← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · il ragno
Thread ID: 3335 | Posts: 90 | Started: 2002-10-31
2002-10-31 13:28 | User Profile
I sometimes wonder if Joe Sobran, at 25, could have ever conceived writing something like this in his mid-fifties. Obviously the idea of abolishing the state entirely is one that he is gradually warming up to, more and more. Interesting how the perspectives born over time bring ideas forth that we, even - especially - in our 'radical youth', would have considered unthinkable heresy. Maybe Joe's on to something: that the machinery of the State in whatEVER form provides comfort, shelter and naked power to the worst of us - cowards, demagogues and utter mediocrities.
Anarchy without Fear
October 17, 2002 These, you might say, are bleak days for libertarians, except that libertarians never have a nice day. Experience keeps proving them right, but still, after the ââ¬ÅReagan Revolutionââ¬Â and the final flop of the Socialist Motherland, alias the Soviet Union, they canââ¬â¢t make a dent in the political duopoly dedicated ââ¬â right here in America! ââ¬â to saving the welfare state.
All one can say is that libertariansââ¬â¢ days used to be even bleaker; a lot bleaker. They can remember when socialism, and the Soviet Union, used to look like the ââ¬Åwave of the future,ââ¬Â and opposing the trend was known as ââ¬Åtrying to turn back the clock.ââ¬Â
Actually, libertariansââ¬â¢ ideas have had an influence their political weakness doesnââ¬â¢t reflect. Many conservative Republicans would vote for the Libertarian Party if they thought it had any chance of winning, rather than helping the Democrats win.
Libertarians are divided between conservatives and anarchists. The former think there must be some minimal state, or ââ¬Ålimited government.ââ¬Â The anarchists think the state is evil in principle and must be totally eliminated. A radical position, to be sure, but an interesting one.
The first great American anarchist was Lysander Spooner, who died more than a century ago. His argument was simple. There is a natural and unchangeable moral law, which forbids slavery. No man has the right to force others to do his will. The state not only claims such a right, but claims a monopoly of force ââ¬â the right to force its subjects to accept its laws as morally binding, no matter how arbitrary and unjust those laws may be.
That is, the state claims that its commands supersede the moral law. It claims it can add to, and subtract from, the eternal law of God. It never actually says this, but the claim is implicit in its supposed authority. If it has a legitimate, limitless monopoly of force, we all have a limitless duty to obey it. And this, Spooner says, is absurd. It amounts to saying that the state has the right to violate all our rights. Once we grant the principle, we are already slaves of the state.
Conservatives have tried to rein in the state with constitutions confining it to a few specific powers, but these constitutions have never worked for very long. The reason is simple. The state itself ââ¬Åinterpretsââ¬Â the constitution in such a way as to broaden its own powers constantly ââ¬â or it simply disregards the constitution as soon as itââ¬â¢s powerful enough to get away with it.
There is no getting away from it: at bottom, the state is nothing but organized force. Its only abiding rule is this: ââ¬ÅObey, or we will hurt you.ââ¬Â
What is force? Simone Weil defined force as that which turns a person into a thing ââ¬â a corpse or a slave ââ¬â with no will of its own. Of course even a slave exercises his own will to some degree, but only by sufferance of his master. The state itself has to allow its slaves some latitude, but its permissions arenââ¬â¢t genuine rights. Even the Soviet rulers had to permit some degree of the economic freedom it had abolished in principle; otherwise the socialist state would indeed have ââ¬Åwithered awayââ¬Â ââ¬â through famine. If the slaves donââ¬â¢t eat, the master starves too.
Most men today can hardly imagine living without the parasitic force-systems we call states. However bad the state may be, they assume that anarchy would be somehow even worse, even after a century of world war, mass murder, and general waste and destruction claiming hundreds of millions of lives and creating poverty where there might have been plenty.
By now, if men learned from experience, they would talk about the state in the same tones in which Jews talk about Nazis. Instead, they continue to imagine the state as their savior and protector, and as the natural solution to all their problems. Yet itââ¬â¢s self-evident that the bigger the state, the larger the ratio of force in human life, and the smaller the scope of free action.
The measure of the stateââ¬â¢s success is that the word anarchy frightens people, while the word state does not. We are like those African slaves who believe that their master is their benefactor, or those Russians who still believe that Stalin was their guardian.
Joseph Sobran
2002-10-31 16:41 | User Profile
Libertarianism and conservatism are false alternatives. You can't do away with a state or expect it to limit itself. Sobran seems to know that. To control a state you have to counteract it.
The State or nation-state has been filling the vacuum of authority created by the French Revolution 200+ years ago. We look to the State for education, child-care, health, pensions, nursing care, and everything else that used to be done by volunteer or religious institutions.
We are simply paying the price for dethroning God. The State has just taken God's place. Liberals would say, "good." Conservatives complain but can't do anything about it since God is dead for them too.
Putting God back on his throne would be the solution, though Joe doesn't seem to want to say so. Anarchists and anarcho-capitalists are simply utopians. Without divine authority restored, the state isn't going anywhere. We deserve it.
2002-10-31 18:31 | User Profile
Originally posted by Buster@Oct 31 2002, 11:41 Without divine authority restored, the state isn't going anywhere. Get used to it.
Great points, Buster. However, may I add that we, the USA, are, indeed going *somewhere*.............
to the ash heap of history.
2002-10-31 18:35 | User Profile
**The first great American anarchist was Lysander Spooner, who died more than a century ago. His argument was simple. There is a natural and unchangeable moral law, which forbids slavery. No man has the right to force others to do his will. The state not only claims such a right, but claims a monopoly of force ââ¬â the right to force its subjects to accept its laws as morally binding, no matter how arbitrary and unjust those laws may be.
That is, the state claims that its commands supersede the moral law. It claims it can add to, and subtract from, the eternal law of God. It never actually says this, but the claim is implicit in its supposed authority. If it has a legitimate, limitless monopoly of force, we all have a limitless duty to obey it. And this, Spooner says, is absurd. It amounts to saying that the state has the right to violate all our rights. Once we grant the principle, we are already slaves of the state. **
How can you argue with that?
2002-11-12 00:00 | User Profile
**Now, if a "stateless society" would work so well, where are all of the stateless societies? **
This is a fallacy of the first order. The fact that men tend to impose states on stateless societies hardly qualifies as a criticism of the stateless society itself. That is a criticism of human nature. The stateless society is an ideal -- that we have difficulty achieving the ideal is no reason for us to stop striving. You completely ignore the heart of the matter:
*No man has the right to force others to do his will. The state not only claims such a right, but claims a monopoly of force ââ¬â the right to force its subjects to accept its laws as morally binding, no matter how arbitrary and unjust those laws may be. *
2002-11-12 00:21 | User Profile
**ANtiYuppie wrote: Now,if a "stateless society" would work so well, where are all of the stateless societies? **
Good question.
** mwdallas wrote: No man has the right to force others to do his will.**
Who says? Picture someone starving in the wilderness and then coming across a settlement, knocking on the first door begging for food, and being shooed off, then knocking on another door, and continuing to do this for a while. The people inside the houses might sip tea and discuss libertarian theory, but the immediate concern of the starving wanderer will be his own survival. He will have to steal food or die. He might even view the people in the houses as effete theorisers worthy of death.
2002-11-12 01:32 | User Profile
I don't believe for a minute that a libertarian society is possible or desireable (why desire the impossible?), but I'm perfectly willing to consider advocacy of libertarianism as a political tactic, similarly to how MLK asked black radicals to adopt "tactical non-violence" (thereby revealing that he wasn't really a pacifist). However subterfuge isn't really our strong suit and many leftists are keenly aware that many libertarians are in fact conservatives who have adopted a fallback position.
2002-11-12 02:38 | User Profile
**In a "stateless" society, how would basic functions such as law enforcement be fulfilled? **
How is the function of law enfocrcement fulfilled within a state?
It's not, of course. The state is by definition aggressive and predatory, and its very existence is a violation of natural law. The point of the state, as the holder of the monopoly on the use of "legitimate" force, is that the law cannot be enforced against the state.
2002-11-12 07:40 | User Profile
Originally posted by AntiYuppie@Nov 12 2002, 00:21 Who says? Picture someone starving in the wilderness and then coming across a settlement, knocking on the first door begging for food, and being shooed off, then knocking on another door, and continuing to do this for a while. The people inside the houses might sip tea and discuss libertarian theory, but the immediate concern of the starving wanderer will be his own survival. He will have to steal food or die. He might even view the people in the houses as effete theorisers worthy of death.
And people accuse libertarians of being obsessed with pointless abstractions?
The answer to this question is rather simple. If the man values his survival over libertarian moral principles, as most people (including myself if I were in that situation), he would steal the food, and live. However, he has no "right" to the food, just as some welfare mother has no right to your money. If the libertarians decided to press charges, then they would be legitimate, and I'm sure our starving man would be willing to bare the marginally small punishment that he would get for stealing a small ammount of food.
2002-11-12 20:22 | User Profile
Originally posted by oldrightlibertarian@Nov 12 2002, 01:40 > Originally posted by AntiYuppie@Nov 12 2002, 00:21 Who says? Picture someone starving in the wilderness and then coming across a settlement, knocking on the first door begging for food, and being shooed off, then knocking on another door, and continuing to do this for a while. The people inside the houses might sip tea and discuss libertarian theory, but the immediate concern of the starving wanderer will be his own survival. He will have to steal food or die. He might even view the people in the houses as effete theorisers worthy of death.**
And people accuse libertarians of being obsessed with pointless abstractions?
The answer to this question is rather simple. If the man values his survival over libertarian moral principles, as most people (including myself if I were in that situation), he would steal the food, and live. However, he has no "right" to the food, just as some welfare mother has no right to your money. If the libertarians decided to press charges, then they would be legitimate, and I'm sure our starving man would be willing to bare the marginally small punishment that he would get for stealing a small ammount of food.**
[the inner quote is of Sporon, not AntiYuppie, BTW]
Sporon's point, in terms of the ethical rationale for libertarianism, would be that the rightly-understood-interest of the starving wanderer is in using force, and thus he has his "right" in so doing. For libertarianism rationalizes its structuring of "rights" with an appeal to the rightly-understood-interests of the participants in that society, based upon the purported benefits of the property-rights/competitive-market/laissez-faire/voluntarist model of classical micro-economics.
As illustrated by Sporon, libertarianism cannot consistently exclude the initiation of force with an appeal to its own rationale. It must simply resort to dogma, in avoiding the reality of the imperfect reconcilablility, in pacific terms, of individuals and groups over whom a state must thus prevail.
2002-11-12 23:10 | User Profile
Originally posted by NeoNietzsche@Nov 12 2002, 14:22 Sporon's point, in terms of the ethical rationale for libertarianism, would be that the rightly-understood-interest of the starving wanderer is in using force, and thus he has his "right" in so doing. **
But not if that right infringes on the others' right to own and protect his property. In this particular case, holding on to his food. If violated, then retaliatory force is justified.
Right?
2002-11-12 23:24 | User Profile
I believe Neo-Nietzsche is saying "Might makes right." Nicht wahr?
2002-11-12 23:41 | User Profile
Originally posted by Texas Dissident@Nov 12 2002, 17:10 > Originally posted by NeoNietzsche@Nov 12 2002, 14:22 Sporon's point, in terms of the ethical rationale for libertarianism, would be that the rightly-understood-interest of the starving wanderer is in using force, and thus he has his "right" in so doing. **
But not if that right infringes on the others' right to own and protect his property. In this particular case, holding on to his food. If violated, then retaliatory force is justified.
Right?**
The question has become one of whose property/food it is, and libertarianism does not tell us whose it is in terms of a consistent ethical rationale.
The case as between the contestants becomes one of might-makes-right, in a state of anarchy, or of the enforcement of the right of one and the violation of the other, by the state.
In either case, libertarian theory is reduced to an applicative nullity.
The reality of this difficulty is much more evident in the instances of commercial "collusion in restraint of trade" and state assertions of "eminent domain."
2002-11-12 23:44 | User Profile
Originally posted by mwdallas@Nov 12 2002, 17:24 I believe Neo-Nietzsche is saying "Might makes right." Nicht wahr?
Du hast recht.
2002-11-13 00:07 | User Profile
Originally posted by mwdallas@Nov 11 2002, 20:38 > In a "stateless" society, how would basic functions such as law enforcement be fulfilled? **
How is the function of law enfocrcement fulfilled within a state?
It's not, of course. The state is by definition aggressive and predatory, and its very existence is a violation of natural law. The point of the state, as the holder of the monopoly on the use of "legitimate" force, is that the law cannot be enforced against the state.**
MW,
Are you familiar with the "Bootstrap" theory as to why quarks cannot be isolated?
It explains, by analogy, why the State will always emerge in one form or another.
2002-11-13 00:09 | User Profile
My point is that libertarian theory is bunk. Here's a parable to explain why. There was once a herd of gazelles, quietly eating some food, when a ravenously hungry lion come along. The lion was about to eat one of the gazelles. The soon to be eatn gazelle said "wait a minute. you can't do that!"
"why not?" asked the lion. "Because you are initiaiting force in order to take what is not yours!" explained the gazelle. "What do you mean by 'not mine'?" asked the lion. "I produced the fat on my body through eating grass, and since I performed the labour I am entitled to its fruits", said the gazelle, in explanation. "This sounds very interesting" said the lion. "How about we discuss this some more after lunch?".
THe lion proceeded to kill the gazelle and eat it.
My question to libertarians is to explain to me in what sense the lion was wrong, since I see no error in his actions. Indeed, I see no error in the actions of many of the people aggressing against western civilisation. They are hungry. They want to eat. If western civillisation is not prepared to defend itself then it deserves to get eaten.
2002-11-13 00:15 | User Profile
What if the gazelle is well-armed?
2002-11-13 00:33 | User Profile
Originally posted by Texas Dissident@Nov 12 2002, 18:15 What if the gazelle is well-armed?
Then the lion does not get to enjoy the fruit of his labor in apprehending the gazelle - to which fruit he is entitled, according to the logic of the gazelle's own "libertarianism."
2002-11-13 00:45 | User Profile
Originally posted by NeoNietzsche@Nov 12 2002, 18:33 Then the lion does not get to enjoy the fruit of his labor in apprehending the gazelle - to which fruit he is entitled, according to the logic of the gazelle's own "libertarianism."
Please pardon my obtuseness, but I'm trying to wrap my mind around the principles involved here.
I thought that a major tenet of libertarianism was that the lion was not entitled to the fruit of his labor (the gazelle) because that would violate or infringe upon the "right" of the gazelle to exist. Therefore, the lion may well devour the gazelle, for he is stronger, but to me that doesn't invalidate the libertarian principle. What it does suggest is that libertarianism could only hope to be realized in and among a group of individuals with sufficient moral fiber to practice it. On a macro-scale, the libertarian community better dang well be armed to the teeth to defend itself from those outsiders who don't share the same moral compass.
2002-11-13 01:02 | User Profile
**Are you familiar with the "Bootstrap" theory as to why quarks cannot be isolated?
It explains, by analogy, why the State will always emerge in one form or another. **
I am not familiar with that theory, but I do not doubt that "the State will always emerge in one form or another." I will not, however, succumb to the naturalistic fallacy.
2002-11-13 01:06 | User Profile
Originally posted by Texas Dissident@Nov 12 2002, 18:45 > Originally posted by NeoNietzsche@Nov 12 2002, 18:33 Then the lion does not get to enjoy the fruit of his labor in apprehending the gazelle - to which fruit he is entitled, according to the logic of the gazelle's own "libertarianism."**
Please pardon my obtuseness, but I'm trying to wrap my mind around the principles involved here.
I thought that a major tenet of libertarianism was that the lion was not entitled to the fruit of his labor (the gazelle) because that would violate or infringe upon the "right" of the gazelle to exist. Therefore, the lion may well devour the gazelle, for he is stronger, but to me that doesn't invalidate the libertarian principle. What it does suggest is that libertarianism could only hope to be realized in and among a group of individuals with sufficient moral fiber to practice it. On a macro-scale, the libertarian community better dang well be armed to the teeth to defend itself from those outsiders who don't share the same moral compass.**
But the lion has an equivalent right to exist, and in order to exist he must eat the gazelle, as the gazelle eats the grass.
Again, we have "rights" in conflict. It is not a question of moral fiber.
2002-11-13 01:24 | User Profile
Originally posted by mwdallas@Nov 12 2002, 19:02 I am not familiar with that theory, but I do not doubt that "the State will always emerge in one form or another." ÃÂ I will not, however, succumb to the naturalistic fallacy.
Interesting.
First expression I can recall of what sounds like political prudery.
2002-11-13 01:40 | User Profile
Originally posted by NeoNietzsche@Nov 13 2002, 01:06 **But the lion has an equivalent right to exist, and in order to exist he must eat the gazelle, as the gazelle eats the grass.
Again, we have "rights" in conflict. It is not a question of moral fiber.**
Fascinating dialogue on the gazelle and lion, which proves one of the fundamental idiocies of libertarianism (there really are an awful lot) this doubletalk on the use of force "legimate" "illegitimate" la de da. All human society is ultimately based on force.
This dialogue on the lion and gazelle reminds me of a dialogue of George Bernard Shaw
**1. Think about that next time the tiger is about to eat you
No, I meant where love is.
Oh, the tiger will certainly love you. There is no love stronger than the love of food.**
2002-11-13 01:59 | User Profile
Originally posted by Okiereddust@Nov 12 2002, 19:40 All human society is ultimately based on force.
"To refrain mutually from injury, from violence, from exploitation, and put one's will on a par with that of others: this may result in a certain rough sense in good conduct among individuals when the necessary conditions are given (namely, the actual similarity of the individuals in amount of force and degree of worth, and their co-relation within one organisation). As soon, however, as one wished to take this principle more generally, and if possible even as the fundamental principle of society, it would immediately disclose what it really is--namely, a Will to the denial of life, a principle of dissolution and decay. Here one must think profoundly to the very basis and resist all sentimental weakness: life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation;--but why should one for ever use precisely these words on which for ages a disparaging purpose has been stamped? Even the organisation within which, as was previously supposed, the individuals treat each other as equal--it takes place in every healthy aristocracy--must itself, if it be a living and not a dying organisation, do all that towards other bodies, which the individuals within it refrain from doing to each other: it will have to be the incarnated Will to Power, it will endeavour to grow, to gain ground, attract to itself and acquire ascendency--not owing to any morality or immorality, but because it lives, and because life is precisely Will to Power. On no point, however, is the ordinary consciousness of Europeans more unwilling to be corrected than on this matter; people now rave everywhere, even under the guise of science, about coming conditions of society in which 'the exploiting character' is to be absent:-- that sounds to my ears as if they promised to invent a mode of life which should refrain from all organic functions. 'Exploitation' does not belong to a depraved, or imperfect and primitive society: it belongs to the nature of the living being as a primary organic function; it is a consequence of the intrinsic Will to Power, which is precisely the Will to Life.--Granting that as a theory this is a novelty--as a reality it is the fundamental fact of all history: let us be so far honest towards ourselves!"
[Nietzsche, BGE]
2002-11-13 03:17 | User Profile
Originally posted by NeoNietzsche@Nov 12 2002, 19:06 **But the lion has an equivalent right to exist, and in order to exist he must eat the gazelle, as the gazelle eats the grass.
Again, we have "rights" in conflict. It is not a question of moral fiber.**
Perhaps our animal analogy has reached its apex. :)
A man does not have to eat another man in order to exist. Therfore he has no right to eat another man - no ultimate rights in conflict.
I believe it is a question of moral fiber. Other mediating factors have to act as a restraint. Our republic would never have been as free as it once was without the Christian character of the individuals who inhabited it. The less Christian character, the less freedom and the greater power and presence of the police state.
I'm not a libertarian and I believe it is a utopian fantasy. But, there is a continuum there and I would rather move in the direction of high individual morality, high freedom and a diminished State than away from it like we are presently doing.
2002-11-13 04:00 | User Profile
The four most important words in American history- to me, at least, and likely to Sobran as well - are "don't tread on me". It should be obvious to anyone but an idiot that those words have less than nothing to do with modern American government, which exists to monitor, regulate, disallow, prohibit, meddle, mediate, dictate, punish, and generally s**t on the individual in the name of a discombobulated, multi-racial and (now) nonexistent 'greater good'....and above all, TAX its citizenry.
Sobran may be in Cloud-Cuckooland, but no more than some of our more sober-minded 'realists' are. I think his point is it's time to stop being married to the idea of American democracy as though it's holy writ handed down by gods. States are systems created by men; systems fail. This one has. It might've lasted a millenium had its central principles been adhered to like holy writ, but the fact is it was doomed the first time an office-seeker or office-holder discovered that the populace was herd-like, easily spooked and easily defrauded; acted upon the knowledge; and was not immediately lynched for it.
Think about how many of our politicians leave office millionaires. Take a look around at how many multi-millionaires (and billionaires!) have lately jumped into politics out of the clear blue, hoping to outright BUY an in to power, and then join me in a hearty horse-laugh at the idea of 'public servants'. From crime to immigration to race to education to foreign policy and all points between, we are led by men and women who operate on the principle of 'shove it under the carpet for the next guy tio deal with, and grab as much as you can with both hands'. Whether it's tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, or the day after that....the pilot light's flickering and diminishing, and probably past recovery.
America was founded by men who looked around at the governments they had and decided they could create something better. And for a long time, it WAS something better. Don't tell me that 200+ years later, the idea of men, dissatisfied with the corrupt systems of government they have, creating something better is a mathematical impossibility. If they'd thought that way 250 years ago, we might all still be in debtor's gaols thousands of miles away. The idea that what we have now is the best anyone has ever had or could EVER have is more tombstone-marker than truth.
2002-11-13 04:21 | User Profile
Dang, IR. Didn't realize there was such a fiery populist in you. ;)
Hard to argue with any of that. Great job, as usual.
2002-11-13 06:00 | User Profile
Originally posted by NeoNietzsche@Nov 13 2002, 01:59 Here one must think profoundly to the very basis and resist all sentimental weakness: life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation;--but why should one for ever use precisely these words on which for ages a disparaging purpose has been stamped?
Nietszche and nihlism do have some intersting critiques to give of false morality, pretension, and hypocrisy. Ultimately however, to completely dismiss the moral sense of mankind is to arrive at many fundamental contridictions and absurbities. Ultimately, in fact, it is to arrive at the conclusion that life is absurb, which was probably one of the reasons Nietszche went crazy, and why when the German right became strongly Nietszchien it lost so much of its those fundamentally conservative concepts, morality and a sense of balance.
Sadistic Nietszchien statements like > To observe pain is good. To inflict it is better. There is something festiveabout suffering
Really don't do anything to enlighten or help mankind (didn't Nietzsche say creating man was God's second mistake?)
Anyway it is good you do bring up Nietszche, because he does illustrate why western conservatism became so opposed to many things about German National Socialism. Even in its best intellectual varient (appropriating concepts from intellectuals such as Nietzsche) it seemed to appropriate their ideas with rather poor discretion.
2002-11-13 06:36 | User Profile
Although I consider myself an anarchist, I am not very big on natural rights. However, the point that the state is by its very nature is coercive and parasitic is irrefutable. This has nothing to do with saying "the US government is bad, so we should. The state can not create anything without confiscating the wealth of others. Hence it is parasitic- it can not exist without the labor of others. Lets say that private insurance companies can't provide defense, and hence the state is necessary. As for it being coercive, even if a state managed to fund itself, no one can withdraw from it (or it ceases to be a state) or offer competition in the area's which it provides. I would think that still means that we should see the state as intrinsically evil and something that must be greatly limited.
On that note, many libertarians have offered various answers to how a stateless society would deal with law, courts, defense, and the police. Murray Rothbard in Power and Market and for a new Liberty. Hans Hoppe in democracy the god that failed (Or you can look at "The Private Protection of Defense" in the JLS, which is archived at mises.org), Bruce Benson in the Enterprise of Law, David Friedman in The Machinery of Freedom. You can reject any of these and many other, libertarian authors' argument, but it is simply a falsehood to say that libertarians give no answers to these problems.
As for the the idea that because no stateless society exists, then it is impossible. I am curious to know about any "conservative managerial state" (an oxymoron if there ever was one.) There is a reason why all western governments promote third world immigration, entitlements, and various other left wing programs. It is in their interest, and is the very nature of the state. Paul Gottfried deals with this at length in After Liberalism and Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt.
2002-11-13 14:03 | User Profile
Originally posted by Texas Dissident@Nov 12 2002, 21:17 A man does not have to eat another man in order to exist. Therfore he has no right to eat another man - no ultimate rights in conflict.
You missed the point of the analogy, TD.
[BTW, the doctrine of neccessity does give a man the right to eat another under extreme circumstances.]
2002-11-13 14:37 | User Profile
Originally posted by Okiereddust@Nov 13 2002, 00:00 > Originally posted by NeoNietzsche@Nov 13 2002, 01:59 Here one must think profoundly to the very basis and resist all sentimental weakness: life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation;--but why should one for ever use precisely these words on which for ages a disparaging purpose has been stamped?**
Nietszche and nihlism do have some intersting critiques to give of false morality, pretension, and hypocrisy. Ultimately however, to completely dismiss the moral sense of mankind is to arrive at many fundamental contridictions and absurbities. Ultimately, in fact, it is to arrive at the conclusion that life is absurb, which was probably one of the reasons Nietszche went crazy, and why when the German right became strongly Nietszchien it lost so much of its those fundamentally conservative concepts, morality and a sense of balance.
Sadistic Nietszchien statements like > To observe pain is good. To inflict it is better. There is something festiveabout suffering
Really don't do anything to enlighten or help mankind (didn't Nietzsche say creating man was God's second mistake?)
Anyway it is good you do bring up Nietszche, because he does illustrate why western conservatism became so opposed to many things about German National Socialism. Even in its best intellectual varient (appropriating concepts from intellectuals such as Nietzsche) it seemed to appropriate their ideas with rather poor discretion.**
*Nietzsche does not "completely dismiss the moral sense of mankind" - he is selective in his approbation, as evidenced by the part of the passage you have overlooked:
"To refrain mutually from injury, from violence, from exploitation, and put one's will on a par with that of others: this may result in a certain rough sense in good conduct among individuals when the necessary conditions are given (namely, the actual similarity of the individuals in amount of force and degree of worth, and their co-relation within one organisation)... Even the organisation within which, as was previously supposed, the individuals treat each other as equal--it takes place in every healthy aristocracy--must itself, if it be a living and not a dying organisation, do all that towards other bodies, which the individuals within it refrain from doing to each other..."
*Nietzsche emphatically resists the notion that life is absurd, but for the inversion of values achieved by Judeo-Christianity.
The "sadistic" comment refers back to his remarks, in historical context, in the Second Essay of his Genealogy* - rather than to a personal inclination.
*And the well-balanced conservatives/reactionaries/bourgeois were letting Germany slide into the Bolshevik abattoir, but for their very own desperate subsidization of those nasty, dynamic, unbalanced Nazis.
*My vast reading of "Western conservative" thought shows it in opposition to National Socialism out of willful misunderstanding or incomprehension of politico-economic history and logic, where it is not simply under the influence of the Hollywood History of the Second World War.
2002-11-13 14:53 | User Profile
Originally posted by oldrightlibertarian@Nov 13 2002, 00:36 **I would think that still means that we should see the state as intrinsically evil and something that must be greatly limited.
There is a reason why all western governments promote third world immigration, entitlements, and various other left wing programs. It is in their interest, and is the very nature of the state. **
Jewry long ago learned the lesson of turning the state, whatever its size or shape, to their own purposes.
When will the goyim catch up/grow up?
"Western" governments are Jewish regimes or satellites (or were shortly to be so at the end of the 19th C.) They were not emulated by the advanced "fascist" states of the early 20th. Thus it is not "the very nature of the state" so to do. See Japan even today.
2002-11-13 15:57 | User Profile
Sobran starts to get real in his column of 10/29:http://www.sobran.com/columns/
Remember, friends, the modern nation-state really came into being as a result of deposing the Church (in 1789 in particular). Before that, the state was something entirely less than it is today. Many states couldn't even raise money to support themselves, much less pay for wars. There are other secondary checks on the state as well: the gold standard, the second amendment, Jeffersonian violence, etc. The State may be inevitable, but not in its modern form.
If the Church were restored today , would we be talking war with Iraq now? Of course not. That will not happen, of course, absent a miracle, but we need perspective.
Seek ye first the kingdom of God, then TRUTH shall set you free.
2002-11-13 16:26 | User Profile
What do all you Christians plan on doing with us non-christians? Forcibly herding us into church?
2002-11-13 16:29 | User Profile
**"Western" governments are Jewish regimes or satellites (or were shortly to be so at the end of the 19th C.) **
I prefer "secular Jewish theocracies" when I'm in a good mood, and "the Jewish Final Solution for us" when I'm ornery. (Where's that Earl Raab quote when y' need it?)
The more "diversity is strength" proves to be a lie, the more bad money the West throws after the good, contrary to 5000 years of human history. The more Western Civilization buckles under the weight of her protected parasites, the further the West commits to protecting them. The more people are inculcated into believing that there should be no victims of inequality whatsoever, the closer we all return to living in caves. And the more people use the adjective "Judaeo-Christian", the fewer will understand that the "Christian" part is merely window-dressing/ protective coloration for the "Judeao", to be discarded at the earliest safe opportunity.
2002-11-13 16:48 | User Profile
No, Sporon, we're tolerant. Just don't make plans to run for president.
Thanks.
2002-11-13 17:12 | User Profile
Oldrightlibertarian, TD, and IR, have made some good points. Some specifics of the statist triumvirate's claims remain to be addressed.
The "state" as members of society who perform administrative and legal functions is a natural outcome of the division of human labor, nothing more, nothing less.
The division of labor is the essence of society, indeed. And certain "administrative" or coordinating functions can be valuable to the society. But that does not imply that the administrators must have the power to rob -- with impunity -- the very people they purport to serve. If they are providing something of value to society, the members of society will pay for the service.
2002-11-13 17:41 | User Profile
Sporon, I hear ya. We wouldn't "be talking war with Iraq", unless we were engaged in a rerun of the Crusades. Which we almost surely would, sooner or later.
Religious govt always spooks me, whether Jew, Moslem, Christian, Buddhist....what have you. If it ever came down to world theocracy-by-majority-rule, I'm afraid the Christians are gonna be out of luck. But then, no religion can ever be satisfied with the simple freedom to worship; they all have the same will-to-power as any basic conquering horde.
Speaking of Sobran re 10/29, here it is:
The State: Evil and Idol
October 29, 2002 For some time now Iââ¬â¢ve been advocating the idea of society without the state, or anarchism. This is no more than an affirmation of the principle of the Declaration of Independence: that no man can be justly ruled by another without his consent. To be ruled by force is to be a slave.
So far, Iââ¬â¢ve encountered only one serious argument against this principle: that itââ¬â¢s utopian. It canââ¬â¢t work. An utterly free society would be quickly overwhelmed and enslaved or annihilated by a ruthless neighboring society, or by organized criminal elements within. The free societyââ¬â¢s freedom would be very brief. The world is ruled by force; always has been, always will be. War is the rule, peace the exception. The idea of anarchism is plausible only to those who naively imagine that peace can be a normal state of affairs.
History offers much to support this pessimistic view. Someone has estimated that mankind has been at war, on the average, for 13 years for every year of peace. And the wars have generally been wars of annihilation, no holds barred. ââ¬ÅCivilizedââ¬Â warfare, sparing noncombatants, has been almost exclusively European, existing chiefly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when war was sometimes almost a gentlemenââ¬â¢s pastime, rather like fox-hunting.
If you want to survive in this harsh world, the argument runs, youââ¬â¢d better seek the protection of a state, just as, in a tough neighborhood, you may have to join one gang or the other. Anarchism, in this view, is simply not an option. Itââ¬â¢s only a dream.
To live, then, is to be the slave of a state, a system of force. The most you can hope for is a reasonably mild state, an Athens rather than a Sparta, whose rule is bearable but whose survival is viable. Of course itââ¬â¢s easy for us to forget that many men are more at home in a Sparta than in an Athens. The taste for freedom, including respect for othersââ¬â¢ freedom, is far from universal, or we would all be free.
This is a powerful argument, and I wonââ¬â¢t try to refute it here. But at most it proves only that the state is a necessary evil and that the rule of force is inescapable. Even if we are all doomed to live under the state, it doesnââ¬â¢t follow that there is, or even can be, such a thing as a good state.
Of course some states are worse than others, and the differences matter. Sometimes their subjects can impose limits on them ââ¬â bills of rights, for example. But since the state is finally a monopoly of force, such limits are always tenuous and unstable. The stateââ¬â¢s excuse for being is its protective function, but no state that I know of has ever been confined to this role for long. It soon becomes aggressive, either toward neighboring communities or, more often, against its own subjects.
The remarkable fact is that men are so loyal to the states that rule them. They actually idealize and take pride in their rulers. It may be obvious to outsiders that those rulers are tyrants, but their subjects seldom see it that way. They are often ready, and proud, to fight and die for the men who theoretically protect them! Itââ¬â¢s like sacrificing your life to save your bodyguard.
Consider that strange creature, the American conservative. He constantly, and rightly, complains that his government is oppressive. At the same time he insists that his country is the freest on earth. Whatââ¬â¢s more, he is proud that itââ¬â¢s also the most militarily powerful on earth. Yet he also thinks his freedom is in constant peril from foreign threats, and only the state can preserve it from imminent destruction.
George Orwell gave us the word doublethink for the ability to hold two contradictory views simultaneously. Conservatives have now achieved doublethink and are approaching something like triplethink. They forget that the state is at best a necessary evil, a threat to liberty, and extol their own state as a positive good, even a glorious thing we should take pride in. They quote Lord Acton ââ¬â ââ¬ÅAll power tends to corrupt,ââ¬Â et cetera ââ¬â and celebrate American power. Which is it?
Thus does a ââ¬Ånecessary evilââ¬Â become an idol. Maybe weââ¬â¢re stuck with it. But do we have to worship it?
Joseph Sobran
2002-11-13 18:35 | User Profile
Good and bad are unagreed upon intellectual categorisatsions, as we all know. You claim that the state is bad because it uses force. If someone robs you is he's only bad because he's robbing you. He may think that he is doing what it takes for him to survive. If you were less egotistical you might understand that and abandon the unnecessary intellectualising. If you wish to preserve yourself (and the things you hold dear, like civilisation, perhaps) you will correctly defend yourself in whatever manner you deem necessary. Likewise, if the robber wishes to preserve himself, he will rob you.
You ignore game-theroretical reasoning in your arguments. The idea that people would voluntarily create an entity with the power to excercise force is not unreasonable. A man, who does not personally object to paying taxes, might not pay taxes for fear of his neighbours' also not paying and thereby gaining an unfair competitive advantage over him. The solution is to have an agency that will use force to get everyone to pay. A man who is not a coward might not wish to fight for fear of having his life unfairly sacrifed for the sake of others who are cowards. The solution is to have an agency that will use force to compel everyone to fight. In both of these cases this government may actually be governing by the consent of most of the governed, and therefore can hardly be considered 'predatory'.
2002-11-13 18:51 | User Profile
Originally posted by AntiYuppie@Nov 11 2002, 17:09 Those who sit around day-dreaming about a "stateless society" are to be taken about as seriously as those who daydream about "classless societies." Both are absurd fantasies that are utterly untenable in an industrial or postindustrial age of intricate infrastructure.
I had this argument with several OD-ers this summer about drug legalization. It all comes back to the same point: yes, WE can live without the state. WE can live with a little dope on our back porch. But many in our society (especially minors) cannot.
They cannot control themselves and will fall prey to the predators of our society. Therefore we need the state to protect us when Reggie smokes an 8-ball and flies down the highway at 123 mph.
-J
2002-11-13 19:04 | User Profile
Originally posted by il ragno@Nov 13 2002, 11:41 **Sporon, I hear ya. We wouldn't "be talking war with Iraq", unless we were engaged in a rerun of the Crusades. Which we almost surely would, sooner or later.
Religious govt always spooks me, whether Jew, Moslem, Christian, Buddhist....what have you. If it ever came down to world theocracy-by-majority-rule, I'm afraid the Christians are gonna be out of luck. But then, no religion can ever be satisfied with the simple freedom to worship; they all have the same will-to-power as any basic conquering horde.
**
What we're talking about is not theocracy, but a moral power to counter-act the omnipotent State. As we speak, there is no such power. The Constutution is a dead letter. The liberals control the media, the military, the bureaucracy, the schools, the currency, the judiciary, and every other meaningful source of power. We are nominally a nation "under God," but we can't agree on what that means anymore. Hence we are helpless. The political option is a pipe dream.
Recall when Pope Pius V tried to instigate a rebellion against the British Crown by excommunicating Queen Elizabeth? He was too late, or the Church is Britain was too weak, but his strategy was to overcome tyranny by appeal to higher authority. I repeat, the political option is a pipe dream.
As for the Crusades, they were an attempt by Christians to re-take was had been taken from them by Moslems, namely, the Holy Land. They were also strategically imperative, given the rise of the Islamic threat to Europe, which continued for another 300 years after the Crusades failed, until pushed back at Lepanto. Now the Moslems threaten Europe again by immigration and fertility rather than by their military. I like their chances.
2002-11-13 19:10 | User Profile
Originally posted by jay@Nov 13 2002, 12:51 **Therefore we need the state to protect us when Reggie smokes an 8-ball and flies down the highway at 123 mph. **
jay, good to see you on the board again.
What about when Reginald does that 8-ball and decides to kick down the door of your homestead at 3 AM? You think the State is going to be there to protect you and yours? At best the State mops-up the mess in these matters, but in no way does much of anything in the way of prevention. It's ultimately up to you.
2002-11-13 19:14 | User Profile
Originally posted by il ragno@Nov 13 2002, 17:41 So far, Iââ¬â¢ve encountered only one serious argument against this principle: that itââ¬â¢s utopian. It canââ¬â¢t work. An utterly free society would be quickly overwhelmed and enslaved or annihilated by a ruthless neighboring society, or by organized criminal elements within. The free societyââ¬â¢s freedom would be very brief. The world is ruled by force; always has been, always will be. War is the rule, peace the exception. The idea of anarchism is plausible only to those who naively imagine that peace can be a normal state of affairs.
This expresses Nietszche and conservatives influenced by him like Spengler's viewpoints almost exactly. Spengler, for instance said, "in the future men would not be ruled by parliaments but by armies".
**History offers much to support this pessimistic view. Someone has estimated that mankind has been at war, on the average, for 13 years for every year of peace. And the wars have generally been wars of annihilation, no holds barred. ââ¬ÅCivilizedââ¬Â warfare, sparing noncombatants, has been almost exclusively European, existing chiefly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when war was sometimes almost a gentlemenââ¬â¢s pastime, rather like fox-hunting.
If you want to survive in this harsh world, the argument runs, youââ¬â¢d better seek the protection of a state, just as, in a tough neighborhood, you may have to join one gang or the other. Anarchism, in this view, is simply not an option. Itââ¬â¢s only a dream.**
Expresses the theories of MacDonald almost exactly. Group strategies defeat individual strategies. Armies with strong discipline defeat armies with loose discipline.
To live, then, is to be the slave of a state, a system of force. The most you can hope for is a reasonably mild state, an Athens rather than a Sparta, whose rule is bearable but whose survival is viable. Of course itââ¬â¢s easy for us to forget that many men are more at home in a Sparta than in an Athens. The taste for freedom, including respect for othersââ¬â¢ freedom, is far from universal, or we would all be free.
Exactly. Of course the NS's are among those more at home in Sparta. Hitler said I think something to the effect that the sole duty and purpose of all Germans is to serve the state.
**This is a powerful argument, and I wonââ¬â¢t try to refute it here. But at most it proves only that the state is a necessary evil and that the rule of force is inescapable. Even if we are all doomed to live under the state, it doesnââ¬â¢t follow that there is, or even can be, such a thing as a good state. **
Sobran should realize until he does address this key point the rest of his anarchist musings are just idle musings.
**Consider that strange creature, the American conservative. He constantly, and rightly, complains that his government is oppressive. At the same time he insists that his country is the freest on earth. Whatââ¬â¢s more, he is proud that itââ¬â¢s also the most militarily powerful on earth. Yet he also thinks his freedom is in constant peril from foreign threats, and only the state can preserve it from imminent destruction.
George Orwell gave us the word doublethink for the ability to hold two contradictory views simultaneously. Conservatives have now achieved doublethink and are approaching something like triplethink. They forget that the state is at best a necessary evil, a threat to liberty, and extol their own state as a positive good, even a glorious thing we should take pride in. They quote Lord Acton ââ¬â ââ¬ÅAll power tends to corrupt,ââ¬Â et cetera ââ¬â and celebrate American power. Which is it?
Thus does a ââ¬Ånecessary evilââ¬Â become an idol. Maybe weââ¬â¢re stuck with it. But do we have to worship it? **
Being stuck with ideas that are in tension is not really doublethink. It is the fate, to some extent of all serious philosophers. Moeller van den Bruck expressed it this way "we must learn to live in our antitheses" - in the German dualisms.
No we don't have to worship "the state". But that doesn't mean we have to hate it, descecrate it, or profane it either.
Conservatism is about just such principled concessions to reality and imperfect human nature against utopia. You'd think a supposedly brilliant thinker like Sobran would recognize this.
But really I don't see Sobran, or for that matter Buchanan and other popular paleo leaders, as really brilliant thinkers at all. In a number of ways they often remind me, as with many talking head journalists, more like dilletantes. They start to see implications in their ideas, but just go on, and don't take them seriously.
I think, to digress a little, that is often why paleoconservatism does poorly in its battles with neoconservatism. It is popularly represented by Sobran and Buchanan who just put forth theories with a lot of loose ends, which they don't bother to really address. The implication here I think is really the certain similarity tendencies in some of both Sobran's and Buchanan's to some tendencies of National Socialism. The tendencies are there, but they both prefer to deal with it IMO by inserting some libertarian (as with Sobran) or pacifist/left-wing sympathizing notions (as with Buchanan) into their prescriptions in an eclectic fashion.
It seems actually to be a tendency that has been absorbed into paleoism in general to some extent.
2002-11-13 19:20 | User Profile
They cannot control themselves and will fall prey to the predators of our society. Therefore we need the state to protect us when Reggie smokes an 8-ball and flies down the highway at 123 mph.
No, you do not need the state to protect you. There's nothing the state can do about Reggie that you can't do yourself.
2002-11-13 19:21 | User Profile
Originally posted by Okiereddust@Nov 13 2002, 13:14 The implication here I think is really the certain similarity tendencies in some of both Sobran's and Buchanan's to some tendencies of National Socialism.
In your opinion, what are those tendencies?
2002-11-13 19:21 | User Profile
**WE can live without the state. WE can live with a little dope on our back porch. But many in our society (especially minors) cannot.
They cannot control themselves and will fall prey to the predators of our society. Therefore we need the state to protect us when Reggie smokes an 8-ball and flies down the highway at 123 mph.**
Phrase it correctly, Jay. WE have OUR freedoms curtailed because blacks, mestizos and the odd bit of white human jetsam , who have been granted special rights & tax-based subsidies allowing them to live without any responsiblities, will inevitably abuse them.
The problem, therefore, has nothing to do with protecting minors and everything to do with idiotic, you're a savage idiot therefore that must be OUR fault social policies.
At one point it was part of the tikkun-olan credo that such behavior would all vanish, once the lower castes were given "equal opportunities" - that money and first-class citizenship would sweep away such low-iq, anti-social savagery like a new Jewish broom. As if inside every sullen, stupid black there lay a dormant David Niven waiting to emerge. And what makes it worse is that no one with a public platform - NO ONE - will admit the fallacy behind that idea, no matter how much evidence piles up before their eyes.
Being a white American today is a little like being in grade school after The Great Society. Everything stops dead until the bussed-in simpletons catch up. And while it's okay to realize they never will, and suffer in silence, saying it out loud will get you expelled.
2002-11-13 19:50 | User Profile
**Expresses the theories of MacDonald almost exactly. Group strategies defeat individual strategies. **
But you must take this a step further. The existence of the state precludes -- or at least poses a huge obstacle to -- the coalescesce of a cohesive group to counter the Jewish group strategy.
The central feature of a successful group strategy is group-orientedness (altruism). The existence of the state, however, provides criminals an opportunity to commit crime with impunity. Though it is possible that a state may be led by an altruist (Hitler?), the nature of the state as the monopoly criminal organization means that criminals (though not only criminals) will be attracted to the state, and thus even a state led by men like Washington and Jefferson (if the government of the Old Republic even qualifies as a state) is sure to degenerate into a collection of parasites.
The state rewards those who reject the cooperative ingroup morality (altruism) that is a hallmark of Judaism and encourages all members of society to follow the lead of the criminals (parasites). Individuals are forced to choose between individual success as a parasite and relative failure as an altruist. Buckley, Will, Limbaugh, et al. have venally chosen the former outcome. Those of us here choose the latter. If we are to foster an environment that produces more of us and fewer of them, we must eliminate rewards for parasitism and bestow rewards for altruism. A crucial part of this process is to weaken the state.
2002-11-13 20:43 | User Profile
Then the Gazelle had better live in Arizona or Texas. Lest he be arrested for "unreasonable" use of force in protecting his fat.
2002-11-13 20:58 | User Profile
Originally posted by Texas Dissident@Nov 13 2002, 19:21 > Originally posted by Okiereddust@Nov 13 2002, 13:14 The implication here I think is really the certain similarity tendencies in some of both Sobran's and Buchanan's to some tendencies of National Socialism.**
In your opinion, what are those tendencies?**
I don't want to jump off the deep end here, but there are just a couple of things here, in a very broad general sense.
1.Sobran
Where Sobran would be and is in veiled and not so veiled fashion by the Veronica's of this world compared with NS is in his critique of Jewish power. Like Kevin MacDonald, he is noting and focusing on certain things about Jews that have long also been noted by anti-Semites. As of course with this forum and LF also.
I'm not saying or repeating the NS slander of course. Nevertheless there are similarities. That doesn't mean they are significant of course. People have had fun pointing out all sorts of things in NS and trying to pin them on people who happen to share the same views, that's a little game people play.
Nonetheless there is, it strikes me, a certain sense in which both Buchanan's extreme (sometimes it seems to me at least) anti-imperialism and solicitude toward left-wing regimes like Iraq, North Korea, and Castro are part of an effort to distance himself from accusations that he really just sympathicized with Hitler. People would after all, be rather suspicious if the Third Reich was the ONLY foreign power he did not view as a threat to the United States.
Similarly Sobran's extreme libertarianism possibly might be an attempt to continue to stay in the good graces of the Austrian school influenced libertarians. Austrian school people like Hayek long (eroneously) viewed neo-conservatives like Moeller van den Bruck and Spengler, who emphasized the "socialistic" side of National Socialism, (or in their proto-forms - Moeller's "the Third Reich" and Spengler's "Prussians and Socialism") as being the "doctrainiers" of National Socialism.
So it strikes me a little bit like both Sobran and Buchanan might in their writings be trying to distance themselves from certain tendencies associated with National Socialism, and might be doing so at the expense of a certain amount of clarity and logic, if not conservative principle.
I think there are certain principles that one should hold on to. National Socialism for instance opposed pornorgaphy, perversion, and homosexuality. I am going to continue to oppose these things also, even if I lose one chance to distance myself from NS slanders. But its just the right thing to do.
2002-11-13 21:08 | User Profile
Originally posted by mwdallas@Nov 13 2002, 19:50 > Expresses the theories of MacDonald almost exactly. Group strategies defeat individual strategies. **
But you must take this a step further. The existence of the state precludes -- or at least poses a huge obstacle to -- the coalescesce of a cohesive group to counter the Jewish group strategy..... If we are to foster an environment that produces more of us and fewer of them, we must eliminate rewards for parasitism and bestow rewards for altruism. A crucial part of this process is to weaken the state.**
With all due respect, I don't see the exact reasons in "the state" per se, that automatically make it such a bad thing. I'm following AntiYuppies and Francis's logic here, they are less opposed to "the state" per se, rather than just "this state".
Its an old strain of thought that goes back to Hamilton, who argued (in opposition to Jefferson) states were really just no different than any other corporate organization, and the people had every right to use its power, i.e. of public incorporation, as they did to voluntarily form private organizations/corporations.
The doctrinaire libertarian opposition to such is something I've never really understood. In fact, many libertarians, following this logic, also are opposed to private incorporation. At this extreme, this is a doctrinaire individualism totally opposed to ingroup altruism of course.
2002-11-13 21:37 | User Profile
**With all due respect, I don't see the exact reasons in "the state" per se, that automatically make it such a bad thing. **
Taxation.
Taxation is nonconsensual. It is aggressive. It is criminal. In other words, it is wholly inconsistent with an effort to create a cooperative group.
There is nothing wrong with an administratve organization that does not tax -- i.e., that provides its services pursuant to contract.
2002-11-13 21:58 | User Profile
Originally posted by mwdallas@Nov 13 2002, 21:37 > With all due respect, I don't see the exact reasons in "the state" per se, that automatically make it such a bad thing. **
Taxation.
Taxation is nonconsensual. It is aggressive. It is criminal. In other words, it is wholly inconsistent with an effort to create a cooperative group.
There is nothing wrong with an administratve organization that does not tax -- i.e., that provides its services pursuant to contract.**
I feel a little now like I'm arguing with a libertarian, with all due respect ;)
Getting back to this voluntary covenant thing, that I've heard libertarians always push as an alternative to government, how exactly is taxation different, than say when a voluntary associatin assesses dues or some other sort of assessment?
2002-11-13 22:06 | User Profile
Originally posted by Okiereddust@Nov 13 2002, 15:58 Getting back to this voluntary covenant thing, that I've heard libertarians always push as an alternative to government, how exactly is taxation different, than say when a voluntary associatin assesses dues or some other sort of assessment?
You can disassociate yourself from the voluntary organization if you don't want to pay dues.
If you don't pay your taxes to the state, you'll be criminally prosecuted and could likely face time in jail.
Just ask Willie Nelson.
2002-11-13 22:59 | User Profile
The (non-libertarian) state generally defends both borders and culture. The defense of borders may be related to the defense of culture, indirectly, because people who are united culturally are more likely to fight in the common interest. People are born into a state, so effectively the generations of the past have chosen the "state" underwhich the present generation lives. If a government were just a corporation then people would be born as non-citezens without guardians to protect them. There would be competition between multiple corporations for the job of "state", and the nation would be torn between many seperate allegiances. Eventually, more intelligent outsiders would come and help themsleves to some loot, as other posters have already stated, but as another poster noted it really is a waste of time arguing with libertarians.
2002-11-13 23:15 | User Profile
** feel a little now like I'm arguing with a libertarian, with all due respect **
Na und? I have seen no convincing critique of the libertarian perspective.
The state is never objectively good, but Neo-Nietzsche suggests that it can be subjectively good, and that Western states typically are good form the Jewish perspective.
I agree wholeheartedly.
This subjectively good state, however, exists only where the state rules a multiethnic population and supports one's own ethnic group at the expense of others. This condition, of course, prevails vis-a-vis Jews in the U.S. and elsewhere. It does not prevail vis-a-vis white folks in this country. Instead, we have a state that is directly hostile to our ethnopolitical interests and that indirectly rewards, subsidizes, and encourages the growth of parasitism within our own population. The development of a cohesive, cooperative group depends on the cultivation of the very opposite, and any fantasies of hijacking the state to use it for our own ends cannot be realized until after the coalescence of a such a group.
2002-11-14 00:26 | User Profile
There would be competition between multiple corporations for the job of "state", and the nation would be torn between many seperate allegiances. Eventually, more intelligent outsiders would come and help themsleves to some loot
Hardly.
In fact, if you knew European history, you would know that such competition -- specifically the competing jurisdiction of the Church and the Crown -- proved a boon to the development of modern Europe.
2002-11-14 00:27 | User Profile
**The claim that "THE STATE" is what makes Jewish manipulation of society possible can be refuted in a few lines. **
But no one makes this claim, so spare yourself the trouble.
2002-11-14 01:27 | User Profile
Originally posted by AntiYuppie@Nov 13 2002, 17:59 **Perhaps like many libertarians you advocate that voluntary agencies should fulfill the functions of law enforcement and national defense, and that paying them should be voluntary, some sort of "social contract" between the individual and the private agencies that provide for domestic law enforcement and national defense. Well then, how does one deal with parasites who live in the society but chose not to pay for the national defense and law enforcement? They should be expelled from the society, right, because they aren't living up to their end of the contract! Under this scenario, you can obviously see that the private law enforcement and defense agency acts as a de facto state, because the individual's only choice is to pay for the service or leave the community (nation). Of course, you as a subject of the state have the exact same right - you can chose not to pay taxes and just leave the country (barring totalitarian states like the USSR that won't let you come and go as you please, that isn't the case in the US).
If you won't grant these agencies the right to cast "cheaters" out of the nation, you'll wind up with a nation of parasites which fluctuates at a certain frequency of cooperators and cheaters and will most likely collapse as the number of cheaters gets too high.**
Also, if you are so foolishly libertarian as to make the ethos of the armed forces and civil service merely contractual/mercenary/self-interested - you have created instant praetorianism: the classical problem, theoretical and practical, of who guards the guardians.
If one dispenses philosophically with self-sacrifice and higher loyalty, as does the libertarian individualist, his toutedly beneficent "Invisible Hand" can logically and historically be expected to smash all resistance with an Iron Fist.
2002-11-14 01:35 | User Profile
Originally posted by mwdallas@Nov 13 2002, 18:26 In fact, if you knew European history, you would know that such competition -- specifically the competing jurisdiction of the Church and the Crown -- proved a boon to the development of modern Europe.
And as much or more a curse, when cooperating, as in the premature sexual maturation of a child for having been molested.
2002-11-14 02:29 | User Profile
Originally posted by il ragno@Nov 12 2002, 23:00 America was founded by men who looked around at the governments they had and decided they could create something better. And for a long time, it WAS something better.
While I believe there were many men who led the revolution and founding of this country who were staunchly for limited government, I also believe that many merely wanted to be directly in control. Quite a number of founders, especially those from the North, would have been just as happy with a monarchy.
What stopped them was the people themselves. They would not put up with such a government, and to this elected leaders responded in the true fashion of representative government. The nature of the people was such that they were considerably more moral, more conscientious, more studious, and more industrious than the people of today. Such a people would not put up with an abusive government. They did not deserve it, and so they did not have it. They required little force to fashion their characters into what they were.
The problem today is that our people are unfit for freedom. They need someone to warn them of every danger. They need someone to look after them in old age. They need someone else willing to do the work required of them. The people of today are fit for nothing but slavery, and so they have it, slavery to vice, impulse, greed, bad judgement, and the eternal politician always ready to step in be their master.
The question that always confronts man is who will be his master. We have chosen poorly.
2002-11-14 02:55 | User Profile
Originally posted by il ragno@Nov 13 2002, 14:21 WE have OUR freedoms curtailed because blacks, mestizos and the odd bit of white human jetsam , who have been granted special rights & tax-based subsidies allowing them to live without any responsiblities, will inevitably abuse them.
A most important point. Only those capable of freedom should be allowed it. Who would argue that a 10 year old should be set free from the bondage of his parents? Who would say they should enjoy the same rights as a 20 year old? We all know they are not capable of being free. But, not all. There might be a few 10 year olds that could be free, and there are certainly many 20 year olds (most college students) who are incapable of being free. You can not have rights without responsibility. And those who can not be responsible have no rights.
Society always restricts freedom based on generalities, but technically this is always at an arbitrary point. Few people dispute that 15 year olds should be able to drive on their own. So we have laws saying you must be 16 or older to drive. This is a line drawn based on probability from observation and study. Yet it is in one sense arbitrary. It is certainly no different than the prohibition of women voting, or the servitude of negroes. Both were based on first hand experience that informed white men that these groups were less fit for the liberty a white man could be entrusted with. In fact, the egalitarian nonsense that has enslaved us all started with the refusal to allow distinctions based on general characteristics to permit negro slavery. From there it progressed to emancipating women. And from that to children. What has been destroyed in the process is society and the family.
The proof of the error of egalitarianism is our society. Those given rights they dont deserve have proven themselves to be incredibly irresponsible. So since we can no longer make the distinctions necessary to give the most freedom to the most people, we are all forced to live under the freedom deserved by the worst among us.
2002-11-14 03:57 | User Profile
Originally posted by amundsen@Nov 13 2002, 20:29 The problem today is that our people are unfit for freedom.
How did this come to be?
2002-11-14 03:59 | User Profile
Originally posted by amundsen@Nov 13 2002, 20:55 In fact, the egalitarian nonsense that has enslaved us all started with the refusal to allow distinctions based on general characteristics to permit negro slavery.
How did this come to be?
2002-11-14 04:54 | User Profile
Originally posted by jay@Nov 13 2002, 18:51 **I had this argument with several OD-ers this summer about drug legalization. It all comes back to the same point: yes, WE can live without the state. WE can live with a little dope on our back porch. But many in our society (especially minors) cannot.
They cannot control themselves and will fall prey to the predators of our society. Therefore we need the state to protect us when Reggie smokes an 8-ball and flies down the highway at 123 mph.
-J**
How does this justify the existence of the state or narcotics laws? If the roads were privately owned, the owners obviously would not allow people to drive wrecklessly on drugs. Simply because people may do irresponsible things does not mean we need a state.
2002-11-14 13:04 | User Profile
Originally posted by oldrightlibertarian@Nov 13 2002, 22:54 > Originally posted by jay@Nov 13 2002, 18:51 I had this argument with several OD-ers this summer about drug legalization. It all comes back to the same point: yes, WE can live without the state. WE can live with a little dope on our back porch. But many in our society (especially minors) cannot.
They cannot control themselves and will fall prey to the predators of our society. Therefore we need the state to protect us when Reggie smokes an 8-ball and flies down the highway at 123 mph.
-J**
How does this justify the existence of the state or narcotics laws? If the roads were privately owned, the owners obviously would not allow people to drive wrecklessly on drugs. Simply because people may do irresponsible things does not mean we need a state.**
"But let us examine their position. When they say that a Briton, when they say that people of whom they do not approve, shall not be reported, what then becomes of the talk of the free Press in Britain? It vanishes. There is no such thing. When they say that censorship exists in foreign countries but does not exist in Britain, we give them that lie direct. We say by their own admission, by their treatment of British Union, they admit the censorship of money. (Cheers.) The only difference between the censorship in Britain and the censorship in the foreign countries they denounce is this: In foreign countries, the people concerned have decided by an enormous majority that their Government shall be vested with power to prevent the publication of lies which destroy the life of their nation. But, in Britain, we have censorship given not to any Government, but censorship in the hands of money and money alone, (Cheers) and censorship used by money, not to suppress anything damaging to the life of the nation, but to promote everything that IS damaging to the life of the nation - to sell to the people false news, to sell to the people lies, to push the vested interests, to raise the interest of the faction and the section above those of the people and of the nation."
2002-11-14 15:11 | User Profile
Excellent thread.
Much of the railing against the great evil abstraction, The State, is a way of avoiding what VDARE calls the national question. Although the tendency towards managerialism and the abuse of state power by a minority always exists, ethnic division makes it much more likely to happen and more malevolent when it does, as the recent history of the west demonstrates.
Consider the following positions:
Leftist: Anti-white 'White Nationalist': Pro-white Libertarians : 'Viewing groups of people as groups is always illegitimate'
The leftist position nakedly exults non white groups and cultures but declares any similar claim by whites to be evil. The pro-white defensive reaction asserts a claim by whites as a group. The problem is that unlike other groups whites have been indoctrinated to see their own group membership as uniquely illegitimate. What's a citizen to to? Become a libertarian, and decare all group membership to be illegitimate.
Libertarianism means never having to say you're white! And in the modern west, that appeals to a great many people.
The problem with this is that libertarians never deal with the basic problem of group affinity, other than declaring that it shouldn't exist and otherwise ignoring it. They rarely strongly oppose the group association among non-whites that they would recoil from engaging in themselves, and because the government is the natural vehicle for group power to assert itself, they stay in the safe and shallow water and blame everything on a secondary effect of group competition, The Dreaded State.
A fundamental characteristic of human societies is that homogeneous societies need less state power to operate successfully, but they can also tolerate more state power when it does exist. Both of these facts arise from the level of trust in society. Cultural and ethnic division undermines this trust because people have a natural affinity for their own group, and because there is less that people will naturally agree about. A state that maintains its borders and its ethnic composition preserves a society where a more powerful state is both less necessary and more tolerable. Only a state can enforce this policy, and the libertarian 'no-groups' fantasy merely undermines arguments for the preservation of the only kind of society in which a small and unobtrusive government is possible, which is what they claim to believe in.
2002-11-14 16:27 | User Profile
**Libertarianism means never having to say you're white! **
Houston, we have a slogan. Brilliant.
2002-11-14 16:47 | User Profile
Leveller:
Libertarians : 'Viewing groups of people as groups is always illegitimate'
But I see the following definition of libertarian:
One who advocates maximizing individual rights and minimizing the role of the state.
It seems that you're talking about a subset of libertarians -- you're painting with too broad a brush here.
2002-11-14 17:22 | User Profile
**I agree with every criticism of the current state of affairs that you and il ragno present, but I don't consider that as any sort of proof that "the state" in itself is responsible for any of this or that the state is something intrinsically evil (or at least any more intrinsically more evil or fallible than any other large human institution). **
Is the state in itself responsible?
No. The state is not the problem; rather it reflects and perpetuates a problem that must be addressed if we are to form a cohesive group that can combat the group strategy that threatens us. Within the framework of multilevel selection, we will see competition between groups and within groups. If a group is to be successful, it must work to minimize the extent to which individuals succeed at the expense of the group. This behavior can be described many ways -- as anti-group, anti-social, criminal, selfish, hyperindividualistic, even parasitic behavior. As long as there is any genetic variation whatsoever within the group, such behavior will be a problem that must be addressed. The state, of course, does not cause the evolutionary competition that generates this sort of behavior.
What the state does is reflect such competition, and the use of force by some members of the group to confiscate resources from other members of the group is parasitic vis-a-vis the group. The state provides a means whereby anti-social individuals can conduct their parasitic activities under a cloak of "legitimacy". When we should be discouraging and punishing anti-group behavior, the state instead helps it flourish. This is the fundamental problem with the institutionalization of the parasitic behavior known as robbery (taxation). The existence of the state means that crime pays within the group. A cohesive group does not tolerate crime within the group.
2002-11-14 18:10 | User Profile
Originally posted by mwdallas@Nov 14 2002, 16:47 **Leveller:
Libertarians : 'Viewing groups of people as groups is always illegitimate'
But I see the following definition of libertarian:
One who advocates maximizing individual rights and minimizing the role of the state.
It seems that you're talking about a subset of libertarians -- you're painting with too broad a brush here.**
Libertarianism has always struck me as a tendency rather than an ideology. It has no real ideological center it seems per se.
However the sentiments you abscribe to a subset of libertarians seem awfully pervasive. Oftentimes I've heard annalex and other libertarian articulaters express adversion to the whole idea of any "communitarian rights" etc.
Libertarianism of course, by nature is an archistic thing, and one has as much rights as someone else to use the phrase. But I really question its value, when so much nonsense is commonly attributed to it. We've discussed this over at
[url=http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php?s=e081222d3a3455fcf5]Bill Gates Does It Again[/url]
Paleolibertarianism seems in general a concession to that old NS bugaboos, "Americanism" and "Hyperindividualism", for which their arguments in this area seem in some ways quite pointed, without necessarly acdcepting their whole weltenshaung.
2002-11-14 19:53 | User Profile
thanks il ragno.
mw:
"But I see the following definition of libertarian: One who advocates maximizing individual rights and minimizing the role of the state."
Although 'rights' is open to misinterpretation, I think I know what you mean. I wasn't defining libertarian philosophy, just describing its followers' view about groups, rather than individuals. In the libertarian worldview only universal interchangable human individuals are considered.
I appreciate the fact that paleolibs in particular say that group affiliations are a private matter and it's only government interference that they have a problem with, but since government exists in some form everywhere and at all times, and group competition creates demands for more government, this is merely a slippery avoidance of the issue.
"It seems that you're talking about a subset of libertarians -- you're painting with too broad a brush here."
Counter-examples are welcome.
For the record, I'm all for small government in general.
2002-11-14 19:58 | User Profile
Originally posted by Texas Dissident@Nov 13 2002, 13:10 What about when Reginald does that 8-ball and decides to kick down the door of your homestead at 3 AM? You think the State is going to be there to protect you and yours? At best the State mops-up the mess in these matters, but in no way does much of anything in the way of prevention. It's ultimately up to you.
Well, true. I don't deny that. I fully support gun ownership in the event Reggie comes by. Then, you can take care of the problem. The state (police) are not able to be omnipresent, so citizens are ultimately responsible for their own protection.
Nevertheless, I want my highway patrol keeping these doofuses behind bars. Cuts down on the probability Reggie even makes it to my door.
2002-11-14 20:00 | User Profile
Originally posted by mwdallas@Nov 13 2002, 13:20 No, you do not need the state to protect you. There's nothing the state can do about Reggie that you can't do yourself.
Totally disagree. I don't have the time nor the inclination to be ever-vigilant about my own personal safety. Most of us have jobs, schools, and families to concern ourselves with. We're not going to spend time we don't have packing heat and driving slowly around our neighborhoods.
We need an org to do that for us, and that's what the State does. There are a few things the state can do better than us - and policemen are one.
-J
2002-11-14 20:17 | User Profile
**
But once again, to argue that "the state is corrupt and incompetent, therefore it must go" makes as much sense as those communists who argue, "look how corrupt Enron and Arthur Anderson are! obviously capitalism must go!" Of course, at least the Communists offer an alternative to capitalism in their proposals, albeit flawed. Libertarians don't even have that, all they have are the literary equivalent of teenagers painting their faces blue, doing a Mel Gibson impersonation, and braying "FREEDOM!"
Now, you did concede that administrative and law-enforcement functions are a necessary consequence of human division of labor. Perhaps you will also concede that the more complex a society, the stronger the administrative and law-enforcement entities must be, simply because an industrial society of hundreds of millions has to deal with complications that hunter-gatherer tribes simply don't encounter. We may quarrel about the details of WHICH administrative and law enforcement functions must be fulfilled, but we agree that SOME have to be fulfilled. So, what are the "free enterprise" alternatives to performing such basic functions, and how are they going to be paid for in the absence of taxes?
Perhaps like many libertarians you advocate that voluntary agencies should fulfill the functions of law enforcement and national defense, and that paying them should be voluntary, some sort of "social contract" between the individual and the private agencies that provide for domestic law enforcement and national defense. Well then, how does one deal with parasites who live in the society but chose not to pay for the national defense and law enforcement? They should be expelled from the society, right, because they aren't living up to their end of the contract! Under this scenario, you can obviously see that the private law enforcement and defense agency acts as a de facto state, because the individual's only choice is to pay for the service or leave the community (nation). Of course, you as a subject of the state have the exact same right - you can chose not to pay taxes and just leave the country (barring totalitarian states like the USSR that won't let you come and go as you please, that isn't the case in the US).
If you won't grant these agencies the right to cast "cheaters" out of the nation, you'll wind up with a nation of parasites which fluctuates at a certain frequency of cooperators and cheaters and will most likely collapse as the number of cheaters gets too high.
So ironically, the libertarian dream runs into the same problem as the egalitarian dream - the "tragedy of the commons" in which cheaters exploit the voluntary contract. The "stateless" utopia runs into the same problems as the "classless" utopia - not everyone will play fair when there's something to be gained from dishonesty. The only options are the dissolution of the society or some level of coercion which says, "if you want the service, you have to pay your dues, otherwise leave." The fact that the entity that says so is called "a private corporation" rather than the "state" makes little difference operationally.
As far as I can see, libertarians have no substantive answer to Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan. Given that there will always be cheaters who won't "play fair," given that you'll have violent criminals and business charlatans at home and aggressors abroad, the only option is to enter a contract with a powerful enforcement and defense entity that is a de facto state, whatever you wish to call it. I suspect the reason libertarianism will never be a viable ideology outside of university campuses is because it's an ideology with no grounding in either human nature or realpolitik. I had asked how basica functions such as national defense and law enforcement would be fulfilled in the absence of a state, the the "response" I got was that supposedly these functions aren't being fulfilled right now. Presumably what you meant is that the way they are being fulfilled is terribly flawed (which I wholeheartedly agree with) because the law is hardly fairly enforced or even coherently stated. **
For the sake argument, lets say that you're right and that the state must provide for the courts, police, and defense. How does that make government anything more than a necessary evil, and why does that presume that we need anything more than a night-watchman state to protect contracts and property?
That being said, Your libertarian straw man argument really fails to address the main points. For starters, mentioning that the state does a horrible job at protection is not irrelevant. It does not follow that we must have private defense agencies because the state does a bad job at defense, but it does mean that all libertarians have to prove is that their system is better.
As for your tragedy of the commons, Hans Hoppe and Murray Rothbard address this at length. Go here [url=http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/14_1/14_1_2.pdf]http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/14_1/14_1_2.pdf[/url] to read Hoppe's private production of defense. Here is rothbard's chapter on For a New LIberty tthat deals with the protection. [url=http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newliberty11.asp]http://www.mises.org/rothbard/newliberty11.asp[/url]
While I can not do justice to either of their views, I have a few basic points that I would like to address.
1) Assuming there is a "tragedy of the commons" how is it any different than the fact that people in a state get protection regardless of whether they pay taxes. 2) If someone does not pay for defense, in terms of national defense, they a) won't get protected (Given that agression can not be indiscriminate), or in the case that it is they will B) not be compensated for damaged property as most insurance companies would do (in the sense that unlike the state, they will actually have an incentive to do a good job of protection) 3) As for your "de facto state" that implies that either the place they live is owned by one group being forced to leave is no less a state than an apartment complex is. If it is incorporated, the owners must specifically agree to the terms the "social contract" and each homeowner must do so voluntarily(which would not likely happen). In a state, I dont have a say in any of those cases 4) YOur arguments only work in the case of a foreign agressor. With police the policy would most likely be they would protect you and you would have to pay a high price if you were not insured. Just as the case is with ambulances.
2002-11-14 20:27 | User Profile
Originally posted by AntiYuppie@Nov 14 2002, 00:10 **il ragno,
I've long tried to understand how one can be a racialist and a libertarian at the same time. The two worldviews seem utterly at odds with one another, hence while I'm a "moderate" racialist I'm not at all a libertarian. Authentic libertarians are ultra-individualists for whom "race" hardly exists at all, every negro must be judged as an individual and not as a representative of his race just as every white man should be similarly judged. It's not accident that doctrinaire individualists (such as Rothbard and the rest of the "Austrian School") championed the cause of negro liberation in the 60's, as they regarded race laws as violating the "personal freedoms" of the negro.**
While I think Rothbard's defense of the Black Panthers was stupid, if you actually look at his arguments to defend the movement, You will see that He liked the black power movement in som much that it would lead to racial separatism (he suggested that Detroit, for example become its own country.) Likewise, he argued the argument for race problems in america was 'extreme apartheid', supported David Duke's run for governor, and endorsed the Bell Curve.
Rothbard's arguments were probably no less "racialist" or whatever than those that came out Modern Age in the 60s, where we learn about the black's "legitimate greivances", which they should use the courts and legislature to solve rather than protest or use violence.
I wouldn't call rothbard a racialist, nor would I say I am. However, It'd be pretty ridiculous to act as if somehow libertarianism inevitably leads to politically correct attitudes on race.
2002-11-14 20:32 | User Profile
**Totally disagree. I don't have the time nor the inclination to be ever-vigilant about my own personal safety. Most of us have jobs, schools, and families to concern ourselves with. We're not going to spend time we don't have packing heat and driving slowly around our neighborhoods.
We need an org to do that for us, and that's what the State does. **
You may want an organization, but that doesn't mean the state.
And, no, protecting is is not "what the state does". It's merely what it says it does to justify its existence. What it actually does is something else entirely. In fact, in our country, the state is busy forcing you to accept criminals into your neighborhood.
2002-11-15 01:01 | User Profile
The exact same thing can be said about private enterprise. The mass media (very much a private sector entity) is probably more responsible for the promotion of anti-social and anti-western activity than anything the government has done. So by your logic we should work for the elimination of the private sector as well, because both the state and the private sector alike can be harnessed by our enemies and used against us.
The problem with the state is not that it can be harnessed for evil; it is that its own means for sustaining itself are inherently evil. That is decidedly untrue for private exchange.
2002-11-15 01:20 | User Profile
What do you mean by 'inherently evil'? Such judgements may only be applicable if we first accept libertarian morality, which most people won't do (they see no reason to).
2002-11-15 01:44 | User Profile
Originally posted by Sporon@Nov 15 2002, 01:20 What do you mean by 'inherently evil'? Such judgements may only be applicable if we first accept libertarian morality, which most people won't do (they see no reason to).
I'm guessing that most people do not accept your morality on many issues. Does that mean its wrong?
2002-11-15 01:54 | User Profile
It means its wrong as far as they are concerned. I always thought that moral relativism was a very conservative concept.
2002-11-15 04:11 | User Profile
Moral relativism the view that people and, by extension, groups of people, will never agree on morality. I believe that moral relativism is a conservative stance because it fits in well with the so-called "tragic" view of man. As conservatives we should fight to reclaim moral relativism.
Often we hear leftists claiming (often loudly) to be moral relativists and then using the language of moral absolutism in the same breath. Words such as "good and bad aren't agreed upon, therefore you must tolerate behaviours you don't agree with", suggest that it is absolutely good to tolerate everything. It seems reasonable to conclude that leftists are actually moral absolutists, but categorising them is difficult because of their inconsistancy. Being consistant is not part of what they consider "good".
2002-11-15 05:04 | User Profile
Originally posted by Sporon@Nov 15 2002, 01:54 It means its wrong as far as they are concerned. I always thought that moral relativism was a very conservative concept.
I know not everybody's "conservatism" is exactly the same, but moral relativism goes against the very first principle of the conservatism defined by the one person who can best define that term in a coherent sense, Russell Kirk.
**Rightly did John Adams call ideology "the science of idiocy". It mistakes means for ends.
Not so the conservatism Kirk personifies. Instead, conservatism, although no rigid doctrine, plumbs the depths of first principles and asks, "What means best serve these principles?" And so, in the second chapter, Kirk enunciates and explains "Ten Conservative Principles". It is as good a summary of the conservative mind as can be found anywhere in so short a compass:
"First, the conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order. That order is made for man, and man is made for it; human nature is a constant, and moral truths are permanent. ([url=http://www.visi.com/~contra_m//cm//reviews/cm08_rev_kirk.html]Tenfold Wisdom[/url])**
Indeed, if libertarianism can be faulted for anything, it is not in its morality, rather it is its tendency to lack such, leaving everything to the discretion of that modern secular concept, the autonomous self, which is a very weak basis for any morality. I know libertarians differ somewhat, and that there is some attempt to define a morality, but overall this is a strong tendency I see in them in general, even to some extent in the so-called "paleo's" who stick to the Ludwig von Mises institute, although they are generally much more cautious and conservative in this regard.
2002-11-15 05:20 | User Profile
Originally posted by Sporon@Nov 15 2002, 04:11 Moral relativism the view that people and, by extension, groups of people, will never agree on morality. I believe that moral relativism is a conservative stance because it fits in well with the so-called "tragic" view of man. As conservatives we should fight to reclaim moral relativism.
I don't see how it fits in with a "tragic" view of man at all. Marx, the great relativist, said of human history rather, "it starts in comedy, moves to tragedy, and ends in farce". Relativism would take a farcical view of man, not a tragic one.
Often we hear leftists claiming (often loudly) to be moral relativists and then using the language of moral absolutism in the same breath.
Why shouldn't they? If morality is relative, why should we bother to tell the truth? As Lenin said, "telling the truth is bourgouis prejudice".
Words such as "good and bad aren't agreed upon, therefore you must tolerate behaviours you don't agree with", suggest that it is absolutely good to tolerate everything. It seems reasonable to conclude that leftists are actually moral absolutists, but categorising them is difficult because of their inconsistancy. Being consistant is not part of what they consider "good".
Yes it is hard to categorize people by their words when their words may easily be lies. As to "good" a relativist believes "good" is a meaningless concept in a social sense as Nietszche "Beyond Good and Evil" noted.
I suggest you restudy the basics of conservatism. Start with Kirk and Jim Kalb's [url=http://www.counterrevolution.net/trad.html]Traditional Conservatism Page [/url]
2002-11-15 05:50 | User Profile
Originally posted by AntiYuppie@Nov 15 2002, 00:15 > What the state does is reflect such competition, and the use of force by some members of the group to confiscate resources from other members of the group is parasitic vis-a-vis the group. The state provides a means whereby anti-social individuals can conduct their parasitic activities under a cloak of "legitimacy". When we should be discouraging and punishing anti-group behavior, the state instead helps it flourish.**
The exact same thing can be said about private enterprise. The mass media (very much a private sector entity) is probably more responsible for the promotion of anti-social and anti-western activity than anything the government has done. So by your logic we should work for the elimination of the private sector as well, because both the state and the private sector alike can be harnessed by our enemies and used against us.
Now let's see, what does that leave us with? We can't have a public sector because it can be exploited by our enemies, but following your very logic we can't have private property either. Libertarian reasoning, when consistently applied seems to leave us in quite a predicament, doesn't it?**
I would argue that "libertarian reasoning" tends to be an oxymoron in my experience, as "Libertarianism in One Lesson" taught me (I'll get the link later). Really though, it strikes me that the differences between you and MWDallas tend to be over the terminology you and MW especially tend to use to define the enemy. MW uses "the State" while you tend to attack just the modern liberal "system" it seems to me. Really both of you I think are referring to the modern "managerial state", which as Francis/Burnham noted is formed by an alliance between three types of managers, corporate managers, government bureacrats, and most importantly, the "cultural managers", as [url=http://www.suba.com/~rcarrier/revcon.html]Revolutionary Conservatism - What's That[/url] the great link I found here points out.
It strikes me really that this difference between your libertarian and anti-libertarian viewpoints really disappears when one sees them as really just using minimally different terminology and conceptual frameworks to criticize what are really the same features of the modern managerial state.
2002-11-15 06:26 | User Profile
Originally posted by Okiereddust@Nov 14 2002, 23:20 **I don't see how it fits in with a "tragic" view of man at all. Marx, the great relativist, said of human history rather, "it starts in comedy, moves to tragedy, and ends in farce". Relativism would take a farcical view of man, not a tragic one.
Often we hear leftists claiming (often loudly) to be moral relativists and then using the language of moral absolutism in the same breath.
Why shouldn't they? If morality is relative, why should we bother to tell the truth? As Lenin said, "telling the truth is bourgouis prejudice".
Words such as "good and bad aren't agreed upon, therefore you must tolerate behaviours you don't agree with", suggest that it is absolutely good to tolerate everything. It seems reasonable to conclude that leftists are actually moral absolutists, but categorising them is difficult because of their inconsistancy. Being consistant is not part of what they consider "good".
Yes it is hard to categorize people by their words when their words may easily be lies. As to "good" a relativist believes "good" is a meaningless concept in a social sense as Nietszche "Beyond Good and Evil" noted.
I suggest you restudy the basics of conservatism. Start with Kirk and Jim Kalb's [url=http://www.counterrevolution.net/trad.html]Traditional Conservatism Page [/url]**
It fits in with the tragic view because it implies that some great transmutation of humanity from its state of suffering and strife to happiness is impossible. Many moralists would like us to believe that if only this or that morality were adopted universally the whole earth would be happy.
Why should we bother to tell the truth? There is no absolute reason. I tell the truth because it is part of my spiritual dicipline among other things. It's said to lead to good karma but its for me to want good karma, and ultimately to say that some karma is good is my judgement again. Some people may have other intellectual preferences and I respect that. Some people may dispute that there is such a thing as karma, and I respect that too.
I never said anything about "good" being meaningless in a social sense. I said that there is no unique meaning. Different individuals, nations and races have different definitions. For a gazelle, good involves eating grass. For a lion, good involves eating gazelles.
You claim hat libertarianism lacks a morality? I disagree entirely. Often I hear libertarians talking about the wrongfulness of "itiatiating force" and "the inherent evil of the state" as if these were universally recognised moral principles. My point is that only a small segment of society could care less about this proposed moral order. Libertarianism will never exist outside of debating societies and internet forums.
I'm not interested in reading the material you suggest that I read because I don't agree with you about the existance universal moral order.
2002-11-15 07:27 | User Profile
Originally posted by Sporon@Nov 15 2002, 06:26 **
I suggest you restudy the basics of conservatism. Start with Kirk and Jim Kalb's [url=http://www.counterrevolution.net/trad.html]Traditional Conservatism Page [/url]
It fits in with the tragic view because it implies that some great transmutation of humanity from its state of suffering and strife to happiness is impossible. Many moralists would like us to believe that if only this or that morality were adopted universally the whole earth would be happy.**
A pure tragic sense by itself may be rightist, but it is not sufficient to be conservative.
Why should we bother to tell the truth? There is no absolute reason. I tell the truth because it is part of my spiritual dicipline among other things. It's said to lead to good karma but its for me to want good karma, and ultimately to say that some karma is good is my judgement again. Some people may have other intellectual preferences and I respect that. Some people may dispute that there is such a thing as karma, and I respect that too.
You talk about karma a lot. Are you rban's guru? :lol:
I never said anything about "good" being meaningless in a social sense. I said that there is no unique meaning. Different individuals, nations and races have different definitions. For a gazelle, good involves eating grass. For a lion, good involves eating gazelles.
Maybe not in a "social" (i.e. utilitarian) sense, but in a transcendent sense, it is meaninglessness. Actually I'm not sure either gazelle or lion understands what we call good. I say this because I believe there is a transcendent universal humanity, qualitatively similar to each other and different from animals through this transendence, the basis for universal human morality. You of course disagree.
You claim hat libertarianism lacks a morality? I disagree entirely. Often I hear libertarians talking about the wrongfulness of "itiatiating force" and "the inherent evil of the state" as if these were universally recognised moral principles. My point is that only a small segment of society could care less about this proposed moral order. Libertarianism will never exist outside of debating societies and internet forums.
You're right, they're often inconsistent and presumptuous, but I'll take this up with the libertarian forums, when I figure out a reason why I should give of ny wisdom freely to Randian despisers of altruism.
I'm not interested in reading the material you suggest that I read because I don't agree with you about the existance universal moral order.
If you aren't interested in reading material that differs from your presuppositions about a moral order,it is rather pointless to read what I, sharing these suppositions, have to say at all now, isn't it?
2002-11-15 13:38 | User Profile
Originally posted by oldrightlibertarian@Nov 14 2002, 14:17 For the sake argument, lets say that you're right and that the state must provide for the courts, police, and defense. How does that make government anything more than a necessary evil, and why does that presume that we need anything more than a night-watchman state to protect contracts and property?
Because the "courts, police, and defense forces" do not - and cannot - have a consistent Code, or formula of contract and property rights to enforce.
The logic of libertarianism/laissez-faire itself leads directly to collusion in restraint of trade, cutthroat competition, and monopoly (the self-deceptive pleadings of apologists notwithstanding) against which the Law has no consistent concept of remedy.
For the merchant/manager of commercial endeavor is required, so as to comply with the ethical rationale of private property/enterprise, to perpetually compete with his peers - but never to win that competition (and never to lose, of course, for his own sake). Compliance with this requirement cannot be consistently defined in law.
Anti-trust law is self-contradictory because: the competitors must not underprice their peers so as to gain a monopoly of the market, they must not charge the same price lest they be guilty of price-fixing, and they cannot overcharge, of course, lest they be driven out of business by a peer, who thus advances toward mono-(oligo)poly and a further violation of law.
In consequence of this ambiguous legal context (and the Populist class-war alternative), major enterprises have been forced to adopt the practice of implicit collusion ("administered pricing") with its exploitation of monopoly/oligopoly pricing at public expense, an expense maintained at a level tolerable to the public, however, through governmental supervision of the economy based on discretionary policy rather than unrealizable law. The fact that policy and politics are necessarily involved means favoritism and corruption are intrinsic aspects of the macro-management of advanced economies, and thus all participants have an unavoidable interest in turning policy in their own favor.
And so we understand that the "night-watchman state" is unrealizable because of intrinsic administrative obstacles thereto, but the state itself cannot be dispensed with because absolute property rights are intolerable in permitting large-scale productive property to be monopolized.
2002-11-15 14:02 | User Profile
BTW, this is why the "Mediator" - elite Jewry- has inserted itself into the U.S. Establishment during the past century, following the closing of the American frontier and the laissez-faire/libertarianism which it had temporarily permitted.
2002-11-16 13:22 | User Profile
Originally posted by NeoNietzsche@Nov 15 2002, 08:02 BTW, this is why the "Mediator" - elite Jewry- has inserted itself into the U.S. Establishment during the past century, following the closing of the American frontier and the laissez-faire/libertarianism which it had temporarily permitted.
[url=http://www.thebirdman.org/Index/Others/Others-NWO-RothschildsVsRockefellers-JamesB.htm]http://www.thebirdman.org/Index/Others/Oth...lers-JamesB.htm[/url]
"However much of the Rockefeller wealth may be attributed to old John D.'s rapacity and ruthlessness, its origins are indubitably based in his initial financing from the National City Bank of Cleveland, which was identified in Congressional reports as one of the three Rothschild banks in the United States and by his later acceptance of the guidance of Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb & Company, who had been born in the Rothschild house in Frankfort and was now the principal Rothschild representative (but unknown as such to the public) in the United States.
"With the seed money from the National City Bank of Cleveland, old John D. Rockefeller soon laid claim to the title of 'the most ruthless American'. It is more than likely that it was this quality which persuaded the Rothschilds to back him . Rockefeller realized early in the game that the oil refinery business, which could offer great profits in a short time, also was at the mercy of uncontrolled competition. His solution was a simple one - crush all competition. The famous Rockefeller dedication to total monopoly was simply a business decision. Rockefeller embarked on a campaign of coercing all competing oil refineries out of business. He attacked on a number of fronts, which is also a lesson to all would be entrepreneurs. First, he would send a minion, not known to be working for Rockefeller, with an offer to buy the competing refinery for a low price, but offering cash. If the offer was refused, the competitor would then come under attack from a competing refinery which greatly undercut his price. He might also suffer a sudden strike at his refinery, which would force him to shut down. Control of labor through unions has always been a basic Rockefeller technique. Like the Soviet Union, they seldom have labor trouble. If these techniques failed, Rockefeller would then be saddened by a reluctant decision to use violence; beating the rival workers as they went to and from their jobs, or burning or blowing up the competing refinery.
"These techniques convinced the Rothschilds that they had found their man. They sent their personal representative, Jacob Schiff, to Cleveland to help Rockefeller plan further expansion. At this time, the Rothschilds controlled 95% of all railroad mileage in the United States, through the J.P. Morgan Company and Kuhn Loeb & Company according to official Department of Commerce figures for the year 1895. J.P. Morgan mentions in his Who's Who listing that he controlled 50,000 miles of U.S. railways. Schiff worked out an elaborate rebate deal for Rockefeller, through a dummy corporation, South Improvement Company. These rebates ensured that no other oil company could survive in competition with the Rockefeller firm. The scheme was later exposed, but by that time Rockefeller had achieved a virtual monopoly of the oil business in the United States. The daughter of one of his victims, Ida Tarbell, whose father was ruined by Rockefeller's criminal operations, wrote the first major expose of the Standard Oil Trust. She was promptly denounced as a 'muckraker' by the poseur, Theodore Roosevelt, who claimed to be a 'trust buster'. In fact, he ensured the dominance of the Standard Oil Trust and other giant trusts.
"During the next half century, John D. Rockefeller was routinely caricatured by socialist propagandists as the epitome of the ruthless capitalist. At the same time, he was the principal financier of the world Communist movement, through a firm called American International Company. Despite the fact that the House of Rothschild had already achieved world control, the sound and fury was directed exclusively against its two principal, representatives, John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan. One of the few revelations of the actual state of affairs appeared in Truth magazine, December 16, 1912, which pointed out that 'Mr. Schiff is head of the great private banking house of Kuhn, Loeb & Company, which represents the Rothschild interests on this side of the Atlantic. He is described as a financial strategist and has been for years the financial minister of the great impersonal power known as Standard Oil.' Note that this editor did not even mention the name of Rockefeller.
"Because of these concealed factors, it was a relatively simple matter for the American public to accept the 'fact' that the Rockefellers were the preeminent power in this country. This myth was actually clothed in the apparel of power, the Rockefeller Oil Trust becoming the 'military-industrial complex' which assumed political control of the nation; the Rockefeller Medical Monopoly attained control of the health care of the nation, and the Rockefeller Foundation, a web of affiliated tax exempt creations, effectively controlled the religious and educational life of the nation. The myth succeeded in its goal of camouflaging the hidden rulers, the Rothschilds."
2002-11-17 13:17 | User Profile
While the population of the world has increased six-fold in the last hundred years to more than six billion souls, the number of Jews, some 14 million today, has remained approximately the same. Evil is unproductive, barren,. and eventually perishes of its own sterility. This is the way of Nature. She deals ruthlessly with any population, race or ethnic group, which fails to solve the problems of its environment.. The low birthrate among Jews is a continuing echo of Natureââ¬â¢s way of weeding out evil.
On a human level, the Nazi expulsion of Jews from Western Europe was an extreme example of a majority group seeking to rid itself of a parasitical minority group that was a threat to kinship and social laws, i.e. culture.
These defilers of all races and cultures have caused dissention and turmoil wherever they have gone for the past 2,000 years. Whether itââ¬â¢s Nazi-style suppression of Palestinians on their own land, land stolen from them by the Zionist-controlled Israeli Government, or the corruption and financial ruin of the host nations, say, the disastrous effect of the Hollywood syndrome upon American culture or the near bankruptcy of Russia, the pattern of evil and desolation is same wherever they are found.
Nature, however, offers hope. The low Jewish birthrate in America suggests they may go the way of the Dodo bird and become extinct in 100 years. And the high birthrate of Palestinians indicates that Jews will be a minority population in Israel, including the occupied territories, within 30 years. The downside is that the bastards are working diligently to suck America into a full-scale war in the Middle East, which will drastically reduce the Arab population, or, if that fails, thereââ¬â¢s always Israelââ¬â¢s nuclear arsenal.
Jews are indeed evil. Perhaps, if humanity is lucky, their lack of procreative success will ultimately bring about their downfall.
-Z-