David Davis
The Landed Underclass highlights what IMHO is the abiding problem about freedom versus tyranny. In ordinary social intercourse, libertarians believe that spontaneous order (call it Law, if you will) will arise because intelligent animals discover co-operation and agreement to be the best policy. Liberty of course is the mother of this kind of order, since you must be free to agree or not.
The post that he is commenting on wonders if there is some kind of convergence in the minds (if you can call them that) of tyrants, who all seem to be collecting tyranny-Pokemon-cards simultaneously.
I tend to side with Mr Underclass on this one, in that there are indeed two kinds of human beings: those who are normal, and those who want simply to bully all those around them into submission.
We may have to finally address what to do with the other sort: they have been allowed to do too much damage, kill too many innocent people, and cause too much delay, for too many centuries. But I hope it does not come to such times, when such things are considered.
Governments have had, in (very very very) small doses, their uses, as has been shown by English History, and indeed the early history of the USA. But I would not go further than that.
For Life, Liberty and Property
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They are acting in concert, because the Enemy Class is a worldwide phenomenon, or, at least, a western-world-wide phenomenon. It has a very long history, too. In fact, in my limited spare time I am attempting to compile some kind of meaningful history of it- a narrative, if you will- which can be easily soundbited. (Soundbitten?)
The roots of it, strangely, seem to lie in certain religious factions- for instance, the methodists here in Britain- who are naturally moralitarian as a matter of doctrine. Indeed, it’s closer to say that we are now suffering under a government of post-methodists than post-marxists, though that isn’t the right way to put it, since the methodists created Victorian moral hegemony, which developed the social engineering ideas of the ruling class- saving the poor from themselves and their nasty habits- which then adopted economic socialism and marxism, et ce ra ra ra.
They are natural internationalists, and always have been. At least for the past century anyway. They create international organisations, international committees, international bodies. They use international organs such as the UN and all its subsidiaries, e.g. the WHO to enforce and promulgate an international moral hegemony. They are indeed working in concert- e.g. smoking bans descended simultaneously worldwide precisely because the Temperance Movement- an integral part of the Enemy Class’s moralitarianism- works internationally.
This is why blaming things on “Labour” is entirely missing the point. The Labour Party is, yes, Britain’s natural methodist party, but it is, like all political parties allowed into the mainstream, simply an emanation of the Enemy Class. Thinking these ideas that descend upon us originate with our visible politicians is like thinking the little figures on the townhall clock are really dancing on their own, and ignoring the complex machinery hid beneath which actually makes them dance.
So anyway, we have to understand that when we look at politicians and their laws and what they do, we’re only seeing what pokes above the surface for inspection. The Enemy is a vast, international machine of committees, organisations, academic bodies, ghastly charities[1] who do the actual decision making. By the time it gets to the lawmaking stage, the decision is long made and impossible to stop. The Network (let’s call it that) decide that smoking will be banned, or that drugs must be illegal, or that Islam must be promoted in the west, and so on. Most of us are entirely excluded from that decision making process.
[1] One weak spot in libertarianism tends to be a naive support for charity (as an answer to “what will happen to people without welfare?”). While charitable acts are entirely commendable and a society of liberty would undoubtedly be a society of charity and friendly assistance, we really need to grasp that the beasts we call official charities are an emanation of the Enemy Class and always have been; founded by aggressive social reformers in the Victorian Era and afterwards with explicitly political objectives. They have been fundamental in pushing us into the statist hell-hole, and instrumental in creating the internationalised steamroller under discussion. We need to stop thinking we have to be nice about these organisations. It’s good to attack “fake” charities, but we have to recognise that machiavellian politicking is a central part of all the significant charities, not some recent new phenomenon, and always has been.
Ian B:
I support Libertarian Internationalism.
What the Heck is “Libertarianism in One Country”???
Haven’t we heard that sort of talk before, somewhere or other???
“Nationalism” is a strong form of Collectivism.
If “All men are created equal, with inherent Rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”, why would anyone want to limit those so entitled to “One Country”‘s people?? It makes no sense!
Or: it’s wilfully evil Nationalist nonsense…
[ FX: "Liberty; the closed preserve
That horrid Foreigners don't deserve" ]
Regards,
Tony
We need to be nationalists at this stage of the game, Tony, because there is currently no libertarian internationalism, because in political terms there is no libertarianism. In a libertarian world, borders would naturally decay to that degree desired by the citizenry. But right now, supporting left-internationalism isn’t supporting an end to nations, it is supporting the creation of super-nations and ultimately one global nation, whose governance is absolute and monolithic, and from which there is no escape.
Nations have been a very good mechanism for firewalling evil. If one nation falls to tyranny, others are still free. When there is only one nation, and it falls to tyranny, that tyranny is absolute and inescapable and there is nowhere outside of it that the spirit of freedom can live on and revive. And- let us not get into nonsense about nations being a recent post-Westphalian invention. Nations are as old as humanity; the tribe is a nation, the old Empires were nations; the story of the Bible come to that is the story of a struggle for nationhood, long before Westphalia.
We are libertarians but must recognise that there are ties of community that bind. People define themselves as parts of things to some degree, and there is nothing wrong with that. I am always struck when reading the writings of no-borders libertarians, that there is always an unspoken undercurrent that the society that they are part of will magically continue to exist- America, or Britain or wherever. But liberty itself is a fragile, western european idea with hardly any track record, that was largely able to come into existence precisely because there were defined polities in which the experiment could take place, containing people who, broadly speaking, considered themselves enough of a community to be able to live together. You break that at your peril, and to ignore it is naive.
If we could spread the flame of liberty, the world would become more equal than we can possibly imagine, with the poor nations of Africa for instance rapidly ascending to parity with the wealthier west as their economies bloom. In that equalised world, borders will have less and less meaning and naturally weaken. That would be a very normal, natural process far removed from the current leftie deliberate smashing of nations and community. We are nowhere near it; the hegemony- the Enemy Class- are currently using all their might to destroy the hopes of the poor world, and wreck the wealthier world. Their internationalism is antipodal to libertarianism.
And, even in that future I hope for, where Ghanains are as wealthy and comfortable as Englishmen, and Englishmen and Ghanaians may freely settle in each others’ lands, there will still be a desire to say “I am an Englishman” or “I am a Ghanaian”. There is nothing wrong with that. Nations are not evil; even though the people who run them frequently are. They are certainly better by far than the one world nation towards which we pitch headlong, for an undending tyranny in such a construct is guaranteed.
I want to publish this exchange as an actual post.
Do you people (Ian and Tony) agree?
I will retitle it as, er, something else, appropriate.
I don’t mind David, I feel rather flattered, so long as you fix my typo “undending” with “unending”
Tony, Ian does not mind: would you agree to this exchange being retitled as a discussion post about the possible future strategic directions that libertarians might take?