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  • AtlasAikido's picture
    AtlasAikido 12 years 13 weeks ago Web link Pete_Eyre
    Remember Hickman? And who and how it was used? Witnessing and pointing out WhiteIndian's context dropping/adoption/use of a Leftist smear tactic IS hardly an Ad hominem on my part. Next he will be trying to attribute HIS Intellectual Dishonesty to Rand, me... WhiteIndian's use of such was in place of where a refutation to Rand's and Mises AND their students works might have been leveled. I still have seen none. Lincoln, Sherman and Sheridan (Govt) do not come up in the Slavery and Native Indian genocide map for WhiteIndian. This is hardly Rand's fault for missing what is considered TODAY as Revisionist History! Instead of hiding behind this WhiteIndian "WE" Group-Band-Socialism with blame attributions for anything outside his world view (wrongly attributed as best I can tell): What is WhiteIndian going to do to free HIMSELF?
  • AtlasAikido's picture
    AtlasAikido 12 years 13 weeks ago Web link Pete_Eyre
    This Hickman issue is actually one of the most favorite materials being used by Leftists--including WhiteIndian and his "We" Social Group/Band views--to discredit Ayn Rand AND short circuit the process of properly and intellectually refuting her philosophy of "I" The Self-ruled Individual. I have already dealt with some of these issues as they relate to Ad Hominem attacks being used by the Totalitarian Left against Ayn Rand: * Ayn Rand and Alan Greenspan and the Illuminati plotted to rule the world; * Ayn Rand was an UnSociable rule-the-word sociopath/psychopath and her philosophy of Objectivism promotes fascism; * Ayn Rand lived on welfare while advocating against it; and was a fan of a child serial killer named William Hickman I cover some of the issues here: http://www.strike-the-root.com/was-ayn-rand-proto-fascist But what did the author-philosopher actually say about Hickman? In The Journals of Ayn Rand, she is clearly quoted: “[My hero is] very far from him, of course. The outside of Hickman, but not the inside. Much deeper and much more. A Hickman with a purpose. And without the degeneracy. It is more exact to say that the model is not Hickman, but what Hickman suggested to me.” There was clearly a context when Rand made her journal entry. Anyone who read her books would understand that the philosopher/writer is against initiation of force. She was morally against the crime Hickman committed and throughout her life, she advocated individual freedom and not collectivism. WhiteIndian's horrid criticisms of Rand/Mises bespeak a serious misunderstanding of her philosophy of Individualism in a division of labor society (remnant) and how they relate to current economic and political events playing out right now a la Greenspan, Bernanke and bureaucracy. Not the least WhiteIndian misconstrues libertarian philosophy and Rand's principles. It’s Ayn Rand Bashing Time, Once Again http://www.lewrockwell.com/block/block172.html Grovelling at the Fed: Greenspan and Bernanke http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/sheehan-f4.1.1.html WhiteIndian has said that he has all of Ayn Rands works (presumably he has read them) and he is witnessed agreeing with the Left and using its methods. For those smearing Rand as a lover of psycho-killers, by ignoring her qualifying comments is, I submit, intellectually dishonest. The Left’s Endless Smears Against Ayn Rand http://fvdb.wordpress.com/2011/04/19/the-left-smears-ayn-rand/
  • WhiteIndian's picture
    WhiteIndian 12 years 13 weeks ago Web link Pete_Eyre
    I'm not leftist, (but thanks for caring enough to spew the very worst of Ad Hominem within your groupthink.) Both leftist and right-wing-nuts city-Statists like you aggressively enforce Gambol Lockdown against Non-State band and tribal lifeways. Your philosophy of "individualism" both twists and denies the nature of humans; it goes against observable reality, it blanks-out empirical data. Again, to reiterate what you're dodging and weaving around: 1. Humans are social animals, observable and corroborated with other science. Perhaps you've never heard of mirror neurons. They're in your brain. Yours might not work so well, but they're there. 2. In egalitarian Non-State societies, the human animal is observed to behave with altruism and empathy as a social animal, while simultaneously behaving as a "sovereign" (Service) who answers to no political hierarchy. Your defense of Rand is akin to a communist's defense of Marx, Lenin, or Stalin. I understand Rand *said* she defended individuals and wasn't racist. Fact is, she talked out the other side of her mouth and lauded genocide, and was quite the racist about her snarling support of the American Indian Holocaust by the collective invasion of city-Statism (civilization,) which she also supported. While talking out the other side of her mouth about how she hated the state. In real life, we call those contradictions. Within the cult, they're laboriously whitewashed. So what do you think of a person who speachifies at the Empire's military academy about how sweet it was to slaughter 90,000,000 people? And TAKE by force the Land they lived on. Yah, see, the city-STATIST RAND said it was ok to TAKE: "[The Native Americans] didn't have any rights to the land ... Any white person who brought the element of civilization had the right to TAKE over this continent." ~Ayn Rand, US Military Academy at West Point, New York, March 6, 1974 Stalin would have smiled on Rand's statement, since he did much the same, for much the same reason, to Non-State societies in Siberia.
  • WhiteIndian's picture
    WhiteIndian 12 years 13 weeks ago Web link Pete_Eyre
    Humans are observed to be social animals. "We" is a part of reality. (You know, that ol' A=A thingy. Unless you want to "blank-out" reality.) Fact: Humans have lived as social animals in bands or tribes for the last couple or three million years. Fact: This social animal did NOT live in a hierarchical State sociopolitical typology. We did live in egalitarian Non-State sociopolitical typologies. Conclusion: your equivocation of "we" and "state" is without merit, and refuted by empirical data. Psychopaths have the same erratic view of "we" as libertarians tend to expatiate. It's not surprising; Ayn Rand based characters in her writing on a very real psychopath, William Hickman. Romancing the Stone-Cold Killer: Ayn Rand and William Hickman by Michael Prescott http://michaelprescott.net/hickman.htm ATLAS SHRIEKED: Ayn Rand’s First Love and Mentor Was A Sadistic Serial Killer Who Dismembered Little Girls by Mark Ames http://exiledonline.com/atlas-shrieked-why-ayn-rands-right-wing-follower...
  • AtlasAikido's picture
    AtlasAikido 12 years 13 weeks ago Web link Pete_Eyre
    When it comes to FREEDOM, there is no “WE”. There really is only ONE person that you are capable of freeing and that is yourself. A person with the attitude of a slave cannot be free anywhere. THE CONTEXT of the statement is that when it comes to solving problems without using the Collective, the Government, the State (the WE), a person must adopt the ATTITUDE of an individual instead of a collective, one must think for himself/herself. For an example of switching from “WE” to “I”, Ayn Rand’s book “Anthem” comes to mind. Another example that springs to my mind is when the Lone Ranger says to Tonto “We are surrounded by hostile Indians. We are in real trouble.” and Tonto replies “What you mean ‘WE’, white man?” To elaborate on that example: Someone says that the State solution to such and such problem isn’t working, we are in real trouble, what are we going to do about it. The essay “Freedom Has No ‘System” very nicely answers with the equivalent of “What do you mean ‘WE’, Statist?” Such an approach puts the burden of freeing oneself onto the Statist. It UNDERSCORES the fact that the Statist has NOT bothered to think of solutions that do NOT involve enslaving other people. As pointed out in the article: “…[watch] my fellow humans squirm when asked to think like a free people…”. References: There is *No We*: Challenge the Premise. http://zerogov.com/?p=2334
  • Darkcrusade's picture
    Darkcrusade 12 years 13 weeks ago
    Never Volunteer
    Page Paul Hein
    Greetings Suverans2, We are in agreement concerning the misconscrewing of the author,Bork.IMHO. If that quote can be verified,one could not blame him for being off? Have you tried these? I've about exhausted my resources so i came back here. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/blackstone.asp http://librivox.org/commentaries-on-the-laws-of-england-by-william-black... http://thesecretpeople.wordpress.com/library/ p.s. i always read your postings and like what you have to say,along with a couple of other popular posters,i am learning bunches. Are you familiar with Verl K. Speer,you seem to be somewhat on the same page. http://commonlawjurisdiction.wordpress.com/
  • AtlasAikido's picture
    AtlasAikido 12 years 13 weeks ago Web link Pete_Eyre
    ~And then there are the undergrounds and loyalties of sub-culture markets. In the movie Joyeux Noel the military men and officers gave up on WWI for Christmas Day... A true story... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0424205/ I should emphasize that the film is not confined to the extraordinary night and day of December 24–25, 1914. We are introduced to some of the characters before the conflict begins. We see how the war changes them. We also see how the officially unsanctioned truce changes them. Aside from its artistic merits, Joyeux Noël gets things right in the realm of ideas. It opens with scenes of three schoolboys, German, French and British, each reciting nationalistic pieties about the foreign devils who threaten his respective homeland. It ends with German troops on their way to the Eastern Front, humming a melody they learned from Scottish soldiers on Christmas Eve. What happens in between is the discovery that those doing the shooting and dying on one side don’t have any real quarrel with those doing the shooting and dying on the other side. Those familiar with the workings of the free market will have no trouble recognizing the "spontaneous order" that breaks out when soldiers from opposing sides exchange champagne for chocolate, share photographs of their wives and help one another bury their dead. http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/rosinger1.html ~I think that the "5000+" go-no-go-Agora criteria White Indian has brought up is a lump sum--arbitrary in many senses because it gets one all caught up in the "We" instead of seeing the many "I"'s that inhabit the crevices of topology maps and temporary zones of autonomy.... For someone who spends as much time as WhiteIndian on and in the Agora--market place--This agora in witnessed point of fact, while proclaiming (discounting) it as not finite enough; or a place to live; or a place to trade ideas. Well I hear you. Actually see your words and your Avatar. Although you are at once invisible you are also connected. And so there is Bitcoin, The Amish and The Wenchou model--In China but also replicated all over the world and Reagan of all people railing about the uber under market and then there is the Italian and Russian under markets. ~As for Ayn Rand too many see her hat on the coat rack and refuse to pick it up and look under it for a fellow thinker and innovator instead of a know-it-all, seeing-all-authority figure and model of ALL her own premises and illuminations not to mention those assumptions she personally missed, whilst uncovering and undoing centuries of rust infested canned philosophies... Happily there are students of Rand and Mises--Linda and Morris Tannehill, Thomas DiLorenzo, LewRockwell...--who have actually innovated and that innovation has brought such men as Ron Paul into the light for the young to see the Matrix/farm for what it is. As for the Zombies that hang out at ARI or SOLO with Leonard Peikoff, Michele Milken and such (warmongers). Gak! You have my sincere and heartfelt sympathies. John Stossel--objectivist--has come a long way. And John Stewart seems to have the makings of another George Carlin not to mention a Misean Economist . And Stephan Molyneux is another objectivist misean who is breath of fresh air. References: Best Bitcoin Ad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pV9ptoCMyc A little about the Amish...(They are not Luddites although they appear to be) http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer146.html Anarchy and Agoras...Welcome to Wenzhou, where the mountains are high, the emperor is far away, and people are busy creating their own economic miracle. http://www.bradleymgardner.com/2011/11/16/wenzhou-chinas-black-market-city/ It is at times useful to imagine how a truly laissez-faire society, one entirely emancipated from the shackles of state coercion, might exist and operate. Morris and Linda Tannehill examine this very idea in The Market for Liberty: Is Government Really Necessary? These laissez faire ideas were culled from Rand and Mises. http://mises.org/resources/6058 # Dagny Taggart Confronts the Union http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8MVFoiw-dw&feature=g-vrec&context=G2421b... # Dagny Confronts James http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etzke3JW8O8 # Rearden Metal is not for sale http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1jLbGSngRE&NR=1&feature=endscreen # I Hate Ron Paul (Sarcasm intended) http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/100854.html # Re: Presidential Paul Nails Leno Show http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/101002.html # Ron Paul discusses Ayn Rand http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjwuGHPilwI There is *No We*: Challenge the Premise. http://zerogov.com/?p=2334 Finally Hamilton, Lincoln, Sherman fit the bill of a proto-fascist military police state and Thomas Dilorenzo and LewRockwell.com does a great job uncovering that and how that brought us to where we are today. http://www.strike-the-root.com/was-ayn-rand-proto-fascist
  • WhiteIndian's picture
    WhiteIndian 12 years 13 weeks ago Web link Pete_Eyre
    Just because people don't totally lose their humanity and empathy in a prison setting does not mean they're still not in prison. Libertarian types point to prisoners trading trinkets to plush up their prison cells and call the walls "private property" and the frantic whoring of themselves to more powerful others so they don't starve inside the walls a "free" market. I still call city-Statism (civilization) a prison, which rather upsets those with the plushest cells and fear of living outside the walls of their own minds. And there's not much difference between a communist prison or a capitalist prison. Officer, am I free to gambol about plain and forest? MARX: NO! MISES: NO! You're just part of the Marx-Mises Axis of Gambol Lockdown against a Non-State society lifeway of gathering food without paying any other person.
  • Suverans2's picture
    Suverans2 12 years 13 weeks ago
    Never Volunteer
    Page Paul Hein
    G'day Darkcrusade, Here http://www.pacinlaw.org/pdf/Sovereigns_without_Subjects.pdf on page one is where I found the quote. It is on the foundation of this quote, by the way, that causes the author, IMO, to misconstrue the verbiage of Chisolm v Georgia. Here is an online version of William Blackstone's Commentaries http://www.lonang.com/exlibris/blackstone/ but I have yet to locate the quote, because the search engine for this version of the Commentaries leaves much to be desired. I am in the process of trying to contact LB Bork to ask for his assistance in this matter. G'day LB Bork, In your treatise Sovereigns without Subjects your quote, on the first page, I have been unable to verify. I have an online version of William Blackstone's Commentaries but the search engine for it isn't the best. If you could tell me which Book and Chapter it can be found in, it would be most helpful. Thank you in advance for your time and effort.
  • Guest's picture
    emartin (not verified) 12 years 13 weeks ago Web link Melinda L. Secor
    Really? Civilization exists? Prove it.
  • WhiteIndian's picture
    WhiteIndian 12 years 13 weeks ago Web link Melinda L. Secor
    "One of the most recognizable signs of domestication is a reduction in brain size—domestication makes a population stupid."* Domestication has shrunk the human skull too. Neanderthals, now extinct, had larger cranial capacity. How, and why, has civilization shrunk human skulls? "What is it in domestication that selects for the most docile, the most calm—the most stupid—individuals in a population? Primarily, it is a question of stress."* So if you've got a high percentage of Neanderthal blood in you, you might fidget in school. They might say you have Asperger's or ADHD.** Or you might not be the world's most submissive wage-slave. You're not completely domesticated to city-Statism (civilization.) Yet most humans today are city-Statist poodles. Oh sure, the civilized poodles sometimes whimper when they get swatted by authority, but they wouldn't think of taking on the personal responsibility of living a non-domesticated lifestyle, and yip and nip at those who don't share the poodle's fear-of-wilderness. ______________ * "The closest parallel to human behavior is not found in primates, but among wolves." Wolves & Dogs by Jason Godesky | 13 November 2006 http://rewild.info/anthropik/2006/11/wolves-dogs/index.html ** The Neanderthal theory http://www.rdos.net/eng/asperger.htm
  • WhiteIndian's picture
    WhiteIndian 12 years 13 weeks ago Web link Melinda L. Secor
    War is a staple of city-Statism (civilization); therefore, civilization itself is "the most profound and filthy moral evil." "Based on archaeological evidence, it is now a tenet of mainstream scholarship that pre-civilization humans lived in the absence of violence—more specifically, of organized violence." ~John Zerzan The Origins of War http://www.scribd.com/doc/20298938/Zerzan-The-Origins-of-War Libertarians, Randroids, an-caps, etc. need to check their premises, because their religio-economic belief system is built on as many false premises as creationism. The last 60 years of anthropology and archeology that demonstrate an "Original Affluent Society" (Sahlins, 1972) are as paradigm-shattering to the establishment as On the Origin of Species. It's time to consider real, scientific empirical evidence instead of parroting non-evidence-based "axioms" from the libertarian canon. Because an axiom isn't "self-evident" when empirical data refutes it.
  • WhiteIndian's picture
    WhiteIndian 12 years 13 weeks ago Web link Pete_Eyre
    AtlasAikido, there is no Agora (market) in any City (settlements of 5000+) without State-level politics. That's why I keep calling it a City-State, which is both the popular definition of civilization and the scholarly definition. Trying to separate the two and say only one aspect is bad is as silly as saying "fighter aircraft provides solutions that jet engines would never dream of." A jet fighter is all one concept, a single package. There is no fighter aircraft without the jet. A noiseless jet is an oxymoron. City-Statism (agricultural civilization) is a single cultural package. A voluntary city is an oxymoron. The Randroids turn a blind eye to the violence within their own system. For instance, what they call "private property" in land is nothing more than a big government Land enTITLEment program to restrict the free movement of Non-State people like the Native Americans, who once gamboled about forest and plain hunting and gathering. It takes a brutal city-statist invasion and occupation to enforce Gambol Lockdown. Try to whitewash it as you may, agricultural city-Statism has been proven genocidal, and your "mixing-labor" and "homestead" fabrications can't whitewash it enough to keep the blood from soaking through.
  • Darkcrusade's picture
    Darkcrusade 12 years 13 weeks ago
    Never Volunteer
    Page Paul Hein
    “The popular leaders, who in all ages have called themselves “the people.” ~ Blackstone's Commentaries 438/Ballentines Dictionary'' I like the quote,but cannot seem to track it down. ---------------------------------------------------- (a former slave) said the following: "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they have resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress." - Frederick Douglass The whole BEAST SYSTEM is a fraud. Explore from any angle and it comes up slavery. The Tax system!!! Is the chains. The monetary system is the lock. What is the definition of TAX? Tax is a burden, a load, meant to hold down the people. And keep them expending massive amounts of energy under the burden. The monetary system is the Government self granted monopoly to counterfit, ALL DONE ACCORDING TO LAW whereby Stealing productive human energy by inflation, interest, or dilution.( debasement) If we stop volunteering to enslave ourselves, Stop doing business with the beast. Come out of Babylon! And KEEP YE SEPERATE! The charade will come crashing down! ·The only power tyrants have is the power relinquished to them by their victims. ·The tyrant is often a weak little man. He has no special qualities that set him apart from anyone else - yet the gullible idolize him. ·The victims bring about their own subjection - they "win their enslavement." ·If without violence the tyrant is simply not obeyed, he becomes "naked and undone and as nothing." ·Once you resolve to serve no more, you are free. ·We are all born free and naturally free. ·Grown-up adults should adopt reason as their guide and never become slaves of anybody. ·People can be enslaved through either force or deception. ·When people lose their freedom through deceipt, it is because they mislead themselves. ·People born into slavery regard it as a natural condition. ·In general, people are shaped more by their environment than by their natural capacities - if they allow it. ·Habit and custom are powerful forces that keep people enslaved. ·There are always some people who cannot be tamed, subjected, or enslaved. Even if freedom were to be entirely extinguished, these people would re-invent it. ·Lovers of freedom tend to be ineffective because they are not known to one another. ·People who lose their freedom also lose their valor (strength of mind, bravery). ·Among free people there is competition to do good for humanity. ·People seem to be most gullible towards those who deliberately set out to fool them. It is as if people have a need to be deceived. ·Tyrants stupefy their victims with "pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes." ·Tyrants parade like "workers of magic." ·Tyrants can only give back part of what they first took from their victims. ·Tyrants attain their positions through: (a) Force; (b) Birth; or (c) Election. ·Tyrants create a power structure, consisting of a multi-layered hierarchy, staffed by a conspiracy of accomplices. Accomplices receive their positions as a favor from the tyrant. ·The worst dregs of society gather around the tyrant - they are people of weak character who trade servility for unearned wealth. ·Accomplices can profit greatly from their positions in the hierarchy. ·If people withdraw their support, the tyrant topples over from his own corrupted weight. ” tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him” “Shall we say that those who serve him are cowardly and faint-hearted?” “It is therefore the inhabitants themselves who permit, or, rather, bring about, their own subjection, since by ceasing to submit they would put an end to their servitude. A people enslaves itself, cuts its own throat, when, having a choice between being vassals and being free men, it deserts its liberties and takes on the yoke, gives consent to its own misery, or, rather, apparently welcomes it” “the more one yields to them, and obeys them, by that much do they become mightier and more formidable, the readier to annihilate and destroy. But if not one thing is yielded to them, if, without any violence they are simply not obeyed, they become naked and undone and as nothing, just as, when the root receives no nourishment, the branch withers and dies.” “Liberty is the only joy upon which men do not seem to insist; for surely if they really wanted it they would claim it. Apparently they refuse this wonderful privilege because it is so easily acquired.” “You let yourselves be deprived before your own eyes of the best part of your revenues; your fields are plundered, your homes robbed, your family heirlooms taken away. You live in such a way that you cannot claim a single thing as your own; and it would seem that you consider yourselves lucky to be loaned your property, your families, and your very lives.” “He who thus domineers over you has only two eyes, only two hands, only one body, no more than is possessed by the least man among the infinite numbers dwelling in your cities; he has indeed nothing more than the power that you confer upon him to destroy you.” “Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces.” “we should be intuitively obedient to our parents; later we should adopt reason as our guide and become slaves to nobody” “we are all naturally free” “Since freedom is our natural state, we are not only in possession of it but have the urge to defend it.” ” what evil chance has so denatured man that he, the only creature really born to be free, lacks the memory of his original condition and the desire to return to it?” “Certainly all men, as long as they remain men, before letting themselves become enslaved must either be driven by force or led into it by deception” “When they lose their liberty through deceit they are not so often betrayed by others as misled by themselves.” “men born under the yoke and then nourished and reared in slavery are content, without further effort, to live in their native circumstance, unaware of any other state or right, and considering as quite natural the condition into which they were born.” “we learn to swallow, and not to find bitter, the venom of servitude.” “It is truly the nature of man to be free and to wish to be so, yet his character is such that he instinctively follows the tendencies that his training gives him.” “custom becomes the first reason for voluntary servitude.” “Even if liberty had entirely perished from the earth, such men would invent it. For them slavery has no satisfactions, no matter how well disguised.” “men of strong zeal and devotion, who in spite of the passing of time have preserved their love of freedom, still remain ineffective because, however numerous they may be, they are not known to one another” “The essential reason why men take orders willingly is that they are born serfs and are reared as such.” “liberty once lost, valor [strength of mind, bravery] also perishes.” “Among free men there is competition as to who will do most, each for the common good, each by himself, all expecting to share in the misfortunes of defeat, or in the benefits of victory;” “stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes,” “The fools did not realize that they were merely recovering a portion of their own property, and that their ruler could not have given them what they were receiving without having first taken it from them.” “It is pitiful to review the list of devices that despots have used to establish their tyranny; to discover how many little tricks they employed, always finding the populace conveniently gullible, readily caught in the net as soon as it was spread.” “It has always happened that tyrants, in order to strengthen their power, have made every effort to train their people not only in obedience and servility toward themselves, but also in adoration.” “four or five who maintain the dictator,” “The six have six hundred who profit under them,” “The six hundred maintain under them six thousand,” “not the six thousand but a hundred thousand, and even millions, cling to the tyrant by this cord to which they are tied.” “through big favors or little ones, that large profits or small are obtained under a tyrant,” “Whenever a ruler makes himself a dictator, all the wicked dregs who are corrupted by burning ambition or extraordinary avarice, these gather around him and support him in order to have a share in the booty and to constitute themselves petty chiefs under the big tyrant.” “men accept servility in order to acquire wealth” “how great is the number of those who, having by shameful means won the ear of tyrants - who either profit from their villainies or take advantage of their naivete - were in the end reduced to nothing by these very tyrants;” “the majority of the dictators of former days were commonly slain by their closest favorites” “the tyrant is never truly loved, nor does he love.” “Let us therefore learn while there is yet time, let us learn to claim our liberty. Let us open our eyes to our natural freedom for the sake of our honor, for the very love of virtue. As for me, I truly believe I am right, since there is nothing so contrary to reason as self-imposed tyranny. I believe the time will come when support will be withdrawn from tyrants and their accomplices. Then let us watch them all fall from their own corrupted weight.” ~ Étienne de La Boétie
  • AtlasAikido's picture
    AtlasAikido 12 years 13 weeks ago Web link Pete_Eyre
    As the Tannehills--students of Rand and Mises--argue persuasively, the free market provides solutions that governments would never dream of. “The big advantage of any action of the free market,” contend the Tannehills, is that errors and injustices are self-correcting. Because competition creates a need for excellence on the part of each business, a free-market institution must correct its errors in order to survive. Government, on the other hand, survives not by excellence, but by coercion; so an error or flaw in a governmental institution can (and usually will) perpetuate itself almost indefinitely, with its errors being “corrected” by further errors. Private enterprise must, therefore, always be superior to government in any field. (It is worth mentioning here that corporations acting in collusion with the state are not private enterprises as the Tannehills define them. They are simply entities that have co-opted the government’s “gun-for-hire” to do their dirty work for them. Think Wall Street “bailout” recipients and their army of DC lobbyists. Indeed, think any institution at all that seeks unfair protection or promotion from the state.) Freedom, Naturally Mises Daily: Thursday, May 26, 2011 by Joel Bowman http://mises.org/daily/5305/Freedom-Naturally Unfortunately Thomas DiLorenzo's--student of Rand and Mises--illuminating work was not available till well after her death. I would not expect Ayn Rand to know or unravel what has taken till now to be communicated across the web regarding the State and Native Indians... ...Sherman was every bit as much a racist and white supremacist as Lincoln. He was also an anti-Semite, and of course hated red-skinned people almost as much as he hated South Carolinians — and would later kill them in even greater numbers. Slaves were raped, pillaged, and murdered indiscriminately along with the white population of the South, and Sherman did nothing to stop it. *This is documented*. It has been claimed in print that Sherman was some kind of *egalitarian* who was motivated by indignation over the degree of racial inequality in the South. (Cisco proves what delusional liars such Lincoln (and Sherman) cultists as Victor Davis Hanson are in "Abuse of African-Americans" by Sherman's army in Cisco's final, stomach-turning chapter. ...The union of the founders was destroyed in 1865. War Crimes Against Southern Civilians explains in great detail how, in addition to killing some 300,000 dissenters to rule by Washington, D.C. on the battlefield, the U.S. Army, under the micromanagement of Abe Lincoln, also murdered tens of thousands of Southern civilians, including thousands of slaves and free blacks, while stealing tens of millions of dollars of their private possessions as well. None of it was necessary, of course, for the purpose of ending slavery; all other countries on earth ended slavery peacefully during the nineteenth century. This included the British, Spanish, French, Dutch, and Danish colonies, where 96 percent of all the slaves in the Western Hemisphere once existed. The purpose of the war was to finally realize the Hamiltonian dream of a consolidated, monopolistic government that would pursue what Hamilton himself called "national greatness" and "imperial glory." The purpose of the war, in other words, was a New Birth of Empire, one that would hopefully rival the Europeans in the exploitation of their own citizens in the name of the glory of the state. Malice Toward All, Charity Toward None: The Foundations of the American State by Thomas J. DiLorenzo http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo123.html
  • WhiteIndian's picture
    WhiteIndian 12 years 13 weeks ago Web link Pete_Eyre
    Ayn Rand extolled the city-State (civilization) and the city-Statist genocide perpetuated on Non-State societies on Turtle Island. "[The Native Americans] didn't have any rights to the land ... Any white person who brought the element of civilization had the right to take over this continent." ~Ayn Rand, US Military Academy at West Point, March 6, 1974 Note where this racist psychopath endorsed the American Indian Holocaust.
  • AtlasAikido's picture
    AtlasAikido 12 years 13 weeks ago Web link Pete_Eyre
    Ayn Rand was "surrounded by the State"--last time I looked she had NO kind words for it---and many kind words, principles and applications regarding Individuals. People are forced (by politics) to consider the lesser of two evils, when no evil need prevail. http://mises.org/daily/5758/Depoliticize-Everything. While Rand fell for the Limited Govt--mini-statist mantra--her writings lead to opposite conclusions for those who think for themselves and don't just smoke because she smoked. Or need time to self-inoculate or wash off the detritus of mini-statism let alone figure out there is NO such thing as mini-anarchy. Even though her description of Galt's Gulch is a functional anarchy (no rulers), Rand abhorred what she thought of as "anarchy" and she explicitly embraced the idea of minimal government. HOWEVER, as George H Smith points out "...Rand's principles, if consistently applied, lead necessarily to a repudiation of government on moral grounds". “IN DEFENSE OF RATIONAL ANARCHISM” http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~thomas/po/rational-anarchism.html And Carrie Burdzinski identifies good reason why SOME Objectivists do not apply these principles. “Objectivist Resistance to Anarchy: A Problem of Concept Formation?” Column by new Root Striker Carrie Burdzinski. http://www.strike-the-root.com/91/burdzinski/burdzinski1.html Today it is easier to attack a politically correct shadow with a pitch fork than the statue--the elephant in the room--that darkens the landscape. And thereby avoid the controversial causes and any taint of stigma. I recommend Tom Woods and Stefan Molyneux Take On Wall Street to begin to understand this issue! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l XNOxnn7_uA&feature=youtube_gdata Woods asks the Right Question: Would there likely be Less Wars and Bailouts--that enrich the military-industrial complex and politically connected fat cats--Or More if the Fed Gov had a magical money machine? This is not a hypothetical question. They--all the above--Do have such a machine and access to it: it is called The Federal Reserve System. As Hayek (a Nobel prize winning student of Mises) points out money is half of every transaction economy wide. And Woods makes a cogent connection: Is there a chance that this magic printing machine has a tinsy chance of creating economy wide up and down boom, bust volatility and classes of people herded, corralled and enriched by Govt? This is not the same as the pyramid of ability or comparative advantages of a division of labor society (remnant of hands off--laissez faire--anarcho--self-rule--capitalism. What's changed? There is now more impoverishing Wars and the same for Bailouts than can be supported or hidden. There is only one entity that can pit the poor against the rich, the young against the old, the white against the black, this country against another and thrive thru divide and conquer. Woods and Molyneux further discuss: Seeing thru the duality of what is bad, evil and corrupt in the private sector magically rendered good in the public sector. It can only occur on the scale we have via a "coercive" monopoly that can be wielded by the politically connected to bypass the competition of free market. Rand's novel presciently warned of ALL of this... There is a reason that “Atlas Shrugged” is becoming a political “Harry Potter”. Ayn Rand SHONE a spotlight on a problem that STILL exists today: Not pre-1989 Soviet commmunism, but 2010-style State capitalism (mercantilism/fascism).. http://atlasshruggeddocumentary.com/
  • KenK's picture
    KenK 12 years 13 weeks ago Web link Pete_Eyre
    If the courts had to just take whoever was called and not screen and selectively weed out those they don't like for each jury the outcomes in our courts would be a lot different IMO. It would help. The stuff they ask you in voire dire guarantees that only docile sheep who will vote for the state's case no matter what will get selected.
  • Suverans2's picture
    Suverans2 12 years 13 weeks ago
    Natural Law
    Web link Don Stacy
    According to the Natural Rights clause of the New Hampshire Constitution, "men have a natural, inherent, and inalienable right of “defending their lives and liberties.” This, of course, means that they have a right to defend them against any injustice on the part of the government, and not merely on the part of private individuals; because the object of all bills of rights is to assert the rights of individuals and the people, as against the government, and not as against private persons. It would be a matter of ridiculous supererogation[1] to assert, in a constitution of government, the natural right of men to defend their lives and liberties against private trespassers.[2]" __________________________________________________________________ [1] "Performance of more than duty requires." ~ Webster's 1828 American Dictionary of American English [2] Excerpted from An Essay on the Trial by Jury by Lysander Spooner
  • Suverans2's picture
    Suverans2 12 years 13 weeks ago
    Natural Law
    Web link Don Stacy
    "The right of revolution, which tyrants, in mockery, accord to mankind, is no legal right under a government; it is only a natural right to overturn a government. The government itself never acknowledges this right." ~ Excerpted from An Essay on the Trial by Jury by Lysander Spooner
  • Suverans2's picture
    Suverans2 12 years 13 weeks ago Web link Pete_Eyre
    “I think that there is no possibility that I can win this case in the courts,” said jury nullification advocate, Julian Heicklen. That's right Julian; when your accuser and your judge are one in the same PERSON, it is nigh onto impossible to actually "win". "Any government, that is its own judge of, and determines authoritatively for the people, what are its own powers over the people, is an absolute government of course. It has all the powers that it chooses to exercise. There is no other --- or at least no more accurate --- definition of a despotism than this." ~ Excerpted from An Essay on the Trial by Jury by Lysander Spooner
  • WhiteIndian's picture
    WhiteIndian 12 years 13 weeks ago Web link Pete_Eyre
    If someone had began to garden and restore the soil where the road once was, they would have accosted by aggression. The cost of pavement is only one consideration of how much government violence must be used to enforce and maintain city-Statists roadways upon the land.
  • WhiteIndian's picture
    WhiteIndian 12 years 13 weeks ago Web link Pete_Eyre
    POLICe exist to serve and protect POLIS (city-State*) privation property values. Kelly Thomas died for our sins. For the love of [POLIS' property values] is the root of all [POLICe brutality.] [fixed] That's the way the POLI (city-slickers) roll. It's just POLItical POLIcy. "When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe." ~Thomas Jefferson _________________ Polis is often translated as "city-state." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polis
  • WhiteIndian's picture
    WhiteIndian 12 years 13 weeks ago Web link Pete_Eyre
    The agricultural city-State deforests and creates deserts. The towering cedar forests of Mesopotamia have been "developed" into the Iraqi desert. One is forced to seek the sacred that Mother Earth provides so freely and in such abundance, whether in small underground refuges, as depicted in the article. Or fantastical delusions. Christianity is one delusion - a hope for a beautiful heavenly City. Libertarianism is another delusion - the hope for a voluntary City. Yet the promise of the City is like the promise of fiat money, a siren call of illusory wealth. Fiat money spreads fear of honest finance, and promises to deliver people from the personal responsibility of accounting in balance with rational mathematics. The City spreads fear-of-wilderness, and promises to deliver people from the personal responsibility of an honest living in balance with Mother Earth. Both lies always eventually collapse. While collapse is painful, it is an economizing process, and increases quality of life.* Maybe after the collapse of agricultural city-Statism (civilization,) we won't have to dig underground to find the sacred. __________________________ * Thesis #20: Collapse is an economizing process. Thesis #27: Collapse increases quality of life. The Thirty Theses by Jason Godesky http://rewild.info/anthropik/thirty/
  • WhiteIndian's picture
    WhiteIndian 12 years 13 weeks ago Web link Pete_Eyre
    JH: "What would happen if all of the government operations...that regulate peaceful behavior were abolished?" Then we wouldn't have agricultural city-Statism (civilization.) We wouldn't have the big-government Land enTITLEment program that creates artificial borders to restrict the free movement of Non-State society families "gamboling about plain and forest" (Manning, 2004) to forage for food. We wouldn't have psychopathic city-Statists like Ayn Rand bloviating at a US Military Academy how it's ok to commit genocide on a whole continent of Non-State families living without political leaders and hierarchy and bosses. We wouldn't have illegitimate privation property "rights" that rely on city-Statist violence. We wouldn't have "libertarians" and oxymoronic "anarcho-capitalists" meticulously whitewashing how much violence is necessary to enforce totalitarian agriculture's privation property. We wouldn't have babies born in industrialized institutions bonding to material objects (e.g., a "security blanket"), instead of bonding to people, who then become greedy mercenaries who are never satisfied by even "unlimited wealth." We would no longer feel that "Encounters with people are causes of severe, unbroken, unrelenting stress, and that stress finds its only reduction through contact with material objects." (Pearce, 1980) We wouldn't find life to be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short," either. That is a city-Statist apology for the benevolence of the glorious city-State. The last several decades of anthropology and archeology have debunked that city-Statist lie. It would be the "Original Affluent Society." (Sahlins, 1972) "The life of an Indian is a continual holiday." ~Thomas Paine It would be party time.
  • AtlasAikido's picture
    AtlasAikido 12 years 13 weeks ago Page Paul Bonneau
    Many are coming around... Ron Dominates the Debate Posted on December 16, 2011 by Lew Rockwell http://www.lewrockwell.com/politicaltheatre/2011/12/ron-dominates-the-de...
  • AtlasAikido's picture
    AtlasAikido 12 years 13 weeks ago Page painkilleraz
    "Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value --- zero." Voltaire (1694-1778) And so...The Best Bitcoin radio ad yet-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pV9ptoCMyc&feature=player_embedded So too will follow economic solutions to other pollutions..
  • WhiteIndian's picture
    WhiteIndian 12 years 13 weeks ago Page painkilleraz
    Here's what an economic miracle looks like: October 14, 2009, the 30th annual awards ceremony of the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund took place at the Asia Society in New York City. Lu Guang (卢广) from People’s Republic of China won the $30,000 W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography for his documentary project “Pollution in China"... Amazing Pictures, Pollution in China October 21st, 2009 http://www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china/
  • GeoffreyTransom's picture
    GeoffreyTransom 12 years 13 weeks ago Page painkilleraz
    That is a misreading of the text - the government has the power to exercise exclusive legislation etc ONLY IN the District of Columbia.... as is made clear by the phrase immediately following: "over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States" I'm no fan of either the Constitution or the US government (and I want Hamilton's body exhumed and burned, and the ashes mixed with piss and ochre and used to daub graffiti on Lincoln's memorial), but we do not advance the ball my mischaracterising elements of the now-dead Constitution. As with a lot of countries with codified constitutions, it is the COMMERCE power that is used as the 'catch all' to expand tyranny. And that's certainly the case in the US: so much so that recent decisions have hinged on the court's opinion that the state may penalise acts that do NOT cross interstate boundaries, if the activity can be seen to impinge INDIRECTLY on interstate commerce (although case law on indirect effects has been abundant prior to recent decisions). And for example, the Gonzales v Raich decision (about HOME GROWN marijuana in states with medical marijuana laws) makes it clear that in the opinions of the robed charlatans, the activity does not even have to be commercial in nature - the significant part of the ratio decidendi was that the output of home-grown pot MIGHT at SOME FUTURE DATE be used in (black) market activity. On that basis, they can legislate against home grown vegetables, even if you never sell a single one... because one day you MIGHT. At bottom, we are on the same page: Constitutions, as Spooner famously pointed out, are contracts entered into without the consent of the overwhelming majority of the contractees, and claim to bind in perpetuity those who are not yet born (much as Tom Paine complained about the Act declaring perpetual loyalty of the British people to William and Mary). They are always formulated in order to give a veneer of respectability to the rule of the masses by a narrow clique; from there the judiciary is populated with 'like minds' (be they Democractic or Republican, they still believe in the right of the State to wield its power expansively) and ANY rights asserted by the polity are parsed as narrowly as possible. We know this - and it serves little to make logical errors by mir-parsing one phrase (which specifically concerns the District of Columbia), except to the extent that I guess the robed charlatans may bring 'indirect; reasoning into the arsenal of tyranny. I would not put it past the likes of Scalia, Alito, Roberts and the rest of them... there is a track record of the court helping stretch the sphincter of liberty, going even farther back than that paragon of jurisprudence - Oliver Wendell "Sterilise the Feeble-Minded" Holmes and his 1927 decision in the Buck case.
  • AtlasAikido's picture
    AtlasAikido 12 years 13 weeks ago Page painkilleraz
    China’s Black Market City Welcome to Wenzhou, where the mountains are high, the emperor is far away, and people are busy creating their own economic miracle. The Wenzhou Model Foreign businessmen, politicians, and journalists who fly into Beijing or Shanghai often get the impression that the Chinese government is the main driver behind the jaw-dropping development of what was until recently one of the worst large economies in the world. In Shanghai you fly to a state-built airport, ride on a state-built maglev train through the Pudong district, and behold a city of skyscrapers that appeared out of nowhere a little more than a decade ago with the help of generous government subsidies and investment from state-owned enterprises. Whatever local company you’re interested in, chances are the government is interested in it as well. In southern China, things look rather different. The Chinese say that in this region “the mountains are high and the emperor is far away”—in other words, the government isn’t paying much attention. Companies are mainly small or medium-sized enterprises, government services are slight, and laws are routinely ignored. According to official statistics, the three southern coastal provinces of Zhejiang, Guangdong, and Fujian have the first, second, and fourth wealthiest citizens, respectively, in the country. They are the center of China’s export sector and the primary destination for China’s millions of internal economic migrants. Here is where the real Chinese miracle is happening. The city and region of Wenzhou play an important role in this story. The Wenzhounese have a reputation for both an uncanny sense of business and an almost pathological disregard for the government. The mountains here are no metaphor: Seventy-eight percent of the Wenzhou prefecture is covered by mountains, a fact that proved pivotal to the area’s early development and the central government’s response to it. In 1978, when China’s economic reforms were just being launched, Wenzhou was extremely poor, about 90 percent rural, with smaller land allocations than other areas and poor connections to larger markets. Even today, the vast majority of local entrepreneurs have less than eight years of formal education, and the current population of foreigners is estimated at only a couple of hundred. The Wenzhounese government received directives from Beijing but found that without accompanying support they lacked resources to run the economy by diktat. Fortunately, a central government that wasn’t offering much support also wasn’t paying much attention. So private citizens quietly took over many of the services that elsewhere are either provided or heavily regulated by the state. Local authorities, lacking other options, didn’t try to stop them. The most important development in those early days was the city’s flourishing underground financial system, which according to the local branch of the People’s Bank of China (China’s central bank) currently is used by 89 percent of Wenzhounese private citizens and 57 percent of local companies. More dramatically, private citizens were the first to connect Wenzhou to neighboring regions by building roads, bridges, and highways, as well as the city’s airports and substantial portions of the dock. Even today the city is scattered with infrastructure investment firms through which groups of businessmen pool money to build the transport routes they all need to get their goods from factory to the point of sale. The result is not pretty. Aside from the confusion faced even by residents driving into the city, it is not uncommon to see sidewalks torn up to insert piping, with seemingly no intention of replacing the concrete. Nevertheless, the system is crudely efficient, merchants can all easily access factories, and the factories in this geographically isolated city now have sales networks that span the globe. The government’s indifference didn’t last forever. But when the authorities got around to paying attention, they decided not to mess with a good thing. http://reason.com/archives/2011/11/15/chinas-black-market-city
  • Evan's picture
    Evan 12 years 13 weeks ago
    Of Dogs and Men
    Page Paul Hein
    As tzo's breathing becomes regular and the rapid eye movement phase of sleep sets in, the falling green glyphs of his dreams begin to coalesce into a stunningly beautiful panorama. Without having to be told, tzo automatically recognizes the world he sees as being the politico-philosophical landscape. From his vantage point atop a glorious citadel on the fair continent of market anarchism, he can see across the ocean to the savage continent of primitivist anarchism, where pale natives frolic freely in the lush forests and trolls gambol across the endless plains. Suddenly, tzo's attention is directed to a small island floating in the seas between the two landmasses. This island, (a seastead actually, though the forest gardens growing on it make it seem like a natural island,) tzo intuitively recognizes as being the island of eco-agorism, (part of the broader archipelago of green libertarianism,) and from it he hears a faint song. The song seems to grow louder, and the music vibrates tzo's energy body, starting with 132 hertz at his root chakra, and moving slowly up his spine through sacral, solar plexus, heart, throat, third-eye, and finally crown, accumulating higher frequencies in layers as the cosmic strings play their soulful melody. As the song reaches its climax, and every quantum wavicle that constitutes tzo's energy body is vibrating in harmony with the sacred geometry of the universe, right at the peak where the metaphorical air is almost too thin to breathe, and tzo's consciousness blinks in and out of existence, between unity and void, beyond the 1s and 0s that make up the matrix, he suddenly awakens, perhaps enlightened, but in any case, prepared to face the white indian and continue their pow wow, now convinced of the terrible importance of such diplomacy.
  • Suverans2's picture
    Suverans2 12 years 13 weeks ago
    Natural Law
    Web link Don Stacy
    "...the primal rights pertaining to men are undoubtedly enjoyed by human beings purely as such, being grounded in personality, and existing antecedently to their recognition by positive law". ~ A Dictionary of Law (Henry Campbell Black's first edition, c.1891), page 1044 [Emphasis added] PRI'MAL, a. [See Prime.] First. [Not in use.] ~ Webster's 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language Man's "primal rights" are his "First" rights, i.e. his innate, or natural, rights. They are "Prime", that is to say, they are "paramount", they "take precedence or priority of", and they "outrank" all other "claims". PRIME. To stand first or paramount; to take precedence or priority of; to outrank. ~ Black's Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition (c.1991), page 1191 And, as we all should know, that which "stands first", is "best", in the law. Quod prius est verius est; et quod prius est tempore potius est jure. What is first is truest; and what comes first in time, is best in law. Co. Litt. 347. ~ Maxim of Law, Bouvier's 1856 Law Dictionary So, why do most (wo)men settle for the lesser man-made legal rights? Because they want the "carrot at the end of the stick" held by their self-proclaimed masters[1]; they want, what they perceive to be, the benefits and privileges offered in exchange for their natural liberty[2]; they want a "parent" (parens patriae) to feed, clothe, medicate and protect them, so that they don't have to take responsibility for their own life. Then, like the "spoiled brats" that they are, they have the audacity to complain because they don't like the food they're being forced to eat, they don't like the clothing they are forced to wear, they don't like the medications they're forced to take, and they don't like the protection that is forced upon them. Some children just aren't happy no matter how much their "parent" does for them. ____________________________________________________________ [1] "The kings of the earth set themselves..." ~ Psalm 2:2 (KJV) [2] Natural liberty is the right which nature gives to all mankind of disposing of their persons and property after the manner they judge most consistent with their happiness, on condition of their acting within the limits of the law of nature, and so as not to interfere with an equal exercise of the same rights by other men. Buriamaqui, c. 3, § 15; 1 Bl. Comm. 125 ~ A Dictionary of the Law (c. 1891), pg. 716
  • WhiteIndian's picture
    WhiteIndian 12 years 13 weeks ago Page Paul Bonneau
    I agree 100% with your statement: "The ruling class has been trying its best to dumb the rest of us down for the last hundred years ... we are all the victims of predation by the parasitic class." The anthropological term for them is "big men" in the early days of domestication, or "emergent elite."* Besides plants and animals, humans are too deliberately domesticated. In fact, just like what happens to other animals, human brain size gets smaller.** Domestication makes animals stupid. Why? Only the stupid are docile enough to live in a zoo cage and actually be able breed. The Wild is deliberately culled. Yet there are still some of us (often with ADHD) who feel like "hunters in a farmer's world." It's time to re-Wild. It's time to start being Wolves instead of Poodles. _________________________ * Thesis #10: Emergent elites led the Agricultural Revolution. by Jason Godesky | 11 October 2005 http://rewild.info/anthropik/thirty/ ** Wolves & Dogs by Jason Godesky | 13 November 2006 http://rewild.info/anthropik/2006/11/wolves-dogs/index.html
  • painkilleraz's picture
    painkilleraz 12 years 13 weeks ago Page painkilleraz
    Nope I dont understand those arguments, I understand what I write about and learn as I go regarding the other things. Much of my life is spent training, educating myself and pushing to be a better (blank blank) than others. AS a result I honestly do not often really delve into the minutia that is the argument between one form of something and another. :)
  • WhiteIndian's picture
    WhiteIndian 12 years 13 weeks ago Page painkilleraz
    Agriculture does create lots of people, on purpose, because a large population is needed for cannon-fodder and a labor pool for the nobility and capitalists to use. The hierarchy-bribed cornucopian Julian Simon ironically called you "The Ultimate Resource." Smile and say "moo," human resource #6,981,526,096. Hope ya live close enough to the center of empire to not starve if they don't find you useful.
  • WhiteIndian's picture
    WhiteIndian 12 years 13 weeks ago Page painkilleraz
    Gambol Lockdown already violates the Non-Aggression Principle. Privation property, or big-government Land enTITLEment from the Land Office (or county recorder these days,) is nothing more than a totalitarian regulatory program to restrict the free movement of Non-State societies and to violently disestablish Non-State people from their lifeways. It took an 8000 year long Trail of Tears to establish global Gambol Lockdown, and daily threats of violence to enforce Gambol Lockdown. Most libertarians whitewash such aggression and threats thereof by calling it their "right." As Dr. Ralph Borsodi states in his 1929 volume This Ugly Civilization: "Our system of private property in land FORCES landless men to work for others; to work in factories, stores, and offices, whether they like it or not. wherever access to land is free, men work only to provide what they actually need or desire. Wherever the white man has come in contact with savage cultures this fact becomes apparent. There is for savages in their native state no such sharp distinction between "work" and "not working" as clocks and factory whistles have accustomed the white man to accept. They cannot be made to work regularly at repetitive tasks in which they have no direct interest except by some sort of duress. Disestablishment from land, like slavery, is a form of DURESS. The white man, where slavery cannot be practiced, has found that he must first disestablish the savages from their land before he can force them to work steadily for him. Once they are disestablished, they are IN EFFECT STARVED into working for him and into working as he directs." Daniel Quinn notes too how people are forced by starvation into working for the system. "You’ll know you’re among the people of your culture if the food is all owned, if it’s all under lock and key. But food was once no more owned than the air or the sunshine are owned. No other culture in history has ever put food under lock and key—and putting it there is the cornerstone of your economy, because if the food wasn’t under lock and key, who would work?" And the funny thing is, divinely-derived Lockesian property rights (have you read his On Property?) are about as valid as the divine right of kings. They rely on the following make-believe hierarchy, even if modern day libertarianism waters it down to a more secular version, and attenuated the sexism: GOD ("...those grants God made of the world to Adam..." ~John Locke) MAN (everything else below is property) WOMAN (submits to husband) ANIMALS (submit to husbandry) NATURE (valuable only if used-up by the hierarchy) I suppose now you're going to give me the "mixed labor" and "homestead" arguments, but before the plow came the sword (they're both closely related tools of domination.) Every time agriculture invades and occupies, there is another trail of tears and a mountain of skulls. And the taking is still today enforced by the sword, no matter if you call it a property right, and intone all kinds of Austrian word magic to whitewash the aggression.
  • painkilleraz's picture
    painkilleraz 12 years 13 weeks ago Page painkilleraz
    I guess I dont understand what this has to do with now? Unless we violate the NAP how would we ever get back to our aboriginal ancestry, and besides, why would anyone willingly or gladly embrace that idea? Its not easy living completely off the land, having done it in small portions over much of my life thanks to a paranoid prepper father and other influences I can say that if I can avoid it I will. Ridding ourselves of the false notions encompassed and espoused by the supporters of the Constitution and our current Government does not automatically mean we will go back to pre-speaking society, in fact I would expect that we would have a relatively small "hitch" in our progress forward, which would increase rapidly. Regardless thanks for the comments, though again I have no idea what they have to do with the article.
  • Paul's picture
    Paul 12 years 13 weeks ago Page Paul Bonneau
    That book of Gatto's I quoted from, his "Underground History...", (available there online) is one of the most important books I've read. This brings up another thought about this meme. The ruling class has been trying its best to dumb the rest of us down for the last hundred years, very similar to the previous practice of keeping books out of the hands of slaves. In other words, we are all the victims of predation by the parasitic class. Looking down on such victims is a bit like sneering at someone confined to a wheelchair.
  • Paul's picture
    Paul 12 years 13 weeks ago Page painkilleraz
    "Agriculture creates government." Maybe so, maybe so. At any rate, agriculture creates lots of people, and concentrations of people appear to result in government. At least so far. I'm just wondering what WhiteIndian proposes to do with all the extra people who can't be supported by his pre-agricultural society. And with all the people who don't want to wear animal skins and live in 6x6 foot huts with dirt floors.
  • WhiteIndian's picture
    WhiteIndian 12 years 13 weeks ago
    Of Dogs and Men
    Page Paul Hein
    Have fun your "act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think—not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment." (from John Galt's speech) The only rationally-integrated, non-contradictory, evidence-based Non-State voluntaryist is a primitivist, or anarcho-primitivist. "Voluntary City-Statism (civilization,") is an oxymoron (Rand was correct on that, even if many of her premises are debunked.) Keep hoping though, it'll happen right after we have power to cheap to meter. Libertarianism is a socio-political manifestation of Cargo-Cult techno-salvationist hubris.
  • painkilleraz's picture
    painkilleraz 12 years 13 weeks ago Page Paul Bonneau
    Paul, this was a tremendous, insightful look at something I am guilty of personally; viewing the world as full of idiots, loving the movie idiocracy as an example, writing as if too idiots. It has been only recently that I realized the truth, just because my worldview differs, does not by default mean those who either do not or cannot believe it, idiots! Thank you sir, and well written- I would like to communicate with you and possibly collaborate with you if you are ready.
  • tzo's picture
    tzo 12 years 13 weeks ago
    Of Dogs and Men
    Page Paul Hein
    zzzzzzz Your posts put me to sleep. I place the blame squarely on my intellectual deficit and apologize beforehand for not responding anymore to these deep thoughts that affect me like Prozac. Have fun trolling with others.
  • GeoffreyTransom's picture
    GeoffreyTransom 12 years 13 weeks ago Page Paul Bonneau
    Terrific article. As someone who spent half my adult (well, pretend-adult) life fulminating against 'idiots', it embarrasses me to say that it took me until my mid-40s to slough off the "people who think stupid things are fuckwits" meme. In fact I reckon I can attribute this epiphany to one person, and can pin it down to a very specific point in time. It was - and don't DARE laugh - a Joe Rogan podcast. Yep: Joe Rogan - stand up comic, drug liberalisation advocate and host of "Fear Factor"... and as I have said before, an example of everything that is RIGHT about the American system (as it used to be) - a guy from the shitty part of Boston who has known genuine hardship, but who persevered and made a good life for himself using nothing but his wits. Anyhow... In the middle of one of his podcasts, he developed this theme that people were NOT stupid - they were tired, they were stressed, they didn't have the tools necessary to do their own due diligence... and therefore 90% or more of their opinions were simply "shit they heard someone say". And given that tired, stressed people get most of what they hear from the TV... well, no surprise that their opinions reflect this. They outsourced their opinions to a system that was set up to steal from them. This counts as only my second genuine epiphany: the first epiphany was in an economics lecture given by Prof Ross Parish [RIP] in 1992, which was all about why engineers and others with no understanding of tradeoffs and feedback, will always miscalculate the effects of economic policy. In other words, it was an inoculation against the tendency of economists to become technocrats: engineers and technocrats think along the lines of the naive 'input output' Leontief-style model, rather than the dynamic CGE model of Leontief's PhD student Peter Dixon (who was later my PhD supervisor). Leontief got the Nobel prize in 1973 for his IO work; Dicko's CGE model was the basis of his PhD under Leontief at Harvard; my PhD was extending a dynamic CGE model to incorporate stochastic simulation; I never submitted my dissertation (more accurately: I haven't submitted YET... you never know, I might bother one day).
  • painkilleraz's picture
    painkilleraz 12 years 13 weeks ago Page Paul Bonneau
    Apologies my smart phone posted multiple times-
  • painkilleraz's picture
    painkilleraz 12 years 13 weeks ago Page Paul Bonneau
    Apologies my smart phone posted multiple times-
  • WhiteIndian's picture
    WhiteIndian 12 years 13 weeks ago Page Paul Bonneau
    LOL!!! Trade chick-raising and child-rearing above. Such are the vagaries of writing and editing in a wee-little white box online while running a business and doing homeschool, all while stealing a little time to debate with ya'll.
  • WhiteIndian's picture
    WhiteIndian 12 years 13 weeks ago Page Paul Bonneau
    You're correct, there was a small amount of specialization: women generally were more the gatherers, men were more the hunters. That's because of body size and other considerations. However, it's not a stark contrast. Men gather and women hunt in forager societies. Anybody could do anything anyone else could do. And all share in chick-raising duties. Humans are egalitarian, and that includes between the two sexes. The biological evolutionary evidence is low sexual dimorphism -- on the level of penguins, who also share in child-rearing duties. Also, humans show zero sexual dichromaticism, like their evolutionary, and extremely hierarchical evolutionary cousins, the red ass baboons. Today we do make-believe sexual dichromaticism; power ties now make red ass baboons out of men. Also, specialization and hierarchy do go hand-in-hand. In fact, the term "specialization hierarchy" is used frequently in scholarly journal articles. You ask: "How are you going to stop them doing that?" I'm not stopping anybody from doing anything, even if what they're doing is wrong (even if it would be morally right to stop them, just like stopping a rape, as Derrick Jensen argues); agricultural civilization always stops itself. It's suicidal. Collapse is inevitable. Joseph Tainter, William Catton, and many others have documented how and why collapse happens with agricultural city-Statism. Besides, if the collapse happens too fast from actively helping it collapse, there's just that much more chance of it going to full-bore global thermonuclear war. Although the chances of that, I think, are near 100% anyway. Got a fallout shelter to protect you from the most advanced fruits of 8000 years of CULTure's "progress?"
  • WhiteIndian's picture
    WhiteIndian 12 years 13 weeks ago
    Of Dogs and Men
    Page Paul Hein
    - "..bit dogmatic with his insistence that agriculture = slavery..." I'm not dogmatic. I cite scholarly sources that have analyzed empirical data. - "...his citing of Mr. Whomever as the infallible and ultimate authority on the subject, subject closed." Empirical data directly refutes widely held libertarian's premises. You're having an emotional reaction against it, and falsely attribute to me some lame-ass anti-intellectual excuse so you don't have to study it yourself and think. You're being lazy, even intellectually evasive. Do I have to get my John Galt speech out and spank you with it, Mr. "Blank-Out?" - "...agricultural societies have been run by coercive governments which distorts the agriculture market's behavior..." LOL That is truly funny. Zombie religio-economics. I suppose that dead organs are distorting the behavior of corpses that should really be Zombies walking. Look, agriculture itself, all by itself, is coercive. You're taking a huge tract of Land and claiming: This is mine, and mine only, and nobody else can use it, and I'll kill ya even if you walk across it. And when the fertility gets "farmed out," I'll kill ya "savages" (savage means etymologically dwellers of the forest) so I can get more vast tracts of Land. Jean Jacques Rousseau was correct when he said in his Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (1754), "The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody." We know who started agriculture. Manipulators. Power seekers. Those trying to be "Big Men." Know any of those in Congress today? "Big Men" is actually the term anthropologists use to describe the Emergent Elite. Volumes of archeology, anthropology, and other sciences show that domestication = greatly increased violence, human sacrifice, sacrifice religions, slavery, cannibalism, repression of women, etc. Agriculture is a 8000 year long Trail of Tears, cheered on and then the necessary genocide whitewashed by the capitalists. "[The Native Americans] didn't have any rights to the land ... Any white person who brought the element of civilization had the right to take over this continent." ~Ayn Rand, US Military Academy at West Point, New York, March 6, 1974 Agriculture is the demon engine of city-STATISM. Agriculture: Demon Engine of Civilization by John Zerzan http://rewild.info/anthropik/library/zerzan/demon-engine-of-civilization/
  • Paul's picture
    Paul 12 years 13 weeks ago Page Paul Bonneau
    Might be more accurate to say I aspire to be patient. :-) "Claire's example of the women at the door who asked her husband what "we" think is mind boggling" Well, maybe less than it first seems. Maybe this woman said it ironically, and young Claire didn't pick up on that. Maybe she was rattled about something else when she came to the door, and the question temporarily discombobulated her, so she passed it on to her spouse (a tactic I myself am fond of). Maybe she is one of those people so connected to her spouse that she likes to put everything in terms of "we". Maybe they didn't have a TV and didn't pay attention to what commentators and government boobs were saying about the war. And yes, maybe she was just dumb. But these things are just anecdotal. Anyway this woman (perhaps) not having an opinion about the war is not the same thing as saying she's an idiot. She might also have been an expert cook and mother. One never knows. It's not people's job to keep up on politics. It's their job to live their life as they see fit. In an anarchist world, few would care about politics above the level of what gossip happens over the backyard fence.
  • Paul's picture
    Paul 12 years 13 weeks ago Page Paul Bonneau
    I suspect even in tribal societies, there was some specialization. Anyway, we have to deal with what is, not with what was. Also, I don't buy your argument that specialization implies hierarchy. One can over-specialize, that's true. And one can also live in nature and make one's own clothing, weapons and shelter. Most people would probably prefer to stay somewhere between the two extremes, and who's to say they are wrong? How are you going to stop them doing that?