Alien vs. Predator, and the hypocrisy of Allen West
Originally published on Ad Libertad:
The battle lines are forming in Washington DC. Barring any tricks which the embattled (racist, redneck, kooky, backward, radical, unelectable) libertarian wing of the Republican Party may still have up its sleeve, it seems to be another contest between Marxist-Leninist Socialists who will take everything we have in the name of social welfare, and National Socialists who will take everything we have in the name of national security. Much like in Alien vs. Predator, whoever wins, we lose.
I think we’ve crossed the Rubicon toward tyranny and fiscal ruin long ago, and the important thing now is to brace for calamity. A fiscally conservative friend of mine is appalled by my cynicism. He invokes America’s greatness and my veteran status in an attempt to bring me back to the noble cause of shutting up and blindly supporting the Republican Party. He recently encouraged me to watch Allen West’s speech at CPAC 2012. He wants, presumably, for me to give people like Allen West my time, money, attention and respect, because nothing is more important that defeating Obama (. . . says the Predator about the Alien).
In the speech, Allen West goes on at length about the virtues of the Constitution. He said, “[The founders] laid out in no uncertain terms the types of things government would have the right to do, and the types of things it wouldn’t.” I’d love to hear him reconcile this with his discussion of “a Chamberlin-Churchill moment,” and “kinetic solutions” to Iran’s nuclear research, and “the precipice of World War Three.” Does he know the Constitution requires presidents to seek congressional declarations of war? Or does he, like most politicians, only believes in the Constitution when it foils his political opponents.
He said, “The founders knew that if government were allowed to restrict the freedom of the people . . . freedom would not long survive,” yet he voted in favor of renewing Patriot Act provisions.
He decries reckless spending: “We’ve allowed the federal bureaucracy to balloon out of control,” yet he voted in raise the debt ceiling. When questioned by Young America’s Foundation’s Ron Meyer, he asked for the thing all politicians have always requested: unity and support. Presumably, Allen West’s rapid betrayal of the principles he invoked in his campaign would be remedied if only I gave him more money, time, attention and respect. . . .
* The End of the Mega States? * with Roman Skaskiw and Andy Duncan
“In our latest edition of Radio Free Market World Report, I talk to Roman Skaskiw about the global secession movement and particularly how this applies to the United States and the European Union. We examine why the world’s wealthiest countries, on a per capita basis, tend to be the smallest states, and why the major exception to this general rule, the United States, managed to avoid the trend.
We discuss whether the United States itself should be saved from secession, why European countries tend to be both socialist and independent, and whether the world will move towards a global government or a global constellation of micro-states.”
(More from Radio Free Market World Report)
Note: This was just posted on mises.org.
“Fighting for Freedom” in the Middle East — the military mentality and unintended consequences
This lecture was given at the 2011 Property and Freedom Society Conference.
Powerpoint presentation: here
Essays based on this lecture:
- The Military Mentality
- Bureaucratic Management and Unintended Consequences
Very flattering review of the conference and my lecture here. I agree with Jame’s sentiment. The PFS conference is a rare visit to the outside of the asylum.
Reading at Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art
It was an honor to read this weekend at The Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago, alongside Askold Melnychuk, Alexis Buryk and Virlana Tkacz.
I read my unpublished story, “Storyteller,” and a revision of my favorite essay from the NY Times, Homefires series, “Something Worth Fighting For.”
The Burden of the Soldier
Earlier this month, a little-discussed headline read “Muted Ceremony Marks End Of Iraq War.”[1] Of course, neither the war in Iraq nor the occupation are really ending. Thousands of private security contractors remain in the country (as do the fifteen thousand employees of the Baghdad embassy).[2] The end of conventional military operations reflects the changing usefulness of the soldier to the state.
Generally speaking, the soldier’s role as provider of security is secondary to his role in propaganda. Regardless of an individual soldier’s motivation in joining the military, his primary function is to serve as a rallying cry for the fellow subjects of his state.
The nefarious motives behind wars, the endless political treacheries, and the massive fortunes accumulated by military industries must all hide behind the image of the soldier. He is portrayed as the best reflection of a grateful society, and elevated to the shining status of a religious icon, in the hope of blinding everyone to the cesspool of narcissism, corruption, and corporatism behind every war.
. . . the fact that parades, monuments, political speeches invoking their suffering, and streams of fawning news coverage are not only nonexistent for mercenaries, but scarcely imaginable, says much about the role and primary purpose of the soldier.
The soldier’s role, however, also burdens the state. Once an ongoing condition of war is cemented as the new normal, the soldier becomes, in many ways, a nuisance to the state. Soldiers invoke their own image and become outspoken critics, either of incompetence within their endeavor or of the endeavor itself. Soldiers write blogs, record embarrassing pictures and videos, and share them readily through social media, eroding the myths upon which the state relies.
Also, to justify the suffering of soldiers, the state is increasingly pressured to explain its endeavor and demonstrate progress. Neither mercenaries, mindful of their employment status, nor clandestine forces, carefully screened and highly disciplined, present such a burden. . . .
Stanford Daily Cartoons
Long, long ago when I was an undergrad, I drew cartoons for the Stanford Daily. I came across them recently and decided to scan them.
Here are the few published one and the many unpublished ones, in additional to a few notes and the first piece of fan mail I ever received.
Is the United States Too Big to Succeed?
Although European libertarians continue to produce great works of theory and activism, the United States has been, and seems to remain, the epicenter of the libertarian movement. There are no prominent protests in Europe calling for less governmental help as there are in the United States. Murray Rothbard’s essay “Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty” refers to the United States as “the great home of radical liberalism.” In 1996, Dr. Yuri Maltsev presented a lecture at a Ludwig von Mises Institute summit entitled “Why America Must Be Saved,” making the case for the United States as the greatest hope in the struggle for freedom. Writing favorably of the tea-party movement, Peruvian writer and recent Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa distinguished the American individualist tradition as stronger than the European one:
In the United States … individualism has never had the bad press it had in Europe.… In the purest American tradition, it is not the state but the citizen who is first responsible for failure or success.
Despite the more muted prevalence of libertarians in Europe, they enjoy a dynamic absent in America: strong regional identity reinforced by language and cultural barriers far greater than the relatively homogenized United States. As Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe might say, Europe has more “international anarchy,” . . .
However, what remains of European regionalism may very well do more to promote the cause of liberty than the more vigorous, better organized libertarian movement in the United States. . . .
The Violence and Justice Monopoly
This essay was heavily influenced by one of my intellectual heroes, Hans Hermann Hoppe:
Almost all of us hold two beliefs which contradict a third near-universal belief. The first is that a state, however else defined, is a geographic monopoly of security and justice. One cannot appeal a ruling beyond the state, and whatever private providers of security and justice may exist, they do so in pronounced subservience to and supervision by the state.
The second is that monopolies invariably cause high prices and low quality. Is it so absurd to unite these two self-evident ideas and suggest that states are poor providers of security and justice?
This, of course, rattles to its very foundation a belief most people consider unassailable: that states must invariably provide us, the gray, primitive, violent, purposeless masses, with security and justice — or else civilization itself would plunge into darkness and despair.
(Read more from Daily Anarchist)
