Dmitry Chernikov’s Blog

And what a good libertarian ideology must prevent him from having: capitalist profits and socialized losses.

Says Nietzsche, correctly. And adds: “How is it that the Russians have songs?” That’s because the Russians aren’t evil. Slaves, sure. Evil, no.

See also: Economic Freedom of the World.

Such a demand is clearly a form of blackmail, because it is never really addressed to those who do not love Ruritania and will evil to it but merely to those who disagree with the demander on how best to promote Ruritania’s welfare; i.e., it is not about different ends but about different means to the same end. At worst it is insisted that we love Ruritania’s government, as if the government were the country or the government acted in the interests of the country, both obvious falsehoods. So, who are you to tell me either to agree with you or to get out of the country? (If your reason is that you are in a temporary majority and find it convenient to forget the Golden Rule, wait a little bit, and at some point you‘ll end up the one asked to emigrate.) How can you impose on me such great costs of maintaining my integrity? A “love it or leave it” guy is like a Roman emperor presenting Christians with a dilemma: worship me or be fed to the lions. In both cases the victim is asked to either betray himself or suffer. It’s disgusting.

On the 4th of July Americans commemorate the events that occurred between 1775 and 1783, known together as the Revolutionary War. Yet what is being celebrated? Not, obviously, the resistance to Great Britain’s dominion, for all that is ancient history. For most people, I think it’s clear, it is the glory of the “Republic.” America! That’s the country we are all loyal to. Love it or leave it, etc.

Folks who are more sophisticated than the mass-men singing hymns to the Leviathan, instead emphasize not the federal government but the Constitutional limitations on it, such as: the division and equality of powers; the Bill of Rights; federalism, state rights, the 10th Amendment, nullification, and interposition; local self-government; and such like. The wisdom of the founders is definitely worth bringing to mind. But even that is not the entire story, because the federal government has remained formally limited but in fact tyrannical.

The revolutionaries were not loyal to the American government which did not exist. They were loyal to Washington and the military chain of command during the war as a means to attaining their purpose, freedom, but not as an end in itself. What they were loyal to simpliciter was the secessionist movement and their cause of attaining independence. They were loyal to an idea, namely, the idea that “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Each time the Independence Day rolls in, Americans should be reminded to ask themselves and their neighbors: “Should we continue to suffer under the present regime? Has the ‘train of abuses and usurpations’ become intolerable? Should we (1) abolish the federal government (e.g., by calling a national constitutional convention), or (2) secede from the United States, or (3) establish our town as a free city, outside of both federal and state jurisdictions, or something similar? It is these questions which should be on everyone’s minds.

Happy independence/secession day to you and yours. Please comment “aye” if you would like the state you live in to secede from the United States.

William Kristol objects to the now famous MoveOn.org ad featuring a mother and her 1-year old son:

Now he argues that “Unless we enter a world without enemies and without war, we will need young men and women willing to risk their lives for our nation. And we’re not entering any such world.” Thanks to him we are indeed not. But anyway, the young men and women can rest easy. I am part of the “nation,” but I don’t want them to risk their lives for me. If anyone wants to risk his life, go climb a mountain or learn some extreme sport. Me, you can leave alone, unguarded and unrisked for. I can defend myself, thank you very much. If necessary, I’ll even call the city cops to help me. (Yes, I know: “defense” is a public good; non-excludability and all that. Readers of my blog will know that I care little for the federal and state protection.)

Doesn’t Kristol understand that the point of the ad is not to denigrate soldiering as such but to protest against particular offensive imperial conquests such as indeed the war in Iraq; against deceiving young men into serving not the “people” but the state and its connected pressure groups; and against foreign statism and interventionism as such? It is true that “Someone has to stand between our society and danger.” But no country in the Middle East was a danger to us, certainly not Iraq. What McCain can’t have is Alex as his tool, his useful idiot in perpetuating government destructionism of the despot-in-chief.

Sandefur writes: “The child has a right not to be, so to speak, falsely imprisoned in a mental asylum due to the parents’ superstitions — and the state has the legitimate authority to defend that right, again, within certain (often vague) boundaries set by a parent’s right to direct the upbringing of a child.” That seems to entail the view of the child’s rescuer, the state, as coldly rational, dispassionate, and scientific; as a kind of perfect NT who sees all and will instead of superstitions impart into the child truths. Now a decision could be defended to take a child away from an intellectually suffocating environment in some particular case. Maybe even under market anarchism a private judge would rule that Child Savers, Inc. was in the right to steal some kid from his parents. But, in keeping with Sandefur’s entirely praiseworthy opposition to public schooling, we should qualify that and say that the state’s own schools in which children are supposed to be taught “truths” are far from adequate. My own view is that the only truths the state should be charged with telling is found in its investigations of violent crimes. Elsewhere, even on the level of a city, it is an unreliable arbiter.

But God bless Sandefur’s mission to defend and restore private property rights.

He is wrong on Ron Paul, though. “Racism” is now a meaningless term. So, the question is, was Paul or whoever wrote that correct? Exactly what in the polemic to which our author links is false? Or must our brains rot with PC crud? We have indeed, as the article argues, failed to convey to blacks that they should know their place as allotted to them by a laissez-faire free market economy lacking both the welfare state and any legal privileges for any race. As Mises points out, for example, “The market… directs each individuals’ activities into those channels in which he best serves the wants of his fellow-men.” (Planning for Freedom, 72) Why shouldn’t blacks be a normal part of the market process? Don’t secure property rights require the legal right to “discriminate” as the owner sees fit and freedom of association? Moreover, Paul is a spectacular proponent of free trade — he wants to unilaterally eliminate all trade barriers erected by the US government, including war-inducing sanctions. As for the other accusations, they reflect a split in opinions between the Cato and Mises Institutes. Sandefur should study these views in detail rather than just wave a whatever-color flag for Cato. E.g., Paul is also great on property rights. The subtlety is, he is very skeptical of the utility of a higher-level government’s, especially the feds, dictating policies to and arbitrating disputes within the territory of lower-level governments, such as cities and states. He is consistent; for example, he does not like the UN determining or even influencing US policy. I’m with him on this. When in doubt, decentralize. Unless Sandefur is not in doubt.

Lew Rockwell asks, “why are the frightening calls for energy autarky — that is, destruction of part of the division of labor — by McCain and the other neocons — never even controversial?” I think it’s because the government can do anything to us. The only thing that limits the state these days is public opinion, and the mainstream media — the opinion-molders — is statist to the core. There is no realization that protectionism both impoverishes and is a prelude to war. As an old saying goes, if goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will.

What’s the point of getting angry if you can’t do anything? Influence folks a little bit, sure. But more than that? There is a comedy movie called Mystery Men about seven unlikely superheroes. One of them is Mr. Furious, played by Ben Stiller, whose superpower is that he gets angry. Real angry. But nothing happens. What are we supposed to do? “Stand on the hill with Lew Rockwell, dressed in black, waving the black flag, and saying ‘Smash the State’”? Now of course it is a gross misrepresentation to label Rockwell & Co. left sectarians. It is his accusers who have succumbed to right opportunism while doing the allegedly “responsible, respectable, important work.”

If the revolution comes, it won’t be because of any Fabian nudging. Ron Paul offered the public an opportunity to vote libertarian within the system, and look how far he got. (In terms of promoting ideas, quite far; in terms of political success, nowhere at all.) The revolution will come when no one expects it. It will be unpredictable, and it will indeed smash the state. Everybody knows that revolutions come when the state is in retreat. Success breeds audacity which causes further success, etc. We need a hook, an “objective” condition, which, as Rothbard writes, is “a ‘crisis situation’ in the existing system, a crisis stark enough to be generally perceived, and to be perceived as the fault of the system itself.” Our task is to prepare the public to choose wisely when it’s time to pick the direction of radical reform.

Why it won’t work, proves Rothbard:

Another alternative right-wing strategy is that commonly pursued by many libertarian or conservative think tanks: that of quiet persuasion, not in the groves of academe, but in Washington, D.C., in the corridors of power. This has been called the “Fabian” strategy, with think tanks issuing reports calling for a two percent cut in a tax here, or a tiny drop in a regulation there. The supporters of this strategy often point to the success of the Fabian Society, which, by its detailed empirical researches, gently pushed the British state into a gradual accretion of socialist power.

The flaw here, however, is that what works to increase state power does not work in reverse. For the Fabians were gently nudging the ruling elite precisely in the direction they wanted to travel anyway. Nudging the other way would go strongly against the state’s grain, and the result is far more likely to be the state’s co-opting and Fabianizing the think-tankers themselves rather than the other way around. This sort of strategy may, of course, be personally very pleasant for the think-tankers, and may be profitable in cushy jobs and contracts from the government. But that is precisely the problem.

Continue reading…

HT: Lew Rockwell

Consider the following standard justification of libertarianism: liberty makes it possible for people to pursue their diverse goals and conceptions of the good and virtues and flourishing and self-perfection and, finally, happiness in whatever way they see fit without infringing on one another. (We can define happiness here not as satisfaction of desires, whatever they are, but as consummation of perfected activity.) Now the reason for this is that flourishing is agent-relative: what is good for one person may not be good for another.

Consider also the standard justification for liberal limited government: the government’s role is to secure the public goods that all people share or have in common, particularly, protection of life, liberty, and property. But because of the diversity of human lifestyles, the government should not go beyond these, because then it would privilege one form of human flourishing as the expense of all others.

So far, so good. But wait a minute: what of the virtues described in ST, II-II? Aren’t having them, at least in some minimal amount, essential to all forms of human flourishing? Don’t we share all these virtues? And don’t people who lack them lead a miserable life? Why shouldn’t the government enforce them, too? For example, if it finds a cowardly person, the state might scourge him publicly or order him to undergo counseling with a psychologist or a priest. Or, in general, if it finds someone who is crafty or incontinent or intemperate or unjust or slothful or avaricious or prideful or vainglorious or …, let the state punish him. Further, Aquinas writes that the purpose of the state and the human law is to make men good, and virtues are perfections of powers or good habits which yield good works. Isn’t that an additional reason for the state to try to imbue the citizens with virtues?

What is wrong with this line of thought? Here are some reasons:

1. Virtues are private, rather than public, goods.
2. One can’t objectively measure virtues even in theory, let alone in practice.
3. Many virtues manifest themselves in people’s daily lives, such that there is no universal test (such as a questionnaire) that the state can administer which would reveal the intensity of virtues.
4. Punishing a person need not necessarily make him better.
5. The state functionaries are often much worse people than an average citizen, such that to entrust them with uplifting mankind is absurd.
6. The pursuit of virtue must be self-directed and actively desired by a person; and without these prerequisites governmental paternalism will fail to achieve its goal.

Are there other reasons why “enforcing (correct) morality” is a bad idea?

On the Glen Beck’s CNN show Horowitz said: “There are plenty of, unfortunately, libertarian websites which are indistinguishable from the anti-American lefties: lewrockwell.com and others like that. They are totally in bed with Islamo-fascists and have turned against this country.”

What an asshole! It goes to show: once a communist, always a communist; or, to be more precise, once a fanatic in thrall to a bad ideology, always a fanatic in thrall to a bad ideology. It is true that his ideology has changed; but it has remained bad. In short:

1. LRC.com has nothing to do with the “lefties,” anti-American or not, except insofar as the libertarians and the left-liberals share certain few ideological positions and can therefore enter into limited and temporary alliances.

2. LRC.com is not anti-American but one of the most patriotic publications in the US. It is cosmopolitan in its outlook, but its love of liberty presupposes the love of the countries in which that liberty is to flourish. In other words, it wills nothing but good to America, even though it criticizes the evils that, thanks in part to dorks like Horowitz, have crept into it.

3. There is no such thing as an “Islamo-fascist” (that is, fascist due to the tenets of Islam).

4. The libertarians have not turned against this country; they have merely turned against Horowitz and his fellow neocons. One can only mock Horowitz’s delusions of grandeur by which he thinks he is America.

5. Ron Paul is not “against” things, nor does he appeal to the “disenfranchised.” His campaign has always emphasized what he is for, such as peace, sound money, small government, and such like.

HT: LewRockwell.com blog.

… is that it has not conquered Canada, says Michael Medved. Also, check out his reference to the “insurgent” Ron Paul campaign.

Oh year, and the “immortal toast,” “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but right or wrong, our country!” is pretty much the same toast that might be uttered by Don Corleone, with “family” replacing “country.” Criminal nationalist, Medved is. A patriot loves what is good about his country and hates what is evil in it. Everything that I love about America has nothing to do with the doings of presidents and politicians and judges, because almost all of the latter seek to ruin this country, though whether from malice or stupidity is not always clear. Ron Paul is an exception to the rule.

And as for his main thesis, isolationism does not mean absence of commerce and other peaceful intercourse; on the contrary, as Ron Paul has repeatedly emphasized, he and his supporters are not isolationist but non-interventionist, something completely different. As I have written elsewhere,

In condemning wars, libertarians are not being isolationist. On the contrary, they want to engage the entire world into social cooperation under division of labor. They want all barriers to trade and to free movement of capital and labor to disappear. They want international travel to be as hassle-free as possible. They support the gold standard, in order to further unify the world by making gold and/or silver the single international currency not subject to manipulation by political elites in every country in the world. It is our acts of war that isolate us and make the rest of the world hate us.

And even from my admittedly limited knowledge of history I can say that in the past 50 years the US has been far more interventionist than it had been at all the times before. To quote Rothbard, America was “conceived in liberty” and, after seceding from Britain, also in peace.

But suppose we grant Medved’s point. The Golden Age of minding our political business in the distant past never existed. So what? Does it invalidate the ideal of non-interventionism? I think not.

Says Jonathan Bostwick. In other words, get the government out of making, enforcing, and interpreting laws prohibiting murder. If market anarchy can work in providing protection against murderers, arbitration over murder cases, etc. and more efficiently, then surely, it can deliver every other service now supplied by the state.

Hmm… the major premise seems fine. But what of the relevant minor premise? That’s why I hesitate on anarchism; it’s so difficult to speculate about how things would work, if at all.

I’ve long thought that in order to undermine the warfare state, it is essential to prevent official counterfeiting and therefore unlimited government debt by having a gold standard or commodity money, and 100% reserve banking or, at least, free banking. This will cause the empire to shrink dramatically. And in order to undermine the welfare state, it is necessary to eliminate Social Security as its most prominent and sacred component. If it is gone, then all the other welfare schemes will be revealed as economically and socially destructive and morally impermissible. If Ron Paul, if elected, is able to accomplish these things, then we will have freedom again, anarchy or not.

There is “an anti-interventionist wing of the GOP“? When I asked Lew: “The Republicans have spent the last 6 years building an empire and a police state at a much increased rate; why would they nominate someone who pledges to dismantle both?,” he replied with “only if it is a revolutionary moment.” Well, is it a revolutionary moment? I think it’s definitely possible for Paul to get elected, and I don’t just mean “true in some possible world,” ha ha. I mean, he has a real chance in this wretched world. Go, Ron! I don’t even want to imagine having to choose between the about equally atrocious Giuliani (if the neocons need their weekly new Hitler, here’s one, and he doesn’t even need to be bombed; just refused the nomination) and Hillary (she’s just a Frankenstein’s monster). May both of these scumbags get their asses thoroughly kicked.

“America’s Police Brutality Pandemic” by Paul Craig Roberts.

Private individuals who use low miles per gallon vehicles such as SUVs are condemned by environmentalists as morally depraved. But when, as Lew Rockwell points out, the government uses gas-guzzling tanks, no condemnation is forthcoming, because the state-god can do no wrong. The use of tanks is fully justified, even from the environmentalist standpoint, and the worship of the state must under no circumstances be interrupted. And people wonder why libertarians consider environmentalism to be both misanthropic and thoroughly statist.

I’m thinking that environmentalists are just cowards; they are afraid of taking on the state. It is so much easier (and feels better) to attack poor SUV companies and owners and get the state to regulate them (which means to destroy consumer sovereignty). When the state, the environmentalists’ benefactor in helping them crush personal liberties, is acting contrary to the environmentalists’ own beliefs, the latter slink back into the darkness from which they originally came, whether from fear or from awe. Or maybe they just love the Big Brother.

Update. Perhaps the state is the Earth Mother’s avenger who punishes us for our environmental sins. So, repent all you who fail to recycle or suffer the wrath of the righteous omnipresent agent of our beautiful and delicate planet which is being ravaged by us worthless humans. We must be purged through pain and suffering and self-hatred for our own good.

No, it’s the same old world. The only differences are: the World Trade Center is gone, 3,000 people are dead as a direct result of the attacks, and the US government has used this tragedy as a pretext to do what it had always wanted to do: start wars in the Middle East (thereby killing over a million people, directly and indirectly (and that’s just since 2003) — thanks, of course, to Lew for finding these data) and clamp down on domestic liberties. Other than these, everything is pretty much the same. Oh, the computers are better, don’t forget about that.

A reader of this LRC article asked me for some examples. I wrote back that the argument we are concerned to counter is as follows:

Major premise: Giving up liberties is sufficient to gain security, necessary to gain security, or both.
Minor premise: We want to attain greater security.
Therefore, We must give up some of our liberties.

1) Now how about the situation in prisons? You have few freedoms there, yet you are at much greater risk of being killed or raped or beaten up or, worse (for your soul), yourself killing, raping, or beating up others than in civil society.

Or what of airplane security? You are hardly allowed to go to the bathroom on airplanes, yet any SOB with a box cutter can steer the airplane towards the Empire State Building and cause another catastrophe.

Or consider the absurdity of being George W. Bush. He runs (poorly) a global empire, yet he is so afraid of not just physical dangers but even of simple dissent that he has an enormous security machine protecting him and will not associate with people (e.g., in townhall meetings or meetings with soldiers) unless they have been thoroughly vetted by the Secret Service. Here you have a seemingly powerful man who is, however, extremely limited in what he can personally do. And, he would be afraid to go to a bar after “work” without a platoon of security agents who pre-arrange this event months in advance to make sure that Bush’s fellow bar patrons are in perfect agreement with his policies. And even with all that, he is less secure than I am.

(Similar reasoning can be used in the case of soldiers in hostile territories. They are little more than slaves to the state, yet they die every day despite being armed to the teeth. Or in the case of Iraqi citizens living in violence-torn places. None of them have either liberty or security.)

Or how about prisoners on death row or in gulags being tortured? Surely, they have neither liberty nor security. Are the securitists eager to end up like them?

Finally, consider gun rights. If the freedom to own weapons and to use them in self-defense is taken away, people will become less safe. Thus, a diminution of liberty (to own guns) results in less security.

These examples show that lack of liberty can co-exist with lack of security; in other words, they show that giving up liberty is not sufficient for obtaining security.

2) One of the things lack of liberty does is it prevents people from buying their own security. Government-provided security is one size fits all. There is no reason to believe that this size, in fact, fits all or even the majority. Some people get too much security; others get too little. This is inefficient, and a free market in security will much improve things.

Further, US government’s meddling in the affairs of other countries makes us less safe. But peace, private property, and freedom go together. You have peace, you will have more freedoms (and by contraposition, interventionism, protectionism and statism in domestic affairs generate bellicosity) and at the same time more security (terrorists will have fewer reasons to attack us, and the US government will have fewer excuses to hold you in prison indefinitely without trial).

Safeguarding freedom of association through tighter immigration laws could lead to greater security. (Though I ultimately favor individual state control of immigration or, better yet, control by private property owners.)

These points show that greater liberty will lead to better security; in other words, lessened liberty is not necessary for greater security.

3) Also, exactly which liberties do our opponents think they need to give up for better security? Freedom to trade with whoever they want (do they really want to be poor?)? Freedom to profit from market activities (that’s socialism)? Freedoms resulting from having procedural rights like due process (I doubt they’ll pick that one)? Freedom to own guns (again, those increase security)? Freedom to hide information from the state (e.g., through privacy rights)? Freedom not to be tortured at the will of the emperor? No offense, but maybe these guys are just wimps. I say: I ain’t afraid of nothin’, no “terrists,” that’s for sure. So you give up your own liberties; I’ll keep my own and take my chances. That’s the libertarian or even anarcho-capitalist way.

This challenges the minor premise, by saying that not everyone wants to be protected by the state.

Now at its permanent homepage.

When I was a kid, once or twice I asked my mother and grandparents why the Americans wanted to nuke us. The answer they gave was unusual. Americans, they said, had never been invaded or had a real war on their territory. (This was factually incorrect, of course, because of the War between the States, but let’s let that slide.) They didn’t know what war was like. Their sin was ignorance. But as far as I could tell, the reality was far more frightening. Presumably, I thought, Americans were so bored with their lives, so satiated with their decaying bourgeois culture, so fat, so selfish from their capitalism (nonsense, all of it, but I believed it; and who wouldn’t at the age of 6, being surrounded by it?) that they actually wanted to experience what war was like. They wanted a first-hand experience of using destructive power and perhaps nihilistic enjoyment of killing and devastating. This was taken by me as just another sign of America’s deepest perversity and evil. How could these cold, unsympathetic, malicious alien beings be capable of such hatred for me, a child, who had done nothing to them?

Of course, now at 30 and as a US citizen I can only contemplate the depth of my error of attributing such qualities to my countrymen. But that Americans don’t know what war is like is true. This causes them to overlook or underestimate its horrors in their imaginations. Now wait a minute, you will object — you, Dmitry, has also never fought in a war. What gives you the right to pronounce judgment over us?

My reply is that my whole childhood was suffused with the understanding of the tragedy that was the Second World War through my family’s experiences in it (e.g., by the end of the war my grandfather served as captain in Army intelligence), as well as through the Russian exceptionalism and nationalism which were generally inculcated. (Mother Russia, the idea was, a good, righteous, cheerful woman who will welcome you with open arms, with nary a wicked thought in her head, was raped by the damned Germans.) And war was not the only tragedy. The horrors of Stalin’s rule were rather well-known at the time, even by me, and those were yet another heartbreak. Because my mother’s side of the family was Jewish, stupid anti-Semitism, too, was tragic and beyond comprehension for me. And everyone felt that there was something wrong with socialism, some kind of masochistic self-hatred and dull despair involved in this monstrous ideology. Most could not put their finger on what was wrong; I do not believe that economics was taught in any institution of learning, but everyone knew when I was growing up that our country was cursed.

At this point you may ask whether my opposition to war stems merely from these childhood experiences. Of course, it does not. I believe (1) that most kinds of war are absurd, and (2) that most of the actual wars made no sense and benefitted neither the victors nor the losers, a phenomenon Mises (with Hegel) called “the futility of victory,” for reasons which have nothing to do with my early years. The purpose of my bringing them up was to show that even second-hand war experiences are often enough to inoculate one against automatically cheering for wars.

Be that as it may, I think that for a long time now Americans have been going on on one thing only: their tradition of liberty. I don’t believe that we have this tradition anymore. I wrote that we had crossed an invisible threshold by starting the war with Iraq, a threshold beyond which there is little chance of going back to goodness. In domestic politics I sense no hope whatsoever. So, as far as I am concerned, Americans are cursed, as well. Maybe Ron Paul can get elected and slowly drag us back into the light, to which end I offer this prayer:

1 Have mercy on me, O God,
       according to your unfailing love;
       according to your great compassion
       blot out my transgressions.

4 Against you, you only, have I sinned
       and done what is evil in your sight,
       so that you are proved right when you speak
       and justified when you judge.

7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
       wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.

8 Let me hear joy and gladness;
       let the bones you have crushed rejoice.

10 Create in me a pure heart, O God,
       and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

11 Do not cast me from your presence
       or take your Holy Spirit from me.

12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation
       and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
       and sinners will turn back to you.

14 Save me from bloodguilt, O God,
       the God who saves me,
       and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. (Ps 51:1-14)

Update: To illustrate my point, here is Walter Block and Max Raskin on the murderous neo-cons.