Liberty

SOTU: a Masterwork of Co-option.

L. A. Repucci Liberty , , , , , , , , , ,
Sheila Broflovski ‘solves’ the ‘problem’ of ‘obscenity’.

A professor of Political Science at my school described the modern left-right paradigm for the class today — to paraphrase, he summed up the political landscape of the US with the all-too familiar perspective: ‘conservatives want less government, and liberals want more government’.

I opined, silently, in my seat.  Sensing my disapproval, the professor asked if anyone had a differing perspective on the country’s political spectrum.  I raised my hand and pointed out the perspective of this oft-regurgitated axiom of political theory.  rephrased the point: Conservatives want liberty, and Liberals want safety.  When it was suggested by a classmate that I was coloring the axiom to suit my political bent, I defended my choice of language.  This phrasing, I argued, is the happy middle ground between the original, popular formulation that the professor used, and a statement that more closely aligns with my actual opinion: Conservatives want freedom, and Liberals want slavery.

When placed together, these three phrasings of the same observation illustrate the powerful effect nomenclature can have on a statement — and sheds a pinhole of light onto the vastness of the power of language analysis with respect to ideology:

Conservatives want less government, and Liberals want more government.

Conservatives want liberty, and Liberals want safety.

Conservatives want you to be free, and Liberals want you to be a slave. 

The words we chose to use when we frame our thoughts betray our underlying perspective.  Language is the seat of understanding, and can be deconstructed to suggest motivation and perspective.  Analyzing the language used by self-styled ‘progressive liberals’  (forgive the quotes — the term itself is completely removed from cogency as a representation of meaning, as is ‘conservative’.  These two terms as used in modern US politics do not come anywhere near connoting accurate definitions) yields a lexicon that I dub the language of Co-option.  This liberal dictionary is used by a vast majority of the public out of rote; most people do not consider deeply the meaning of the language they use.  Those that speak this dialect knowingly craft the language, and therefore, the thinking, of the larger public who adopts the dialect and spreads the meme and built-in collectivist programming therein.

This Language of Co-option is the language of our classrooms.  It is the language of our politicians.  It is Hegel.  It is Sociology.

Let’s vivisect the following liberal sociological speech pattern:

“X is bad for society.  We should do y so that z happens instead.”

To make the point that much clearer, let’s translate the above formulation into political rhetoric:

“For American families, x is a real problem, so our administration is committed to y policy so that z will result.”

To define our terms:  the value x in this construction represents a ‘problem’ — to be specific, some suggested verifiable disadvantageous phenomena, that would be mitigated by taking y action.  These instances exist; we can plug in some terms for our variables to create cogent statements:  Suffocating is problematic for humans, therefore humans should breathe.  This construction is cogent because human beings need to breathe in order to avoid suffocation, which is indeed, harmful to humans.  However, such statements rarely provide people with new insights, because cause and effect tend to be plainly apparent; most everyone knows that they need to breathe to live.  It seems tedious to think such obvious statements would warrant comment, let alone, say, a State of the Union address.

The power of this statement only manifests when coupled with action — the y variable.  The point of x, of stating an obvious ‘problem’, is merely to gain the agreement of the audience to the y that will follow.  In fact, in political speech, x and y need not have any real connection at all.  This effect has been pointed out by others, including the research of behaviorist Ellen Langer, who’s research suggests merely by adding any explanation to a request one can improve the chance of a ‘yes’ in response.

For example, take this phrase from the State of the Union Address last night:

“There are other steps we can take to help families make ends meet, and few are more effective at reducing inequality and helping families pull themselves up through hard work than the Earned Income Tax Credit.”

to simplify:  “Poverty (x) is a problem for people, and we can fix inequality (z) with the EITC (y).”

Let’s break it down critically.  Poverty is always a problem for a family, as it is averse to survival.  If you don’t eat, you starve — as obvious as the sun shining in the sky.  This statement alone is almost as bereft of importance as ‘nice day, huh?’ or ‘how about those (insert local sports team name)!’ The President must have had a reason to make the comment.  The statement made in this way implies poverty is a fixable problem in society, rather than a product of the human condition or the laws of our natural world.  The first law of the human condition is scarcity; there is never enough of any resource to satisfy demand in any economy.  When coupled with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, any natural system in the universe behaves the same way.  POTUS makes the statement about poverty implying a collective problem that can be solved by some action.

The showstopper for libertarians is usually y.  The solution to the problem offered by the state is ALWAYS aggressive force.  In the above example, that aggression is in the form of extortion — specifically, theft of property through threat of violent action via taxation.  This is stated in a positive light as phrased; the Earned Income Tax Credit is sold to the public as a tax break for some people, but comes at the expense of everyone else.  The fact that your government is extorting less money from some than from others is aptly defined as ‘inequality’, but this obvious truth is distorted and reversed completely with Co-optive language to masquerade as benevolence, yielding the aberration cited.

This construct is the essence of the Hegelian ‘crisis, reaction, solution’, and is a hallmark of Co-optive speech and thought, and permeates our zeitgeist.  Freedom-minded individuals hear this language and know just how ubiquitous it is in society — keep it in mind the next time you hear someone spray about what ‘We’ must ‘do’.  Co-option is built in to the culture and mindset of authoritarianism, and in fact, the democratic process itself as naked tyranny of the supposed majority.

Please, feel free to post your co-optive, authoritarian quotes in response below!

Narrating the Decline from a Classroom Desk,

L.A.Repucci

The State of the Union and the State of our Liberties

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty, Politics , , , , , ,

Nevertheless it is important not to fall into the delusion that President Obama presents the greatest danger to the culture of liberty. A historian looking back a hundred years from now is likely to group the Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton presidencies together as an era when the state receded or at least did not grow, as measured by regulatory and fiscal burdens on our lives. But Bush II relentlessly increased domestic spending and created more government involvement in health care with the Medicare D program for prescription drugs. It was President Bush who initiated many of the NSA programs.

In short, there are more similarities between Bush II and Obama than their supporters or detractors care to acknowledge. And almost all of the similarities suggest that the risks to our liberty today transcend the actions of any particular politician.

From John McGinnis. Read the rest.

Gratitude to a Power Pole

Warren Gibson Liberty

Image

Whilst ambling around San Carlos recently, I came upon the power pole shown here. Ugly, isn’t it? Or maybe not. In fact, my reaction was one of gratitude, prompted in part by the “Gratitude” chapter in Joel Wade’s excellent book, Mastering Happiness (available at drjoelwade.com). I had listened to the chapter the previous evening.

What is there about this power pole that warrants gratitude, and to whom? The answer lies in really looking at the pole and pondering the devices, wires and cables attached to it.

The top crossbar holds wires that provide the electrical supply, probably three-phase 440 volts. I know the supply comes from a substation a mile away which in turn is fed from very high voltage transmission lines east of the freeway. Three transformers on the pole step the 440 down to 220 and feed it to surrounding buildings.

Ugly grey boxes? Not to me. Some anonymous engineers put their heart and soul into designing those transformers. The basic idea of a transformer has been known for years: use a pair of coils with different winding densities to convert electrical energy into magnetic energy and then back to electrical at a desired voltage. But to design a really good transformer requires careful attention to fabrication costs, reliability, safety, and operating efficiency. No transformer is perfect; some energy gets lost as waste heat, and heat must be dissipated even in the hottest weather lest temperatures exceed safe operating levels. (Notice the cooling fins on each transformer.) The fluid bath which enhances efficiency must never leak – or more precisely, the probability of leakage must be kept extremely low. Nice job, guys (maybe gals, too). Thanks!

I see telephone wires. Of course, wireline telephone service is declining but still there is a lot to ponder. Four blocks away is a big windowless AT&T building which I believe houses switching equipment that was a marvel in its day.

I see coaxial cables that transmit television and internet signals. Just think of the torrent of information coursing through those cables. These days we all take megabit download speeds as a God-given right. Try to picture millions, perhaps hundreds of millions of bits traversing one of those cables every second. In addition, the cables entering those poles from Comcast’s central office, wherever that may be, carry a mix of packets destined for different recipients. They must be sorted and delivered on time and in the proper sequence to the various recipients served by our pole. I see three small boxes on the pole that may perform that function. The Post Office is a block away. Imagine the sorters there sorting a million letters per second!

I see a small device which may be an antenna for the new wireless electric and gas meters. Predictably, there have been complaints about health effects from these devices, likely from people who have no clue about the difference between ionizing radiation and RF radiation. Others have complained about privacy. I personally feel no need to hide the details of my electrical usage. I look forward to the advent of time-of-day pricing that these meters will enable. The resulting incentives should save money for many people including me. In addition, PG&E will be able to forestall increases in peak power capacity.

The pole itself is a tree trunk treated with creosote. Aluminum is used in substation structures and transmission towers but is evidently uneconomical for street poles. Wooden poles eventually rot and require replacement. But replacing a pole requires far less time and labor than in past times because of the improved equipment and procedures that have been developed.

Now I grant you that such poles will remain ugly in the eyes of many beholders no matter how much they may learn about their function. So why not put all the wires underground? Just dig a trench and move them, right? Not so fast, it’s nowhere near that easy. Of course it can be done and has been done but there are many complex and expensive details. For one thing, most of the buildings served by the relocated lines would require interior modifications to accept cables from underground rather than overhead. It wouldn’t do, as part of a beautification project, just to run cables down the outside of a building from the old rooftop connection point to the new underground point. Underground transformers are costlier and harder to access. The old service must be kept running until the new service is ready, and the switchover must be done quickly and near-perfectly. The costs and benefits of an undergrounding project should be carefully weighed before it is undertaken.

Gratitude to a power pole? No, in the spirit of Leonard Read’s I, Pencil I owe my gratitude to the countless individuals who made it possible. I think of Faraday and Maxwell who gave us the keys to understand electromagnetism. Edison and Tesla who pioneered power generation. Anonymous engineers and linemen who make it happen. Bold thinkers of the Enlightenment who paved the way for what McCloskey calls bourgeois dignity and the consequent explosion of Western living standards in the last three centuries.

Some people are moved to gratitude by religious iconography. Good for them. For me, a power pole does the trick.

Trade and cruelty

Rick Weber Economics, Liberty

Time for me to geek out on basic economics again. I’ve been on a Top Gear kick and I’m currently watching the North Pole special. Richard is taking a sled dog team to the north pole and Jeremy and James are racing him in a truck (in order to be the first people to drive a car to the North Pole).Their big advantage is that they can drive as hard as they want, whereas Richard is limited by how hard the dogs can go. Hypothetically he could push them harder and get their faster, but to do so would be cruel. This got me thinking.

The car is what economists call capital, whereas the dogs are labor. Strictly speaking the dogs are capital as well, but due to our enlightened modern ethical precepts we’re morally concerned with their welfare. Remember Planet of the Apes? Those damn, dirty apes had been thought of like chattel slaves, and the folly of that was shown by their taking over the earth. Legally, if your sled dogs won’t run, you can get rid of them. Putting them down might be considered cruelty to animals and thus illegal (I’m not sure), but it would certainly be considered immoral by many westerners. If we think about a labor-capital continuum, dogs are closer to the labor side than cattle, and a car is all the way over at capital.

So capital has a different moral standing than labor (or “quasi-labor” like dogs), but does that mean there’s no possibility of cruelty?Running the truck into the side of a glacier won’t make an engineer cry, but it would create work for a mechanic and wrecker operator (assuming they decide to recover it). “But wait,” you say, “jobs are awesome! JOBS!”

But I put it to you: jobs aren’t good. If they don’t pay the mechanic, then they’re making him (or her) suffer. To make someone work is to be cruel. But in the real world nobody makes mechanics do their work, people induce them to do that work by making it worth their time. Mutually advantageous trade is beautiful and kind. (Okay, that’s only certain with euvoluntary exchange).

Oh! And an I, Pencil moment: The truck made it to the north pole, allowing two middle aged, out of shape men, to make a journey that otherwise probably would have killed them. Through gains from trade, and capital that both represented and applied embedded knowledge, in order to reach a destination that has been visited by no more than a few dozen humans.

UK considering long prison terms for file sharers

Adam Magoon Current Events, Economics, Liberty, Philosophy

https://torrentfreak.com/uk-considers-throwing-persistent-internet-pirates-in-jail-140123/

Up to ten years in fact.  While there is debate in the libertarian community over intellectual property laws I think that I would be hard pressed to find many libertarians that think downloading a movie should put an “offender” in prison for a similar amount of time as stealing a car. 
 

Weekly Wakeup 01-24-2014

Adam Magoon History, Liberty , , ,

Making this a quick copy paste job today.  It has been a busy week.

To make a long story short, read this.

Myth:  The Great Depression was caused by government inaction in the face of a failing economy.

Reality:  The Hoover administration was the most active interventionist of a non-war economy in American history.

To quote the man himself:

“[W]e might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead, we met the situation with proposals to private business and to Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic. We put it into action.

No government in Washington has hitherto considered that it held so broad a responsibility for leadership in such times. . . . For the first time in the history of depression, dividends, profits, and the cost of living have been reduced before wages have suffered.”

And to quote the Murray Rothbard about Hoover’s actions:

At St. Paul, at the end of his campaign, Hoover summarized the measures he had taken to combat the depression: higher tariffs, which had protected agriculture and prevented much unemployment, expansion of credit by the Federal Reserve, which Hoover somehow identified with ‘protection of the gold standard’; the Home Loan Bank system, providing long-term capital to building-and-loan associations and savings banks, and enabling them to expand credit and suspend foreclosures; agricultural credit banks which loaned to farmers; Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) loans to banks, states, agriculture, and public works; spreading of work to prevent unemployment; the extension of construction and public works; strengthening Federal Land Banks; and, especially, inducing employers to maintain wage rates. Wage rates ‘were maintained until the cost of living had decreased and the profits had practically vanished. They are now the highest real wages in the world.’ But was there any causal link between this fact and the highest unemployment rate in American history? This question Hoover ignored.

Hoover had, indeed, “placed humanity before money, through the sacrifice of profits and dividends before wages,” but people found it difficult to subsist or prosper on “humanity.” Hoover noted that he had made work for the unemployed, prevented foreclosures, saved banks, and “fought to retard falling prices.” It is true that “for the first time” Hoover had prevented an “immediate attack upon wages as a basis of maintaining profits,” but the result of wiping out profits and maintaining artificial wage rates was chronic, unprecedented depression. On the RFC, Hoover proclaimed, as he did for the rest of his program, “Nothing has ever been devised in our history which has done more for those whom Mr. Coolidge has aptly called the ‘common run of men and women.'” Yet, after three years of this benevolent care, the common man was worse off than ever.

Hoover staunchly upheld a protective tariff during his campaign, and declared that his administration had successfully kept American farm prices above world prices, aided by tariffs on agricultural products. He did not seem to see that this price-raising reduced foreign demand for American farm products. He hailed work-sharing without seeing that it perpetuated unemployment, and spoke proudly of the artificial expansion by business of construction “beyond present needs” at his request in 1929-30, without seeing the resulting malinvestment and business losses.

While claiming to defend the gold standard, Hoover greatly shook public confidence in the dollar and helped foster the ensuing monetary crisis by revealing in his opening campaign speech that the government had almost decided to go off the gold standard in the crisis of November, 1931—an assertion heatedly denied by conservative Democratic Senator Carter Glass.

The spirit of the Hoover policy was perhaps best summed up in a public statement made in May, before the campaign began, when he sounded a note that was to become all too familiar to Americans in later years—the military metaphor:

The battle to set our economic machine in motion in this emergency takes new forms and requires new tactics from time to time. We used such emergency powers to win the war; we can use them to fight the depression (321-323).

“The Idea Trap” e o nacional-inflacionismo venezuelano-argentino

claudio Liberty ,

Minhas breves observações sobre a Venezuela e a Argentina. Aqui.

Seven Ways Libertarians Sometimes Run Off the Rails

Warren Gibson Economics, Liberty, Politics , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’m a dedicated libertarian but my first allegiance is to accuracy.  It pains me when I see libertarians making arguments that are inaccurate, irrelevant, or just plain wrong.  When they do so, they do themselves and our movement a big dis-service.  I list seven such arguments here.  More could be added.

  1. The Fed is privately owned. This is true only superficially. Member banks own shares of stock in one of twelve district Federal Reserve Banks and they receive dividends on those shares. But they have little in the way of genuine ownership privileges. They cannot sell their stock and their voting rights are very limited. The President of the United States appoints the Board of Governors. Just because a legal arrangement is given labels that suggest private ownership, that doesn’t make it so.

  2. The Bureau of Labor Statistics disguises the true unemployment situation by excluding workers who are “discouraged,” i.e., not seeking jobs. This is true of the U-3 unemployment figure which is the most widely cited figure, and the one the Fed says it is targeting. That figure is currently about 6.5%. The BLS also publishes its U-6 figure, which includes discouraged workers and currently stands at around 13%, down from about 17% at the height of the Great Recession. The BLS is not covering up anything here, although politicians may certainly choose to emphasize one figure or the other depending on what ax they’re grinding. Which is the “true” unemployment rate? There’s no such thing. The figures are what they are and observers can make of them what they will.

  3. “Chain-weighted” versions of the Consumer Price Index are politically motivated.  These adjustments are intended to recognize the substitution effect, the classic example of which is when the price of beef rises and the price of chicken doesn’t, people eat less beef and more chicken. Peoples’ cost of living rises less than it otherwise would. CPI increases as measured by a chain-weighted formula reflect this fact, and the resulting price inflation estimates come out lower than under the old approach. That flashes a green light to some conspiracy theorists. While these adjustments are tricky business, substitution effects are real and the attempt to compensate for them should not be impugned.

  4. The Consumer Price Index is politically manipulated by excluding food and energy. There are many versions of the CPI. One of them excludes food and energy because those prices are usually very volatile. That figure may be useful to economists who want to filter out volatile effects and focus on secular trends. Again, the figures are what they are, and politicians or for that matter we bloggers can use or misuse them as we wish.

  5. “Banksters” control the U.S. government. There is a grain of truth in this one. The big banks are both victims and beneficiaries of government dominance of banking and finance. The reality of government regulation is that regulated firms employ many very smart and very well paid individuals who are constantly finding ways to manipulate or sidestep the regulations to which they are subject. The fact is that the regulators and the regulated are very thick. Banking and finance are controlled by a cabal of government and Wall Street firms and individuals. It’s a mistake to say that either group totally dominates the other.

  6. Global warming is a myth and a scam. Ron Paul, whom I admire very much, blotted his copy book when he said on Fox News, “The greatest hoax I think that has been around for many, many years if not hundreds of years has been this hoax on […] global warming.” A few basic facts are beyond dispute: (a) carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, (b) CO2 levels are at an all time high, and (c) human activity is the primary cause of the increase. Beyond that, the evidence starts to get sketchy and incomplete. We do seem to have melting polar ice caps, record high temperatures in some places, droughts, etc. But overall there has been almost no temperature increase during the last ten years or so.  Projections of rising temperatures and rising sea levels appear to be too pessimistic. This is a very complex issue and one where biases can overwhelm us if we aren’t careful. Statists are prone to accept the global warming thesis because they see it as a way to increase state power. Libertarians want the issue to go away for the same reason. This would be a great time for all parties to step back an exercise some epistemic humility. There’s a great deal about this issue that we just don’t know.

  7. Let’s get rid of the state entirely, and all will be well. Given the present primitive degree of evolution of our species, a new state will pop up wherever an existing one is overthrown. The key to peace and prosperity is not anything so simple as abolition of the state, but to convince enough people, thoroughly enough, of the advantages of long-term cooperation. Good institutions will follow.

Do we have a Natural Right to be Annoying?

Fred Foldvary Liberty , ,

by Fred Foldvary

Suppose somebody is walking along the sidewalk carrying a big sign saying “I hate you.” Is he violating your natural rights? Should the state prohibit him from being annoying? Does freedom imply being protected from being annoyed, or does it protect our right to be annoying?

The citizens of Brighton, Michigan, believe that we have a right to not be annoyed. In 2008 the city council enacted an ordinance authorizing the police to cite anyone who is annoying in public “by word of mouth, sign or motions.” Violators will pay a fine. Brighton is not alone in this war on annoyance. Royal Oak, Michigan, also had such an ordinance, which serves as a model for other cities to copy.

A common source of public annoyance in some cities are beggars who ask for money as one passes by or, worse, come up to you with a sad story. Now, with the anti-annoyance ordinance, one can call the police, and the beggar will have his food in jail if he refuses to accept the ticket.

In some places, guys walk down the street in baggy pants that hang low. Another annoyance is inconsiderate guys who walk around with a loud portable music player; the music itself is often cacophonous, hence annoying, Those who are annoyed by such fashion and bad taste can now call the police and ask to have the offenders cited.

In economics, uncompensated bad effects on others are called “negative externalities.” The textbooks say that government can correct this by charging the person who emits the externality for the social cost. Evidently Royal Oak and Brighton have implemented this principle. You annoy, you pay.

Unfortunately, if you walk into a shop and seek some service, but the worker there is yakking on her cell phone, it is very annoying, but in Brighton you may not call the police, since the shop is a private place.

But what if the police are annoying? The police should not be above the law. If you are annoyed by a police officer, you should be able to call other police and have the officer cited.

You get a traffic ticket and the judge pounds the gavel and declares, “guilty!” Very annoying, and the court is a public place. You can get back at the judge; call the police and have the judge cited! But that would annoy the judge, so he will have you cited too. Now you have become annoyed again, and can have the judge cited for citing you. After all, if judges are above the law, we have no law.

What a wonderful weapon is this anti-annoyance ordinance. If your neighbor annoys you by hanging underwear in his back yard, call the police! Threaten to cite him, and he will have to do as you say. But that might annoy him, and then you have to do what he says. Whoops, now they are both slaves of one another. At least it’s equal.

Children are often annoyed by the restrictions and punishments imposed by their parents. They can now do something about it. When they are shopping or otherwise out in public, parents are often annoyed by their children whining, crying, complaining. parents can now tell their children that they will call the police if the kids don’t stop being annoying.

Perhaps the residents of Brighton and Royal Oak find this editorial annoying. Too bad; they can’t do anything about it unless I show up in those towns. I will make sure I never enter those towns.

The unemployment rate in Michigan is nine percent, and its major city, Detroit, is in bankruptcy. What I want to know is, if the residents find the bad economy annoying, who gets cited?

(Note: this article is adapted from “Do we have a Constitutional Right to be Annoying?” in The Progress Report, 2009.)

Introducing the Weekly Wakeup

Adam Magoon History, Liberty , , ,

History is one of my passions and one I share with the late Murray Rothbard.  His examinations and refutations of the commonly accepted truth were one of my early inspirations into exploring libertarian thought.  I urge you to consider this quote from Plato’s Apology: “I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know.”  This is the first in what should be a long series of weekly blurbs about common misconceptions and downright lies about history.  I will be looking forward to responses and suggestions for future topics in the comments.

Weekly Wakeup for 01-17-2014

Myth:  Early European colonists in North-America enacted a systemic genocide of native peoples from the start.

Reality: “The most hideous enemy of native Americans was not the white man and his weaponry, concludes Alfred Crosby,’but the invisible killers which those men brought in their blood and breath.’ It is thought that between 75 to 90 percent of all Indian deaths resulted from these killers.”

Another source confims:

“[B]ased on the data, the team estimates that the Native American population was at an all-time high about 5,000 years ago.

The population then reached a low point about 500 years ago—only a few years after Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World and before extensive European colonization began.

Study co-author Brendan O’Fallon, a population geneticist who conducted the research while at the University of Washington in Seattle, speculates that many of the early casualties may have been due to disease, which ‘would likely have traveled much faster than the European settlers themselves.’

For instance, the Franciscan friar Toribio de Benavente—one of the first Spanish missionaries to arrive in the New World in the early 1500s—wrote that Mexico was initially ‘extremely full of people, and when the smallpox began to attack the Indians, it became so great a pestilence among them … that in most provinces more than half the population died.'”

Myth: This disease epidemic was directly caused by settlers through planned biological warfare.

Reality:

“Unfortunately for this thesis, we know of but a single instance of such warfare, and the documentary evidence is inconclusive. In 1763, [ed. Notably long after the “500 years ago” mark where the population was already markedly declined] a particularly serious uprising threatened the British garrisons west of the Allegheny mountains. Worried about his limited resources, and disgusted by what he saw as the Indians’ treacherous and savage modes of warfare, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, commander-in-chief of British forces in North America, wrote as follows to Colonel Henry Bouquet at Fort Pitt: ‘You will do well to try to inoculate the Indians [with smallpox] by means of blankets, as well as to try every other method, that can serve to extirpate this execrable race.'”

I would like to point out that this attack, if it ever did actually happen, was initiated not by individual settlers but instead by the military government in that region.  A group that I do not and would not defend under any circumstances.   I would also like to preemptively say that I am not attempting to justify the forced relocation of Native peoples later in history, wars waged by either side or the murder of civilians by either group.  Instead I merely wish to question the assertion that there was an intentional and premeditated genocide.  A fact that seems obvious when you consider up to 90% of the native population was already dead from disease before the first colonists even arrived.

Bons restaurantes e liberdade

claudio Liberty

Sugiro um “rolezinho” lá no meu blog para apreciar o tema citado no título. Digamos que é um aperitivo. 🙂

Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting….

Adam Magoon Liberty , , ,

A very interesting post popped up in the technology subreddit on reddit.com a couple of days ago.    It was simply titled “What reddit looked like 9 years ago”  and the content was “Exactly what it says on the tin”.   

A web archive of reddit nine years ago.  The real fun was in the comments though where a redditor with the highly appropriate and musically astute username of “WarOnErrorism” posted the following:   

Third fuckin page. “NSA Spied on U.N. Diplomats in Push for Invasion of Iraq “

Edit: And on the 6th page: “AT&T NSA Wiretap Whistleblower Marc Klein’s Story In His Own Words”

Edit 2: Same page: “Whistle-Blower Outs NSA Spy Room”  

Links added for posterity.  

Nearly a decade ago the truth was out in the open for anyone to see and it was ignored.

Is President Obama the culmination of American Marxism?

Brandon Christensen Liberty , , , ,

I recently tried my hand at prodding Jacques to blog more often about Marxism and Marxist thought. As an immigrant from a country with a strong Marxist tradition and – more importantly – with his educational background (Stanford’s sociology department in the late 60s/early 70s; arguably the time period with the most sophisticated understanding of Marxist thought ever), I think he provides readers with a nuanced and sharply critical glance into Marxism, something that is very tough to do. Alas:

Brandon: Thanks for the suggestion and for the incense. However, the charm of blogging has much to do for me with following whatever my inspiration whispers at any one time. Once in a while, it lands on Marxism, not often. When it does, it’s often in the context  of conversations in French with French speakers. (You may have noticed something on my blog called, “Le dernier Communiste.” )

To the extent that I am impelled to do the needful rather than the natural, I direct my steps to whatever I think I do well and that is also in demand. In general, I am not sure waking up Marx for the benefit of young Americans is useful or much in demand. Almost no one in America calls himself a Marxist anymore . (There were many when I was young.) The people who would have been Marxists in 1974 call themselves “environmentalists” today.  Aside from this, I suspect
that the Obama administration is the result of wet dreams by Marxists of my generation but I don’t know how to talk about it. It’s just my sense of smell telling me.

I make a mental note of your expressed demand for Marxist critiques. In the meantime, feel free to pillage whatever you find on the subject in my blogs.

Oh, I’ve pillaged. His knowledge of Marxism is too important for me to ignore it. You can find Jacques’s thoughts on Marxism here. Jacques is also working on his memoirs, and you can find excerpts of those here (it’s also located on the top right side of the blog’s navigation bar).

As far as President Obama being the culmination of American Marxism, I think Jacques is woefully wrong. However, I also think Jacques’s assessment of Marxism in the US today (it’s irrelevant) is spot on. There is a recent, well-written essay in Dissent by a political scientist at Columbia arguing that the Obama administration is simply kowtowing to a neoliberal (and, by extension, racist) agenda, and this, I think, suggests that my suspicions are correct.

Happy Holidays

Brandon Christensen Liberty

I hope everybody is enjoying their holiday season. I know I have been. My apologies for how slowly things have been going here at NOL, but things’ll pick up again once the holidays are over and life gets back to normal.

I hope you all stay tuned!

Pope Francis: Does An Anti-Capitalist = A Socialist?

Samuel Allen Current Events, Liberty, Religion , , , , ,

The Pope has made his opposition to capitalism clear and his words were scathing…

“Just as the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say ‘thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills… A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules. To all this we can add widespread corruption and self-serving tax evasion, which has taken on worldwide dimensions. The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits.”

This has led to praise and criticism from the right and the left. People have naturally views this within the right vs left dichotomy. I think it worth pointing out that libertarians of all varieties do not fit anywhere, comfortably, in this one dimensional paradigm, nor aught the Pope be expected to. He has been called a Marxist and had the economic failing of state socialism in Latin America and around the world flagged up, the assumption seems to be that if he is against the present model of capitalism he must be a socialist. The problem is the Pope may have made clear that he is in opposition to our present economic model he has not made clear what else he is against, (socialism) or what he supports.

What he has said on the matter and the clues to what he supports are as follows “I repeat: I did not talk as a specialist but according to the social doctrine of the church. And this does not mean being a Marxist.” The Pope indicates here that his stance on economics is only that which the Church has long-held. That he is simply re-iterating it’s doctrine, the only economic ideology based upon catholic social doctrine is Distributism… It is based on the teachings of Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Rerum Novarum and Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno, and it is emphatically opposed to socialism. In the words one who inspired it:

“No one can be at the same time a sincere Catholic and a true Socialist” and “it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community” – Pius XI.

The Popes Francis’s words on capitalism were no less scathing than his predecessor’s in Rerum Novarum. Pope Leo XIII spoke of “misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class” and how “a small number of very rich men” had been able to “lay upon the teeming masses of the labouring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.” And Pope Francis’s use of the term “exclusion” I’d argue meaning exclusion from personal access to property, and the means to produce are a further clue to his distributist leanings.

So what do these distributists profess if they oppose both socialism and capitalism?

According to distributists, property ownership is a fundamental right and the means of production should be spread as widely as possible rather than being centralized under the control of the state (state socialism) or of accomplished individuals (laissez-faire capitalism). Distributism therefore advocates a society marked by widespread property ownership and, according to co-operative economist Race Mathews, maintains that such a system is key to bringing about a just social order. – Wikipedia

In truth we cannot know where the Pope stands on socialism other than what he has said. Until he say’s otherwise I think it’s safe to say there is no reason to suspect he is a socialist, or that his position is anything other than that which the church has long-held.

– Samuel Allen