Vox Rationis

The Anti-Imperialists on True Patriotism

2011-12-28T18:12:00.000-05:00

The Anti-Imperialist League played an interesting, if somewhat overlooked, role in U.S. political history. Founded as a result of the illegal and brutal takeover of the Philippines by the U.S. government after the Spanish-American war, the group supported the idea that such military adventurism stood in conflict with the ideals of liberty and self-determination. Interestingly enough, these men who denounced big militarism were those on the political right, that is, they also favored free markets, free trade, and generally limited government. They recognized that it was intellectually dishonest to favor limited government at home and support big government abroad. Some notable members included Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie, Grover Cleveland, John Dewey and William Lloyd Garrison.

Moorfield Storey, a member of the group, is a most fascinating historical figure. He was a lawyer and a noted civil rights leader in the late 19th Century, and the founder of the NAACP. Consider Storey's words in April 1898, on the eve of the Spanish-American War, for it was these sentiments that animated his and so many others' anti-imperialist work:

"This Club [the Massachusetts chapter of the league] never met under circumstances more calculated to create the gravest anxiety in every patriotic man than tonight, and by patriotic man I do not mean him who measures his country's greatness by the extent of her territory, the size of her armies, the strength of her fleets, or even by the insolence with which she tramples upon her weaker neighbors, but him who knows that the true greatness of a nation, as of a man, depends upon its character, its sense of justice, its self-restraint, its magnanimity, in a word upon its possession of those qualities which distinguish... the highest type of man from the highest type of beast."

Consider also, the words of Carl Schurz, another league member and the first German-born member of the U.S. Senate.

"The man who in times of popular excitement boldly and unflinchingly resists hot-tempered clamor for an unnecessary war, and thus exposes himself to the opprobrious imputation of a lack of patriotism or of courage, to the end of saving his country from a great calamity, is, as to 'loving and faithfully serving his country,' at least as good a patriot as the hero of the most daring feat of arms, and a far better one than those who, with an ostentatious pretense of superior patriotism, cry for war before it is needed, especially if then they let others do the fighting."

These men realized something profound, namely, that true patriotism does not exist where there is a clamoring for the military force of one's nation to be cast in the direction of every far corner of the world. Patriotism does not exist where childish egotists who, in their lust for blood and power and self-affirmation, insist that the nation's true strength lies in its brutality, and who conjure up an endless parade of invisible "enemies" and insist this brutality be exercised in their direction.

Patriotism exists where men with level heads resist these cries for violence, because war violates the most basic of nature's laws, and man's very humanity. Patriotism exists where a man, despite the mocking of his bellicose compatriots, says no to his state and to it's wars because wars financially and morally bankrupt nations, and are an assault on the very qualities and ideals that make humankind superior to beasts.

Iran: Paranoia and Propaganda

2011-12-17T03:29:00.000-05:00

The latest Arab country to find itself in the crosshairs of the U.S. government is Iran. For the past several years, alarmists on both sides of the political isle have been ramping up the rhetoric about Iran and the supposed threat it poses to the free world. Unfortunately, many of the claims of these war hawks regarding the situation in Iran are simply untrue. It would seem that once again, as was the case in the months leading up to the disastrous Iraq War, many in this country are throwing about false claims in order to justify a needless war.

The most recent example of such blatant misinformation about Iran being spewed in public occurred at last Thursday’s Republican presidential debate. Michele Bachmann, who has made such outlandish statements as demanding the Iraqis pay reparations for the U.S. occupation of their country, said the following:

"We have an IAEA report that just recently came out that said, literally, Iran is within just months of being able to obtain that weapon."

This statement is false on it’s face, and only Ron Paul was willing to correct it, which he did immediately. Bachmann’s explicit misinformation was debunked by a number of objective third parties.

CNN says:

“The IAEA report does not say that Iran is within months of being able to obtain a nuclear weapon. So Bachmann is wrong.”

The New York Times says:

“[The IAEA’s] long awaited report… did not say a weapon was months away.”

Yahoo News Fact Check says:

“As Paul said, the report of the International Atomic Energy Agency does not state that Iran is within months of having nuclear arms.”

Another erroneous claim Bachmann made was to insist that Iran has stated it intends to use these hypothetical weapons to, in her words, “wipe Israel off the face of the earth.” This claim arises from an interview Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave in August. A difficulty arises in the translation of Ahmadinejad’s words from the Persian into English. The American idiom, “to wipe something off the face of the earth,” or as some have phrased it, “to wipe something off the map,” does not exist in the Persian language, and is exclusively an American idiom. The Israeli newspaper, the Haaretz Newspaper, translated Ahmadinejad’s words in the following way:

"Iran believes that whoever is for humanity should also be for eradicating the Zionist regime (Israel) as symbol of suppression and discrimination.”

This is distinctly different from saying an entire nation must be “wiped off the face of the earth.” What Ahmadinejad is saying, agree with it or disagree, is that the Israeli government has been guilty of certain human rights violations, and Iran does not want that regime to stay in power.

Many experts have testified to this effect. Juan Cole, a Middle East specialist at the University of Michigan told the New York Times,

"Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to wipe Israel off the map because no such idiom exists in Persian. He did say he hoped its regime, i.e., a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse."

Jonathan Steele, writing for the Guardian newspaper in London, put it this way,

"The Iranian president was quoting an ancient statement by Iran's first Islamist leader, the late Ayatollah Khomeini, that 'this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time,' just as the Shah's regime in Iran had vanished. He was not making a military threat. He was calling for an end to the occupation of Jerusalem at some point in the future. The 'page of time' phrase suggests he did not expect it to happen soon."

The independent fact checking website PolitiFact said this,

“Where Bachmann misstepped was by accusing Ahmadinejad of saying he planned to use a nuclear weapon against Israel or the United States… Ahmadinejad has said some tough things about the United States and Israel, but we find no evidence that he has said he would use a nuclear weapon against either country.”

Despite the clear evidence that the translation between these vastly incomparable languages has led to an inflated interpretation of Ahmadinejad’s actual words, let us suppose for a moment that Iran did develop a nuclear weapon, and did attempt to attack Iran or the U.S. The consequences for Iran would be grave and immediate. Israel is armed with over 300 nuclear weapons, capable of being launched at a moment’s notice. The U.S. has over 5,100 nuclear weapons at its disposal, and an incredibly efficient means of delivering them to any corner of the globe. Iran knows that if it even hints at using any form of nuclear force against Israel that the entire nation of Iran would be obliterated without pause. The same is true vis-à-vis the United States.

This concept is known as “mutually assured destruction,” that is, any country with nuclear weapons knows that if they use their nuclear weapons, the other countries will in all likelihood retaliate. The final outcome of an understanding of mutually assured destruction is peace, as neither side is willing to risk total annihilation by firing first. This is part of the reason the Cold War remained cold.

In fact, the rhetoric being spewed about the need to destroy Iran now is similar to that which was heard during the Cold War period, except then there was concrete evidence that Krushchev indeed had nuclear weapons.

Upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, Soviet foreign spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov warned the United States, "We have done the most terrible thing to you that we could possibly have done. We have deprived you of an enemy.” That is what this current debate about Iran is all about: the government elevating the fear of the public in order to facilitate more needless violence, and therefore, the further expansion of the government.

The truth is, the government loves war. As Randolph Bourne famously remarked, “War is the health of the state.” The trenchant warrior of liberty, philosopher Murray N. Rothbard once said,

“It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society. Society becomes a herd, seeking to kill its alleged enemies, rooting out and suppressing all dissent from the official war effort, happily betraying truth for the supposed public interest.”

Political historian Jonathan Finegold Catalan notes, with regard to the government’s current “War on Terror,”

“The greatest threat to American freedom proved to be, not the terrorists, but the very government that purportedly protects Americans. Indeed, in the years following the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration managed to perpetrate some of the most severe infringements on individual rights since the Roosevelt administration.”

It is high time we abandon blatant fallacies and the spreading of paranoia and propaganda in seeking new wars to instigate. As the great American statesman John Quincy Adams put it, “America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

On the Ownership of Person and Property

2011-11-17T05:05:00.001-05:00

The concept of property rights arises because physical things in this world are scarce. There are, for example, only a certain and limited number of forks in the world, and therefore, we must establish a system by which we can determine who has the legally defensible right use those forks. This “right to use” is the definition of ownership.

Every physical thing on this planet is scarce, including human bodies and the space they take up. Thus, property rights must not only deal with possessions, but also with persons themselves. If person A owns person B, that means A has the right to coerce B to use his physical body in any way A sees fit. This concept will become clearer as we examine examples.

We see through logical examination that there are only five ways in which it is possible to allocate the ownership of person and property. In the first system, nobody owns, that is, has the right to use, any person or physical thing. Second, everyone owns everything, that is, he has the right to use any person or thing as he sees fit. Third, everyone owns one seven billionth (his proportion of the world population) of everything. Fourth, one person or group of persons completely owns the persons and property of another person or group of persons. Fifth, each person owns himself and his justly acquired property. There are no other conceivable ways to allocate the use of person and property. Let us examine each.

Nobody owns anything

In this system, no person has the right to use any object or person. We can see that this system of property allocation would quickly fail. Not only would a person not have the legal right to life sustaining activities like eating, he would not even have the right to exist, for the very fact that his body is taking up physical space in the world is illegal since he can have no legal claim to that space. Obviously this system is absurd.

Everyone owns everything

In this system, every person has the right to use of every physical object or person. Again, this system is doomed from the beginning. Imagine a scenario in which two persons claimed the right to use the same fork. There is no legal way to establish who has the “proper” claim to the use of the fork, because, after all, they both “own” it. This system is even more impossible when applied to persons themselves. As stated above, if one person can claim ownership of another person, then he can force that person to essentially be his slave, that is, to use his body as the owner sees fit. Thus, if we say that everyone owns everything, and this applies to persons as well, person A could legally claim ownership of person B. Meanwhile, person B could just as easily and legally reject this claim that he is owned, citing the fact that he has the same right to the use of his body as person A. Person B could even counter this claim of ownership by attempting to claim ownership of person A. Again, this entire system is bizarre and would break down immediately.

Everyone owns an equal share of everything

This means that a person has the legal right to use 1/7,000,000,000 of every object or person in existence. This system too breaks down immediately. For ownership implies the sole use of an object, unless consent is given to others to use it. I have ownership of a piano, and others can use my piano only to the extent that I consent to their use of it. Thus in our “everyone owns an equal share of everything” system, it would be impossible to use anything, for to use anything would require gaining the consent of the other 6,999,999,999 people who also claim partial ownership of that object. Philosopher Murray N. Rothbard addressed this system in his beautiful treatise The Ethics of Liberty, saying, “Can we picture a world in which no man is free to take any action whatsoever without prior approval by everyone else in society? Clearly no man would be able to do anything, and the human race would quickly perish.”

One class owns another

This is, I would argue, the system in place today. In this system, a person or group of person is entitled to own not only themselves, but the rest of the physical objects and persons in existence. The first reason that this system is disastrous is that it is not an homogeneous system, that is, it is not a universal legal ethic. For a system of law to be just, the law must apply equally to all members of society. The three systems mentioned above at least are universal in their scope, that is, no person gets special treatment, but in this system, a certain class does get special treatment under the law. Furthermore, this system violates one of the most basic and God-ordained truths of nature, namely, that all persons are created equal. For one group to deny to another group the use of their persons and properties is to say that they are, by nature, subhuman. This system is exactly what is in place today, wherein the state has the “legal right” to coerce the citizenry to use their bodies and possessions in various ways that benefit the state. This is called coercion. Common examples of this type of coercion are taxation, wherein a citizen is called upon to simply hand over his possessions upon the threat of violence, and conscription, wherein a citizen is called upon to hand over the use of his body upon the threat of violence. This system, under any definition, cannot be called just.

Everyone owns himself and his property

The only remaining conceivable system of allocating scarce resources is one such that each person has the right to use his body and his justly acquired possessions as he sees fit, provided that he does not interdict upon the ability of anyone else to do the same. This system is a universally applied legal ethic, it complies with the laws of nature, and it does not stifle the activity of society, unlike the others. Consider: only I, in the state of nature, have the ability to use my faculties (movement, vocalization, thinking, ect.), and therefore, only I can claim a right to their use. This concept is called self-ownership. When this right of self ownership is extended to other material objects, it can be said that I have the right to the use of those objects which I have either contractually exchanged with another person, or have created or gathered out of previously unowned objects (This latter concept is called homesteading, and for more on this important topic, read Locke’s Second Treatise, Section 27.)

Thus, this final system is the only way to justly, equally and plausibly allocate scarce resources. In the real world, this system would prohibit any person or group from violently confiscating the person or property of another. This means that, for example, bank robbers could not, brandishing guns, take money that from the bank that they did not earn. Also, a government could not, brandishing guns, take money from its citizens that it did not earn. It means that a kidnapper could not, under the threat of bodily harm, force a person to go anywhere or do anything against his or her will. It also means that a government could not, under the threat of bodily harm, conscript a person into its army against his or her will.

Only a system of interpersonal ethics that is universally applied, consistent with the easily apprehended laws of nature, and allowed persons freedom to act within defined spheres can ever hope to be just. Only a just system of interpersonal ethics is in line with God’s design and will for His creation.

Common Objections, Vol. 3: Non-Interventionism vs. Isolationism

2011-10-11T06:05:00.006-04:00

Quite often, when confronted with the ideology of a principled non-interventionist, those who favor military expansionism often dismiss the non-interventionist as an isolationist. This reflects an underlying misunderstanding of both non-interventionism as an ideology and of the term isolationism.

The term isolationist was first coined as a smear tactic to apply to those opposed to America’s entry into WWII. Contained in the term were connotations of pro-Nazism. As the indomitable libertarian philosopher and historian Murray N. Rothbard pointed out, “If not actively pro-Nazi, 'isolationists' were at the very least narrow-minded ignoramuses ignorant of the world around them, in contrast to the sophisticated, worldly, caring 'internationalists' who favored American crusading around the globe.”

When defined properly, an isolationist is a person who favors a complete and total lack of interaction with other nations. Under this precise definition, there are very few who can actually call themselves isolationists, although many isolationistic policies have been enacted over the years by both Republican and Democrat-led governments.

Indeed, the real policies of isolationism are those of restricting trade, ignoring diplomacy, devaluing the currency, and meddling in the internal affairs of other nations. All these policies go far in isolating America, in destroying international relationships and trust, and in causing hatred toward America abroad. As political commentator and author Justin Raimondo writes, “The War Party [i.e. the group that favors foreign intervention, both left and right] is the one really consistent advocate of what might be called isolationism: by forcefully intervening in the internal affairs of other nations, by occupying countries and effecting ‘regime change,’ we isolate ourselves from the rest of the world and retreat into an imperialist cocoon, cutting off all normal – i.e. economic and social – relations, and laying the groundwork for the kind of ‘blowback’ that results in terrorism directed against the US and its allies.”

This tactic of calling non-interventionists isolationists is, in effect, a straw-man argument, made to make the interventionists seem like the more reasonable ones. In a June 29^th New York Times article, David Greenberg attempts to paint this picture. Noting the steadily shifting attitude of many on the right to non-interventionism, a charge no doubt led by the example and influence of ardent anti-war libertarian Ron Paul, Greenberg writes, “Suddenly, after the aggressive, militaristic foreign policy of the Bush years, isolationism — a stance that rejects America’s leadership role in the world — is on the rise among Republicans.”

So we are now supposed to believe that those who believe in the Constitution, those who are against tyrannical warmaking by the executive, and those who believe in the rule of law are now naive isolationists, thus portraying those who support a hyperactive military policy as on the side of reason. This is a grotesque and anti-intellectual distortion of reality.

To be sure, those on the side of military expansionism are indeed more irrational and dangerous than the peace-loving non-interventionists. In the post-WWI era, those who opposed the newly-labeled “isolationists” were supporters of the “League to Enforce Peace.” While often downplayed by historians, the goals of this group were incredibly frightening. Again, to quote Raimondo, “The Enforcers wanted to set up a world government, with the US and Britain at its head: anyone who looked cross-eyed at these Global Governors would be promptly invaded, subdued, and occupied. That was their idea of ‘peace.’” These goals are essentially the same as those of the interventionists of today – to "create peace" by militarily clobbering any group who the U.S., in all it’s mighty wisdom, deems disobedient.

The real internationalists, those who recognize the complex realities of geopolitics, and who do not simply see the world through red, white and blue colored glasses – the real peacemakers – are the non-interventionists. We favor globe-spanning free trade, a condition that has been incontrovertibly proven to decrease the likelihood of war. We favor truly appreciating what different races, ethnicities, cultures, values systems, and traditions have to offer, and we do not count the lives of people who are different from us as less valuable. We favor diplomatic relations that recognize other nations’ right to sovereignty, dignity and humanity. In short, we favor being active participants in the global marketplace of ideas, creativity and products, and not isolating ourselves by stirring up violence and resentment.

Objections, Vol. 2: Is Non-Interventionism Leftist?

2011-02-16T13:43:00.003-05:00

For the majority of U.S. history, the political right was the side that favored a non-interventionist foreign policy. “The Old Right” is a term that has been used to describe the movement made up mostly of political Republicans that favored a realistic, non-aggressive policy abroad. This was a longstanding tradition.

Rightists like Rep. Alexander Stephens of Georgia opposed the Mexican War of President Polk. William Graham Sumner founded the Anti-Imperialist League, which opposed the U.S. government’s first foray into foreign empire-building, the war in the Philippines. Henry Ford was a famous critic of the government’s WWI policy. Right-wing intellectuals H.L. Mencken, Rose Wilder Lane, Garrett Garet and Albert Jay Nock were very vocal about their opposition to the U.S. government’s entry into WWII.

To question needless foreign intervention was the modus operandi of the right for a number of reasons. As I will explain below, it simply is the more ideologically consistent position. To oppose big government means to oppose it at home and abroad. Furthermore, it is more fiscally responsible to oppose expensive foreign entanglements. The old right understood this.

The Cold War changed everything. This era saw the emergence of the “new right” of Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan. In 1952, a young Buckley summed up what would become the new conservative credo. He said, in response to the supposed threat from the Soviet Union, “we [new conservatives] have to accept Big Government for the duration—for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged . . . except through the instrument of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores."

Buckley continued, with startling frankness, that conservatives were duty-bound to promote "the extensive and productive tax laws that are needed to support a vigorous anti-Communist foreign policy," as well as the "large armies and air forces, atomic energy, central intelligence, war production boards and the attendant centralization of power in Washington."

And so the political right became synonymous with big militarism. This is not to say that the voices of the old right were completely silenced. One such voice was that of Herbert Hoover, who criticized President Truman for violating the Constitution by invading Korea. Other anti-war Republicans of that era included Senator Robert Taft and Congressman Howard Buffett. But slowly, these voices of reason and ideological consistency became the minority, as the country became swept up in communist alarmism.

Now there is a growing movement afoot, especially among young voters, to return the conservative movement to its anti-interventionist roots. This effort is arguably being led by Rep. Ron Paul, who is a staunch fiscal conservative, and an opponent of war. He has been criticized by establishment conservatives as advocating a “liberal” foreign policy. However, this ideology is not a left-wing ideology at all, but rather, the only consistent one. It is high time the right abandon the idea that not supporting foreign meddling is and idea of the left. This is the case for a number of reasons.

First, conservatives must realize that their foreign policy is not based on an ideology, but rather, simply upon a misguided tradition. It is not more conservative to support foreign wars. In fact, it is simply the opposite. As the ardent libertarian scholar Murray Rothbard asked, “How can the rightist trumpet his devotion to private property and free enterprise while at the same time favoring war [and] conscription?” It simply does not stand to reason that someone could oppose statism at home, in the markets and in their personal lives, and support statism abroad, with military actions and the propping up of foreign regimes. This conservative “ideology” is simply not based on reason. It is not consistent. It is based on a tradition that started with a few misguided pseudo-intellectuals in the Cold War era, and has continued to this day.

Second, the conservative, who opposes “big government” in other areas, must realize that their pet wars are the biggest contributing factor to the development of big government. As Buckley himself admitted in the quote above, an interventionist foreign policy requires totalitarian bureaucracy, extensive tax laws and the centralization of power in Washington. The problem lies in the fact that not all conservatives are willing to admit this as openly as Buckley did. As 19^th century intellectual Randolph Bourne famously said, “War is the health of the state.”

War has always been the favorite means of those in power to increase their power. The largest and most troubling expansions of government in America were mostly not the result of social programs. The Progressive Era and even the New Deal did not do as much as war to move America away from its heritage of limited, checked and balanced government, free markets and individual liberty. The Civil War brought with it censorship, a draft, inflation, the suspension of habeas corpus and a consolidated national government that signaled the end of true federalism. World War I introduced even wider censorship, conscription, deportations and spying. World War II gave us food rationing, conscription, citizen surveillance, censorship, and Japanese internment. With the "War on Terror," we have practically lost the Fourth Amendment and seen habeas corpus once again suspended.

Third, fiscal conservatives must come to grips with the fact that the majority of the U.S. government’s budget is spent on war. The government spends more than a trillion dollars a year on its empire abroad. That is more than all the other countries in the world spend combined. So-called “defense” spending, which is entirely a misnomer, has become a sacred cow of the right. While they favor cutting government spending in other areas, they will throw a fit when anyone seeks to cut their bloated “defense” budget. Again, anyone with basic reason skills should be able to see that it is not consistent to call oneself a fiscal conservative and support the enormous expenditures of the government on empire.

Being against war and foreign meddling is not an idea of the left, but rather, it should be an idea of the right. It is time the right abandons blindly clinging to a prevailing paradigm, and actually examines whether its worldview is consistent.

For more reading see the following pieces:

The Betrayal of the American Right by Murray Rothbard

America's Anti-Militarist Heritage by George C. Leef

The Real American Right by Justin Raimondo

The Intellectual Incoherence of Conservatism by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Common Objections to Non-Interventionism, Vol. 1: Introduction

2010-10-13T14:46:00.003-04:00

The libertarian foreign policy can be described in a single word, namely, non-interventionism. This theory states that military, economic and humanitarian intervention in the internal affairs of other nations is improper, immoral and dangerous.

It is based in the more fundamental theory of non-aggression, which, as outlined in a previous essay, is the bedrock principle of libertarianism. This is the belief that, as stated by libertarian scholar Walter Block, "It shall be legal for anyone to do anything he wants, provided only that he not initiate (or threaten) violence against the person or legitimately owned property of another."

At very few times in our nation's history have any of our leaders espoused or practiced this doctrine, especially when applied to foreign policy. As military historian Laurence Vance put it,

"U.S. foreign policy has resulted in the destabilization and overthrow of governments, the assassination of leaders, the destruction of industry and infrastructure, the backing of military coups, death squads, and drug traffickers, imperialism under the guise of humanitarianism, support for corrupt and tyrannical governments, interference in the elections of other countries, taking sides or intervening in civil wars, engaging in provocative naval actions under the guise of protecting freedom of navigation, thousands of dubious covert actions, the dismissal of civilian casualties as collateral damage, the United States being the arms dealer to the world, and the United States bribing and bullying itself around the world as the world’s policeman, fireman, social worker, and busybody."

History agrees with this statement. Below is a list of a small percentage of the military actions the U.S. has undertaken since the 1970s, and some examples of what we did.

· Cuba, the U.S. has been blockading them since 1963, more than forty years.

· Australia, in 1973, the CIA interferes to manipulate the free election process.

· Chile, in 1973, a CIA financed coup ousts the elected President.

· Portugal, in 1974.

· Angola, in 1976.

· Afghanistan, in 1979 the U.S. began to secretly finance, train and arm mujahedeen rebels including rebel leader Osama Bin Laden. These mujahedeen eventually formed what we now call Al Qaeda.

· El Salvador, in 1980 the U.S. funded a government found to have committed gross human rights violations.

· Nicaragua, in 1981.

· Chad, in 1982.

· Libya, in 1982.

· Honduras, in 1982.

· Lebanon, in 1982.

· Grenada, in 1983.

· Iraq, in 1987 the U.S. supported and armed Sadaam Hussein’s Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war.

· Iran, in 1988, the U.S. shoots down a civilian passenger airline, almost 300 dead.

· Libya, in 1989.

· Philippines, in 1989.

· Panama, in 1989, U.S. forces invade and kill the President, and an estimated 2,000 innocent civilians, including some American tourists.

· Kuwait, in 1990.

· Iraq, in 1990, the U.S. blockade kills 10,000 Iraqis monthly.

· Bulgaria, in 1991.

· Somalia, in 1992.

· Peru, in 1992.

· Colombia, in 1992.

· Bosnia, in 1994.

· Haiti, in 1994.

· Sudan, in 1998.

· Afghanistan, in 1998, U.S. lobs missiles into some factories.

· Yugoslavia, in 1999.

· Yemen, in 2000.

· Afghanistan, in 2001.

· Iraq, in 2003.

· Pakistan, in 2004, U.S. begins drone attacks, continue to this day.

In addition, we currently have American troops in nearly 150 countries worldwide and we have almost 800 military bases worldwide. The U.S. has also attempted to assassinate elected presidents in Iraq, Haiti, The Congo, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam and Cuba, to name but a few.

The facts positively mock any reasonable person who believes that the U.S. government hasn't practiced a foreign policy of expansionism and militarism. Nevertheless, the forces supporting war and interventionism have a death-grip on our policy-making, and their propaganda resonates in the uneducated ears of many in this country. As a believer in the non-interventionist norm, I've have been confronted on my beliefs by many of these ignorant naysayers, some even resorting to calling me a terrorist, or my beliefs a sin against God. The funny part about their perfunctory, half-baked critiques is that they are incredibly predictable. Those in power who support war have been feeding the American public the same lines for years, to the point where I can predict with absolute certainty which will be clumsily hurled in my direction. In the following series of essays, I will demonstrate how each of these oft-rehashed arguments fall flat on their faces when compared to reality. Stay tuned.

Lysander Spooner on the Criminality of the State

2010-06-18T00:18:00.001-04:00

Excerpted from Lysander Spooner's No Treason:

"It is true that the theory of our Constitution is, that all taxes are paid voluntarily; that our government is a mutual insurance company, voluntarily entered into by the people with each other.

But this theory of our government is wholly different from the practical fact. The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: “Your money, or your life.” And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat.

The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the roadside, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful.

The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a “protector,” and that he takes men’s money against their will, merely to enable him to “protect” those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful “sovereign,” on account of the “protection” he affords you. He does not keep “protecting” you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villainies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave."

Basic Libertarianism

2010-04-26T12:28:00.003-04:00

In the course of human and societal development, few questions have caused as much division and ill will as the question of governance. It seems mankind has been as splintered on this issue as it has been on any issue. However, when the entire gamut of political opinions is reduced to its most simple categories, only two belief systems emerge: a system founded upon the belief that the state (also known as government) should have governing power and one that is founded upon the belief that the state should not have governing power. Before each of these is examined, it is necessary to explain the reason that this debate exists in the first place.

Man is born a social creature. It is in his nature to interact with other creatures. This interpersonal interaction takes two basic and mutually exclusive forms: cooperation and violence. Cooperation occurs when two or more parties (individuals or groups) decide voluntarily to exchange resources (possessions, labor or skill), or to use their resources in combination for a common goal. Violence occurs when one party (an individual or group) causes harm to another party’s person or possessions, or threatens to cause harm thereto, either for it’s own sake, or in order to force the second party to act in accordance with the first’s demands.

Imbedded in man’s nature are warring impulses, some to cooperate, and some to engage in violence. These two impulses are at war in the mind of every man.

There came a time when some men decided to initiate systems of mass violence, under the guises of maintaining “social order.” Thus the state was born.

The State as a Violent Entity

For a good definition of the state as an institution, we will turn to the political philosopher Murray N. Rothbard. He defines the state as

“a group of people who have managed to acquire a virtual monopoly of the use of violence throughout a given territorial area… to wield power over the inhabitants of the area and to enjoy the material fruits of that power.”

To put it simply, a state is a band of persons who employ the use violent interactions, as described above, to coercively obtain labor and resources from the citizens. (Another term for the state is government, but as I will explain, this term can easily lead to confusion.)

As described earlier, the two types of interpersonal interactions are cooperation and violence. In the same way, the great German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer described two basic mutually exclusive ways to obtain wealth; one, that of production and exchange, he called the "economic means." The other way is the way of seizure of another's goods or services by the use of force and violence. This method Oppenheimer termed "the political means" to wealth. The economic means to wealth is an example of interpersonal cooperation, while the political means to wealth is an example of interpersonal violence. Therefore, in essence, the state is the institutionalization of the political means to wealth.

This is true for the following reason. The only resources the state has it acquires as a result of violence. In the modern state, this violence takes the form of property confiscation and prison sentences for those who fail to pay taxes. Taxation is, in essence, the state taking that which it did not earn, on the threat of violence. To better illustrate this, consider the mafia. Suppose the mafia decided to enter a local community, and tell Ted the shopkeeper that he must pay a weekly sum of money to the mafia, else the gang will torch his shop. Thus, Ted the shopkeeper is forced, on the threat of violence, to give the mafia money it did not earn, or else have his property aggressed against. Now, imagine this mafia is the state, and the situation will become clear. In essence, the state is acting like the mafia; it is withholding violence against the citizen, so long as the citizen pays protection money, in this case, taxes.

Two Ways Out: Statism vs. Libertarianism

Here we come to the point of defining the two specific political philosophies that therefore emerge. Those who believe that the state is the proper vehicle for maintaining civil order are called statists. The statist either denies the reality that the state is an agent of violence, or it deems this reality inconsequential, or an insufficient reason not to allow the state to govern. Examination will show that the overwhelming majority of political debate is comprised of petty arguments between different factions of statists.

However, another system of political philosophy exists. This is the philosophy that holds that, for reasons that will soon be examined, the state is an illegitimate form of governing body. This belief has a number of names associated with it, some accurate and some not. These include voluntarism, anarchism, individualism, anti-statism, among others. For various reasons which this volume is too short to include, these terms are either widely misunderstood, or are not sufficiently descriptive. For our purposes, we will call the position that does not give intellectual support to the state libertarianism. Now, there are a number of definitions of the term libertarian that are incorrect. However, the definition that will be given in this volume is historically the most appropriate definition and use of the term.

At the core of libertarianism is the philosophy of self-ownership. This is the belief that, with regard to interpersonal relations, man is not born subservient or inferior to any other man. Only he is in control of his faculties, (thinking, reasoning, speaking, working, etc.) and only he is entitled to their use. Therefore, any form of violence undertaken by Smith against Jones, such as slavery, murder, injury, etc., is a violation of Jones’ right to the sole use of his person as he deems fit. If Smith cuts off Jones’ hand, Jones does not have the ability to use his hand as he desires, and therefore, his self-ownership is violated by Smith.

By extension, every person has a right to the use of the physical property that he has justly acquired. A person justly acquires property either by voluntarily exchanging some of his property with another person, by receiving the property as a voluntary gift from another person, or by homesteading a previously unowned piece of property. This homesteading occurs when a person mixes his labor with the property, as philosopher John Locke put it. To understand this, consider a wood carver. If the wood carver finds a tree that has no claim of ownership upon it, and he uses his skill and labor to cut it down, and to carve a sculpture out of it, no one can argue that the sculpture is not justly his. The sculpture is an extension of himself in that it is a physical representation of the use of his faculties, in this case, his skill and labor. Philosophers have called this the theory of property rights.

Thus, the libertarian philosophy upholds the injustice of the violent form of interpersonal relations. All violent interpersonal relations whether they are undertaken by the state, or by a gang of thugs, (which is essentially the definition of the state) violates the victim’s right to self-ownership. Therefore, the libertarian calls for the abolition of any institution that seeks to perpetuate violence. The state is such an institution. In fact, throughout history, the state has been the chief instrument of violence on this earth. As philosopher Jarret B. Wollstein states in his outstanding discourse entitled Society Without Coercion,

“Whenever one thinks of the worst injustices in history — massive wastes, confiscatory taxes, purposeless wars, great depressions, slavery, concentration camps, and genocide — one inevitably finds that such injustices were either a direct or an indirect result of governmental action.”

Thus, there are both practical and moral reasons for the libertarian not to give intellectual consent to the institution of the state.

The Voluntary Society

More than any other institution, the state has come to rely on superstition, tradition, and the perpetuation of myth to maintain its existence. Nowhere has reason eluded society more than in the fallacy of the necessity of the state. In no other institution have the crimes of theft, slavery, and murder gone unpunished than the state. In fact, because the delusion of the necessity of the state has become so advanced, society regularly welcomes the crimes of theft, slavery and murder when they are undertaken by the state.

Society has come to hold the government to a completely different moral standard than its own. To use the mafia example explained above, were the mafia to order a storeowner to pay protection money on a regular basis, under threat of physical violence, society would rightly call that an extortion racket. But when a government agency orders that same storeowner to fork over large sums of money on a regular basis, under threat of physical violence, society calls it taxes, and maintains the innocence of the act and the thief.

It seems society has come to view the acts of force perpetrated by the state as not only innocent, but inevitable. Benjamin Franklin exemplified this when he lamented, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Why is it that an institution whose every act necessitates the use of coercion has enjoyed such a high reputation amongst its victims?

The main reason is that from birth, we’ve been bombarded with this state apologia. It comes from the state-connected media, the state-connected philosophers and historians, and most importantly, from the state-connected educational institutions. It should come as no surprise that the curriculum of the state-run schools inculcates students with the myth of the necessity of the state. Therefore, it is at least partially understandable why this myth has become so widespread. We live, work, breathe and learn within the matrix of the state. As such, it is difficult to see any possible reality outside one with the state as the institution of civil order. However, libertarians do see this reality clearly, and it is a reality based upon cooperative interpersonal interaction.

In a libertarian society, law would be administered by private, competing arbitration agencies. If Jones claims that Smith stole his wallet, Jones has the ability to bring the case before one of these agencies. As is the case with all competing firms, Jones will choose the firm that enjoys the highest reputation for fairness. If the arbitration agency finds Smith guilty of the theft, it would order Smith to return the wallet, plus any court fees, damages, interest that Jones incurred as a result of the theft. If Smith is not able to pay, the agency may set up the terms of an agreement whereby Smith becomes indentured to work for Jones until the value of the stolen object plus other fees is returned.

The above situation is simply one example of a libertarian alternative to a state function. The libertarian alternatives to state action are fairly complex, and therefore cannot be explained in their entirety in this essay. For a more complete explanation of the libertarian society, the reader should examine two books: Chaos Theory, by Dr. Robert P. Murphy Jr. and For A New Liberty, by Murray N. Rothbard. There is also a large amount of literature from the libertarian tradition available at the website for the Mises Institute.

To put it simply, every function that the state performs can be performed more efficiently and morally by private interests in cooperative interpersonal relations. So often, the terms government and governance are thought to be synonymous. This is a myth. Governance, that is, natural authority and order, is part of the natural order of the universe. Government, that is, an organization that relies on violence, theft, murder and slavery, fails even the most basic test of morality and logic. Those who argue for a voluntary society do not argue against governance, but government, that is, the state. This voluntary society will not only save lives and create wealth, but will conform to basic concepts of morality.

Pro Libertas

Pro Aequitas

Pro Virtus

Concerning War, Just and Unjust

2010-04-13T16:22:00.010-04:00

The political philosophy presented in this medium is what some would call libertarian. At the heart of libertarian philosophy is what is known as a non-aggression axiom. This is the belief that, as stated by libertarian scholar Walter Block, "It shall be legal for anyone to do anything he wants, provided only that he not initiate (or threaten) violence against the person or legitimately owned property of another." Furthermore, the only legitimate use of violence in the libertarian system is to defend oneself against aggression towards one's person or legitimately owned property.

This philosophy of non-violence can and must be applied both on a micro level and a macro level in order to maintain ideological consistency. On the micro level, this would mean that Jones would have no legal right to Smith’s legitimately obtained car, and that if Jones attempted to steal Smith’s car, Smith would have a right to defend his property with the use of violent force. If applied on a macro level, the non-aggression axiom illuminates the heart of libertarian just war theory.

In a libertarian society, a just war occurs when several key criteria are met. First, as the imminent libertarian philosopher Murray N. Rothbard pointed out, a just war occurs “when a people tries to ward off the threat of coercive domination by another people, or to overthrow an already-existing domination.” This situation is similar to the aforementioned Jones-Smith scenario. An example of such a conflict is the American Revolution. The colonists justly took up arms to defend their lives and properties against a coercively domineering British government.

Another criterion for a just war is that just wars are fought using no coercively obtained funds. Libertarians believe that taxation, the when the State coercively takes citizens’ money upon the threat of violence, is a form of theft. In the case of taxation, the justly acquired property of one person is taken not by voluntary means, but by violent means. Much more can be said about this topic, but this brief overview will have to suffice for our purposes here. Therefore, the libertarian non-aggression axiom holds that military action funded by taxation does not meet the standard of a just war.

A third plank in the libertarian just war doctrine is the belief that just wars are fought using only voluntary labor rather than forced labor. Libertarians believe that involuntary servitude, the act of forcing a person to perform a task or tasks upon the threat of violence, violates the basic right of self-ownership. Self-ownership is the principle that in the state of nature, man is not born subservient to or owned by any person other than himself. Only he has control over his faculties, and therefore, only he has the right to their use. Therefore, involuntary servitude, as is required when conscription is instituted during war, is not just. Military action undertaken using conscripted soldiers is not justified under the libertarian commitment to non-aggression.

A further application of the principle of non-aggression leads to a fourth criterion for just war, namely, the belief that just wars are fought when no private civilians’ lives or property is endangered against their will. It should be plain to see how any military action that leads to the loss of the lives or the properties of civilians violates those civilians’ right to the ownership of their persons and possessions.

The fifth and final thesis in the libertarian view of just war is the belief that the rights of countries or persons to remain neutral must be respected in order for the conflict to be defined as just. Again, as is the case with the previous points, this simply is a further extension of the libertarian commitment to non-aggression. Again, to cite Rothbard, “In short, the libertarian tries to induce neutral States to remain neutral in any inter-State conflict and to induce the warring States to observe fully the rights of neutral citizens.”

Thus, military conflict can be just, unjust, or somewhere in between. A conflict that meets several of these criteria, but not all, may be called more just than a conflict that meets none, but it cannot be called just qua just.

Historically, the military action that has come closest to meeting these criteria is the war for the liberation of Bangladesh, which occurred in 1971. The nation of Pakistan consisted of imperial rule by the Punjabis of West Pakistan over the more numerous and productive Bengalis of East Pakistan. The Bengals desired independence from their imperial rulers. When the Punjab army began slaughtering civilian Bengalis as a result of a decisive Bengali parliamentary victory, the Bengali people took up arms in their defense to shake off the coercive rule of the Punjabis.

The libertarian position is not pacifist, as is claimed by some misinformed critics, but rather it is based upon the principal that persons and property must not be threatened with violence. In a future essay, we will examine how U.S. foreign policy has for years ignored this principal. For further research, we would point the reader to the writings of Erasmus, late Spanish scholastics like Grotius and de Vitoria, early English parliamentary Radicals like John Bright and Richard Cobden, and Murray N. Rothbard. Their writings considerably influenced the view presented above. This discourse should serve to show that a comprehensive, non-arbitrary, non-contradictory theory of just war is only possible under a larger philosophy of non-aggression.

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Pro Virtus
Pro Aequitas

The One-Paragraph Definition of the State

2010-03-22T00:38:00.001-04:00

Excerpted from Murray N. Rothbard's essay War, Peace, and the State:

The State is a group of people who have managed to acquire a virtual monopoly of the use of violence throughout a given territorial area. In particular, it has acquired a monopoly of aggressive violence, for States generally recognize the right of individuals to use violence (though not against States, of course) in self-defense. The State then uses this monopoly to wield power over the inhabitants of the area and to enjoy the material fruits of that power. The State, then, is the only organization in society that regularly and openly obtains its monetary revenues by the use of aggressive violence; all other individuals and organizations (except if delegated that right by the State) can obtain wealth only by peaceful production and by voluntary exchange of their respective products. This use of violence to obtain its revenue (called "taxation") is the keystone of State power.

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Pro Virtus
Pro Aequitas

26 Reasons Not To Blame Capitalism

2010-02-01T13:31:00.003-05:00

As the economy goes through another painful correction, the charge voiced incessantly by the demagogues in Washington and the media at large is that “capitalism” is to blame for the current economic state. Nothing could be farther from the truth. This claim is not based on fact, but on a political agenda, the goal of which is the elimination of the market system, the system responsible for the creation of wealth. Capitalism must not be blamed for this or any economic crisis, because for decades capitalism has not been allowed to see the light of day in this country. The economic system we have can at best be described as state-managed crony capitalism. Capitalism is not the cause of poor economic conditions, because we have not had capitalism. Here are a few examples.

A system of capitalism presumes sound money, the type and quantity of which is determined by market players, not worthless fiat money that can be manipulated by central government planners at any time and for any reason.
A system of capitalism presumes that the coinage of money, like the creation of any other good, is open to competition on the market.
A system of capitalism presumes that interest rates are determined naturally by the rate of savings, not by non-market manipulation by the central bank.
A system of capitalism presumes that regulations regarding private enterprise are agreed to voluntarily, and not mandated by central government planners.
A system of capitalism presumes that any company can merge with any other company at will, without being subject to criminal prosecution.
A system of capitalism presumes that any company can sell or buy back its stock at will, without being subject to criminal prosecution.
A system of capitalism presumes that the wages an employer pays to employees are determined by voluntary contract, not manipulated by the wage control laws of the central government.
A system of capitalism presumes that the prices a producer charges are set naturally as a result of a balance between supply and demand, not manipulated by the price control laws of the central government.
A system of capitalism presumes that banks may lend to whomever they choose for whatever reason they choose, and that they will not be forced by the central government to make unwise loans.
A system of capitalism presumes that businesses may trade with whomever they choose at whatever time they choose, and that no protectionist anti-trade laws of the central government will hinder that trade.
A system of capitalism presumes that no international body can presume to force businesses to adhere to restrictions of international trade.
A system of capitalism presumes that no business will earn special favors and subsidies from the central government.
A system of capitalism presumes that no business can enjoy privileged government contracts.
A system of capitalism presumes that businesses will be able to keep their profits, and would not be subject to insanely complex and exorbitant corporate taxes.
A system of capitalism presumes that persons will be allowed to control the use of their own property, and will not be subject to theft by the central government.
A system of capitalism presumes that the central government has no right to incur a national debt with public money.
A system of capitalism presumes that consumers will never be forced to buy any product, such as insurance, by the central government.
A system of capitalism presumes that no central government will have a legal monopoly of, or play any role at all in the system of education.
A system of capitalism presumes that no central government will have a legal monopoly of, or play any role at all in the system of currency creation.
A system of capitalism presumes that no central government will have a legal monopoly of, or play any role at all in the offering of student loans.
A system of capitalism presumes that no central government will have a legal monopoly of, or play any role at all in the manufacture of automobiles (or any other product.)
A system of capitalism presumes that no central government will have a legal monopoly of, or play any role at all in the system of health care.
A system of capitalism presumes that no central government will have a legal monopoly of, or play any role at all in the redistribution of wealth known as welfare.
A system of capitalism presumes that no central government will have a legal monopoly of, or play any role at all in the delivery of mail.
A system of capitalism presumes that no central government will have a legal monopoly of, or play any role at all in the insurance market.
A system of capitalism presumes that no central government will have a legal monopoly of, or play any role at all in the system of banking

The list is seemingly endless. This partial list serves only to demonstrate some of the reasons why blaming capitalism for economic crises is childish and ignorant. Not one of the presumptions listed above is a feature of our current economic system. Not a single one. And yet time after time, policy makers and elected officials get away with blaming markets for all the world’s woes. Their solution is always more government. For example, when the nationalized public school system consistently produces incredibly appalling results, at a cost tens of thousands of dollars per student above the market level, the solution always offered by the demagogues is to throw more public money into the school system. Under market conditions, any school system operating so poorly would not be able to stay afloat. Under market conditions, those in charge of the schools would have to come up with a better product at a lower cost. That is exactly what the private school system has done, much to the chagrin of central government planners.

An economic system based on sound money, private property, free trade, private contracts, non-intervention, and market-determined wages and prices; this is the essence of a capitalist system. Not one of these exist in our current system. Until all of these are implemented, calling our current system “capitalism” is irresponsible, immature, and demonstrates the truly delusional mindset of those who clamor for central planning.

Pro Libertas
Pro Virtus
Pro Aequitas

Teachable Moments in Economic History, Volume 2

2010-01-29T01:46:00.002-05:00

Another myth about the Great Depression is the belief that the downturn was ended by World War II. We will refer to this as the WWII myth. While this assessment is correct in denying credit to the New Deal, it offers an alternative that is based on a fallacy. The claim often repeated is that America’s entrance into the war produced jobs for many unemployed, and created enormous demand for products needed for the war effort, such as metals, plastics and rubber.

However, to argue that this led to overall economic growth is simply not appropriate. The number of unemployed Americans at the start of the war was approximately five million, and the government drafted eleven million to serve in combat. The claim that this solved the unemployment problem is at best naïve. Obviously, the number of unemployed people would decrease if the jobless were employed by the government to sit in a foxhole in Germany. By this line of reasoning, the government could magically erase unemployment by shooting all unemployed people. It should be plain to see how this would not address the underlying economic problems that caused the unemployment.

The assumption behind the WWII myth is essentially Keynesian in nature. Those who argue this point are saying that a massive government spending increase kick-started demand and brought the economy out of depression. This belief is influenced by the same underlying fallacy that belies the New Deal myth, namely, that private industry was incapable of directing capital properly, and it took the almighty government to show the way by spending massive amounts of public funds.

The idea that war creates a boon for industry because products are needed for the war effort is based on what Frederic Bastiat calls “The Broken Window Fallacy.” In his work “That Which is Seen and That Which is Not Seen,” as economist Anthony Gregory explains, “Bastiat asks his reader to imagine a delinquent boy throwing a rock through a store window, about which some presumptuous onlooker comments that it might indeed be good for the economy. The glazier will make money replacing the window, which he will use to buy bread from a baker, who in turn will buy a new pair of shoes. The economic activity will snowball and lead to greater general prosperity. (In modern times, Keynesian economics has favorably referred to this as ‘the multiplier effect.’) What this ignores, as Bastiat explains, is the unseen costs: what the storeowner could have done with that money had he not had to spend it on the glazier, but rather on something he would value higher had his window been left intact.” What is seen is only a transaction between the shopkeeper whose window was broken and the glazier. If these are the only parties considered, it might indeed seem that employment went up as a result of the broken window. However, what is not seen is the new suit the shopkeeper intended to buy, but could not because he had to pay for the broken window. Thus business is denied to the maker of suits, and given to the maker of glass windows. No new wealth is created.

The thought that destruction of wealth via war creates new wealth is an example of this fallacy operating in our time. By way of reductio ad absurdum, we can state that the logical course of action for any government wishing to increase wealth would be to stockpile all the nation’s wealth into a rocket and shoot it into space. In the case of Bastiat’s example, it would mean the most economically productive thing the boy could do would be to go down the street smashing every window in sight. The reasons why this would not create wealth should be glaringly obvious.

When government seizes private funds and directs them towards a destructive effort, namely war, it does create some jobs. However, this is only half the picture, as countless private entrepreneurial ventures are hereby not allowed to take place. To say that the government war effort was the best creator of jobs that could have happened, which is the underlying assumption in the WWII myth, is to fall for the Keynesian lie that government stimulus is needed to aid failing economies. If the production of tanks and airplanes truly were precisely what the economy needed at that time, the free market would have naturally shifted production to tanks and airplanes. The fact that it did not shift its production to these products, aside from non-market government intervention, illustrates that the production of tanks and airplanes was not the proper use of private capital. This, of course, is not what the believer in government spending would have you think. A crucial plank in Keynesian philosophy is the belief that those who own capital are not competent to invest or spend that capital optimally, and that some central planner in Washington D.C. would do a better job. As humorist Dave Barry sarcastically put it, “See, when the government spends money, it creates jobs; whereas when the money is left in the hands of taxpayers, God only knows what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to avoid creating jobs.”

The real cause of the end of the Great Depression was the end of the government restrictions and expenditures imposed by the Roosevelt Administration. During wartime, the government imposed an enormous amount of restrictions, limitations and prohibitions to private enterprise. As economist and author Robert Higgs explains in his essay for the peer-reviewed Journal of Economic Policy, “Commodity markets were pervasively subject to controls: price controls, rationing, and in some cases outright prohibition in the consumer goods markets; and price controls, prohibitions, priorities, conservation and limitation orders, quotas, set-asides, scheduling, allocations, and other restrictions in the market for raw materials, components, and capital equipment. While taxes were raised enormously, many forms of production received subsidies so the price controls would not drive suppliers from the market.” Indeed, the climate during the war years was one of a command-control economy, with an unprecedented degree of central planning. Higgs explains that the erosion of property rights under the New Deal resulted in an environment where businessmen and investors were unsure of what to expect, and so abstained from investment. According to Higgs, “For the eleven years from 1930 to 1940, net private investment totaled minus $3.1 billion. Only in 1941 did net private investment ($9.7 billion) exceed the 1929 amount.”

What did end the Depression was the lifting of these controls, and the end of the war effort. From 1945 to 1947, the government budget was reduced from $95 billion to $35 billion, thus freeing up resources for the use of private enterprise. The lifting of government restrictions and expenditures made the year 1946 was the most robust year of economic growth in all of American history, with the private sector growing 30% in that one year. The private sector has never grown anywhere near 15% in any other year. It is interesting to note that this outcome is precisely the opposite of what the Keynesian crowd predicted. They would have warned that a huge cutback in government spending like this would have plunged us back into depression. Fortunately, as always, the Keynesians were proven wrong. Unfortunately, as clear as the evidence is, the myth of war prosperity continues, and is even perpetuated by those who claim to believe in free markets. It is high time this fallacy is put to rest once and for all. The simple truth is this: war reallocates resources from productive ventures which create wealth, such as business, to violent ventures which destroy wealth, like bombs.

Pro Libertas
Pro Virtus
Pro Aequitas

Teachable Moments in Economic History, Volume 1

2009-12-26T23:47:00.005-05:00

A theme often emphasized in the writings of the late Murray N. Rothbard is that the ultimate power of the state rests in the realm of ideas. The powerful but secret tool of demagogues designed to keep themselves above scrutiny is their ability to perpetuate myths, superstitions, and fallacies about the grandiosity and benevolence of the state, and the positive outcomes of state intervention. In America, one of these great myths is the supposed success of the New Deal in curing the Great Depression.

Nearly every time President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is mentioned in the popular media, it is with high praise. Even those who claim to support limited government, like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, have succumbed to the popular pro-Roosevelt sentiment. Gingrich referred to Roosevelt as the greatest political figure of the 20^th century because his actions ended the Great Depression.

Roosevelt is said to have alleviated the economic ills of the 1930s by implementing a host of new entitlement programs, make-work programs, government bureaucracies, and special privileges to labor unions. Roosevelt was a student of the latest economic fad of his day, namely Keynesianism. This “new” school of economic thought, articulated by British economist John Maynard Keynes, was really just a repackaging of centuries-old statist ideology. Keynes maintained that, during an economic recession or depression, consumers simply are not spending as they should, and therefore it is government’s obligation to make up for this reduction in spending. The fallacy in this line of reasoning is that periods of market correction, in the form of economic downturns, must never be allowed to happen. As economist Henry Hazlitt observed in his treatise, Economics in One Lesson,

“Everywhere government spending is presented as a panacea for all our economic ills. Is private industry partially stagnant? We can fix it all by government spending. Is there unemployment? That is obviously due to ‘insufficient private purchasing power.’ The remedy is just as obvious. All that is necessary is for the government to spend enough to make up the ‘deficiency.’”

The underlying assumption is that market players are not able or competent to make good choices with their own property, and that somehow central government planners are. This is what Nobel Laureate Friedrich August von Hayek called “the pretense of knowledge.” The idea that some central planner can possess all the knowledge that is in the minds of all the participants in markets is a fallacy that has taken root in the mainstream of political and popular thought.

The real cause of economic downturns is that the central government, through monetary, fiscal and regulatory policy, promotes spending in directions that would have otherwise not occurred, creating an artificial boom in those sectors. This artificial economic growth must naturally be corrected by cutbacks on the part of industry and consumers because this growth is based on decisions made as a result of government signals rather than real market signals.

Roosevelt had exactly the mindset demonstrated in Hazlitt’s writing. His massive spending programs were aimed at injecting public money into areas of the economy that were not performing well enough in his opinion. However, as economist Robert P. Murphy explained, spending public money to solve pullbacks is like treating a patient with a fever by using a dirty needle to take some blood from his leg and injecting it into his arm. The simple fact is that public money given to any private interest must come from another sector of the economy, thus weakening that sector.

Given this understanding of the underlying fallacy, an examination of the effects of this intervention is in order. If the figures are examined, one can see that the employment programs instituted by Roosevelt did not decrease unemployment. Even the Government’s official statistics show that in 1939, almost a decade after the New Deal was put into effect, unemployment was still 19%, as opposed to a 1929 level of 2.9%. Indeed, the figures indicate that Roosevelt’s programs extended the Great Depression for several years past what it would have lasted under normal circumstances. As Richard Vedder and Lowell E. Gallaway showed in their book Out of Work, A History of Unemployment and Government in the 20^th Century, the New Deal programs made unemployment at least seven or eight percentage points higher than it would have otherwise been. One such example is in how the special privileges granted to labor unions by Roosevelt allowed them to keep wages above market level, pricing many workers out of jobs they otherwise might have had.

Today’s policy makers clearly have not learned these lessons. The reason this ideology of market intervention has become so widespread is that it buys votes. The promise of something for nothing resonates with the short-sighted, self-absorbed citizen in a way that ensures the election of politicians who offer such a promise. The only way to stop the perpetuation of these fallacies is to become educated enough to spot them when they are advocated by our political leaders, and to challenge them with simple economic truth.

Pro Libertas
Pro Virtus
Pro Aequitas

On Private Property, and the Link Between Economic and Political Liberty

2009-11-15T15:56:00.012-05:00

Economic liberty and political liberty are linked by the concept of private property. This concept has been crucial to western thinking, with thinkers like Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Comte, and Bastiat all arguing for the value of private property. Comte stated that “Interference by the state over the centuries in property ownership has had dire consequences for justice as well as for economic productivity.” Bastiat argued that life, faculties and production – or life, liberty and property, were the quintessence of man, and that the spirit of private property had much to do with the social and economic progress seen in every stage of human history.

However, this spirit has little or no influence on the modern western legislator. Since the advent of Keynesian economic theory, virtually every nation has enacted Keynes’ ideas, often at the expense of private property. Keynes’ assertion, that the government has a right to inject public money into failing or worthless investments in order to save them, and that a government owes its citizens a living, through welfare programs and subsidies to certain groups like the unemployed, did much to erode the public concept of the intrinsic value of private property. Bastiat called these practices the conversion of the law in order to protect the “legal plunder” of certain classes. This legal plunder takes place “when the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong.” Protective tariffs, subsidies, guaranteed profits, guaranteed jobs, relief and welfare schemes, public education, taxation, free credit, and public works programs are examples of legal plunder that have become completely ingrained into the collective mindset of this and nearly every country in the world.

It is impossible for the central government to redistribute wealth without some degree of violation of private property rights. Since these rights are such an integral part of the nature of mankind, this practice of legal plunder links economic policy with political and personal liberty. If the private property rights of an individual are removed or diminished, his political influence and freedoms will likewise be curtailed. The well-being of the entire nation suffers as a result.

Pro Libertas
Pro Virtus
Pro Aequitas

To Enliven The Spirit Of Resistance

2009-10-04T03:08:00.028-04:00

One of the founders of this young nation, Thomas Jefferson, once said, “The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.” If history has taught us anything, it is that Mr. Jefferson’s argument does not go far enough. The spirit of resistance to government is valuable on all occasions. Thus it would behoove any nation to be constantly prodding and stirring this spirit of resistance, in order that it would not on any occasion, doze off.

But what of this resistance? What is its character? What is being resisted? To answer these questions, a brief overview of history is in order. Throughout man’s existence on this earth, the question of order and governance has been a subject of contention and debate in every society. Should government be powerful, ensuring conformity and punishing those deemed wrong, or should it leave men free to exercise their own will? In most societies, prior to the founding of our nation, governments tended toward the former.

However, in the late 1600s the spirit of resistance to government was astir. Classical theorists like John Locke, Algernon Sidney, and Voltaire began to speak out against the heavy-handed monarchical systems they saw all around them. Their theories were radical in that era. Locke’s idea that government is morally obliged to serve people, namely by protecting life, liberty, and property, stood in direct contrast to the strong-armed monarchies and oligarchies that were in power in virtually every civilized country at the time. When the American colonies decided to declare their independence from the crown, they built their entire form of government around the idea of natural rights and freedom from oppression. The Declaration of Independence states boldly and clearly, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

They affirmed the doctrine that a government only has precisely the amount of power society has given it, and no more. Just as the State has no money except that which has been allotted to it by the people, it also has no power except that which has been granted to it by the people.

Furthermore, the Declaration makes very plain the rights of the people to make amendments to their government should it become too powerful. “Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends,” states the Declaration, “it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.” This time-honored principle must recapture the hearts and minds of Americans today. There is no need to consider violent overthrow of our government, for we are not yet at such a desperate point. But now is the time to alter it, as we have the Constitutional capacity to do, in order to avoid future desperation and strife.


We must ask ourselves a basic question: For what purpose are governments instituted among men? To answer this, we must look at man in his most basic state. We will call this the state of nature. The natural man has two desires. The first is to tend to his own interests, even at the expense of those of his fellow man. History bears clear witness to this fact.

The second desire of the natural man is for freedom. Natural man is not born subservient to man, but on a level plane with all men. Therefore, it is placed within man, from the day he is born, a desire to be individually sovereign.

Were these desires to be acted upon every time without vice, there would indeed need not be any government at all. Every man would properly exercise his natural freedom and act to preserve himself and his family. However, there is on this earth no man who acts without vice. He steals his fellow man’s property, he threatens his fellow man, and he influences society to do likewise. Therefore, the natural man comes to a place where he must institute a form of government, an authority to punish the vices of man. Thus, as Thomas Paine stated, “Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence.” It also follows that the greater the vices of a people, the greater their need for government, and for greater government. Thus the saying, “People always get the government they deserve.” is, at least in a sense, found to be true.

If this aphorism is, in fact, true, it should be our task to examine our present government, and determine what we have done to get it. For if we, as has been established, have perfectly followed the laws of nature and of nature’s God, we should have no government whatsoever. Yet, as even a cursory examination of our American system will show, we do indeed have a government, and a robust and powerful one at that. How did we get to this point? I believe we are here for many reasons, which all can be summed up in one word: laziness.

Our nation's founders were brave, wise and most of all, tireless men. They accomplished the almost unimaginable feat of creating an entire nation from a ragtag band of immigrants. The form of government they established was one that provided for national security, but left men free to pursue happiness as they saw fit. Yet in the more than 200 years since that time, we have seen the citizens of this nation grow tired and apathetic. More and more power was turned over from society to the State. As social theorist Albert J. Nock stated, “There is never, nor can there be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.” Also, as Nock noted, as this power of a society decreases, so does the desire to act. This is what has happened in this country.

Some of the greatest transfers of power from society to the State occurred during the Great Depression, under the administration of President Franklin Roosevelt. People were afraid, the State seized upon this opportunity, and ever greedy to engorge itself, offered something to which society was attracted at the time: the promise of stability. The State created dozens of new programs and bestowed upon itself massive power. This particular assumption of power by the State did not begin this trend, but it did establish a precedent that has greatly accelerated it. Now we have handed over so much power to the State, that when we see a natural disaster, like the great hurricane of 2005, the very first entity to which we turn for help is the “disaster relief” arm of the State. It has become so customary to think of the State as the solution to all our problems, and hardly anyone questions this mentality.

So it is, in fact, a vicious cycle. Society becomes lazy, it cedes power to the State, it loses the ability to resist laziness, thus becoming more lazy and ceding more power to the State.

The grievances this State has committed upon society are numerous. We have ceded so much power to the State that there is scarcely a street down which a man can walk where he will not see numerous signs of the activity of the State. There is an agency of the State, the Federal Reserve, that has fallen into the habit of creating money out of thin air and devaluing our currency to finance these increases in State power. A citizen cannot earn a single dollar without giving approximately four tenths to the State. And at the time of this writing, the American government owes $11,929, 902,189,892.74 in national debts. This year alone the debt has gone up $2 trillion, and it does not even phase those in power to talk about spending another trillion on health care legislation this year. Why does our government owe this much? Because we have been so lazy with the social power we naturally have, that we have ceded the majority of it to a few oligarchs in a far off capitol who are interested in nothing more than to expand their power. It is no wonder they have taken the power we have given them in the form of money and used it so unwisely as to owe the world trillions of dollars. For the State takes on a life of its own, and has no innate desire for the betterment of its people, but only desires to maintain its own existence. Thus it takes and spends at rates that should shock the conscience of any sensible person. And Society has, plainly and simply, enabled this process with its laziness. Leaving this much debt, taxation, and government impositions for future generations to deal with is a moral travesty which demonstrates a self-serving, short-sightedness of the most vile kind.


So what are Americans to do? How can we combat the natural, if sinful, tendency toward a lazy existence within our society? First, we must inform ourselves of the extent of the power we have so unwisely ceded to the State. Second, we must unite our voices against the further loss of liberty. Third, we must go about the business of taking back that power and freedoms we have already surrendered. In all our thoughts and actions we must listen to the Vox Rationis, the Voice of Reason, in order to determine the proper course. The time for idleness has past. The darkness of the ignorant must be illuminated, the conscience of the dormant must be stirred, and the spirit of resistance in every complacent man must be enlivened. This will require hard work, but it will not require complicated work. Bringing about change is not the task of merely the more politically or socially minded among us, but it is the common task of all man. For times like these, divine providence granted us common sense and reason. Let us use them to cast off the chains of repression, subservience and compulsion this State has thrown around us, that we may be able to pass on to posterity a more perfect union.

Pro Libertas
Pro Virtus
Pro Aequitas