Comments (0) “Just as war is the natural consequence of monopoly, peace is the natural consequence of liberty.” -Gustave de Molinari
February 8, 2010
Regular blog posts are below the cartoon.
Lazarowitz on Moral Capitalism, ObamaCorps, Government Medicine vs. Inalienable Rights, Compulsory Medical Monopoly, Conservatives’ Nutty Military Socialism, Trading In Keynesian Clunkers, The Inalienable Right to Secede
Check out the “Noteworthy Articles” and “Recommended Books” on the Right Sidebar.
D.L. Adams: War For Islamic Sharia Law
…..Both Afghanistan and Iraq are Islamic states as codified in their new American-supported constitutions. Sharia Law is the law of Islam. Islamic law supersedes any laws in the constitution that are not Sharia law-compliant…. Sharia law is antithetical to American concepts of freedom and democracy. What can be the reason that we have created two Islamic states founded upon American blood and treasure? Why did we take such a radically different approach to Iraq and Afghanistan than we did with Japan after WW2?….
There is no overlap whatever between American concepts of decency and justice and Sharia law. Among the horrors of Sharia are death for criticism of Islam, death for leaving Islam, dhimmitude for those who are non-Muslims living under Sharia, the near impossibility of rape victims to prove rape, wife beating, child marriage, unequal rights for women, no legal rights for non-Muslims, and the subjugation of women….. No American who loves our Constitution and the freedoms guaranteed under it should accept Sharia Law anywhere in this country or actively support it elsewhere. How can it be countenanced that American soldiers are told that they fight and die for “freedom” in Iraq and Afghanistan when in fact our soldiers fight to prop up two Sharia law states?….
Glenn Greenwald on the Lynch-mob mentality
….All throughout the Bush years, no matter what one objected to — illegal eavesdropping, torture, rendition, indefinite detention, denial of civilian trials — the response from Bush followers was the same: “But these are Terrorists, and Terrorists have no rights, so who cares what is done to them?” What they actually meant was: ”the Government has claimed they are Terrorists,” but in their minds, that was the same thing as: “they are Terrorists.”….
Greenwald compares the current mentality of presumption of guilt (because the government said so) to that of the Salem Witch Trials. And in an update to his post, he highlights one commenter:
….In my job I have to attend monthly community council meetings in one of the police precincts I cover. Here in New York City, just substitute “gang member” for “terrorist” and you have the same dynamic.
Many members of the community were sincerely asking why it is that we can’t just arrest gang members (people we think are gang members based on indicia, I suppose) on sight, whether they’re involved in criminal activity at the time or not, and some thought we should be able to just “take them out.”
It was pretty funny to then hear a room full of cops and DA’s try to explain due process and the Constitution to a room full of civilians who were probably 90% Democrats. Well, maybe ‘funny’ isn’t the word….
That’s the mentality of the supposedly “Constitutionalist,” “conservative” talk radio hosts I listen to in the Boston area. I wonder if they might change their tune if/when the Obommunists go after those “anti-government” types and tea-party activists.
People who blindly believe what government officials tell them are known as “sheeple.” There have been a lot of sheeple who have been blindly believing and trusting of our beloved government officials especially since 9/11. Many people have been followers of the moral relativism of the dreaded Bush Doctrine. But now that the Obommunists are in charge, they will use all the unconstitutional laws, regulations and procedures that Bush gave us to call anyone they want a “terrorist,” arrest people and search them without a warrant and jail them, even, yes, “take them out.” Don’t get in Obama’s way. Don’t get in Hillary Rotten Clinton’s way—that’s even worse, if you can believe it—because she wants to replace him. As H.L. Mencken (supposedly a favorite of talk host Michael Graham, but you could’ve fooled me) wrote,
….The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable….The number of men sitting at Atlanta and Leavenworth for revolting against the extortions of government is always ten times as great as the number of government officials condemned for oppressing the taxpayers to their own gain…..
There have been plenty of signs that the Obommunists will use governmental power towards oppressive ends: members of the Administration who have praised Saul Alinsky, Chairman Mao, Che Guevara and Marx. (No, not Groucho.) When Dick Cheney and Bush put in the unconstitutional, un-American, unpatriotic Patriot Act that has probably disgusted the Heavenly spirits of our Founding Fathers, the narrow-minded policy-makers of extreme shortsightedness probably were incapable of forecasting possible misuse and abuse of such policies by an even more socialist administration in the future. How could anyone have been more socialist than George W. Bush?! Sadly, the sheeple on the right have not been able to see the leftist Big Government destructiveness and invasiveness of liberty of the two Bush presidents and other “neocons,” despite plenty of evidence of it (Wall St. Bailout welfare, amnesty, “Amero,” etc.)
Che
It is unfortunate that the drooling Scott Brown fellators and war zealots and otherwise supporters of US governmental expansionist policies abroad cannot see that foreign governmental expansionism is just as destructive to our liberty and security as domestic governmental expansionism. It’s impractical and counter-productive as well as immoral for the US government to invade and violate people abroad as well as its own citizens.
If anything destroys the United States of America, it won’t be terrorism or Obama or Hillary Rotten Clinton or illegal immigrants or drugs, it will be the US government. The US government began destroying America and liberty and progress since the Founding of America. I think we need Donald Trump to tell the federal government, “You’re fired.”
Justin Raimondo is not afraid to say what’s on his mind regarding “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” in Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell—Don’t Go.
….Today we are fighting three unjust (not to mention unwinnable) wars simultaneously: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the unacknowledged war on Pakistani soil. Hopeful neocons are planning a fourth, and the President’s rhetoric and actions give them ample reason for optimism….My position is not derived from pacifism, although I respect those who hold that view: it is, instead, based on a moral evaluation of US foreign policy as it has been conducted at least since September 11, 2001, although the roots of the moral rot precede that date by a few decades…. The series of post-9/11 wars engaged in by the United States were sold to the American public by hook and by crook – faked “evidence” of Saddam’s alleged nukes, lies retailed by the New York Times and spread throughout the journalistic bloodstream – but the capture of the elites by the War Party was another matter entirely. While John Q. Public was fed a steady diet of scare-mongering – at one point, President Bush claimed Iraq was capable of launching drone attacks on the continental US – the elites were treated to a rather different line….
For years, the US military has proscribed, tracked down, harassed, prosecuted, and imprisoned lesbians and gay men, entrapping them, depriving them of their pensions, and disrespecting them as people – and now that they’re desperate, and backed up against a wall, with an unpopular couple of wars to fight, suddenly they need us, they want us, and, by the way, they’re oh-so-sorry about the past…..
With criticism of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s comment to some left-wing groups that some of their ideas were “retarded,” we now see the left deservedly getting a taste of their own political correctness intolerance. Now Rush Limbaugh is getting criticized for merely saying what he’s been saying for many years, that the left and their ideas really are “retarded,” as well as “kooks” and “loony tunes.” We need to separate the two main uses of the word “retarded,” into what it actually means, and it’s use in “slang” language.
First, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online defines “retarded” as:
(sometimes offensive) : slow or limited in intellectual or emotional development or academic progress
According to several online sources, the current diagnostic criteria for “Mental Retardation” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-iv), include IQ of below 70, limitations in “adaptive” functioning, and beginning before age 18. (When I was in college, the DSM-iii referred to IQ of below 80. I guess they had to lower it to give politicians and bureaucrats a break.)
There are people with developmental cognitive functioning problems, and they shouldn’t be teased or humiliated for that. That’s a completely different situation from criticizing someone who presents dumb ideas, like Obommunists and some people on the right with bad economic and political ideas. What’s really retarded is when people express such offense at Rahm Emanuel’s off-color remarks, and making a big politically-correct thing about it. There’s nothing wrong with Rahm’s or Rush’s recognizing certain people for what they are, and there’s something good about people like Rush not being afraid to say what’s on his mind, and not afraid if a few people might be offended by a word. Most of the people who are offended by this are usually among the “social services” crowd.
But this political correctness fascism that’s been pervading and perverting our culture should be stopped. The left seem to have replaced the old Christian right in this censorship stuff, like book-banning and changing actual words with meanings into euphemisms so as to not offend someone. A perfect example of this is the American Association on Mental Retardation’s changing their name to “American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.” That’s just silly. And it is now the leftists who want to attack and censor the Internet, as a means of stifling ideas that go against their retarded ideas that really shouldn’t be taken seriously anyway. As Psychology Today’s Christopher Ryan states,
It’s not just stupid, it’s counter-productive. In other words, by infantilizing the discussion, this idiocy retards real social progress.
In the previous post the concept of governmental monopoly of territorial protection, law and justice was discussed. Here is a video that exposes some of what we can see in the current system of government’s monopoly of the judicial system (lacking any competition and economic incentives to improve). Note the interaction between the tax-eating police officer and judge towards the beginning. Even though this particular scene doesn’t show the real outrages of the current system, it still takes private citizen (and co-defendant) Felix to act as attorney and get to the bottom of this.
In contrast, here is an example of “private law and justice,” where the laundromat owner could have taken Archie to a government-monopolized court to sue Archie for loading a washer above the weight limit, but instead, chose to find a “private judge,” based on her known honesty and impartiality (even though she’s the wife of the accused violator). The first video sets up the situation, and the second one concludes it.
Two articles to be discussed here, one posted by the Mises Institute and another one from 2006.
This past week, the Mises Institute, and LewRockwell.com, posted a lengthy article by economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Political Economy of Monarchy and Democracy. In this article, Prof. Hoppe discusses the difference between private (monarchical) and public (democratic) ownership of government, their
Given that a monopoly of territorial protection and jurisdiction by either monarchy or democratic rule causes a rise in cost and decline in quality of those monopolized services, among other negative consequences,
….when democratic rule has finally exhausted its legitimacy, the problem faced will be significantly more difficult than when kings lost their legitimacy. Then, it would have been sufficient by and large to abolish the king’s monopoly of law and law enforcement and replace it with a natural order of competing jurisdictions, because remnants of natural elites who could have taken on this task still existed. Now, this will no longer be sufficient. If the monopoly of law and law enforcement of democratic governments is dissolved, there appears to be no other authority to whom one can turn for justice, and chaos would seem to be inevitable. Thus, in addition to advocating the abdication of democracy, it is now of central strategic importance that at the same time ideological support be given to all decentralizing or even secessionist social forces; that is, the tendency toward political centralization that has characterized the Western world for many centuries, first under monarchical rule and then under democratic auspices, must be systematically reversed….
Prof. Hoppe also makes reference to “natural elites,” which he explains further in this 2006 article, Natural Elites, Intellectuals, and the State. In that article, Prof. Hoppe discusses the origins of the “state,” how it came to exist, and the differences between “natural elites” and the state-promoting and state-sponsored elites. The “natural elites” are the ones who have achieved status through natural talents and abilities, characterized by “wisdom and bravery,” and who
possess natural authority, and their opinions and judgments enjoy wide-spread respect,….with long-established records of superior achievement, farsightedness, and exemplary personal conduct that men turn with their conflicts and complaints against each other. These leaders of the natural elite act as judges and peacemakers, often free of charge out of a sense of duty expected of a person of authority or out of concern for civil justice as a privately produced “public good.”
What primarily characterized the formation of the “state,” Hoppe suggests, was the monopolization of those very functions of judge and peacemaker. Economically,
From the moment when a single member of the natural elite successfully monopolized the function of judge and peacemaker, law and law enforcement became more expensive. Instead of being offered free of charge or in exchange for voluntary payment, it was financed by a compulsory tax. At the same time, the quality of law deteriorated. Rather than upholding ancient private property laws and applying universal and immutable principles of justice, a monopolistic judge, who did not have to fear losing clients as the result of being less than impartial, would pervert the existing law to his own advantage.
Prof. Hoppe then discusses the role of intellectuals in monarchies and in the rise of democracies, and points out that the majority of intellectuals at the time of transition from monarchies to democracies did not recognize that the problem with society and justice under monarchical rule was with the rulers’ monopoly of justice and law; rather, the intellectuals promoted keeping government’s monopoly, but just replacing the monarch with “the people” in a democracy. However,
To the intellectuals, this meant by them, as the people’s spokesmen.
Prof. Hoppe explains the economic consequences of the transition of monarchical monopolies to democratic monopolies, the rise in governmental expenses from about 5% to 50% of the GNP, and the rise in government employment from about 3% to 20% of total employment, and the monarchs’ commodity money of gold with an increasing purchasing power that shifted to democracies’ fiat paper money with a steadily decreasing purchasing power.
What happened to the “natural elites” as democracy began and evolved?
The fortunes of the great families have dissipated through confiscatory taxes, during life and at the time of death. These families’ tradition of economic independence, intellectual farsightedness, and moral and spiritual leadership have been lost and forgotten. Rich men exist today, but more frequently than not they owe their fortunes directly or indirectly to the state. Hence, they are often more dependent on the state’s continued favors than many people of far-lesser wealth. They are typically no longer the heads of long-established leading families, but “nouveaux riches.” Their conduct is not characterized by virtue, wisdom, dignity, or taste, but is a reflection of the same proletarian mass-culture of present-orientation, opportunism, and hedonism that the rich and famous now share with everyone else.
The fate of intellectuals, thanks to the evolution of democratic rule, is that of state-apologists, claims Prof. Hoppe. In my own opinion, this isn’t just leftist intellectuals, but the right-wing, war supporting “intellectuals,” who are as much statist and promoters of statism and socialism at the expense of liberty and property as are the leftists.
There are more propagandists of democratic rule around today than there were ever propagandists of monarchical rule in all of human history.
And Hoppe continues with the alleged “free-market” intellectuals of Milton Friedman and his ilk, who support a central bank, paper money and the welfare state in general (the very aspects of democracy that are playing a major role in destroying Western civilization). And Hoppe is critical of the Newt Gingrich “Republican Revolution” of the 1994 elections, with “Revolutionary” Gingrich nevertheless praising the New Deal and civil rights legislation that have destroyed private property rights and freedom of association and contract, the very values that were promoted and advanced by actual Revolutionaries in the late 18th Century.
What kind of a revolution is it where the revolutionaries have wholeheartedly accepted the statist premises and causes of the present disaster? Obviously, this can only be labeled a revolution in an intellectual environment that is statist to the core.
Hoppe describes the importance of morality, which is lacking in today’s intellectuals, and ways to counter the pro-state intellectuals of both left and right, with an anti-intellectual intellectualism, and with courage, and with hope:
Fortunately, the ideas of individual liberty, private property, freedom of contract and association, personal responsibility and liability, and government power as the primary enemy of liberty and property, will not die out as long as there is a human race, simply because they are true and the truth supports itself.
Jacob Hornberger on the Toyota recall and the regulation-obsessed “nanny state”
….Unfortunately, the problem doesn’t just involve parasitic bureaucrats sucking hard-earned money out of people’s pockets under the pretense that they’re keeping them safe. It’s much worse than that. The nanny state lulls lots of people into a peaceful state of innocent bliss in which they think they’re being kept safe from the hazards of ordinary life. Thus, people become less cautious and more gullible, and thus, are less safe than they otherwise would be….
In this month’s Liberty Magazine, Lone Star College librarian David Puller points out President Obama’s Biblical references in some of Obama’s speeches, and asks whether the implication that the Bible recommends government redistribution-of-wealth schemes is accurate.
….The fundamental question for those who consider the Bible authoritative is not whether it advocates charity or helping the poor. Obama, Wallis, and other statist Christians are not arguing for charity. They are arguing for government appropriation of property….
….Let’s examine these principles. The first, that theft is morally wrong, is stated in the Old Testament and repeated in the New, as in Matthew 19:17–19 and Romans 13:9–10. One particular form of theft that the Bible addresses specifically and at length is withholding wages from workers who have earned them. Leviticus 19:13 establishes that doing so constitutes robbery. Deuteronomy 24:15 and James 5:4 describe this act as one that infuriates God….
…If theft is a crime, then by logical necessity there must be a right to property. Where there is no property, there can be no theft. Before Christians endorse confiscatory economic policies, thinking that the Bible mandates them, they should consider what limitations the Bible places and does not place, on property rights….because the whole world belongs to God… But the divine ownership premise cannot be taken as grounds for government seizure of property….
The Inalienable Right To Secede, by Scott Lazarowitz
February 1, 2010 Copyright © 2010 by LewRockwell.com
During the time of President Obama’s State of the Union address, it was noted that HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan was Obama’s “Designated Survivor.” This is a perfect example of how a government-monopolized defense system is actually a threat to the security of all Americans. If a catastrophe occurs in Washington, panic and vulnerability would spread across America, a result of an entire population compelled by force to be dependent on a centralized authority for their protection. Another catastrophe is the economic one that Americans have been suffering, due to the federal government’s monopoly in the production and distribution of money, thanks to President Abraham Lincoln and his War on Independence.
Within the inalienable rights to life and liberty, as recognized in the Declaration of Independence, is the right to independence. People have a right not to be compelled to be dependent on the federal government’s monopoly of territorial protection and jurisdiction. If people within a particular territory have a right of independence and a right of self-determination, then they have a right to secede from the federal “union.” This is reinforced by the Declaration of Independence, which states that “it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” And Thomas Jefferson later noted, “…If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation….to a continuance in the union….I have no hesitation in saying, ‘let us separate’…”
While some say there is no such constitutional right to secede or nullify federal law, and others argue that the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the US Constitution protect such states’ and individuals’ rights, there is a higher law that takes precedence over Constitutional law, namely Natural Law, which governs our natural, inherent rights as human beings, as noted in the Declaration of Independence.
Further, given that the US Constitution is a “contract,” its terms are legally binding to all who reside within the US territories whether or not they voluntarily consented to participate in such a contract. 19th-century entrepreneur Lysander Spooner observed that the Constitution’s contractual obligations are to those who signed such a document, and applied to the people living at the time, and cannot possibly apply to people living in future generations. And, Spooner notes,
…. only a small portion even of the people then existing were consulted on the subject, or asked, or permitted to express either their consent or dissent in any formal manner. Those persons, if any, who did give their consent formally, are all dead now…. It is not only plainly impossible…. that they Could bind their posterity, but they did not even attempt to bind them…. the language neither expresses nor implies that they had any right or power, to bind their “posterity” to live under it. It does not say that their “posterity” will, shall, or must live under it. It only says, in effect, that their hopes and motives in adopting it were that it might prove useful to their posterity….
The mid-19th-century war waged by President Abraham Lincoln against the peacefully seceding Southern States was an important time. However, it is necessary to rectify the myths associated with that war, such as Lincoln’s purpose being to “end slavery.” In fact, an important motivation behind the Southern States’ peaceful secession was Lincoln’s tariffs against the South that protected Northern industries, and Lincoln’s main concerns were not freeing slaves, but his protectionist tariffs and, more importantly, to force the Southern States back into the “union.” Further, Lincoln expanded the government’s monopolies upon which all Americans were compelled to be dependent, such as replacing hard money with fiat paper money, something against which Thomas Jefferson and others had warned, and driving a stake into the heart of banking competition.
Much of America’s current economic slavery and depression are tied to Lincoln’s actions. To Lincoln, expanding the size and power of the federal government and further handcuffing the masses was worth the clinging US government’s campaign of violence and barbarism against civilians that contradicted internationally recognized mores. While the Founding Fathers were forced to use war to secede from tyrannical British rule, Lincoln used war for the opposite purpose.
Besides his oppressive use of taxation, Lincoln’s other economic achievement–and it’s also not a good one–initiated the monetary bondage of the citizens by the federal government, violating the people’s right of free exchange and trade, which includes the right to choose one’s means of exchange that isn’t monopolistically produced and distributed by the government. Not only should Americans secede from the federal government, but they should secede from invasive, dictatorial federal monetary policy. (US Rep. Ron Paul’s bill to repeal the legal tender laws and allow for competing currencies begins to correct this.)
Economist Murray Rothbard is quite blunt about the true nature of taxation and the government’s constitutionally assigned compulsory territorial monopoly:
Taxation is theft, purely and simply….and is therefore indistinguishable from theft, it follows that the State, which subsists on taxation, is a vast criminal organization far more formidable and successful than any “private” Mafia in history…. (the State) prohibits the free competition of defense and decision-making agencies within a given territorial area – prohibiting the voluntary purchase and sale of defense and judicial services… the State is an inherently illegitimate institution of organized aggression, of organized and regularized crime against the persons and properties of its subjects. Rather than necessary to society, it is a profoundly antisocial institution which lives parasitically off of the productive activities of private citizens…
Within our inalienable rights to life and liberty is the God-given right of self-defense. However, a centralized federal government which monopolizes territorial defense is a violation of the peoples’ right of self-defense. People have a right of self-defense and a right to not be held in bondage by the state for their protection or for any reason.
Besides the states seceding and providing their own defenses, another alternative is a privatized, free market in defense that would allow competition among defense agencies, especially in the context of totally repealed weapons laws. The quality and efficiency in defense services would go up and the price would come down, as in any endeavor in any free, civilized society. For example, after 9/11, the people of Manhattan or indeed the owners of the World Trade Center would exercise their right to contract private agencies and private warriors to investigate, retaliate against and eliminate Al Qaeda at its roots, including involving specialized risks in foreign territories. Assuming there would be no invasive, dictatorial US governmental restrictions interfering with such efforts, the private contractors would probably have done the job more quickly and efficiently than the government, which not only still hasn’t done the job, but has only made things worse. Had the government been a private agency, its contract would have been terminated years ago, and many of its authorities would now be in jail.
As economist Gustave de Molinari noted,
…(the consumers of competitive protection agencies) “would be careful not to allow themselves to be protected by men who would unscrupulously attack the persons and property of their rivals…. Just as war is the natural consequence of monopoly, peace is the natural consequence of liberty.”
The nation states of the Soviet Union learned their lesson, that central planning and government monopolies violate individual rights and cause dysfunction, economic stagnation and corruption. Either the US states ought to secede from the federal government’s control, or we ought to consider eliminating the federal government altogether and let the people have their freedom and independence. It is the people’s inalienable right to secede, just as it was the Founders’ inalienable right to secede from British rule.
Panorama Theme by 
Themocracy
© 2009-2010 Reasonandjest.com All Rights Reserved -- Copyright notice by Blog Copyright
