Category Archives: The State

UPDATED: Levin Claims Liberty’s Language (Levin/Mainstream Media & Object Permanence)

English, Neoconservatism, The State

It’s not saying much, but Mark Levin is better than most radio talkers in that he crafts thoughtful commentary daily, rather than resort to taking calls, or to frivolous banter with bimbo producers. It’s, however, truly bizarre for “The Great One,” as Sean Hannity has dubbed Levin, to claim to have originated the term “statism,” coined by, I believe, Ludwig von Mises. Via Ludwig von Mises Institute:

Statism is a political ideology where the central state, rather than the people, are the ultimate source of authority and power.[1] Statism tends towards increased central planning in the economic sphere and a curtailing of civil liberties, which may be deemed necessary by those in power to achieve social or militaristic goals. The term statism is derived from the French word etatism, a term which was preferred by Ludwig von Mises as he believed it expressed the fact that the ideology did not originally emerge in Anglo-Saxon countries but rather was later adopted by them.

It would be comical were it not true, but, in similar vain, Levin could be heard the other day, laying claim to popularizing the use of the term “civil society.”

Plain dumb.

Here is just one use of liberty’s language, in 2003: “… paleolibertarians care first about the effects of the state on civil society.”

Another: “To liberals, the U.N. is the embodiment of civil society.” Here.

Google “civil society” at the ilanamercer.com Articles Archive, and the search will spit up over two pages.

UPDATE (9/26):: Levin/Mainstream Media & Object Permanence.

Most good libertarians use “civil society” and “statism” without second thought. Perhaps Levin has figured that good libertarians are marginalized enough to ignore … Mainstream media generally believe that unless they personally have arrived at certain eternal truths—these truths and their champions do not exist. In psychology we’d say that they lack object permanence, a facility a baby acquires in his first year. What is out of sight doesn’t exist.

‘Scaredy Cops’

Fascism, Law, Terrorism, The State

“[These are the very men who gear up in military assault gear to gang-assault grandmothers and infants in no-knock raids. And they’re whining that a copkiller hunting them doesn’t give THEM fair warning? Please.” So writes the acerbic Vox day (a former WND colleague and a fellow paleolibertarian) about Eric Frein, who “who is charged with ambushing two Pennsylvania state troopers last Friday night, shooting them with a rifle. One was killed. The other remains in critical condition.”

The police should be grateful that the guy is playing fair enough to only target police officers and not police families. And considering that there are “hundreds of officers” hunting him, about the last thing you can call Eric Frein is a coward. Cowards are those who only have the courage to act in packs. Frein is probably a lunatic and may even be a psychopath, but he doesn’t strike me as a coward.
Never forget: you can’t have a police state without police.

MORE Vox.

UPDATE IV: Jealous Of The Scots (What Would Lincoln Do? Drop Daisy Cutters)

Britain, Nationhood, Socialism, States' Rights, The State

Envy ought to animate America, as it watches the push for the decentralization of power—radical federalism—across Europe and in Canada. For here in the US, the legacy of Lincoln has prevailed. He carried out a violent constitutional revolution (instead of pursuing peaceful emancipation like every other nation did), a revolution, which, in turn, sired the modern imperialist, interventionist and highly centralized American State, and outlawed peaceful political divorce.

The sweet sounds of of Scottish secession (to shamelessly mix metaphors) have fallen silent. For now. Scotland voted against leaving the United Kingdom and becoming an independent nation. But only just. The “No” campaign won 55.3 percent of the vote. The Scots hardly “rejected independence,” as Fox News put it. The tyranny of democracy has meant that a simple majority won the day.

Afrikaner secessionist Dan Roodt summed up my sentiments, in an email:

The Scottish referendum is a big disappointment to me, as I had hoped that a “Yes” victory could have unleashed a whole series of independence movements, in Europe, but also here in SA. More and more the Zulus control South Africa, with the media waging a futile campaign against Zuma. So ultimately ethnicity has triumphed over all these other clever theories.

Contra broadcaster Mark Levin—who clings for dear life to an anti-secession sentiment, so as to better love the unlovable: war criminal Abe Lincoln—the healthiest and most intuitive response to deep-seated unhappiness—political or personal—is not a constitutional convention, but a divorce; to exit the abusive relationship.

If Americans try what the Scots have have just done, our states and neighborhoods would be invaded by the federal government. People could die.

UPDATE I: To continue the theme of majority makes right, via Butler Shaffer at LRC.COM:

The mainstream media informed us that David Cameron was greatly pleased by the outcome. It is the nature of politics that this statement is true. Political thinking has trained people to believe in the 51% principle: no idea is worthwhile unless 51% of the public believes in it. But imagine a man with nine children, and four of them dislike the father so much that they want to vote to have all siblings leave home. The vote is held and, by a 5 to 4 margin, the pro-big daddy side wins. Would any loving psychologically-healthy man consider this to be a great personal victory?
Opponents of this measure were quick to announce that the question of Scottish independence has been settled, “once and for all,” words that mean “when we get the outcome we want, the issue can never be brought up again.”
All-in-all, the outcome of this vote was a referendum on the ageless choice people must make between individual liberty and collective security.

MORE.

UPDATE II: If “1 in 4 Americans are open to secession, what does it say about this freedom which Lincoln waged war to abolish? It tells you that secession is intuitive to a very many ordinary folks.

Secession, political divorce, peaceful separation: these are the most natural and best ways to solve disputes. Walk away. This tells you just how aberrant was Lincoln’s war against the South.

UPDATE III:

Nikola Dzhilvidzhiev on Facebook:

In the past week, I heard a lot of arguments from neoconservatives that Scottish secession was ‘because they wanted to be even more socialist than the UK’. Maybe I was a bit optimistic but I believed that the sudden leftward surge in Scottish policy and resultant loss of living standard would have shocked the people and policymakers into understanding that capitalism and free markets are the way to prosperity, á la China.
Until the next referendum, at least, you’re all welcome to join me in shouting Alba gu bráth from the rooftops of the world.

To Nikola Dzhilvidzhiev:

Yes, the secessionist would have had to learn whence come their subsidies and, for freedom’s sake, they would have had to cease and desist the country’s march toward complete socialism. Nevertheless, the CORRECT libertarian view is to support the impetus of decentralization. (Reason magazine is left, Beltway libertarianism).

UPDATE IV (9/19): WHAT WOULD LINCOLN DO? Drop Daisy Cutters. That’s what he’d do.

Rafi Farber emails EPJ editor Robert Wenzel:

Before we decide what to think about Scottish independence, let’s consider what our beloved forefather, Abraham Lincoln, Honest Abe, would do if he were head of the UK in the event that the Scots secede from the United Kingdom tomorrow.
Answer: He would make some stupid but eloquent speech about how a House Divided Cannot Stand…and then proceed to bomb the living crap out of Scotland, murdering as many people as possible man woman and child, burning their property and salting the earth. And after he broke their will to fight, he would force them back in the UK and tax the living daylights out of them. Then we would all celebrate him hundreds of years later for saving the country.

MORE letters to editor.

The Hos @ State On Outsourcing Safety To The Enemy

Foreign Policy, Gender, Hillary Clinton, Military, Multiculturalism, Political Correctness, Terrorism, The State

To counter other grand theories about Benghazi, I have always contended that, to quote, “Hillary Clinton, the woman who cracked the whip at Foggy Bottom at the time, had clearly resolved to run the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya, as one would an open community center. This was meant to signal that her war on Libya had been a success, when in fact Hillary’s adventure there had as much ‘host-nation support’ as George Bush’s faith-based forays into Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The next tidbit is by no means news, yet it always disgusts me afresh on a number of levels: What it says about the submissiveness of soldiers who serve Uncle Sam. Its confirmation of the state’s eagerness to sacrifice those who serve it for the tyranny of ideology—in this case the idea that one can safely outsource the safety of Americans to the enemy: Muslim militia.

Over to Marie Barf, Whore at State (do you have an audial recollection of the grating tart tones the woman emits from her mouth?):

QUESTION: On Libya?

MS. HARF: Uh-huh.

QUESTION: Marie, in Friday’s briefing where you addressed the stand-down controversy, you repeatedly said that there was “a short delay” that was ordered by the chief of base that night was smart and prudent because it was designed to help the CIA security contractors obtain, as you put it, additional backup and additional weapons. From whom and where did the chief of base expect to procure this additional backup of weapons?

MS. HARF: I don’t have details for you on that, but again, he thought it was prudent to take a short time to see if they could get additional weapons and backup, given they did not know the severity of the security situation they were sending their men into. Of course, wanted to avoid additional loss of life, but again, as I said on Friday, there was no stand-down order. There’s a fundamental difference between a short delay for these kind of security considerations and a stand-down order, which implies some effort to prevent people from aiding those under attack. As we know, these gentlemen eventually did go and assist, so disproving the theory that there was a stand-down order.

QUESTION: But you can’t say who they were requesting —

MS. HARF: I can check and see if there are details on that.

QUESTION: It wasn’t the February 17th Brigade?

MS. HARF: I can check and see what the details are on that.

QUESTION: Okay. As we look back on Benghazi with almost two years from now, can we say with certainty – just given how the events unfolded that night – that it was indeed a mistake to invest such confidence in local militias there to help these U.S. diplomats?

MS. HARF: Well, I think that’s, quite frankly, grossly simplifying what was a very sad and tragic day, where we know more could’ve been done with security. We knew the situation in Benghazi and in the rest of Libya was a dangerous one, but State Department employees and our counterparts from other agencies serve in dangerous places because we believe it’s important for America to lead and to be engaged and to help promote freedom and democracy and help people who are working towards those ends.

So obviously, we’ve said that more could have been done with security. We’ve spent these last two years doing more: implementing the ARB’s recommendations, making our people safer overseas. That’s been the focus of what we’ve done. But broadly speaking, of course, we believed it was important to engage there, and we still believe it’s important, even given today’s, quite frankly, tough security environment in Libya.

QUESTION: Which is so tough that you’ve closed your Embassy and they’re now operating out of Malta.

MS. HARF: That our – we haven’t closed our Embassy, but —

QUESTION: Well, you —

MS. HARF: Right, exactly.

Yes, in the back. And then I’ll come up to you, Leslie.

*****

Does the gentle reader, perhaps, have an apt description for a whiny, insubstantial, empty-headed ho like Harf? State with the likes of Harf at the helm is a real community center for cretins.