Tracy

“But Rothbard is mistaken. Burke pointed out in the preface that the book was a satire, just one year after he wrote the book.”

Doesn’t preclude the possibility that Rothbard is correct. Regardless, seems that Burke is in the neighborhood. As per Paine, the linked article is quite interesting on Paine’s view of political liberty. I had no idea such an important distinction exists. Thanks for the link.

“Spend It Where You Make It! Buy American”

To that economically ignorant statement, I say..

“Don’t sh** where you eat. Buy foreign whenever you want!”

“Years ago my mother used to say to me, she’d say, ‘In this world, Elwood, you must be,’ — she always called me Elwood — ‘In this world, you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant.’ Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.”

Thanks, Sy.

Also interesting, Rothbard’s article on Burke and anarchism, and also this:

http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/libhe/libhe013.pdf

I like this too:

“History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, & all the train of disorderly appetites, which shake the public with the same

‘troublous storms that toss The private state, and render life unsweet.’

These vices are the CAUSES of those storms. Religions, morals, laws, prerogatives, privileges, liberties, rights of men, are the PRETEXTS. The pretexts are always found in some specious appearance of a real good.You would not secure men from tyranny & sedition by rooting out of the mind the principles to which these fraudulent pretexts apply? If you did, you would root out everything that is valuable in the human breast. As these are the pretexts, so the ordinary actors & instruments in great public evils are kings, priests, magistrates, senates, parliaments, national assemblies, judges, & captains. You would not cure the evil by resolving that there should be no more monarchs, nor ministers of state, nor of the gospel; no interpreters of law; no general officers; no public councils. You might change the names. The things in some shape must remain. A certain quantum of power must always exist in the community in some hands & under some appellation. Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names; to the causes of evil which are permanent, not to the occasional organs by which they act, & the transitory modes in which they appear. Otherwise you will be wise historically, a fool in practice. Seldom have two ages the same fashion in their pretexts & the same modes of mischief.”

- Edmund Burke – “Reflections on the Revolution in France” – 1790

Of course, they both have to go, the vices and the kings. First the vices, then the kings become less terrible.

However, Thucydides says often “human nature being what it is”. Is he right? What has history shown us but that one nation/empire seeks to take over another. Persia invaded Greece. The Aztecs conquered and enslaved their neighbors. “Native Ameircan” tribes fought brutal wars of attrition. The US just fought them all the same without prejudice!! One cannot argue with intellectual honesty that Iran and Pakistan (to name two examples) are simply in need of cooperation and trade and all will be peaceful. Nor could one make the claim for Chavez’s Venezuela. Or North Korea, or Zimbabwe, or…

Neither time, place, culture, race, nor anything else (not guns, germs, and steel either!!) has proven anything other than man is violent and tends towards war. And man tends first towards political associations (Aristotle – man is by nature political…) and sadly those tend towards expansion. (cf. Polybius Rome vs. Carthage, two empires that cold not coexist at close proximity. He argued one had to succeed, one had to fail. I think he had a point.)

Thus, Vegetius’ “those who desire peace, prepare for war” seems to be the ultimate oxymoron. But also the greatest observation.

So, what I’d love an answer to, and I don’t know that one exists, is how does a free society, one based on liberty, maintain it’s strength as to dissuade others from external aggression (because the strong are almost never attacked, only those weak or perceived as such. Yes, there are many contradictions, such as WW1, which was started over empire, i.e. the attacking of the weak by the strong…) without becoming the very society it despises?

How can a libertarian society protect itself? How does it acquire and prepare the means, project such preparedness, and at the same time, maintain the will to restrain itself?

Sione