Why Should We Care About Property Rights?

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BENGHAZI 2: Oct 13, 2007; by Cyrano4747

SedanChair posted:

Obviously in the mind of jrodefeld (or any covert white supremacist), getting called a racist is the ultimate aggression.

hey maybe this will get his attention then

hey jrode you're a fuckin racist piece of poo poo. stop listening to wu-tang, you fuckin abominable excuse for an abortion. also, pick up your klan robes on your way to the hitler youth rally

now talk to me about minimum wage jobs COCKSUCKER

# ? Feb 13, 2016 00:26

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# ? May 15, 2024 21:20

Who What Now: Sep 10, 2006; by Azathoth

Tesseraction posted:

The latter I can understand but it's depressing to think he got the former job position of pirate blu-ray burner via nepotism.

Where do you think Pee-Paw and Mee-Maw Rodefeld got the money to pay off Jrod's medical bills for his totally real case of Chronic Lyme Disease? That's right, selling bootleg VHS tapes! You rent the movie from the store, make a dozen copies, and sell em' for half what the retail price is. Li'l J is just keeping the family business alive.

# ? Feb 13, 2016 00:28

Tesseraction: Apr 5, 2009

Who What Now posted:

Where do you think Pee-Paw and Mee-Maw Rodefeld got the money to pay off Jrod's medical bills for his totally real case of Chronic Lyme Disease? That's right, selling bootleg VHS tapes! You rent the movie from the store, make a dozen copies, and sell em' for half what the retail price is. Li'l J is just keeping the family business alive.

Hell, given his tendency to just quote long libertarian screeds at us I wonder if he isn't just choosing random selections of his currently-copying libertarian e-book of choice.

# ? Feb 13, 2016 00:30

Teriyaki Koinku: Nov 25, 2008; Bread! Bread! Bread!

Bread! BREAD! BREAD!

Who What Now posted:

I have a feeling that jrod's work history is nothing but a long list of positions gained through nepotism and/or failed get-rich-quick and Ponzi schemes.

Sales Experience:
� Essential in importing 2.5k units of Chinese Blu-Ray movies while maximizing profit on each sold
� Proficient in navigating customs regulations and interacting with law enforcement
� Well-educated in libertarian political science to provide rapport with clients
� Skilled negotiator in receiving "extras" in deals (eg mercury tooth fillings)

SedanChair posted:

Obviously in the mind of jrodefeld (or any covert white supremacist), getting called a racist is the ultimate aggression.

*spits drink all over monitor*

Covert?

Teriyaki Koinku fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Feb 13, 2016

# ? Feb 13, 2016 00:45

Stinky_Pete: Aug 16, 2015; Stinkier than your average bear; Lipstick Apathy

Your Dunkle Sans posted:

*spits drink all over monitor*

Covert?

I'm new to the arguing with libertarians pastime here on SA. Has he explicitly said that white people are naturally better than other races by some metric of human quality?

Because I'd still call it covert if he's just acting like history started yesterday and every black person's achievement in life has nothing to do with slavery, sharecropping, police brutality, redlining, lead poisoning, or people like jrod who are unaware of their cognitive biases and think that they're perfectly rational and objective when they reject Jamal's application in favor of Steve's?

# ? Feb 13, 2016 01:09

Goon Danton: May 24, 2012; Don't forget to show my shitposts to the people. They're well worth seeing.

Stinky_Pete posted:

I'm new to the arguing with libertarians pastime here on SA. Has he explicitly said that white people are naturally better than other races by some metric of human quality?

Because I'd still call it covert if he's just acting like history started yesterday and every black person's achievement in life has nothing to do with slavery, sharecropping, police brutality, redlining, lead poisoning, or people like jrod who are unaware of their cognitive biases and think that they're perfectly rational and objective when they reject Jamal's application in favor of Steve's?

Okay, cliffsnotes time.

One of his favorite thinkers (and one of his most quoted) is Hans Hermann Hoppe, who's notable for talking about the inferior time preference of the negroid being the main thing holding back African countries (he used those words, and is still alive. He wrote that on his blog) and for openly fantasizing about forcibly removing socialists and homosexuals from society. His other most cited thinker is Murray Rothbard, notable for writing fawning tributes to David Duke and Charles "Bell Curve" Murray. There are hilariously awful quotes by the both of them if you check my posting history in this thread. e: Another constantly invoked figure is Actual Literal Fascist Ludwig von Mises.

JRod himself has expressed the belief that black women have multiple children to maximize their welfare checks, talked about how it isn't racist to assume a young black man he sees on the street is "probably in a gang," and then argued in favor of law enforcement racially profiling Arabs when we called him on it. His racism really does seem to be of the "I am a rational and non-racist person; I have X bias; therefore X bias must be rational and non-racist" variety.

Goon Danton fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Feb 13, 2016

# ? Feb 13, 2016 01:34

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Stinky_Pete posted:

I'm new to the arguing with libertarians pastime here on SA. Has he explicitly said that white people are naturally better than other races by some metric of human quality?

Because I'd still call it covert if he's just acting like history started yesterday and every black person's achievement in life has nothing to do with slavery, sharecropping, police brutality, redlining, lead poisoning, or people like jrod who are unaware of their cognitive biases and think that they're perfectly rational and objective when they reject Jamal's application in favor of Steve's?

I believe Jrode specifically disclaims personally thinking that black people are inferior to white people, but is quite happy to constantly cite arguments, thinkers, books, and failed nation-states who were built on this fundamental principle. However, he feels this is unfair, not because of some appeal to neutrality ("an interstate highway network isn't evil just because Hitler built the first one") but because, you see, it is they who are the real racists, and his system cannot possibly be racist. It will be completely fair and honest starting riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight - now.

# ? Feb 13, 2016 01:35

Grand Theft Autobot: Feb 28, 2008; I'm something of a fucking idiot myself

Stinky_Pete posted:

I'm new to the arguing with libertarians pastime here on SA. Has he explicitly said that white people are naturally better than other races by some metric of human quality?

Because I'd still call it covert if he's just acting like history started yesterday and every black person's achievement in life has nothing to do with slavery, sharecropping, police brutality, redlining, lead poisoning, or people like jrod who are unaware of their cognitive biases and think that they're perfectly rational and objective when they reject Jamal's application in favor of Steve's?

Let me introduce you to Hans Herman Hoppe, who believes blacks, jews, homosexuals, and "democrats" need to be physically removed from society. He is somewhere on jrod's list of top influences after a guy who supported Apartheid South Africa, and a Confederate Lost Causer who believes we should resegregate public schools on the basis of race.

# ? Feb 13, 2016 01:36

fade5: May 31, 2012; by exmarx

Stinky_Pete posted:

I'm new to the arguing with libertarians pastime here on SA. Has he explicitly said that white people are naturally better than other races by some metric of human quality?

Because I'd still call it covert if he's just acting like history started yesterday and every black person's achievement in life has nothing to do with slavery, sharecropping, police brutality, redlining, lead poisoning, or people like jrod who are unaware of their cognitive biases and think that they're perfectly rational and objective when they reject Jamal's application in favor of Steve's?

In addition to the above posts, there's this:

jrodefeld posted:

Furthermore, I think I wrote a small handful of posts about the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman trial shortly after it erupted, which was several years ago, and you have to resort to digging up those old posts out of context to attack me on this thread? That strikes of desperation.

It is as if you feel that your primary duty is to first justify calling your opponent a racist. That is why whenever I mention I libertarian thinker I learned from, your first response is to comb through their twitter feed or look through every article or book they ever published to find some rationale in order to call them a bigot of some sort. To call this disingenuous is far too kind.

The task of any criminal defense is to demonstrate reasonable doubt. With regards to the Zimmerman/Trayvon trial, the only relevant fact was whether Zimmerman was justified in using deadly force. If there wasn't sufficient evidence for murder, then according to our legal standards, he must be acquitted. I shouldn't have to mention it, but given the audience I feel it necessary, it is not a grant of immunity from any wrong doing to acquit someone from murder charges.

If Trayvon had a history of criminal abuse, that IS relevant to whether it is likely that during an altercation with Zimmerman, Trayvon became the aggressor and Zimmerman had legitimate reason to fear for his life. It is not unreasonable for the defense to bring up issues with Trayvon's past.

The idea that I am even bothering to defend multiple year old posts about a long resolved criminal trial is absurd. But what if I was concerned about an ISIS attack on Los Angeles? Would I be unreasonable in being extra cautious about Middle Eastern men who were also Muslims? Would that make me a bigot, even though the clear evidence shows that nearly all ISIS members are Muslims who are of Middle Eastern descent?

As would any reasonable person who didn't want to jump to a premature conclusion, I was attempting to see whether Zimmerman had passed the test of reasonable doubt and whether there was sufficient evidence to convict him of first degree murder. Every single question I posed was entirely relevant to that legal inquiry.

If your entire purpose is to "out the racists" or find bigotry everywhere you look, you can justify labeling anyone as such. But to a rational observer, it looks desperate and dishonest.

We mocked Jrod for at least two pages over the bolded part.

# ? Feb 13, 2016 01:39

Goon Danton: May 24, 2012; Don't forget to show my shitposts to the people. They're well worth seeing.

fade5 posted:

In addition to the above posts, there's this:

We mocked Jrod for at least two pages over the bolded part.

I'm actually surprised he didn't vanish after that fuckup. I guess after we didn't drop the Qatar thing, he may have learned that it only gets worse. Haha, never mind, he can't learn.

Oh! Oh! The Qatar thing! He cited a list of the most "economically free" countries, which counted actual slave states Qatar and the UAE in the top 15. Both ranked higher than the USA if I remember right.

# ? Feb 13, 2016 01:45

Captain_Maclaine: Sep 30, 2001

Who What Now posted:

I have a feeling that jrod's work history is nothing but a long list of positions gained through nepotism and/or failed get-rich-quick and Ponzi schemes.

On the one hand, he has said he doesn't think much of bitcoins, but on the other he is very dishonest and stupid so :shrug:

# ? Feb 13, 2016 02:02

Doc Hawkins: Jun 15, 2010; Dashing? But I'm not even moving!

Nolanar posted:

I'm actually surprised he didn't vanish after that fuckup. I guess after we didn't drop the Qatar thing, he may have learned that it only gets worse. Haha, never mind, he can't learn.

Oh! Oh! The Qatar thing! He cited a list of the most "economically free" countries, which counted actual slave states Qatar and the UAE in the top 15. Both ranked higher than the USA if I remember right.

Further: when people described the nature of the foreign worker programmes in those states, and how they were in practice slavery, he dismissed this as the workers' sour grapes at being prevented from unionizing.

He is not good at faking empathy, which makes me wonder why he thinks he can proselytize to leftists.

# ? Feb 13, 2016 02:08

ToxicSlurpee: Nov 5, 2003; -=SEND HELP=-; Pillbug

Doc Hawkins posted:

Further: when people described the nature of the foreign worker programmes in those states, and how they were in practice slavery, he dismissed this as the workers' sour grapes at being prevented from unionizing.

He is not good at faking empathy, which makes me wonder why he thinks he can proselytize to leftists.

Leftists believe in freedom and prosperity for all.

He believes that the things he supports will increase freedom and prosperity for all.

Ergo, leftists should all agree with him. If they don't it's because they're deluded, misinformed, or brainwashed.

# ? Feb 13, 2016 02:15

burnishedfume: Mar 8, 2011; You really are a louse...

Doc Hawkins posted:

He is not good at faking empathy, which makes me wonder why he thinks he can proselytize to leftists.

His efforts to find middle ground policy proposals have been hilariously pathetic, from "Strengthen labor by repealing the minimum wage for teens" to "Completely gut the FDA by revoking their ability to ban/stop the distribution of drugs".

I don't know what exactly he was trying to do there, if he sees the world as statists V non-statists, then there's no need to compromise, statism is dominant and shows no signs of letting up. If he recognizes that there are a whole lot of ideologies under the umbrella of "statism", then why does he think a bunch of leftists who want to weaken businesses and strengthen workers want to kill a watchdog agency and make low skill workers compete with kids who are paid cents on the hour?

# ? Feb 13, 2016 02:19

Goon Danton: May 24, 2012; Don't forget to show my shitposts to the people. They're well worth seeing.

Doc Hawkins posted:

He is not good at faking empathy, which makes me wonder why he thinks he can proselytize to leftists.

Easy:

How to Gain Converts Left, Right and Center posted:

It is called �political cross-dressing.� �Cross-dressing,� of course, refers to the adoption of the dress and behavior of members of the opposite sex. For the libertarian, political cross-dressing means using right-wing words, evidence, and arguments to support civil liberties, and left-wing terms and reasons to support the free market. Because statism is unjust and inefficient, evil and impractical, libertarians can present moral and utilitarian cases against it in all spheres

You don't need to show empathy or maintain a coherent worldview or know what the gently caress your talking about, you just need to use the right magic words short-circuit the silly leftist brain! They can't possibly disagree with your ideas, it must be because you didn't phrase it right.

You can see him try this with non-standard political language too, like when he tried to sell his insane interpretation of the Categorical Imperative.

Goon Danton fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Feb 13, 2016

# ? Feb 13, 2016 03:33

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

We're all chums based on where we would have sat in the French legislature over like 150 years ago.

# ? Feb 13, 2016 03:55

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

Nolanar posted:

His other most cited thinker is Murray Rothbard, notable for writing fawning tributes to David Duke and Charles "Bell Curve" Murray.

Also please note that this is the guy depicted in jrod's avatar.

# ? Feb 13, 2016 03:57

Buried alive: Jun 8, 2009

Nolanar posted:

...
You can see him try this with non-standard political language too, like when he tried to sell his insane interpretation of the Categorical Imperative.

Which, I'd like to mention, got me to do a little reading and stumble upon the fact that Kant believed that it was immoral to be an anarchist. Which is hilarious, given Jrod's apparent position.

# ? Feb 13, 2016 03:58

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Buried alive posted:

Which, I'd like to mention, got me to do a little reading and stumble upon the fact that Kant believed that it was immoral to be an anarchist. Which is hilarious, given Jrod's apparent position.

But would Kant have understood that you could refuse to create joinder?

# ? Feb 13, 2016 04:03

Tacky-Ass Rococco: Sep 7, 2010; by R. Guyovich

Nolanar posted:

I can't stop responding to this dumb loving post help help

Let's play the syllogism game!

1: Theft can be morally justified under certain circumstances
2: Taxation is theft
3:

Let's just post this over and over until he cries.

# ? Feb 13, 2016 04:04

paragon1: Nov 22, 2010; FULL COMMUNISM NOW

GunnerJ posted:

We're all chums based on where we would have sat in the French legislature over like 150 years ago.

can i be this thread's Saint-Just?

# ? Feb 13, 2016 04:09

Doc Hawkins: Jun 15, 2010; Dashing? But I'm not even moving!

Buried alive posted:

Which, I'd like to mention, got me to do a little reading and stumble upon the fact that Kant believed that it was immoral to be an anarchist. Which is hilarious, given Jrod's apparent position.

Kant believed it was immoral to not tell murderers where they could find their intended victims.

There are many things which make jrod's calling upon his authority preposterous.

# ? Feb 13, 2016 04:15

Goon Danton: May 24, 2012; Don't forget to show my shitposts to the people. They're well worth seeing.

GunnerJ posted:

We're all chums based on where we would have sat in the French legislature over like 150 years ago.

Motherfucker would be cheering on the war in the Vendee. Not fighting in it, mind. But writing pamphlets in support from London.

Doc Hawkins posted:

Kant believed it was immoral to not tell murderers where they could find their intended victims.

There are many things which make jrod's calling upon his authority preposterous.

Wait what?

e: Oh, universal immorality of lying. It's still immoral to refuse though

Goon Danton fucked around with this message at 04:28 on Feb 13, 2016

# ? Feb 13, 2016 04:23

Juffo-Wup: Jan 13, 2005; Pillbug

Nolanar posted:

Wait what?

Kant explicitly said that it is always wrong to lie no matter what, even to save a life. And also that masturbation is worse than suicide and that bastards should be killed. Pretty much every contemporary Kant scholar thinks he misapplied his own ethical system in a lot of places.

# ? Feb 13, 2016 04:32

Who What Now: Sep 10, 2006; by Azathoth

Juffo-Wup posted:

Kant explicitly said that it is always wrong to lie no matter what, even to save a life. And also that masturbation is worse than suicide and that bastards should be killed. Pretty much every contemporary Kant scholar thinks he misapplied his own ethical system in a lot of places.

I wanna read that masturbation quote.

# ? Feb 13, 2016 04:53

Grand Theft Autobot: Feb 28, 2008; I'm something of a fucking idiot myself

I dug up this article by Tom Woods in noted neo-Confederate rag Southern Partisan called "Christendom's Last Stand," in which he holds up the antebellum South as a bastion of freedom and morality. I'm just not seeing how we can call him a neo-Confederate, so I guess jrod is right.

Tom Woods posted:

Christendom's Last Stand,
by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

Richard Weaver begins Ideas Have Consequences by admitting that "this is another book about the dissolution of the West." American conservatives have frequently looked to the New Deal for the origins of this more general dissolution, but both of these "great leaps forward" had precedents earlier in U.S. history. The real watershed from which we can trace many of the destructive trends that continue to ravage our civilization today, was the defeat of the Confederate States of America in 1865.

Our so-called intellectual class insists that the war was fought over slavery, pure and simple � an argument which the Southern activist finds himself responding to with a depressing frequency. A similarly myopic approach to history would conclude that America's First War for Independence was fought over a small tax on tea.

Astute observers on both sides of the conflict, in fact, recognized the war less as a clash between two systems of labor than between two kinds of civilization. Southern theologian James Henley Thornwell described the two sides this way: "The parties in this conflict are not merely abolitionists and slave-holders � they are atheists, socialists, communists, red republicans, jacobins on the one side and the friends of order and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is the battleground, Christianity and atheism the combatants, and the progress of humanity is at stake."

This assessment was quite common among Southern theologians. "To the South," wrote Benjamin Morgan Palmer, "is assigned the high position of defending before all nations the cause of all religion and of all truth." Looking back on the conflict, Robert Lewis Dabney, one of the most brilliant of the Southern Presbyterian theologians, agreed that it had fallen to the South to defend eternal truths from the onslaught of an alien ideology. "Providence ordained that the modem rationalism should select as its concrete object of attack our form of society and our rights."

Much of the conflict, in fact, can be summed up in what Richard Weaver identified as the "two types of American individualism," each of which is endemic to a particular section of the country. Henry David Thoreau represents the philosophy of Northern radicals. His is an atheistic philosophy, which refuses to recognize any authority to which the individual has not explicitly consented, and which in any case tends to shun collective affiliations of any kind.

Anticipating Thoreau, many modern political philosophers, when speaking in favor of individual liberty, have criticized not simply the state, but also the various intermediary institutions � such as family, church, and community � that stand between the individual and the state. This is certainly true in the case of Hobbes and Rousseau, who viewed with extreme suspicion any independent association that existed wholly outside of and prior to the central state. Rousseau feared that such associations, by dividing the individual's allegiance, would impair the functioning of the General Will. And John Stuart Mill is only one of many classical liberals who considered the bonds of community and other such affiliations to be nearly as threatening to individual liberty as the state itself.

But the cult of the individual that has flourished since the Enlightenment, and which has celebrated man's progressive emancipation from the various corporate bodies that once commanded his allegiance, can no longer claim the moral high ground; for what was supposed to have been mankind's most progressive and enlightened century has yielded only disillusionment and alienation.

This kind of individualism coincides well with the designs of the omnipotent state. The central state also wants to liberate the individual from his traditional attachments � not because they infringe on his liberty � but because they compete with the central state for his allegiance. In order to attain absolute power, the centralizes seek to crush all competing sources of authority.

Historically, such despots have concealed their true intentions by claiming that only a strong central authority can adequately protect the individual. But in practice, from whom did the state "protect" the individual? From family members (wives from their husbands, children from their parents), from churches, from communities. And it has done so by increasing its own power at the expense of these institutions.

What Thoreau and his followers were too foolish to realize is that man is a social creature. Once these institutions have been destroyed, once they have ceased to perform their traditional roles, something will step into that vacuum, and that something is the absolute state.

The political scientist J.N. Figgis was particularly prophetic when he remarked early this century: "More and more is it clear that the mere individual's freedom against an omnipotent State may be no better than slavery; more and more is it evident that the real question of freedom in our day is freedom of the smaller unions to live within the whole."

Pace most libertarians, radical individualism and Big Government are two sides of the same coin. It has been part of the genius of Southern civilization to have recognized this all along. Repelled by a philosophy that would lead to a combination of moral anarchy and political tyranny, John Randolph of Roanoke � Weaver's second type � would have none of Thoreau's pop theology of radical individualism. He acknowledges with Aristotle that man is a political animal, and that it is only through his interaction and relationships with other people, and through his membership in society, that he becomes truly human. Randolph's defense of states' rights, on the one hand a repudiation of arbitrary central authority, explicitly recognizes the individual's status as a member of a corporate body � in this case, a state.

It is almost unnecessary to point out that over the past few centuries it has been Thoreau's brand of individualism that has flourished and Randolph's which has suffered a precipitous decline. As Richard Weaver explained in 1948; "For four centuries every man has been not only his own priest but his own professor of ethics, and the consequence is an anarchy which threatens even that minimum consensus of value necessary to the political state." Today, of course, the message imbibed by our children � and by all too many adults as well � is that no moral court of higher appeal exists apart from individual whim.

It is highly significant, therefore, that the U.S. Constitution makes hardly any reference to individuals at all. It views Americans � not as part of an undifferentiated mass � but as members of particular states with rights and traditions of their own. The Bill of Rights, moreover, erroneously invoked by modern Civil Libertarians, was never intended to protect individuals from the state governments. Jefferson is far from alone in insisting that only the federal government is restricted from regulating the press, church-state relations, and so forth. The states may do as they wish in these areas.

For the first seven decades of its existence, the United States found its constituent parts very rebellious indeed. Many Americans would have agreed with John Randolph of Roanoke, about whom John Greenleaf Whittier once wrote:

Too honest or too proud to feign
A love he never cherished
Beyond Virginia's border line
His patriotism perished.

Upon ratifying the Constitution, for example, several states explicitly reserved the right to withdraw from the new union "whensoever the same shall be perverted to her injury or oppression," and all the states retained this spirit of resistance well into the 19th century. John Taylor of Caroline, repelled by the Alien and Sedition Acts, advocated secession as early as 1798. Madison and Jefferson drew up the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, respectively, the latter of which suggested the doctrine of nullification, whereby a state government could "interpose" between the people and the federal government when the latter exceeds its legitimate constitutional authority.

After the Louisiana Purchase, and then again after Jefferson's 1807 embargo, former Secretary of State Timothy Pickering gained some temporary support for a plan by which New England and New York would secede and form an. independent country. The 1814 Hartford Convention is often cited in this regard, as secessionist in character, but we now know that it was convened by moderate Federalists who hoped to keep secessionist sentiment at bay. The point remains, however, that secessionist sentiment was widespread, and by no means was it confined to the South. And these are but a few of the lesser known examples of the jealousy with which the states once guarded their sovereignty and independence. (The nullification crisis of the early 1830s, for instance, has not even been mentioned.)

The secession of the Southern states was virtually the last sign of life to emerge from a once-vibrant federal system. For by the 1860s, such figures as Andrew Johnson and Ben Wade were prepared to dismiss as traitors anyone who even appealed to the Constitution, let alone advocated secession. And in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, the Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. White (1869) that secession was unconstitutional. Not surprisingly, after the war it became common to replace the old expression � "The United States are" with 'The United States is."

Most significant for our purposes was the ratification � by highly questionable means � of the 14th Amendment. Now we can debate the "original intent" of this amendment, but it seems clear that it inaugurated a radically new stage in American constitutional history. From the point of view of the central government, the fundamental units of the federal Union were no longer the several states, but the individuals of which those states were composed.

The architects of this constitutional revolution were less than candid about what they were doing. The beginning of this process by which American federalism was destroyed was couched in the saccharine language of justice and rights. The states cannot be trusted to protect the individual, Americans were told. Only the federal Leviathan can do this. So once again, in the name of protecting individual liberty, the central state set out to crush an important intermediary institution � the state governments.

Although a moderately conservative Supreme Court was able to keep at bay the utter obliteration of the federal system, the 14th Amendment has since become Washington's favorite tool for imposing its will on what remains of the states. The "human fights" that it seeks to protect grow stranger and stranger every year. The Fourteenth Amendment was invoked a few years ago, as you no doubt will recall, to vindicate the inalienable human right of an unqualified, overweight woman to attend an all-male military academy.

The British libertarian and Southern sympathizer Lord Acton saw all of this coming and expressed his profound anguish to Robert E. Lee in 1866:"1 saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy .... Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake that was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo."

Just as Northern radicals sought to make the individual the fundamental political unit, so also did they attempt to make him supreme in the moral and ethical sphere. This is particularly true in the case of the abolitionists, many of whom stated frankly that if forced to choose between their private beliefs on the one hand, and the Holy Scriptures on the other, they would be compelled to jettison the Bible.

What Southern theologians found especially alarming was the dubious method of argumentation which the abolitionists employed. They might have argued, to offer just one example, that biblical slavery might not be analogous to modem slavery. There were certainly a number of such arguments which, if not compelling, at least were based on relevant considerations. But the abolitionists tended instead to make vague appeals to the spirit of the New Testament," and the result of this kind of reasoning, the Southern divines recognized, was the moral anarchy that ensues when, as Weaver put it, every man becomes his own professor of ethics.

It is worth recalling that a good number of anti-slavery feminists took the next step and compared the status of the slave to that of the married woman. In fairness, a great many abolitionists were horrified by this line of argument, but having made their bed, they were now being forced to sleep in it. Dabney was rather amused at the spectacle of anti-feminist abolitionists desperately trying to refute feminist claims when in fact the feminists were only using the abolitionist approach to biblical exegesis.

The South has never been fertile soil for religious liberalism. This is not to say that Southerners are guilty of the unforgivable sin of "intolerance." As Professor Eugene Genovese reminds us, a kind of tolerance is observed in both North and South, but it is a different kind in each place. In the North where religion is more frequently considered a matter of mere individual preference and whim, the attitude is: "You worship God in your way and we'll worship him in ours." But in the South, where tolerance is not the same thing as indifference, people are more likely to say: "You worship God in your way and we'll worship him in his."

Unitarianism, for example, utterly failed to take root in the South, and in 1860 only 20 of the country's 664 Universalist churches could be found below the Mason-Dixon Line. Resisting the spirit of the age, Southern Calvinists refused to adulterate the Christian faith with 18th century philosophies, and refrained from turning Jesus Christ into a divine Barney the Dinosaur.

Many Southern observers noticed that Northern society, in which individual conscience and rationalist philosophies had replaced scripture as the generally accepted authority, lacked a certain stability that was so conspicuous in the South. As Donald Davidson put it in The Attack on Leviathan:

"While the North has been changing its apparatus of civilization every 10 years or so ... the South has stood its ground at a fairly safe distance and happily remained some 40 or 50 years behind the times ... The South has never been able to understand how the North, in its astonishing quest for perfection, can junk an entire system of ideas almost overnight, and start on another one which is newer but no better than the first. This is one of the principal differences, out of many real differences, between the sections.

In his own assessment, Dabney was characteristically blunt: "We might safely submit the comparative soundness of Southern society to this test: that it has never generated any of those loathsome isms, which Northern soil breeds, as rankly as the slime of Egypt its spawn of frogs. While the North has her Mormons, her various sects of Communists, her Free Lovers, her Spiritualists, and a multitude of corrupt visionaries whose names and crimes are not even known among us, our soil has never proved congenial to the birth or introduction of a single one of these inventions."

The South has indeed stood firmly over the years against a series of deplorable trends in politics and religion. But her adversary is tenacious. Liberalism has no logical stopping point, no point of rest. Once one traditional belief or institution has been undermined, the liberal proceeds to his next conquest. The number of practices we are expected to "tolerate," for example, seems to increase by the hour. The University of Massachusetts, apparently in all seriousness, has added pedophiles to its list of protected groups under its nondiscrimination policy.

The same is true in the political arena. The Revolution that began in the 1860s has proceeded to this day with a cold and relentless logic. It was a vain hope that the Left would be satisfied with undermining state and local authority. Now its target is national sovereignty. The old struggle between the local and particular on the one hand, and the abstract and universal on the other, is being carried out on this new level.

Two years ago, while at Harvard, I attended an address by Jack Kemp, who could hardly contain his excitement as he described the ideal international order that he saw coming rapidly to fruition: what he called "a world without borders." Kemp's "world without borders" is the logical outcome of the process I have described in which the smaller associations which once claimed men's allegiance have been gradually and deliberately weakened. We have witnessed over the past decades, and especially since the end of the Cold War, the growth of transnational, globalist elites for whom patriotic sentiments and national sovereignty are so many obstacles to be overcome in the construction of a New World Order. In the course of building a centralized national government, it suffices to weaken the competing authorities of families, churches, local governments, state governments, and so on. But for those who would construct a unitary global state, there remains the persistent problem of national allegiance and loyalty. (A few of the methods of choice employed by those who would absorb the United States into a global regime include a policy of open immigration, which balkanizes the populace and makes resistance to the central state's designs less likely; the promotion of multiculturalism, intended to make children ashamed of their country and its history; and trade agreements like NAFTA and GATT, which delegate legislative authority to unaccountable supranational bodies.)

Madeleine Albright, our new Secretary of State made a quite revealing remark in a recent Commencement address at Brandeis University. Because our country was founded on individual liberty, she claimed, and not on loyalty to family or clan, Americans are particularly suited for real global citizenship. Without these competing loyalties, Americans can be disinterested advocates for the entire human race.

There was a time, of course, when one was considered part of the lunatic fringe for suspecting that we were moving toward world government. Today, our rulers are amazingly frank: Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, for example, recently remarked that the United States and Western Europe should enter into what he called an "Articles of Confederation-type relationship." Strobe Talbott looks forward to the day when nationhood as we know it will no longer exist, when we will all look to a single global authority. (And who do you suppose will be staffing that?)

There is no point in multiplying examples. Let it suffice to say that recent trends toward global centralization provide ample reason for concern. Equally certain is that the global statists do not particularly like places like the American South, and they detest all she stands for. Like all centralizers, they prefer a subject population of atomized individuals with no particular attachments � people, in other words, who are content to eat Big Macs, vote in sham elections, and watch Seinfeld. It would be naive to suppose that the South is not also cursed with this kind of apathy But the growth of the Southern League and the continuing popularity of Southern Partisan reminds us that many Southerners are prepared to defend their civilization, and a people that still possesses even a spark of resistance, a sense of history and tradition, an attachment to the locality, and a strong Christian faith � is a potential threat to the Left's new order.

Indeed, Southerners have had too many strange philosophies shoved down their throats already to go quietly in the face of this one. As former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan explained, speaking not of Southerners in particular but of his supporters in general: "We love the old republic, and when we hear phrases like 'New World Order,' we release the safety catches on our revolvers." Make no mistake: the persecutors of the South hate her today for the same masons they hated her in 1860. An 1868 article in the pro-South periodical The Land We Love summed them up quite well:

"Her conservatism, her love of the Constitution; her attachment to the old usages of society, her devotion to principles, her faith in Bible truth � all these involved her in a long and bloody war with that radicalism which seeks to overthrow all that is venerable, respectable and of good repute."

So the War Between the States, far from a conflict over mere material interests, was for the South a struggle against an atheistic individualism and an unrelenting rationalism in politics and religion, in favor of a Christian understanding of authority, social order and theology itself. The intelligent Left knows this, and even the incurably stupid, like Carol Moseley-Braun, must at least sense it. For all their ignorant blather about slavery and civil rights, what truly enrages most liberals about the Confederate Battle Flag is its message of defiance. They see in it the remnants of a traditional society determined to resist cultural and political homogenization, and refusing to be steamrolled by the forces of progress.

I have been a Northerner for my entire 24 years. But when we reflect on what was really at stake in the "late unpleasantness," we can join with Alexander Stephens in observing that "the cause of the South is the cause of us all."

-----------

Thomas E. Woods Jr., a founding member of the League of the South, is a doctoral candidate in history at Columbia University in New York City.

BACK

Copyright 1997, Southern Partisan (Article reprinted with permission)

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Contacts:

Southern Partisan Magazine,
PO Box 11708,
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(800) 264-2559 / (800) 23-DIXIE

Grand Theft Autobot fucked around with this message at 05:15 on Feb 13, 2016

# ? Feb 13, 2016 05:08

Teriyaki Koinku: Nov 25, 2008; Bread! Bread! Bread!

Bread! BREAD! BREAD!

GunnerJ posted:

Also please note that this is the guy depicted in jrod's avatar.

Did he buy that avatar himself or did someone buy that for him? I can't remember.

# ? Feb 13, 2016 05:30

Goon Danton: May 24, 2012; Don't forget to show my shitposts to the people. They're well worth seeing.

Who What Now posted:

I wanna read that masturbation quote.

Immanuel Kant, wise philosopher posted:

But it is not so easy to produce a rational proof that unnatural, and even merely unpurposive, use of one's sexual attribute is inadmissible as being a violation of duty to oneself (and indeed, as far as its unnatural use is concerned, a violation in the highest degree). The ground of proof is, indeed, that by it a man surrenders his personality (throwing it away), since he uses himself as a means to satisfy an animal impulse. But this does not explain the high degree of violation of the humanity in one's own person by such a vice in its unnaturalness, which seems in terms of its form (the disposition it involves) to exceed even murdering oneself. It consists, then, in this: That a man who defiantly casts off life as a burden is at least not making a feeble surrender to animal impulse in throwing himself away.

Your Dunkle Sans posted:

Did he buy that avatar himself or did someone buy that for him? I can't remember.

As I understand it, he buys it for himself any time anyone else buys a more accurate disclaimer for him. It is a great argument for the ineffectiveness of customer reviews instead of regulation.

# ? Feb 13, 2016 05:38

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Nolanar posted:

As I understand it, he buys it for himself any time anyone else buys a more accurate disclaimer for him. It is a great argument for the ineffectiveness of customer reviews instead of regulation.

I prefer to see it as a way to get 50% matching on your donations to Lowtax.

# ? Feb 13, 2016 05:47

Dr Pepper: Feb 4, 2012; Don't like it? well...

Nolanar posted:

Let's play the syllogism game!

1: Theft can be morally justified under certain circumstances
2: Taxation is theft
3:

This is the post that will make Jrod vanish for a few months calling it.

# ? Feb 13, 2016 06:51

SatansOnion: Dec 12, 2011

For those of you whose eyes just kind of slid off that Tom Woods article--and I for one could hardly blame you--let me summarize: According to him, the Confederacy was more principled, stable, and moral than the Union has ever been, and its defeat was a triumph for the forces of collectivist evil over the morally upright ~~white~~ individual. Abolition of slavery is only mentioned in the context of calling its proponents unprincipled, disingenuous, and extremist. The word "slave" is used all of two times, both in the context of what the Civil War was totally not at all about, why would you think that, god that's just so stupid

quote:

The South has never been fertile soil for religious liberalism. This is not to say that Southerners are guilty of the unforgivable sin of "intolerance." As Professor Eugene Genovese reminds us, a kind of tolerance is observed in both North and South, but it is a different kind in each place. In the North where religion is more frequently considered a matter of mere individual preference and whim, the attitude is: "You worship God in your way and we'll worship him in ours." But in the South, where tolerance is not the same thing as indifference, people are more likely to say: "You worship God in your way and we'll worship him in his."

The South is also a bastion of tolerance--the real kind of tolerance, which involves toxic levels of passive aggressive condescension :pseudo:

# ? Feb 13, 2016 06:52

quickly: Mar 7, 2012

Since everyone is talking about Kant, I have a question for the libertarians in this thread: what do you take universalizability to mean - and what's wrong with Rawls' interpretation?

# ? Feb 13, 2016 07:42

TLM3101: Sep 8, 2010

SatansOnion posted:

For those of you whose eyes just kind of slid off that Tom Woods article--and I for one could hardly blame you--let me summarize: According to him, the Confederacy was more principled, stable, and moral than the Union has ever been, and its defeat was a triumph for the forces of collectivist evil over the morally upright ~~white~~ individual. Abolition of slavery is only mentioned in the context of calling its proponents unprincipled, disingenuous, and extremist. The word "slave" is used all of two times, both in the context of what the Civil War was totally not at all about, why would you think that, god that's just so stupid

The South is also a bastion of tolerance--the real kind of tolerance, which involves toxic levels of passive aggressive condescension

... So, what you're saying is that yet another of jrode's favored thinkers - so called, anyway - is an unabashed defender and apologist for racist slave states.

Quelle surprise.

I am shocked, shocked I say, to discover this.

How could noted not-racist jrodefeld, a man who has been in the same room as a black person at one point, a man who professes a deep and abiding love for even the most Entartete music, have been so cruelly, viciously deceived?

Truly, the mind boggles.

# ? Feb 13, 2016 08:00

Zanzibar Ham: Mar 17, 2009; You giving me the cold shoulder? How cruel.; Grimey Drawer

jrod, here's a Libertopia hypothetical for you -

Goofus is supposed to wire you 100 GoldBucks, but accidentally sends you 1000 instead. Now he demands the 900 extra GoldBucks back. Are you obligated to return the money sent to you by mistake? If not, would you do it anyway?

# ? Feb 13, 2016 09:50

Grand Theft Autobot: Feb 28, 2008; I'm something of a fucking idiot myself

It was equally shocking to learn that one of jrod's top thinkers, who candidly speaks about the constitutionality of racial segregation, and who thinks the Confederacy was great and abolitionists were extremist usurpers, is a founding member of the noted white supremacist hate-group The League of the South.

# ? Feb 13, 2016 15:20

Mr. Belding: May 19, 2006; ^
|
<- IS LAME-O PHOBE ->
|
V

Doc Hawkins posted:

Further: when people described the nature of the foreign worker programmes in those states, and how they were in practice slavery, he dismissed this as the workers' sour grapes at being prevented from unionizing.

He is not good at faking empathy, which makes me wonder why he thinks he can proselytize to leftists.

Libertarians are notoriously bad at understanding their opponents arguments well enough to empathize with them. In their defense, the opponents of libertarians tend to skip past arguing and go immediately to mockery. I think most libertarians genuinely believe that government is just getting in the way and that if we just get government out of the way, then everything will sort itself out. The fact that there is genuinely zero evidence that this is true and that places with small or ineffective governments tend to be not very pleasant places to live should be enough to convince these people that maybe their case isn't ironclad. And while it think it's still possible to justify a belief in libertarianism in the face of all of this historical evidence I have rarely seen a libertarian even attempt to articulate that justification.

# ? Feb 13, 2016 16:19

Guilty Spork: Feb 26, 2011; Thunder rolled. It rolled a six.

Grand Theft Autobot posted:

I dug up this article by Tom Woods in noted neo-Confederate rag Southern Partisan called "Christendom's Last Stand," in which he holds up the antebellum South as a bastion of freedom and morality. I'm just not seeing how we can call him a neo-Confederate, so I guess jrod is right.

I like how he thinks it's a flaw that people reconsider and improve on their ideas, by way of misinterpreting that as "discarding" entire systems of thought every decade. Also the convenient idea that States are a special type of government entity that should totally be able to discriminate or whatever if it wants.

I don't think it's something Jrod has ever really addressed, but I get the impression that libertarians vary quite a bit in terms of that tribalistic anti-individualist worldview. Some want the freedom to be super-tribal without those pesky "human rights" getting in the way, while others are libertarian precisely because they're so hyper-individualist that they're capable of ignoring or defaming the tiniest bit of consideration for fellow human beings.

# ? Feb 13, 2016 18:06

Dirk the Average: Feb 7, 2012; "This may have been a mistake."

Nolanar posted:

As I understand it, he buys it for himself any time anyone else buys a more accurate disclaimer for him. It is a great argument for the ineffectiveness of customer reviews instead of regulation.

To be fair, it's fairly accurate. Self-owning happens quite a bit whenever he posts.

# ? Feb 13, 2016 18:10

Zanzibar Ham: Mar 17, 2009; You giving me the cold shoulder? How cruel.; Grimey Drawer

I thought according to his beliefs jrod can't ever stop owning himself.

Don't remember who posted the above first, sorry

# ? Feb 13, 2016 18:16

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# ? May 15, 2024 21:20

QuarkJets: Sep 8, 2008

Mr. Belding posted:

Libertarians are notoriously bad at understanding their opponents arguments well enough to empathize with them. In their defense, the opponents of libertarians tend to skip past arguing and go immediately to mockery. I think most libertarians genuinely believe that government is just getting in the way and that if we just get government out of the way, then everything will sort itself out. The fact that there is genuinely zero evidence that this is true and that places with small or ineffective governments tend to be not very pleasant places to live should be enough to convince these people that maybe their case isn't ironclad. And while it think it's still possible to justify a belief in libertarianism in the face of all of this historical evidence I have rarely seen a libertarian even attempt to articulate that justification.

This is a great post and I'd like to add that it's also related to why so many conspiracy theorists are also libertarians. Their ideas require either no evidence or the shakiest evidence imaginable, and any counterarguments cannot ever satisfy their minimum burden of proof.

# ? Feb 13, 2016 20:28

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