A LITTLE REBELLION

Why Young Conservatives Are Drawn to Libertarian Politics

(via PolicyMic.com)

I can't help but feel confused by an organization like the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). On the one hand, Dick Cheney received roaring applause and a standing ovation and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was awarded the "Constitution Award."

On the other hand, a few of the smartest libertarian minds were also represented: author Thomas Woods, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, and Congressman Ron Paul. Campaign for Liberty and Antiwar.com - two libertarian outposts with significant grassroots influence - were also in attendance.

I have a hunch, however, that the old, stuffy, and wealthy right-wing donors at the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute are dying off; that their ideas of perpetual war and a "clash of civilizations" with Islam are losing sway with my generation.

As fellow PolicyMic contributor Christine Harbin - who also happened to be in D.C. attending the event - pointed out in her recent article:

Young people are dissatisfied with the status quo. They’re worried about the government’s rate of growth. They wonder whether the government will be able to pay for its promises without burdening the tax base. They disagree with the federal government on what issues should be a priority, and how they can be best achieved.

And she's right. The biggest thing I took away from watching the events at CPAC from the web here in San Francisco was how young people "crashed" CPAC and made their presence felt.

And it appeared that the overwhelming majority of youth were sympathetic not to the modern, war-mongering, torture-supporting, nationalist conservatism of the Republican Party, but to a classical (but still just as relevant and applicable) conservatism.

Some, like Fox News, have labeled these youth as "disrespectful libertarians," but it strikes much deeper than that. Sure, the politics of the followers of Ron Paul may be described as "libertarian" in this age of Left Statism and Right Statism, but in a different time, conservatives were making the same arguments libertarians are making today.

Frank Chodorov, Garet Garrett, John T. Flynn - the most prominent intellectuals of what has been dubbed "the Old Right" - were distinctively conservative in the very essence of the word. They understood that a moral and social order lies not in the power of the state but in the power of the individual and his right to exercise his liberty free from outside coercion.

Decentralized and limited government, private property, peace, an inherent suspicion of all things large, whether corporate or state; these ideas used to resonate with American conservatives before the movement was hijacked by neocons and warfare statists. “Small is beautiful” morphed into a defense of America’s state-capitalism, and the vision of a peaceful, commercial republic transformed into an ugly thirst for Pax Americana.

Although I consider myself a libertarian with anarchist impulses, I have always sympathized with the voluntary aspects of social and cultural conservatism; that morality and virtue do not come from government edict and are regulated best by communities and ostracism.

It is a strange feeling for someone who hasn't even hit 25 to feel such resonance with a philosophy held by old white guys that are long dead now, but living under a government that steals half your income, garrisons the globe, wages perpetual war, and twists morality like a pretzel makes a wild-eyed radical find strange bedfellows.

According to those that "hijacked" CPAC, I'm not alone. My generation is tired of the killing, of the police state, of the debt and taxes, of the utter racket that the American Empire brings.

As Ronald Reagan said, libertarianism is at the heart and soul of conservatism. It's time the Right re-discovers its roots and abandons its nationalistic and big government impulses.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

San Francisco's Sit/Lie Law: the Signs of a Police State?

Last April, I blogged about San Francisco's "sit/lie" law and all the things that are wrong with it.

By having the privilege of being able to see a lot of San Francisco on a daily basis, I can see why an issue like this would be of interest to city officials. The amount of panhandlers and homeless on the streets is staggering and sad, but when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

The law essentially makes it a crime to sit or lie on public sidewalks, which is a typical government response (pass a law!) to a problem largely created by government.

For example, how many of San Francisco's (or any other major city) homeless are veterans that were sent thousands of miles away in a war to kill and die for a government that routinely denies them basic medical care when they get back? Or what about old government legislation, passed during WW2, that forced employers to provide health insurance, thus individuals losing both if fired? Or the permanent underclass that is created by the government's insane prohibition of drugs?

It truly is exhausting cataloging the extent in which state intervention into society has incredibly harmful, counterproductive, and often unforeseen consequences, but even more frustrating that the solution to these problems is always....more laws, more force, more government.

And as it turns out, as this Alternet article explains, this law that kicked in last month was propelled by wealthy donors and business interests eager to shift the burden onto a coercive third party with very police-stateish implications. Corruption and crooked collusion in government? Who knew?

I know the "officials" and big, important people in the San Francisco city government (or any government) could ever contemplate the idea that they are fundamentally incapable of solving social problems, but I have a simple solution: stay as far away from this issue as possible; the more you do, the worse it gets.

For starters, why not lessening (or even eliminating!) the restrictions on starting businesses and acquiring employment, from licensing to the infinite amount of regulations and fees to minimum wage laws. All of these discourage economic growth and the free marketplace and make a life selling drugs or engaging in violent crime that much more appealing.

And secondly, give back the money taken from us through taxation so that we may spend it (and donate it) in the manner we see fit. That way we can volunteer, give money to charities, and provide for those less fortunate than us in the most moral and efficient way possible: voluntarily.

Democratic Double Standards in California

MyGovCost.org, a great website dedicated to showing what "our" government does with the money it forcibly confiscates from us and how corrupt our benevolent political masters are, explains the double standards being used by incoming California Governor Jerry Brown and California Democrats. Shocking, I know:

Governor Jerry Brown is proposing measures to balance the California state budget, including cutting $12.5 billion in spending and extending $12 billion in expiring taxes. The politically ambitious move from the new governor involves a sequencing of three legislative parts. The legislature would pass spending cuts, voters would then be able to vote in a special election to extend certain tax rates, and afterward the legislature would pass a final budget. However, Brown’s proposal faces trouble.

As the Christian Science Monitor reports, passing the state spending cuts could require a super-majority of two-thirds to get past the legislature. Often requiring a simple majority vote or less to determine government spending of taxpayer dollars, this appears to be a double standard.

There are good reasons for having some democratic double standards, albeit the opposite of what Gov. Brown may be up against. Rules determine the scale, scope, and distribution of political power. The nature of the political process is to transfer wealth to concentrated, powerful groups and away from dispersed and uninformed individuals. Taxpayers seeking to protect themselves and their heirs from political interest groups would be wise to advocate a reverse double standard—mandating a two-thirds vote for any new spending initiatives and allowing a simple majority vote for spending cuts.

In other words, it should be difficult to take and spend other people’s money and easier to cut back programs that are unfunded, unwanted, too ambitious or inefficient. Instead, the rules of the game currently favor the government’s proclivities to dig deep into our wallets and the savings accounts of the young.

Happy New Year Californians

Last week, I posted a story about some of the ridiculous things Americans are being arrested for these days by our compassionate and caring government.

The trouble with having thousands and thousands of government "laws" is not they do not have the best intentions behind them, but because state law necessarily implies the use of force against person or property if said law is broken.

In other words, when coercive laws become more and more omnipresent and passively accepted as instituted for "our own good," "public safety," or "order," state violence becomes a part of daily life and a more accepted way of handling social problems.

There are other (and more rational, empirical, and moral) ways to legislate behavior and punish transgressions that are inevitable in any society that tend to spontaneously arise when authority over these matters is decentralized and taken out of the hands of political busybodies.

Manners, customs, sanctions, and public and private ostracism have existed for centuries and not only do not require the initiation of force as state law does, but are far more practical and efficient.

This is why any government law that encroaches farther than the protection of our life, liberty, and property (like protection against murder, rape, theft, fraud, pollution, etc.) can not be tolerated. Like a cancer, the legislative authority governments claim over us can only grow and grow, and with it the spread of institutionalized coercion.

This is why it is with great, but not surprising, disappoint that California is welcoming in the new year with 725 new laws, everything from social media networking, the banning of trans-fat, and new fines for marijuana possession.

And always remember: ignorance of the law is no excuse! Read up, Californians, you never know when peaceful human action may indeed be against the law.

I Never Thought I'd Agree With Pat Robertson...

...but here he is on a recent episode of "The 700 Club" arguing for the decriminalization of marijuana.

It is not exactly a principled libertarian defense of self-ownership and the right of an individual to act freely as long as he does not infringe on another person's right to do the same, but when even my home state of "liberal" California can't legalize it, I'll take it.

 

Nobody in November

As November approaches in a year that is divisible by two, politics turns from its background nuisance into an obsession. Television ads dominate the airwaves, pamphlets urging citizens to vote for or against certain measures litter the streets, and the debate between friends and co-workers grows deeper and more volatile.

The question inevitably comes up, "so, who are you voting for?" I often get a lot of curious and even angry looks when I explain that I don't vote. But, comes the usual response, voting is your voice, your chance to participate in our democracy, to change things for the good, and so on. 

But when I take a look around, what has been accomplished by voting? There exists poverty, bailout rip-offs, stupid wars in countries most Americans can hardly pronounce, inflation, and debt.

It's easy to blame the politicians and bureaucrats for these troubles since they are the ones calling the shots, but the blame lies squarely on us. By voting, we are choosing between the the lesser of two evils, to entrusting our lives and our property to a third party, and at its core, voting implies consent to political rule.

Like inmates in a prison who feel "free" when our wardens give us longer breaks, better meals, or loosened chains, voting gives legitimacy to the State. The State is founded upon naked aggression or the threat of it, but ultimately its authority rests on the consent of the governed. 

This is the heart of why I don't vote: I do not consent to being taxed, regulated, controlled, restricted, lectured, conscripted, and ultimately coerced. As a free and sovereign individual, I feel it is the most patriotic thing one can do.

Just imagine for a second, as the great Frank Chodorov once asked, if no one voted?

Such abstinence would be tantamount to this notice to politicians: since we as individuals have decided to look after our affairs, your services are no longer needed. Having assumed social power we must, as individuals, assume social responsibility – provided, of course, the politicians accept their discharge. The job of running the community would fall on each and all of us. We might hire an expert to tell us about the most improved firefighting apparatus, or a manager to look after cleaning the streets, or an engineer to build us a bridge; but the final decision, particularly in the matter of raising funds to defray costs, would rest with the townhall meeting. The hired specialists would have no authority other than that necessary for the performance of their contractual duties; coercive power, which is the essence of political authority, would be exercised, if necessary, only by the committee of the whole.

By voting, we give consent to a social order that relies on a top-down, monopolistic institution and discourages or eliminates the infinite other ways that order, goods, and services can be provided. As Thomas Paine pointed out, a large majority of the order that exists in society comes from every man's rational self-interest to improve his existence and the voluntary exchange of goods, labor, and services in the marketplace.

Can you imagine what the reactions in the corporate media and the halls of Congress would be if no one showed up to vote on Election Day? It would send shock waves throughout the entire institutionalized structure of DC's parasitic empire.

Instead of handing away your life to a snake in a suit who's sole purpose is to get re-elected, I recommend committing the most revolutionary act you can do and engage in self-improvement. Lead by example and withdraw consent, read voraciously, work hard, and live as freely as you possibly can.

Peaceful sedition, quiet rebellion, and skepticism are the soul of the American contribution to the world. Just ask the great Emma Goldman:

The poor, stupid, free American citizen! Free to starve, free to tramp the highways of this great country, he enjoys universal suffrage, and, by that right, he has forged chains about his limbs. The reward that he receives is stringent labor laws prohibiting the right of boycott, of picketing, in fact, of everything, except the right to be robbed of the fruits of his labor…

Or Henry David Thoreau:

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers, or backgammon, a playing with right and wrong; its obligation never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right thing is doing nothing for it. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.

These sentiments echo the conclusions of many, like Franz Oppenheimer, who argued that there are essentially two ways that human beings can interact with each other: the political means and the economics means.

The economic means include any voluntary, consensual, mutually-beneficial activity, whether it be grocery stores, farmers markets, neighborhood watches, homeowners associations, the internet; spontaneous, horizontal structures of activity that benefit mankind since they are done voluntarily. The political means are the means of all States and private criminals: force, fraud, aggression, or theft.

By voting, we give power and legitimacy to the political, exploitative means of human interaction, that a group of fallible individuals (whether called a King, Monarch, President, or Legislature) has the right or the ability to manage the infinitely complex and unpredictable results of human action.

So this November, I will gladly stand quietly, firmly, with my liberty and my dignity, and withdraw my consent. What if a million others did the same?

re: Antiwar Speakers in San Francisco

Last week, I saw a panel of speakers at the First Unitarian Universalist Church in San Francisco commemmorate the 9th anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan with intelligent, informative, and inspiring speeches on why this war, like all war, is a racket and how we get the hell out.

Thanks to Eric Garris at Antiwar.com, there's some great video of the event. Enjoy.

Antiwar Speakers in San Francisco Tonight

I'll be at the First Unitarian Universalist Church tonight at 6 pm in San Francisco to see a panel of speakers who all oppose the US war in Afghanistan. Coming from the Left and the Right, it looks to be an interesting and diverse mix of thought on how to build a consensus to end the war that is now almost a decade old, costing billions of dollars, killing thousands of American boys and innocent Afghans, and creating more enemies than we can count.

Details:

Panelists:
John Dennis, Republican Candidate, 8th Congressional District
Daniel Ellsberg, Author and Activist
Michael Eisenscher, US Labor Against the War Nat’l Coordinator
Karel, Green 960 AM Radio Talk Show Host
Angela Keaton, Antiwar.com Developmental Director
Moderator: Jeff Johnson, PeacePundit.com

Time and Place:
Wednesday, October 6, 2010, 6 pm
First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco
1187 Franklin Street, at Geary Blvd
Admission: FREE

'On October 7th 2001 US military aircraft began bombing Kabul. Nine years later, US military operations continue in Afghanistan with no end in sight. Within the next year, the US-led war on Afghanistan will exceed the length of the 1980s Soviet occupation of that unfortunate country.

The war has already claimed the lives of over 1100 American service men and women; while more than 7500 have been wounded. Much larger numbers of Afghan and Pakistani civilians have lost their lives due to US and NATO bombing, including by pilotless drones.

A recent opinion poll shows that 58% of Americans oppose the war in Afghanistan, yet both Democratic and Republican leaders still support it.'

Repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell!

It's time to finally end one of this country's greatest injustices, the US military's official policy of "don't ask, don't tell" when it comes to civilian casualties. Just in this century, the Empire has killed at least a million Iraqis and thousands of Pashtuns in Afghanistan, with barely a murmur from the State-stenographers in the media. This policy is intentional, of course. As war criminal Tommy Franks once said, "we don't do body counts."

Because if a majority of American were aware, or cared, about our killing fields all over the globe, they might start to question some of the nauseating cliches that are indoctrinated into our minds by State schools and the mass media. Like how the U.S. government is "exceptional," "benevolent," bringing "liberty and democracy" to backwards people everywhere.

People might just come to the conclusion that the State is NOT a public servant, but a parasitical monster, looting, taxing, controlling, coercing, and killing in service of its political interests and the interests of those who cozy up to it. This is why it spends millions of dollars every year convincing you otherwise, the manufacturing of consent.

Without these myths, without the consent of the majority of the population, the State falls apart. For the sake of peace, individual liberty, order, and the free production of goods and services, it won't come soon enough.

On a side note, I just can not comprehend the national attention given to the other "don't ask, don't tell" policy concerning gays in the military. Why would ANYONE fight for the right to participate in the slaughter and destruction of villages, cities, and entire countries, to come home with missing limbs so that Lockheed Martin's stock goes up a few points? Gays have been persecuted for far too long by governments; they deserve better than military slavery.

Anarchy: True Checks And Balances

The Ninth District U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco, in a recent case, validated the legality of the current CIA practice of flying "terrorism" suspects to foreign countries to be tortured. The ruling also reinforced the incredibly broad powers of the President to invoke the "state-secrets privilege" to stop lawsuits against the U.S. government. The rationale? "National security," of course.

What a perfect Orwellian word. You could fill a library with the crimes and bloodshed committed in its name.

"National security" does not mean the protection of the citizens' liberty and property, of course, but the protection (and expansion) of the political structure of the State and its corporatist buddies that benefit from government subsidies and the restriction of competitors. If perpetual war really made us safe and free, how come every U.S. war leaves us with fewer civil liberties, higher taxes, and more debt?

The Ninth Circuit's ruling also pokes holes in the arguments of proponents of "limited government." Having three branches of government (legislative, judicial, and executive) was supposed to provide effective checks on each other, "ambition to check ambition" as James Madison put it.

But the idea that a government court would tend to rule against the expansion of government power not only borders on absurd, but also has hundreds of years of evidence in this country alone to refute it. Like nearly every attempt to "reform" or check the power of the State, it has been futile.

The Founders were absolutely correct when they, standing on the shoulders of philosophical giants, argued in favor of restricting the occasional propensity of man to violate his neighbor's liberty and property, settling on the idea of checks and balances.

But the tragic mistake was assigning the job of protecting people against theft and coercion to the State, an institution that exists solely due to theft and coercion. It's like putting Ted Kennedy in charge of an AA meeting. Creating checks and balances against power is absolutely essential in a free society, but how can this ever be possible under the centralizing tendencies of a State?

Later on in his life, even Thomas Jefferson came incredibly close to rejecting the necessity of the State, and perhaps he was right. Societies that have had smaller states or no state at all tend to be more decentralized, where a market order emerges based on private property, voluntary exchange, and mutual aid. Jefferson's friend Thomas Paine recognized that a huge majority of order and civilization we enjoy comes from the combination of man's nature as a social being (commerce and cooperation) and man acting in his own rational self-interest.

In other words, free market anarchism --the abolition of coercion from human relationships-- is checks and balances taken to its logical extreme.

Which is why it doesn't shock me that the Ninth Circuit justified the torturing of innocents or the right of Obama to do anything he wants as long as it's in the name of "national security;" government courts have been rubber-stamping the expansion of government power for centuries. After all, if absolute power corrupts absolutely, why wouldn't they?

UPDATE: The always great Glenn Greenwald has the best analysis I have found so far on the Ninth Circuit's recent decision here.

re: Ron Paul in San Francisco

I just got back from hearing Ron Paul, John Dennis, and Matt Gonzalez speak at the "Principle over Politics" rally in beautiful downtown San Francisco.

Matt Gonzalez, former Green Party vice presidential candidate and the man who should have been the mayor of San Francisco, spoke first. Gonzalez is a Lefty, so I didn't agree with everything he said, but his outspoken criticism of empire, the Federal Reserve system, the police state, and centralized power and wealth were making a lot of libertarian heads nod.

Up next was John Dennis, who is the Republican nominee for Congress attempting to defeat Nancy Pelosi. A tough task indeed, but he lit up the crowd with his passionate defense of peace and limiting the size, scope, and power of the federal government.

After Dennis, was the main event, Dr. Ron Paul. I have been a Ron Paul fan since I discovered his speeches and writings in high school, and to see him in person was absolutely surreal (and I got to shake his hand!!!).

For a little over half an hour, he reiterated the things he has been saying for decades: the revolutionary power of decentralized private property ownership, free markets, peace, the crimes of the welfare-warfare state and the war on drugs, ending the Federal Reserve, and that the revolution of liberty is a war of ideas. Ideas are more powerful than armies, as the great Mises reminded us, and his message continues to spread more and more every day.

It was also a beautifully diverse crowd: Left, Right, Libertarian, black, white, asian, young, old, hippies, and suits. After all, liberty is universal.

Here are some pictures I took of the event:

 

UPDATE: I took video of all the speakers on my phone, but wasn't able to upload it. But thanks to USTREAM (via LRC), here is video of the entire event. Enjoy:

Ron Paul in San Francisco

I'm about to head to the Civic Center in downtown San Francisco to see Congressman Ron Paul and John Dennis --who will hopefully unseat the warmongering Nancy Pelosi-- speak about "Principles over Politics." On the corner of Polk and McCallister to be exact.

If you want to hear the truth about our empire, our vanishing civil liberties, and the revolutionary power of peace, free markets, and individual liberty, please join me.

I will report more on this event later today. Stay tuned.

Slow-Mo Lincecum

Making Juan Marichal proud:

Pet Prohibition in SF

The Chairwoman of San Francisco's Commission of Animal Control and Welfare (big, important title!), Sally Stephens, is a brave public servant, regulating and coercing us mere private citizens for our own benefit and protection. From the San Francisco Chronicle :

Sell a guinea pig, go to jail.

That's the law under consideration by San Francisco's Commission of Animal Control and Welfare. If the commission approves the ordinance at its meeting tonight, San Francisco could soon have what is believed to be the country's first ban on the sale of all pets except fish.

That includes dogs, cats, hamsters, mice, rats, chinchillas, guinea pigs, birds, snakes, lizards and nearly every other critter, or, as the commission calls them, companion animals.

"People buy small animals all the time as an impulse buy, don't know what they're getting into, and the animals end up at the shelter and often are euthanized," said commission Chairwoman Sally Stephens. "That's what we'd like to stop."

Now, Stephens definitely raises a valid issue, especially concerning the purchase of hamsters and other small rodents. People buy them because they are cute and cuddly, and then regret their purchase when they find out that hamsters are prone to biting and gnawing through expensive wiring.

But the solution to a problem is not bans or prohibitions. First, these policies imply government intervention into private and voluntary exchange, which inevitably leads to friction, distrust, more top-heavy bureaucracy, and the socialization of responsibility.

There are plenty of ways that this pet problem can be addressed without a coercive law imposed on customers and businesses. As Stephens' worries show, there is obviously a concern and a demand for a solution. And where there is a demand, there tends to be a supply.

Just look at the thousands of voluntary organizations that have spontaneously been created to house, nurse, heal, and find homes for unwanted and abused animals (and there would likely be far more if we weren't taxed to fund endless wars, bank bailouts, and corporatist health care bills!).

Here in San Francisco, where every issue, from smoking to plastic bags, is "fixed" with the magic wand of passing a law, and I wouldn't be surprised if this ban goes through. But don't worry, Sally Stephens, prohibitions always work.

(via Examiner.com blog)

Why Can't Gary Johnson Run For Governor?

(from Examiner.com)

It's hard not to feel apathetic about elections when after $110 million and a bombardment of television and radio ads, California has to pick between Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown for Governor.

Most of California agreed, with "Super Tuesday" gathering enough hype to get a whopping 11% of voters to turn out.

Can you blame them? We had a choice between a liberal Democrat with the predictable platform of "I'll spend more of other people's money!" And a liberal Republican who says that she'll spend other people's money "more wisely."

Then there's the continual violation of civil liberties and private property rights that is voraciously defended by nearly every major elected official: the "war on drugs".

Both Whitman and Brown defend the idea that by some unexplained mystical gift of their virtue, they have the right to forcibly tell you what you can and can't do with your minds and bodies, your private property.

This tyrannical notion is most often wrapped in Orwellian language, for our "protection" and "safety." But the war on (certain) drugs is an incredibly lucrative industry for the state, making it millions of dollars a year in asset forfeiture. Plus, the "no-knock " raids help give it the feeling of omnipotence. Control is the nature of political power, and it's a nearly effortless process when we voluntarily submit to these cages and chains.

Pelosi's New Palace

"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under"   H.L. Mencken

My congressional "representative" here in San Francisco is Madame Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and I am definitely ashamed to admit this.

Since becoming the Speaker of the House in 2002, she has already had quite the legacy:

• Pelosi was briefed on Bush's torture regime and not only said nothing, but actively supported it.
  
• She removed the section of a bill passed by the House which would have barred the US from going to war with Iran without congressional approval.
• Has never met a bailout that she didn't like.
• Although she called the Iraq War "a mistake," she has consistently refused to end it or even cut its funding.
• Supported the "Share the Sacrifice Act," a proposed tax increase on Americans to help cover the costs of Obama's expansion of the war in Afghanistan (the largest "surge" since the initial October 2001 invasion).
• Helped pass Obama's corporatist health care bill (enough said).

In other words, she's been behind nearly every major expansion of state power in the last decade. So why not throw some more chains around our legs?

War For Lithium?

Finally, after ten years and billions of dollars later, the truth comes out about the War in Afghanistan.

According to The New York Times, it's rich with natural resources:

WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

The "Saudi Arabia of lithium." Lithium also just happens to be the key raw material in laptop batteries and cell phones.

So that's why Obama keeps sending brigades and Predator drones into Central Asia!

Or is it?

A Little Rebellion, i.e.

 

    "...I hold that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing..."

-Thomas Jefferson

This blog is dedicated to a simple, but radical, idea: that human beings are not means to an end. Period.

In others words, every individual has the sole sovereignty over his person and property and is not a chess piece to be constrained, compulsed, coerced, regulated, licensed, or taxed by central planners, corporatists, Presidents, Congressmen, and war makers alike.

This is the heart of the American cultural and philosophical contribution to the world, that government exists to protect the life, liberty, and property of every individual.

Because what it society other than a reflection of individuals? Unfortunately, the term "society"--and its political manifestation, the Nation-State-- has been given near mystical and magical attributes, that it has rights and powers that we as individuals do not possess.

But society is not a separate institution that is allowed to impose its will, by force, on others; might does not make right.

Society is a cooperative effort, evolving and adapting spontaneously from every individual's desire to improve his circumstances.

This is the marketplace, the practical application of the sovereignty of the individual; the law of contract and association, of mutually-beneficial trade and services. The opposite of the marketplace is the coercive State, existing solely off of what it confiscates. As Friedrich Nietzsche put it:

"Everything the State say is a lie and everything it has, it has stolen"  - Thus Spoke Zarathustra

And without a recognition of the primacy of the individual, then we are all at mercy to the whims of whoever happens to control the State. We become (are?) sheep and cattle that must submit, or else; the moral equivalent to a gun at our ribs.

But, comes the usual response, what are you going to "do about it?" The only thing I will "do" is to work on the one unit that I can improve, the only one that I have a right to reform: myself. To live as freely as I can, to pummel political power with arguments and convince others that the political State is evil. Strip of its its phony, self anointed mysticism, its flags, thrones, monuments, medals, White Houses, and songs.

Self-improvement is not a selfish, misanthropic gain but a gain for all of us. The self-interested actions of private individuals in the marketplace, through voluntary arrangements like the division of labor, indirectly benefits us all. After all, a million heads are better than one.

My only aim is to defend individual liberty, the marketplace, peace, sound money, and private property, the tenets of the "little platoons" of a liberal order. My ultimate goal is to convince as many others as I can to do the same, to love liberty and see it as the essential ingredient in a peaceful, just society.

But this ordered liberty will never come through the ballot box or violent uprising, but through revolution. Not like the "revolutions" of history that only replace one ruling gang for another, but through the peaceful sedition of simply ignoring the State; philosophical agorism. In the advice of Frank Chodorov,

"A government building you regard as a charnel house, which in fact it is; you enter it always under duress, and you never demean yourself by curtsying to its living or dead statuary. The stars on the general's shoulders merely signify that the man might have been a useful member of society; you pity the boy whose military garb identifies his servility. The dais on which the judge its elevates the body but lowers the man, and the jury box is a place where three-dollar-a-day slaves enforce the law of slavery. You honor the tax dodger. You do not vote because you put too high a value on your vote..."

To expose it, to mock it, to walk away from it.

This is my peaceful sedition, my raison d'être, my little rebellion.

        Westernerd

        San Francisco, California

Please also visit my ongoing posts at Examiner.com and my contributions to San Francisco's DreamNotOfToday.com.