libertarianism – praag.org

Ilana Mercer: Libertarian anarchism’s ‘justice’ problem

To the extent the Constitution comports with the natural law—upholding the sanctity of life, liberty, privacy, property and due process—it is good; to the extent it doesn’t, it is bad. The manner in which the courts have interpreted the U.S. Constitution makes the Articles of Confederation, which were usurped in favor of the Constitution at the Philadelphia convention, a much better founding document than the Constitution.

THE SIN OF ABSTRACTION

Unless remarkably sophisticated and brilliant (as only Hans-Hermann Hoppe indubitably is), the libertarian anarchist invariably falls into sloth. Forever suspended between what is and what ought to be, he settles on a non-committal, idle incoherence, spitting venom like a cobra at those of us who do the work he won’t or cannot do: address reality as it is. This specimen has little to say about policy and politics for fear of compromising his theoretical virginity.

Suspended as he is in the arid arena of pure thought, the garden-variety libertarian anarchist will settle for nothing other than the anarchist ideal. And since utopia will never be upon us, he opts to live in perpetual sin: the sin of abstraction.

Indeed, arguing from anarchism is problematic. It is difficult to wrestle with reality from this perspective. This is not to say that a government-free universe is undesirable. To the contrary. However, the sensible libertarian is obliged to anchor his reasoning in reality and in “the nit and the grit of the history and culture from which it emerged,” in the words of columnist Jack Kerwick.

This mindset maligned here is not only lazy but—dare I say?—un-Rothbaridan. For economist and political philosopher Murray Rothbard did not sit on the fence reveling in his immaculate libertarian purity; he dove right into “the nit and the grit of the issues.”

And the “nit and grit” for this not-quite anarchist concerns the problems presented by the private production of justice.

COMPETING THEORIES OF JUSTICE

A belief in the immutably just nature of the natural law must elicit questions about the wisdom of the private production of defense, as this could, in turn, give rise to legitimate law-enforcement agencies that uphold laws for communities in which natural justice has been perverted (in favor of Sharia law, for example).

It’s inevitable: In an anarcho-capitalistic universe, fundamentally different and competing views of justice (right and wrong) will arise. And while competing, private protection agencies are both welcome and desirable; an understanding of justice, predicated as it is on the natural law, does not allow for competing views of justice.

How, then, does one reconcile this inevitable outcome with the natural law and the emphasis on the search for truth as the ultimate goal of justice?

To let the victim forfeit—or choose his own form of—redress for certain misdemeanors is fine. Many legal solutions are a result of mediation and other perfectly private solutions to non-violent offenses.

To leave punishment for murder, rape and other violent crime to the vicissitudes of the victim or his proxies is, however, unacceptable. The likelihood that in a stateless state-of-affairs, a victim or her proxies will choose to let a violent offender go free in favor of financial restitution cannot be ignored or tolerated. It matters not that such an eventuality may be rare, or that similar injustices occurs under the state. These should never happen. Not under the state. Not under anarchy.

Furthermore, does the voluntary forfeiture of just retribution not imply, in the case of murder, that the right to life is a right the victim’s surrogates may choose to alienate or relinquish at will? How else does one construe this position?

The danger of reducing justice, in cases of violent crime like homicide, to a negotiated deal amounts to moral relativism and is a recipe for nihilism.

Anarchists also ignore that a violent offender presents a clear and present danger to others, and that his fate, at least in a civilized society, is the prerogative not only of the victim.

Libertarian anarchists will correctly counter that, under a minimal state and certainly under the state today, criminals could—and do every day—get away with murder. This is because the justice system is horribly flawed. This fact is insufficient a reason to support a state of affairs where, as a matter of principle, proportional, moral retribution will not necessarily be the goal of justice. The kind of justice sought in anarchy would depend on the victim, not so? It is unlikely that she will support unconditional love—euphemized these days as restorative justice—as an antidote to rape. But if she’s of the Left, it’s quite possible.

Conversely, under a system in which competing theories of justice prevail, personalized “justice” may well take the form of vendetta. For example, and as one anarchist retorted: “If a woman is raped, she could demand proportional restitution (e.g., whatever fines imposed on the criminal necessary for the emotional harm caused her, including castration and the unexpected forced rape of the criminal). The criminal would simply be enslaved to the victim (or her punishment agency, more likely, if she didn’t want to deal with him), until repayment had been met. The court could decide, for example, that for restitution, the rapist is to pay the victim $1 million and be violently raped himself.”

What if the offender dies due to castration or forced rape? Is that proportional justice? What was suggested above is barbaric vigilantism.

Under anarchism, the proposal above could be adopted as a matter of principle rather than as an aberration to be rectified. Civilized, moral retribution should aim to avoid such barbarism.

JUSTICE FOR ALL VS. CLIENT-CENTERED JUSTICE

As was observed, victims could demand disproportionate punishment and the enforcement agency would comply. Not all victims, moreover, will be covered by private protection agencies. Who ensures that justice is meted in cases where individuals cannot afford or opt not to contract with a private protection firm? There is little if no incentive for such an agency to pursue a dangerous offender who has not harmed their client. Do we, then, rely on good Samaritans to take up arms and hunt down the offender? Or do we as a society, through the common law, make a public declaration of the few abiding values we wish to uphold?

To the extent possible, there must be a commitment, however imperfect, to justice for all and not only for those who’ve contracted with a private protection agency.

So while the current criminal justice system is often egregious in its approach to victims, the libertarian’s characterization of the private production of defense as “victim-centered” is misleading. It is client-centered.

Again, that we suffer depredations under the state is insufficient an argument for making this state-of-affairs a viable, “principled” option, which would likely be the case under anarchy.

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Garner: Innocent actor in Sovereign’s snuff film

Despite its elegant simplicity, the libertarian law is difficult to grasp. This I realized pursuant to the publication of “Eric Garner: 100% innocent under libertarian law.” Some of the smartest, polymathic readers a writer could hope for were easily bullied into believing that by failing, first, to submit to the Sovereign and question him later, Eric Garner had undermined some sacred social compact.

A small-time peddler is killed-by-cop for selling single smokes on a New York street corner. Yet so befuddled were readers over the application of libertarian natural law to the Garner case, that they insisted against all evidence that Garner’s was an understandable death by “civil disobedience.”

“I certainly would applaud those who resist truly immoral laws (like ordering someone to commit torture),” equivocated one writer, “but I am leery to suggest massive civil disobedience of petty regulations which may, in fact, just give rise to more oppressive government to ‘restore law and order.’”

Yes, the poor sod who dared to purchase and dispose of a couple of loose smokes had committed “massive civil disobedience.” Fearing the Sovereign’s vengeance, some of his fellow citizens felt obliged to calibrate just how daringly Garner should have deviated. Did he raise his voice excessively? Did he wave his arms too energetically? All utilitarian, not principled, considerations.

Other readers beat on breast. Hopelessly “torn” were they between my verdict – Garner was an innocent actor in the Sovereign’s snuff film – and the proposition that Garner had an obligation to prostate himself before the law to his overlord’s exacting specifications. By failing to do so, Garner had somehow invited his fate.

“Torn” is a word that better comports with images of Gloria Swanson or Marlene Dietrich mid-swoon. What in bloody blue blazes is there to be “torn” over? The right of a man to stand on the curb with a few “loosies” in-hand, and stay alive?

In claiming that Garner was innocent in natural law, I was – or so I was informed – guilty of implying that he had no moral obligation to obey state-enacted positive law. Woe is me – and woe betides that rascal who counseled that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

Here’s the rub about the rudiments of libertarian law. While we all have ideas about what is moral and what’s immoral, libertarianism doesn’t! It has nothing whatsoever to say about morality per se. When libertarians say this or the other is wrong in libertarian law, they mean the following and the following only:

Unprovoked, A initiated aggression against B or his “legitimately owned” property. That’s it!

Libertarianism is thus concerned with the ethics of the use of force. This and this alone is the ambit of libertarian law.

The foundation of libertarianism is the non-aggression axiom. “The non-aggression axiom is the lynchpin of the philosophy of libertarianism,” explains Walter Block:

It states, simply, that it shall be legal for anyone to do anything he wants, provided only that he not initiate (or threaten) violence against the person or legitimately owned property of another. That is, in the free society, one has the right to manufacture, buy or sell any good or service at any mutually agreeable terms. Thus, there would be no victimless crime prohibitions, price controls, government regulation of the economy, etc.

The concept was unremarkable among 19th century classical liberals, who were Russell Kirk conservatives by any other name. Nowhere was the self-evident nature of natural law more evident than in the matter of Eric Garner. According to a “nationwide USA Today/Pew Research Center poll,” “Americans by nearly 3-1″ agree the police officer was responsible for the death of Eric Garner.

What is immoral is not necessary illegal and vice versa. It is, arguably, immoral to legislate preferences in employment for certain employees, based on the concentration of melanin in their skin. Yet racial set-asides are perfectly legal in some precincts around the country. Conversely, it is utterly moral to sell an item that belongs to you, as Garner did. However, it was illegal for Garner to sell said items, even though he was in his moral right to trade.

Naturally, there are very many difficult moral issues over which natural-rights libertarians – as opposed to Benthamite, utilitarian libertarians – will argue. Abortion, for example.

Based on the non-aggression law, some libertarians hold that abortion is legal in libertarian law, because a woman owns herself and may evict anything from her body. To punish her for exercising dominion over her own body, they claim, would be wrong – even if we think abortion immoral. Other natural-rights libertarians disagree with this position. They say that abortion is aggression against a living, non-aggressive, sentient being.

The debate is mired in morality. But it always returns to what should be legal or illegal in a truly free society: Based on the non-aggression law, should we or should we not proceed with force – for that is what law is – against a woman for what she does to her body.

Law is force. Every time our overlords in D.C. legislate (unconstitutionally, for the most), they grant their gendarmes permission to aggress against an innocent citizen who’s been criminalized. Every new law and regulation licenses law enforcement to initiate mostly unjust, unprovoked force against an innocent, sovereign individual and/or his lawful property – an individual who has done harm to nobody.

Competition in a free society is not aggression. “Eric Garner was not violating anyone’s rights or harming anyone by standing on a street corner and peddling his wares.” The shopkeeper who sicced the cops on Garner had the right to pursue profits. He has no right to the profits he had before the competition arrived on the scene. Not in a free market.

Ultimately, libertarianism’s elegant minimalism as to what is lawful and what’s unlawful comports with the American idea of individual sovereignty, subject to limited, legitimate authority.

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The twisted motives behind political correctness

by Brandon Smith

As I have confessed in the past, in my early years I found myself active in the Democratic Party and the general liberal methodology. I had no understanding of the concept of the false left/right paradigm. I had no inkling of the dangers of globalism and central banking. I had no concept of decentralization or non-participation. I had never even heard of libertarianism. I knew only that George W. Bush was a criminal (and I was right), but the problem went far deeper than the GOP. I was astoundingly ignorant of the bigger picture.

However, what I did have going for me was an almost violent sense of nonconformity. I hated collectivists, yet I found myself surrounded by them while working within the leftist culture. It was the insanity of self-proclaimed “liberals” that taught me the true nature of the facade of politics. When I realized that the Democrats were essentially the same corrupt entity as the neoconservatives, everything in my life changed.

One aspect of liberalism with which I am now very familiar is political correctness. I didn’t understand it at the time, not until I stepped outside the cultism of it and looked in from a wiser place. It always bothered me, but I couldn’t quite grasp why until later. Then, it hit me like a revelation. Political correctness was not a political ideology. No, it was a religion, a full-fledged spiritual con, a New Age ghetto of frothing mishmash that is sociological voodoo. And the leftists were eating it up like steak night at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

These people were rationally retarded. Every idea they proposed they merely parroted from books and articles they had read. They were like malfunctioning automatons trapped in a cycle of discontented social criticism. Their desperation to invent meaning in the midst of their irrelevant lives made me feel ill. If they could not find a legitimate cause to champion, they would create one out of thin air and defend it relentlessly, regardless of how shallow it truly was.

When I outline my analysis of economic destabilization within the United States or I write about the rise of the police state, I am driven by a fundamental sense of concrete concern. There are indeed real problems in the world, swirling in a storm of obvious factual conflicts. But the warriors of the PC culture don’t see any of it. Rather, they fantasize about injustices that don’t exist, trespasses that are ultimately fictional. They imagine themselves champions of some greater purpose that, in the end, doesn’t matter.

Recently, I read a news story about a “transgendered teen” in Maine. When the boy was in the fifth grade, he decided to dress as a girl and demanded to use the girl’s bathroom at his public school, despite having the biological apparatus of a male. This story was international news, folks! Why? I can’t say, except that the mainstream media have made a point to focus on “gender optional” issues as if they represent some kind of civil rights uprising.

The issue perfectly illustrates the disturbing nature of politically correct culture.

Teachers at the school did not deny the student the use of restroom facilities. In fact, they allowed him to use the teacher’s bathrooms to avoid any confusion. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court, on the other hand, had other ideas. It ruled that the school’s refusal to allow the boy to use the girl’s facilities constituted a violation of the State’s anti-discrimination law. The ruling has been heralded as a massive victory for the politically correct narrative.

Now, let me make one thing clear: I could not care less about this boy’s sexual orientation (if he even has one). I do think the very idea that a fifth-grader at about the age of 10 is sexually conscious enough to develop a sense of gender dissuasion is absurd. Children who haven’t even experienced puberty yet, proclaiming they are transgendered? Utter nonsense. I find it far more likely that the student’s PC-obsessed parents influenced him to come to such a decision despite his naivety.

Is it not rather mentally backward for any person to base his public persona solely on his carnal compulsions? Do I dance around on the sidewalk bellowing to strangers how much I love the curves of women? Do I require a sociopolitical legal apparatus to vindicate my existence? Do I feel the need to shame gay people into publicly embracing my straight man’s libido? No, I do not.

The PC culture demands that we, as individuals, openly accept the sexual orientations of anyone and everyone; otherwise, we are labeled prejudiced monsters. It is not enough that we object in a logical manner. No, we must fall to our knees and thank the stars for the very existence of gender chameleons.

In the end, the psychological gender position of any particular person does not overrule his biological features. A child with a penis is a boy. Period. He will never be a girl. Ever. Not without surgical aid. And even then, he will never have the ability to give birth, which is the very hallmark of femininity. (Sorry, feminists, but that’s how it goes.) A boy, no matter his mental orientation, does not belong in a girl’s lavatory. The privacy rights of the girls outweigh the gender confusion of the boy. If I were a girl (why not play some gender games since everyone else is), I would beat the living hell out of any boy gallivanting in a dress in a bathroom I was using and make sure he never dared come back. And, by extension, if I were a rather mischievous boy with an aptitude as a peeping tom, why not dress up in a tutu in the hopes of getting a glimpse of the forbidden while being legally protected by the State?

The warped conflicts that arise, though, are not the creation of the child in question. A fifth-grader has no concept of gender rights or political correctness. This issue was a creation of the PC cult and its acolytes. These people don’t actually care about the children they involve in their legal dramas. They exploit them, with every intent to abandon them once they have chiseled their agenda into the gray matter of every American.

What truly motivates these people? Why do they do what they do? I think my experience with leftists makes me a well-positioned observer of the psychology of the culture. Here are the hidden thought processes I have witnessed while dealing directly with the PC army.

PC Elitism

One of the unfortunate side effects of religion is that proponents often use it as a means to feel superior to others. I have seen it in Christianity as much as I have seen it in any other belief system. It is the primary reason why I refuse to subscribe to organized and establishment-sanctioned spiritualism. Religion should be a personal experience first and foremost, not an easy way to fit in with the collective. Communing with others who share one’s beliefs should be secondary. Hypocritically, politically correct adherents often criticize Christians for their collectivist elitism while suffering from the same problem themselves.

PC culture allows participants to pretend as though they have some greater understanding of the world, an elevated knowledge of life that makes them superior to the uninitiated. It is important to understand that when a person pursues the methodology of zealotry, he doesn’t do it to make the world a better place; he does it to feel better about his place in the world.

The politically correct are so violent in the assertion of their ideals because they crave the subjugation of the mainstream and a recognition of their “rightness.” They don’t want people to “accept” their beliefs as tolerable. They want people to adore their beliefs as supreme. They want every man, woman and child to reinforce their ideals without question.

The malfunction of this philosophy is that zealots are never finished. They must always find new ways to feel superior to others. So they continuously engineer new taboos and new sins, no matter how ridiculous, so that they can forever look down upon the laymen. Because of this, there will never be an end to PC law. It will go on forever, labeling numerous social interactions and stances as “aberrant” — never satiated and never satisfied.

PC Futurism

The young are always searching for ways to feel wiser than the old. This is just the natural way of things, at least in America. Now, I know from ample experience that age does not necessarily denote intelligence. I’ve met plenty of idiotic people who had decades of time to learn from their mistakes but didn’t. But the young, many of whom lack time and struggle, have a terrible tendency to either pretend that they have “seen it all.” Or they pretend that the very atmosphere of the day somehow gives them a greater insight than generations past. The reality is that most of them know very little of import. This attitude comes from a philosophy called “futurism” (popular with the Nazis and the Soviets), which holds that all the beliefs and discoveries of the past mean nothing compared to the beliefs and discoveries of the present. This ideology is alluring to the young, because it gives them a way to feel intellectually dominant over older and more “ignorant” people who are “behind the times.”

Political correctness is basically an appendage of futurism. By labelling elders as social bigots and products of a barbaric era who don’t understand the “lingo” of the PC elite, liberalism draws in and collectivizes the fledgling left. Younger generations are given a cultural avenue toward high priesthood, a right of passage usually reserved for the aged. They get to skip ahead past all the trials and tribulations of life and announce their deep awareness of the so-called greater good.

The values of forefathers past become archaic scrawlings of racist and prejudiced cavemen who could never appreciate the “brilliance” of today’s academia. The inherent freedoms of natural law that have existed since time began are nothing more than obstacles to them, standing in the way of a new and better world where they have somehow outsmarted human instinct and centuries of history.

PC Collectivism

The very foundation of political correctness is solidified in a desire for the perpetual reinforcement of one’s worldview. PC people need every other person around them to sing the praises of their pure virtues. If I happen to disagree with the idea of gender bending, for instance, as some kind of socially persecuted subculture that needs overt government protection, then I am, of course, labelled a hateful Neanderthal. If I stand in opposition to the concept of victim group status in general, in which the state demands that designated “minorities” be given special treatment regardless of the status of the individual, then I become a racist political fossil ignorant of the bigger picture. You see, if you disagree with PC culture in any way (even if that way is rational), you cannot win. To refute political correctness is to refute the god of the New Age; and to refute their god, even with concrete logic, is blasphemy.

This kind of blind faith in political correctness lends itself entirely to collectivism. The average person begins to think that without a viable appreciation of the philosophy, he may be left out or cast aside. Most people do not know how to function without the approval of others. Therefore, even if a father happens to have a healthy skepticism over the idea of a make-up wearing fifth-grade boy waltzing into his daughter’s school bathroom, he is likely to keep his mouth shut, because to speak out would be a risk to his position within the group, or the community.

PC Control

The prevalence of PC philosophy is not subtle. I have always found it interesting that political correctness seems to consistently support the demands of the state. Our system smothers children with it in public school, our workplaces are rife with the propaganda for fear of lawsuits and colleges are veritable breeding grounds for the PC oligarchy. Politically correct culture goes out of its way to constantly test others to make sure they are also true believers.

The truth is some discrimination is healthy, and some discord is needed for a society to remain balanced. As long as we don’t allow our disagreements to end in the physical harm of others, then those disagreements are our natural-born right. If you are a racist (this goes for non-whites as well), that’s fine. Just don’t act out your racism in a violent way around me, or I will have to put you down permanently. If you have a distaste of homosexuality (or asexuality, as seems popular nowadays), then whatever, I don’t care. You shouldn’t have to have organizations like GLAAD (formerly the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) in your face attempting to force you to put on a smile for gaydom, coordinate man-on-man heavy-petting protests in your favorite restaurant (Chick-fil-A) while you’re trying to eat a damn sandwich, push boys into the girl’s bathroom, or trying to shut down your favorite TV shows because the stars happen to share your views (“Duck Dynasty”).

Now, PC proponents will argue that the very existence of bigotry does harm to society as a whole, and it must be educated out of individuals. Frankly, I see that kind of utopian fascism as a far greater threat to society as a whole than bigotry ever will be.

Look at where we are today because of the PC nightmare! We have a Nation on the verge of industrial and economic collapse, partly because companies are forced by law or persuaded by government subsidies to hire people with victim group status, even if they are unqualified, while ignoring highly qualified people who just happen to have lighter skin. We have children not even old enough to discover their own inherent character being clinically diagnosed with “gender dysphoria” by a psychiatric community of quacks, which conjured most PC terminology out of thin air. We have boys who are told that they are stunted for acting out their natural male impulses and girls who are told that true femininity is weakness and that they should act more masculine. We have a mainstream culture that coddles and infantilizes young adults, young girls who think promiscuity is the key to womanhood and that motherhood is disgusting (which I find rather ironic), and young men who have no testicular fortitude and no clue how to take charge of their own lives.

The American family unit has been completely destroyed. We have women who are ashamed to set aside careers to raise children because feminism frowns upon “breeders” who bring down the whole gender. We have men who abandon their children and refuse to take responsibility. And we have a weak-minded population addicted to collective affirmation and unwilling to think outside the box for fear of being shunned and shamed. Honestly, I can’t see a single redeeming quality to political correctness other than the fact that those people who espouse it do so loudly and obnoxiously, making it easier for me to identify and avoid them or to take special note of them as an obvious zombie threat in an America swiftly declining into mundane oblivion.

Brandon Smith at: brandon@alt-market.com

Apartheid South Africa: Reality vs. libertarian fantasy

by Ilana Mercer

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One needn’t propagate lies about the state-enforced segregation that was Apartheid in order to condemn it.

Yet in defiance of fact, one prominent libertarian economist has gone so far as to assert that apartheid was “a version of Castroite socialism.”

How can one credibly say that about a country that in its heyday had a gold-backed currency, enjoyed the confidence of investors the world over, sported low to no government debt and similar rates of inflation, the most opulent and spectacular shopping malls, the freest, finest medicine I’ve experience in life on three continents, near-unfettered legal access to handguns (for whites) and relatively secure property rights for the same minority? You can’t. Not if you wish to retain intellectual credibility.

Racial segregation, inequality under the law, injustice: yes, yes, and yes. But “Castroite socialism”?

Not quite as embarrassing, another wag asserted the following: “Apartheid was a system of government control and regulation to artificially keep South African blacks from competing against whites in the marketplace.”

This is only partly true. The problem with half-truths is that the conclusions that flow from their premises will likewise be deficient.

Dogma without data

Distorting the facts about Apartheid’s raison d’être does nothing to promote the truth.

“Hermann Giliomee – whose grand historical synthesis and primary source exegesis (“The Afrikaners: Biography of a People”) is referenced extensively in “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa” – has concluded that Afrikaner anxieties were overwhelmingly existential, rather than racial. Leading thinkers at Stellenbosch University devised a system for the National Party to ensure “the security of the Afrikaners as a dominant minority.” (More about Apartheid as “A Strategy for Survival,” in “Into the Cannibal’s Pot,” pp. 67-70.)

As noted in the same book:

Anybody who lived … among Afrikaners during the apartheid era can testify that crime and communism were foremost on their minds. To rationalize the cruel, Kafkaesque laws of Apartheid, Afrikaners spoke of the Swart Gevaar (which meant the “Black Threat”), and of the Rooi Gevaar (the “Red Threat”). My Afrikaner neighbor would regularly admonish me for my incipient liberalism: “You want black rule so badly, look around you at the rest of Africa! Anglos like you simply don’t understand what’s at stake.” (P. 70)

The sweeping non sequitur that follows from the partial truth aforementioned has it that “black poverty” and misery stemmed solely from Apartheid’s “suppression of free market forces.” This is economic reductionism, typical of the impoverished analysis of South Africa, offered so authoritatively by libertarian economists stateside.

Apartheid is a necessary explanatory variable in the “black poverty” equation, but never a sufficient one.

As expounded in “Into the Cannibal’s Pot,” “the maze of racial laws that formed the edifice of Apartheid” had been dismantled by the offending National Party almost a decade before the transition to democracy; by 1986, the party had already brought down Apartheid’s pillars, the “pernicious influx control laws,” for example.

In all, South Africa has now been racially desegregated for almost 28 years.

Documented in the same book are these immutable facts: “Twelve years into the Nationalist government’s rule, the rate of literacy among the Bantu of South Africa was already higher than that of any other state in Africa, or that of India. From the 8.6 million recorded in the 1946 census, the black population rose to 17.4 million in 1974 and 28.3 million by 1991. [In-migration from the north was just about non-existent.] From the 1940s to the 1990s, life expectancy for blacks soared from thirty-eight to sixty-one years!” (P. 178.)

“Since the dawn of democracy in 1994, life expectancy has plummeted by nine years. Crime has reached crippling levels … and is certainly much higher than in the Old South Africa. … unemployment had jumped from 19 percent in 1994 (before ‘freedom’) to 31 percent in 2003 (after ‘freedom’), steadily rising until, in 2005, it stood at 38.8 percent. The trend is consistent and persistent.” (P. 178)

These stubborn facts collapse the politically pleasing but reductive theory, promulgated by libertarian know-nothings, that holds Apartheid to be the sole cause of black South Africa’s dysfunction, economic and other.

As the pesky facts attest, black dysfunction in racially desegregated South Africa is way worse than it was during state-enforced segregation. In fact, it now resembles that of the rest of Africa.

Apartheid was reprehensible. But dogma denuded of data does nothing to bolster this uncontested, incontrovertible position.

Lite libertarianism vs. the right kind

Herein lies the difference between the paleolibertarian analysis and what this column has termed the lite libertarian one, philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe being the finest example of the former. The rest fall into the latter, lite category.

A crucial difference between lite libertarians and the right kind is that to the former, the idea of liberty is propositional – a deracinated principle, unmoored from the realities of history, hierarchy, biology, tradition, culture, values.

Conversely, the paleolibertarian grasps that ordered liberty has a civilizational dimension, stripped of which the libertarian non-aggression axiom, by which we all must live, cannot endure. “The pursuit of the … paleolibertarian ideal,” explained Catholic philosopher Jack Kerwick, Ph.D., “is the pursuit of an ideal of liberty brought down from the clouds to the nit and the grit of the history and culture from which it emerged.”

‘The color of money’

Indeed, the truth about the Old South Africa is far more nuanced. As this writer tried mightily to explain during an RT broadcast (embedded), “The color of money” did speak loud and clear to enlightened self-interest in Apartheid South Africa.

“‘The market is color-blind,’ said Milton Friedman. ‘No one who goes to the market to buy bread knows or cares whether the wheat was grown by a Jew, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim or atheist; by whites or blacks.’ As Thomas Sowell put it so well, ‘prejudice is free, but discrimination has costs.’ Added South African academic, Steven Farron: ‘[P]eople demand that their governments restrict the economic and occupational success of specific ethnic or racial groups. However, when the same people act as individuals or business owners, they actively resist and/or circumvent these restrictions.’” (P. 127)

All people do this. Apartheid South Africa was no different.

During Apartheid, white industrialists – miners especially – “put continual pressure on the South African government to allow them to use more black labor.” Afrikaner farmers also chose overwhelmingly to ignore racial job quotas, despite their own racist predilections, and also despite high unemployment among rural Afrikaners. Well before the official dismantling of Apartheid laws (carried out, as mentioned, by the white minority government), the agricultural sector, skilled and managerial jobs included, came to be dominated by blacks. As was the semi-skilled labor market – clothing, furniture, millinery, sheet metal, construction, mining, baking. Clearly, whites, acting as individuals, chose to subordinate ethnic advancement to optimize their livelihood. (P. 126)

Those half-truths again

“Free market economists (the only kind worth consulting) have long since insisted that the rational, self-interest of individuals in private enterprise is always not to discriminate. Arguably, however, the good economists, while certainly not wholesale liars as are their Keynesian counterparts, are still offering up a half-truth. Rational self-interest does indeed propel people, however prejudiced, to set aside bias and put their scarce resources to the best use. But to state simply that ‘discrimination is bad for business’ is to present an incomplete picture of reality. This solecism stems from the taint the word ‘discriminate’ has acquired. The market, by which we mean the trillions of capitalist acts between consenting adults, is discriminating as in discerning – it is biased toward productivity. Hiring people on the basis of criteria other than productivity hurts the proprietor’s pocket.” (P. 127)

Thus, we can be fairly certain that, absent racist affirmative-action laws, the market would reflect a bias toward productivity. In other words, what the good economists are loath to let on is that a free market is a market in which groups and individuals are differently represented. Parity in prosperity and performance between differently able individuals and groups can be achieved only by playing socialist leveler.” (P. 128.)

Freedom vs. egalitarianism

Contra the economic reductionism of the lite libertarian, free-market capitalism is a necessary but insufficient condition to sustain freedom in a country of South Africa’s complexion.

The truth absent from the phantasmagorical formulations critiqued is this: Economic freedom does not necessarily reduce so-called wealth inequality. Inegalitarainism is a feature of a free economy. If history is anything to go by, certain minorities will achieve prosperity from poverty, no matter how gravely the state and society impede them. Jews did it in Europe. Levantines and Indians in Africa and the Middle East. Chinese in southeast Asia and everywhere else they go. Europeans in South Africa.

Moreover, “While all people want safety and sustenance for themselves, not everyone is prepared to allow those whom they dislike and envy to peacefully pursue the same.” (P. 4) Free-market capitalism is not enough to safeguard ordered liberty in racially riven societies like South Africa, where the majority will always covet the possessions of immensely wealthier minorities and associate these riches with racial privilege.

Ultimately, the rights to life, liberty and private property will forever be imperiled in a country whose constitution has a clause devoted to “Limitation of Rights,” and where redistributive “justice” is a constitutional article of faith. (P. 101)

This, paleolibertarians (all three of us) know too well.

In “The Cannibal” chapter entitled “Saving South Africans S.O.S.,” secession is explored as one solution, it being a species of the private-law society delineated by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Hoppe, of course, has never been afraid to speak to the “unequal civilizing potential” (in James Burnham’s coinage) of different people and peoples.

Against dog-ate-my-homework argumentation

For the sins of man, hard leftists blame society, and the lite libertarian saddles the state.

In its social determinism, the lite libertarian’s “the-state-made-me-do-it” argumentation apes that of the left’s “society-made-me-do-it” argumentation. Both philosophical factions implicate forces outside the individual for individual and aggregate group dysfunction.

In the New South Africa, the left’s “argument” has been taken to a new level of abstraction: “The legacy of Apartheid” is said to explain the unparalleled depravity of Nelson Mandela’s dominant-party mobocracy.

While the state is a worthier culprit than society, both are analytical equals in as much as they absolve the individual of responsibility for his actions. For the philosophy of freedom is predicated on individual responsibility.

“Societies are only as good as the individuals of whom they are comprised; individuals only as good as their actions.” (P. 4) If the sanctity of life is the highest value in a civilized society – then Mandela’s South Africa is uncivilized in every way possible.

The unvarnished truth about democratic South Africa is that it is “now preponderantly overrun by elements, both within and without government, which make a safe and thriving civil society impossible to sustain.” (P. 4)

Although absolutely essential, free-market capitalism is insufficient to the task of tackling this tide of sinecured criminals.

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Freedom is neither Right, nor Left

by Albert Brenner

What happens to exist is the cause of its use. (Lucretius)

Equal-outcome egalitarianism (henceforth, EOE) is the scourge of our time. It is the doksa of our Zeitgeist – the fons et origo of the Prismon of Equality.

To, for example, believe that race and gender are “social constructs”, gay and heterosexual marriage (are) commensurate and culture(s) “relative” – in order to make all (appear) equal in outcome – is unreason at its purest. For all actions aimed at its fulfillment are fated to fail because its telos is extrinsic in finality… meaning that if that external thing – in this case a-historical and universal equality in outcome – had never existed, all action undertaken to bring it to fruition will, inexorably, fail.

Fortunately this anthropic attribution underpinning the “divine” purpose of secular-humanism is petrifying. Its “truth” – its “mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms …” (Nietzsche) is becoming increasingly immobile … in the face of Reason.

Freedom-loving people in the West are becoming increasingly aware of EOE’s inherent, and inevitable, totalitarian aspirations. They are getting sick and tired of, for example, words being banned, wanton social-engineering (e.g. AA, BEE, bussing and “gender-free” toilets for kids), state-sponsored punishment via forced “rehabilitation” courses like sensitivity and cultural-awareness training – as if (the) Soviet gulags weren’t bad enough already, etc.

Be that as it may; the rise of libertarianism as embodied by, for example, the Tea Party in America and UKIP in England, is the clearest sign that the overtly coercive policies of (yet another) state-driven ideology have reached their sell-by date.

And this disaffection has nothing to do with being “left” or “right” on the political spectrum… because the aforementioned positions are but dichotomous expressions of allegiance to, or contra, (a) specific ideology.

For example, anti-communists like Lech Walesa and Alexander Solzhenitsyn were actually “left-wing” because they fought against those who wanted to conserve Communism. Yet (the) support of Communism is (usually) regarded as being “leftist”. Ergo, to conserve (as in “right-wing”) or to explore/demand liberty (as in “left-wing”) is completely relative – purely a factor of allegiance as expressed dichotomously.

Meaning that the growing dissatisfaction with (yet another prismon) – this time, EOE – transcends all traditional notions of conservatism and liberalism. Hence, new political constellations are arising in the West… under the guiding light of libertarianism. For libertarianism seems to be the only viable solution left to guarantee the freedom of Whites in the future.

And this is especially true for the Afrikaner in South Africa. The road to the “right” (e.g. the AWB) and the road to the “left” (e.g. the DA) have brought them nowhere. Even worse; it has made enemies of potential friends.

There are many non-Christian Afrikaners (especially the youth) and there are many white English-speaking South Africans who are fiercely loyal to the Afrikaner’s quest for freedom. Yet they and “traditional” Afrikaners are always at each other’s throats… simply because they are still caught within the “left-wing versus right-wing” political constellation… now discredited!

Maybe the path to Afrikaner Freedom is via libertarianism… the antithesis of (the) authoritarianism shackling him to ANC/DA-driven equal-outcome egalitarianism. Because it, libertarianism, – as defined by the philosopher Roderick Long – furthers “any political position that advocates a radical redistribution of power from the coercive state to voluntary associations of free individuals”.

Maybe (a) federalism fed by libertarianism will, one day, be the only political guarantee of voluntary associations (of whites in South Africa) within a clearly defined geographical (and ideological) locale, like Orania. But alas, only time will tell.

What is a given though is the fact that libertarianism will be the Alamo of the Pale Male once its own artillery, democracy, has finally turned against him… on the eternal battlefield where demography is fate (August Comte).

Self-segregation trumps imposed multiculturalism

Ilana Mercer on multiculturalism, political correctness, and more

FLORIDA, January 28, 2013 — Ilana Mercer is a rarity.

Originality is rare in punditry these days. Every time a new narrative-of-the-day arrives, we take refuge in groupthink rather than thinking for ourselves. Not Mercer.

Originally from South Africa, she moved to Israel after authorities pressured her anti-apartheid father. Today, Mercer is one of America’s leading paleolibertarian voices. She not only has a prominent column for World Net Daily, but is the author of Into The Cannibal’s Pot, a book about what has happened to her home country over the years.

Mercer shares her views about topics ranging from political polarization to race relations.
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Joseph F. Cotto: This seems like one of the most polarized eras in American politics. Why do you think that our country’s political atmosphere has become so divisive?

Ilana Mercer: I think you are correct in your assessment regarding the unparalleled polarization of American society. Have you noticed how commentators on both sides of received political wisdom attempt to diminish the fact you articulate by referring to America’s fractious history? Nevertheless, this is a complex issue that is hard to answer briefly. I’ll try. In the introduction to F.A. Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom,” economist Milton Friedman underscores this important point: “The argument for collectivism is simple if false; it is an immediate emotional argument. The argument for individualism is subtle and sophisticated; it is an indirect rational argument.”

Underway today in the USA is a monumental clash between individualism and collectivism; between the forces of reason and reality, against force and coercion. The “philosophical” differences between the Republikeynesians, on the one hand, and the Democrats, on the other, are insignificant. The first believe individual rights should be carefully calibrated by central planners; the latter believe these natural rights can be overridden.

There is also a cultural dimension to these irreparable divisions. We are today, thanks to social engineering, a deracinated and divided society. We are no longer what John Jay termed “a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and custom.” There can be no unity without community. The glue of togetherness is gone, replaced by a flimsy, fluid, and thoroughly fake unity peddled by politicians. “Ideas” they call it. On the one day, it’s a crusade for democracy; on the next, it’s a war against racism.

Cotto: From foreign terrorism to domestic riots, we live in an increasingly challenging world. In order to face it, America must have a sufficient national security policy. What would you say that this should entail?

Mercer: It depends on your definition of “a sufficient national security policy.” If it means protecting borders and people not our own—which is how both Republicans and Democrats conceive of “national security—”then, no, we disagree on what is a “sufficient national security policy.” US foreign policy operates upon the premise that American men and matériel should be capable of reaching and controlling all corners of the world. I’ve opposed this foreign policy folly as long as I’ve been writing. (And in particular, in Jan. 16, 2004, I pointed out that, “Inviting an invasion by foreigners and instigating one against them are two sides of the same neoconservative coin.”)

Republicans profess to understand why the Welfare State cannot bring prosperity. Why don’t they get that the Warfare State, which operates on the same principles and by the same principals, cannot bring security? Remember, the military, the ostensible vehicle for national security, is government. The military works like government; is financed like government, and sports many of the same inherent malignancies of government.

The quest for ultimate security has given us Police State USA, the TSA, and wars that have bankrupted us. Bankruptcy is inimical to national security. We won’t be too secure if China quits funding the federal behemoth. Or if the Moody’s credit-rating agency downgrades U.S. Treasuries to junk bond status, befitting the banana republic we are becoming.

A rational, constitutional “national security,” guided by the principles of limited government, would involve a defense of America’s borders alone, a well-armed citizenry, strong secessionist, states’-rights movements, and the end to an immigration policy that has turned our country into a mass of hostile, competing factions.

Cotto: Multiculturalism is spreading rapidly across the Western world. This has led not only to cultural barriers, but tremendous religious and ethnic conflicts. What are your views on the subject?

Mercer: Multiculturalism as practiced in the West amounts to top-down, centrally enforced and managed integration. Show me a historical precedent where forced integration has worked. As it works across the Anglo-American and European spheres, one group (the founding, historical majority) is forced by self-anointed and elected elites, on pain of public and professional ostracism, to submerge its history, heroes, customs, culture, language, and pander to militant minorities, who’ve been acculturated by the same elites in identity-politics warfare.

As a libertarian, I believe that the right to include or exclude; associate with or dissociate from, is inherent in the right of private property. Private property is a civilizing institution. How better to keep the peace than to respect the right of free private-property owners to keep their distance (or not)—to hire, fire, and, generally, associate at will? This foundation of civil society is being dismantled for the sake of militant multiculturalism and policed pluralism

Cotto: Political correctness has brought many changes to American public discourse. How do you regard its legacy?

Mercer: As I write in “Into the Cannibal’s Pot,” “PC is the law of rule — mob rule — as opposed to the rule of law. Political correctness is tyranny euphemized. In fiction, the Orwellian Ministry of Truth is a reified entity. In reality, there isn’t one concrete ministry that decides how the nation thinks — there are many such entities. America’s many Ministries of Truth include the education system, most churches, the self-anointed ‘intellectuals,’ the ruling duopoly and their attendant TV bobbleheads. They issue countless edicts. This ‘dark art of rule’ demands obedience.

“Choose to disobey, and you risk public shame, libel, and loss of livelihood. Sometimes The Ministries of Truth will lunge for your property in the form of a law suit. Canada’s Ministries have a special Kangaroo Court in which they judge Un-PC speech (mainly), and from which traditional legal defenses have been barred. Examples of such expunged defenses: an appeal to truth and the lack of intent to harm. This self-inflicted tyranny, so typical of Western societies, plays a role in collapsing our societies.”
Cotto: Much to our country’s detriment, race relations appear to have soured during recent years. Some might say that this is rooted in generational poverty, while others would blame an increasing number of culture clashes. What is your take on this dilemma?

Mercer: I would probably dispute the thing you finesse or define as “race relations.” There are presumably many good relationships between fair-minded individuals—black, white, brown, etc. I have those. I am sure you do too. But, as for “race relations” in the collective sense, these consist in whites, as a group, accepting that all blacks have an eternal claim against them—for no other reason than that they are white. For ever after, whites have accepted that they are destined to be roped into the Sisyphean struggle to appease the unappeasable. Or so African Americans repeatedly tell them. White liberals, the vast majority of Obama’s base, lap up the libel of a racist America. The same curvature of the spine afflicts the “conservative” priesthood. Sane individuals reject this Mark of Cain; as they should a false accusation of hate they don’t harbor; hate The Other harbors.

Numbers from The Bureau of Justice Statistics confirm that white-on-black hate crimes are practically (and certainly statistically) non-existent. These are manufactured myths. Young, white, and poor: Now this is the group that is more likely than any other age group to be well represented among the reported victims of hate crimes. A significantly higher percentage of victims of violent racial hatred say their attackers were black.” “Nine out of 10 of them identify their race as the reason blacks targeted them.” Now tell me who’s doing the hating?

Originally published by the Washington Times Communities