Tag Archives: Freedom

Right Wing Americans Need to Wake Up And Get Real

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A blogger calling himself Mark America demonstrates the fear-sodden ideology of the right that is disabling many conservatives’ ability to think clearly about what is really going on:

On Saturday, the “Occupy DC” contingent of the greater “Occupy Wall Street” movement clashed with guards and police outside the National Air and Space Museum.  At least one was pepper-sprayed, and one was arrested.  They’re now combining with the even more radical October2011 group, the object of which is to overturn our system of government.  All of these groups have direct ties to Barack Obama from his years in the left-wing community organizing movement, and to the Democrat party structure reaching back two decades.  Let’s be honest:  These are the shock-troops of the communist movement in America.

For those of you who don’t yet understand what this is all about, it’s time to clear it up.  These people aren’t protesting for reform.  They are protesting for the absolute destruction of the United States of America of any description by which you’ve known it.  I once thought that to believe this, a person would need the tin-foil hat and the basement computer terminal and be a conspiracy kook, but this is simply not the case any longer.  These people have powerful, well-heeled backers, and they are acting in concert with Barack Obama and the extreme leftist fringe of American politics.

They  make the mistake of believing the Republican Party is the United States. Big, big mistake. It misleads them into making mistakes of thinking all around. Continue reading →

Is Equal Access to Health Care a Right?

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Responding to yesterday’s post, Trutherator wrote:

On insurance companies covering everything, that’s one of the choices an insurance consumer has at the moment of purchase. But once you concede your own freedom to set up the guys with guns (government) to decide how much of YOUR money to take for their health care provision, especially a government that has shown themselves so astronomically inept that federal cabinet-level departments have had repeated cases of moneys missing to the tune of even $12 billion for the Dept of Education.

My response to Trutherator follows. Continue reading →

Ron Paul Reveals More About His Notion of Freedom

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The most notorious moment in the Republican presidential debate the other night revealed something about Ron Paul the “liberty” candidate’s idea of what freedom actually means to him. Clearly some vociferous audience members, presumably members of the Tea Party, think they define it similarly, but I don’t think all Americans do or would. Continue reading →

Anarchism, Capitalism and Human Rights: A Discussion

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There’s a lively little discussion going on in the comments for this post. Here’s a little sample: Continue reading →

Is Government Property Always Unjust?

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I want to spend a little more time on the notion in Paul’s third principle that “justly acquired property” is “privately owned,” which implies that government (or public) property can only be unjustly acquired. I suspect the primary libertarian principle at work here is “taxation is theft,” a right-wing perversion (or theft, if you will) of Proudhon’s original libertarian socialist principle that “property is theft.”

It seems to me a bit sneaky of Paul not to put his cards flat on the table and admit that that is precisely his meaning here, if that is his meaning. Of course it would open him wide up to the charge of  supreme hypocrisy for having accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years of  “unjustly acquired” income as a representative to the Congress from his district in Texas. Continue reading →

Is Private Property in America Ever Justly Acquired?

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Property acquisition in the Americas begins.

Back to the critique of Ron Paul’s libertarian principles that I began with this post. We’re onto principle number 3:

3. Justly acquired property is privately owned by individuals and voluntary groups, and this ownership cannot be arbitrarily voided by governments.

–from The Ten Principles of a Free Society

[Aside: There’s that word “voluntary” with groups (associations) again! ]

As I’ve shown in my previous critiques, Paul’s principles are half-baked by-products of social contract theory. They want to assert that rights precede government (which even social contract philosophers have to take on faith) and then do away with the government that those philosophers posited as a necessary evil for preserving those rights in society with other individuals. Really? Do away with the government, you might ask? Doesn’t Paul, like Jefferson, for example, just want to keep the government to a size that isn’t able to overwhelm the individual with its potentially arbitrary and despotic power? I would argue that the way these principles are phrased–and this one in particular is a very good example–Paul seeks to postulate a society that operates according to natural rights, with or without a government. He seems to believe that rights in themselves, if we would only just respect them, are sufficient for self-government.
Continue reading →

Beginning of a New American Revolution? #OccupyWallStreet

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The following is a public service announcement on behalf of Occupy Wall Street. To participate, go here. Of course, if you’d like to discuss it with me in the comments area right here, please do. Continue reading →

Fruits of One’s Labor: Possession and Property, Use and Usury

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Jan C, a self-described “prioritarian” and “voluntaryist” (new terms on me, I confess) who inspired the previous post, opened another can of worms in his comments that I’d like to look into more deeply. He was responding to this assertion of mine:

“The difference between possession and private property in real anarchism, is the difference between use and usury. Real anarchists believe that what a person uses, a person possesses”

He asked:

So if you don’t use ‘your’ hammer, I can pick up and walk away with it?

I really don’t understand you people. If you’ve worked your ass of and got something for it in return (money, or goods), than you simply own it, and that means you can do with it whatever you like (either use it, trade it, give it away or destroy it). How can anybody not agree with that?

I do see that there are grey area’s. What constitutes property is not always clear-cut in every case. But I find ‘fruits of labour’ a much better rule of thumb than ‘use’. Continue reading →

The Commons and Individual Rights

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I received an interesting comment from Jan C on the previous post which I’d like to respond to in part here. There’s a lot to unpack in Jan’s comment, so I may take another post to elaborate on the question of “property” vs. “possession” and “use” vs. “usury.” But here I want to address a crucial point Jan made about “the commons” and “the individual.”
Continue reading →

“Anarcho”-Capitalism: The Boss’s and Landlord’s Paradise

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Continuing the discussion I began here and continued here, in this installment, I present for your consideration more of the debate I participated in nearly a decade ago over the inherent contradiction in the term “anarcho”-capitalism.

I should say a little more about why this debate remains relevant. If you listen to the rhetoric of some of the “intellectuals” in the Republican party, you will hear echoes of “anarcho”-capitalism’s sacred principles: private property is a natural right; the state is an impediment to freedom; taxation is theft; freedom to associate with persons of one’s choosing is a natural right. Ron Paul‘s Ten Principles of a Free Society almost reads like a Ten Commandments for anarchos. It’s not surprising given that Paul is a Libertarian and “anarcho”-capitalism is also a product of Libertarian philosophizing, is, in fact, Libertarianism taken over the side of the slippery slope. Paul and his son Rand are far from the only Libertarianism-espousing politicians in power. One other very powerful Libertarian  in the Republican party is Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, whose budget aims to dump social welfare programs from the government’s repertoire of services for the citizenry. These ideas are as close as they’ve ever been to  America’s power center. Are we all comfortable with that? Continue reading →