War has always been the occasion of a great — and usually permanent — acceleration and intensification of State power over society. War is the great excuse for mobilizing all the energies and resources of the nation, in the name of patriotic rhetoric, under the aegis and dictation of the State apparatus. It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society. Society becomes a herd, seeking to kill its alleged enemies, rooting out and suppressing all dissent from the official war effort, happily betraying truth for the supposed public interest.
Free-market capitalism, the victory of social power and the economic means, is not only the only moral and by far the most productive system; it has become the only viable system for mankind in the industrial era. Its eventual triumph is therefore virtually inevitable.
For example, consider slavery. Slavery is a system in which a nonviolent human being must labor for another under the threat of aggressive violence. For Rothbard, slavery is unjust because it violates the non-aggression principle. Therefore, slavery must be illegal. Now consider the case of drinking alcohol. Although it may be morally reprehensible and bad for one’s health, drinking alcohol does not involve the use of violence against a nonviolent human being. Therefore, drinking alcohol must be legal. In this manner, Rothbard uses the non-aggression test to determine whether any act is just or unjust and must be legal or illegal.
Although the non-aggression principle itself has never been controversial in the history of thought, its implications can be shocking for the uninitiated. For example, consider the case of taxation. A tax is a payment that government extracts from a human being under the threat of aggressive violence. To Rothbard, taxation is unjust because it violates the non-aggression principle. Any logically consistent thinker who accepts the principle must reject taxation.
Since the nature of man is such that each individual must use his mind to learn about himself and the world, to select values, and to choose ends and means in order to survive and flourish, the right to self-ownership gives each man the right to perform these vital activities without being hampered and restricted by coercive molestation.
HERE’S THE DIFFERENCE: IN CAPITALISM, PEOPLE HAVE RISKED THEIR LIVES TO SAVE THEIR DOGS; IN SOCIALISM, PEOPLE KILL THEIR DOGS TO SAVE THEIR OWN LIVES … THAT’S WHY PEOPLE RISK THEIR LIVES TO MIGRATE TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. AND THAT’S WHY PEOPLE RISKED THEIR LIVES TO MIGRATE FROM VENEZUELA, NORTH KOREA AND CUBA.”
-Johan Norberg, author of Open: The Story of Human Progress
Johan Norberg is an author, lecturer and documentary filmmaker, born in Sweden. He is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington D.C. and the European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels. He received his M. A. in the History of Ideas from the University of Stockholm.
The state cannot be fought by simply boycotting it, as a private business could, because an aggressor does not respect the negative judgement revealed by boycotts. But it also simply cannot be fought by countering its aggression with defensive violence, because the state’s aggression is supported by public opinion. Thus, everything depends on a change in public opinion………In order for the state to fail in reaching its objective, no more and no less than a change in general public opinion must take place: state-supportive action must come to be regarded and branded as immoral because it is support given to an organization of institutionalized crime.
Man, in particular, must use his mind to learn, to formulate his goals and the means to attain them. He has no inborn instinct to guide him automatically to the correct choices, as the bird or the salmon are supposed to be guided…. animals are bound within the environment in which they find themselves. If a group of animals are adapted only to the environment of a certain area, X, and they are forced to leave X they will die. They must then defend this environment to the death. Man, on the contrary, is unique among living beings for his capacity to change his environment, to leave, transform, and alter his circumstances on behalf of his own survival and progress. Man is not bound to a fixed plot of earth and all the environmental conditions upon it; he can move, he can build shelter against the elements, he can transform the earth, etc.
Murray N. Rothbard
Libertarian Forum v. 1, pp. 140, 142
Michael Tsarion is an independent researcher, teacher, & film maker; see his excellent film Architects of Control.
Minimum wage laws tragically generate unemployment, especially so among the poorest and least skilled or educated workers… a minimum wage, of course, does not guarantee any worker’s employment; it only prohibits, by force of law, anyone from being employed at the wage which would pay his employer to hire him. It therefore compels unemployment.
It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, aft er all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a “dismal science.” But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.
Murray N. Rothbard Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, p. 202
…Hayek had to fall back on the importance of blindly obeying whatever social rules happened to have “evolved,” and his only feeble argument against intervention was that the government was even more irrational, and was even more ignorant, than individuals in the market economy.
A final word about conscription: of all the ways in which war aggrandizes the State, this is perhaps the most flagrant and most despotic. But the most striking fact about conscription is the absurdity of the arguments put forward on its behalf. A man must be conscripted to defend his (or someone else’s?) liberty against an evil State beyond the borders. Defend his liberty? How? By being coerced into an army whose very raison d’etre is the expunging of liberty, the trampling on all the liberties of the person, the calculated and brutal dehumanization of the soldier and his transformation into an efficient engine of murder at the whim of his “commanding officer”? Can any conceivable foreign State do anything worse to him than what “his” army is now doing for his alleged benefit? Who is there, O Lord, to defend him against his “defenders”?
In all societies, public opinion is determined by the intellectual classes, the opinion molders of society. For most people neither originate nor disseminate ideas and concepts; on the contrary, they tend to adopt those ideas promulgated by the professional intellectual classes, the professional dealers in ideas. Now, throughout history … despots and ruling elites of States have had far more need of the services of intellectuals than have peaceful citizens in a free society. For States have always needed opinion-molding intellectuals to con the public into believing that its rule is wise, good, and inevitable; into believing that the “emperor has clothes.”
US News More cops are saying they will not enforce the COVID lockdowns. [Link] Alaska voters approve rank-choice voting. [Link] The New York Times ran an article warning about removing US forces from Somalia. [Link] Taiwan Taiwan is beginning to build a fleet of...
If Joe Biden is successful in his fight for the White House, he will be bringing with him a foreign policy team that is responsible for some of the biggest and deadliest fiascos in the past quarter century. From the idiotic attack on Yugoslavia, to arming jihadists in...
Thanks to Joe Biden we are finally getting rid of the grifters and con artists that infiltrated the foreign policy establishment Max Boot on the Biden Foreign policy A-Team [video width="720" height="400"...
Oh yeah, no, it's because they are just terribly concerned about the proper process being followed! If there's one thing that anyone and everyone knows about the cops of South Dakota: they don't care about themselves at all! They are only worried what might happen if...
California’s financially battered restaurants filed government claims Monday to recover more than $100 million in fees for liquor and health permits and tourism charges that they say were assessed even though their businesses were shuttered or only partially operating...
Kevin Gosztola discusses the abominable record of some of Joe Biden's key transition team officials, people who are likely to become high-level members of Biden's eventual cabinet. This list includes the usual war hawks and D.C. insiders, who are sure to return the...
Gareth Porter is back for a retrospective on Trump's foreign policy. Despite campaigning on a relatively non-interventionist platform, and indeed despite explicitly denouncing the policies of the Bush and Clinton families along the way, Trump has not been especially...
Ray McGovern discusses the recent personnel changes in the Trump administration and what they could mean for his final months in office. McGovern thinks that John Brennan and his allies are getting nervous that as a lame duck, Trump might decide to simply release...
Scott interviews Doug Bandow about the missed foreign policy opportunities of the Trump administration. Bandow laments that Trump didn't push harder to get U.S. troops out of our wars in the Middle East, theorizing that he was worried the political cost in the eyes of...
115 Minutes Not Safe for Work Vin Armani returns to close out "The Dim Age" series of talks. He comments on what the installation of Joe Biden represents in the context of "The Dim Age." He and Pete then have a discussion on personal "spiritual" and "religious"...
63 Minutes Suitable for All Ages Bryan Sharpe, better known as Hotep Jesus, is a tech entrepreneur, podcast host and social commentator. Bryan returns to the show to discuss a subject he has written on extensively, the war on masculinity. Pete also brings up an...
34 Minutes Safe For Work Dr Robert Rowen has been practicing medicine for more than three decades. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Johns Hopkins University before attending medical school at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr Robert Rowen joins Pete as a...
79 Minutes PG-13 Scott Horton is Managing Director of The Libertarian Institute, host of Antiwar Radio for Pacifica, 90.7 FM KPFK in Los Angeles and KUCR 88.3 in Riverside, podcasts the Scott Horton Show from scotthorton.org, and is the Editorial Director of...
On Conflicts of Interest #36, Kyle is joined by the great Mike Maharrey from the Tenth Amendment Center to talk about the president's war powers. Mike recently published two articles on how the president claims the authority to wage war in Somalia and Yemen. Mike...
On Conflicts of Interest #35, Kyle breaks down the recent changes made by Trump at the Pentagon. While the Blue Checks on Twitter speculated Trump was prepping for a coup, it is now clear Trump was actually getting rid of personnel who refused to end the wars in Iraq...
On Conflicts of Interest #34, Dave DeCamp joins Kyle Anzalone to discuss Trump and Biden's destructive foreign policy. Dave explains how Trump has carried out an aggressive policy against China. Reports say Biden is likely to just as, if not more, aggressive towards...
Pete Quinones joins Conflicts of Interest to discuss the crazy year we are living through. Pete published a documentary, the Monopoly of Violence, earlier this year. Pete breaks down his struggle to get the doc on streaming platforms like Amazon Prime. Pete compares...
https://youtu.be/yrNRQG8Kjic HERE’S THE DIFFERENCE: IN CAPITALISM, PEOPLE HAVE RISKED THEIR LIVES TO SAVE THEIR DOGS; IN SOCIALISM, PEOPLE KILL THEIR DOGS TO SAVE THEIR OWN LIVES ... THAT’S WHY PEOPLE RISK THEIR LIVES TO MIGRATE TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. AND...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpYZZafQOPM The state cannot be fought by simply boycotting it, as a private business could, because an aggressor does not respect the negative judgement revealed by boycotts. But it also simply cannot be fought by countering its...
https://youtu.be/O1D3NJwZnxQ Why should 535 people in Washington be entitled to issue commands to 300 million others? And why should the others obey? - Michael Huemer The Problem of Political Authority, Pg. xxvii Michael Huemer is a professor of Philosophy at the...
https://youtu.be/_jX7c3THBHQ Man, in particular, must use his mind to learn, to formulate his goals and the means to attain them. He has no inborn instinct to guide him automatically to the correct choices, as the bird or the salmon are supposed to be guided.......
https://youtu.be/sr1dvyNUZTY As Harry Browne said, "Freedom is the ability to do what you want with your life." Keith and I reflect on this message with the help of a few psychological studies of the dying. Subscribe to Keith Knight's "Don't Tread on Anyone" on...
https://youtu.be/tbCPPihKBuU Keith Knight and I unpack the ACB hearings from this morning. We discuss separation of powers, conservative vs. progressive vs. libertarian judicial philosophy, and objective morality. Subscribe to Keith Knight's "Don't Tread on Anyone" on...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZuA3V2qV3s&feature=youtu.be In an unprecedented abridgment of the most basic rights of an ostensibly free society, American citizens are being wholly deprived of their right to Due Process in the name of an amorphous "public health...
https://youtu.be/4KiNyw7uSx8 If the governments of the world have formed and persist in a state of anarchy, does it follow that the State is an inevitable institution? How would a libertarian anarchist society prevent being conquered by a state or prevent itself from...
Tommy touches on the stories of the last few weeks and the last 4 years. https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/strangerencounterspodcast/Pre-Election_Circus.mp3
A continuation of Tommy's conversation with Ryan about the election and the political ramifications of 2020. https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/strangerencounterspodcast/ryan_pt_2.mp3
Ryan joins Tommy to discuss all things 2020 and what seperates anarchists from voters. https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/strangerencounterspodcast/ryan_pt_1.mp3
Austin of atlasarms.org joins Tommy to discuss the Dagney Dagger, an open-source armored penetrating hollow point 9mm ammunition, and the furtherance of liberty. https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/strangerencounterspodcast/open-source_aphp.mp3
