Mike Gogulski and the Citizens of Nowhere

by James Tuttle

Note: I met Mike in Slovakia in 2008, and look forward to seeing him again every year. His principled stand isn’t one I feel inclined to imitate. However, it is very much to be admired. SIG

Mill on Liberty – Old Review

I wrote this in 1994. I still more or less agree with it. SIG

On Liberty
John Stuart Mill
Prepared by dell from the Harvard Classics edition,
published by P.F. Collier & Son, Massachusetts, 1909
Available from gopher://gopher.panix.com/misc/referencelibrary/classicsofliterature/
First published 1859, published on-line September 1993, 281.53kb, public domain

Keith Preston on The New Totalitarianism

by Keith Preston

Note: I’m very impressed by the work of Keith Preston. I came up with the phrase “Enemy Class” to describe the enemies of bourgeois civilisation. Our Blogmaster uses a long circumlocution. Ian B has his preferred terminology. I suggest we should adopt the Prestonism of “totalitarian humanists.” We are all talking about more or less the same group of people.

Totalitarian humanists are people whose legitimising ideology is cultural leftism, and who are imposing this via a police state at home and military force abroad. They have merged with a much older corporate elite. They have massively enlarged the military and police arms of the State. Until about 30 years ago, they were denouncing these three forces. But they have now spread their ideology to their former enemies, and thereby cleansed them of evil. They seek absolute and unaccountable power, and the consequent destruction of ancient liberties and intermediary institutions, by insisting on the absolute goodness of their legitimising ideology and the absolute evil of the various “hates” they are combating. They control business and education and the media, and politics and law and administration, and every medical bureaucracy. They are embedded in every main religion except Islam. They are absolutely supreme in every transnational bureaucracy.

As an aside, I suggest that the European Union is evil not because it is run by Frenchmen and Germans, or whatever. Let’s be reasonable – rule from Paris or Berlin would not in itself be catastrophic. It isn’t evil because our own liberal institutions are being destroyed – these have already been destroyed. It is evil because it is another place from which the totalitarian humanists can exercise absolute and unaccountable power to reshape us as they desire.

A good British example of totalitarian humanism is the Stephen Lawrence circus. Two men faced 20 years of administrative and legal harassment and media vilification. They were finally brought to trial and convicted on the basis of what looks like fabricated evidence. One of them could only be tried after the very ancient protection against double jeopardy had been stripped out of the Common Law. Had this been done to Sinn Fein/IRA terrorists, there would – rightly – have been howls of outrage. In this case, the entire ruling class set up a squeal of delight. Nothing – certainly not due process or even common decency – can be allowed to stand in the way of crushing racism, homophobia, sexism, xenophobia, or any other excuse for not joining in the Potemkin love feast of the totalitarian humanists.

Other examples are the persecution of Emma West, the persecution of Christian hoteliers who won’t rent out rooms to homosexuals, refusal to let devout Christians foster children, denial of NHS treatment to people who live other than as directed, the attempted use of sporting associations to
brainwash the white working classes. These really are all examples of the same war against bourgeois civilisation.

I could say more. But here is the essay. Read and consider its implications for our own strategy. [SIG]

Down with anti-market “anarchists”

by Stephan Kinsella
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/22743.html

Down with anti-market “anarchists”

Posted by Stephan Kinsella on September 9, 2008 01:46 AM

There’s a lot of noise being made by the left- and mutualist-libertarian crowd about the arrest of some so-called “anarchists” (scare quotes because anti-market “anarchists” are not real anarchists, i.e. anarcho-libertarians) and seizure by the police of “anarchist” and anarchist literature, including some by mutualist-libertarian Kevin Carson. From what I can gather from various incoherent media and blog descriptions, an “anarchist” group called the RNC Welcoming Committee was going to protest the Republican convention in Minnesota; some market anarchists tried to join up to make some inroads with the commie “anarchists”, and some Ron Paul supporters. For some reason the cops made arrests and seized literature, which included some of Carson’s writings.

Evaluate and Critically Discuss

“England was a much better place when ruled by a committee of aristocratic landlords. All experience of the past 127 years has shown that ordinary people are not to be trusted with public affairs. They have consistently failed to see through the rogues and charlatans who have progressively monopolised English politics since the Third Reform Act, and have been too numerous to feel or be exposed to any sense of personal shame at this failure. The only way that England can now be saved is by a Caesaristic dictatorship, after which a restored Constitution will restrict the vote and access to elected office to persons of good character.”

Evaluate and critically discuss this anonymous, though wholly sound, comment. Candidates are encouraged to make some reference to the failed reforms that Sulla made to the Roman Constitution, and to the more thoroughgoing reconstuction by Julius Caesar, and to the final settlement by Augustus. Additional marks will be given to those candidates who recognise Gladstone as the proto-Blairite wrecker that he was. Candidates who use American spellings, or make any reference to the politics or history of the United States, will be failed without right of appeal.

Unvereinigtes Königreich: Abspaltung Schottlands wäre gut für England – Sean Gabb – eigentümlich frei

 

Unvereinigtes Königreich: Abspaltung Schottlands wäre gut für England

von Sean Gabb

Vorteilhaft auch für die angeschlagene bürgerliche Zivilisation

Die übliche englische Antwort auf den schottischen Nationalismus ist, ihn zu ignorieren, ihn als Irritation zu betrachten oder ihn unter Erinnerung an die gemeinsame Geschichte herunterzureden oder den Wert englischer Subventionen hervorzuheben und darauf zu warten, dass sich in der Debatte der gesunde Menschenverstand durchsetzt. Ich behaupte, dass keine dieser Reaktionen angemessen ist. Keine davon berücksichtigt, dass England und Schottland verschiedene Nationen sind und dass der lauteste und aktivste Teil der schottischen Nation entschieden hat, dass die derzeitige Union der Nationen nicht im schottischen Interesse ist. Das bedeutet nicht notwendig, dass die Auflösung der Union unausweichlich ist. Es macht sie jedoch erstrebenswert. Schottland mag unter der Union gelitten haben, oder auch nicht. Aber die Union hat viel dazu beigetragen, England an den Punkt des Zusammenbruchs zu bringen und es scheint mir vernünftig zu sagen, dass die Sicherheit Englands niemals gewährleistet werden kann, solange sich schottische Mitglieder im Westminster-Parlament befinden.

Rothbard and Rockwell on Conservatives and the State

by Stephan Kinsella
http://www.libertarianstandard.com/?p=10447

Rothbard, in For A New Liberty:

The idea of a strictly limited constitutional State was a noble experiment that failed, even under the most favorable and propitious circumstances. If it failed then, why should a similar experiment fare any better now? No, it is the conservative laissez-fairist, the man who puts all the guns and all the decision-making power into the hands of the central government and then says, “Limit yourself”; it is he who is truly the impractical utopian.

A Year of Wonders — And Another to Come?

by Kevin Carson
http://c4ss.org/?p=9459

Looking back on the events of 2011, I have to keep reminding myself it wasn’t a dream.

Populism

“The basic right-wing populist insight is that we live in a statist country and a statist world dominated by a ruling elite, consisting of a coalition of Big Government, Big Business, and various influential special interest groups. More specifically, the old America of individual liberty, private property, and minimal government has been replaced by a coalition of politicians and bureaucrats allied with, and even dominated by, powerful corporate and Old Money financial elites (e.g., the Rockefellers, the Trilateralists); and the New Class of technocrats and intellectuals, including Ivy League academics and media elites, who constitute the opinion-moulding class in society. In short, we are ruled by an updated, twentieth-century coalition of Throne and Altar, except that this Throne is various big business groups, and the Altar is secular, statist intellectuals, although mixed in with the secularists is a judicious infusion of Social Gospel, mainstream Christians. The ruling class in the State has always needed intellectuals to apologize for their rule and to sucker the masses into subservience, i.e., into paying the taxes and going along with State rule. In the old days, in most societies, a form of priestcraft or State Church constituted the opinion-moulders who apologized for that rule. Now, in a more secular age, we have technocrats, “social scientists,” and media intellectuals, who apologize for the State system and staff in the ranks of its bureaucracy.“

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/ir/Ch5.html

Mic Check: I See What You Did There

by Thomas Knapp
http://c4ss.org/?p=9379

As right-wing talk radio host Rush Limbaugh loves to note, words mean things. What they mean isn’t always obvious, of course. Meanings change over time. Gaps between usage and reality are open to exploitation and abuse. One key task of any movement for change is to close those gaps — to help people accurately identify words with the phenomena they actually describe.

Libertarianism: Thick and Thin

Article by Matt Zwolinksi.
http://attackthesystem.com/?p=12750

A fairly balanced discussion of “thick vs thin” libertarianism from a generally “thin” perspective.

Guardian Readers Snarling through Bars of Their Intellectual Cage

Taking liberties with the concept of freedom guardian.co.uk, Friday 23 December 2011

It was amusing to read Sean Gabb of the so-called Libertarian Alliance proclaim the need for “exposing your readers to genuine libertarian positions” (Letters, 21 December). If that were done, they would discover that libertarian was originally coined by a French communist-anarchist in 1857, over one hundred years before the propertarian right in America appropriated it for their hierarchical ideology. To quote leading propertarian Murray Rothbard: “we … had captured a crucial word from the enemy … ‘Libertarians’ … had long been simply a polite word for … anti-private property anarchists … But now we had taken it over.”

Some Distinctions and Clarifications

by Roderkick Long
http://aaeblog.com/?p=8442

I want to talk a bit a bit some of the ways in which left-libertarian claims are susceptible of misinterpretation. (Note: when I use the term “right-libertarian” below, I mean “libertarians who deviate rightward from the C4SS/ALL plumbline”!)

Ayn Rand, Objectivism and Anarchism

The Facts Of Reality: Logic And History In Objectivist Debates About Government
Nicholas Dykes
Philosophical Notes No. 79
ISSN 0267-7091 1 85637 609 5

An occasional publication of the Libertarian Alliance, Suite 35, 2 Lansdowne Row, Mayfair, London W1J 6HL.

© 2007: Libertarian Alliance; Nicholas Dykes.

Nicholas Dykes is a British-Canadian writer currently living in England. He is married, with two grown-up children. Besides numerous pieces for the Libertarian Alliance and journals such as Reason Papers, he is the author of Fed Up With Government? (Hereford, UK, Four Nations, 1991), the 300-page manifesto for a putative British ‘Libertarian Party’. This current essay was previously published in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 7, no. 1 (Fall 2005): pp. 79-140.

The views expressed in this publication are those of its author, and not necessarily those of the Libertarian Alliance, its Committee, Advisory Council or subscribers.

FOR LIFE, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY

Capitalism as an Unnatural System

Article by John Medaille.
http://attackthesystem.com/?p=11860

Ever since capitalism made its appearance in the late Middle Ages and came to dominate both production and politics in the late 18th century, there has been a vigorous debate on just what the nature of capitalism is. Central to these debates has been the question of capitalism’s relationship to the state, and particularly the question of whether capitalism was an enemy or a child of the state. There have been no shortage of great names in this debate: Smith, Marx, Mill, Mises and many other great minds weighed-in with weighty tomes on the topic. Yet I do believe that the honor of formulating the question in the most succinct and elegant terms possible must go to Sorin Cucerai in his brief but powerful essay, “The Fear of Capitalism and One of its Sources,” in the May issue of Idei in Dialog.

Keith Preston on Strategy

by Keith Preston
http://attackthesystem.com/?p=11857

Hat tip to MRDA. Dain is an old acquaintance of mine from the U.S. libertarian milieu.

A Bleeding Heart History of Libertarian Thought – Herbert Spencer

Article by Matt Zwolinski.

If you’re like most people, then the one thing you probably think you know about Herbert Spencer is that he was a “Social Darwinist.” And that one thing is wrong.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe on Immigration

by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
http://lewrockwell.com/orig/hermann-hoppe1.html

On Free Immigration and Forced Integration
by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

The classical argument in favor of free immigration runs as follows: Other things being equal, businesses go to low-wage areas, and labor moves to high-wage areas, thus affecting a tendency toward the equalization of wage rates (for the same kind of labor) as well as the optimal localization of capital. An influx of migrants into a given-sized high-wage area will lower nominal wage rates. However, it will not lower real wage rates if the population is below its optimum size. To the contrary, if this is the case, the produced output will increase over-proportionally, and real incomes will actually rise. Thus, restrictions on immigration will harm the protected domestic workers qua consumers more than they gain qua producers. Moreover, immigration restrictions will increase the “flight” of capital abroad (the export of capital which otherwise might have stayed), still causing an equalization of wage rates (although somewhat more slowly), but leading to a less than optimal allocation of capital, thereby harming world living standards all-around.

What to Make of “Capitalism”

Note: This posting has generated nearly a hundred comments, and has been viewed by pushing towards 10,000 people. We are not surprised, as the issues discussed are central to the future direction of the libertarian movement. For this reason, we are pinning it to the top of the blog until the comments and views fall away. SIG

by David D’Amato
http://c4ss.org/?p=8156

For the United Kingdom’s The Guardian, Pankaj Mishra says the world is “looking at a fresh political awakening,” citing examples from Egypt and Greece to Israel and China. “[E]xtreme and seemingly insurmountable inequality,” Mishra argues, are the source of the new “public anger,” and that inequality is itself the result of “the west’s model of consumer capitalism.”

Help Keep Kevin Carson Busy!

by Brad Spangler

Dear Supporters of the Center for a Stateless Society,

I’m starting the third quarter 2011 fundraiser early in hopes that it  will clear up an apparent database problem with the donation software we use.

Here’s where we’re at…

C4SS staff has been paid for up through half of their February 2011 pay. Here is what our regular monthly expenses for staff pay look like.

Research Associate: Carson — $250 (2 weekly articles + $50, 1/6 of 1 biannual study)

News Analyst: Worden — $100 (1 weekly article)
News Analyst: D’Amato — $300 (3 weekly articles)
Social Media Specialist: Litz — $320 (10 hours/wk / 40 hours/month @ 8/hour)
Media Coordinator: Knapp — $640 (20 hours/wk / 80 hours/month @ 8/hour)Total: $1610

So, half of February plus all of March through June means we’re seeking 4.5 times $1610 — which means we’re looking to raise $7245 between now and the end of August 2011.

To donate, please click on the “Contribute” button which you’ll find on the fundraising widget you’ll find on every page of our web site.

http://c4ss.org/

Nobody else really fills the niche we fill. If you agree that what we do matters, please support our work as best you can.

Regards,

Brad Spangler
Director, Center for a Stateless Society