← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · vytis
Thread ID: 16839 | Posts: 41 | Started: 2005-02-19
2005-02-19 16:27 | User Profile
Jew writer Ayn Rand (Rosenbaum) once said that fiction is a much more powerful weapon to sell ideas than non-fiction. Well if true Christians fell for it.
By accepting and then propagating evil Jewry's fictitious 'chosen people' myth, coupled with their blind allegiance to anti-Christ Israel, they have thereby given credibility to the greatest lies ever put over another race of people.
Many professing Christians have in a sense, to the eyes of the rest of the world, made God Almighty an accomplice to World Jewry's racial sins and crimes against humanity...A sacrilege I'm not sure ever will, or can be forgiven.
'Wer kennt den Jude kennt den Teufel' ('Whoever knows the Jew knows the Devil')
2005-02-20 03:39 | User Profile
[QUOTE=vytis]Jew writer Ayn Rand (Rosenbaum) once said that fiction is a much more powerful weapon to sell ideas than non-fiction. Well if true Christians fell for it.
By accepting and then propagating evil Jewry's fictitious 'chosen people' myth, coupled with their blind allegiance to anti-Christ Israel, they have thereby given credibility to the greatest lies ever put over another race of people.
Many professing Christians have in a sense, to the eyes of the rest of the world, made God Almighty an accomplice to World Jewry's racial sins and crimes against humanity...A sacrilege I'm not sure ever will, or can be forgiven.
'Wer kennt den Jude kennt den Teufel' ('Whoever knows the Jew knows the Devil')[/QUOTE]
Trivia: almost all the top libertarians are/were Jewish: Von Mises, Rothbard, Rand, etc.
Libertarianism is good for the Jews. Its race-blind, nothing-is-taboo ideology is perfect for weakening Western culture.
2005-02-20 04:22 | User Profile
I have no problem with the State remaining out of the lives of the community in general. By their nature politicians are crooks so they should be defanged to the utmost degree and that is done by taking away their tax base (money) and power. From the State's point of view massive immigration is a good thing because it quite simply creates more slaves to pay taxes.
2005-02-20 04:48 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Bardamu]I have no problem with the State remaining out of the lives of the community in general. By their nature politicians are crooks so they should be defanged to the utmost degree and that is done by taking away their tax base (money) and power. From the State's point of view massive immigration is a good thing because it quite simply creates more slaves to pay taxes.[/QUOTE]
Oh, sorry, I didn't know that you were a libertarian....
2005-02-20 07:19 | User Profile
I see nothing wrong with "the State" ... provided it is a pro-White State. However, we currently live under an anti-White State. If "freedom" means the freedom for White children to act like Negroes, then to hell with freedom. If "freedom" means the right for millions of non-Whites to invade Our country, then to hell with freedom. If "freedom" means the right for a US-based company to outsource its services to foreign nations, thus denying Americans jobs, then to hell with freedom. Perhaps we need a pro-White dictator, to keep us on the White, and right, path.
2005-02-20 07:41 | User Profile
Name one good state in the history of the world.
2005-02-20 07:50 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Kurt]I see nothing wrong with "the State" ... provided it is a pro-White State. However, we currently live under an anti-White State. If "freedom" means the freedom for White children to act like Negroes, then to hell with freedom. If "freedom" means the right for millions of non-Whites to invade Our country, then to hell with freedom. If "freedom" means the right for a US-based company to outsource its services to foreign nations, thus denying Americans jobs, then to hell with freedom. Perhaps we need a pro-White dictator, to keep us on the White, and right, path.[/QUOTE]
And what is this pro-White dictactor going to do to citizens who disagree with him?
2005-02-20 07:53 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Bardamu]And what is this pro-White dictactor going to do to citizens who disagree with him?[/QUOTE] Anyone who disagrees with him is free to leave, and live among non-Whites.
2005-02-20 07:56 | User Profile
What if this tyrant is misguided and makes foolish decisions?
2005-02-20 08:07 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Bardamu]What if this tyrant is misguided and makes foolish decisions?[/QUOTE] What kind of foolish decisions? Is banning any and all media that is anti-White foolish? Is banning inter-racial marriage foolish? Any decision may be considered "foolish" by some, but they will be free to leave.
2005-02-20 08:29 | User Profile
After the war, von Mises briefly became an adjunct member of the new republican government of [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany"][color=#0000ff]German[/color][/url] Austria (the name carried by the Austrian state until [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September"][color=#0000ff]September[/color][/url] [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919"][color=#0000ff]1919[/color][/url]). He was the authority on financial matters pertaining to foreign affairs. But his main practical achievement in this period was to persuade socialist leader [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Bauer"][color=#0000ff]Otto Bauer[/color][/url], a former friend and fellow student, not to attempt a [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolshevik"][color=#0000ff]Bolshevik[/color][/url] coup. He also published a book explaining the collapse of multicultural Austria-Hungary. In [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nation%2C_Staat_und_Wirtschaft&action=edit"][color=#0000ff]Nation, Staat und Wirtschaft[/color][/url] (1919; translated as [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nation%2C_State%2C_and_Economy&action=edit"][color=#0000ff]Nation, State, and Economy[/color][/url], [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983"][color=#0000ff]1983[/color][/url]), he argued that German imperialism had resulted from applying the power of the State to solve the problems of the multicultural communities that prevailed in the eastern provinces of Germany and Austria.
In the fall of 1919, von Mises wrote his most famous essay, on "economic calculation in the socialist commonwealth." He argued that a socialist leadership lacked the essential tool for the rational allocation of resources--[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem"][color=#0000ff]economic calculation[/color][/url]--and that only the money prices of a [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist"][color=#0000ff]capitalist[/color][/url] economy make it possible to compare alternative investment projects in terms of a common unit. Two years later he published a treatise on socialism ([url="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Die_Gemeinwirtschaft&action=edit"][color=#0000ff]Die Gemeinwirtschaft[/color][/url], [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1922"][color=#0000ff]1922[/color][/url]), which had a decisive impact on a whole generation of rising intellectual leaders--men such as [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._A._Hayek"][color=#0000ff]F. A. Hayek[/color][/url] and [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_R%F6pke"][color=#0000ff]Wilhelm Röpke[/color][/url], who after [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II"][color=#0000ff]World War II[/color][/url] would lead the nascent [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberal"][color=#0000ff]neoliberal[/color][/url] movement.
. . . . . . . In the U.S. he became the spiritus rector of the renascent [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian"][color=#0000ff]libertarian[/color][/url] movement, to which he gave a distinct Austrian School flavor. Close ties to the [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_for_Economic_Education"][color=#0000ff]Foundation for Economic Education[/color][/url], the [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Volker_Fund"][color=#0000ff]William Volker Fund[/color][/url], and the [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Earhart_Foundation&action=edit"][color=#0000ff]Earhart Foundation[/color][/url] gave him the necessary organizational and financial backing. Von Mises's influence reached a peak in the years following the publication of the English version of his praxeological treatise under the title [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Action"][color=#0000ff]Human Action[/color][/url] ([url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1949"][color=#0000ff]1949[/color][/url]). In the [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950s"][color=#0000ff]1950s[/color][/url], his NYU seminar produced many important intellectual leaders of postwar [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism"][color=#0000ff]libertarianism[/color][/url], such as [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard"][color=#0000ff]Murray Rothbard[/color][/url], [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Sennholz"][color=#0000ff]Hans Sennholz[/color][/url], [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Reisman"][color=#0000ff]George Reisman[/color][/url], [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ralph_Raico&action=edit"][color=#0000ff]Ralph Raico[/color][/url], [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Liggio"][color=#0000ff]Leonard Liggio[/color][/url], and [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Kirzner"][color=#0000ff]Israel Kirzner[/color][/url].
[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises[/url]
2005-02-20 08:30 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Kurt]What kind of foolish decisions? Is banning any and all media that is anti-White foolish? Is banning inter-racial marriage foolish? Any decision may be considered "foolish" by some, but they will be free to leave.[/QUOTE]
Most tyrannies prevent their subjects from leaving, or they would soon have no-one left to rule over.
2005-02-20 08:33 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Kurt]What kind of foolish decisions? Is banning any and all media that is anti-White foolish? Is banning inter-racial marriage foolish? Any decision may be considered "foolish" by some, but they will be free to leave.[/QUOTE]
The community can make those decisions. It not necessary to have a dictator to achieve the goals of white survival.
2005-02-20 08:48 | User Profile
I have read and respect all your comments, especially yours, Mr. Bardamu. I have nothing more to say.
I am a simple man. I have my own vision of a "White utopia." It may be just a fantasy on my part. I am not sure how it would work in reality. However, I can dream, can't I?
2005-02-20 11:40 | User Profile
Franco...Thanks for moving my post totally off topic! :disgust:
'Everywhere one sees the directing and destroying hand of Judaism' + Czar Nicholas II +
2005-02-20 12:52 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Bardamu]The community can make those decisions. It not necessary to have a dictator to achieve the goals of white survival.[/QUOTE] The community must have a way to take common action, and the government provides that. As for naming one good state in history, I would say there have been many, although it depends on your criteria. I would say that a good state allows its people to lead peaceful lives, protects them from enemies, and advances an international strategy that contributes to the long-term existence and health of the nation. By those criteria, many of the monarchies of Europe have been good governments. If your criteria is that people should be completely 'free' (with 'freedom' being defined in a strictly Enlightenment sense) then you would have a hard time finding a state that would be considered a good one. But that is simply because that ideal of freedom is corrosive to community, culture, and peace.
2005-02-20 15:00 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Kurt]I have read and respect all your comments, especially yours, Mr. Bardamu. I have nothing more to say.
I am a simple man. I have my own vision of a "White utopia." It may be just a fantasy on my part. I am not sure how it would work in reality. However, I can dream, can't I?[/QUOTE]
I would take your White dictatorship over what we have today, Kurt. There also are some real problems with libertarianism, especially the question of imports. Libertarianism with a capital L is probably impossible for a White republic, but then I'm certainly no expert one way or the other. I think that minimal government is the way to go, that is all.
2005-02-20 20:47 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Kurt]I see nothing wrong with "the State" ... provided it is a pro-White State. However, we currently live under an anti-White State. If "freedom" means the freedom for White children to act like Negroes, then to hell with freedom. If "freedom" means the right for millions of non-Whites to invade Our country, then to hell with freedom. If "freedom" means the right for a US-based company to outsource its services to foreign nations, thus denying Americans jobs, then to hell with freedom. Perhaps we need a pro-White dictator, to keep us on the White, and right, path.[/QUOTE]
Very true. Who is in charge of a given political system is much more important than the nature of the system itself. If the state, corporate, and mass media apparatus that exists today were working to conserve and promote traditional western institutions and peoples rather than subvert or destroy them, would anybody here be complaining about their power?
"Libertarianism" and "anarchism" are what factions who are out of power favor, because it strips their enemies of power, just as "pacifism" is the stance to take when those in power are waging war against your friends and allies. To adopt a strictly anti-government or anti-war stance as a desired, final end rather than as a conditional means of combatting the enemy ideology is like hoping for rain so that you get to use your umbrella every day. "Anarchism" and "pacifism" are simply tools, strategically useful, but made to be jettisoned once your faction attains power. When and where Marxists were out of power, they were "anarchists" who talked of the state "withering away.," and they were "pacifists" when war was being waged against Marxist nationsl Once in power, they built a state apparatus to enforce their worldviews, and warmongered abroad for the same reason. Along the same lines, "libertarian" and "small government" racialists find it useful to adopt this pose now because it is in our interests to disempower a hostile state apparatus. This doesn't mean that racialists and others on the far right shouldn't use that state apparatus if and when they attain power.
2005-02-21 07:21 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]Who is in charge of a given political system is much more important than the nature of the system itself. [/QUOTE]
Or as Joseph Stalin, of happy memory, put it "the cadres determine everything."
If Jews run the Party apparatus, then you'll get genocidal anti-Russian policies, no matter what ideological label the Party carries and regardless of any universalist "brotherhood of man" agitprop it may be spewing.
If Russian nationalists run the Party apparatus, then they'll round up all the Jewish Bolsheviks and have them shot in show trials, without even having to change the label.
The crafty old Georgian.
One of the great cynics of history.
As an aspiring cynic, I can't help but tip my hat to him.
2005-02-21 18:30 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Very true. Who is in charge of a given political system is much more important than the nature of the system itself.[/QUOTE] In the short term, that is true. But in the longer term, the nature of the system is of supreme importance, because it is the nature of the system that protects against a change in control. To the extent we accept a "state" in the sense defined by Weber as involving a territorial monopoly on coercion, our days are numbered. The double standard inherent in the notion of "legitimate" coercion means that any community governed by a Weberian state has no moral code, and the absence of a moral code leads to dissolution of the community.
2005-02-21 18:44 | User Profile
[QUOTE=mwdallas]In the short term, that is true. But in the longer term, the nature of the system is of supreme importance, because it is the nature of the system that protects against a change in control. To the extent we accept a "state" in the sense defined by Weber as involving a territorial monopoly on coercion, are days are numbered. The double standard inherent in the notion of "legitimate" coercion means that any community governed by a Weberian state has no moral code, and the absence of a moral code leads to dissolution of the community.[/QUOTE]
Libertarianism/anarchism as a desired end in itself is what happens when people internalize and fetishize political methodology and confuse that which is a convenient strategy today with what is actually a workable end. It's a matter of strategy: when the enemy controls the state, be anti-state. When the enemy wages war, be a pacifist. Common sense dictates that these things should go out the window once a faction friendly to your interests comes to power.
The question should not be one of how the government is run as such, but rather whether we are to have a government that subverts Western institutions or one which upholds them. That a "state" will exist is a given, your "stateless society" (like the "classless society" that Marxists daydream about) only exists in primitive tribal societies and in the naive scribblings of libertarian theorists. Since nations emerged from Medieval fiefdoms, there has always been a "state," (the fiefdoms themselves were also "states," albeit on a small scale).
Libertarians who daydream of a stateless society have about the same grasp of reality as Marxists who dream of a classless society - absolutely none. Pray tell, in the absence of a state, who will be responsible for national defense, law enforcement, courts of law, etc? Will these things only be limited to the wealthy individuals who can purchase these services? What will stop them from "coercing others" once they have purchased these services? Who will enforce the "moral code" which you claim can only exist in the absence of a government? I suspect that your pie in the sky society, if implemented, will basically degenerate into rival gangs of warlords, unless everyone agrees to "play fair" in your utopian vision (yet another way in which libertarianism is the mirror image of Marxism, i.e. the assumption that people won't cheat in the absence of a punitive state apparatus is the same as the assumption that everyone will share honestly in a commune).
2005-02-21 18:53 | User Profile
[QUOTE]The question should not be one of how the government is run as such, but rather whether we are to have a government that subverts Western institutions or one which upholds them. [/QUOTE] The two questions are largely the same. [QUOTE]That a "state" will exist is a given, your "stateless society" (like the "classless society" that Marxists daydream about) only exists in primitive tribal societies and in the naive scribblings of libertarian theorists. [/QUOTE] This is true, but the conclusion you draw from this fact does not follow. One might also say that a "crimeless society" has never existed, but that is no reason for capitulation to crime. We must use our knowledge to achieve a political community as close to the ideal as possible -- and that means rejecting the "state" in principle, even if its eradication in practice may never occur.
2005-02-21 19:12 | User Profile
[QUOTE=mwdallas] This is true, but the conclusion you draw from this fact does not follow. One might also say that a "crimeless society" has never existed, but that is no reason for capitulation to crime. We must use our knowledge to achieve a political community as close to the ideal as possible -- and that means rejecting the "state" in principle, even if its eradication in practice may never occur.[/QUOTE]
Other than libertarian daydreamers, most people don't accept your premise that the existence of a state is in itself evil. So I reject your premise that this is an "ideal," as my "ideal" is to have a state that represents my interests rather than my enemy's. The most madenning thing about libertarians and Marxists is that they start with a dogma ("the state is evil," "social class is evil") and claim it to be a self-evident truth, to the point where they can't even conceive that there starting point itself needs justification.
That this current state is evil does not prove that all states are by nature evil, any more than the corruption of an individual businessman proves that private enterprise is by nature corrupt. Does the Enron affair "prove" that private property is by its very nature a great evil that must be abolished? If you're a Marxist it does, of course, because a dogmatist always picks and choses what suits their pre-conceived notions and pre-packaged ideology. Fortunately, there exist schools of thought in political theory that reflect not idealized daydreams and solipsistic ideologies, but real world power politics. I wish every Rand aficionado would study Machiavelli and Hobbes (particularly the latter), two thinkers whose ideas were based on real-world politics. So far, no libertarian theorist has refuted Hobbes, so instead they resort to rhetoric and solipsism, claiming that it is somehow self-evident that they are morally right and Hobbes is morally wrong. Much the same logic that animates Marxists, really.
So, once again, I ask libertarians the following questions:
1) In the absence of a state, what institutions will be responsible for national defense and law enforcement? Will the government's armies, courts of law, and police be replaced by private militias and private courts of law (as if the latter makes any sense at all) owned by those wealthy enough to afford them? If so, what is to prevent wealthy individuals who can afford private militias from being as coercive as the most oppressive state apparatus? And wouldn't these private militias and their leaders take on the very functions of the state that you want to see abolished? Personally, I have more faith in getting a fair trial even under a corrupt state apparatus such as our own (where checks and balances still exist) than being subject to the whim of a wealthy warlord's privately hired goon squad (which is what "law enforcement" in an anarcho-libertarian society would be in practice, unless you guys can come up with some other alternative that doesn't involve magic).
2) You claim that a "moral code" (as you define it) cannot co-exist with a state. What "moral code" are you referring to, and what makes that "moral code" absolute apart from your personal hang-ups? I suspect that your "moral code" amounts to no more than saying "I don't like the idea of somebody forcing me to do something I don't want to do." In response to this, in the sort of warlord society that would emerge if anarchy was in place, you would be routinely forced to do things that you don't want to do. Furthermore, "I don't like this" isn't a good argument for moral absolutes, I "don't like" having to pay for food, shelter, and clothing, does this mean that theres' a moral imperative for me to have these things for free?
The point is, in the real world, you don't get something for nothing, just as in the real world you need some organized apparatus to protect individuals from the aggression of other groups and individuals, to pacify the "war of all against all" and allow for a peaceful society where people can do something other than fight for daily survival. Your analogy between the state and criminality breaks down (for all except those who accept libertarian dogma a priori) because the state was in many ways an institution that arose to curb criminality from within and from without.
2005-02-21 19:17 | User Profile
[QUOTE=mwdallas]One might also say that a "crimeless society" has never existed, but that is no reason for capitulation to crime. We must use our knowledge to achieve a political community as close to the ideal as possible -- and that means rejecting the "state" in principle, even if its eradication in practice may never occur.[/QUOTE]
Excellent points, Ben. It only makes sense that the more devolved and spread out state powers are then the less susceptible the entire community is to any kind of subversion or baneful influence. But, it seems to me that kind of 'state' will only work with high levels of personal or individual Christian morality. What's your answer for that?
2005-02-21 19:34 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]I suspect that your "moral code" amounts to no more than saying "I don't like the idea of somebody forcing me to do something I don't want to do."[/QUOTE]
Probably more like 'Live Free or Die'.
2005-02-21 19:48 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Texas Dissident]Probably more like 'Live Free or Die'.[/QUOTE]
The point is, you can live more free in a stable state where a balance of power holds various factions in check than you would in an anarchic society where might (and wealth) make right and where power shifts hands daily depending on which warlord has the most guns or the most money to pay off his gunmen.
2005-02-21 20:09 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]The point is, you can live more free in a stable state where a balance of power holds various factions in check than you would in an anarchic society where might (and wealth) make right and where power shifts hands daily depending on which warlord has the most guns or the most money to pay off his gunmen.[/QUOTE] Correct. The problem with most discussions of 'freedom' is that they beg the question -- freedom to do what? Libertarians love to talk about 'freedom of choice' but they never address this question. The act of choosing itself is not a virtue.
2005-02-22 01:17 | User Profile
[QUOTE]You claim that a "moral code" (as you define it) cannot co-exist with a state.[/QUOTE] You disagree with this, but then you prove my point: [QUOTE]Other than libertarian daydreamers, most people don't accept your premise that the existence of a state is in itself evil.[/QUOTE] How can such a premise be rejected? Only by rejecting morality, by saying that robbery is not wrong when perpetrated by a privileged class.
But privileging the state to commit crimes means that there is no community-wide moral code, but rather a Hobbesian war of all against all. It's one thing to say it's inevitable but quite another to say it's desirable.
2005-02-22 01:24 | User Profile
[QUOTE]The most madenning thing about libertarians and Marxists is that they start with a dogma ("the state is evil," "social class is evil") and claim it to be a self-evident truth, to the point where they can't even conceive that there starting point itself needs justification.[/QUOTE] Keep in mind that you're not addressing a libertarian or Marxist. But obviously, the state is evil to the extent it engages in evils, such as robbery. The point is -- even if we cannot eliminate the evil completely -- to structure things as intelligently and organically as possible so as to minimize the evil.
2005-02-22 01:37 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis] If Russian nationalists run the Party apparatus, then they'll round up all the Jewish Bolsheviks and have them shot in show trials, without even having to change the label. [/QUOTE] Doubt it was in explicit (or even implicit in people's minds) nationalist terms. Don't get carried away yet. If there was a breakdown along the ethnic lines, it was more due to the (dissapearing) Jew hold on power in the Bolshevik party.
And as mwdallas correctly points out, if the system is ****ed and is built on false premises, the cadres won't fix it (unless those cadres incidentally subvert the system). Case in point: the Soviet Union. It continued to be anti-Russian, despite ethnic Russians getting power after the show trials, by virtue of continuing to hold on to "international" marxist principles and trying to elevate the economies of shittystans while Russia proper was natural leader and should have owned the spoils rather than wasting ethnic Russian resources on the chimera of "creating the new entity, the Soviet man".
2005-02-22 01:40 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie] Pray tell, in the absence of a state, who will be responsible for national defense, law enforcement, courts of law, etc? [/QUOTE]
The government, that is who. It is the rightful duty of government to look after defense, law enforcement, and justice. One does not have to be cynical to be a libertarian. All one has to be is a strong believer that outside the domain of the above listed duties the state screws up everything is touches.
2005-02-22 01:41 | User Profile
[QUOTE]The point is, you can live more free in a stable state where a balance of power holds various factions in check than you would in an anarchic society where might (and wealth) make right and where power shifts hands daily depending on which warlord has the most guns or the most money to pay off his gunmen.[/QUOTE]
But a coercive state is inherently unstable. Checks and balances are the hallmarks of self-government, or a polis. A coercive state by definition lacks checks and balances sufficient to maintain the community's stability; it engages in coercion because it can, not because it must.
[QUOTE]...in the real world you need some organized apparatus to protect individuals from the aggression of other groups and individuals....[/QUOTE]
Absolutely, and the coercive state falls short of the ideal.
2005-02-22 02:00 | User Profile
[COLOR=Indigo][B][I] - "Libertarians who daydream of a stateless society have about the same grasp of reality as Marxists who dream of a classless society - absolutely none. Pray tell, in the absence of a state, who will be responsible for national defense, law enforcement, courts of law, etc? Will these things only be limited to the wealthy individuals who can purchase these services? What will stop them from "coercing others" once they have purchased these services? Who will enforce the "moral code" which you claim can only exist in the absence of a government?"[/I][/B][/COLOR]
The basic idea for both of these ideologies is [I]the denial of Original Sin[/I], that is, the fundamental human wickedness, the tendency of men to abuse their power and freedom.
The Bible teaches that fallen, non-born-again men need a Divine Law to restrict them from evildoing which is what [I]theocracy[/I] is all about.
[COLOR=Blue]"Yet the mass murders of the 20th century were not perpetrated by some latter-day version of the Spanish Inquisition. They were done by atheist regimes in the service of Enlightenment ideals of progress. [B]Stalin and Mao were not believers in original sin[/B].
[B]Even Hitler, who despised Enlightenment values of equality and freedom, shared the Enlightenment faith that a new world could be created by human will. [/B] Each of these tyrants imagined that the human condition could be transformed through the use of science."[/COLOR]
[url]http://afr.com/review/2003/01/03/FFX9CQAJFAD.html[/url]
Pelagian perfectionism is an essential component of modernist ideologies that seek to bring the paradise on earth.
Petr
2005-02-22 03:14 | User Profile
[quote=mwdallas]How can such a premise be rejected? Only by rejecting morality, by saying that robbery is not wrong when perpetrated by a privileged class. [QUOTE=mwdallas]But obviously, the state is evil to the extent it engages in evils, such as robbery.[/QUOTE] Are you saying that the existence of the state is intrinsically evil or not? You seemed to be propounding that viewpoint, but then you began talking about the evils of the 'coercive state.' Do you object to the state itself, or merely to a tyrannical state?
2005-02-22 17:10 | User Profile
[QUOTE=mwdallas]But a coercive state is inherently unstable. Checks and balances are the hallmarks of self-government, or a polis. A coercive state by definition lacks checks and balances sufficient to maintain the community's stability; it engages in coercion because it can, not because it must.
If by "coercion" you mean "forcing people do to what they would rather not do," any administrative apparatus that provides services such as courts of law, police, and military will be such. To make sure that certain members of society don't receive these services fully at the expense of others, a taxation of one form or another is inevitable. Since most people would rather not pay taxes and receive these services for free, it stands to reason that the government will be "coercive." Ditto in the case where the nation is attacked and requires conscripts. Or do you suppose in your libertarian fantasyworld everyone will play fair and voluntarily make these sacrifices? "Self-governing" means that everybody plays fair and there is no institution in place to punish the cheaters. There never will be a "self-governing" society until you find a way to magically make all people honest. Until you find a way to make everybody honest, coercion is not only inevitable but desirable and necessary.
Since you acknowledge that some administrative apparatus is necessary for law enforcement and defense, you are acknowledging that a state is inevitable. You may chose to call this apparatus something other than "state" because "state" is such a nasty buzzword in libertarian theology, but the fact remains that a society without a state is about as workable as a company without chairmen or presidents. The Greek polis was basically a state system in embryo, in the same way that a small company contains the administrative apparatus of a major corporation in embryo. That one administrative apparatus is smaller than the other is simply a matter of common sense - you need less to administer a society of a thousand people than a society of ten million people and an intricate infrastructure. And if you propose we get around this problem by returning to the small city-state and local government, guess what? These will be very quickly swallowed up and overwhelmed by the sheer volume and power of nation-states who don't share your utopian visions.
2005-02-22 17:30 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]It's a matter of strategy: when the enemy controls the state, be anti-state. When the enemy wages war, be a pacifist. Common sense dictates that these things should go out the window once a faction friendly to your interests comes to power. [/QUOTE]
Bingo.
The only question is whether it is "ours" or not.
The rest is just adjusting the apparatus to fit out experience.
2005-02-22 20:46 | User Profile
[QUOTE]"Self-governing" means that everybody plays fair and there is no institution in place to punish the cheaters.[/QUOTE] No, "self-governing" means the community punishes the cheaters through institutions over which it maintains control.
2005-02-22 20:53 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Since you acknowledge that some administrative apparatus is necessary for law enforcement and defense, you are acknowledging that a state is inevitable.[/QUOTE] Whether it is inevitable IS ENTIRELY BESIDE THE POINT. The issue is whether we should say that crime is "good" because it is ineradicable, and the answer is NO!
2005-02-22 22:14 | User Profile
[QUOTE=mwdallas]No, "self-governing" means the community punishes the cheaters through institutions over which it maintains control.[/QUOTE]
Direct Democracy is impossible in any society numbering more than a few hundred people. How do you propose each and every person in a nation state numbering in the millions "maintain control" over government institutions on a case by case basis? Are you privy to every trial that goes on and every decision that is made (including who gets arrested, fined, etc)? Do you preside in person or vote on every law that is passed?
Your model is workable if we return to tribal hunter-gatherer societies, but not much else. And guess what - should you chose to return to tribal societies or even small city states where direct Democracy works to a reasonable first approximation, they will be rapidly overrun and outcompeted by those polities follow the modern nation-state example. It's the same reason that a Feudal economy is no longer viable against industrial and finance-capital.
2005-02-23 00:27 | User Profile
AY,
I think mwdallas has in mind other means for violators of traditional social mores: ostracism and the like.
2005-02-23 07:21 | User Profile
[QUOTE=mwdallas]No, "self-governing" means the community punishes the cheaters through institutions over which it maintains control.[/QUOTE]
MW: how do you relate this to the organismic view of human groups that self-organize around religious symbols?
Islam is a good example in our world today of how this organic self-organizing principle works. The Taliban, for example, didn't need much of a state to regulate Afghanistan, because its virulent form of Islam caused Afghan society to regulate itself organically. As Wilson pointed out in Darwin's Cathedral, it all just happens when we organize around religious symbols and beliefs, because humans have an in born instinct for exactly that. That's all fine and good as far as it goes. The Taliban brought a sort of peace to Afghanistan, and even a measure of justice, at least as measured by the diminished standards of Islam.
The Taliban did fail, however, in that they didn't recognize that they needed purely state institutions to meet the external threats of the NWO. They needed, for example, a large weapons industry and an army backed up by the draft, all of which necessitated an efficient tax collection system. They needed a total "monopoly on coercive force" - a powerful centralized state - in order to make that artificial extractive system work. They didn't do that, and so they've basically been extirpated. Perhaps that human organism known as the Taliban will some day reappear, but as of now it looks all but completely destroyed.
For us, I think that the best way to proceed is to re-establish a virulent form of Christianity as the undisputed ideological ruler of all America. Once that is established, society will tend to regulate itself, and the state can be seriously pruned. This is in essence the vision of the Founders. We could afford limited government because we self-regulated under Christianity, but we needed a state to meet the needs of large organization, especially in conquering the Indian lands and protecting ourselves from invasion by the Brits.
Actually getting there is a chicken-or-egg proposition. Christians of this Taliban stripe must recapture all state institutions in order to (a) stop with the attacks launched upon Christianity from alien elements that now occupy state points of power, and (b) to assist in the downsizing of government to the size required to meet external threats while allowing internal American society organically to self-organize around Christian religious symbols.
I think we're headed in that direction now.