(possibly important to libertarians) —“Would you position Hoppe as a bourgeoise intellectual still? I’ve seen Josh mention this a couple times but through the things Hoppe promotes, his clear classicism and advocating of the recognition of “natural social elites” I get the feeling he’s got some of that martial, anti-liberal stuff going on.”—- I see him as trying to bridge ‘religious’ jewish ‘rights’ from religious law with sovereign martial demands and natural law. And he failed. It cannot be done without violence. He starts from argumentation and non-contradiction rather than possessions and non-retaliation. And that premise is why he fails. —“It’s interesting. I saw you closer to a post-classical liberal at first but when I read Hoppe’s Aristocracy/Monarchy/Democracy essay I sort of found out Hoppe himself tries to position his philosophy as aristocratic but he can not escape from his Rothbardianism, sadly”— yep. I advocate the aristocracy of sovereign men who grant liberty, freedom, and subsidy to weaker men, women, and children in the lower classes for personal,familial, tribal, cultural profit and status. —“Hoppe just sort of expects this to form by itself. It’s sad. It’s sad because he’s brilliant”— It is. It frustrates me no end. He was so close. He loves rothbard as a mentor but it was rothbard who ruined his potential. —“Where does he get close? I reckon where he advocates for institutions to preserve liberty (covenants) but there, apart from sort-of advocating (violent) enforcement of voluntary commons I don’t see where he almost figures it out”— I think it’s in DGTF that he comes across the operationalists and intuitionists and dismisses them. He didn’t make the connection between the intuitionists, operationalists, and mises praxeology. I think it’s at that point that he had the opportunity to understand but failed. He basically was applying argumentation ethics from the marxists (cosmopolitan jews) and was sort of a hammer looking for a nail. In the end, I see rothbard as a corrupting influence on Hoppe’s early promise, just as I see him as a corrupting influence on everyone else that he influenced. Hoppe’s justificationary ‘excuses’ are all nonsense. But his deductions from property are flawless. Unfortunately he is (absurdly) proud of his errors, and under-appreciates his achievements. And I have offended him enough with my arrogance that there is no way to reconcile and rescue his legacy from the bin of intellectual history. If instead, we look at the operationalist problem in social science as a sequence from Weber->Mises->Rothbard->Hoppe->Doolittle, we solved the logic of the social sciences and completed the scientific method in a century – despite the failure of the entire philosophical academy. I can’t show that without his help because the problem is too difficult for people to invest in learning without an incentive to do so by a perceived authority. I didn’t change what Hoppe deduced from property rights. I change the chain of causality that it depended upon by abandoning his jewish legal pseudo-rationalsm and german kantian justificationism, and replacing it with critical empiricism: SCIENCE. And I did so by restoring the basis of the experience of liberty, to the creation of sovereignty by the aristocracy, through the organized application of violence to prevent the alternatives. Jewish-tradition libertarians beg for the pretense of Sovereignty. Anglo-Saxon sovereignty is a choice made possible by the reciprocal insurance of warriors against the creation of a superior of any kind among peers. From this perspective we should be heroes in history. But without Hoppe’s assistance I do not have a way to convert the indoctrinated, true believers, and to rescue Hoppe from his rationalism. His achievements, his wonderful organization, and his name will end with him otherwise. I owe him so much. I asked him repeatedly for help. I told him first when I’d solved the problem. But I am just an arrogant american to him. And what he fails to grasp is that I a descendent from a long line of the norman martial class who sees the academy as an infested swamp, doing yeoman’s labor among the bricklayers of intellectual history. I do not need to act as a bourgeoise beggar for liberty. Because I understand liberty is the consequence of sovereignty, and sovereignty is obtained by violence used to deny all others any alternative. Sovereignty at one end of the spectrum and tyranny at the other. Sovereignty consists in a distributed dictatorship of sovereign men. And liberty is had only by their permission. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine
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