Category Archives: Private Property

A Good Country For Dead Beats

Business, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Law, Private Property, Rights, Socialism

Initially, every parasitical official seeking to renew or secure a grip on the public teat was demanding a halt to what are mostly perfectly legitimate foreclosures on delinquent homeowners. Now cities across the US are considering using eminent domain to seize underwater mortgages. One dreadful cur, Chicago Alderman Joe Moreno, claims that the effort will “boost a recovery of the housing market.”

Fox Business’ Melissa Francis hammered Moreno for his scheming.

“Chicago is threatening to undermine whole system,” blasted Ms. Francis. “If you seize these mortgages from the banks and you just rip them up, why would a bank ever lend money again?” Good for her. But why not use the words “contract” and “property rights”? Why use “system,” so vague and meaningless?

Public discourse never rises above the utilitarian: what works, what doesn’t. Rights be damned. Anything to get away from making a principled distinction between what is mine and what is thine. In a word, property rights.

It is almost always true that a necessary condition for a foreclosure is for the homeowner to have failed to make his mortgage payments. Some even “argue” for all-out sweetness and love for the foreclosed upon. They say that because the banks are embroiled in the fractional reserve system, they should suffer this fate.

That’s like saying that because a legal system is corrupt, murderers should go free; or because an owner who sells a parcel of land partakes in the property tax theft, the buyer should not have to pay him. Or because businesses often act like exuberant idiots during a phase of the business cycle—some as offenders; others as victims—their customers need not pay them. And on and on.

‘You Didn’t Build That’: Obama’s Political Epitaph

Barack Obama, Government, History, Human Accomplishment, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Political Philosophy, Private Property, Republicans, Socialism

“‘You Didn’t Build That’: Obama’s Political Epitaph” is the current column, now on RT. Here is an excerpt:

“… Not once but four times did Obama repeat the gist of his clinching line, ‘You didn’t build that.’ With each iteration, his voice dripped contempt for individual achievement.

‘…you didn’t get there on your own.
You didn’t get there on your own.
If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that.
Somebody else made that happen.’

‘You didn’t build That’ will be Barack Obama’s political epitaph.

Obama’s collectivism, and vertiginous ignorance, called for a one-two punch. A knockout. Patrick J. Buchanan was the only rightist—I hesitate to libel Mr. Buchanan as a Republican—who delivered the blow.

‘Barack Obama, with due respect, does not understand America — at least that part of America that produces and creates,’ roared Buchanan on Fox News. ‘Obama spent his whole life in tax-exempt, tax-subsidized and tax-supported institutions. Does he not understand what creates the wealth in America?’

‘For the first 175 years of our existence as a people, there was no federal government. Who does he think created that country of 3 million who defeated the greatest empire in the world, other than the individuals who built the farms and little factories; who clothed and fed and housed themselves and created one of the greatest societies on earth, again, before the federal government was created?’

Indeed, America is the culmination of the individual principle of voluntary cooperation…

… Obama’s remarks at Roanoke, Virginia, on July 13, 2012, were more than a faux pas.

With these remarks, Obama has come out of the closet as a most odious collectivist, who believes religiously that government predation is a condition for production. Or, put simply, that the parasite created the host.

With his near-religious repetition of the ‘you didn’t build that’ phrase, the president of the United States demonstrated his faith in the statist principle of compulsory cooperation. …”

The complete column, “‘You Didn’t Build That’: Obama’s Political Epitaph,” can be read on RT.

Also available from WND is my book, “Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa.” The paperback edition features bonus material, including an Afterword by Burkean philosopher Jack Kerwick, Ph.D. Order it from WND.

If you’d like to feature this column, WND’s longest-standing, exclusive libertarian column, in or on your publication (paper or pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

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UPDATE III (1/1/021): Abortion And A Woman’s Title In Her Body

Abortion, Conservatism, Ethics, Feminism, Individual Rights, libertarianism, Liberty, Natural Law, Private Property

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It is clearly untrue to say that a paleolibertarian is one who always opposes a woman’s absolute dominion over her body, as a poster on Wendy McElroy’s Facebook Wall has implied.

Abortion is one hill I do not care to die on; I’ve committed enough professional Seppuku over the years. However, I have repeatedly stated that, for a classical liberal (at least), “it’s [highly] problematic to say that by virtue of her fertility, a woman loses a title in her body.”

To repeat, for me, abortion is not the hill to die on. It seems prudent not to come out on this issue. Division of labor and all that stuff; I’ll leave it to Wendy McElroy, who, I am sure, agrees that “libertarians can agree that no state funding, local or federal, should be allocated to such a procedure.”

Otherwise, here is Wendy’s brilliant articulation of self-ownership. Watch Wendy on Stossel’s, 7:28 minutes in:

Wendy McElroy: As far as I’m concerned, this is my skin. Everything beneath this skin belongs to me, or I don’t own anything. I am a self-owner-

John Stossel: Even if there is a living being inside you?

Wendy McElroy: If there is a living being inside me, I’m glad you used the word “being” and not “individual with rights,” if there is a living being inside me, it exists on my breath, it exists by my, the blood pumping through my veins, by the food I eat. It is within my skin, and if you say to me that there, that I do not have jurisdiction over my body, that, in fact, society or someone else has jurisdiction, the, the word that describes someone else owning my body is slavery.*

UPDATE I: Glad people have remained civil on Facebook, so far. That’s the way. Always. However much one disdains the procedure, you can’t get away from the fact of self-ownership. You have no right to take custody of another person’s body. They either own themselves or don’t.

You can’t “own” your body in conjunction with other busybodies.

UPDATE II (July 21):

From the hopeless Facebook thread:

Your tortured analogy, MW, does not hold or even come close. Any reasoning about this fraught topic must proceed, at the very least, from a correct analogy. This is why this debate cannot proceed from logic. People lose their logic (or perhaps they never had the ability to reason to begin with) when it comes to abortion. Enough, now folks. The most honest position the anti-a-woman’s-right-in-her-body proponents can advance is this: a woman, by virtue of her biology, does not have total title in her body. As a propertarian, I find this position untenable, but agree that individuals who hold it will try to finesse it. So this is the final word. “Respek,” as Ali Gi would say.

JV: This is what I mean by a lack of reasoning faculties on the topic, and plain dissembling. What irks here is not only that I said, “enough,” and this is my Wall. But that you, JV, frame your “distinguishing” argument” as exhaustive. The initiation of force is most certainly not the only distinguishing feature between the mother and the fetus. (Unrelated: there is a prerequisite for Facebook Friendship.)

UPDATE III (1/1/021):

Libertarians view women as having dominion over their bodies! My comment, then, is on the cultural specter of females freed from men, morality and tradition: how quickly they turn into diabolical libertines. Most women need traditional strictures to balance exhibitionism and promiscuity.

UPDATED: Barely A Blog (BAB) Closes Comments (& Says ‘So Long’ To Cowards)

BAB's A List, Education, Etiquette, Free Speech, Ilana Mercer, Liberty, Private Property

Barely A Blog (BAB) Comments Section is now closed.

For years, I’ve moderated this forum, hoping to educate visitors. The goal was noble, but naive. The labor-intense effort involved considerable opportunity costs, and few returns (Comments do not drive traffic to BAB or to IlanaMercer.com).

Time is scarce and thus precious.

With the exception of a few valued voices (who may, like Myron Pauli, submit editorials), this public-minded forum attracted a lot of maladroit, often maladaptive, men and women, who, for the most, hadn’t the faintest idea how to behave on private property (BAB).

As for learning or researching? Forgetaboutit!

The BAB forum was seen as an opportunity not to broaden horizons, but to abuse the host and display ignorance. Generosity, and an invitation to debate with civility and decorum: These were treated by most as yet another entitlement; free-reign on a domain for which they were not paying, and to which only a few contributed funds.

Unfettered freedom became a standard demand. As good libertarians know, you have no automatic rights of free speech on private property; you have the right to petition private property for that prerogative. Few did so, and few complied with the minimum standards of grammatical, polite speech.

For such irremediable attitudes and sense of entitlement one develops contempt.

Why labor over irredeemably rude individuals, who will never imbibe the basics of liberty, and will resent you and diss you for your efforts?

So, for now, “Comments” are no more. If you’ve had a change of heart; if you wish to discuss posts—and do battle for liberty in a civilized way—do so @Twitter, on my Facebook Wall, or on WND’s and RT’s Comments Sections.

I trust that good friends of BAB and IlanaMercer.com will do what they can to support and contribute to the ongoing work on these sites.

UPDATED (July 3): Militating for a policy of minimal contact going forward is the following: I used to be critical of writers who never-ever responded to their readers, even writing the blog post “Manners As Virtue.”

As a person with a strong sense of duty and propriety, I used to answer almost all my mail. Imagine the kind of opportunity costs involved! (In other words, the extra book I might have written had I not been self-sacrificing and nice, as Ayn Rand would, no doubt, castigate this “good-girl” behavior.)

The goal was to galvanize readers to the ideas of liberty and to my idiosyncratic way of conveying these ideas.

The outcome after 15 years of doing this? I made about 3 really good personal friends.

For the rest, readers are freeloaders—individuals who’re interested in “access” to you and, thus, in ego affirmation. They will use your civility to drain your energies, to no avail. A gush with praise for you in private, they are generally too cowardly to defend important ideas publicly.

A prime example: Most longtime correspondents of mine, individuals who’ve enjoyed the outlet afforded them on Barely a Blog for years, responded not at all in my defense, following the repulsive Karen-Klein pack-attack I sustained.

The detritus of humanity unleashed itself on their supposed favorite writer. But these individuals could not muster one cutting comment in defense of ideas and writing they say they favor and would like to see prevail.

Damn straight Comments (and other communications) are closed.