Anatomy of the State by Murray N. Rothbard is a booklet/essay that traces the origins of the state and takes a hard look at what it is. This is an important work that can be read in a short sitting. You can download a free copy here. You can buy a paperback copy from the Mises Institute here for five dollars.
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization devoted to human liberty and Austrian School free market economics. They are funded by individual members and donors. Please consider supporting them by becoming a member! Browse their vast free library here.
Here is a reading of Anatomy on YouTube - one hour at normal speed:
Because of a previous owner of my phone number, I am on MoveOn's text list. I get all of their alerts.
I just received this one today "Trump's impeachment trial for inciting violence is soon. Need GOP votes to convict. Tell Sen Bill Cassidy: Convict Trump."
Ironically, MoveOn was founded during the Bill Clinton impeachment trial, trying to get the country to just forget about the President's sexual abuse of power in taking advantage of an intern half his age within his chain of command - and then committing perjury about it afterward. MoveOn wanted the Senate to just censure the president and just "Move On to pressing issues facing the country." Obviously, this was in the era before the #metoo movement - although in Bill Clinton's case, they seem to approve of the sexual abuse.
But here we are when it is a Republican president being impeached, MoveOn wants nothing of moving on.
As for their action item to call Senator Cassidy,
First of all, the trial hasn't even started yet. No evidence has been presented. Even in the House impeachment, no evidence was heard, nor was the former president given an opportunity to present evidence. So on what basis is MoveOn calling for conviction other than their political views? MoveOn has shown its colors, that it believes in Soviet- and Maoist-style political show trials in which political opponents are convicted without evidence.
But worse yet, did they commit the crime of jury-tampering? Senator Bill Cassidy is one of the jurors of this case. How is this any different than sending out the phone number of any other juror of any other case and urging people to call the juror to try to pressure him into voting for a conviction?
This clearly demonstrates that this is a political, not a judicial, proceeding. This has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with fetid politics.
Sadly, very few people on the Left will criticize one of their ideological bedfellows - even if laws are being broken in order to get the political outcome that they want.
Is jury tampering within the legal rights of a 501c4 organization?
We Americans have ‘no fault divorce’ because we no longer believe marriage to be sacred and inviolable. It’s merely a human arrangement based on convenience that can be dissolved - or even redefined - at will. And government defines and administers marriage.
But we outlaw divorce between states and consider even discussing a reconfiguration of government to be ‘sedition’ and ‘treason.’ Moreover, even our government buildings are now considered sacred - as church sanctuaries were once upon a time.
We have replaced God with the State, and instead of recognizing marriage as a sacramental estate that precedes and supersedes government, we have placed it firmly under government. Instead of recognizing government as a mere human arrangement designed to serve our purposes and protect our rights and liberties, we now see government as our master, who giveth liberty, and who taketh it away.
The State is now our god. For even when churches can be closed and declared nonessential, government must remain open.
In our statist religion, marriages are dissolved every day, but our current and specific form of governance is indivisible. We are wedded to the State until death do us part.
Hopefully, conservative people have learned something today. Violence is useless. The GOP is useless. Third parties are useless. Elections are useless.
The Deep State is everywhere, and will not relinquish power. We do not live in a republic. We are ruled by technocrats and oligarchs.
We are entering a period of one-party socialist globalist government. We have already been in cultural decline for quite some time. The Trump presidency was a speed bump on the way to the Great Reset. But it has been overcome. It took a bioweapon and election fraud, and it was achieved at a great price - but they pulled it off.
We are looking at a radicalized Democratic Party controlling both houses and the presidency. They have the votes to pack the Supreme Court and take the judicial branch very quickly as well. Nothing can stop this. They have the votes to admit new states, open the borders, and consolidate their power for years to come. Again, nothing can stop them. We need to come to grips with this reality.
There is nothing that any opposition can do. They have a radical and ambitious agenda that is economically and culturally Marxist. They control the schools, the popular culture, Hollywood, Wall Street, sports, entertainment, the mainstream media, Big Tech, Big Pharma, and the Academy.
So we are going to have to look for solutions outside of the federal government and outside of their social and political control. There may be some respite at the state and local level - depending on where you live. But real resistance will take place in private communities. We must culturally secede.
If you have money, figure out how to invest it or save it in ways that it can’t be tracked or seized. It may be crypto or gold or stuffing bills in a safe. It may be buying life insurance or land. No matter what your financial situation is, plan on frugality and thrift. The state will try to get its fangs into you.
Engage in offline economic activity: cash transactions, barter, etc. Disengage from government as much as possible. Pull out of public schools. Stay off of the government radar. Expect high taxes and inflation - and plan accordingly.
Also expect a crackdown on the first and second amendments - and find ways to continue to exercise your God-given rights without any unnecessary contact with government. Be innocent as doves and wise as serpents.
Understand that this could be a very long captivity. Babylon and the USSR were both 70 years. Read and collect subversive literature. Teach your children banned history, literature, and market economics. Associate with others who share your views, and get educated together. Remember, this is a long-term rebuilding project. We are planting seeds of trees that we will probably not see bear fruit in our lifetimes.
Be guarded in your speech and be selective about whom you trust. You will need to think long and hard about lines that you will or will not cross.
Encourage your children to get into the trades. We will always need plumbers, mechanics, carpenters, IT, etc. Be wary of mainstream universities. They not only generate debt and prepare students for careers that don’t exist, they also pervert the minds of young people.
The most radical things that young people can do is not to start a podcast or run for Congress - but rather get married, have children, stay married, faithfully attend church, and form local communities. Stop watching TV and movies. Secede from poisonous pop culture.
Take care of your mental and physical health apart from the healthcare system where possible. Use preventive measures to stay healthy, and use natural medicine wherever you can. Expect a much more expensive and shoddy healthcare system - one that will be laden with waiting lists and bureaucracy, that will embrace euthanasia for the elderly. Expect a mental health system that will target the politically undesirable - and try to stay off of their radar screen.
If ordinary people begin to see the folly of what the Democrats have in store, and begin to wake up, outstanding. But don’t expect to see anything of the sort for decades. People love the promise of ‘free stuff.’ They will have to learn for themselves how costly ‘free stuff’ actually is. We will need to hit Venezuela-style rock bottom before there can be a change in direction. Sadly, people need to lose their liberty before they treasure it and start to demand it again - and this is a generational thing. We didn’t get here overnight.
This is going to be quite a ride. It will be ugly. Business as usual is over. Don’t underestimate their malice and potential for inhumane and demonic behavior. Think before you act, and strategize like a chess player.
And remember, God is still in charge. He allows His people to suffer, both as chastisement, as well as to accomplish His inscrutable will. Be fervent in prayer and seek His will - knowing that Christ will come again. We ultimately know how it all ends!
This Lutheran confession lays out a theology of resistance to tyranny based on the Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate. The brave autonomous city of Magdeburg, with its spirit of political independence and theological insistence on adhering to Lutheran theology, come what may, arguably saved the Reformation in the year 1550. The city stood alone in refusing to surrender the Lutheran confession to Charles V's so-called Augsburg Interim. Magdeburg paid for its tenacity by being put under military siege for a year, until the imperial forces backed off and negotiated a settlement that allowed the Lutheran confession to coexist with Roman Catholicism in the empire.
The Confession is a theological treatise, but it happens in a very real political context - and thus the narrative has not only ecclesiastical and doctrinal implications, but also serves to teach us political lessons in our world today.
Indeed, the world was very different in 1550. At the time, there was no Germany. That would not come until the late 19th century. Europe was feudal, comprised of a patchwork of small governments. What we call Germany today was part of the so-called Holy Roman Empire. As is often said, the HRE was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. It was a crazy-quilt of kingdoms, principalities, duchies, and free cities in what is today mainly Germany and Italy. The emperor was actually elected by certain elector princes.
The HRE was more a loose confederation than an empire, one which offered maximum liberty because of the concept of competition. There were no passports. The countries were small. The German language was spoken across a large swath of the Empire. And so, if a prince was abusive, raised taxes too high, or impeded free markets - people could vote with their feet and move. It didn't involve emigrating hundreds of miles away, securing work visas and a path to citizenship, and learning a new language.
The economist and philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe argues that Europe's successes in science, exploration, economics, scholarship, and the arts was due to this vast decentralization. He argues that a Europe today "made up of thousands of Liechtensteins and Swiss cantons, united through free trade, and in competition with one another in the attempt of offering the most attractive conditions for productive people to stay or move" is a far better alternative to the European Union, which he describes as "a gang of power-lusty crooks empowering and enriching themselves at other, productive people’s expense."
This kind of political decentralization existed in the HRE and it made the Reformation possible. Had Charles V been an actual emperor instead of a figurehead overseeing a loose confederacy, he would have had no problem capturing and executing all religious dissidents. However, the confederal nature of the Empire made it possible for local German princes to interpose in order to protect Luther and other reformers - to the frustration of both Charles V and the papacy.
The Reformation flourished, at least in human terms, owing to the economics of free competition in the marketplace of ideas. Not only did churches and universities spread the faith of the Evangelical confession (as Lutherans were known in those days), but also the printing press and merchants who were free to sell printed material - thanks to free markets and capitalism. A centralized state would have had far better success in banning books and pamphlets and crushing dissenting opinions than a confederation of small sovereignties.
It's no wonder that dictators and tyrants always have imperial dreams. Managing a single massive bureaucracy is far easier than "thousands of Liechtensteins" when it comes to exercising authoritarian control.
One can hope that Brexit will lead to other defections away from European centralization and a restoration of the polity that made Europe a great civilization: the envy of the world.
If Americans truly value their liberty, they too will look to find ways of decentralizing the country back to its original federalism, instead of the nationalism and consolidation that has taken root instead. One path toward such a devolution is nullification (sometimes called "interposition") - which is what the Magdeburgers pioneered in 1550. With our own patchwork of state and local jurisdictions, our spirit of political independence, and our constitutional system of federalism, we could conceivably restore the republic and become, once more, heirs of Magdeburg.
And so we stand at a crossroads.
Will we move in the direction of centralization, stagnation, and slavery? Or will be be sons and daughters of Magdeburg? We should study this history and confession in both its theological and political frameworks.
We are conditioned to believe that might makes right, that the bigger entity has power over the smaller. Perhaps this is rooted in family life, where the smaller and weaker children are subject to the rule and power of the bigger and stronger parents.
As we approach 250 years from the establishment of the United States, and as we are more than 150 years after the clash of visions of the American Union that led to the War Between the States, most of us simply assume that in the United States, the federal government is where sovereignty resides. And as the world becomes smaller, the Might Makes Right (or the Bigger is Better) dictum leads to the idea that the United States should yield its sovereignty to a larger entity, be it a regional trans-national government (like the European Union) or the United Nations.
The idea that sovereignty resides at a smaller level strikes us as incongruous. To defy a UN decree or a federal law sounds rebellious and treasonous.
But this is only because we have been conditioned to believe so. We have been dumbed-down by our schools. We have been brainwashed by television. We have been manipulated by global elites to place our trust in government - and the bigger the better.
But in the United States - as borne out by history and the U.S. Constitution, sovereignty does indeed reside with the states. This is what "federalism" actually means, and this is why the United States used to be treated as a plural noun (even in the Constitution itself!), and why the United States was often referred to as a "confederation" by the founders - including the so-called Federalists who truly did desire a national government.
In spite of more than a century and a half of court precedents and federal laws that have encroached upon state sovereignty, and in spite of the aforementioned stultification of our public and private school systems, a remnant of this sovereignty still remains.
In 1973, President Richard Nixon issued an executive order mandating a "national" speed limit of 55 mph. This was done under the color of an emergency order to conserve gasoline . After the order expired in 1974, Congress passed the National Maximum Speed Law (NMSA), which most people simply think was a "national" 55 mph speed limit.
But that's not what it was.
Congress had no authority to mandate a "national" speed limit (by the way, the word "national" never appears in the Constitution, and the word "national" was deliberately replaced by "federal" by the Constitutional Convention). So in order to impose a "national" speed limit over the sovereignty of the states, the law doesn't actually set a speed limit. Rather it penalized states that had speed limits in excess of 55 mph by threatening to take away federal highway funds.
And this is how the federal government bullies the sovereign states.
Since the passage of the 16th Amendment in 1913, the federal government taxes individuals. Some of this money is held in abeyance and redistributed back to the states based on some federally desired behavior. It is really more of a bribery - or perhaps more accurately, blackmail - scheme.
If the federal government truly had sovereignty, they would simply pass a law and enforce it. They didn't, and they don't. They had, and have, to make the states "an offer that they can't refuse."
This is how "national" laws and policies - like the No Child Left Behind and Common Core disasters were imposed upon the American people (under Bush and Obama respectively), by reducing the sovereign states to groveling provinces, slavishly licking the hand of their federal master for money taken from the people in the first place. This modern view of America is at odds with the words and writings of the founders themselves.
We should be studying our American history - for example reading the Federalist and Antifederalist papers - as well as researching the "compact theory" of the Constitution. The vilification of the Confederate States has also led to a lack of understanding of the nature of our Constitutional Union, the re-writing of our history, and the sending of important parts of that history down the proverbial Orwellian Memory Hole. The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government by Jefferson Davis includes a recapitulation of the nature of the Union, as does Alexander Stephens's A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States. There are several works of U.S. Secretary of State Abel Upshur (1790-1844) that inform the reader of the compact theory that is today largely ignored by jurists and suppressed by universities.
The military defeat of the compact theory by the national theory in 1865 - in which the question was "resolved" by force of arms instead of reasoned debate - has only reinforced the Might Makes Right and Bigger is Better theses. And even then, many of our "national" laws depend on bribery and blackmail of the states to achieve these "national" laws - and hardly anybody asks "Why?"
The American people, wrongly believing, teaching, and confessing that America is a "nation" - a unitary state - instead of a voluntary union of sovereign states, that the states must obey the federal government, and that sovereignty resides in Washington instead of with the people of their own states - are ripe for a global takeover.
After all, Bigger is Better and Might Makes Right.
On February 4, 2002, a current member of the United States Supreme Court gave the following remarks at Loyola University, in New Orleans: a tribute to Judah P. Benjamin, a former U.S. Senator who resigned and took part in the secession of Louisiana. He was quickly appointed to a cabinet post by President Jefferson Davis: first as Attorney General, and subsequently as Secretary of War and finally as Secretary of State of the Confederate States of America.
Benjamin has been described as "the brains of the Confederacy."
After the fall of the Confederate government, Benjamin evaded capture by the Federal government, fled to the Bahamas, and from there moved to England where he had a long and prosperous career as a barrister. There was no attempt to extradite Benjamin to the United States.
The Justice who praised this prominent member of the Confederate government (who was not only a slave-owner, but also a defender of slavery) still sits on the bench of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Is this problematic? If progressives knew about this, would they seek this Justice's resignation?
Here is the Justice's remarks:
Judah Benjamin ranks first in time, and has captured my imagination. Alone among the four brave spirits I will describe, Benjamin never served as a judge. Recall that Judge Ainsworth, in 1961, gave up the seat he occupied for some eleven years in the state senate for an appointment to the federal bench. In contrast, Judah Benjamin, in 1853, declined the nomination of President Millard Fillmore to become an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Just elected U. S. Senator from Louisiana, Benjamin preferred to retain his First Branch post. His choice suggest that the U. S. Supreme Court had not yet become the co-equal Branch it is today. Had he accepted the Third Branch nomination, Judah Benjamin, not Louis D. Brandeis, would have been the first Jewish Justice to serve on the High Court. It was just as well, for Benjamin's service would not have endured. In early 1861, in the wake of Louisiana's secession from the Union, Benjamin resigned the Senate seat for which he had forsaken the justiceship. No doubt he would have resigned a seat on the Court had he held one, as did his friend Associate Justice John Archibald Campbell of Alabama. (Campbell, incidentally, opposed secession and freed all his slaves on his appointment to the Supreme Court. But when hostilities broke out, he remained loyal to the South. He eventually settled in New Orleans where he built up a thriving law practice.) Benjamin is perhaps best known for his stirring orations in the United States Senate on behalf of Southern interests and for his service as Attorney General, Secretary of War, and finally Secretary of State in the cabinet of Jefferson Davis. After the Confederate surrender, Benjamin fled to England; en route, he narrowly survived several close encounters with the forces of storm, sea, and the victorious Union. Benjamin's political ventures in the Senate and in the Confederacy were bracketed by two discrete but equally remarkable legal careers, the first here in New Orleans and the second in Britain. Having left Yale College without taking a degree, Benjamin came to New Orleans in 1832 and was called to the bar that same year. Although he struggled initially, his fame and fortune quickly grew large after the publication, in 1834, of A Digest of Reported Decisions of the Supreme Court of the Late Territory of Orleans, and of the Supreme Court of Louisiana. Benjamin's book treated comprehensively for the first time Louisiana's uniquely cosmopolitan and complex legal system, derived from Roman, Spanish, French, and English sources. The work digested "every point or principle" decided in each Louisiana High Court case. Benjamin's flourishing practice and the public attention he garnered helped to propel his election by the Louisiana legislature to the United States Senate. (In pre-Seventeenth Amendment days, until 1913, Senators were chosen not directly by the People, but by the Legislatures of the several States.) Benjamin's fortune plummeted with the defeat of the Confederacy. He arrived in England with little money and most of his property lost or confiscated. His wife and daughter settled in Paris, where they anticipated support from Benjamin in the comfortable style to which they were accustomed. He nevertheless turned down a promising business opportunity in the French capital, preferring to devote himself again to the practice of law, this time as a British barrister. He opted for a second career at the bar notwithstanding the requirement that he start over by enrolling as a student at an Inn of Court and completing a mandatory three-year apprenticeship before qualifying as a barrister. This, Benjamin's contemporaries reported, he did cheerfully, although he was doubtless relieved when Lincoln's Inn determined to waive some of its requirements and admit him early. Benjamin became a British barrister at age 55. His situation at that mature stage of life closely paralleled conditions of his youth. He was a newly-minted lawyer, with a struggling practice, but, he wrote to a friend, "as much interested in my profession as when I first commenced as a boy." Repeating his Louisiana progress, Benjamin made his reputation among his new peers by publication. Drawing on the knowledge of civilian systems gained during his practice in Louisiana, Benjamin produced a volume in England that came to be known as Benjamin on Sales. The book was a near-instant classic. Its author was much praised, and Benjamin passed the remainder of his days as a top earning, highly esteemed, mainly appellate advocate. His voice was often heard in appeals to the House of Lords and the Privy Council. Benjamin's biographer tells us that "[h]owever desperate his case, Benjamin habitually addressed the court as if it were impossible for him to lose." This indomitable cast of mind characterized both Benjamin's courtroom advocacy and his response to fortune's vicissitudes. He rose to the top of the legal profession twice in one lifetime, on two continents, beginning his first ascent as a raw youth and his second as a fugitive minister of a vanquished power. The London Times, in an obituary, described Judah Benjamin as a man with "that elastic resistance to evil fortune which preserved [his] ancestors through a succession of exiles and plunderings."
So who is this Neo-Confederate Justice? Click here.
Nicholas Sarwark is the chairman of the Libertarian (sic) Party (LP).
In recent years, the LP has been abandoning the libertarian principles that gave it its name. Libertarianism is a political philosophy that stresses the limitations of government based on the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP), a belief that initiating violence against peaceful people is morally wrong, and that human interaction ought to be based on voluntary cooperation instead of coercion.
Libertarianism therefore stresses private property, free trade, non-intervention in foreign policy, and advocates for private sector solutions to social problems versus a reliance on the State. Libertarianism is thus grounded in free markets, and is the antithesis of totalitarianism that manifests itself in various forms of dictatorial Statism, such as Communism (International Socialism) and Nazism (National Socialism). There are degrees of libertarianism, such as the more moderate minarchism, and the more radical anarcho-capitalism.
What is so vexing about the LP in recent years is its tolerance, or even advocacy of, well... Socialism! It's right out of Alice in Wonderland, or worse yet, an Orwellian dystopia.
It has become fashionable for prominent LP members to attack noted successful and influential libertarians like:
In recent years, the LP has become a laughable collection of stoners, sexual deviants, celebrity hangers-on, and open Marxists.
After speaking at the 2016 national convention and witnessing the LP's hard turn away from libertarianism, I changed my party affiliation to "independent" as soon as I got back home. The attendees (delegates and candidates) indeed included some solid and serious-minded libertarians, but the party had clearly been hijacked.
The above quote by Chairman Sarwark is a case in point.
Stokely Carmichael was a Marxist black nationalist/supremacist who advocated violence. It's hard to get more antithetical to libertarian principles than that.
In 1981, while I was a 17-year old college freshman, my openly-Socialist professor of Sociology strongly encouraged us to attend a lecture on campus by her hero Stokely Carmichael (who at this time was calling himself Kwame Ture). She was so embarrassingly excited that I though she might wet herself. I attended this event, which was essentially a Hitler rally for militant black nationalists. Carmichael ranted against whites, referring to us as "animals" and called for our extermination. He called for Marxist revolution and railed against "capitalist pigs." Being a slightly built white teenager, I got out of there while the crowd was whipped up into a frenzy. I was appalled by what I had seen.
At the next class, our professor was gushing about Carmichael's performance. She asked for reactions. The class was quiet. After a couple of awkward minutes, I piped up. I did not approve of calls of violence against whites, nor of the endorsement of Marxism. In less than a decade, the Berlin wall and the Iron Curtain would fall, and the USSR would break up. In the early eighties, as the wheels were coming off, we were starting to hear more and more about the cruel Gulag system and the unspeakable repression and poverty that the people of the USSR were suffering - especially as defectors managed to escape the horror.
Other students also expressed their disapproval of Mr. Ture's rhetoric. The professor looked like a deflated tire. Had this happened in the current environment, perhaps I would have been sent to sensitivity training or expelled on account of my criticism.
And this Stokely Carmichael is the kind of person that Nicholas Sarwark quotes as an exemplar of libertarian thought, while at the same time, trashing Rothbard and Woods and others who blazed the trail for libertarian ideas to be promulgated in contemporary America. If libertarians wonder why the LP considers itself successful if it exceeds a mere three percent of the votes, look no further than its tired, Socialist-friendly leadership and weak candidates.
If this is what the LP wishes to be, it will continue to be (at best) nothing more than an option for people to cast a none-of-the-above protest vote, and the LP can continue congratulate itself on its great success. Any similarity to libertarianism is becoming increasingly coincidental.
The good news is that libertarianism is an intellectual tradition, a school of thought, an alternative to Marxism that transcends things like political parties, a political philosophy that is being embraced around the world in spite of the efforts of Sarwark and the LP leadership to undermine the principles of liberty and markets and human flourishing, and in spite of their tarnishing of the term "libertarianism."
Those who are interested in libertarianism would do well to ignore the LP - like the vast majority of Americans already do.
Interestingly, Pastor Glover looks at the issue not from the moral, cultural, or ethical aspect, but rather from the political viewpoint of "policies and laws." He goes on to express ambivalence toward the political issue of Supreme Court justices, even a bit of skepticism, while also expressing the possibility that Supreme Court appointments might help.
The real answer, the author opines, is politics of a different stripe: "policies and laws that end, or at least seek to radically reduce, poverty."
His well-intentioned argument is that abortion is not at its root an ethical or philosophical issue, but rather one of economics, and that as such, it is actually rooted and grounded in poverty. Poverty is the keystone. If we can "end" it or "radically reduce" it, that would in fact "end" the "hundreds of thousands of abortions that occur every year in America."
Of course, poverty is not something that can be cured with enough research, the right policy prescription, technology, or even the milk of human kindness. Poverty is caused by scarcity: demand exceeding supply, which, according to Christian anthropology, is a consequence and curse of the Fall. Poverty will always be with us in this age, if we are to believe Jesus. This is not to say that we should not seek out behaviors which bring relief to our fellow man. Quite the opposite! That is what charity and alms-giving are all about. Though we cannot cure poverty in the abstract, though we cannot overcome the Fall by our own prowess, though we cannot scientifically make supply exceed demand - we can love our neighbor in need.
Pastor Glover, however, proposes that the road to the ending or the radical reduction of poverty lies in Socialism. Interestingly, he begins his argument by an appeal that we "imagine."
Pastor Glover writes: "[I]magine a nation that insures every one of its citizens from conception to death." Has socialized medicine resulted in fewer abortions in nations where it is the norm? And how does it work for a fertilized egg to have health insurance, but at the same time, can be aborted?
The author invites us to "imagine a nation that guarantees a living wage to every one of its citizens." He invites us to "imagine a nation that has more generous maternal leave policies and begins to have a serious conversation about paternal leave." He alludes to the myth of "the gross income disparity between men and women." He calls for "radically expanding foster and adoptive services and supporting them in ways far beyond what our budgets currently allot" meaning more government intervention in the economy. Do all these things, and "maybe" says the author, "just maybe, more women will choose not to have an abortion."
Of course, the argument that Socialism alleviates poverty is monstrous. What brings countries out of poverty are markets, not Marxism. This is not opinion; it is empirically and historically demonstrable.
Moreover, even Europe's soft democratic-socialist countries already have these very policies and laws that the author asks us to "imagine", as if such Utopias were only a glimmer in the mind of Lennonesque dreamers. Has abortion ended in these countries? Has it been radically reduced? Or have we seen a further degradation of the value of human life by an increase in related atrocities such as euthanasia and its related boon for tourism in countries that champion such policies?
There are two fatal flaws in Pastor Glover's argumentation:
1) That Socialism is a way out of poverty, and
2) That abortion is primarily a matter of having more money as opposed to how one views human life.
A little perspective is also called for. In the United States today, most of the people we consider poor have a place to live, clean potable drinking water, indoor plumbing, electricity, television, and telephones. They typically have access to free health care through Medicaid, greatly reduced food bills through EBT and other welfare programs, breakfasts and lunches for their children enrolled in the nation's free public schools and free head start programs. People that we consider poor often have luxuries like cellphones, cable TV, sports tickets, pets, tattoos, video games, jewelry, cigarettes, air conditioning, automobiles, etc. Moreover, they also often manage to find the money to get abortions.
I do agree that we should support policies and laws that push back against poverty (even though it is impossible to eradicate it in this fallen world). I believe that the free market system, not Socialism, has demonstrably proven itself to be exponentially and consistently superior in that endeavor. Socialism has not only given us more abortions - paid for by tax money - but has also given the world a hundred million corpses and a legacy of the concentration camp and the mass grave.
Pope St. John Paul II - a player in the downfall of the very Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that championed Pastor Glover's various policy prescriptions - put his finger on the problem. At its root, the issue of abortion is not economic or political. Politics follows the anthropological philosophy, of the culture. Economics is about choice and human action based on one's subjective values.
The root issue which underlies the politics and economics of abortion, according to Pope John Paul, is the "culture of death." And so it is.
Here is a thorough expose of how the word "Nazi" became so popular in modern parlance, and how the Socialism in National Socialism has been hidden from view.
In this 2015 Independent Review article "From 'Nationl Socialists' to 'Nazis'" by University of Memphis historian Andrei Znamenski (whom I had the pleasure to meet and hear lecture this year at Mises University), the author argues that the Socialist aspect of Nazism was covered over by a deliberate linguistic shift from the use of the term "National Socialism" to "Nazism" in the English language, largely at the behest and example of the Communist Frankfurt School.
The typical viewpoint expressed in academia. the media, entertainment, and popular culture is that the Nazis (and other Fascists) were/are a "right-wing" ideology, and are representative of capitalism and conservatism. This represents an Orwellian shift from the reality that the term "Nazi" is a contraction of "National Socialist" - from the party's original name: "Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei" (National Socialist German Workers' Party) - a contraction which conveniently obscures the "Socialist" element of the party and political philosophy.
This is how it is that right-wing, traditionalist, capitalist, conservative or libertarian political leanings (which includes the nearly 63 million people who voted for Donald Trump) are painted with the broad-brush as "Nazis" when in fact, most such people decry Socialism. This is why we are seeing modern campus Communists violently marching under the "anti-fascist" (Antifa) banner that dates back to the German Communist Party of 1932. In an Orwellian abuse of language, such totalitarians are setting themselves up as the alternative to "Nazism" - when in fact, they are birds of a feather, kindred spirits divided only by the question of whether their Socialism is national or international in scope.
Whether the concentration camps bear the red and black banner of Stalin or Hitler makes little difference. Both are the antithesis of liberty.
In fact, the Frankfurt School's linguistic shift represents a Hegelian dialectic that presents us with two opposite alternatives: National Socialism, or International Socialism. In rejecting "Nazism," we are led into the arms of Communism ("Internazism"?). In reality, the opposite of both National Socialism and International Socialism is Libertarian Capitalism or Classical Liberalism.
Instead of buying the lie that Socialism is good, and "Nazism" is capitalism run amok, we need to see the reality that Marxism in all of its forms (national and international) is a repudiation of human rights, dignity, private property, and liberty in exchange for central economic planning by boards and bureaucracies, enforced by political and police power to imprison, torture, and kill dissenters.
There are two different patterns for the realization of socialism. The one pattern - we may call it the Marxian or Russian pattern - is purely bureaucratic. All economic enterprises are departments of the government just as the administration of the army and navy or the postal system. Every single plant, shop or farm, stands in the same relation to the superior central organization as does a post office to the office of the Postmaster-General. The whole nation forms one single labour army with compulsory service; the commander of this army is the chief of state. The second pattern - we may call it the German or Zwangswirtschaft system (footnote:Zwang means compulsion, Wirtschaft means economy. The English language equivalent for Zwangswirtschaft is something like compulsory economy) - differs from the first one in that it, seemingly and nominally, maintains private ownership of the means of production, entrepreneurship, and market exchange. So called entrepreneurs do the buying and selling, pay the workers, contract debts and pay interest and amortization. But they are no longer entrepreneurs. In Nazi Germany they were called shop managers or Betriebsfuerer. The government tells these seeming entrepreneurs what and how to produce, at what prices and from whom to buy, at what prices and to whom to sell. The government decrees at what wages labourers should work, and to whom and under what terms the capitalists should entrust their funds. Market exchange is but a sham. As is all prices, wages, and interest rates are fixed by the authority, they are prices, wages and interest rates in appearance only; in fact they are merely quantitative terms in the authoritarian orders determining each citizen's income, consumption, and standard of living. The authority, not the consumers, directs production. The central board of production management is supreme; all citizens are nothing else but civil servants. This is socialism with the outward appearance of capitalism. Some labels of the capitalistic market economy are retained, but they signify here something entirely different from what they mean in the market economy.
I don't know if Planned Chaos (which was appended to post-1951 editions of von Mises's 1922 work Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis) was written in German or English. It would be interesting to see if Mises himself used the word "Nazi" or if English translators overwrote "National Socialist"). It is important to note that the Jewish Ludwig von Mises and his wife fled Austria in 1938 to escape the National Socialist threat - leaving behind his library and papers.
At any rate, von Mises, far from placing Communism and Fascism (or Nazism) on opposite poles, he places them both under the overarching heading of Socialism. Socialism comes in two varieties: Communism, in which the State owns all of the means of production, and Fascism, in which the State micromanages and regulates the means of production. Both are variants of Marxism: both are opposed to individual liberty and capitalism, and both rely on central economic planning by state bureaucrats. The former is international in scope, the latter is national. Both are ultimately authoritarian and totalitarian. Both enforce Marxism by fear, intimidation, incarceration, concentration camps, torture, slavery, and genocide. Both seek a "New Man" in a perverse parody of Christianity, both offering hope of an Edenic Utopia once human nature is itself evolved, goaded, and transformed through the elimination of "undesirables." Both versions of Socialism oppose the traditional family, champion abortion, and have no scruples about crushing dissent by any means necessary.
I am no longer going to play into the deception by using the term "Nazi." It may take a second longer to use the term "National Socialist", but that is exactly what they are. I believe we can more accurately convey the Dirty Little Secret of our modern-day "Antifascists" and "Democratic Socialists" - that they are actually in an incestuous and inbred love/hate relationship to the very ideology that claim to oppose.
They are all Socialists. We would do well to say so.
One can only call to mind the Marxists who ran the Soviet Union.
While Michael Moore trashes capitalism and advocates Marxist socialism (the ideology of the bread line and the gulag camp) - he doesn't put his ideology where his wallet is. The man lives like a Persian potentate and has nine homes. He acquired this vast wealth and lives this elite mega-rich lifestyle not thanks to socialism, but thanks to capitalism. He produces things (films) that people are willing to pay for, and the freedom to profit, that is, to reap the rewards of these voluntary exchanges, allows him to make more money than hundreds of workers will ever see in a lifetime. The right to own private property - the very basis of capitalism and the antithesis of Marxism - means that he is free to buy as many houses with his rightfully-earned money as he chooses. He could never have lived like this in the Soviet Union, unless, of course, he were a high-ranking member of the state apparatus.
Moreover, Moore is just plain wrong about Christianity endorsing Marxism.
Christians are to give alms (Matt 6:1-4) out of the kindness of their hearts (2 Cor 9:7) - in other words, voluntarily. Marxism thrives on compulsion, fear, threats, intimidation, and state power to seize property, to imprison, to stifle dissent, and to kill. Marxism demands complete loyalty and obedience to the state over and against religious belief. By contrast, Christianity recognizes private property (Ex 20:15) and the need to work in order to eat (2 Thess 3:10), not to mention the right of a property owner to pay his workers as he chooses (Matt 20:1-16).
The good news is that Michael Moore doesn't actually work for the state, and thus can't put anyone against a wall and shoot them in the name of "the common good." Hopefully, he'll be content to continue to enjoy his nine homes in hypocritical dissonance with what he claims to believe - and just leave the rest of us alone to enjoy the fruits of our own labor as he does.
But as George Orwell's Animal Farm powerfully pointed out, in Marxism, some animals are always more equal than others, and Marxist ideology is always filled with exceptions for the pigs who out-compete the other animals to elite status on the farm.
The word "libertarianism" has erupted into our cultural lexicon as we see the political and cultural disintegration of the United States into extreme debt, division, authoritarianism, and a seemingly endless cycle of the welfare and warfare state.
The Left is still blaming Bush, the Right is still blaming Obama, both sides claim the mantle of the Constitution.
In reality, both sides are wrong. Both sides have betrayed the original philosophy behind the American republic and its libertarian heritage that extends back to Magna Charta.
Instead of buying the propaganda of the professional political establishments of the Democrat and Republican parties, a groundswell of people are considering a different way that doesn't empower the state, but rather limits it, or theoretically even dissolves it, leaving people themselves empowered to live out their lives seeking harmony with others around them based on the right to life, liberty, and property.
There are many terms for these concepts: libertarianism, voluntaryism, the non-aggression principle (NAP), miniarchism, anarchism, anarcho-capitalism, etc. There are some differences between the terms, both in emphases and in the acceptance of some different premises, but the overarching similarities are greater. All of these terms embrace personal liberty, personal responsibility, economic freedom to work and hire and make contracts, respect for private property, freedom of travel and trade within the realm of private property, all without relying on the state as a monopoly of violence and a tool for the forcible transfer of wealth for social ends and goals.
While no political or economic system will ever create a Utopia, and, as Jesus taught, we will always have the poor among us in this fallen world, societies that embrace more freedom and less coercion enjoy exponentially more material prosperity and personal happiness over and against coercive states and societies that rely on threats, terror, prisons, torture, invasion, redistribution of wealth "for the good of the people" - as graphically illustrated here.
But where are we headed in the United States? Are we seeing personal liberties expand or contract? Do we see more or less involvement in our lives by governments at all levels?
As the U.S. collapses into a larger segment of the population being dependent on an increasingly smaller segment, as the dollar continues to decline due to continued Fed "quantitative easing," as unemployment continues to spiral, as Christians and other religious minorities are being increasingly bullied by public and political institutions to violate their own religious tenets or face jail time and fines, as the military/industrial complex rattles sabers and entices Washington into further undeclared wars and quagmires that destroy the lives of thousands of young people, and as the leaders of both major parties mouth platitudes about "change" - we need a real philosophical paradigm-shift instead of just a sideways reshuffling of the ruling parties.
Thanks to YouTube and other technologies, these concepts are accessible in ways that demonstrate the common sense of the matter. Here are just a few thought-provocative videos:
1) The Conversation
Two college students have an intriguing discussion:
2) George Ought to Help
What is the best way to help people in need?
3) Edgar the Exploiter
Minimum wage laws and greedy bosses:
4) The Broken Window Fallacy
Do things like war, make-work jobs, and repair of damage stimulate an economy?
5) I, Pencil
The remarkable process by which goods come to market:
6) If You Were King
What about a benevolent State?
7) You Can Always Leave
What about the social contract?
8) Diner from Hell
What about democracy?
To learn more, the Ludwig von Mises Institute probably has the largest free online library of literature and audio/video materials on libertarianism. Feel free to click here! And though this list is now about five years old and may not be completely up to date, here is a list of 100 libertarian websites.
Here is a link to a great interview regarding Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (today is the 150th anniversary of the speech). Click on Nov 19 to listen to the show. It is an interview with Dr. Richard M. Gamble, professor of history and political science at Hillsdale College and author of the article "The Gettysburg Gospel."
Here is an article concerning the mainstreaming of the concept of nullification, which is being dusted off from the days of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John C. Calhoun.
This is one issue that unifies freedom-loving people from the left (who are resisting unconstitutional federal marijuana laws) to the right (who are resisting unconstitutional federal gun laws). The federal government is too big, too intimidating, too powerful, too expensive, too expansive, and it is time for it to get back into its constitutional cage before it is too late.
Even if you are against marijuana and for gun control, these laws should be passed in accordance with the federal constitution and the rule of law. Governments that are permitted to act above and outside the law quickly descend into the realm of concentration camps, police states, and Orwellian totalitarian bureaucracies. The founders created a federal system of checks and balances - one of which is the check of the states against the federal government. As it stands now, the only arbiter to determine the extent of federal power is the federal government itself. This is antithetical to the very notion of republican government and individual liberty. It is the legacy of Marx, Lincoln, Bismarck, and Mussolini. And we see how it has worked in the international failure of 20th century history. Every one of these advocates of big, centralized government acted "for the good of the people."
So they claimed.
It is gratifying to see the 21st century American people - from both sides of the aisle, as well as those who have opted out of the left-right paradigm - coming together in defense of liberty. Nullification is a peaceful and lawful response to tyranny. And it works! We see an apostolic example of individual nullification in Acts 5:27-32.
The above comedy video by Christian humorist Tim Hawkins is a self-parody of homeschooling. There is some truth in this little video, though (like all good humor) it is exaggerated and blended with stereotypes and misconceptions.
A relative recently decided to start homeschooling, and found out the snarky attitude of some of the establishment, one of whom told her that she "needed permission" to do it. Now, in her locale, this permission consists of basically notifying the government with a simple letter.
This is basically the case in Louisiana - which is quite a homeschool-friendly state.
Nevertheless, the fact that one has to petition the state to homeschool one's children does raise the question: "Why?" What is it any business of a bureaucrat - be it in Baton Rouge, Washington, or Geneva? Why should we seek their permission - especially considering the track record of a lot of these government schools (some of which allow children free access to contraception without parental notification, many of which allow for pseudo-religious indoctrination which may run contrary to the parents' religion, not to mention the foisting of a political point of view at odds with those of many people who do not agree with the dominant views of many in the educational establishment)?
So why should parents seek permission from the state? Why should it not be the other way around? Does the state own our children? Does the state own us?
Why shouldn't the default position be that the parents have the right to educate their children as they see fit, and that the state should seek permission to indoctrinate the children?
Or as member of the European parliament Nigel Farage famously challenged his power-grubbing "colleagues" in Strasbourg: "Just who the hell do you people think you are?"
The more people start asking these fundamental questions, the more people realize that the state has long since overstepped its bounds, that the servant now presumes to be the master, that the Frankenstein Monster is running amok and the constitutional chains that were designed to keep him in tow have been snapped like balsa wood, and that it doesn't matter whether the state is a democracy, a republic, a monarchy, or a dictatorship, it is wrong for any agency to presume to tell parents how to raise their children. And if the state's wings were not still somewhat clipped as they are here, we would have a system like Germany and Sweden where homeschooling has been basically criminalized, and children have been taken away from their parents! Think about that, dear reader, children have been taken away from their loving parents and placed into foster homes because the parents were homeschooling their children. We are not talking about beating them or starving them, but educating them.
Their real "crime" is showing the inferiority of the bureaucratic John Dewey progressive model of "education" as well as taking the (God-given) liberty of handing down their own moral and political views. In unbridled statist models of society, the state is omnipotent over the individual. There are some in American capital cities and capitol domes who lust after such power to dominate.
But in the final analysis, who does a better job, the government (with its mercenary armies of paid bureaucrats pulling the strings with money and regulations in the luxury of marbled domed edifices)? Or parents themselves, who love their children, sacrifice for their well-being, and who have a moral and natural right to teach their values to their children? And by what authority does the state claim authority to lord over the parent-child relationship? Just who do they think they are?
Homeschool families often get to see these questions in action, not merely presented as theoretical poly-sci premises for academic discussion, but rather up close and personal in the very real world.
Maybe that's why Tim Hawkins also made this video:
Some honesty from the Big Hollywood left wing: president Obama (Bush III?) is pushing a tyrannical Big Brother state on Americans who seem increasingly okay with the destruction of their own liberties.
While serving in a previous ministerial call, I had to moonlight at the local Hollywood Video to pay for health insurance for the family. It took one of my coworkers a couple weeks before she stopped addressing me as "Father" and started using my first name.
It was a fun job. My co-workers were the best. I got free rentals too. You can click here to see a picture. Now you know the rest of the story...
