Category Archives: Classical Liberalism

Mainstream Conservatism Is A “Big Con,” If You Care To Sweat The Philosophical Details

Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, Free Speech, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Private Property

I quit reading this article, sent by a friend, when I reached this “conservative’s'” typical leftist outrage over thought crimes, as in, “One racist is two racists too many.”

This is a thought no classical conservative or classical liberal would ever utter, much less entertain. We don’t care what’s in your head.

The article is mostly guff.

As a libertarian, I don’t give a tinker’s toss who people hate, so long as they don’t hit them. As a strict propertarian, I support your right not to serve me if you don’t like Jews.

Now that’s freedom. Now that’s a society based on private property rights. And that’s why Barry Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act.

The “Big Con,” as my friend Jack Kerwick calls e-conservatives.

UPDATE II (12/2): A Country Is More Than An Economy

Classical Liberalism, Economy, Free Markets, IMMIGRATION, libertarianism, Nationhood

A country is more than an economy. America has an economy. Americans no longer have a country. I’ve been mocked for close on two decades by libertarians for holding this opinion. No worries; I won. I was right about immigration and La Raza libertarians.

I believe this is what Steve Bannon was trying to tell the libertarian-minded at the “Values Voters Summit In Washington D.C.“:

Bannon specifically called out policy centers such as the Heritage Foundation, CATO Institute, and American Enterprise Institute for their constant support of free trade. He also critiqued for the Austrian school of economics for stressing that ‘everything is about the economy.’ He hopes to eventually bring these folks on board with his program of economic nationalism.

“We’re a civic society and a culture that has a capitalist, free market system as our economy,” Bannon said. “But we’re not an economy, and you’re not just units of production. You’re free men and women in a civic society underpinned by a capitalist system, but where other people in the world don’t practice capitalism, we have to be savvier than that. …”

UPDATE (10/23):

Nationhood? US immigration population hits record 60 million, 1-of-5 in nation:

Importing Islamabad:

 

UPDATE (12/2):

UPDATED (10/12): Everyone Has Property Rights, Whether They Know it or Not

America, Classical Liberalism, Critique, History, Individual Rights, libertarianism, Natural Law, Objectivism, Private Property

A NEW ESSAY, “Everyone Has Property Rights, Whether They Know it or Not,” is on Mises Wire.

The Indian tribesman’s claim to his ancient stomping grounds can’t be reduced to a title search at the deeds office. That’s the stuff of the positive law. And this was the point I took away from a conversation, circa 2000, with Mr. Property Rights himself, Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

Dr. Hoppe argued unassailably—does he argue any other way?—that if Amerindians had repeatedly traversed, for their livelihood, the same hunting, fishing and foraging grounds, they would have, in effect, homesteaded these, making them their own. Another apodictic profundity deduced from that conversation: The strict Lockean stipulation, whereby to make property one’s own, one must transform it to Western standards, is not convincing.

In an article marking Columbus Day—the day Conservatism Inc. beats up on what remains of America’s First People—Ryan McMaken debunked Ayn Rand’s specious claim that aboriginal Americans “did not have the concept of property or property rights.” This was Rand’s ruse for justifying Europeans’ disregard for the homesteading rights of the First Nations. “[T]he Indian tribes had no right to the land they lived on because” they were primitive and nomadic.

Hoppean Homesteading

Cultural supremacy is no argument for the dispossession of a Lesser Other. To libertarians, Lockean—or, rather Hoppean—homesteading is sacrosanct. He who believes he has a right to another man’s property ought to produce proof that he is its rightful owner. “As the old legal adage goes, ‘Possession is nine-tenths of the law,’ as it is the best evidence of legitimate title. The burden of proof rests squarely with the person attempting to relieve another of present property titles.” (Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, p. 276.)

However, even if we allow that “the tribes and individual Indians had no concept of property,” which McMaken nicely refutes—it doesn’t follow that dispossessing them of their land would have been justified. From the fact that a man or a community of men lacks the intellectual wherewithal or cultural and philosophical framework to conceive of these rights—it doesn’t follow that he has no such rights, or that he has forfeited them. Not if one adheres to the ancient doctrine of natural rights. If American Indians had no attachment to the land, they would not have died defending their territories.

Neither does the fact the First Nations formed communal living arrangements invalidate land ownership claims, as McMaken elucidates. Think of the Kibbutz. Kibbutzim in Israel instantiate the principles of voluntary socialism. As such, they are perfectly fine living arrangements, where leadership is empowered as custodian of the resource and from which members can freely secede. You can’t rob the commune of its assets just because members elect to live communally. …

… READ THE REST. “Everyone Has Property Rights, Whether They Know it or Not” is on Mises Wire.

UPDATE (10/12):  Facebook Thread.

Those who are unfamiliar with the methods of praxeology and deductive reasoning will twist into pretzels to find fault with this essay. Maybe read the ancients (not the neocons) on natural rights.critiquing neocons on natural rights is a straw man.

UPDATED (9/6/017): Mad Max Gets Totaled By Tucker

Classical Liberalism, Constitution, Government, History, Morality, Neoconservatism

For his foreign policy prescriptions, neoconservative Max Boot got totaled by Tucker Carlson of Fox News. Boot-type neoconservatives center their foreign policy around their ideas of what is moral and what is immoral.

A libertarian or classical conservative ought to base foreign policy on the ROLE OF GOVERNMENT. The Constitution doesn’t give government the right to force ideas on its own citizens, much less on the citizens of the world. Let the peoples of the world fight their own battles of ideas. Morality in foreign policy is a prescription for ever accrediting empire.

Constitutionalism in foreign policy is what Americans ought to seek, not morality.

Boot may sound like Tocqueville with a stretch, but given a chance to enact his policies he’d act like Robespierre. This neoconservative’s attachment is to a Jacobin heritage – expressed in a powerful, centralized, universalist state that aggrandizes abstractions and subordinates communities to a national general will.

UPDATED (9/6/017): Mad Max wants to go home.