"He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city."
—
King Solomon
"Democracy passes into despotism."
— Plato (via sseafaring)
(via absurdreasoning)
"If “we are the government,” then anything a government does to an individual is not only just and untyrannical but also “voluntary” on the part of the individual concerned. If the government has incurred a huge public debt which must be paid by taxing one group for the benefit of another, this reality of burden is obscured by saying that “we owe it to ourselves”; if the government conscripts a man, or throws him into jail for dissident opinion, then he is “doing it to himself” and, therefore, nothing untoward has occurred. Under this reasoning, any Jews murdered by the Nazi government were not murdered; instead, they must have “committed suicide,” since they were the government (which was democratically chosen), and, therefore, anything the government did to them was voluntary on their part. One would not think it necessary to belabor this point, and yet the overwhelming bulk of the people hold this fallacy to a greater or lesser degree."
— Murray Rothbard (via fuckyeahmurrayrothbard)
In a response to a statement I made, Letters To My Country brought up the following questions:
[H]ow can any reasonable and peaceful distribution of land occur where a man and his property are at the mercy of any and all who have the natural freedom to forcefully procure it for their own?
This is a very deep inquiry. Underlying the question is the sentiment that land distribution by government is both reasonable and peaceful. If you recall what has happened through history in building the American Empire, you see that the stolen property was not reasonable or peaceful. This land was stolen from Natives. There were genocides committed against Natives. The Government, as well as the European peoples, were to blame for this; they were the culprits. (Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee illustrates the brutality vividly.)
An individual does not have a natural freedom to force another individual into submission. An individual does not have a natural freedom to kill another individual. An individual does not have a natural freedom to take the belongings (property) of another individual. The reason I say belongings is because I see belongings as different than land. If an individual goes and uses land, maintains it, grows food on it, stores the individual’s home on it, that land is the individual’s own to use. Another individual does not have the right to destroy or steal the things created or owned by the first individual. The land itself isn’t owned by the individual. However, the plants the individual plants, the food the individual has grown, the house the individual built, the car the individual parks, the driveway the individual made, are all the individual’s to keep. No individual can forcefully destroy or steal that from the first individual without damaging the individual’s natural liberties: Life, Liberty and Property.
Then it may be asked what exactly gives an individual those natural liberties? The individual was naturally born free. The individual’s mind is owned by the individual’s being. The individual’s creations are made by the individual’s mind (whether it’s obtained by bartering creations or time, or created simply by the sweat on one’s brow). Those creations are the individual’s properties. By maintaining the land, the individual is the real party in interest of that land. The individual manages the land. The individual tends it. So long as one does so, it is the individual’s to keep (let us keep in mind that the individual can voluntarily barter with another individual the responsibility of maintaining that land; but when the individual so vacates or abandons it, it may be utilized by another individual).
Now that those foundations are set the next question can be addressed:
What is to stop a gang of your peers from uniting to deprive you of your land in the absence of the mutual conventions accompanying a nation state?
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letterstomycountry:
Yglesias muses:
The right-leaning politics of the Koch brothers are the result of intellectual arguments that happened in libertarian circles in the 1960s and 1970s. Contemporary libertarian politics is right-leaning because a previous generation of libertarian intellectuals (Friedman, Hayek, Rand) chose to focus primarily on “right-wing” issues like taxes and deregulation. But there’s nothing inevitable about this. If the present generation of libertarian intellectuals chose to focus on “left-wing” issues—war, civil liberties, immigration, urbanism, patent reform, gay rights, etc—then the next generation of libertarian donors, activists, and politicians would likely see the Democrats, rather than the Republicans, as natural allies.
Very true. I’d say that I focus more on the “left-wing” issues—how freedom resolves those issues, in every aspect.
aslongasitsconsensual:
anothertheletter:
We’d like our word back, please. You’ve done enough damage with it as it is.
Thanks in advance,
Libertarian Socialists
I agree that most so-called libertarians do more harm than good to the cause of liberty, but I don’t think we can give the term back until the term “liberal” is returned to us. I’m comfortable with sharing in the meantime if you are =]
I don’t see how the term used in its earliest writing by William Belsham can be claimed to exclusivity by Libertarian Socialists. I haven’t done enough research into the term though.
Regardless: Liberalism was the movement toward individual liberty. The conservatives (statists) sat on the right side of parliament; the liberals (anti-statists) were seated on the left.
(Source: dressedforthehbomb, via man-hastam)
"There is no Left or Right - there is only freedom or tyranny. Everything else is an illusion, an obfuscation to keep you confused and silent as the world burns around you."
— Philip Brennan (via libertarians)
(Source: primal-libertarian, via whakatikatika)
