Politics

Language Corrupted

by on September 28, 2010 @ 10:48 am · 4 comments

in Business, Democracy, Language, Vulgar Politics

In my first blog post here I pointed out how statism and monopolies had affected language. There is more to be said about this.

It’s not just candidates who invade our homes with political propaganda and petitions for votes. It’s also the almost exclusively pro-state media and academics. 2010 being an election year, rhetoric is rampant. Indeed, discussions about taxes and spending are all too common (and all too sad). And tax talk, of course, is not free of the very same examples of language corruption that allows the existence of certain ways that we speak about taxes and the desire for them.

Take the statement, “taxes give us roads and police.” Putting aside the monopoly aspects, what seldom gets asked is whether roads and police are needed, how much and of what quality. When someone complains about taxes or government spending, soon enough the reply will have to do about us being able to have bridges and other services. Sure, tax money goes to those and thousands of other projects.

Imagine a similar situation in everyday life. We go to the grocery store with a shopping list. The first item is “apples.” Fine–we need apples. But the list only says that. We do not know how many apples, what size, kind, or how fresh they should be. What about price? Whenever statists speak of roads, schools, bridges, police, education, health care, or anything else “offered” by the state, there is no specific mention of the multitude of aspects that a market entrepreneur would have to figure out (such as quality, quantity, etc.). Society needs such and such. That is all. Maybe there are too many schools. Maybe there aren’t enough. Where should they be located? How many students? What about curricula

One can go on and on about such minutia yet the point remains–the populous is not sold (or offered really, as these are taxes after all) a specific amount or number of goods or services but rather abstract, homogeneous, indistinct, monolithic blobs. While the entrepreneur risks scarce goods (time, labor, capital) trying to determine future market conditions to provide his fellow man with a good or service, the political process promises vacuous public works which are, due to the way they are financed and allocated, necessarily inefficient, for they bear no resemblance to what you and I and everyone else wants. (Not to mention that for every government project there is an army of bureaucrats making decisions “on our behalf,” somehow a) reading the minds of all of society; and b) trying to average out our desires. The result, far from being what “the people want” is rather what the lobbyists and politicians want.)

These days the hot topic is employment, with candidates/potential busybodies-tyrants promising an endless supply of jobs. The next time someone promises “jobs,” be aware of how corrupted (and corrupting) that sounds.

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Ecofascism in the Name of Fending Off Ecofascism

by on September 16, 2010 @ 9:04 am · 3 comments

in Corporatism, Democracy, Environment, Nanny Statism, The Left, Totalitarianism, Vulgar Politics

Micah White at The Guardian writes of the growing danger of ecofascism or environmental authoritarianism. Some environmentalists, like James Lovelock and Pentti Linkola, want to put democracy on hold and/or return humanity world-wide to a primitive state of existence in order to combat global warming. Ironically, his proposal to fend off this growing danger is itself an example of the very thing he fears, though perhaps his proposal is motivated not entirely by environmental concerns but also by an independent dislike of consumerism.

White’s solution is to end the culture of rampant consumerism in the West. How does he propose to do this? Ah, now there’s the rub.

[Keep reading…]

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(Statist) Politics as Household Management

by on September 16, 2010 @ 12:27 am · 3 comments

in Anti-Statism, Democracy, Libertarian Theory, Vulgar Politics

In a previous post, Voting, Moral Hazard, and Like Buttons, I discussed the moral hazards of voting and why democracy does not legitimize the state or protect our liberty. I also discussed how statist democracy, particularly representative democracy, is manipulative and conducive to top-down central planning of society. (Statist) politics tends to reduce all basic social issues to problems requiring administrative manipulation. In this post, I’m going to delve into this issue further and draw upon insights by Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition to illustrate how (statist) politics is inherently an attempt to run society as one massive organization, organism, or machine.

Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the differences between action (praxis) and work – and between politics, which involves action, and fabrication or making (poi?sis), which involves work – has negative implications for the central planning of society that is characteristic of modern representative-democratic states. In particular, I have in mind her criticism of Plato, and to a lesser extent Aristotle, regarding their tendency to view society as a sort of organization and politics as the running of society as such an organization – or, in their words, politics as akin to household management. This fits with the tendency in many cultures to refer to one’s country as “the Fatherland” or “the Motherland” and with socialists and communitarians (on the left and the right) essentially modeling their ideal society after the family.

[Keep reading…]

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Regarding Libertarian Strategy: A Reply to Ross Kenyon

by on August 31, 2010 @ 9:29 pm · 6 comments

in Anti-Statism, Libertarian Theory, Statism

Although I find Kenyon’s analysis of the radical socialists interesting, ultimately I disagree with his categorization of libertarianism’s 3 options:

  • Libertarians can allow themselves to be absorbed into the Republican Party and work to expand the Liberty caucus.
  • Libertarians can abandon the Republican Party to work exclusively through the Libertarian Party.
  • Libertarians can jettison electoral politics altogether and refuse to be governed by majoritarianism and statism.

The first one will happen to the Tea Party movement. The second one is not workable, as the author admits.  Nothing can be done about either.  As for the truly radical approach, we are not violent revolutionaries and are never going to be.

What’s missing from that article is something fundamental — people get the government they deserve.  We need to make this country deserve better.  If a choir chants “we” in chorus, it is still the individuals speaking.  Unless libertarians actively change individuals, society will not budge.

[Keep reading…]

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Who are the worst Americans?

by on August 16, 2010 @ 12:26 am · 10 comments

in Anti-Statism, The Left, The Right

From Stephen Bainbridge via Tyler Cowen comes a list of the worst Americans:

John Hawkins asked a bunch of right of center bloggers to list the “20 Worst Americans of all time,” from which he compiled the following list. The comments are mine. Personally, I find the collated list pretty much of a joke. It reflects the partisan passions of the moment, not anything resembling a serious verdict of history.

It goes on to list the usual suspects from the modern political right’s perspective: the Clintons, Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, various spies and assassins, FDR, Ted Kennedy and so on.  I agree with Bainbridge that several selections are historically dubious; leftist loudmouths such as Moore and Al Sharpton seem inconsequential next to true monsters like FDR and Lyndon Baines Johnson.

I doubt Bainbridge would agree with a libertarian’s list, however, although some overlap would exist.  But we libertarians enjoy the benefit of an anti-state, pro-liberty perspective, which neither the right nor left will entertain.  Thus while Bainbridge puts John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of “our greatest President”, at # 3 of his own list, Booth’s target would top mine.  Yes, Abraham Lincoln: the worst American ever.

And certainly no other assassin or spy or anyone else who has undermined the state would go on my list of worst Americans.  The worst Americans are the ones who have used the state to murder, rob and terrorize innocent people.  Lincoln prosecuted a war to prevent secession and caused the deaths of 600,000 Americans and virtually unmeasurable economic destruction.  Timothy McVeigh isn’t our worst domestic terrorist: the United States government is.

FDR, who ushered in the modern welfare state and deliberately goaded the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor, thus providing an excuse to push the U. S. into WWII, surely is in the top five.  As is his successor, Harry Truman, for slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians with atomic weapons.

Then there’s Alexander Hamilton, a strong centralist whose ideas of protectionism and fiat currency plague American economic policy to this day.

Here are some of my choices, not in a meaningful order after the top five or so:

  1. Abraham Lincoln
  2. Woodrow Wilson (World War I tyrant, established the Fed and the first progressive income tax, allowed segregationist government policies)
  3. FDR
  4. Harry Truman
  5. Alexander Hamilton
  6. LBJ (expanded involvement in Vietnam, biggest spender on social programs since FDR)
  7. George W. Bush (two wars, unprecedented expansion of Federal government)
  8. Ted Kennedy (worst recent example of our ruling political class)
  9. Alan Greenspan (architect of the Fed’s disastrous monetary expansion)
  10. Paul Krugman (apologist for neo-Keynesian economic policy)
  11. John Marshall (4th Chief Justice of SCOTUS who greatly expanded Federal power)
  12. Janet Reno (murderess of 76 Branch Davidians in Waco)
  13. J. Edgar Hoover (the FBI’s first and still most evil dictator director)

I’m sure readers can think of many others, but this is a good start.

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