Category Archives: Natural Law

Paris Attacks Bring Some Movement From MS Media GOP Star On Muslim Mass Migration

Europe, IMMIGRATION, Natural Law, Republicans, Terrorism

The Paris Attacks were perpetrated by Muslim murderers within the West, and by Muslims “vetted” by their Western enablers: our political class. In fact, coming to America “in the flow of people from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere” are, indubitably, some just such “vetted” refugees.

So finally, a mainstream media GOP star, Mark Steyn, timidly asks about “the end [of] mass Muslim immigration to France and Europe” (but not the US; neocons have a different theory about the Muslim cohort headed for America). What Steyn says in his “The Barbarians Are Inside, And There Are No Gates” is put tentatively and is a little soft. But here the thing is, at the very end of a prolix piece (full of place names and activities cool people do):

… if M Hollande isn’t prepared to end mass Muslim immigration to France and Europe, then his “pitiless war” isn’t serious. And, if they’re still willing to tolerate Mutti Merkel’s mad plan to reverse Germany’s demographic death spiral through fast-track Islamization, then Europeans aren’t serious. In the end, the decadence of Merkel, Hollande, Cameron and the rest of the fin de civilisation western leadership will cost you your world and everything you love.

The “One-Man Global Content Provider” wasn’t always as forthright. In fact, Steyn delayed the day of reckoning with a best-selling, bad habit of waxing fat about dooms-day demographics. Meaningless crap, as explained, in this 2010 column:

… Exemplified by Mark Steyn, Wilders’ worthy supporters in the US make sure he knows they love him for standing tall for speech, women, and individual rights—no-brainers all. Like Steyn, they generally steer clear of addressing the perils for their own country of mass, third-world immigration (legal and illegal).

I am told that I don’t understand Mr. Steyn of the dooms-day demographics. So I listened to his “End of Europe” lectures, in which he vividly describes the multitudes of Muslims going forth to North America and Western Europe to be fruitful and multiply and push for Islam. Their Pan-Islamist identity trumps their new assumed identity. Because of numbers, Mark asserts, History is on the march in the Muslim direction. By 2030 much of what we think of as the developed world will be part of the Muslim world.

Here Steyn hits a brick wall. Other than making babies at home and total war abroad, Steyn used to propose nothing much at all. Oh yes, if you’re not already fighting (futilely, in my opinion) in Iraq and Afghanistan, you can show your marbles by publishing offensive cartoons, making rightwing movies, and writing right-wing text.

The “One-Man Global Content Provider” is wrong. Demographics need not be destiny. The waning West became what it is not by out-breeding the undeveloped world. We were once great not because of huge numbers, but due to human capital — people of superior ideas and abilities, capable of innovation, exploration, science, philosophy.

Declining birth rates—and their antidote; the mass immigration imperative—are the excuses statists make for persevering with immigration policies that are guaranteed to destroy western civil society and shore up the State.

It would be productive if Steyn were to also demand, asap, as this writer has, the implementation of an immediate, defensive, libertarian, negative-rights, leave-me-alone strategy: don’t let the homie Jiahdis who hold western passports back in. Government-issued papers do not a natural right confer. Citizenship is no natural right; staying alive is.

UPDATED: How Will Kelly Excuse Sandra Bland’s Arrest?!

Justice, Law, Natural Law, Rights, The State

It’ll be interesting to see how Megyn Kelly excuses the inexcusable and justifies the unjustifiable chain of events that culminated in Sandra Bland’s death, in a Waller County holding cell, in Texas. It’s probably futile to remind Ms. Kelly that what is permitted in law is often naturally illicit—in other words, wrong in natural law. Here follows the story of the demise of a young, innocent woman, via CNN:

Anger over Sandra Bland’s death in a Texas jail has boiled over after newly released video showed what happened at the traffic stop that led to her arrest.

Now, many question whether she should have been arrested at all.

The dashcam video shows Texas state Trooper Brian Encinia pulling Bland over July 10 for allegedly failing to use her turn signal. What started as normal conversation gets testy after Encinia asks her to put out her cigarette.

“I am in my car. I don’t have to put out my cigarette,” Bland says.

“You can step on out now,” Encinia replies.

Bland refuses to get out of her car, and the trooper opens her door and starts trying to pull her out of the vehicle.

What happens after that has ignited a debate about what the officer could have done versus what he should have done. …

MORE.

UPDATE: Kelly covered the arrest of Ms. Bland predictably. The less said, the better. This New York Times headline confuses matters:

“Dispute Over Sandra Bland’s Mental State Follows Death in a Texas Jail.”

The issue is Ms. Bland’s harassment and subsequent incarceration for no good reason; actions without which she would almost surely be alive today.

The #RossUlbricht Outrage

Drug War, Law, Natural Law

Not content with stealing a young man’s life and property, and subjecting him to a Stalinist show trial, during which due process was denied—the federal government has sentenced Ross Ulbricht, innocent in natural law, to life in prison. The operator of Silk Road had been in the business of facilitating voluntary, victimless trade in drugs, online. Via The New York Times:

… Mr. Ulbricht’s novel high-tech drug bazaar operated in a hidden part of the Internet sometimes known as the dark web, which allowed deals to be made anonymously and out of the reach of law enforcement. In Silk Road’s nearly three years of operation, over 1.5 million transactions were carried out involving several thousand seller accounts and more than 100,000 buyer accounts, the authorities have said. Transactions were made using the virtual currency Bitcoin …

Note that the sentencing judge, Federal District Court Katherine B. Forrest, saw fit to deliver a sermon at sentencing: “What you did in connection with Silk Road was terribly destructive to our social fabric.”

UPDATE II: Libertarian Anarchism’s ‘Justice’ Problem (The Great Clyde Wilson Weighs In)

Crime, Justice, libertarianism, Liberty, Natural Law, Paleolibertarianism, Political Philosophy, The State, The West

“Libertarian Anarchism’s ‘Justice’ Problem” is the current essay, slightly abridged on Praag.org. An excerpt:

To the extent the Constitution comports with the natural law—upholding the sanctity of life, liberty, privacy, property and due process—it is good; to the extent it doesn’t, it is bad. The manner in which the courts have interpreted the U.S. Constitution makes the Articles of Confederation, which were usurped in favor of the Constitution at the Philadelphia convention, a much better founding document than the Constitution.

THE SIN OF ABSTRACTION

Unless remarkably sophisticated and brilliant (as only Hans-Hermann Hoppe indubitably is), the libertarian anarchist invariably falls into sloth. Forever suspended between what is and what ought to be, he settles on a non-committal, idle incoherence, spitting venom like a cobra at those of us who do the work he won’t or cannot do: address reality as it is. This specimen has little to say about policy and politics for fear of compromising his theoretical virginity.

Suspended as he is in the arid arena of pure thought, the garden-variety libertarian anarchist will settle for nothing other than the anarchist ideal. And since utopia will never be upon us, he opts to live in perpetual sin: the sin of abstraction.

Indeed, arguing from anarchism is problematic. It is difficult to wrestle with reality from this perspective. This is not to say that a government-free universe is undesirable. To the contrary. However, the sensible libertarian is obliged to anchor his reasoning in reality and in “the nit and the grit of the history and culture from which it emerged,” in the words of columnist Jack Kerwick.

This mindset maligned here is not only lazy but—dare I say?—un-Rothbaridan. For economist and political philosopher Murray Rothbard did not sit on the fence reveling in his immaculate libertarian purity; he dove right into “the nit and the grit of the issues.”

And the “nit and grit” for this not-quite anarchist concerns the problems presented by the private production of justice.

COMPETING THEORIES OF JUSTICE

A belief in the immutably just nature of the natural law must elicit questions about the wisdom of the private production of defense, as this could, in turn, give rise to legitimate law-enforcement agencies that uphold laws for communities in which natural justice has been perverted (in favor of Sharia law, for example).

It’s inevitable: In an anarcho-capitalistic universe, fundamentally different and competing views of justice (right and wrong) will arise. And while competing, private protection agencies are both welcome and desirable; an understanding of justice, predicated as it is on the natural law, does not allow for competing views of justice. …

… The complete essay is “Libertarian Anarchism’s ‘Justice’ Problem.” Read the rest on Praag.org.

UPDATE I: The Great Clyde Wilson Weighs In.

Contra a few irate “readers” at WND, distinguished scholar and prolific author Professor Clyde N. Wilson had not the slightest hardship comprehending—even appreciating—the essay. He writes:

“A very fine column on anarchy and justice.”
Clyde N. Wilson.”

Jack Kerwick, Ph.D., provided good cheer with amusing comments about the creature, on WND, who had “graded” the essay (F) by passing it through some Internet auto-program, and who herself professed to read a dozen or so books a month.

Jokes aside, the essay raises theoretical questions that cannot be boiled down to, “Hey, this works here; and that has worked there; and these guys have proposed Y.” These are not questions of pragmatism, but of principle:

Does natural law comport with a vision of society where systems of law antithetical to natural law could arise and co-exist as a matter of principle? That’s the question. It’s a fundamental one.

UPDATE II: The great Clyde Wilson has been most supportive. He further wrote:

“The idiots are loud but soon forgotten. You have tackled something so basic that libertarians are reluctant to face it.
Best wishes, Clyde.”

Although it is a bit of inside baseball, I had imagined this essay was pretty basic. However, if “a,” “natural law” “to” and “the” are a some reader’s idea of five-dollar words; he or she should stay away from the Federalist Papers.