Category Archives: Private Property

Africa BC And AC (Before And After Colonialism)

Africa, Law, Private Property, Propaganda, Technology, The West

“Africa BC And AC (Before And After Colonialism)” is the latest column, now on The Daily Caller.

From their plush apartments, over groaning dinner tables, pseudo-intellectuals have the luxury of depicting squalor and sickness as idyllic, primordially peaceful and harmonious. After all, when the affluent relinquish their earthly possessions to return to the simple life, it is always with aid of sophisticated technology and the option to be air-lifted to a hospital if the need arises. Is there any wonder, then, that “the stereotype of colonial history” has been perpetuated by the relatively well-to-do intellectual elite? Theories of exploitation, Marxism for one, originated with Western intellectuals, not with African peasants. It is this clique alone that could afford to pile myth upon myth about a system that had benefited ordinary people.

What is meant by “benefited”? Naturally, the premise here is that development, so long as it’s not coerced, is desirable and material progress good. British colonists in Africa reduced the state of squalor, disease and death associated with lack of development. To the extent that this is condemned, the Rousseauist myth of the noble, happy savage is condoned. Granted, Africa’s poor did not elect to have these conditions, good and bad, foisted on them. However, once introduced to potable water, sanitation, transportation, and primary healthcare, few Africans wish to do without them. Fewer Africans still would wish to return to Native Customary Law once introduced to the idea that their lives were no longer the property of the Supreme Chief to do with as he pleased. …

… When all is said and done, the West is what it is due to human capital—people of superior ideas and abilities, capable of innovation, exploration, science, philosophy. Human action is the ultimate adjudicator of a human being’s worth; the aggregate action of many human beings acting in concert makes or breaks a society. Overall, American society is superior to assorted African and Arab societies because America is still inhabited by the kind of individuals who make possible a thriving civil society. …

… Read the rest. “Africa BC And AC (Before And After Colonialism)” is now on The Daily Caller.

UPDATE IV (2/26): Julie Borowski’s Wrong: Judge Andrew Napolitano Is NO Rightist Libertarian

Ethics, Free Speech, libertarianism, Old Right, Paleolibertarianism, Political Philosophy, Private Property

I call Judge Andrew Napolitano a left-libertarian. I prove it. Have done so over years.

Consistency is the touchstone of truth. If you keep changing your philosophical orientation as evinced by your changing positions, you’re more of a creedal politician, than a principled thinker.

Julie Borowski, on the other hand, asserts that Judge Andrew Napolitano is a bona fide rightist libertarian.

Ms. Borowski, do some digging. A search on Barely A Blog is a start. Here’s some of the yield:

Andrew Napolitano: Some Libertarian

Ann Coulter Offers A Corrective To Judge Andrew Napolitano

Judge Napolitano’s Left-Libertarian Confusion

Fighting Words From Left-Libertarian Egalitarians

Napolitano-Koch Connection? (Sixth Sense)

The Neoconservative & Left-Libertarian Positions: Liberty Is Universal

14th Amendment Jurisprudence For Dummies

She is “speaking” (I wish I could do that baby-doll voice) in response to Richard Spencer crashing the Students for Liberty Conference, a bit of performance art that brought out the leftist in the apoplectic attendees. (Yes, free speech belongs to the person who paid for the event. Still, don’t be so rude.)

I’ve tracked the Judge for a while. Unless a recent political conversion makes you a creedal rightist, then he isn’t one. A LOT of libertarians have suddenly found their inner rightist recently, when they crashed into the reality of Trump Nation. I respect the likes of Julie Borowski more. She sticks with her left-libertarian positions.

So, do opportunistic libertarian converts who, say, were open-borders until Trump, count as principled, creedal rightists? What CRAP. Actually, a good percentage of Fox News commentators were Never Trumpsters. For example, the Schlapp couple now riding high:

Much like neocons or liberals, libertarians move in tribes (although I have yet to be invited to join any of their intramural gatherings). Certain groups position themselves as top dogs. They enjoy donor and think-tank backing, and can reinvent themselves the way a slut like Madonna does (although, to her credit, Madonna is consistent philosophically. It’s her face that keeps mutating).

Many of those dubbed Right libertarians flirted with open borders and other abominations (as has the Judge), until recently. At the same time, these libertarians have ostracized me for a consistent, restricted immigration position, and a support, since time immemorial, of Israel’s rights in the land (as against those of the MOPE, Most Oppressed People Ever, etc). Our reformed libertarians (many of whom fell out with me over Israel), now make their new-found case for Israel, ponderously, by citing obscure Israeli/Jewish teens. It’s amusing, and certainly leftist. Cultural leftists love “authoritative” kids. Maybe arguing with and citing kids is an intellectual cop-out (like Bill O’Reilly who feels more comfortable with a 22-year-old blondie on his show than with Ann Coulter).

To this hard rightist, there is no kid worth listening to (except for Milo , seriously). To quote Florence King: “… children have no business expressing opinions on anything except, ‘Do you have enough room in the toes?’ More on being culturally rightist in “THE IMPORTANCE OF BOUNDARIES.”

In any event, Judge Nap is certainly not Right, although he’s smart enough to so position himself, since the Trump tsunami.

As for Jeffery Tucker. Yes, he has moved left. But, as a personal matter, Jeff has always been respectful and decent to me. (I know him as a good man.) When allowed, he also published my work (“Democratic Despotism,” for example). There is a saying in Hebrew, I remember you the grace of youth or beginnings …

UPDATE I (2/26): Love him, just don’t mislabel Judge Nap as a rightist libertarian:

UPDATE II: Facebook Thread.

UPDATE III: “Napolitano-Koch Connection? (Sixth Sense)”

UPDATE IV (2/27): Jack Kerwick has chronicled this phenomenon of Hollywood of the punditry like no other. Have fame, will travel. No matter what you say or promote, you get to redefine yourself anytime, anywhere.

UPDATE V (3/27): Civil Rights.

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Mosque Call To Prayer A Form Of Noise Pollution, Trespass

Christianity, Islam, Israel, libertarianism, Paleolibertarianism, Private Property, Religion

In Muslim countries, the remaining Christians and Jews worship under duress. Witness the latest massacre of Coptic Christians in Egypt, where a “bomb blast has killed at least 25 people during Sunday mass inside a Cairo church near the main Coptic Christian cathedral,” reports Egyptian state TV.

All Israel wants is for mosques to turn the volume way down. What a difference. I would ask that the muezzin stop screaming from the spire, or minaret of the mosque. Surely Muslims know what time service begins? Get the mosque to text you, if you forget.

A libertarian case can be made that penetrating, amplified yelps that travel far are a form of noise pollution. Citizens can seek redress in a libertarian universe for such trespass.

The Lesson of Thanksgiving: Private Property Rights

Colonialism, History, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Private Property, Socialism

John Stossel has a lesson in history and political economy for the nation’s brainless Bernieacs:

… before that first Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims nearly starved to death because they didn’t respect private property.

When they first arrived in Massachusetts, they acted like Bernie Sanders wants us to act. They farmed “collectively.” Pilgrims said, “We’ll grow food together and divide the harvest equally.”

Bad idea. Economists call this the “tragedy of the commons.” When everyone works “together,” some people don’t work very hard.

Likewise, when the crops were ready to eat, some grabbed extra food — sometimes picking corn at night, before it was fully ready. Teenagers were especially lazy and likely to steal the commune’s crops.

Pilgrims almost starved. Governor Bradford wrote in his diary, “So they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could … that they might not still thus languish in misery.”

His answer: He divided the commune into parcels and assigned each Pilgrim his own property, or as Bradford put it, “set corn every man for his own particular. … Assigned every family a parcel of land.”

That simple change brought the Pilgrims so much plenty that they could share food with Indians.

… It’s a myth that the Native Americans had no property rules. They had property — and European settlers should have treated those rules with respect. … The U.S. government, after killing thousands of Native Americans and restricting others to reservations, gave tribal governments control over Indians’ lives, in collaboration with the government’s Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Since then, no group in America has been more “helped” and “managed” by the federal government than Indians. Because of that, no group has done worse. …

Deprogram your kids with “Thanksgiving Tragedy.”