Week of December 30:

-- Daniel Larison, "Get Local," Eunomia, August 3, 2007.

I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow-soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.

I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.

On behalf of those who are suffering now I make this protest against the deception which is being practiced on them; also I believe that I may help to destroy the callous complacence with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realize.

Realism is the death of progress.

In the case of American history in particular, the conclusion that students are expected to draw isn't terribly subtle: the private sector is the realm of exploitation and greed, and we should seek relief from the government sector, which is populated by idealistic crusaders for justice. The progovernment prejudice is clear even in the choice of subject matter: students leave school knowing all about how a bill becomes a law, but not the first thing about how markets work.

Compared to such stimulating recollections of the belle époque of big spending and the lavish gesture, the degenerate present, despite material abundance on a scale to dwarf the dreams of a Roman proconsul, offers a sorry comparison. Never have material prosperity and emergent good fortune in such radiant dimension crowned a nation's destinies, never have diffidence and timidity suggested their enjoyment on a scale of more debased mediocrity. ...

It may be argued that Texas millionaires are a specially inhibited and unimaginative breed, predisposed from birth to the inanities of football, drum majorettes, and private flying machines, and that elsewhere in the land men rise above this abysmal level of tastelessness and conformity, but the argument, alas, is not valid. Fords, Rockefellers, Morgans, Mellons, and Vanderbilts to a man are given to public good works and private lives of the most revolting probity. Among the inheritors of great names and great fortunes in America it is difficult if not impossible to find a living man who has given a dinner party at which nude chorus girls leaped from the innards of a lamb potpie. ...

There are men in Texas who could buy and sell J.P. Morgan, Jim Hill, and Jay Gould all rolled in none, but they are poltroons to a man, scared beyond measure of having fun. Instead of fancy-dress balls of revolting dimensions at the Waldorf-Astoria, they are a pushover for family foundations.

At bottom, a border is nothing more than an imaginary line on the ground, drawn by politicians. What's important are not the lines themselves, but the people on either side of those lines.

Clinton's presidency was the long-delayed aftershock of the 1960s generation, particularly that sector of the generation absorbed with Pot and Protest. He was followed in office by a president from the competing sector of the 1960s generation, a cohort more concerned with Beer and Beach Parties. This sequence, in part, explains the enormous bitterness of today's politics on the national level. An intra-generational confrontation is taking place between those young conservatives of the 1960s who thought America should be as America had always been, free and bourgeois; and the young radicals, who thought America should be like one or two late 1960s Beatles albums that now are slipping into memory's well. Clinton and the others from this sector of their famous generation -- wife Hillary, Dr. Howard Dean, Al Gore, Jean-François Kerry -- were troubled adolescents, indignant and self-absorbed. Now despite hair loss and wrinkles, they pretty much remain adolescent, indignant, and self-absorbed.

It is no excuse in a Member of Parliament who is personally honest to plead his personal honesty in defence of the House of Commons as a whole. On the contrary, his very honesty, coupled with his silence, damns the place. If he has not exposed the vile things that now go on there, if he continues to associate familiarly with the actors of them, if he continues to base what he calls his "career" upon a toleration of corruption, then his plea for a merely mechanical reform of the House of Commons is just as insincere as that of his more typical and more guilty colleagues.

-- Hilaire Belloc, The House of Commons and Monarchy, 1920.

Marx, although a man of broad knowledge, had one blind spot: he was ignorant of the true character of economics. He did not realize that economics can only be understood in close relationship to the other humanities (and certain sciences), and therefore should not be studied in vacuo. Ironically, this very weakness was largely instrumental in making Marxism successful. Marxist economics — yet another instance of a false but clear idea — can be explained to the merest child in a matter of minutes. (Conversely, to explain the workings of the free market economy to an adult would take weeks of hard work.) Because it was easily grasped, Marxism flooded the world within a few decades, as had other simplistic ideologies and religions, such as Islam and the Enlightenment; this same sort of simplicity gave rise to the French Revolution and national socialism. Christianity, on the other hand, took three centuries to triumph.

On the twelfth day of the first month we set out from the Ahava Canal to go to Jerusalem. The hand of our God was on us, and he protected us from enemies and bandits along the way.

For the sad state of the world today, the entry of the United States into two world wars has played a larger role than any other single factor. Some might attribute the admittedly unhappy conditions of our time to other items and influences than world wars and our intervention in them. No such explanation can be sustained. Indeed, but for our entry into the two world wars, we should be living in a far better manner than we did before 1914. The advances in technology since that time have brought the automobile into universal use, have given us good roads, and have produced the airplane, radio, moving pictures, television, electric lighting and refrigeration, and numerous other revolutionary contributions to human service, happiness, and comforts. If all this had been combined with the freedom, absence of high taxation, minimum indebtedness, low armament expenditures, and pacific outlook of pre-1914 times, the people of the United States might, right now, be living in Utopian security and abundance.

Although libertarianism is generally considered a radical doctrine, the primary task of the libertarian is to continually reinforce the basic reality that almost everyone already is a libertarian. If we simply keep asking people if they are willing to shoot others in order to get their way, we can very quickly convince them that libertarianism is not an abstract, radical or fringe philosophy, but rather a simple description of the principles by which they already live their lives. If you get fired, do you think that you should hold your manager hostage until he gives you back your job? No? Then you already hold a libertarian position on unions, tariffs, and corporate subsidies. If you find your teenage son in your basement smoking marijuana, would you shoot him? No? Then you already hold a libertarian position on the drug laws. Should those who oppose war be shot for their beliefs? No? Then you already hold a libertarian position with regards to taxation.

Like the scientific method, libertarianism’s greatest strength is its uncompromising simplicity. The enforcement of property rights leads to an immensely complex economy, but the morality of property rights is very simple -- would you shoot a man in order to steal his property? The same complexity arises from the simple and universal application of the non-aggression principle. It’s so easy to get lost in the beguiling complexities and forget to keep enunciating the basic principles.

Of course, it may be that certain things are impossible. Trying to test the states' right of secession today would bring disaster upon your people, for instance, because the central state would annihilate you, no questions asked. In the back of every reactionary's mind is the knowledge that the attempts to openly resist the central state (i.e., "doing" something) have resulted in the obliteration or ruin of whole peoples and regions. That doesn't mean that we think the Jacobites or the Confederacy were wrong, but it means that the value of "doing" something has been qualified significantly. Further, since it is not possible to save the whole, it becomes imperative to preserve what you can of your way of life in your own backyard. Thus comes the annoying criticism that we do not "do" anything, since many of us came to the conclusion (it seems difficult to say that it is the wrong one) that our ailments are spiritual and cultural and cannot be solved through the sort of political "doing" and "action" that would satisfy our critics anyway.

This doesn't mean that we don't engage in the political realm to some extent, inasmuch as we still believe it is part of our responsibility to remain informed and aware of what goes on in the centers of power, but there is an awareness that the sources of our ills are elsewhere and cannot in any case be addressed by becoming a retainer to princes. Like Kekaumenos, we keep a close eye on the intrigues of the capital, insofar as it might affect us and ours, but we do everything we can to avoid it as much as possible. For those who have spent (or wasted, depending on your perspective) their lives in the capital fighting political turf wars, while the culture rots all around them and few political victories are won, this is certainly an infuriating attitude, but what can I say?

The man who has never in his life become lost to all thoughts of time and food in the Charing Cross Road, and at the end of the day has not found himself hugging beneath his arm some book, or books, which he is proud and happy to possess, does not know one of the purest joys which London can afford. The road is a busy one. The traffic rushes one way to Oxford Street and the other to Trafalgar Square. The pavements are always filled with hurrying crowds, and with their backs to the world stand the bookmen, the book readers, the book hunters, the book tasters, the book maniacs -- for books, like drink, can affect the brain -- completely oblivious that they are not standing in an empty street.

We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage. What we lack is a liberal Utopia, a program which seems neither a mere defense of things as they are nor a diluted kind of socialism, but a truly liberal radicalism which does not spare the susceptibilities of the mighty (including the trade unions), which is not too severely practical, and which does not confine itself to what appears today as politically possible. We need intellectual leaders who are willing to work for an ideal, however small may be the prospects of its early realization. They must be men who are willing to stick to principles and to fight for their full realization, however remote. The practical compromises they must leave to the politicians. Free trade and freedom of opportunity are ideals which still may arouse the imaginations of large numbers, but a mere "reasonable freedom of trade" or a mere "relaxation of controls" is neither intellectually respectable nor likely to inspire any enthusiasm.

The main lesson which the true liberal must learn from the success of the socialists is that it was their courage to be Utopian which gained them the support of the intellectuals and therefore an influence on public opinion which is daily making possible what only recently seemed utterly remote. Those who have concerned themselves exclusively with what seemed practicable in the existing state of opinion have constantly found that even this had rapidly become politically impossible as the result of changes in a public opinion which they have done nothing to guide. Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds. But if we can regain that belief in the power of ideas which was the mark of liberalism at its best, the battle is not lost.

Look: everybody gets to make up their own mind about things like this. That's why we have minds. However, "freedom" means that we are not forced to live according to any but our own judgments: in a condition of freedom, we are not bound to live according to someone else's idea of what's good for us, and it's in details like this that this becomes crucially important. People like Beyerstein would forcibly substitute their judgment for mine, in a matter of values which they simply are not competent to judge, because of the individual nature of values. It is nothing for her to dismiss something like my guitar as "insurable", and that's exactly what her judgment means to me: nothing at all.

And there is nothing in the world that she can do about it.

How? Dear god ... how in the world to make the point that ideas are "real" too?

People stumble through complexions like this as if something like a "health-care crisis" just settled on us out of god's blue sky like a tornado: they take that as their starting-point, call it "reality", and attempt to proceed as if no malignant human concept ever had anything to do with it. They see no point in fighting bad ideas with right ones -- ideas that integrate as widely as possible and necessary -- just rolling-over, instead, for the ideological fait-accompli that's right up in their faces and willing to surrender it as a fait-accompli without ever looking at its roots in human action: wrong, but nonetheless open to understanding as something that could be set right with the same power of intellect, but only turned in the proper direction.

This is an enormous barrier. It's the mentality that would look at a practical application of "2+2=5", realize that it's wrong, but shrug and say, "Well, there it is, it's 'real', and we have to try to work with it."

The power of ideas (like I said: very bad ones in the case of health-care) is right in front of them at every turn, and their idea is to give up the fight for ideas. Why? Because they're not "real".

I cannot imagine what it's going to take to dissolve this deadly myopia.

Observe that today's resurgence of tribalism is not a product of the lower classes -- of the poor, the helpless, the ignorant -- but of the intellectuals, the college-educated "elitists" (which is a purely tribalistic term). Observe the proliferation of grotesque herds or gangs -- hippies, yippies, beatniks, peaceniks, Women's Libs, Gay Libs, Jesus Freaks, Earth Children -- which are not tribes, but shifting aggregates of people desperately seeking tribal "protection."

The common denominator of all such gangs is the belief in motion (mass demonstrations), not action -- in chanting, not arguing -- in demanding, not achieving -- in feeling, not thinking -- in denouncing "outsiders," not in pursuing values -- in focusing only on the "now," the "today" without a "tomorrow" -- in seeking to return to "nature," to "the earth," to the mud, to physical labor, i.e., to all the things which a perceptual mentality is able to handle. You don't see advocates of reason and science clogging a street in the belief that using their bodies to stop traffic will solve any problem.

Now all these five characteristics of empire -- alliances, subsidies, dislike of neutralism, impatience with domestic criticism and extreme self-righteousness -- are actively promoted from Washington today. ... But, in spite of xenophobia, talk about Manifest Destiny and The American Century has now almost completely evaporated. There is widespread recognition that the national talent is not imperial and that an extremely large number of people all over the globe are more disposed to dislike than to admire our much-vaunted "American Way." As problems of every sort increase at home we realize that what happens to Israel or Ethiopia is not our first concern. And this is not to be called a rebirth of "isolationism," but rather a recognition that federalism, even if we misname it democracy, is not adapted or adaptable to the path of empire.

A fourth characteristic of empire is the argument that there should be no political debate over foreign policy. Politics, it is said, should stop at the water's edge, because the intricacies of imperial policy demand the most expert direction and it is dangerous to have them impeded by those without inside knowledge. This theory of nonpartisanship depreciates what we call democratic procedures, by suggesting that these work only in issues of secondary importance. It thereby emphasizes again that once democracy has served to centralize government, the executive will assume the right to interpret "the general will."

-- Felix Morley, Freedom and Federalism, 1959.

The need of alliances explains a third characteristic of empire, which is hostility to the theory of neutrality. Thucydides tells how, during the Peloponnesian War, the Athenians demanded a "we or they" decision from the little island of Melos, then seeking to preserve neutrality as between Athens and Sparta. That was in 420 B.C., but twenty-four centuries later it is still a characteristic of empire to dislike neutrality. One strong indication of the American shift to imperial thinking is the way India has been criticized for upholding a neutrality which was a cardinal point in our own foreign policy less than half a century ago. On October 10, 1955, Secretary of State Dulles told an American Legion Convention: "The United States does not believe in practicing neutrality."

From the uncertain nature of military alliances springs a second characteristic of empire. Allies must be continuously subsidized from the imperial treasury, both with military and economic aid. Once undertaken, these subsidies can never be stopped and are more likely to require increasing outlay in order to keep the ally bought. As there is no morality in the state as such, so there is no such moral factor as loyalty in the relations between states. An English statesman summed it up neatly when he said: "Great Britain has no permanent friends and no permanent enemies, but only permanent interests."

-- Felix Morley, Freedom and Federalism, 1959.

There are several definite characteristics of empire, all more or less connected with the fact that empires get their start from military conquest. This conquest leads to territorial aggrandizement, which is followed by the establishment of military alliances to secure or protect the conquered territory. Alliances, as a device of imperial policy, are as old as recorded history but they are by nature impermanent, and the ally of one empire today may always be the ally of its enemy tomorrow -- an elementary political practice on which Marshal Tito has done something to inform us.

-- Felix Morley, Freedom and Federalism, 1959.