| From: | "David Parker" <davefparker(at)shaw.ca> |
|---|---|
| Date: | Fri, 14 Jan 2011 08:18:22 -0800 |
| Subject: | RE: [WDDM] MANY ACTIVE MEMBERS AND VOTERS |
|
The means
sounds good but what are the ends? What is more important, property rights or
the right to vote in democratic elections? [DIEbold-Intel Inside] Since we
have no real property rights our vote is meaningless. "I owe my soul to the
company store" Frank Chodorov covered voting and the lesser of two evils.
Like Moses said, "Look (it) up" Will we still have a state with a monopoly law
enforcement apparatchik funded by immoral direct taxation? [CIA Inside] Is it
true, as Frank said, that Socialists are born not made? I like what
-Hans Herman Hoppe had to say, from his book, Democracy: the god that
failed What can we
do now, in order to prevent the process of civilizational decline from running
its full course to an economic and social catastrophe? Above all, the idea of
democracy and majority rule must be delegitimized. Ultimately, the course of
history is determined by ideas, be they true or false. Just as kings could not
exercise their rule unless a majority of public opinion accepted such rule as
legitimate, so will democratic rulers not last without ideological support in
public opinion.48 Likewise ,the transition from monarchical to democratic rule
must be explained as fundamentally nothing but a change in public opinion. In
fact, until the end of World War I, the overwhelming majority of the public in
Europe accepted monarchical rule as legitimate.49 Today, hardly anyone would do
so. On the contrary, the idea of monarchical government is considered laughable.
Consequently, a return to the ancient regime must be regarded as impossible. The
legitimacy of monarchical rule appears to have been irretrievably lost. Nor
would such a return be a genuine solution. For monarchies, whatever their
relative merits, do exploit and do contribute to present-orientedness as well.
Rather, the idea of democratic-republican rule must be rendered equally if not
more laughable, not in the least by identifying it as the source of the ongoing
process of decivilization. But at the same time, and still more importantly, a
positive alternative to monarchy and democracy-the idea of a natural order-must
be delineated and understood. On the one hand, this involves the recognition
that it is not exploitation, either monarchical or democratic, but private
property, production, and voluntary exchange that are the ultimate sources of
human civilization. On the other hand, it involves the recognition of a
fundamental sociological insight (which incidentally also helps identify
precisely where the historic opposition to monarchy went wrong): that the
maintenance and preservation of a private property based exchange economy
requires as its sociological presupposition the existence of a voluntarily
acknowledged natural elite-a nobilitas naturalis.so The natural outcome of the
voluntary transactions between various private property owners is decidedly
nonegalitarian, hierarchical, and elitist. As the result of widely diverse human
talents, in every society of any degree of complexity a few individuals quickly
acquire the status of an elite. Owing to superior achievements of wealth,
wisdom, bravery or a combination thereof, some individuals come to possess
"natural authority," and their opinions and judgments enjoy widespread respect.
Moreover, because of selective mating and marriage and the laws of civil and
genetic inheritance, positions of natural authority are more likely than not
passed on within a few noble families. It is to the heads of these families with
long-established records of superior achievement, farsightedness, and exemplary
personal conduct that men turn with their conflicts and complaints against each
other, and it is these very leaders of the natural elite who typically act as
judges and peacemakers, often free of charge, out of a sense of obligation
required and expected of a person of authority or even out of a principled
concern for civil justice, as a privately produced "public good. is In fact, the
endogenous origin of a monarchy (as opposed to its exogenous origin via
conquest)S2 can only be understood against the background of a prior order of
natural elites. The small but decisive step in the transition to monarchical
rule-the original sin-consisted precisely in the monopolization of the function
of judge and peacemaker. The step was taken once a single member of the
voluntarily acknowledged natural elite-the king-insisted, against the opposition
of other members of the social elite, that all conflicts within a specified
territory be brought before him and conflicting parties no longer choose any
other judge or peacekeeper but him. From this moment on, law and law enforcement
became more expensive: instead of being offered free of charge or for a
voluntary payment, they were financed with the help of a compulsory tax. At the
same time, the quality of law deteriorated: instead of upholding the
pre-existing law and applying universal and immutable principles of justice, a
monopolistic judge, who did not have to fear losing clients as a result of being
less than impartial in his judgments, could successively alter the existing law
to his own advantage. It was to a large extent the inflated price of justice and
the perversions of ancient law by the kings which motivated the historical
opposition to monarchy. However, confusion as to the causes of this phenomenon
prevailed. There were those who recognized correctly that the problem lay with
monopoly, not with elites or nobility.53 But they were far outnumbered by those
who erroneously blamed it on the elitist character of the rulers instead, and
who accordingly strove to maintain the monopoly of law and law enforcement and
merely replace the king and the visible royal pomp by the "people" and the
presumed modesty and decency of the II common man." Hence the historic success
of democracy. Ironically, the monarchy was then destroyed by the same social
forces that kings had first stimulated when they began to exclude competing
natural authorities from acting as judges. In order to overcome their
resistance, kings typically aligned themselves with the people, the common
man.54 Appealing to the always popular sentiment of envy, kings promised the
people cheaper and better justice in exchange and at the expense of
taxing-cutting down to size-their own betters (that is, the kings' competitors).
When the kings' promises turned out to be empty, as was to be predicted, the
same egalitarian sentiments which they had previously courted now focused and
turned against them. After all, the king himself was a member of the nobility,
and as a result of the exclusion of all other judges, his position had become
only more elevated and elitist and his conduct only more arrogant. Accordingly,
it appeared only logical then that kings, too, should be brought down and that
the egalitarian policies, which monarchs had initiated, be carried through to
their ultimate conclusion: the monopolistic control of the judiciary by the
common man. Predictably, as explained and illustrated in detail above, the
democratization of law and law enforcement-the substitution of the people for
the king-made matters only worse, however. The price of justice and peace has
risen astronomically, and all the while the quality of law has steadily
deteriorated to the point where the idea of law as a body of universal and
immutable principles of justice has almost disappeared from public opinion and
has been replaced by the idea of law as legislation (government-made law). At
the same time, democracy has succeeded where monarchy only made a modest
beginning: in the ultimate destruction of the natural elites. The fortunes of
great families have dissipated, and their tradition of culture and economic
independence, intellectual farsightedness, and moral and spiritual leadership
has been forgotten. Rich men still exist today, but more frequently than not
they owe their fortune now directly or indirectly to the state. Hence, they are
often more dependent on the state's continued favors than people of far lesser
wealth. They are typically no longer the heads of long established leading
families but nouveaux riches. Their conduct is not marked by special virtue,
dignity, or taste but is a reflection of the same proletarian mass-culture of
present-orientedness, opportunism, and hedonism that the rich now share with
everyone else; consequently, their opinions carry no more weight in public
opinion than anyone else's. Hence, when democratic rule has finally exhausted
its legitimacy the problem faced will be significantly more difficult than when
kings lost their legitimacy. Then, it would have been sufficient to abolish the
king's monopoly of law and law enforcement and replace it with a natural order
of competing jurisdictions, because remnants of natural elites who could have
taken on this task still existed. Now, this will no longer suffice. H the
monopoly of law and law enforcement of democratic governments is dissolved,
there appears to be no other authority to whom one can turn for justice, and
chaos would seem to be inevitable. Thus, in addition to advocating the
abdication of democracy, it is now of central strategic importance that at the
same time ideological support be given to all decentralizing or even
secessionist social forces. In other words, the tendency toward political
centralization that has characterized the Western world for many centuries,
first under monarchical rule and then under democratic auspices, must be
systematically reversed.55 Even if as a result of a secessionist tendency a new
government, whether democratic or not, should spring up, territorially smaller
governments and increased political competition will tend to encourage
moderation as regards exploitation. In any case, only in small regions,
communities or districts will it be possible again for a few individuals, based
on the popular recognition of their economic independence, outstanding
professional achievement, morally impeccable personal life, and superior
judgment and taste, to rise to the rank of natural, voluntarily acknowledged
authorities and lend legitimacy to the idea of a natural order of competing
judges and overlapping jurisdictions-an "anarchic" private law society-as the
answer to monarchy and democracy. How do you
get people to withdraw their moral support for the state? It can take my money
but it can't take my mind or take me for a ride. Can you convince people to get
out of the car? Living free
in an un-free world (The general state 'of mind')
I knew I was
right
Dumbing
down
Art
appreciation. What are all these artists trying to tell us in their books,
songs, speeches and signs? George
Harrison wrote Taxman then 40 years later he wrote brainwashed. What was he
trying to tell us? What do our
wise elders tell us to do these days? Keep shopping, only 364 days until
ChistMyth. Cheers: Dave
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