I get a lot of heat from the left for adopting one of their tactics: baiting. But let’s see where those tactics comes from. Saul Alinsky. Our president’s hero. The western concept of political debate originated in the right of the enfranchised warrior to debate tactics in order to gain consensus on those tactics — since unlike eastern militaries, western tactics required individual initiative. The citizen warrior’s right was predicated on forgoing theft, fraud, and violence, and speaking the truth and only the truth in the process of that debate. If truth was abandoned, error was presumed, passons could be forgiven. But if RIDICULE was employed, then the prohibition on violence for the purpose of debate was forgone, and the ridiculed could fight and kill the man who broke the contract by which we put down our weapons and enter debate. While Marx and marxists were wrong in their understanding of the physical world, of human nature, and of economics, they could be counted upon to adhere to rational discourse and confine themselves to moral criticism. Saul Alinsky was one of the first people to strategically abandon the western principle of honest discourse and promote argumentative ‘the ends justify the means’. To those of us who are from the aristocratic manorial tradition, within which dishonesty, cowardice, or loose and libelous words are reason to end someone’s life, Alinsky’s tactics are a violation of every civic principle, and draw out our basic conservative instinct to kill threats to our hierarchy, social order, and group competitiveness. His strategy (from a lost link) is this: CREATE AN IDEOLOGICAL ARMY OPERATING ON EMOTIONAL ANTAGONISM NOT A PROGRAM OF RATIONAL SOLUTIONS THAT THEY ARE UNABLE TO INTELLECTUALLY DEFEND ON THEIR OWN. Through a process combining hope and resentment, the organizer tries to create a “mass army” that brings in as many recruits as possible from local organizations, churches, services groups, labor unions, corner gangs, and individuals. Alinsky provides a collection of rules to guide the process. But he emphasizes these rules must be translated into real-life tactics that are fluid and responsive to the situation at hand. SUN TZU: DECEPTION IS MORE POWERFUL THAN HONESTY Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do. SPEAK IN THE IGNORANT VOICE OF YOUR PEOPLE SO THEY FEEL THEY SPEAK THROUGH YOU Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people. The result is confusion, fear, and retreat. Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat. ARGUE FOR BLACK OR WHITE FALLACIES THAT FORCE THE CRITICISM OF YOUR OPPONENT BUT WHICH DO NOT REQUIRE YOU TO DEFEND YOURSELF OR PROPOSE SOLUTIONS Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.” AVOID REASON, IT WOULD ONLY EXPOSE YOUR LACK OF A SOLUTION OR UNDERSTANDING OF POLITICAL REALITY. Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage. THE LOWER CLASSES HAVE NOTHING USEFUL TO DO, SO GIVE THEM AN EXCUSE TO ENTERTAIN THEMSELVES AND CELEBRATE A UNITED IDENTITY. SUCH RELIGIONS ARE OPIATES OF THE MASSES. Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. “If your people aren’t having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.” A MEANINGFUL ARGUMENT IS OPEN TO CRITICISM AND REQUIRES INTELLECTUALIZATION OF THE SOLUTION. INSTEAD, MAINTAIN THE GROUP’S EMOTIONAL AND MORAL ANTAGONISM TOWARD YOUR OPPONENT AND AVOID THE SELF DOUBT THAT WOULD OCCUR IF THEY HAD TO BECOME INTROSPECTIVE. Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues. CONTROL THE INITIATIVE BUT PREVENTING YOUR OPPONENT FROM DETERMINING THAT YOU HAVE NO PROPOSED SOLUTION OTHER THAN THE ACCUMULATION OF POWER. THE RATIONAL MAN CNANOT UNDERSTAND THIS SIMPLISTIC A STRATEGY: OBTAIN POWER. ONCE YOU HAVE POWER YOUR ARGUMENTS DO NOT MATTER. POWER CAN BE OBTAINED THROUGH MORALIZING, CRITICISM AND DISTRACTION. IT DOES NOT NEED TO BE OBTAINED BY SOLUTION, ARGUMENT OR REASON. THAT ONLY WEAKENS YOU. Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage.” RELY ON TERRORISM WHENEVER POSSIBLE. CREATE FEAR BECAUSE UNCERTAINTY AND FEAR IS A GREATER THAN THE ACTUAL RESULT. PEOPLE WILL ABANDON MAORAL AND TRADITIONAL PRINCIPLES IF YOU MAKE IT HARD ENOUGH FOR THEM TO RESIST YOUR PURSUIT OF POWER. Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O’Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city’s reputation. STICK WITH YOUR ATTACKS, NEVER OFFER SOLUTIONS THAT WOULD ExpOSE YOU TO CRITICISM Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, “Okay, what would you do?” DEMONIZE INDIVIDUALS. DO NOT ENGAGE IN REASON. DO NOT ENAGE IN FACTS. SIMPLY DEMONIZE AND RIDICULE THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS POLITICAL POWER TO INFLUENCE OTHERS WILL DIMINISH. Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame. CONTROL YOUR ENEMY’S RESPONSES TO YOU SO THAT HE BECOMES EMOTIONALLY RATHER THAN RATIONALLY ENGAGED AND LOSES HIS ONE REAL STRENGTH: RATIONAL SOLUTIONS. According to Alinsky, the main job of the organizer is to bait an opponent into reacting. “The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.”
Theme: Coercion
-
ALINSKY – STRATEGIST OF THE LEFT I get a lot of heat from the left for adopting
http://www.libertyzone.com/Communist-Manifesto-Planks.htmlSAUL ALINSKY – STRATEGIST OF THE LEFT
I get a lot of heat from the left for adopting one of the Left’s tactics. But let’s see where those tactics comes from. Saul Alinsky. Our president’s hero.
The western concept of political debate originated in the right of the enfranchised warrior to debate tactics in order to gain consensus on those tactics — since unlike eastern militaries, western tactics required individual initiative. The citizen warrior’s right was predicated on forgoing theft, fraud, and violence, and speaking the truth and only the truth in the process of that debate. If truth was abandoned, error was presumed, passons could be forgiven. But if RIDICULE was employed, then the prohibition on violence for the purpose of debate was forgone, and the ridiculed could fight and kill the man who broke the contract by which we put down our weapons and enter debate.
While Marx and marxists were wrong in their understanding of the physical world, of human nature, and of economics, they could be counted upon to adhere to rational discourse and confine themselves to moral criticism.
Saul Alinsky was one of the first people to strategically abandon the western principle of honest discourse and promote argumentative ‘the ends justify the means’.
To those of us who are from the aristocratic manorial tradition, within which dishonesty, cowardice, or loose and libelous words are reason to end someone’s life, Alinsky’s tactics are a violation of every civic principle, and draw out our basic conservative instinct to kill threats to our hierarchy, social order, and group competitiveness.
His strategy (from a lost link) is this:
CREATE AN IDEOLOGICAL ARMY OPERATING ON EMOTIONAL ANTAGONISM NOT A PROGRAM OF RATIONAL SOLUTIONS THAT THEY ARE UNABLE TO INTELLECTUALLY DEFEND ON THEIR OWN.
Through a process combining hope and resentment, the organizer tries to create a “mass army” that brings in as many recruits as possible from local organizations, churches, services groups, labor unions, corner gangs, and individuals.
Alinsky provides a collection of rules to guide the process. But he emphasizes these rules must be translated into real-life tactics that are fluid and responsive to the situation at hand.
SUN TZU: DECEPTION IS MORE POWERFUL THAN HONESTY
Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.
SPEAK IN THE IGNORANT VOICE OF YOUR PEOPLE SO THEY FEEL THEY SPEAK THROUGH YOU
Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.
The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.
Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
ARGUE FOR BLACK OR WHITE FALLACIES THAT FORCE THE CRITICISM OF YOUR OPPONENT BUT WHICH DO NOT REQUIRE YOU TO DEFEND YOURSELF OR PROPOSE SOLUTIONS
Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”
AVOID REASON, IT WOULD ONLY EXPOSE YOUR LACK OF A SOLUTION OR UNDERSTANDING OF POLITICAL REALITY.
Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
THE LOWER CLASSES HAVE NOTHING USEFUL TO DO, SO GIVE THEM AN EXCUSE TO ENTERTAIN THEMSELVES AND CELEBRATE A UNITED IDENTITY. SUCH RELIGIONS ARE OPIATES OF THE MASSES.
Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. “If your people aren’t having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.”
A MEANINGFUL ARGUMENT IS OPEN TO CRITICISM AND REQUIRES INTELLECTUALIZATION OF THE SOLUTION. INSTEAD, MAINTAIN THE GROUP’S EMOTIONAL AND MORAL ANTAGONISM TOWARD YOUR OPPONENT AND AVOID THE SELF DOUBT THAT WOULD OCCUR IF THEY HAD TO BECOME INTROSPECTIVE.
Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.
CONTROL THE INITIATIVE BUT PREVENTING YOUR OPPONENT FROM DETERMINING THAT YOU HAVE NO PROPOSED SOLUTION OTHER THAN THE ACCUMULATION OF POWER. THE RATIONAL MAN CNANOT UNDERSTAND THIS SIMPLISTIC A STRATEGY: OBTAIN POWER. ONCE YOU HAVE POWER YOUR ARGUMENTS DO NOT MATTER. POWER CAN BE OBTAINED THROUGH MORALIZING, CRITICISM AND DISTRACTION. IT DOES NOT NEED TO BE OBTAINED BY SOLUTION, ARGUMENT OR REASON. THAT ONLY WEAKENS YOU.
Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage.”
RELY ON TERRORISM WHENEVER POSSIBLE. CREATE FEAR BECAUSE UNCERTAINTY AND FEAR IS A GREATER THAN THE ACTUAL RESULT. PEOPLE WILL ABANDON MAORAL AND TRADITIONAL PRINCIPLES IF YOU MAKE IT HARD ENOUGH FOR THEM TO RESIST YOUR PURSUIT OF POWER.
Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O’Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city’s reputation.
STICK WITH YOUR ATTACKS, NEVER OFFER SOLUTIONS THAT WOULD ExpOSE YOU TO CRITICISM
Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, “Okay, what would you do?”
DEMONIZE INDIVIDUALS. DO NOT ENGAGE IN REASON. DO NOT ENAGE IN FACTS. SIMPLY DEMONIZE AND RIDICULE THE INDIVIDUAL AND HIS POLITICAL POWER TO INFLUENCE OTHERS WILL DIMINISH.
Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.
CONTROL YOUR ENEMY’S RESPONSES TO YOU SO THAT HE BECOMES EMOTIONALLY RATHER THAN RATIONALLY ENGAGED AND LOSES HIS ONE REAL STRENGTH: RATIONAL SOLUTIONS.
According to Alinsky, the main job of the organizer is to bait an opponent into reacting. “The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.”
AS AN ADDENDUM
Source date (UTC): 2012-04-02 18:02:00 UTC
-
WHY ARE CONSERVATIVES MISSING THE POINT? Because they, like liberals, operate un
WHY ARE CONSERVATIVES MISSING THE POINT?
Because they, like liberals, operate under the assumptions that:
a) A unanimity of agreement on means and ends is possible – when it’s questionable if it’s even remotely desirable.
b) Our legislative process is an absolute ‘good’ instead of an demonstrably destructive bad.
The evidence of the failure of our legislative process was visible as early as 1812, most notably in 1863, certainly in 1911, pervasively in 1933, and persistently since then.
THE GOVERNMENT IS NOT THE SOURCE OF OUR PROSPERITY
Americans rationalize this tragedy as producing positive ends, when that logic is absurd: Americans have been prosperous because of a conquered continent, the sale of land and household consumption to immigrants during the hight of the industrial revolution, the founding of fossil fuel technologies, and the suicide of europe in the great european civil war.
THE GOVERNMENT IS THE SOURCE OF OUR PROBLEMS
Our government has prevented what we might have achieved were it less of an obstacle, and vehicle for class warfare, rather than the source of the prosperity we claim that came from it. Any despot can sell off a continent and raise taxes by filling new households with consumer goods. It doesn’t take democracy to do that. Any despot can inherit the British Empire and gain a market for selling a new currency. Any despot could financialize an economy and lay the false promise of an upper middle class lifestyle as the logical consequence of an expensive education, instead of investing in the international competitiveness of its working classes.
Hasn’t the legislature been used to grant nearly infinite powers to the state through nothing more than a hole in the commerce clause? Hasn’t the constitution and property rights been undermined to the point that it is irrrelevant? Thereby eliminating the rule of law.
CONSERVATIVES ARE THE PEOPLE WHO ARE SUPPOSED TO HAVE A CORRECT VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE, A CORRECT VIEW OF INTER-TEMPORAL SCARCITY, AND A CORRECT VIEW OF ECONOMICS. SO WHY DO WE HAVE TO HAVE AN ERRONEOUS AND COUNTERFACTUAL VIEW OF OUR REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT’S LEGISLATIVE RECORD?
That’s why Conservative debate concerns me. It seeks first to defend our system of government, rather than the rule of law, and it seeks converts rather than superior institutions that do not require converts, only those who naturally disagree with us. The institutions of classical liberal government are the problem.
The most severe aspect of that problem is the very existence of our legislative institutions and the very concept that men can make laws, rather than agree to contracts. Laws are made, and broken by the next law that is passed. It is impossible in this context to create a durable contract of exchange between groups — effectively there is no means of holding each side responsible. Taxes pool and thereby unaccountably launder causality and responsibility from financial information.
We’re conservatives. We’re libertarians. We’re classical liberals. We’re supposed to be the smart people. Leave the irrational concepts of human nature, the absurd concept of infinite plenty, and the incomprehension of economic necessity to the left. But do not defend against the left by thinking our form of government is effective or that it has produced positive ends. Those positive ends are the product of cheap land, labor and consumption.
The good that is in our government is not from its legislative institutions, but was created by our very distant anglo saxon ancestors, and as the byproduct of the self-interest of the Church in accidentally creating the Rule of Law, and the breaking of tribal and family bonds by the prohibition of intermarriage out to as many as six generations.
WE SHOULD DEFEND THE RULE OF LAW WITH A GOVERNMENT OF CONTRACTS, NOT LAWS. MEN CANNOT MAKE LAWS. THEY CAN ONLY DISCOVER THEM. LAWS ARE NOTHING BUT A VEHICLE FOR OPPRESSION, CONTRACTS ARE VOLUNTARY. LAW IS THE SOURCE OF TYRANNY. AND LEGISLATURES ARE THE SOURCE OF LAW. AND OUR EXISTING GOVERNMENT CONSISTS OF LEGISLATURES.
THE ANALOGY OF THE PARABLE OF LIES:
The Parable Of LIes says that if you tell a lie, you have to tell seventeen lies to cover it, and seventeen for each of those, and seventeen for each of those, until your world consists of nothing but lies. Likewise, Laws are lies. They are an application of violence. Conversely, Contracts are voluntary. They are an exchange. Chosen representatives should negotiate contracts on our behalf which may not be broken without compensation, and which must adhere to natural, common and constitutional law. All of us should preserve our right of juridical defense, and no man should be free from legal action under the pretense that he create’s an arbitrary codification of violence called a ‘law’.
Rousseau was as evil as Marx, and caused proportionately almost as many deaths. We do not need a social contract. BUT WE NEED A SOCIETY OF CONTRACTS. If we are to have any government at all, we should have one that is not an instrument of tyranny. And legislation is tyranny.
Conservatives and libertarians need to address the root of the problem: our institutions. We should not seek to create ideological converts so that we may have a government we prefer. We should create a government so that ideological preferences can be resolved through consensual agreement rather than a gladiatorial battle of dishonesty between lawyers whose actions simply mask the violence and theft that they levy upon us all.
Because we’re supposed to be the smart people after all.
Source date (UTC): 2012-03-31 15:51:00 UTC
-
Why Are Conservatives Missing The Point?
Because they, like liberals, operate under the assumptions that: a) A unanimity of agreement on means and ends is possible – when it’s questionable if it’s even remotely desirable. b) Our legislative process is an absolute ‘good’ instead of an demonstrably destructive bad. The evidence of the failure of our legislative process was visible as early as 1812, most notably in 1863, certainly in 1911, pervasively in 1933, and persistently since then. THE GOVERNMENT IS NOT THE SOURCE OF OUR PROSPERITY Americans rationalize this tragedy as producing positive ends, when that logic is absurd: Americans have been prosperous because of a conquered continent, the sale of land and household consumption to immigrants during the hight of the industrial revolution, the founding of fossil fuel technologies, and the suicide of europe in the great european civil war. If we must have taxes in order to prevent free riders from living off the contributions of others, why can they not be structured as contracts and litigated as contracts. THE GOVERNMENT IS THE SOURCE OF OUR PROBLEMS Our government has prevented what we might have achieved were it less of an obstacle, and vehicle for class warfare, rather than the source of the prosperity we claim that came from it. Any despot can sell off a continent and raise taxes by filling new households with consumer goods. It doesn’t take democracy to do that. Any despot can inherit the British Empire and gain a market for selling a new currency. Any despot could financialize an economy and lay the false promise of an upper middle class lifestyle as the logical consequence of an expensive education, instead of investing in the international competitiveness of its working classes. Hasn’t the legislature been used to grant nearly infinite powers to the state through nothing more than a hole in the commerce clause? Hasn’t the constitution and property rights been undermined to the point that it is irrrelevant? Thereby eliminating the rule of law. CONSERVATIVES ARE THE PEOPLE WHO ARE SUPPOSED TO HAVE A CORRECT VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE, A CORRECT VIEW OF INTER-TEMPORAL SCARCITY, AND A CORRECT VIEW OF ECONOMICS. SO WHY DO WE HAVE TO HAVE AN ERRONEOUS AND COUNTERFACTUAL VIEW OF OUR REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT’S LEGISLATIVE RECORD? That’s why Conservative debate concerns me. It seeks first to defend our system of government, rather than the rule of law, and it seeks converts rather than superior institutions that do not require converts, only those who naturally disagree with us. The institutions of classical liberal government are the problem. The most severe aspect of that problem is the very existence of our legislative institutions and the very concept that men can make laws, rather than agree to contracts. Laws are made, and broken by the next law that is passed. It is impossible in this context to create a durable contract of exchange between groups — effectively there is no means of holding each side responsible. Taxes pool and thereby unaccountably launder causality and responsibility from financial information. We’re conservatives. We’re libertarians. We’re classical liberals. We’re supposed to be the smart people. Leave the irrational concepts of human nature, the absurd concept of infinite plenty, and the incomprehension of economic necessity to the left. But do not defend against the left by thinking our form of government is effective or that it has produced positive ends. Those positive ends are the product of cheap land, labor and consumption. The good that is in our government is not from its legislative institutions, but was created by our very distant anglo saxon ancestors, and as the byproduct of the self-interest of the Church in accidentally creating the Rule of Law, and the breaking of tribal and family bonds by the prohibition of intermarriage out to as many as six generations. WE SHOULD DEFEND THE RULE OF LAW WITH A GOVERNMENT OF CONTRACTS, NOT LAWS. MEN CANNOT MAKE LAWS. THEY CAN ONLY DISCOVER THEM. LAWS ARE NOTHING BUT A VEHICLE FOR OPPRESSION, CONTRACTS ARE VOLUNTARY. LAW IS THE SOURCE OF TYRANNY. AND LEGISLATURES ARE THE SOURCE OF LAW. AND OUR EXISTING GOVERNMENT CONSISTS OF LEGISLATURES. THE ANALOGY OF THE PARABLE OF LIES: The Parable Of LIes says that if you tell a lie, you have to tell seventeen lies to cover it, and seventeen for each of those, and seventeen for each of those, until your world consists of nothing but lies. Likewise, Laws are lies. They are an application of violence. Conversely, Contracts are voluntary. They are an exchange. Chosen representatives should negotiate contracts on our behalf which may not be broken without compensation, and which must adhere to natural, common and constitutional law. All of us should preserve our right of juridical defense, and no man should be free from legal action under the pretense that he create’s an arbitrary codification of violence called a ‘law’. Rousseau was as evil as Marx, and caused proportionately almost as many deaths. The idea of a social contract is nothing more than an attempt to legitimize the dictatorship of the majority by law. It is simply the divine right of kings, or a prohibition against heresy by the monopolistic Church. No wonder Rousseau caused so many deaths, and was responsible for such bloodshed. We do not need a social contract. BUT WE NEED A SOCIETY OF CONTRACTS. If we are to have any government at all, we should have one that is not an instrument of tyranny. And legislation is tyranny. Conservatives and libertarians need to address the root of the problem: our institutions. We should not seek to create ideological converts so that we may have a government we prefer. We should create a government so that ideological preferences can be resolved through consensual agreement rather than a gladiatorial battle of dishonesty between lawyers whose actions simply mask the violence and theft that they levy upon us all. Because we’re supposed to be the smart people after all.
-
Why Are Conservatives Missing The Point?
Because they, like liberals, operate under the assumptions that: a) A unanimity of agreement on means and ends is possible – when it’s questionable if it’s even remotely desirable. b) Our legislative process is an absolute ‘good’ instead of an demonstrably destructive bad. The evidence of the failure of our legislative process was visible as early as 1812, most notably in 1863, certainly in 1911, pervasively in 1933, and persistently since then. THE GOVERNMENT IS NOT THE SOURCE OF OUR PROSPERITY Americans rationalize this tragedy as producing positive ends, when that logic is absurd: Americans have been prosperous because of a conquered continent, the sale of land and household consumption to immigrants during the hight of the industrial revolution, the founding of fossil fuel technologies, and the suicide of europe in the great european civil war. If we must have taxes in order to prevent free riders from living off the contributions of others, why can they not be structured as contracts and litigated as contracts. THE GOVERNMENT IS THE SOURCE OF OUR PROBLEMS Our government has prevented what we might have achieved were it less of an obstacle, and vehicle for class warfare, rather than the source of the prosperity we claim that came from it. Any despot can sell off a continent and raise taxes by filling new households with consumer goods. It doesn’t take democracy to do that. Any despot can inherit the British Empire and gain a market for selling a new currency. Any despot could financialize an economy and lay the false promise of an upper middle class lifestyle as the logical consequence of an expensive education, instead of investing in the international competitiveness of its working classes. Hasn’t the legislature been used to grant nearly infinite powers to the state through nothing more than a hole in the commerce clause? Hasn’t the constitution and property rights been undermined to the point that it is irrrelevant? Thereby eliminating the rule of law. CONSERVATIVES ARE THE PEOPLE WHO ARE SUPPOSED TO HAVE A CORRECT VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE, A CORRECT VIEW OF INTER-TEMPORAL SCARCITY, AND A CORRECT VIEW OF ECONOMICS. SO WHY DO WE HAVE TO HAVE AN ERRONEOUS AND COUNTERFACTUAL VIEW OF OUR REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT’S LEGISLATIVE RECORD? That’s why Conservative debate concerns me. It seeks first to defend our system of government, rather than the rule of law, and it seeks converts rather than superior institutions that do not require converts, only those who naturally disagree with us. The institutions of classical liberal government are the problem. The most severe aspect of that problem is the very existence of our legislative institutions and the very concept that men can make laws, rather than agree to contracts. Laws are made, and broken by the next law that is passed. It is impossible in this context to create a durable contract of exchange between groups — effectively there is no means of holding each side responsible. Taxes pool and thereby unaccountably launder causality and responsibility from financial information. We’re conservatives. We’re libertarians. We’re classical liberals. We’re supposed to be the smart people. Leave the irrational concepts of human nature, the absurd concept of infinite plenty, and the incomprehension of economic necessity to the left. But do not defend against the left by thinking our form of government is effective or that it has produced positive ends. Those positive ends are the product of cheap land, labor and consumption. The good that is in our government is not from its legislative institutions, but was created by our very distant anglo saxon ancestors, and as the byproduct of the self-interest of the Church in accidentally creating the Rule of Law, and the breaking of tribal and family bonds by the prohibition of intermarriage out to as many as six generations. WE SHOULD DEFEND THE RULE OF LAW WITH A GOVERNMENT OF CONTRACTS, NOT LAWS. MEN CANNOT MAKE LAWS. THEY CAN ONLY DISCOVER THEM. LAWS ARE NOTHING BUT A VEHICLE FOR OPPRESSION, CONTRACTS ARE VOLUNTARY. LAW IS THE SOURCE OF TYRANNY. AND LEGISLATURES ARE THE SOURCE OF LAW. AND OUR EXISTING GOVERNMENT CONSISTS OF LEGISLATURES. THE ANALOGY OF THE PARABLE OF LIES: The Parable Of LIes says that if you tell a lie, you have to tell seventeen lies to cover it, and seventeen for each of those, and seventeen for each of those, until your world consists of nothing but lies. Likewise, Laws are lies. They are an application of violence. Conversely, Contracts are voluntary. They are an exchange. Chosen representatives should negotiate contracts on our behalf which may not be broken without compensation, and which must adhere to natural, common and constitutional law. All of us should preserve our right of juridical defense, and no man should be free from legal action under the pretense that he create’s an arbitrary codification of violence called a ‘law’. Rousseau was as evil as Marx, and caused proportionately almost as many deaths. The idea of a social contract is nothing more than an attempt to legitimize the dictatorship of the majority by law. It is simply the divine right of kings, or a prohibition against heresy by the monopolistic Church. No wonder Rousseau caused so many deaths, and was responsible for such bloodshed. We do not need a social contract. BUT WE NEED A SOCIETY OF CONTRACTS. If we are to have any government at all, we should have one that is not an instrument of tyranny. And legislation is tyranny. Conservatives and libertarians need to address the root of the problem: our institutions. We should not seek to create ideological converts so that we may have a government we prefer. We should create a government so that ideological preferences can be resolved through consensual agreement rather than a gladiatorial battle of dishonesty between lawyers whose actions simply mask the violence and theft that they levy upon us all. Because we’re supposed to be the smart people after all.
-
Why Do We Conduct Ideological Warfare? Democracy. That’s why.
Because, under Democratic Republicanism, and under Social Democracy, we conceive of government as majority right to establish laws under which we all must conform to a singular perception of the means and ends by which we create the common good, rather than a process by which we can negotiate contracts consisting of exchanges with one another despite our different preferences for means and definitions of the common good.
Laws evolve, and are discovered not made. Contracts are made with the intention of mutual benefit. The problem with ‘laws’ is that the next legislator can break the contract between groups willfully, and bad laws do not expire with the tenure of the people who wrote them.
Government as we have constructed it is destroying our society.
Yes we need a new civic religion. But democratic government that makes laws, rather than contracts within the one law of voluntary exchange, should be left behind on the dustbin of history with the magical gods and treated as a superstition equal to them.
via Curt Doolittle.
-
Why Do We Conduct Ideological Warfare? Democracy. That’s why.
Because, under Democratic Republicanism, and under Social Democracy, we conceive of government as majority right to establish laws under which we all must conform to a singular perception of the means and ends by which we create the common good, rather than a process by which we can negotiate contracts consisting of exchanges with one another despite our different preferences for means and definitions of the common good.
Laws evolve, and are discovered not made. Contracts are made with the intention of mutual benefit. The problem with ‘laws’ is that the next legislator can break the contract between groups willfully, and bad laws do not expire with the tenure of the people who wrote them.
Government as we have constructed it is destroying our society.
Yes we need a new civic religion. But democratic government that makes laws, rather than contracts within the one law of voluntary exchange, should be left behind on the dustbin of history with the magical gods and treated as a superstition equal to them.
via Curt Doolittle.
-
THE ONLY REASON FOR IDEOLOGICAL WARFARE? Because we conceive of government as ma
THE ONLY REASON FOR IDEOLOGICAL WARFARE?
Because we conceive of government as majority right to establish laws to which we all must conform to a singular perception of the means and ends by which we create the common good, rather than a process by which we can negotiate contracts consisting of exchanges with one another despite our different preferences for means and definitions of the common good.
Laws evolve, and are discovered not made. Contracts are made with the intention of mutual benefit. The problem with ‘laws’ is that the next legislator can break the contract between groups willfully, and bad laws do not expire with the tenure of the people who wrote them.
Government as we have constructed it is destroying our society.
Yes we need a new civic religion. But democratic government that makes laws, rather than contracts within the one law of voluntary exchange, should be left behind on the dustbin of history with the magical gods and treated as a superstition equal to them.
Source date (UTC): 2012-03-31 10:56:00 UTC
-
“Lawmakers parcel out human existence, by right of conquest, like Alexander’s ge
“Lawmakers parcel out human existence, by right of conquest, like Alexander’s generals sharing the world.” – Benjamin Constant
(Priceless)
Source date (UTC): 2012-03-31 10:47:00 UTC
-
REJECT A SUPERIOR MILITARY TECHNOLOGY The right has learned from the left. The l
http://lewrockwell.com/north/north1108.htmlNEVER REJECT A SUPERIOR MILITARY TECHNOLOGY
The right has learned from the left. The left hates it. The problem is, that the right views these tactics as dishonorable. THey intuitively reject the ethics of the bazaar, in favor of the ethics of chivalry.
And that is the right’s vulnerability.
Never reject a superior technology.
Source date (UTC): 2012-03-25 20:05:00 UTC