Comments on Pro Libertate: Establishment "Libertarianism": Better Living Through State Aggression

All Americans whether establishment types or indep...

2008-01-17T13:36:00.000-07:00

All Americans whether establishment types or independent types looking to the constitution for guidance must read edrivera@edrivera.com analysis of that document to understand how it brought us to the police state,authoritarian state welfare state of today. Dr Rivera can read the document and make it's terms plain to everyone using not fancy vocabulary but plain reliance on the written terms contained within its pages, hard verifiable evidence. If you claim any interest in the founding documents, contact him at above and ask to read his commentary.
Joel

the correct answer to the heroin question is: Only...

2008-01-02T11:21:00.000-07:00

the correct answer to the heroin question is: Only if their parents approve.

I always spell it: TaRANTo. The guy is disgusting...

2007-12-31T05:34:00.000-07:00

I always spell it: TaRANTo. The guy is disgusting, and you have done a great job exposing his latest rant.

TaRANTo always refers to "the liberation of Iraq." That is interesting, since I remember that communists would always refer to their takeovers of Upper, Lower, and Whereverslabovia as the "liberation of Upper, Lower, and Whereverslabovia." It is nice to see TaRANTo and his ilk borrow the language of the ultimate oppressors, as he and the others expose themselves.

I think Ilana Mercer's one-two interview with Paul...

2007-12-29T20:22:00.000-07:00

I think Ilana Mercer's one-two interview with Paul Gottfried about his book Conservatism in America: Making Sense of the American Right explains a lot about what's going on with "the Right." Nothing really new, per se, in my view that I didn't already at least suspect long ago, but some of the intricacies and details of how "The Right" is manipulated so easily in culture and the political arena are still enlightening and interesting to some degree nonetheless.

I think Gottfried is dead on about some of the minutiae and details of how the neocons operate and how they have, over the course of the last century, upstaged what little existed of the Taft influence in the Republican Party as a whole.

On Gottfried, according to Wikipedia: Unlike others on the intellectual Right, Gottfried has often portrayed culture and morality in contemporary Western societies as reflections of the reach of the current political administration.

Wikipedia is a dubious source at best - especially about individual people, politics, religion, and culture, IMHO - but nevertheless, if that's an accurate representation of some of his views, I disagree with that particle of it. I believe it's rather the opposite. The political administration (especially Congress and also, naturally, the entire cadre of bureaucrats/politicos who make up the various local polities, etc.) is, generally speaking, a rough reflection of the commoners who put them in office.

The same Wikipedia source also states: What has made this process especially effective has been the identification of two phenomena: social engineering with popular consent, and the advance of democratic pluralism. [emphasis mine]

Now, if that statement is the least bit accurate about what Mr. Gottfried thinks, I agree wholeheartedly. Because, as I keep reminding folk, government doesn't operate in a vacuum in a Republicratic [sic] system. But, who knows for sure, as I don't know the man personally. Anyway, Mrs. Mercer's two-part interview with Mr. Gottfried is a very interesting read, Will.

On another front, what I find most amusing, not to mention oxymoronic in the extreme, about the Ron Paul phenomenon is some of the European praise and dire hope for a Paul presidency that may signify that Americans have come to their collective senses finally about freedom and so on.

Sigh, I don't see any culture wars waging across the pond, which is to expected to some degree of course as the individual countries are largely still homogenous for now, but the old native cultures, as well as Christianity as a whole, are fast dying off and/or are heading for minority status in the next half-century. Yet, if demographics are any sign, the natives aren't reproducing at long-term sustainable levels (another sign of cultural decadence, BTW); the resettled Muslim immigrants, OTOH, are gradually sweeping aside the natives.

If I didn't believe in God's sovereign control over all things, I'd seriously believe that the formation of America was a mistake. IF many of the ones (probably libertines but they nevertheless insinuate themselves among genuine libertarians) who espouse libertarianism are to be believed, I'd certainly believe it's founding was a dire mistake and the Founders were insane. No, rather, I believe America was at its beginning a people who largely possessed the same Christian worldview. Sure there were some who did not, but that doesn't change the reality at all. The libertines, OTOH, seem to think a nation can exist that encourages a cauldron of wildly differing cultures, languages, lifestyles, and value systems to live happily together, as if they have similar overall worldviews, which is ludicrous in the extreme. The entire history of humanity defies that concept! The times throughout history that wildly different peoples and cultures have co-existed within the same nation-state were all due in no small part to authoritarian regimes of some sort ruling over them.

I've always believed you cannot mish mash wildly differing cultures and peoples together, who have their own ambitions and desires and have no interest in assimilation, into a successful and peaceful nation-state and they somehow miraculously become kindred souls in the spirit of Republicanism and become beacons of liberty. They are only held fast by an authoritarian regime, some much more so than others, of course. That would certainly explain how Yugoslavia remained "united" and manage a modicum of peace in the land. This also explains how Rhodesia and South Africa under white authoritarian rule kept the countries "united" and even wildly productive economically compared to the present, contemporary madhouse societies of Zimbabwe and South Africa respectively. Czechoslovakia is yet another and so on. Iraq anyone? Pakistan anyone? When Saddam's heavy hand was removed, the cauldron of peoples - and even peoples within a given ethnicity, who had wildly differing religious and worldviews - was fired up. If Musharaf abdicated and/or his government dissolved, does anyone really think the cauldron of tribes within Pakistan are going to shake hands and be of kindred spirits for liberty of all and they would adhere to a "live and let live" philosophy? I sincerely hope nobody is that deluded.

I probably need to clarify exactly what I'm talking about for the hysterically emotional who may stop in. The core point above is not whether authoritarian government abstractly is good or bad. I think it's bad, even deadly in some cases, for the individual people, but also for the long-term health and stability of the nation-state(s) in question as well, with the possible exception of Rhodesia and South Africa. As they were actually Africa's only two economic powerhouses and bread baskets, rather than being the current basket cases under contemporary black authoritarianism. They exchanged white authority that espoused the concept of "separate, employed, and gradually progressing individually in a material sense" for black authority espousing the concept of "unity, unemployment, and quickly digressing together in a material sense." As has been said many times misery loves company as misery hates solitude.

The estimable Mr. Grigg is quite right that the Ci...

2007-12-28T07:21:00.000-07:00

The estimable Mr. Grigg is quite right that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 amounted to "enlisting the power of Beelzebub to cast out a smaller devil." While most agree with the result (the elimination of "petty apartheid"), the means employed -- the destruction of states rights -- have given us an omnipotent federal government which now dictates everything from the drinking age to toilet tank capacities to the design of drivers licenses, and has implemented a parallel system of criminal law. Freed from the institutionalized discrimination of Jim Crow, blacks as well as whites now face a far more comprehensive tyranny.

A key precipitating factor in the civil rights struggle was the Supreme Court's May 1954 ruling, in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, that "separate but equal" schools for different races are inherently unequal. Factually, the assertion is unchallengable. I recall as a child in public school being exhorted to take care of our schoolbooks, since the Negro schools would inherit them after our school got new ones.

But from a libertarian perspective, government should have not been involved in running schools in the first place. In the South, government schools were being misused to propogate cultural values such as racial segregation. One of the first pitched battles of the civil rights movement was President Eisenhower's dispatch of federal troops to Little Rock in 1957, to open Central High School to the 'Little Rock Nine.'

Predictably, now that the fedgov has gotten firm control over public education, government schools are being used to teach other cultural values. Public schools are leading-edge adopters of drug tests, video surveillance, ID cards, and warrantless searches. Instead of teaching racial segregation, public schools now teach government worship and unquestioning obedience to authority.

Is this really an improvement?

Funny. I asked Ron Paul about herion vending machi...

2007-12-28T05:02:00.000-07:00

Funny. I asked Ron Paul about herion vending machines near a school when he was campaigning for president in 1988. He was speaking at Harvard University, and his reply to my question was perfect: States can handle any necessary regulation of that, but it shouldn't be on Federal Government property.

Are you ready for a good chuckle? My years-long ha...

2007-12-28T00:25:00.000-07:00

Are you ready for a good chuckle? My years-long habit of contributing credited story links to "Best of the Web Today"

http://www.google.com/search?q=
"scott+lahti"+site:opinionjournal
.com&num=100&hl=en&newwindow=1&safe
=off&pwst=1&filter=0

came to an abrupt halt this fall when I found my emails blocked via a dedicated bounceback...I guess JT's loss is Dan McCarthy's, Lew Rockwell's, BK Marcus's, Rod Dreher's, Kenneth Anderson's and Andrew Sullivan's, et al, gain...