ars libertatis

Do you believe that the government of the United States considers itself obliged by law to respect anyone’s rights? You are wrong. Read Chris Floyd’s article on a recent Supreme Court decision to let a lower court’s ruling stand, and weep your bitterest tears. If you count yourself among those who believe that this country stands for something better than the historical norm of tyranny and savagery, consider yourself as having made a grievous mistake.

In truth, any “constitutionally protected rights” you are now exercising exist solely at the pleasure and convenience of the rulers. The minute the continuation of your life or liberty no longer pleases them, they will, as the Court’s decision makes clear, simply declare you an unperson to be dealt with as they choose, whether they choose to torture you, confine you in a steel cage for the rest of your life, or peremptorily kill you. They recognize NO rights in anyone (except themselves, of course) that they are bound to respect.

This horror is the end to which a brave experiment has come. If the rulers can, at their pleasure, declare ANYONE THEY SELECT a legal unperson, the notion that the United States is a free country is nothing but the sickest of sick jokes.¹

1. Robert Higgs – The Supreme Court Has Spoken: You Have No Rights [↩]

[D]emocracy’s gravest defect has little or nothing to do with the defects traditionally ascribed to it. I maintain that its severest defect, indeed, a flaw so critical that it gives democracy the potential to destroy civilization, pertains to its effect in corrupting the people’s moral judgment.

To see how this corruption comes about, let us begin by recognizing that in many people’s eyes, certain government functionaries may legitimately take actions that would be condemned as criminal if anyone else were to take them. If you or I were to threaten a neighbor with violence unless he handed over a specified sum of money, we would be universally recognized as engaged in extortion or attempted robbery.
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Libertarians often argue about whether they might more successfully recruit followers by showing that a free society works best or by showing that an unfree society is unjust. Most libertarians, as I see the matter, have chosen to base their arguments on utilitarian grounds, often because they despair of ever convincing the average person that government officials chronically, or even intrinsically, violate moral strictures. Although I have no doubt whatsoever that free societies do work better than unfree ones, that they deliver, for example, greater prosperity and more rapid economic progress for the masses, I am skeptical that we can cut deeply into the current mass support for the welfare-warfare-therapeutic state unless we open people’s eyes to see that the government actions they now support ― and demand ever more of ― are utterly immoral because they violate individuals’ just rights on a gigantic scale and because the government leaders who propose and implement these measures acquire not an ounce of moral justification from their democratic selection for office. “What works best” remains ever open to dispute, as public policy debate on almost any current issue illustrates: each side has its academic experts, prestigious scientists, or other authorities to prop up its position, and although these two sides rarely offer equally compelling evidence, the lay person can scarcely be expected to see through all of the disinformation and rhetorical flimflam.

Everybody understands, however, without any advanced instruction in the matter, that murder and robbery are wrong, and that no one has a justifiable right to bully his neighbors simply because he does not like the way in which they are conducting their lives. The greatest barrier to libertarian progress continues to be that most people give a moral pass to such criminal actions when democratically elected functionaries take them. This presumed moral immunity by virtue of election to public office is the sheerest superstition ― a montrous mistake in moral reasoning ― and if people can be brought to see it for what it really is, then they will be able to act more effectively to regain some of their lost freedom.¹

1. Robert Higgs – Democracy’s Most Critical Defect [↩]

Robert Higgs über das Wunder des Kapitalismus und der Globalisierung:

The one [nectarine] I consumed this evening came close to perfection: It had just recently ripened fully and had gorgeous colors, inside and outside; its flesh was firm, yet juicy, very sweet, but with enough fruity tanginess that its taste still lingers lovingly on my tongue.

As I enjoyed this heaven-sent delight, I thought to myself: This fruit was grown in Chile. Here I sit, in my home in southeast Louisiana, in a rural area, fifty miles from the nearest big city. Yet I am enjoying the fruit (literally in this case) of someone’s labors in a land many thousands of miles away. It’s not the first time I’ve done so, either, and I fully expect to repeat this experience many times in the future, should fortune decree that my life continue. Indeed, this kind of consumption is a daily occurrence for me, as it is for nearly everyone else in this country.¹

1. Robert Higgs – Miracles We Take For Granted [↩]

Zuerst ein Artikel von Sphairon, der sich mit Vehemenz gegen Waffenverbote ausspricht und davor warnt Unschuldige und potenzielle Opfer zu entwaffnen und eine Gesellschaft zu kreieren, in der (neben der Polizei) einzig Mörder und Räuber Feuerwaffen tragen (Eine Position, die ich (auch weil ich die Eigentumsrechte so hochhalte und es schlicht skurril ist, mit Waffengewalt eine Person dazu zu zwingen, sich selber nicht zu bewaffnen) teile, die aber in diesen Breiten recht unpopulär ist.):

Guns are force equalizers. Powerful as they are, it is irresponsible to deny ordinary citizens the option to own and use them. Doing that will only strengthen the position of criminals. We can assume that, ceteris paribus, an armed society will deter criminals more effectively than a non-armed one.¹

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Dann ein Artikel von Robert Higgs zu unserem aktuellen Partizipativen Faschismus und bitterschwarze Zukunftsaussichten:

All of which leaves us—by which I mean nearly everybody on earth—converging on the only form of politico-economic system that has a stable equilibrium in our present ideological circumstances: participatory fascism. I am not saying that this system is the only one possible, forever and ever, amen. I am saying, however, that until the world’s people abandon en masse the collectivist ideologies that now determine their social cognition, policy evaluation, political practices, and personal identities, any hope for moving to a freer form of economic order as a stable equilibrium is virtually nil.²

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Schliesslich und endlich eine köstliche und so zwingend notwendige Kritik von James Ostrowski an Noam Chomsky, dem von ihm präferierten Anarchosyndikalismus (oder Anarchokommunismus oder Anarchokollektivismus), seine seltsam wirre (semi- bis ganz) marxistischen Wirtschaftskunde und das pseudoanarchistische Katalonien während dem Spanischen Bürgerkrieg:

No, he favors a vague and ill-defined form of collective ownership that the workers will figure out as they bumble and stumble along towards bankruptcy. As Mises writes in Socialism, “as an aim, Syndicalism is so absurd, that speaking generally, it has not found any advocates who dared to write openly and clearly in its favor.”³

1. Road to Rothbard – Guns and crime [↩]
2. Robert Higgs – Are We All Socialists Now? Not at All [↩]
3. James Ostrowski – Chomsky’s Economics [↩]

Consider the following proposition: a gang of armed people calling itself a government has a right to take money from and impose rules on people who are innocent of violating anyone’s just rights, employing violence and threats of violence against these unoffending people to get its way. My idea is that anyone who supports this proposition bears a heavy burden of proof—so heavy, indeed, that no one can bear it on the basis of logic, evidence, and a moral standard higher than a wolf’s.¹

1. beacon blog – This Guy Could Do Standup! [↩]