I notice that the this week’s Economist is taking the same basic line as its sister publication the Financial Times did the Saturday after the Irish ‘no’ vote, that the EU can carry on without the text that was voted down. And, from their own stand point, both publications may well be correct.
It would be nice for them if the European Union had total power (which the ‘Treaty of Lisbon’ would have given it – especially with its amending clause), but the E.U. already has vast power (about 80% of new regulations are a response to its orders) so there is great scope for more collectivism of the involuntary, statist, sort.
And as the European Union contains almost all the major nations of Europe (with the exception of Russia) it can bully the remaining nations – at least with these nations being dominated by a political class who go along with basic philosophy of the EU anyway, due to their education and to the influence of the mainstream media, and so are looking for excuses to give in.
Meanwhile, in the United States the totalitarians look set to take over soon. I have presented evidence that they (both key members of Congress and others) are totalitarians in a previous posting and I will not type it all out again – so I will content myself with wondering whether, when the spiritual son of Saul Alinsky becomes President of the United States, he will invite Bill Ayers (and the other comrades he left Harvard to join in Chicago) to his inauguration.
So the United States and the European Union will sit grinning at each other as vital parts of the “world community”.
It will be rather like Tolkien’s Orthanc and Barad Dur. Or a fallen Minas Tirith grinning at Minas Morgul – over a land “filled with rotteness”.
Try to prevent this, or do not, as you choose. But do not lie and say you did not know what was coming.
Well, this is the point I keep making. Except more strongly, in that my view is that it already has triumphed and we are now beyond fighting to prevent it, and into watching it mop up. The precise point at which it won is hard to define; the only thing which I believe is beyond denial is that that point is already in the past.
Libertarians have to stop seeing ourselves as a defensive army taking losses, and start recognising that in that analogy we’re now an insurgency or revolutionary movement. If we were marxists in terminology we would say that the “progressive left” or whaetver you want to call them are now the bougeoisie.
The positive thing about this, such as it is, is that the roles are now changed in our favour politically. The disconnect of the political class that people like to wring their hands about is merely the recognition of the new class system entrenching itself, with the old revolutionaries now in power and (as always) assuming the role of the class they deposed, living in the same palaces and dining off the same silver, even if they hang a revolutionary banner off the balcony.
So now we’re on the side of the downtrodden masses beyond the palace gates (he said as his metaphor stretched to breaking point). This means we can now be the populists, while the bourgeoisie can only use force to maintain their oligarchy. Kind of thing. We can now be the populists.
We fought for the future, destroyed the invaders,
And brought to our homeland the laurels of fame.
Our glory will live in the memory of nations
And all generations will honour her name.
Long live our Soviet motherland,
Built by the people’s mighty hand.
Long live our people, united and free.
Strong in our friendship tried by fire.
Long may our crimson flag inspire,
Shining in glory for all men to see.
I certainly have moments when I feel every bit as discouraged as Paul seems to be in this post, but in the final analysis I must demur from conceding the field quite yet.
There is no doubt that the relentless campaign of animosity against individual rights, and the endless glorification of the collective, by very influential elements in western culture has done enormous damage to the concepts and precepts upon which the enlightenment revolution was based.
Add to this the hostility of many world cultures which explicitly reject both the value of the individual and the existence of inherent rights which stand above the will of both the ruler and the society, and the forces arrayed against liberty and respect for individual rights are certainly a daunting combination of philosophical and cultural influences.
But, consider for a moment that, as difficult as this situation may be for those who value individualism, and respect for the rights of life and liberty, this world is vastly better and more receptive to those views than the world upon which they originally burst forth a few centuries ago.
It is my most fundamental belief that the power of these concepts is magnetic toward those who long to live their lives as they see fit, and that a great many people all over the world yearn for this very simple, and yet complex, situation to pertain to their lives, and the lives of their children.
The task of those committed to this view, then, is two fold: one, to steadfastly and coherently present the case for individual rights and liberties in every possible context, from PTA meetings and dinner table conversations to political gatherings and academic discussions; and two, to have courage in the face of both social criticism and physical danger.
Surely we, who have been priviledged to witness men and women standing up to and defeating such monstrous collective entities as dominated the 20th century, can muster some little shadow of the courage required to speak out against stalinism, or stand in front of a huge tank, or run against a dictator like Mugabe, in order to contest the next school board election, or stand up at a political caucus and state unpopular positions that need to be presented.
I remember reading, many years ago, a novel called “Mila 18”, which described the horrendous suffering of the people trapped in the Warsaw ghetto, and their final uprising against the nazis, an uprising in the face of impossible, and deadly, odds.
If people in such desparate and dire straights can summon the courage and hope to undertake resistence to utterly amoral tyranny, then surely we can make our positions and beliefs known in the much less daunting circumstances we now face.
Each man and woman must look inside themselves and decide how they will live their lives. Fear to look is fear to live at all.
For myself, I am a free man, born and bred. I have tried with all my powers to pass that status, and the realization of its value, to my children. I, and they, will accept nothing less.
it can bully the remaining nations – at least with these nations being dominated by a political class who go along with basic philosophy of the EU anyway, due to their education and to the influence of the mainstream media, and so are looking for excuses to give in
Yes, but they don’t need to even bully. My wife translates a lot of Norwegian technical documents. Norway isn’t EU but most of it’s trade is with the EU. So if the EU says that Norwegian blue parrots sold within the EU have to be a certain exact shade on the pantone colour chart and nothing else (even if the average German parrot-fancier likes ’em as shade darker) then the Norwegians have to fall into line.
I suppose that is bullying of a sort but it doesn’t involve media or a political class.
What gets me about the EU is their deluded idea that they’re embarked upon some great crusade to create a mighty wonderful nation. Their apeing of the US is pathetic. The US is founded on a constitution that even I can quote bits of. The EU is founded (or was to be, probably still will be, whatever) on something that looks like the bastard offspring of the technical specifications of Windows Vista and a telephone directory.
It’s truly sad. It’s like the hall-monitors have taken over the school and are more concerned that everyone’s tie hangs the “right” length but couldn’t give a toss about the actual education.
Paul indulged himself in a fantasy analogy and so shall I. We used to have fights between good and evil, freedom and tyranny and such things. I see that as Episodes 4-6. Episodes 1-3 start with sharp practises from the Trade Federation. Luke came on the scene to rescue a princess. Anakin came on the scene to fight a trade-embargo.
Nick M, I would never presume to know more than your wife about the impact of EU laws on Norway, but are you quite certain the EU is the originator of laws about Norwegian parrot shades and such like? If our friends over at EU Referendum are to be believed, such technical regulations are decided by organisations such as the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), an international body that represents all the nations of the Europe (plus the US) in sorting out international trading standards.
The EU isn’t actually a member of the UNECE, so even if Brussels copies the trading standards set by Britain, Norway and other UNECE members, it’s actually only feeding off what’s already been agreed above it on an intergovernmental basis.
Anyone else know anything more about this?
It will get more interesting as the EU is seen to be un-Islamic.
Also fun that we are importing those who think whacking the head of state is part of the political process.
We live in very interesting times indeed
>
Could you provide a link for the above mentioned post? I couldn’t find it through the search engine.
Thank you
“I have presented evidence that they (both key members of Congress and others) are totalitarians in a previous posting and I will not type it all out again”
Could you provide a link for the above mentioned post? I couldn’t find it through the search engine.
Thank you
While the observations of the current trends in social organization, and in the “politics” involved seem valid, and would be difficult to dispute, what seems missing are adequate observations and comprehensions of the “forces,” “evolving conditions,” and other circumstances with varying labels that have given rise to, support and drive those trends and the related politics.
Why does it come to pass?
Among the factors noted have been the extensive changes in human inter-relationships, which are increasingly impersonal even as inter-dependence increases – especially evidenced in modern urbanizations. The individual “loses” a great deal of “empowerment/control” even any sense of influence over conditions that the critically affect one’s existence.
What seems yet to be learned is that cooperation (even impersonal in operation) among individuals can not be conjoined succesfully with those necessarily coercive functions in social organization (governments, usually, sometimes religions). In fact doing so gives rise to a “political class,” which may be military, clerical, academic (Plato -see, Popper), or any mix thereof and always opportunistic. The utilities of cooperation are obliterated by the various applications of various coercions.
In the U.S.A. there is a barely awakening perception of “government failures.” but, as yet, no confirmed modalities for recovering the effectiveness of past civic cooperation, totally detached and independent of coercions, other than those of a purely social and “natural” or spontaneous form and exercise.
It probably will not be possible to develop new modalities for cooperation to offset the use of collectivist coercions through governments (and as instruments of the political class) until a critical mass of individuals within each social organization recognizes and accepts the highly personal nature of obligations, and ceases seeking to be relieved of responsibilities through some promised transfers to the “collective.”
To break the trend of collectivism there has to come the realization that for every personal responsibility thereby “lifted” (usually only partially) a 10-fold burden of the responsibilities of others totally impersonal (as entitlements) is laid on by coercions.
There was early acceptance of the need to separate church (cooperative institutions) from having the coercive powers of the governments. The extension of that perception will have to come in time.
James H,
It was a daft example. But let’s say your company make sprockets to spec 6372 and all your nearest customers are being forced into using sprockets to spec 6151 regardless of the merits of either type of sprocket then what as CEO do you do?
You may not be legally bound but…
If your R&D folk come up with an even better sprocket, an ultra-sprocket if you will, then do you get to do well and of course everyone down the line benefits, from the companies that use those sprockets to make make better widgets and then spridgets to the wholesalers and retailers and ultimately the users of those spridgets? No.
Not only is your ultra-sprocket not meeting the (arbitary) “standards” set by your neighbours but by being better it is costing jobs in their “properly” regulated sprocket factories.
It’s therefore against the law. Governments and the likes of the EU are forever coming up with “packages” to encourage “innovation”. What they don’t get is that real innovation has to be free. It’s about working to the purpose and is not filling in forms.
If the State of Ohio “Innovation Board” had made Orv and Will jump through those hoops we’d still be waiting on Kill Devil Hills. Still waiting…
Nick M, it’s not just the regulatory environment that purposfully prevents innovation. It’s the whole mindset of the collectivists.
Suppose you believed in AGW, (or cynically wished to attract state subsidies), so you set out to produce non-fossil fuel based energy sources.
Wind Power? You can’t put those windmills here. Migratory birds, and we don’t know the full environmental effects, (and it obstructs my view).
Solar Power? Sorry, there are countless rare and endangered reptiles, plants and insects in that desert.
Nuclear? Wash your mouth out with soap!
Anthony Watts has a recent post on large scale production of gasoline from algae. Does anyone think this has any chance of getting through the regulatory hoops and overcoming the objections of the greens?
Of course what no-one mentions is the damage to the environment of a two week long power cut in, say, New York in winter. How many trees cut down for firewood? How many animals killed and eaten? Not to mention the human costs, (although humans don’t matter a jot to the greens or the collectivists.)
I’ve said before that I’d rather be downwind of a Three Mile Island type incident than a fortnight’s power cut in London and I doubt that the range of a Chernobyl exceeds that of 6-8 million cold and starving city dwellers for devastation.
I suppose not all of them are of the Stalin or Mao mindset where “a million deaths is a statistic”. Most are just dreary apparatchiks who barely believe in the collectivist vision, but certainly believe in their own power to stop people rocking the boat. But I reckon there are enough of the former to pull down the citadel, and enough of the latter, together with a big enough external threat, to make ‘counting the number of angels that can fit on a pinhead’ a rational pastime in comparison.
Ian, we lost when Hoover set things up for FDR and FDR finished the process. Come on, “Social Security”? It was bald faced unapologetic socialism. It still is.
Speaking as a US citizen I have never during my lifetime thought we were losing a battle to the collectivists. That was lost long before I was born. They are now losing the battle to us. The redistribution imperium is collapsing on itself, just as it has elsewhere. It is mathematically unsustainable. Where it has outside protection like NK, it holds on. Where it does not, like the SU, it fails. And when protection is withdrawn, Zimbabwe? it will fail.
Unlike the SU, NK and Zimbabwe, in the US we can defend ourselves when we decide the consequences of doing so are less than the consequences of not doing so. You will not see Americans hacked to death with machetes or lined up for an economical bullet in the brain without massive retaliation from the rest of us. Yes, the US has its gun culture. And yes, as Vinegar Joe points out in another thread, Europe has its monuments to wars and to killing fields and factories. I know which I prefer.
Therefore the property thieves here must use at least a pretense of law and an illusion of sustainability. But sooner or later Atlas shrugs and at that point pretenses and illusions must be abandoned.
I strongly suspect that Massachusetts income tax elimination will pass and join its property tax predecessor. We may face a question soon of whether there is recourse to citizens of Massachusetts when their own legislative and executive branches ignore their judicial branch’s rulings. And if the judicial branch in MA is corrupted, state SCs can be overturned. Are the citizens of an entire state protected by the 4th amendment’s protections against unreasonable seizures or the very clear and unequivocal statement in the 14th amendment “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”. Might even the SCOTUS turn control of the Massachusetts National Guard over to the MA Supreme Court? It is definitely going to be interesting if this measure passes.
Mediocrity and fear are what are our enemies. The collectivists fear the man of principle, the man of inviolate principle.
They are the mediocre and yet we have run from them in every arena. Have we lost to the big ZERO?
I’m not prepared to consider that as the reality of the day. I don’t ignore what is going on, but if our ideas and ideals are what we claim them to be, then it is they who should be cowering.
Every premise of collectivism needs to be refuted and the capitalist solution offered, on every level.
There can and should be no compromise on this. One cannot be a little free , any more than one may be a little pregnant. The only party to a compromise that wins anyways is the more consistant.
The core and most fundamental issue that may destroy the collectivist lock is the amplification of one principle.
Who owns you? To the collectivist that question has only one answer…and you do not own yourself. The sovereignty of the individual and all that that means is a basis to drive the fatal wedge into collectivist ideology.
Until we operate from similar philosophical premesis, it is the most consistant side who will win the day, but shall we admit being beat by the mediocre?
Come on, people! Let’s see some smiles.
History (including what has happened in our own lifetimes) tells an unmistakable message — everything the left-wing collectivists touch turns to dust in their hands. They truly are King Midas in reverse.
Just think about the once-proud Anglican Church, the once-respected universities, the once-trusted BBC. What about the environmental movement, or even science itself? To say nothing of the fate of the USSR or East Germany.
Those lefties cannot win the war. Yes, they can (& do) win battles — but never wars.
The future is going to be messy. Europe is a lost cause. The US will have to fight another civil war. China will be rocked by revolution & warlords. It has all happened before, and must all happen again as the leftists’ victories turn bitter in their mouths.
Smile, people! This is not the time to lose heart.
Alice – For you optimism Bravo !!!
As far as the US needing another civil war. I pray to God (sorry if this offends anyone) that you’re wrong. We have been in a mental state of near Civil War since 1968, or maybe earlier. If this were to spill over into a real shooting war, it would make Iraq look like a nerf ball fight.
I think we are all aware that the 10 planks of the Communist Manifesto have already been achieved in the United States – to some degree other another.
This battle was lost a long time ago – have ou ever spoken to the average American, Brit or European about even the simplest libertarian solutions to everyday problems? They look at you like lobsters were crawling out of your ears. I interact with these people on a regular basis – its a little scary how central they think government is to the basic functioning of society.
The left won because they took control of education, history and the media. No libertarian revolution will be possible without claiming those closely-held institutions back from the collectivists.
Good luck.
Almost right. But wrong.
Without “claiming those [. . .] institutions back” we are well on our way to defeating the media. Certainly bloggers are now driving the news cycle like they haven’t since the pamphleteers of the Revolution.
History is being reconquered through the sheer number of channels by which it is shared and analyzed by consumers rather than controllers. Errors of fact in the entertainment and media products are ridiculed quickly, publicly and widely enough that no public figure can recite false history without being called on it, and often enough, in a humiliating way. Whether the topic is how the founders understood gun rights or Hillary’s arrival at a ‘combat’ airstrip, a false narrative is daily more difficult to sustain.
The SCOTUS itself payed a bow to this new demand by the public in DC v. Heller. Whatever their underlying philosophies, both sides had to make a very serious show of treating the Constitution with respect and getting the originators intentions right. Stevens, et al failed miserably, almost humorously. Scalia et al got in much better but with still considerable room for improvement. Even stare decisis fails as a weapon when we can now so easily conclusively and publicly destroy the reputations of bad precedent, ie Miller.
As for education, they are putting themselves out of a market. They are becoming steadily worse at their last reliable function of delivering at least a minimally useful employee to the market. Astoundingly expensive costs from kindergarten through to college graduates who, despite the expense, can’t construct a coherent paragraph or estimate the consequences of significantly different options. Once employers regain the right to fire employees, years of formal education will become meaningless; knowledge, understanding and useful results will be well rewarded and all of the ‘correct’ doctrine in the world will get you a job mowing the lawn of a high school drop out.
Midwesterner:
So far none of the small incremental baby-steps you point out have restrained the Fed and the Congress from doing the exact opposite of economic sense over the last year, or the last 10 years or the last 70 years or the last 100 years.
You’re not factoring in an Obama administration working hand-in-hand with a Democratic Congress and Senate with overwhelming majorities, operating with visions of the New Deal dancing in their heads in the middle of the best thing to happen to statist politicians in decades – a full-blown economic and monetary crisis of their own making. By the beginning of next year they will have a blank check from the clueless, brainwashed American public to do whatever they want – and none of it will be good. None of it.
The fact that the average citizens of Washigton DC can now own guns is a good thing – they’ll need them.
We’re winning? I am taxed ~45% of my income and have a household level lein on my labor to the tune of $440,000 at least, more like $750,000 on a prorated basis, we’re on the cusp of socialized medicine, a fairly recent “settlement” with a sinful industry laying out the blueprint for further shakedowns of others, banning of fats, media outlets controlled by Statist fifth columns, a mass which cannot fathom anything but socialized education (with a few exceptions), $3 trillion annual budgets balanced by rapacious borrowings (and this from Republicans). We are adding pages to the federal register a record pace that would have our ancestors heads spinning. Adding inches to the federal tome called the federal register ain’t winning by any definition.
I don’t regard the victory we will have as a true victory if our socialist betters are brought down only through the hellfire of collapse. We indeed can take two paths, one which undoes the decades long misallocations slowly and intelligently via free market principles or to come up to the infeasible end game of the ponzi scheme all at once which merely has the masses out for blood, and anyone with anything resembling assets of any kind will automatically be the cause of their misery. If we have anything but the implementation of a pure market over a mid run span of time we will have not a happy cleansing of boobs from the corridors of power, we will have a fire laden insurrection. When the collapse occurs, the misery will be monumental and addled minds with hungry bellies aren’t going to be too particular whose head they chop off. It simply can be said that if we stay on the course we are on, the socialist elite won’t be swept out by a radical group with Bastiat and Say and Turgot in hand, it will be an ugly mob of socialist educated populists installing instead a brutish new order. Whether it is left or right hardly matters.
Alice says “The US will have to fight another civil war.” I hope not, and personally, I don’t believe we are heading that way. If I am wrong, however, then the skills the US military has been learning in Iraq will be useful in bringing such a civil war to a quicker and juster resolution.
If I am wrong, however, then the skills the US military has been learning in Iraq will be useful in bringing such a civil war to a quicker and juster resolution.
“Quicker” I’ll buy. But what precisely do you mean by “juster”?
Whacking the head of state IS party of the political process.
Would you not whack Chavez? Or Mugabe? Or Stalin? Or Hitler?
Just because I object to my government taking my money by force, and conscripting me to wage a war does not mean that I forfeit my natural right to whack a dictator given the opportunity.
Sic semper tyrannis.
We can now be the populists.
I don’t believe we can. Every candidate claims the title of rebel. Left or Right, it is always the champion of the little guy fighting against the system. What the system is supposedly composed of is what differs.
I believe your right that the political war is lost, but I’m very skeptical of our chances of intellectual revolution. The “people” believe that they are owed something and a revolution of freedom from government is not going to appeal to them.
In my more pessimistic moods I fear that it took a frontier full of self-sufficient people without a history of grievances to start a country based on individual rights. Maybe Freedom just ran out of real estate.
Alice is correct – everything the left takes control of they eventually destroy.
But the destruction nature of collectivism does not mean that civil society will be restored.
For example, the collectivists (via their ever higher taxes, and spider’s web of regulations – including those that tied supposedly free people to what became serfdom) undermined Classical Civilization – but this did not mean that the civil society (civil society disfigured by slavery, but still civil society) was restored when the rule of Rome fell apart under the attack of barbarians who would have been nothing but a pest when civilization was stronger.
What happened instead was the Dark Ages – and contrary to some modern historians, they were rather dark.
As I tried to explain in my posting (I wonder if that posting was ever put up) on the growth of totalitarianism in the United States (as an example of the West generally), the left have vast power in the “education system” (the schools and the colleges) and, via this, vast power in such cultural institutions as the media.
Yet they are determined to have TOTAL power – to crush home schooling, and private schools where teachers are not “trained” in a system they control. And to eliminate the minority of broadcasting stations and newspapers already under their control.
The left already control the Congress (someone like Speaker Pelosi would have been considered a nut by most Democrats only a few decades ago – now she is mainstream). Control of the Executive (where they already have vast influence via the adminstrators) by holding the office of President would break the last defences – such things as the FCC and IRS would be under their TOTAL control.
As would the Justice Department – and (eventually) the courts.
The Federal Courts would uphold such things as forbidding “hate speech” – and (for example) just about everything on this blog would count (to the left) as “hate speech”.
They do not have to destroy every newspaper or every website – just make sure they control what 51% of the public normally experience.
What to prevent the total power of the left? Prevent them creating the totalitarianism they seek?
Then prevent them putting one of their own in the office of President.
If you can not bring yourself to do that (because it means supporting John “McCain-Feingold” McCain) then fair enough – but do not say the consequences of your choices were not mentioned to you.
As my posting on the threat of totalitarianism in the United States (and that the West can not survive if the United States falls) does not seem to be anywhere I will give a brief outline.
My point was that, in spite of their vast power in the “education system” and the media already, the American left are not satisfied.
They wish for TOTAL control (hence totalitarianism) and give much evidence of their desire to put their desires into practice.
They wish to de facto ban home schooling, and to control the “training” of teachers in private schools.
They also wish (in the ironic name of “diversity” and “freedom”) to eliminate any form of media not already under their control.
Via the courts (both State and Federal in California already) and via Executive branch action (anti trust, IRS, FCC, fairness doctrine – whatever it takes) they show their hand. [The “training” of jounalists and such things as the hate speech docrine show that the minority of conservative newspapers that still exist, would not be spared].
As do their published writings and their conferences.
They already have much control of Congress (via such people as Speaker Pelosi and Senator Durbin) and with control of the office of President all remaining resistance within Executive or Legislative (and, eventually in the Juducial) branches of government would colloapse.
“But they will never control everything” – they do not need to, they just need to control what 51% of the population normally see and hear (and how they were educated in the first place).
As my posting on the threat of totalitarianism in the United States (and that the West can not survive if the United States falls) does not seem to be anywhere I will give a brief outline.
My point was that, in spite of their vast power in the “education system” and the media already, the American left are not satisfied.
They wish for TOTAL control (hence totalitarianism) and give much evidence of their desire to put their desires into practice.
They wish to de facto ban home schooling, and to control the “training” of teachers in private schools.
They also wish (in the ironic name of “diversity” and “freedom”) to eliminate any form of media not already under their control.
Via the courts (both State and Federal in California already) and via Executive branch action (anti trust, IRS, FCC, fairness doctrine – whatever it takes) they show their hand. [The “training” of jounalists and such things as the hate speech docrine show that the minority of conservative newspapers that still exist, would not be spared].
As do their published writings and their conferences.
They already have much control of Congress (via such people as Speaker Pelosi and Senator Durbin) and with control of the office of President all remaining resistance within Executive or Legislative (and, eventually in the Juducial) branches of government would colloapse.
“But they will never control everything” – they do not need to, they just need to control what 51% of the population normally see and hear (and how they were educated in the first place).
I do not believe we have lost yet, and see much hope in sites such as this, which form a rallying point for individuals who see where we are headed. Although the collectivists have been working long and hard, their plans have now been exposed. Even though they have attempted to educate the masses to stupidity, it has not worked. I see many young people today who are intelligent, enlightened, and aware of the problems we face. They see through the smoke and mirrors better than we give them credit. The situation is grave, but not without hope. One common thread I see in many of these posts is blaming the “left”, or some other imaginary distinction which is an illusion which has been created by the collectivists to divide us, the individualists. THAT, my friends is the only distinction worth exposing. We need to eliminate the political spectrum of left-right, conservative-liberal, Dem-repub, and realize the only noteworthy distinction is “collectivist vs individualist”. I have found that trying to lump my personal views into the traditional left right dichotomy never worked, as my view would depend on the subject matter. I always found this rather confusing, and only recently realized why. I would guess most individualists also find this to be true. We must all realize we are not alone, and I recommend these 2 sites as proof of that, and a further source of excellent reading:
http://www.freedom-force.org
http://www.campaignforliberty.com
Long live freedom!
With respect Marc I do not think the real divide is between “individualist and collectivist” – indeed to try and smear their foes as “atomistic individualists” is one of the oldest tricks of the left (and I do not see why the word “left” should not be used even though Bastiat sat on the left hand side of the French National Assembly).
The divide is between voluntary cooperation – and force.
Although sometimes even voluntary cooperation can be for an evil purpose – for example whenever Google News has a link to a story that is favouable to Senator Obama his supporters cooperate to put in coordinated complaints about the story.
The complaints have no truth in them – but they achieve their objective (to get the link to the story removed).
The sort of voluntary cooperation that the left (again I use the word) favour is the ACORN style of cooperation – volunatry “community action”, but with the objective of expanding the scope of government.
Rather like the Jacobin clubs of Revolutionary France. To them even the government of the time of Louis XVI was too small – and did dominate enough of the life of human beings.
Nothing must be outside the state – just the state and individuals (with no non political cultural institutions).
Yes it is the left who are the true “atomistic individualists” – as they will accept no form of NON POLITICAL association.
Glorious Socialist Revolution Comrades! Should we replace that repressive imperialist rag the Star Spangled Banner with The Internationale? Well not just yet! Mid-Term elections are comming and we need to sweep the Democratic Socialist Congress Critters out of office. Donate and Campaign Hard for the Republicans. Let’s shine a big lignt under the rock that these collectivist scum live under!
1969: Victor Charlie in the Wire
2009: Victor Charlie in the White House