… in a world of voluntary social cooperation through mutually beneficial exchanges, where one man’s gain is another man’s gain, it is obvious that great scope is provided for the development of social sympathy and human friendships. It is the peaceful, cooperative society that creates favorable conditions for feelings of friendship among men.… the social relations formed by the division of labor tend to be permanent as individuals specialize in different tasks and continue to produce in those fields.
Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 101
The data show that there is little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any one of the world’s religions. In fact, the leading instigators of suicide attacks are the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a Marxist-Leninist group whose members are from Hindu families but who are adamantly opposed to religion. This group committed 76 of the 315 incidents, more suicide attacks than Hamas.
Rather, what nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland. Religion is rarely the root cause, although it is often used as a tool by terrorist organizations in recruiting and in other efforts in service of the broader strategic objective.
Robert A. Pape
Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism
In war, State power is pushed to its ultimate, and, under the slogans of “defense” and “emergency,” it can impose a tyranny upon the public such as might be openly resisted in time of peace. War thus provides many benefits to a State, and indeed every modern war has brought to the warring peoples a permanent legacy of increased State burdens upon society.
Murray N. Rothbard
Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, pp. 80–81
The Libertarian’s basic attitude toward war must … be: it is legitimate to use violence against criminals in defense of one’s rights of person and property; it is completely impermissible to violate the rights of other innocent people. War, then, is only proper when the exercise of violence is rigorously limited to the individual criminals.
Lacking the direct test of success or failure, the voter tends to turn, not to those politicians whose policies have the best chance of success, but to those who can best “sell” their propaganda ability. Without grasping logical chains of deduction, the average voter will never be able to discover the errors that his ruler makes.
Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 887
One of the most vital struggles in the writing and publishing of history is the conflict between the government’s propaganda myths, enshrined in “official history,” and historical reality brought forward by “revisionism.”
Murray N. Rothbard
Left and Right, p. 231
Edward Louis Bernays was an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, referred to in his New York Times obituary as “the father of public relations” Bernays was named one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century by Life Magazine.
Violent, worldwide revolution, in Marx’s version made by the oppressed proletariat, would be the instrument of the advent of his millennium, communism.
Murray N. Rothbard
Classical Economics, p. 317
In the long run, as we have seen under communism, the parasitic sector destroys the private productive sector and harms even the parasites in the process.
Murray N. Rothbard
Making Economic Sense, p. 22
‘Antifa’ is an organization which advocates and engages in the initiation of violence against peaceful people. This is entirely consistent with the abolition of private property, aka communism, and the antithesis of anarchism, the claim that no person or group of people have the right to rule peaceful people.
…the Austrian theory of the trade cycle reveals that only the inflationary bank credit expansion that enters the market through new business loans (or through purchase of business bonds) generates the over-investment in higher-order capital goods that leads to the boom-bust cycle.
Murray N. Rothbard Economic Controversies, p. 737
0:00 – Rothbard Quote
0:51 – What is economics?
2:14 – What makes the Austrian School of economics unique?
3:14 – What is an accurate way of measuring wealth in a given society?
4:37 – Why are some countries poor and others wealthy?
7:16 – How can we increase access to products and services to those in lower income brackets while increasing quality – healthcare and housing?
13:20 – Why do Austrians oppose regulation?
15:46 – Do Austrians assume perfect knowledge?
18:04 – What about monopolies & cartels?
23:45 – Subjective value
24:54 – Labor Theory of Value
26:45 – Centrally planning – difference between corporations and governments
29:19 – Competitive currencies – Spontaneous order
31:44 – Spontaneous order in law
33:18 – Do disastrous situations justify the existence of a state?
35:17 – A Priori reasoning vs. Empirical evidence
38:30 – Real world examples
40:50 – Wealth vs. Dignity
42:54 – Why wages rise
46:04 – The “free” mindset
49:55 – Competition – the Austrian approach as a process
The belief in “authority,” which includes all belief in “government,” is irrational and self-contradictory; it is contrary to civilization and morality, and constitutes the most dangerous, destructive superstition that has ever existed. Rather than being a force for order and justice, the belief in “authority” is the arch-enemy of humanity. Pg. 3
If human beings are so careless, stupid and malicious that they cannot be trusted to do the right thing on their own, how would the situation be improved by taking a subset of those very same careless, stupid and malicious human beings and giving them societal permission to forcibly control all the others? Pg. 26
Perhaps most telling is that if you suggest to the average person that maybe God does not exist, he will likely respond with less emotion and hostility than if you bring up the idea of life without “government.” This indicates which religion people are more deeply emotionally attached to, and which religion they actually believe in more firmly. In fact, they believe so deeply in “government” that they do not even recognize it as being a belief at all. Pg. 29
If, for example, someone has a “right” to housing, and housing comes only from the knowledge, skills and efforts of other people, it means that one person has the right to force another person to build him a house. Pg. 117
All statists believe that the people who make up “government” have an exemption from basic human morality, and not only may do things which others have no right to do, but should and must do such things, for the (supposed) good of society. The type and degree of aggression varies, but all statists advocate aggression. Pg. 121
To quickly review, people cannot delegate rights they do not have, which makes it impossible for anyone to acquire the right to rule (”authority”). People cannot alter morality, which makes the “laws” of “government” devoid of any inherent “authority.” Ergo, “authority”-the right to rule-cannot logically exist. Pg. 144
Businesses are always eager for consumers to buy their product or service. On the free market, the consumer is king or queen and the “providers” are always trying to make profits and gain customers by serving them well. But when government operates a service, the consumer is transmuted into a pain-in-the-neck, a “wasteful” user-up of scarce social resources. Whereas the free market is a peaceful cooperative place where everyone benefits and no one loses; when government supplies the product or service, every consumer is treated as using a resource only at the expense of his fellow men. Th e “public service” arena, and not the free market, is the dog-eat-dog jungle.
… it is a man’s right to do whatever he wishes with his person; it is his right not to be molested or interfered with by violence from exercising that right. But what may be the moral or immoral ways of exercising that right is a question of personal ethics rather than of political philosophy …
Mankind is a mixture of good and evil, of cooperative and criminal tendencies. In my view, the anarchist society is one which maximizes the tendencies for the good and the cooperative, while it minimizes both the opportunity and the moral legitimacy of the evil and the criminal. If the anarchist view is correct, and the State is indeed the great legalized and socially legitimated channel for all manner of antisocial crime — theft , oppression, mass murder — on a massive scale, then surely the abolition of such an engine of crime can do nothing but favor the good in man and discourage the bad….The anarchist view holds that, given the “nature of man,” given the degree of goodness or badness at any point of time, anarchism will maximize the opportunities for good and minimize the channels for the bad.
US News A 46-year-old Texas woman died on the floor of her jail cell after the prison failed to give her prescribed medications and appropriate medical care. [Link] A judge rules Pennsylvania’s lockdowns are unconstitutional. [Link] A judge blasts prosecutors US...
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He might even go to jail for it. The lady was asleep. He was trying to murder her dog, but murdered her instead. He's been charged with criminally negligent homicide.
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Scott and Gareth Porter continue their ongoing conversation about President Trump's foreign policy so far. Porter focuses first on Iran, which has become the ultimate excuse for just about every foreign policy decision over the last decade. In reality, of course, Iran...
Arthur Bloom talks about a recent piece from The American Conservative, which exposes the case of a prolific and well-known anti-Iran opinion columnist who turned out not to be a real person. "Amir Basiri," who wrote dozens of pieces for mostly right-leaning...
Journalist Ford Fischer discusses his coverage of the various armed factions taking to the streets in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, and amid broader calls for police reform. The mainstream media typically paints a black-and-white narrative: on one side are...
Scott interviews Josiah Lippincott about the conventional narrative surrounding the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. The common argument, says Lippincott, is that the U.S. had no real choice but to drop the bombs, since the alternative would have...
81 Minutes PG-13 Bird is one-third of the hosts of the Friends Against Government podcast. Bird joins Pete to discuss various concepts but especially that of the theory of Biopower developed by Michael Foucault. They discuss Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's 2...
60 Minutes Some Strong Language Donnie is the author of "A Direct Republic: The Null Hypothesis of Politics (How to Automate a Legislature)." Donnie is former military intelligence whose method is meant to transcend party politics. Donnie joins Pete to talk about all...
70 Minutes PG-13 Keith Preston is the proprietor of AttackTheSystem.com and an expert on the history of anarchism. Keith talks about his path to anarchism, some anarchist history and then discusses any hope for liberty and anarchism in the age of CV19 and mass...
57 Minutes Safe for Work Independent journalist Jeremy R. Hammond returns to the show to talk about his series of articles revealing the lies the New York Times has peddled in their reporting of the CV19 virus. He also comments on the CDC's August 26th report...
On Conflicts of Interest #5, Will and Kyle break down the DOJ's case against two 'Boogaloo Boys' charged for conspiring with Hamas. Entrapment or foiled terrorist plot? President Trump went on a tear against top Pentagon brass during a Monday press conference,...
An unverified hit piece by Jeffery Goldberg in the Atlantic accused Donald Trump of trash talking US troops. Despite its flimsy sourcing, the Libertarian Party ran with the story to score political points against the president. Kyle and Will explain the problems with...
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https://youtu.be/driOX4uD7G4 “Why should 535 people in Washington be entitled to issue commands to 300 million others? And why should the others obey? These questions, as I argue in the following pages, have no satisfactory answers.” Michael Huemer The Problem of...
https://youtu.be/K1CC9Fm5-Xc ... outlawing something because it may harm the user leads straight down the logical garden path to our totalitarian cage ... Murray N. Rothbard For a New Liberty, p. 136 There is, of course, a very strong connection between addiction and...
https://youtu.be/uuew9Ycs2qU The liberal revolution implanted indelibly in the minds of the masses — not only in the West but in the still feudally-dominated undeveloped world — the burning desire for liberty... Murray N. Rothbard Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against...
https://youtu.be/s63mgqnkqLI If all States are evil, some are more evil than others, some particular States have engaged in enormously more aggression, both internally against their subjects, and externally against the citizens of other States. ... If we libertarians...
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What is QAnon? Who is Q? Tommy spent this last week stuck in a Q-hole attempting to gain insight on the phenomenon that is Q. What he discovered entertained, surprised, and intrigued him. There's no way to discover every angle of Q in a week, but Tommy wanted to avoid...
