REPUBLIC REBORN

The American Prospect: Big Tech: the new predatory capitalism. Ed: Interesting article, but its government-enabled “corporatism” at play here, not free trade.

Al Jazeera: The Guantanamo art that makes Washington nervous

Counterpunch: The war on Iraq’s children

FEE: Peace is the keystone of liberty

Washington Times: Why swamp creatures are hard to kill

Mises Institute: Why not private sponsorship of immigrants?

What we fight for

Posted on December 26, 2017December 26, 2017 by S. Smith

I think it’s natural for people want liberty for themselves, with the term “liberty” here used to describe that system where voluntary interaction among consenting adults reaches as far as is possible into our day-to-day lives. I think this holds even for those ostensible socialists and “communists” in our midst. No communist, when planning their militant utopian uprising, expects to be thrown into the Gulag.

As an aside, I’ve often marvelled at the fact that the socialist ideal can only be attempted with the establishment of a totalitarian, tyrannical central government. That unconscious will for liberty has to be crushed completely in order to move toward any semblance of a marketless society. The primal “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange” is too great. The desire to form bonds between people that include work, payment for goods and services, has to be continuously stamped by the jackboot of the secret police. And socialist countries always have a legion of secret police. Strange, but no coincidence. Free speech is supressed totally in socialist societies as well. The level of censorship in a given country is a veritable storm glass for the liberty being either protected or stripped from the civilian class.

Gun ownership as well, because, despite the masses of gun-toting troglodytes reciting the fact, gun ownership is defense against a tyrannical government once it begins coming for your family, friends, coworkers, and generally anyone you believe to be innocent yet are persecuted nonetheless. Which is why gun registration is an evil. A government shouldn’t know which citizen is armed and which is a sitting duck. To be clear, I’m not advocating for the murder of police or any other armed officials. But did German Jews have a right to defend themselves against a forced train ride to a concentration camp? A gun at least gives them a say in the matter. During World War 2, the Allies dropped 25,000 single-shot, .45 handguns, known as the FP-45 Libertor over occupied Europe, with the logic being that, if the secret police had no idea who was armed and who wasn’t, they’d be slightly more hesitant to kick down a door. No one wants a .45 slug in the gut. Hence the logic of civilian disarmament. I say that most current pro-Second Amendment supporters who are aware of the true purpose of the Second Amendment are inconsistent troglodytes because of their blind worship of the police. When a country descends into tyranny, the police are the ones that will come get your guns, kidnap your people, and shoot you in the head.

Now back to the original purpose of this post. I think we all carry an inner compass that gauges the level of liberty that exists in society, even if we don’t directly experience it. We just know that something is wrong with the state of things. If, due to burdensome regulation or taxation, a would-be inventor fails to produce the next revolutionary gadget or theory, we feel the loss. If the next Einstein or Feynman drops out of a restrictive graduate program because the barriers to entry are prohibitively high, we know. Which brings me to another reason for the danger of restricting liberty: we have no idea what future we are killing by restricting the freedom to create, discover, to engage in ceaseless trial-and-error, in order to build a better future than any single person could dream of.

The fight for liberty, as I witnessed it during the Ron Paul cataclysm, was not a catering to the Left or Right, but more of standing back and hoisting a black flag. It was ideological, and pure, and because of that it planted seeds that will bear fruit if only they receive adequate sunlight and don’t get mired in the weeds of compromise. Paul’s campaign is proof that it is possible to be ideologically principled, yet successful.

To conclude, I’d like to point out that the majority of my writing will consist of (probably irrelevant) ruminations on the nature of liberty, why its important, the path to achieving it, and what I think it would take to achieve it. Which probably consists more in finding the next Mises, Hayek, or Ron Paul, more than patching together a grand coalition. It consists of keeping up morale among the Remnant, keeping the message pure. Defending liberty is the most urgent task we can engage in, its enemies are everywhere, organized, well-funded. A burgeoning Surveillance State is being built around us, all the while telling us its for our own protection. A virtual kill pen, Bentham’s Panopticon reimagined and being realized today.

“Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders: no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping toward destruction. Therefor, everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interest of everyone hangs on the result.” -Ludwig von Mises

Ed: Thank you again for the views. This website is home to the ideal of liberty as felt by those who participated in Ron Paul’s campaigns from 2007 to 2012. Each day I will post news from a ‘liberty’ perspective, in the sense of a philosophical framework that believes that a voluntary society is an ideal that is achievable in our lifetimes, if we only want it bad enough. I will also post ramblings that you may or may not read. Thank you for the time of day.

12/27/17 Overnight links

Posted on December 26, 2017 by S. Smith

Techdirt: Facebook transparency report: lots of government surveillance, bad copyright takedown requests

More from Techdirt: FBI celebrates taking down “terrorist” who told undercover agent he couldn’t go through with an attack. Ed: The sheer desperation for terrorist convictions is pathetic.

Activist Post: NATO rolls out offensive cyberweapons

Washington Examiner: Appeals court says privacy group can’t challenge Trump voter fraud panel

Washington Post: Cities sue Defense Dept. over gun-check system failures

KATC: Police say surveillance boxes not linked to Homeland Security. Ed: More evidence for my belief that the trillion-dollar surveillance infrastructure, built upon the hysterical, post-9/11 fear of terrorism, will be turned entirely to monitoring every US citizen.

Reason: Chicago police union trying to stop new use-of-force policies

TheFreeThoughtProject: SWAT team raids wrong house, holds family at gunpoint–owner makes cops apologize on FB Live

NPR: ‘A hideous milestone in the 21st century’: Cholera cases in Yemen surpass 1 million

Bloomberg: This will be the year when the internet collides with reality

India Times: MIT shows how image recognition AI can be easily fooled by changing just a few pixels

Bloomberg: Russia plans national biometric database beginning next year

Daily Caller: Library of Congress will no longer archive every tweet

The State: Worried about your online privacy? So is SC Congressman Mark Sanford

High Times: Why smoking weed causes you to dream less

RCS: How Western activists prevent Africans from planting a life-saving fruit.

Singularity Hub: How a machine that can make anything would change everything

The Guardian: Former NASA biochemist: “I want to help humans genetically modify themselves”

12/25/17 Christmas Day links

Posted on December 25, 2017 by S. Smith

History.com: The Christmas Truce of 1914

EFF: Medical privacy under attack: 2017 in review

The Intercept: The election fraud in Honduras follows decades of corruption funded by the U.S. war on drugs

Business Standard: 2017 was a banner year for arms industry

Macleans: 2018 will be the year of cyberwarfare

Zero Hedge: The Strangelovian Russia-gate myth

NPR: The foster care system is flooded with children of the opioid epidemic

The Independent: In an age of facial recognition technology and lip-reading CCTV cameras, we need to consider the concept of digital consent

The Week: The most respectable conspiracy theory in Washington

Inverse: The 25 biggest scientific breakthroughs of 2017

Yahoo News UK: Santa and magic mushrooms: Was the Christmas icon derived from trippy fungi?

The wisdom of Nock

Posted on December 23, 2017 by S. Smith

Inarguably the most iconic essay ever penned by Albert Jay Nock is Isaiah’s Job, written in 1936, when Nock himself was 66 years old. In this essay he gifted the unknown and unknowable collection of individuals who are naturally drawn to the philosophy of liberty with a name: the Remnant.

“The Remnant are those who by force of intellect are able to apprehend these principles, and by force of character are able, at least measurably, to cleave to them. The masses are those who are unable to do either.”

It’s considered a classic among libertarian circles, yet I know very few libertarian activists who have read it. Which is a shame, because it effectively stiffens resolve where it might otherwise wane, when discouragement and a general going against the current becomes too much at times. It’s message fortifies in a way that few other essays do. Yes, there are people who are listening to you, taking your message to heart, even if they don’t acknowledge themselves. They are drawn to the ideal of a free society, usually without knowing why. Liberty glints and gleams like stainless steel in their dreams, and they look to you for guidance, for more. And Nock’s entire point is that those who advocate for liberty should never dilute the message for the sake of mass acceptance. Those with the force of character will listen, and then will rebuild society upon that foundation. The masses eat up the popular messages of the day, and forget them just as quickly. But there are those who move silently among us that are drawn to the philosophy of liberty like a compass arrow drawn to true north. For their sake, Nock says, stay true to your message.

“The other certainty which the prophet of the Remnant may always have is that the Remnant will find him. He may rely on that with absolute assurance. They will find him without his doing anything about it; in fact, if he tries to do anything about it, he is pretty sure to put them off. He does not need to advertise for them nor resort to any schemes of publicity to get their attention. If he is a preacher or a public speaker, for example, he may be quite indifferent to going on show at receptions, getting his picture printed in the newspapers, or furnishing autobiographical material for publication on the side of “human interest.” If a writer, he need not make a point of attending any pink teas, autographing books at wholesale, nor entering into any specious freemasonry with reviewers. All this and much more of the same order lies in the regular and necessary routine laid down for the prophet of the masses; it is, and must be, part of the great general technique of getting the mass man’s ear — or as our vigorous and excellent publicist, Mr. H.L. Mencken, puts it, the technique of boob bumping. The prophet of the Remnant is not bound to this technique. He may be quite sure that the Remnant will make their own way to him without any adventitious aids; and not only so, but if they find him employing any such aids, as I said, it is ten to one that they will smell a rat in them and will sheer off.”

I’m fairly certain that this post will have only done Nock justice if it leads to one person clicking the link and reading the essay in its entirety. I read it for the first time merely by chance six years ago, in the basement of a college library while waiting for what would later be known as the 2011 “super outbreak” storm to pass over. Since then, I’ve read it probably ten times, and I find different insights that I hadn’t noticed before. Nock’s writing has this effect.