Tags
clothing, consumerism, contentment, desire, dignity, food, freedom, happiness, liberty, love, materialism, relationships, shelter
The one who meets his needs, but rises above his wants, has found freedom.
04 Thursday May 2017
Tags
clothing, consumerism, contentment, desire, dignity, food, freedom, happiness, liberty, love, materialism, relationships, shelter
The one who meets his needs, but rises above his wants, has found freedom.
11 Tuesday Apr 2017
Posted Bill of Rights, censorship, Corporatism, economic development, globalization, International, liberty, POLITICS
inTags
amputees, big energy, big oil, business leaders, chemical weapons, democratization, dignity, economic colonialism, fake news, freedoms, globalism, Hillary Clinton, human rights, IMF, injustice, International Monetary Fund, jobs, liberties, natural rights, neo-colonialism, neo-liberalism, political leaders, PTSD, public morals, refugee camps, refugees, Smedley Butler, social stresses, starving children, Syria, Syrian diaspora, underemployment, unemployment, veterans, war, War is a Racket, wealth
Now that news of a chemical weapons attack has splattered across the U.S. media, the fake news [1] war is on. Western media is pushing, hard, the story that Assad’s Syrian air force dropped chemical-weapon bombs. The Assad regime and Russia are pushing the story that Syrian air force bombs accidentally detonated a Syrian rebel group’s chemical-weapon stockpile.
And now, CNN is reporting that witnesses “saw chemical bombs dropped from the air.” And these civilian witnesses would know what a chemical bomb looks like, studying it carefully as it hurtled towards them, rather than fleeing for their lives, how?
The truth is not known, but will it be known?
And the Syrian civil war has been overflowing with fake news from the start, when Syria was targeted for the “democratization” process.
07 Thursday May 2015
Posted centralization, consumerism, Corporatism, economics, FINANCE, John Locke, liberty, POLITICS, republicanism
inTags
Cato's Letters, communal property, consumer debt, debt, debt encumbrance, dignity, employment, freedom, Herman E. Daly, household debt, indebtedness, indentured servitude, independence, John taylor of caroline, liberty, liens, Marxism, mortgages, personal responsibility, privacy, private property, property, salary labor, savings, self-reliance, state ownership, Thomas Gordon, wage labor, Wilhelm Ropke
“(T)he United States waged a long war upon the ground, that governments are instituted to secure, and not to bestow, the freedom of property.”
John Taylor, Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated, Sec. 1 (1820)
“To live securely happily and independently is the end and effect of liberty… All men are animated by the passion of acquiring and defending property, because property is the best support of that independency, so passionately desired by all men… as happiness is the effect of independency, and independency the effect of property; so certain property is the effect of liberty alone, and can only be secured by the laws of liberty; laws which are made by consent, and cannot be repealed without it.”
Thomas Gordon, Cato’s Letters, No 68, (1721)
“Private property is the bulwark protecting the individual against exploitation by others,” Herman E. Daly wrote in Beyond Growth. “A property owner has an independent livelihood and need not accept whatever conditions of employment are offered.”
Indeed, Daly taps into the very essence of private property with these sentiments. If there is one single element of Marxism that presses the hardest against the individual’s freedoms, it is the question of property. While it is true that in a perfect world – wherein everyone’s sincerity of altruism would be above question – a society based on communal property may indeed be a workable framework.
But this is not a perfect world, and as sure as the sun rises in the east, there will always be those individuals who would eye the control of communal property as a means to power. In fact, we find in history that state control of property defines every major establishment of communism in the world. And while contemporary Marxists will contend the communism of the USSR and China does not represent “real” Marxism, it is fair to level these criticisms against Marxism until such time its followers show us a society in possession of a complete sincerity of altruism.
It is for this reason, and others, that the tenant of private property continues to hold in free societies, at least for the foreseeable future. But there is another insidious threat to private property, one that Daly did not recognize in his statement above (but does so elsewhere in his works), and that threat is indebtedness.
Today, “free” societies everywhere are populated with a large number of home and property owners, but only a small percentage outright own this property lien free. Almost all of it has been purchased with the help of a mortgage. And within this reality rests The Big Lie, that is, we live on the illusion that we are “homeowners.” Yet, unless we hold title to our property lien free, it is very difficult to align this illusion with reality. And so, to tap Daly’s passage again, encumbered homeowners are forced to “accept whatever conditions of employment are offered.” Continue reading
23 Thursday Apr 2015
Posted anti-federalists, Bill of Rights, centralization, civic engagement, decentralized government, economics, Federalism, Intro Posts, James Madison, John Locke, John Milton, legal system, liberty, limited government, POLITICS, republicanism, republicanism basics, small-r republicanism, Thomas Paine, Trenchard & Gordon, US Constitution
inTags
Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, Algernon Sidney, America's founders, America's Founding era, American radicalism, american republic, Areopagitica, Blackstone, books, Carnation Revolution of 1974, Cato's Letters, Common Sense, Daly, decentralization, Discourses on Livy, entropy, Estado Novo, F.A. Hayek, Fred Hirsch, Georgescu-Roegen, Gordon, Gunnar Myrdal, Hannah Arendt, Henry Neville, Hofstadter, Hume, J.S. Mill, James Harrington, Jane Jacobs, John taylor of caroline, Karl Polyani, Locke, Machiavelli, Marchamont Needham, Milton, Mircea Eliade, Montesquieu, On Revolution, Online Library of Liberty, Peter Kropotkin, Portugal, reading, republicanism, research, Rights of Man, Salazar, Schumpeter, small-r republicanism, steady-state economics, The Age of Reason, The Anti-Federalist Papers, The Constitution of Liberty, The Federalist Papers, The Road to Serfdom, Thomas Paine, Trenchard, Whyte, Wilhelm Ropke, Yehoshua Arieli
From time to time, I have had someone ask me, “What did you research before you started writing on the American Republic?” I think the assumption is that I can rattle off a half-dozen titles and tell them to take it from there. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.
What follows is a list of the works I studied prior to launching my blog in late 2008 (it was then independent, not hosted by WordPress), and prior to posting my white papers online, starting in late 2009. The papers were first posted on Scribd, and are now on Google Drive, a move inspired by the moderator of a blogging community – to which I belonged – who asked me to consider a different platform since my posts were too long, a sin which I still commit.
You will notice that for the most part, I do not recommend specific chapters or sections. In reading courses at university, professors will undertake such recommendations, either out of consideration for the student’s time, or out of desire to guide the student to the professor’s ideologies.
The former is understandable, the latter contemptible. Continue reading
09 Tuesday Apr 2013
Posted centralization, Federalism, James Madison, liberty, nation, POLITICS, US Constitution
inTags
Bill of Rights, checks and balances, citizen-soldier, counterbalances, Federalist 46, gun control, James Madison, limited powers, militia act, Militia Act of 1903, national guard, natural rights, second amendment, sovereignty of the people, state militias, states rights, U.S. Constitution, usurpation of powers
The following post discusses the original intent behind the Second Amendment. Readers should hold their assumptions, read carefully, and check their conclusion jumping until the end.
The rhetoric over gun control legislation is heating up, yet from no corner of the political spectrum do we hear discussed the underlying constitutional crisis that precipitated this ongoing debate, one that America has lived with for over a century. Unfortunately, the accusations and aspersions thrown from either side towards the other generates more heat than light, and it is nigh time to investigate the original intent of the Second Amendment. Although many alleged constitutional authorities have waxed obliquely on the reasons behind the insertion of this amendment, James Madison left little doubt as to why the arming of citizens was a critical civil liberty. His reasoning can be found in The Federalist No. 46.
I find, however, that far too many Americans do not understand the intent of the Bill of Rights, much less the intent of the Second Amendment, and so it is here I must begin. I suspect this reality arises more from the degraded state of our high-school education in civics than from anything else. For those who are comfortable with their understanding of the Bill of Rights, you can safely skip to the next section. Continue reading
24 Wednesday Oct 2012
Posted civic engagement, community, James Madison, John Locke, liberty
inTags
bigotry, Bill of Rights, civic engagement, community involvement, discrimination, eyes on the street, faction, freedom, Hannah Arendt, Hayek, inequality, intolerance, James Madison, Jane Jacobs, John Locke, liberty, license, Montesquieu, Niebuhr, On Revolution, partisanship, prejudice, propaganda, racism, society, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Federalist Papers, The Spirit of the Laws, The White Ribbon, xenophobia
Following most presidential elections, talk turns towards the newly elected (or re-elected) candidate, cabinet nominations, policy changes, and so forth. For the party of the losing candidate, discussions revolve around how the winning candidate achieved success, or which missteps their candidate took.
In the aftermath of the 2008 presidential election, we experienced something else: A backlash against the winning candidate, which emerged in the Birther Issue, the Faith Issue (Muslim or Christian?), so on and so forth.
For those of us who thought we were living in a post-racial society, we were quickly reawakened to the reality. While the dissenters may have felt they held legitimate claims, for most Americans we uncomfortably recognized the racial and xenophobic (due to name) undercurrents. Racial and xenophobic issues are only two symptoms of prejudice, bigotry, partisanship, discrimination, inequality…
…and intolerance.
But how did we get here? Why, after decades of trying to eradicate these social diseases, do we still suffer them in America? These problems seem to be getting worse.
It is due, I postulate, to American citizens’ withdrawal from the public sphere, retreating to the private sphere of our homes and becoming anonymous, inconsequential, faceless individuals. We no longer understand what it means to be recognized, consequential and involved in society or, more specifically and pragmatically, in our local communities. Continue reading
19 Friday Oct 2012
Tags
A Humane Economy, capitalism, Cato's Letters, centralization, economic power, economic tyranny, economism, F.A. Hayek, Gunnar Myrdal, Hannah Arendt, John Trenchard, Joseph A. Schumpeter, liberty, monied corporations, On Revolution, political tyranny, regulatory action, Socialism and Democracy, The Political Element in the Development of Economic Theory, The Road to Serfdom, wage labor, Wilhelm Ropke
In picking up on our discussion of economic tyranny from yesterday, the argument contended that to blindly submit to market forces creates an atmosphere for economic tyranny to arise, every bit as dangerous as political tyranny. This singular belief in markets, to the exclusion of all other considerations, is folly. Both the economic and the political institutions that arise in a society were given space by America’s founders for the betterment of the individual, not the converse.
Economist Wilhelm Röpke noted in The Humane Economy that to focus merely on the economic is to place blinders over our eyes, that
“…we have narrowed our angle of vision and do not forget that the market economy is the economic order proper to a definite social structure and to a definite spiritual and moral setting. If we were to neglect the market economy’s characteristic of being merely a part of a spiritual and social total order, we would become guilty of an aberration…” (emphasis added)
Röpke squarely embeds the economy within the social, within society. Continue reading
18 Thursday Oct 2012
Tags
A Humane Economy, capitalism, Cato's Letters, centralization, economic power, economic tyranny, economism, F.A. Hayek, Gunnar Myrdal, Hannah Arendt, John Trenchard, Joseph A. Schumpeter, liberty, monied corporations, On Revolution, political tyranny, regulatory action, Socialism and Democracy, The Political Element in the Development of Economic Theory, The Road to Serfdom, wage labor, Wilhelm Ropke
All too frequently we hear free marketers in America bemoan regulatory action, suggesting such action actually hampers a sorely needed economic recovery. Free markets, they state, will ultimately sort things out. Yet, do we ever hear these voices caution against economic tyranny? It seems “economic tyranny” is simply not in their vocabulary. Why?
To blindly submit to market forces creates an atmosphere for economic tyranny to arise, every bit as dangerous as political tyranny. This singular belief in markets, to the exclusion of all other considerations, is folly. Both the economic and the political institutions that arise in a society are there for the betterment of the individual, not the converse. The German American political theorist Hannah Arendt understood this when she observed in Chapter 6 of On Revolution that
“Free enterprise… is a minor blessing compared with the truly political freedoms, such as freedom of speech and thought, of assembly and association, even under the best of conditions. Economic growth may one day turn out to be a curse rather than a good, and under no conditions can it either lead into freedom or constitute a proof for its existence.”
Any doubt about these sentiments, written in 1963, can be placed aside when one considers China, a country that has fully embraced capitalism and has taken a commanding lead in global economic growth because of it. Yet, the Chinese enjoy very little in the way of political freedoms. Capitalism does not need political freedom to thrive; in fact, centralized capitalism can create tyrannies of its own. [1]
Economic tyranny arises when the vast majority of citizens are wage laborers. By the very need of an income, wage laborers are at the mercy of centralized economic forces that are seemingly beyond control; one’s fate rests in the hands of others unseen, unknown. Such forces are not part of the “invisible hand” of which Adam Smith spoke. Continue reading
You must be logged in to post a comment.