Theme: Governance

  • “War is the health of the state.” — Randolph Bourn

    “War is the health of the state.” — Randolph Bourn


    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-04 02:26:00 UTC

  • LIBERTY FOR SMART PEOPLE The Dark Enlightenment is the next step in a libertaria

    LIBERTY FOR SMART PEOPLE

    The Dark Enlightenment is the next step in a libertarian’s intellectual development. It’s where we end up when we see that man does not act as homo-economicus except in a rothbardian dream world.

    It took thirty years to abandon rothbard’s ethics of the anarchic ghetto and to turn our attention back to aristocratic monarchy. That was thirty years too long.

    But without rothbard’s interesting combination of errors and insights, aristocracy might have continued to be lost in conservative religio-moral pseudo-intellectual nonsense-speak.

    The Dark Enlightenment embraces the natural sciences, rather than rejecting them and relying on the absurd proposition of the a priori.

    But the Dark Enlightenment is not as philosophically rigorous – which is to be expected for a movement started just a few years ago.

    Time to add the philosophical rigor of libertarianism (and marxism) to the Dark Enlightenment.

    Time to construct liberty for smart people.


    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-02 09:48:00 UTC

  • WE’RE BEING POLITE: THE GRACIOUSNESS OF ENGLISH CHARITY REGARDING CONTINENTALS A

    WE’RE BEING POLITE: THE GRACIOUSNESS OF ENGLISH CHARITY REGARDING CONTINENTALS AND THEIR TOTALITARIANISM.

    “When talk about ‘the west’ we’re being polite. What we mean is the countries that adopted the anglo-american system of government as the result of military victories by the English speaking peoples. If the second world war or the cold war had ended differently, [the continentals] would not be westernized today.” — Daniel Hannan

    {more}

    “”What we [english] invented was constitutional liberty. … Our concept of democracy is a guardian of individual freedom rather than an expression of the will of the majority. ..our system, which is practical, individual, and points to specific rights contractually guaranteed. … Ours has worked better. It didn’t ever fall to fascism or communism or revolution.”


    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-01 15:35:00 UTC

  • UKRAINE UPDATE: The main road, Kreshatik, from the waterfront and old town Podil

    UKRAINE UPDATE:

    The main road, Kreshatik, from the waterfront and old town Podil is barricaded and guarded. The barricade is two stories high and about as wide.

    There are two other less direct routes into town but thats the main artery from this side.

    I didnt get a picture. :(.

    Freaky.


    Source date (UTC): 2014-02-01 08:12:00 UTC

  • WHAT’S THE DEFINITION OF TERRORISM? IT”S NOT COMPLICATED. IT”S JUST ANOTHER POST

    WHAT’S THE DEFINITION OF TERRORISM? IT”S NOT COMPLICATED. IT”S JUST ANOTHER POSTMODERN LIE

    WHY IS TERRORISM USEFUL?

    1 – It’s inexpensive.

    2 – It only requires a small number of people.

    3 – It doesn’t require coordination of activity.

    4 – It gets a LOT of attention for very little effort.

    5 – It both influences policy and modifies public perception.

    6 – It encourages sympathizers and imitators by granting them a vehicle for self image, status, perception of power, and identity.

    7 – It illustrates the inherent weakness of the state and state actors (it dispels the illusion of control)

    8 – It creates intolerable political, public, and economic stress even if it causes little real damage to property.

    “TERRORISM IS THE BEST ADVERTISING STRATEGY, EVER.”

    Worse: And it’s fun. You have to grasp that it’s empowering. It’s exhilarating. Or you can’t understand the motivation for participating in it. Most of us walk through life feeling powerless. Radicals don’t.

    Two guys, one car, and random shooting almost did almost as much damage to the economy as the spring 2008 rise in oil prices. Terrorism is effectively employed by revolutionaries and reactionaries internally, and terrorists and state sponsored terrorists.

    PURVEYORS OF ORGANIZED VIOLENCE

    – State Actors (War/Warriors/Soldiers)

    – State Sponsored Private Actors (state sponsored terrorists)

    – External (out-group) private actors (terrorists)

    – Internal (in-group) private actors (radicals, revolutionaries)

    THE USE OF POSTMODERN VERBAL OBSCURANTISM TO JUSTIFY THE CORPORATE STATE

    1) It’s an abuse of the terms “terrorist” or “terrorism” to apply them to internal actors, because it grants the assumption of legitimacy to the state, and the pejorative illegitimacy of the actor.

    I no case is an external (out group) actor a revolutionary. In no case is an in-group member a terrorist.

    2) the problem of stating in-group and out-group members only emerges under state corporatism and it’s advocacy of multiculturalism as a means of importing low cost labor to support aging social systems. Or in the USA where racial divisions have been a source of conflict since the founding of the government.

    The use of ‘terrorism’ for internal actors is another “postmodernism”: a linguistic contrivance to obscure the causal properties of a conflict, as the natural problems that arise when we attempt to launder causal properties from terms in order to … lie.

    Postmodern obscurantism – the effort to justify the multi-cultural state and the socialist program – is the reason for this false dilemma. There is no difficulty in defining terrorism, as we can see above. Instead, there is an obvious falsehood in the definition of a corporate democratic state: it is impossible for groups with different reproductive strategies, the associated signals and mythos, the associated allocations of property rights, and the different capabilities those groups possess in organizing and conducting production, to cooperate in political systems under majority rule, since by definition such a system imposes a monopoly set of definitions of property rights and obligations – when property rights allocations must reflect the reproductive strategies of the groups.

    As such, without the false assumption of the legitimacy of state corporatism, then the original definitions stand.


    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-31 14:04:00 UTC

  • KIEV UPDATE Talked to one of the active protesters today at lunch. He said that

    KIEV UPDATE

    Talked to one of the active protesters today at lunch.

    He said that they way they work is to wait on chat rooms, message boards, twitter, and all other sort of hangouts. Then someone will say “we need to build a barricade at [wherever] in an hour. They flash mob the location, work for an hour with many hands, then return to coffee shops or food or whatever to get warm. Then repeat the process. I mean, battlefield communications and all that.

    I mean, it’s GENIUS. They have the fortification process down cold.

    BTW: The Ukrainian President “called in sick” today. 😉 Seriously.

    (I LOVE BEING A SPECTATOR TO THIS KIND OF THING)


    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-30 14:23:00 UTC

  • DO NOT INTEGRATE – STATS

    http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2014-01-29.html#.Uune0jQ3ILo.facebookIMMIGRANTS DO NOT INTEGRATE – STATS


    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-30 00:13:00 UTC

  • MATTER: UKRAINE REPEALS DRACONIAN LAWS

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25923199?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=%2AMorning+Brief&utm_campaign=MB+1.28.14PROTESTS MATTER: UKRAINE REPEALS DRACONIAN LAWS


    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-28 08:13:00 UTC

  • MIGHT ISN”T GOOD OR BAD – IT’S WHAT YOU DO WITH IT Might can be used to make rig

    MIGHT ISN”T GOOD OR BAD – IT’S WHAT YOU DO WITH IT

    Might can be used to make right, or to make wrong. But it is very hard to make right WITHOUT might. In fact, I do not think it is POSSIBLE to make right without might.

    So, might itself is not matter of morality. It is a matter of what it’s used for.

    The source of prosperity is the systematic suppression of free riding (cheating) by the organized use of violence.


    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-28 06:05:00 UTC

  • LIBERTY’S POINTS Libertarianism needs a reformation. The church was an instrumen

    LIBERTY’S POINTS

    Libertarianism needs a reformation.

    The church was an instrument of totalitarianism whose pacifism came from its weakness, not it’s intentions, where were always self interest.

    The Aristocracy ACTED, and the church TALKED.

    The church’s rhetoric is a dialectical competitor to Aristocratic action.

    The church’s arguments cannot be understood EXCEPT as only half of the dialectical argument with Aristocracy.

    The pacifist church could not exist without the warrior caste.

    And liberty cannot exist without a militia.

    A militia do not beg for liberty – they take it by force.

    And by taking it with force, they make it for others.

    The source of liberty was, is, and always will be the organized use of violence to suppress free riding in all its forms.

    Property is the result of that prohibition on free riding – ‘cheating’.

    Property is not the cause of liberty, and it is not created by ‘appeals to reason’.

    Property is the consequence of the organized suppression of ‘cheating’ in all its forms.

    And Rothbardian ethics fully endorse and justify ‘cheating’.

    THAT IS WHY WE FAIL

    We need leadership with solutions that will work. Not tolerance.

    Appeals to tolerance are merely a symptom of our lack of good philosophical arguments.

    Our lack of good philosophical arguments is evidenced by our failure to enfranchise the worlds moral specialists: conservatives.

    Conservatives are the moral specialists, not us. And we can, and have, measured that fact empirically.

    But conservatives cannot reform their ancient moral code because their philosophy is metaphorical, not rhetorical.

    Their moral arguments are not open to rational criticism.

    Which is why they retreat into religion.

    And we are not, with Rothbard’s ethics, either giving them a tool to express their morality in rational terms, so that THEY can reform their ideas.

    By failing our role as the intellectual leaders of aristocratic egalitarian liberty, we drive the conservatives into religion as their only defense against the state.

    Our failures: The failure of libertarianism. The failure to obtain liberty.

    The failure to constrain the expansion of the state.

    All of this is our fault.

    We fail not because the world does not understand us.

    It is because our prophet was terribly, terribly, immorally wrong.

    The source of liberty – property rights – is the enfranchisement of any individual who will use the threat of violence to suppress free riding – cheating – anywhere and everywhere.

    And all other arguments are cheap and failed attempts to obtain liberty at a discount by relying on the empty verbalism of the church.

    LIBERTY REQUIRES POINTED WEAPONS, POINTED ARGUMENTS, AND THE WILLINGNESS TO USE THEM BOTH.

    Everything else, is just a cheap and ineffective technique for trying to obtain liberty at a discount.

    Curt Doolittle


    Source date (UTC): 2014-01-28 02:09:00 UTC