, is to replace them or lessen them for statism and the political circus. Combining them with politics will always be damned to failure.

Authority, Private Communities, Law, and Peace

Jonathan Liem writes in “The Voluntary Community”:

Every removal of subsidiarity from the regulation of the community, by the ever-expanding state, displaces the human being from that which grounded them in wholesome relationships. This loss of wholesome relationships has unleashed the atomistic-individualism of libertinism. Thus, the state is responsible for the degeneracy of today’s community. The state has neutered the role that the voluntary community plays in the natural authority that regulates human action, and replaced it with the unnatural authority of the omnipotent state, its political shenanigans and relativistic moral center based upon pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed and sloth. The irony of the entire experience is that in working towards the virtuous community through the mechanism of the state, the conservatives have in actuality, ensured the supremacy of libertinism.

Now I am not certain if what I am about to say is "politically incorrect" or not. These days it is hard to tell. (It might be to the Reason crowd.) Authority and social structure is essential to any society, even one that is purely libertarian.

But authority and power are two different things. According to Brad Lowell Stone in his book on Robert Nisbet, here is how Nisbet saw these two terms:

Power, by contrast [to authority], is external and based on force. It entails an effort to exact obedience or compliance of others to the will of one or more person in a way not derived from the roles or statues of the aggregate. Thus, power tends to be monistic and indiscriminate, with uniform effects, whereas authority by its nature is pluralistic, with multiform effects. Power arises, Nisbet says, only when authority breaks down.

It does not take much to see that without authority society would parish. Mankind has an inegalitarian nature. All men, for instance, cannot be business owners. Some just do not have the ability. Under the free market, contra statism and its political hierarchy of the usage of power, it produces a hierarchy that awards excellence in servicing others. Something of which is mutually beneficial and reinforcing to all individuals, of all talents and intelligence levels, in a society. To get "on top," so to speak, one must serve his fellow man. Hence there exists in free firms hierarchical authority. There has to be. In the free market at large there is a general hierarchy.

Capitalism and the free market, more specifically, is all about an institutional setting. Once this is seen and understood it becomes clear that the atomistic individual and egalitarian individual is an absent and mythical individual. They do not exist in relation to any internal market institution in an atomistic sense or an egalitarian sense having equal authority vis-à-vis others. There is not the hint of democratic values. It may be heresy to say this, but focusing too much on pure individualism and nothing else is destructive. Something too many libertarians fall into.

Children, living with their parents and under their private property, could never develop into mature adults without good parental authority. Therefore in the same regards there is a hierarchy in family*. (Children cannot be said to be equal to their parents in authority!)

*[As Robert Nisbet wrote, today's "disorganization of the modern family," and the loss of much of its private authority, is the result from the "absorption of its functions ... chiefly (by) the state." And, as he said, the family is the most important molecule to society.]

In communities, large and small, there are leaders who are better at organizing functions and resolving disputes than others. Schools have teacher authority figures. In religion, there are also leaders and authority figures. There are thus layers of authority hierarchically structured. But these men, in a free market, do not have the ability to tax or coerce anyone. In addition, many of these authority figures are in constant competition with each other.

A look into private property also shows that such property has an "internal law." It is also something, by its very nature, inegalitarian. Its ownership is inegalitarian. Furthermore, private property does not form a vacuum, or a chaotic free-for-all of open access in terms of accessibility and/or rules of usage, like that of public property nor become detached from bourgeoisie moral and social values. It does not create a drone of detached zombie-like individuals walking about.

It is also important to understand that a free society, as I am describing, allows a harmony between different people, with different beliefs and values. Men do not need a uniform one-size-fits-all set of rules or dictates. They do not need it with purchasing goods and services on the market today. They would not need it if law were to be private. Allowing family households to associate with who they wish to associate with or apply to themselves this or that law (e.g., pure libertarian natural law, Catholic law, Jewish, a secular form of law, etc.) would remove conflict between people. There would no longer be conflict, for instance, between secular versus religion in State monopoly law (or on public property, for that matter).

The replacement of such a society is one where authority, and a unique "authority" development of power or coercive violence, is placed into the managerial, all centralized, State. In not abandoning State monopoly law for private, the result will just be the increasing diminishment of all societal institutions and private authority into central hands to be molded and deformed. It is the destruction of any and all community. By doing this, it is also sets into motion the atomized individual. To use a term from Brad Lowell Stone, even though the words are not exactly to my liking, a "communitarian traditionalist" has no place in a statist society.

For example, one crushing defeat to community, and private property rights in general, were State laws getting rid of covenants. They are a perfect illustration and example of a form of competitive and private law. For this reason it is understandable why the State would outlaw them. They are, at least indirectly, a form of competition to the State institution itself! It makes them, essentially, incompatible with statism and the managerial state.

This topic brings us to the last articles. Yet another strength to freedom is that it will eliminate any problems of forced integration and forced exclusion. See  “Community by Force” by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. They would disappear because all property would be privately owned. There would be no such thing as an immigration problem because all people would be invited into their communities. (Trespassing being against property norms.) At the same time, though, there would be the tendency to promote an all-inclusive complex division of labor to bring people together in the market place. Free trade between all would exist.

To understand where communities typically spring from and how the market's spontaneous order of movement would generally tend to work out, you can see  “Diversity Is Strength! It’s Also…Oh, Wait, Make That ‘Weakness’” by Steve Sailer.

One more mention worthy article would be Mr. Rockwell's “Capitalism and Culture.” It is a bit off-topic from this, but interesting nonetheless.

Dahr Jamail writes not to get taken by all the talk in talk radio.

Read his article "2007 Worst Year Yet in Iraq."

2008 does not look any better, either.

(Sending billions of dollars to dictators, like in Pakistan, is going swell too.)

***

Leaving Behind the Ideological Drug of Neoconservatism

According to conventional "left" versus "right" gibberish from folks like Mr. Rush Limbaugh, I must be some kind of commie. It is part of the neocon mindless view that "You are either with us or against us." And, my personal favorite, "If you don't like Bush or the war, move to Russia [or thereabout]."

When (if) Hillary Clinton (or O-bomb-a) becomes president, then, gosh, I hope the mainstream left-liberal uses the same kind of rhetoric against their "opposition."

Jeffrey Tucker and Thomas Woods made a good point while they were talking to each other about Woods' latest book on American history. It was about the intellectual development of a man politically. When one is very young he first finds out that there are (seemingly) two mainstream political views ("left" and "right") and then finds out one of those does not seem to fit him. Subsequently he joins the "opposite" group and assumes his views equals theirs or should equal theirs. If he is able to see through the collectivist nonsense and its slavery, he usually joins the so-called "right." In so doing, however, he takes what could be referred to as a binary view of politics. Everything becomes an "R." vs. "D." debate, in Limbaugh fashion. He sees political debate through these lenses. Thus, if someone is against the Iraq War, he then attacks this gentleman as a pinko commie and someone who is probably a Clinton supporter.

Then something opens the door to move pass this. This is something that a book by Woods can do. His 33 Questions About American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask has a chapter showing that the three most important traditional conservatives, being Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver and Robert Nisbet, had views that were, in different strengths, anti-militaristic. As Mr. Tucker said in the above interview with Dr. Woods, Nisbet was "amazing" in his critique on the subject. It is difficult to argue against that. I very much agree with Tucker's sentiments.

(As Woods says in the interview, he, as I, has some disagreements with these three gentlemen, but they were serious and intelligent scholars not to be dismissed and surely not to be forgotten, as they have today.)

For example, what "conservative" today would say this...?

All war of any appreciable length have a secularizing effect upon engaged societies, a diminution of the authority of old religious and moral values and a parallel elevation of new utilitarian, hedonistic, or pragmatic values. Wars, to be successfully fought, demand a reduction in the taboos regarding life, dignity, and property, family, and religion; there must be nothing of merely moral nature left standing between fighting forces and victory, not even, or especially, taboos on sexual encounters. Wars have an individualizing effect upon their involved societies, a loosening of the accustomed social bond in favor of a tightening of the military ethic. Military, or at least war-born, relationships among individuals lend to supersede relationships of family, parish, and ordinary walks of life. Ideas of chastity, modesty, decorum, respectability change quickly in wartime.

The great Robert Nisbet in The Present Age, one of my very favorite books. The first book I read of Nisbet.

So a book like 33 Questions can help open the door for young people to see there is an alternative to the binary view. That there were major scholars who said that militarism as such is actually not that good for conservatism (or libertarianism). That there were thoughtful men who had these views and were far from being "pinko commies." And it is this door that can lead to a young man to read someone like Nisbet or Richard Weaver. And that is where the real education begins.

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.

Private property is not just the building block to civilization in a directly "economic" sense (so to speak), but also in a familial sense. The great-late Robert Nisbet, a conservative sociologist and historian, realized that there is a strong connection between the institution of family and private property. Society, he said in Conservatism: Dream and Reality (see Lew Rockwell's mention of this book: "Conservatism One Can Respect"), is based on property and voluntary authority. This produces liberty and order. Liberty being the mother of order.

He wrote:

Property is more than external appendage to man, mere inanimate servant of human need. It is, above everything else, civilization, the very condition of man's humanness, his superiority over the entire natural world.

Indeed...

Much of the [traditional] conservative veneration for the family lies in its historic affinity between family and property. It is usually the rule for any family to seek as much advantage for its children and other members as possible. . . . There is no issue over which conservative has fought liberal and socialist as strenuously as on threats through law to loosen property from family grasp, by taxation or by any other form of redistribution.

In another paragraph he quoted Paul Elmer More....

"To the civilized man," wrote Paul Elmer More in 1915, "the rights of property are more important than the right of life." After all, More goes on, life is a primitive thing; that is, no more than the biological basis of the values we cherish as civilized. "Nearly all that makes it more significant to us than to the beast is associated with our possessions----with property, all the way from the food we share with the beasts, to the most refined products of the human imagination."

Family (i.e., "traditional family") is obviously the institution that sustains society, and family is sustained through property. Citadels of family should also be citadels of private property. It is property that is the tonic of family, combined with a public in possession of correct ideas of a social and cultural nature.

Once upon a time a leading conservative scholar named Richard M. Weaver wrote a book in 1948 called Ideas Have Consequences. It is a short book, but very dense philosophically. One reason he wrote this book was in disgust of the use of atomic weapons in World War II. This event, he believed, was part and parcel will the loss of any moral sense. Weaver laid out his case that people have abandoned any sense of "logical realism" to find transcend truths. Rather we have "nominalism" and thus nihilism. Moral truths and rectitude vanish in such a climate. Decadence fills the culture. This move produces wars with no restraints.

Here Richard Weaver comments on the atomic-bomb project and the use of such weapons:

At Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a force of seventy thousand persons labored at an undertaking whose nature they knew little or nothing about; in fact, wartime propaganda had been so effective that they took pride in their ignorance and boasted of it as a badge of honor or as a sign of co-operation-----in what? It is just possible that a few, and I should be willing to say a very few, had they known that their efforts were being directed to the slaughter of noncombatants on a scale never before contemplated, or to a perfection of brutality as we have defined the term, might have refused complicity. Perhaps they would have had some concept of war as an institution which forbids aimless killing; perhaps they would have had a secret feeling that the world is morally designed and that offenses of this kind, under whatever auspices committed, bring retribution; in any case, it is just possible that a few of these anonymous toilers would have given a thought to the larger responsibility. It was rumored that among the world's elite concerned with atomic research that there were a few who declined to participate in an operation so contrary to the canons of civilization. . . . Imagine the modern state considering a referendum to conscience! The bomb was an unparalleled means; was this not enough? Just so does modern industrial and political organization, which is irrational hierarchy, make the citizen an ethical eunuch. If Thoreau felt, in his time, that it was a disgrace even to be associated with the government, what would he have felt in this? These corrupt bureaucracies are contemptuous of the people, in whose name they so piously speak.

Would such a learned man get a forum today at the various mainstream conservative outlets?

A year or two ago I remember hearing Rush Limbaugh celebrating dropping the atom bombs. It was a sick spectacle.

. . .

Truth is the first thing that must be extirpated in war. It cannot be allowed to get in the way of any government's war. Hence the public must be purged of truth and any objective morality. In its place must be a whipped up war nationalistic spirit. Myths of greatness and infallibility push aside objective observations. And if there is any evidence of some kind of emotional connection between a high percentage of people to their relationship with statism, war patriotism and the myths that surround that patriotism would be very high up on the list of evidence. In plain sight this was seen in the lead up to the Iraq War. For example, Charles Goyette, a talk radio show host in Phoenix, Arizona, was one of the lone voices bringing a anti-war message during this time. He was called everything from "hating America" to being a "terrorist lover." Mr. Goyette was one of many people who were attacked by this "war spirit," so to speak. (Read "How to Lose Your Job in Talk Radio" by Charles Goyette.)

This war nationalism and the myths of war, particularly in the United States, was written about by another leading scholar in conservatism. His name was Robert Nisbet, a sociologist and historian. A flip through his last two books (among others) reveals his thoughts on what the intellectual basis of conservative thought is on questions of war and peace.

He believed that World War I was the genesis, or at least when this myth came to a forefront, of the view that the United States government cannot lose in war. It derived from the false assumption that the U.S. government "almost single-handedly, won the war," wrote Nisbet in The Present Age: Progress and Anarchy in Modern America. This is the "Great American Myth."

The Great American Myth gave birth to other myths: Can Do, Know How, and No Fault, myths which abide to this minute in America and yield up such disasters as Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Lebanon, and Grenada.

A few pages later he wrote this:

Add to what has thus far been said about the Great Myth and American Know How the attribute of No Fault, and we have the myth fairly well identified. Presidents, secretaries, and generals and admirals in America seemingly subscribe to the doctrine that no fault ever attaches to policy and operations. This No Fault conviction prevents them from taking too seriously such notorious foul-ups as Desert One, Grenada, Lebanon, and now the Persian Gulf.

It is this that one has to overcome to try to persuade men that the conventional wisdom is often wrong of matters of war and state. Life too often shows that it is the unconventional wisdom that has the truth on its side. So it does in the infinitely immoral and unnecessary, since Japan wanted to surrender before the event, dropping of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan during World War II.

In this goal I'll use (primarily) Mr. John V. Denson for help...

In his article "The Hiroshima Myth" he writes:

The stark fact is that the Japanese leaders, both military and civilian, including the Emperor, were willing to surrender in May of 1945 if the Emperor could remain in place and not be subjected to a war crimes trial after the war. This fact became known to President Truman as early as May of 1945.

It is true that Japan government was not willing to surrender unconditionally. They were not willing to give up their Emperor. "The Japanese religion," writes Denson, has "the belief that all the Emperors were the direct descendants of the sun goddess, Amaterasu."

Denson quotes a passage of a book called The Decision to Use the Bomb by Gar Alperocitz, which I will excerpt:

We have noted a series of Japanese peace feelers in Switzerland which OSS Chief William Donovan reported to Truman in May and June [1945]. These suggested, even at this point, that the U.S. demand for unconditional surrender might well be the only serious obstacle to peace.

...At the center of the explorations, as we also saw, was Allen Dulles, chief of OSS operations in Switzerland (and subsequently Director of the CIA). In his 1966 book "The Secret Surrender", Dulles recalled that "On July 20, 1945, under instructions from Washington, I went to the Potsdam Conference and reported there to Secretary [of War] Stimson on what I had learned from Tokyo – they desired to surrender if they could retain the Emperor and their constitution as a basis for maintaining discipline and order in Japan after the devastating news of surrender became known to the Japanese people." [Emphasis mine]

It was "documented by Alperocitz that Stimson reported this directly to Truman." To continue:

Alperovitz further points out in detail the documentary proof that every top presidential civilian and military advisor, with the exception of James Byrnes, along with Prime Minister Churchill and his top British military leadership, urged Truman to revise the unconditional surrender policy so as to allow the Japanese to surrender and keep their Emperor. All this advice was given to Truman prior to the Potsdam Proclamation which occurred on July 26, 1945.

And here is Gary G. Kohls in "Whitewashing Hiroshima: The Uncritical Glorification of American Militarism":

Admiral William Leahy, top military aide to President Truman, said in his war memoirs, "I Was There": "It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons. My own feeling is that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages." And General Dwight Eisenhower agreed. [Emphasis mine.]

Gary Kohls talks about the destruction:

An estimated 80,000 innocent civilians – plus 20,000 young essentially weaponless Japanese conscripts – died instantly in the Hiroshima bombing. Hundreds of thousands suffered agonizing burns, leukemia and infections for the rest of their shortened lives, and generations of the survivor's progeny inherited horrible radiation-induced illnesses, cancers and premature death. What has been covered up is the fact that 12 American Navy pilots, their existence well known to the US command, were incinerated in the Hiroshima jail on Aug. 6.

The 75,000 Nagasaki victims were virtually all innocent civilians, except for the inhabitants of an allied POW camp near Nagasaki's ground zero. They were incinerated, carbonized, then evaporated, by a scientific experiment carried out by obedient, unaware soldiers. The War Dept. knew of the existence of the POWs but, when informed, simply replied: "Targets previously assigned for Centerboard (atomic bomb mission code name) remain unchanged." [Emphasis mine.]

Japan would have surrendered, if the U.S. agreed to let them keep the emperor. But in the end this is exactly what happened. The terms of surrender were exactly how the Japanese government wanted it to be! Dropping the bombs was needless bloodshed and frankly evil.

John Denson closes with this:

Now that we live in the nuclear age and there are enough nuclear weapons spread around the world to destroy civilization, we need to face the fact that America is the only country to have used this awful weapon and that it was unnecessary to have done so. If Americans would come to recognize the truth, rather than the myth, it might cause such a moral revolt that we would take the lead throughout the world in realizing that wars in the future may well become nuclear, and therefore all wars must be avoided at almost any cost. Hopefully, our knowledge of science has not outrun our ability to exercise prudent and humane moral and political judgment to the extent that we are destined for extermination.

I recommend you all read the above two articles for more details. Here is further online reading:

• Remembering Hiroshima by David R. Henderson
• The Bombing of Nagasaki August 9, 1945: The Untold Story by Gary G. Kohls
• A Military Chaplain Repents by Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
• Hillary, Hiroshima, and Hubris: Justifying mass murder by Justin Raimondo
  

Traditional Catholics should be happy on Robert Nisbet's comments on Vatican II:

The greatest religious event of our age will prove to have been the signal transformation of the Roman Catholic Church by the Vatican Council summoned by John XXIII in 1960. For the Roman Catholic Church was the last real stronghold of the kind of authority that lies in religious institutions, in ritual and in sacrament. To an astonishing degree it had resisted the acids of modernity which in the Protestant faiths had virtually destroyed the sense of visible community in religion and that had driven more and more of their members either out of religion altogether or to the work of further secularizing these faiths in the interests of either politics or Mammon. I do no think it too strong a statement to say that in large areas of Protestantism----and the same applies to Jewish areas also----the capacity of religion to inspire respect, to provide spiritual anchor, to offer community worthy of the name, had just about vanished. Only, really, in the Roman Catholic church did ritual, liturgy, and sacrament remain vivid, a fact attested to in some part by the rising number of conversions to Catholicism from Protestant and nonreligious sectors.

Vatican II changed that, though we cannot be sure at this juncture exactly how much. If the Roman church, by virtue of the acts of this momentous council, goes the way of the Protestant churches, if escalating secularism is accompanied there as it has been in the Protestant faiths by loss of visible community and authority in the vital sphere of faith, then one more wall of the political community will have been weakened. Religions like Christianity and Judaism were once both strong in the authority of the sacred, and in this fact lay their internal strength and also their extraordinary value to the whole idea of the political community, together with its liberties and rights, in Western society.

I cannot help thinking that the often mindless nostalgia that has come over American society during recent decades is related to the loss of the sacred and of the power of ritual in human affairs. The great effect of ritual is its capacity to bind past and present in a single act, with the emphasis, of course, on the present. In ritual the past, and also by implication the future, are enacted, but, as I say, in the present. There is nothing in ritual that leads one to look back at all, least of all fondly, on the past, for it is the merit of ritual that it keeps the past around in our daily existence. But when ritual declines and disappears the sterile spirit of archaism or nostalgia takes command. Nostalgia is the rust of memory. Having, as it were, lost the past from our present, we look back on it fondly, and so often vapidly. It is a poor substitute for the sacred.

Some Links:

• Fish Eaters
• Catholic Tradition
  
• Keep The Faith
  
• Society of Saint Pius X

Traditional Catholic Articles at LRC:

• "The Catholic Church's great divide" by Steven Greenhut (orregister.com)
  
• "PC in the Catholic Church" by Tom Woods
• "What the Next Pope Should Do" by Lew Rockwell
• "Pius XII And John Paul II" by Pat Buchanan

Pro-Capitalist Catholicism:

• "A Catholic Looks at the State" by Don Mathews
• "Catholic Social Teaching and Economic Law: An Unresolved Tension" by Tom Woods
• "Three Catholic Cheers for Capitalism"
  
• "Morality and Economic Law: Toward a Reconciliation"
  
• Read Woods' book: The Church and the Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy

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.

Personal Stuff --- I’m unfortunately under the weather. Right now my energy is around 50 percent. So I have been sleeping, napping and watching television.

Let me type this up before I am not able to do so...

Neoconservatism --- I always hear people use the term “neocon.” Liberals especially like to use this to denounce their enemies. But how many of them actually know what it means? Do they even give it any thought? I doubt it.

I once heard a liberal refer to LewRockwell.com as “neocon” because of a piece about privatizing public utilities! Ha! Ha. Ha.

Anna Nicole --- Requiescat in pace.

Now I mean no disrespect to the dead ---- Rest in Peace I say ----, but who is this person? This is how out of touch I am with pop culture. And honestly I am not interested in finding out. She is, no doubt, a product of our slut culture.

TAC --- Lead Article (not yet online)

When I feel better I’ll type something about this. Paul Weyrich and William Lind talk about their ideal version of what the next conservatism should represent. While there were things I can agree with, overall I found it pretty disappointing and weak.

Lew Rockwell Article --- The Left Is Useless
And the Democrats are doomed. Article by Lew Rockwell.

Joe Sobran Article --- President Paul?

Antiwar Radio: Charles Goyette Interviews Chalmers Johnson

Robert Nisbet --- When I start feeling good, I will start to read some more of Robert Nisbet.

  Daniel McCarthy says:
      "Nisbet exposes how the State undermines the institutions of family, church and civil society.  Nisbet didn't call himself a libertarian, but the implications of his work are profoundly anti-statist."