by Kirkpatrick Sale

There’s much talk these days, particularly by the Tea Party types, about getting back to the “real” Constitution, forcing the Obama government to honor the “original intent” of the Founding Fathers, and “understanding the Constitution through the eyes of its creators,” as one contributor to the Tenth Amendment Center recently put it.  That center, in fact, is dedicated to, and attracting a growing following for, a rigid interpretation of that amendment reserving to the states the powers not expressly given to the Federal government. And along with it in the last few years has grown up a Constitution Party that has the idea that the nation’s problems can be solved by “a renewed allegiance” to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and hence a return to “limited government.”  The problem with current officials of both parties, as the CP see it, is that they “ignore their oaths to uphold the Constitution,” that is to say, the Constitution  as originally written and used in the 18^th century .

This would be a far different country, of course, if it paid an allegiance to the document of 1787 that the renegade Congress had come up with, in secret, that summer in Philadelphia, even along with its first ten amendments.  But what all the critics who believe that going back to the original Constitution would forestall the kinds of forces that have led to the present bloated, overstretched, intrusive, and unwieldy government do not realize is that this is what it almost inevitably had to lead to.

Let’s wake up these “real Constitution” die-hards and the ardent “Tenthers” and tell them that it’s a waste of time to try to resurrect that document in order to save the nation —because  because the growth of government and the centralization of  power is inherent in its original provisions.   As the anti-Federalists were trying to say all along from the very beginning of the ratification process.  Only when we get people today off this understandable but ill-fated track can we begin to open their eyes to the reality of our present peril: we have a big overgrown government because that’s what the Founding Fathers founded, and we won’t escape from it until we take the idea of secession as seriously as it must be taken.   Let’s look at some of the dangerous elements of the “real” Constitution.

It starts off with a phrase that, right there at the start, sounded alarm bells in those who, having experienced the powers of the individual states as sovereign states under the Articles of Confederation, saw that it was not to  the states but to “we the people” that power would be given.  “What right had they to say, We ,the people,” cried Patrick Henry to the Virginia ratification convention,  “instead of, We, the states?”  He saw that the phrase gave power to an amorphous “people” whom the new government could define and use as it chose, bypassing and undercutting the states.  If “the people” spoke through the Congress, it could willy-nilly ignore the individual states.

Which, indeed, is what happened, and Congress was cheerfully ratified in doing so by another centralizing branch of government, the Supreme Court.  But the idea was never more egregiously used than when Lincoln denied that the states had any particular power, indeed denied that they were sovereign entities at all, and argued that all power rests with the people, who had created a United States and wanted it united.  “Government of the people,” in other words,  means that Washington can do whatever it damn pleases in their name.

And the anti-Federalists had warned of exactly that seventy years before.  The framers of the Constitution, said Luther Martin, a delegate to the convention from Maryland, were crypto-monarchists whose “wish it was to abolish and annihilate all State governments, and to bring forward one general government…of a monarchical nature, under certain restrictions and limitations.”   That was said in November 1787—don’t say you weren’t warned.       But let’s go on with the faults of the centralizers’ Constitution.  There is in Article I a bold statement that “Congress shall have the power to” and there follow some specifics about taxes and debts—and then “provide for the… general welfare of the United States.”  Agree to that and you’ve agreed it can do anything it likes without check or rein, for what measure could not be thought to be enhancing the “general welfare”?  James Madison, who had a hand in Federal enlargement elsewhere in the document, saw the danger here: “If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of …in short, everything, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police.”  That is not what they had fought a war against the British monarchy for.    Not more than a few phrases away is the famous “commerce clause,” by which a Supreme Court, ever-willing to enhance the powers of the Washington establishment, managed almost from the beginning to enhance Congressional control over what the states would be allowed to do.  Congress shall have the power, it reads, “to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states.”  That would seem to mean that Congress could establish terms by which states could trade with each other, so that none would establish tariffs against any other—“a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the States themselves,” as Madison saw it, “rather than as a power to be used for the positive purposes of the General Government.”

But positive is what the clause became.  The Supreme Court decided that practically anything that went on commercially within one state would have some kind of effect on all the others, in some way or other, and so government can regulate it; as early as 1828 it held that the government could regulate trade on the Hudson river for its entire length because some of it ran along New Jersey, and the monopoly New York state had given to Robert Fulton to run his steamboat it decided to be null and void because it affected New Jerseyans.  Its reading of the clause became ever more expansive as time went on and by the New Deal it gave the government carte blanche to interfere in state business down to the level of a janitor’s salary and a farmer’s wheat crop.

And as if that wasn’t a sufficient interference in state business, the Founding Fathers wound up their Constitution with a clause that ringingly asserted that what they had just enumerated as the powers of  the government—and any laws that they should subsequently pass “in pursuance thereof”—“shall be the supreme law of the land” and judges in the states better take that to heart.   This “supremacy clause” was hotly debated at the time because it, like the other sections above, could be interpreted in such a broad way that the states would be powerless to act on matters of serious concern, and thus it was that when there finally came a slew of amendments that the people of the states demanded as checks on Federal power, one of the most important was the Tenth, asserting that Washington had only the specific powers enumerated in the Constitution and the states had jurisdiction in all else.

Which brings up the final deficiency in that Constitution, that Tenth Amendment itself.  It seems clear that a great many serious people felt that when it said “the powers not delegated to the U.S….are reserved to the states…or to the people,” that this guaranteed a considerable sovereignty for the states.  But the centralists agreed to it (and put it at the end of the Bill of Rights) because they knew that it was so unspecific, so merely rhetorical, that it was capable of any interpretation—and that a Supreme Court capable of giving itself judicial review over Congress ( not enumerated in the Constitution) would be capable of finding that the powers delegated to the U.S.  were pretty vast and those given to the states were few and limited in scope.  As it so happened.

The Tenthers are fighting valiantly to reverse the 220 years in which that last item in the Bill of Rights has been emasculated and rendered effectively irrelevant, and they may even be gaining some attention, particularly in the states’ growing resistance to Obamacare.  But it seems most unlikely that, with the other centralizing tools at their command, the Federal courts will give it much consideration.   And then when they finally see their beloved amendment in shreds, maybe then the Tenthers and other Constitutional-Firsters will begin to see that the U.S. Constitution, by the centralists, of the nationalists, and for the Hamiltonians, is not a document that will lead them to liberty and sovereignty.  The only method for that, let us hope they finally realize, is secession.

Has anyone read this book? It looks rather interesting.

Some of this stuff would seem to be a possible prototype for replacing the state’s social welfare system. Presumably, these models could be utilized by separatist or decentralist movements of any type.

Apparently the Democrats are getting a little nervous about the Second Vermont Republic.

Interesting talk at a meeting of the London New Right. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Yes, the Rent Really Is Too Damn High!! by Kevin Carson

Obamacare Feeds Insurance Oligarchs by David D’Amato

Why Building Codes and Licensing Boards Are Bad for You by Nicole Paluszek

If the Supply Trucks Stop Rolling In, What Will You Be Eating? by Nicole Paluszek

Time to Rescind the Social Contract by David D’Amato

Understanding Intellectual Property An Interview with Stephen Kinsella

Tonight, I had a conversation with a woman who has worked in a clerical capacity for the court system in three different jurisdictions in my state.  She told me that during her time as a court employee she observed that if drug cases were eliminated from the court system altogether the criminal division of the courts would essentially be non-existent compared to what it is now. Hmmm.

Interesting talk by Bowden. I’m not that big on Evola, I prefer Nietzsche, but either way this is a great discussion of religion, philosophy, and society. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7.

It’s somewhat surprising to find an article like this in a relatively mainstream publication like the Guardian.

Yet it does not require that much thought to realise that people in different countries may have different views about what policies would be most appropriate for achieving economic growth or that attitudes towards certain human rights are quite socially and culturally specific. No one should ever be tortured, arbitrarily executed or held in slavery, but notions such as freedom of expression, religion and sexual relations do vary in different parts of the world. The right to private property is basically a western concept, which may be politically sensitive in societies where it is associated with capitalism and colonialism.

Of all my positions on various things, one of the most controversial is my view that official outlaw organizations like motorcycle clubs and street gangs are potential constituents for the anarcho-pluralist struggle against the state. Indeed, aside from my militantly anti-totalitarian humanist outlook, this issue combined with my insurrectionist views are probably the aspects of my thinking that raise the most eyebrows.  Here’s an illustration of why I take this position:

Jury Chosen at Outlaws Trial in Richmond

Notice this passage in particular:

(Defense attorney) Collins said the job of the undercover agents is to break up gangs such as the Outlaws. He urged the jury to pay close attention to whether they were collecting evidence or instigating problems.

An authentic anarchist movement should be defined first and foremost by two essential characteristics. The first of these is a commitment to freedom of thought and speech in the tradition of Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson, John Stuart Mill, or Bertrand Russell. This is where our PC “anarchist” thought police fail the exam. The second characteristic should be a defense of all those who come under the attacks of the state. Clearly, the role of state agents in the infiltration of motorcycle clubs and other comparable organizations for the sake of stirring up violence between different groups should be exposed and attacked by opponents of the state. There are numerous reasons for this. First, such state agents often participate in crime themselves, and not just consensual crimes like buying and selling drugs. State agents of this kind provoke violence that would not otherwise occur in many circumstances. State attacks on motorcycle clubs or anti-gang laws essentially criminalize freedom of association and are used as a weapon against subcultures that are at odds with the establishment. Lastly, the same tactics that are used against groups like motorcycle clubs are often used against political dissidents as well. See COINTELPRO.

It matters not whether the members of such organizations are “good” people are not. Political and social struggles are not contingent on the virtue of the individual members of groups that are under attack by the state or the ruling class. We might aid a general strike by fast food workers, even though some fast food workers may be virtuous people and others may be scumbags. The historic struggle against evils like labor exploitation, slavery, the religious subordination of women, religious persecution, or the state persecution of homosexuals was not contingent on the individual character or personality of individual workers, slaves, women, religious or ethnic outgroups, and gays. Of course, this doesn’t mean that we adopt the totalitarian humanist practice of defining individual virtue by group identity, either. It is fine to recognize genuine problems caused by, for instance, the presence of street gangs for residents of nearby neighborhoods.  It is fine to hold individuals accountable for harm they do to others. Not all criminal prosecutions are “unjust” by any means, though we may ultimately seek abolition of the state’s “criminal justice” system and its replacement with our own private, common law, tribal, or otherwise non-statist legal systems.

Still, a crucial test of a true anarchist is the degree to which anarchists defend all enemies of the state, regardless of their personal feelings about them or the individual characteristics of persons involved. Fuck the feds, I’m rooting for the Outlaws.

James Kalb discusses his observances concerning “gender relations” during his time as a math instructor for the Peace Corps in Afghanistan. Read it here.

http://fair-use.org/benjamin-tucker/instead-of-a-book/

Instead Of A Book, By A Man Too Busy To Write One

This is a complete electronic transcription of the second edition (1897) of Instead Of A Book, By A Man Too Busy To Write One by Benjamin Tucker, a self-published collection of Tucker’s writings from the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.

http://foster.20megsfree.com/417.htm

Kurt Eisner, the leader of the revolutionary socialist Bavarian Republic, devoted his first book in 1919 to the philosophy of Nietzsche. Though he criticized the “megalomania” that he found in Thus Spake Zarathustra, he also praised its aristocratic ideals. The aristocratic values found in Nietzsche, he said, had to be put at the service of the people, not treated as ends in themselves. Gustav Landauer (1870-1919), another founder of the Bavarian “Red Republic,” emphasized Nietzschean voluntarism in his training of political revolutionaries. Landauer’s original anarchistic individualism became more communitarian and populist during the course of his political career, approaching the folkish, nationalist thinking of his enemies. Landauer died in the streets of Munich fighting the soldiers of the Freikorp, a group of paramilitary adventurers who were classified as “rightist” but who shared much of Landauer’s outlook.

Martin Van Creveld’s masterful work “The Rise and Decline of the State” argues that the nation-state system as it has been known since the time of the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia is on its way out. As the twenty-first century progresses, conventional states of the kind that began to emerge several centuries ago and fully established themselves in the 19th and 20th centuries will be challenged by regional autonomist movements, transnational federations, separatist breakaway movements and “fourth generation” private armies and sources of authority outside the state.

If this is true, then the next wave of political radicalism will be the precise opposite of the radicalisms that arose in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries-liberalism, socialism and nationalism-all of which aimed towards more concentrated political authority. More than a century and a half since Proudhon first proclaimed himself an anarchist, it is time for anarchism to achieve its moment in the sun. What would a 21st century revolutionary anarchism look like?

1. It would draw on the history of classical anarchism and other pre-existing forms of anarchism, but modify these to make them more compatible with the times.
2. It would attack the Left, i.e., Liberalism and Marxism, as its primary enemies, particularly in North America, given that North America has no historical attachment to the Ancien Regime and the traditional Right. Instead, the enemy to be assaulted is modern bourgeoise liberalism (internationalist, social democratic, corporatist, multiculturalist, therapeutist, managerialist)
3. It would specifically embrace movements, causes and groups ignored by the Left establishment, focusing primarily on the lumpenproletariat, petite bourgeoise, rural agricultural population and the declasse elements from all class backgrounds.
4. It would crossover to the radical Middle with a populist-decentralist economic outlook standing in opposition to both Big Government and Big Business.
5. It would crossover to the vast culture of right-wing populism recognizing the many economic, foreign policy, civil liberties, decentralist and cultural rights issues raised by these milieus.
6. Its primary strategy would be the creation of alliance of local and regional secession movements spanning the cultural and ideological spectrum but united against the common enemies of State, Capital and Empire.
7. The leadership corps of such movements should ideally be hardline revolutionaries with a committment to radical action and an understanding of the major issues.
8. Aside from a populist-decentralist economic platform, such a movement would assemble coalitions of consituent groups at the local and regional level with grievances against the state and in favor of the decentralization of power.
9. Such a movement would seek to establish alternative infrastructure so as to reduce dependency on state services and to transfer responsibility to non-state services following the demise of the state.
10. Such a movement would recognize the legitimacy of armed self-defense against the ruling class, and so seek to establish private defense forces independently of the state.

So what would the endgame be?

1. Limited, decentralized and federative political institutions and the elimination of the gargantuan states of modernity.
2. Cooperative, decentralist economics outside the modern fiefdoms of State-Capitalism.
3. Non-interventionist foreign policy in opposition to both neoconservative “global democratic revolution” or leftist “human rights internationalism”.
4. Defense of civil liberties and individual freedom across the board, whether on seemingly right-wing populist issues like the right to bear arms or seemingly left-wing counterculture issues like drug decriminalization.
5. An authentically pluralist approach to social and cultural matters, where the basis of social organization is autonomous ethnic, religious, cultural, familial, linguistic, sexual, commercial, aesthetic or other such particularist enclaves.

So how do we get started?

To some degree, we see the beginnings of such a movement in the Ron Paul campaign, a grassroots revolt against the Neocons’ foreign policy agenda, Kirkpatrick Sale’s and Michael Hill’s alliance of neo-secessionist factions, the emergence of the New Right as a genuine intellectual challenge to Liberalism and Marxism, the resolutions local communities have issued against the Iraq war, the Patriot Act and other abominations of the present system, the success of popular referendums in favor of medical marijuana, the rise of the militia movement in defense of the 2nd Amendment in the 1990s, the rise of the anti-globalization movement a few years later, the economic scholarship advanced by Kevin Carson and other contemporary decentralists, and many other things that serve as prototypes for what might be done in the future.

I favor a trickle-down/trickle-up, inside/outside strategy. This means at the top level we need a new generation of scholars to emerge that challenge the hegemony of neoconservatism and reactionary leftism in the cultural and intellectual realms. At the bottom level, we need streetfighting radical activists devoted to the kinds of ideas that have thus far been outlined.
We need those who work on the outside (like citizens militias confronting agents of the state when necessary or feasible) and on the inside (lawyers and lobbyists fighting the system on its own turf like the ACLU or the NRA).

Obviously, there is much work to be done.

http://www.deadanarchists.org/avrich.html

The late Anarchist historian Paul Avrich probably met and got to know more people from the original anarchist movement than anyone who was young enough to be alive at the beginning of the 21st century. He was acquainted with the sons of Johann Most and Rudolph Rocker, and the daughters of Benjamin R. Tucker and Peter Kropotkin and with those who had been personal friends of Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Sacco and Vanzetti and Voltairine de Cleyre. What did he have to say about the old anarchists?

“”I’ve known thousands of anarchists and the percentage of them I didn’t like is very small,” says Avrich. At his sparsely furnished Upper West Side apartment, overlooking the Hudson River, Avrich speaks quickly and passionately about the people and the movement he spent a lifetime chronicling. “I loved these people,” he says, leaning forward with his hand clutching his heart. “I think about them every day.”

Now what did the distinguished historian have to say about what passes for “anarchism” today?

“Avrich does not shy away from controversy in his books, treating the anarchist acts of violence honestly and in the context of the time. He does not condone the violence of Berkman, but says he still admires his decision, considering how brutal Frick acted toward striking workers. But Avrich does not have the same patience for some contemporary anarchists, who choose to destroy property and who, he says, come mainly from educated and middle-class backgrounds. “I’m not so crazy about anarchists these days,” he says. Anarchism means that you leave other people alone and you don’t force people to do anything.”
He says he is sad that the old-timers are not around to guide the resurgent movement. “They were nicer people –much nicer people.”

Of course, not a few of today’s “anarchists” are really nothing more than brownshirts for the new Totalitarian Humanism. To hell with ‘em.

Forty years ago, in the summer of 1968, leftist radicals fought the police outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Four years later, these same New Left forces went into the Democratic Party, seized control of its nomination process, and put George McGovern on the presidential ticket. The result was the biggest defeat of a major party candidate in modern American history, surpassing even the Goldwater and Mondale debacles of 1964 and 1984. For decades afterward, as the cultural Left consolidated its position in the Democratic Party (and other places, like the mass media and academia), the Democrats fuctioned as an often seemingly irrelevant opposition party, achieving victory only when they put up a couple of previously obscure frying pan governors as candidates.

As Republicans continued to win elections, the cry from the Right was a persistent, “The Sixities are over!” as if the radical Left had finally been vanquished for good. The Right was saying this as recently as 2004, when a former celebrity of the anti-Vietnam War movement, John Kerry, headed up the Democratic Party ticket, obtaining forty-eight percent of the vote. The radical Left was a fringe movement in the late 1960s, comprised of politically marginalized and socially outcast racial minorites, feminists, homosexuals, environmentalists, student radicals, leftist intellectuals, counterculturalists and the antiwar movement. Now, forty years later, what was marginal in 1968 is normal, mainstream and a cultural majority at the end of 2008.

The electoral victory of Barack Obama symbolizes the culmination of the long march from the streets of Chicago to full institutionalization of the radical Left of a previous era. That Obama, the individual, is more of a centrist than a leftist and was only a child in 1968 is less significant than what he represents. The 68ers have now seized the establishment and those who insisted the establishment could never be trusted have become the establishment.

On virtually every issue, the radical Left of the 1960s has either won or is in the process of winning. Racism? Despite the claims of “anti-racist” professionals who insist that Nazis are hiding under every bed, racism is at an all-time low. Blacks are only 12.5 percent of the U.S. population, and have a lengthy history as an outgroup, yet a black man wins the presidency. If hatred of blacks was particularly common, the Obama presidency would be impossible. Sexism? The woman who is to become the next Secretary of State is a woman who personally epitomizes 70s era feminism. The class of urban professional women has grown exponentially in recent decades. Even the vice-presidential candidate of the ostensibly “conservative” party was a woman, something that would have been virtually unthinkable forty years ago. A friend of mine’s mother was told as a child that her ambition to become a doctor was inappropriate because of her gender. Today, such sentiments would be laughable. As an illustration, the daughter of the Reverend Jerry Falwell, the man who for many symbolized anti-60s social conservatism, is now a physician. Gay rights? Homosexuals are more out of the closet, more socially integrated and have more “rights” than ever before. Anti-gay marriage referendums continue to pass, but do so by a smaller margin each time they come up for vote, with the real source of the conflict being generational in nature. The gay rights movement will eventually win on that issue as well. In the 1950s, homosexual relationships were considered a serious felony, like drug use in the present era. Today, not only does gay culture thrive in American cities, but even mainsteam bookstores like Barnes & Noble feature entire sections of literature devoted to gay issues. Such materials would likely have been banned under obscentity laws prior to the late 60s or early 70s.

Environmentalism? One of the world’s leading advocates of environmental causes, who obtained a Nobel Prize for his efforts, was very nearly elected President of the United States in 2000. Student radicalism? Many of the student rebels of the 1960s are now tenured academics, and there is no place in American society where the far Left is more secure than in academia. The sexual revolution? This has proven to be every bit as enduring as the civil rights revolution. Very few Americans even remember that some states had laws prohibiting contraceptive devices in the 1960s. Pornography and adult entertainment are now almost as mainstream as rock and rap music.

What about the antiwar movement? Surely, some might think, the present war in Iraq illustrates a failure of the radical Left is this area. Well, not really. In the early days of the Vietnam War, it was physically dangerous to oppose the war. Early antiwar protests typically required police protection, and the protestors were happy to have the cops present to ward off vigilante attacks from gung ho patriots. When the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was passed, it did so unanimously in the House of Representatives, and with only two dissenters in the Senate.

The number of casualties on the American side has yet to be one-tenth of what they were in Vietnam, yet public opinion turned against the war at the first site of blood, and this was in spite of the fact that September 11 had occurred only a few years earlier. It is politically impossible to impose war taxes, which is why the System is financing the war with inflation, deficit spending and foreign loans. The draft is likewise politically impossible and, indeed, the fact that there has been no draft since the Vietnam era marks yet another profound victory for the radical Left of the time. The present Iraq war, the public disgust generated by the neoconservatives and the Bush crowd, the national bankruptcy produced by Bush policies and the ineptness of the U.S. at fighting modern, “fourth generation” guerrilla armies have likely rendered further major imperial expeditions like Vietnam or Iraq impossible for the forseeable future. Yes, some piss ant Clintonesque imperialisms like those in Haiti or Kosovo may continue (with the added irony of former Vietnam War protestors defending these in the name of “humanitarian” war), and these will likely end only when the present regime finally dissolves, but the empire is on its last legs and its days are likely numbered. 

Indeed, even the “conservatism” of the present time is “liberal” compared to the pre-1960s period. Ronald Reagan did not govern appreciably to the right of John F. Kennedy. Reagan’s wars in Central America were simply a repeat of Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs and early involvement in Vietnam. George W. Bush has not governed to the right of Lyndon Johnson, presiding over the same kind of failed combination of joint extension of the warfare and welfare states as LBJ. The present day leadership of the Republican Party are the neoconservatives, who were on the far left end of the Democratic Party in the 1960s, the so-called “state department socialists.” What about the Religious Right? There is no group around more consistently demonized by the Left, and the literature of the Left is full of wild claims concerning an imminent theocratic coup by the Religious Right. The reality is that the Religious Right are simply convenient scapegoats for the Left and useful idiots for the Right. In the thirty years that the Religious Right has been an organized political movement, it has achieved nothing concerning any of its major issues. Putting prayer back into public schools? There are arguably more restrictions on religious practice and expression in state institutions than ever before. Banning abortion? A comprehensive anti-abortion referendum could not pass popular vote even in conservative South Dakota, and with Obama likely appointing the next members of the Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade is probably secure. Tuition tax credits or vouchers for private religious schools? It ain’t happening.

Jews are another traditional American outgroup, who were at times excluded from some social organizations and institutions until the civil rights era. Today, ethnic Jews own the majority of the major media companies, and the Israel Lobby is by far among the most powerful in the U.S government, essentially controlling U.S. policy in the Middle East. Yet, merely pointing out these facts invite sshrill accusations of the new “Scarlet A” of anti-Semitism. Prior to 1965, the U.S. maintained a racially restrictive immigration policy, which has since been liberalized remarkably. America was ninety percent white in 1960. Today, the U.S. is only sixty-eight percent white, and proposed policies to so much as deny welfare state benefits to illegal immigrants are denounced as racist and xenophobic.

Indeed, the only area where the radical Left is losing is in the area of so-called “criminal justice.” The U.S. police state has expanded dramatically in recent decades, and the “War on Drugs” and enforcement of other “consensual crime” laws have largely been the foundation of this, and has produced a corresponding prison-industrial complex. The execution rate in the U.S.  is also unusually high for a modern, democratic, industrialized nation. 

Though the Left has achieved complete or nearly complete victory on just about every issue, the Left will never admit as much. Sixties radicalism has become what any other movement becomes once it is institutionalized. The purpose of the Left today is to simply perpetuate its own existence and its own vested interests. For this reason, invisible armies of racists, sexists, homophobes and theocrats must constantly be said to be hiding behind every rock or tree. Heretics who dissent from left-wing orthodoxy on any number of matters must be constantly sought out for denunciation, repression or persecution.

This brings us to the question of what it really means to be a radical in 21st century North America. How “radical” is it to simply espouse anti-racism, feminism, gay rights, environmentalism and other run of the mill “progressive” causes? Are such things “radical” or are they mainstream, status quo and now establishmentarian in nature?

Is attacking the supposed “racism”  of a Don Imus or a James Watson really the act of a dissident? Or would it be the “radical” thing to do  to champion the rights of freedom of speech, religion or association for those with beliefs and opinions that dissent from liberal orthodoxy? Is it “radical” to persistently denounce groups like the Klan or Neo-Nazis that everyone hates anyway, or would it be more “radical” to expose supposed humanitarian do-gooders like the SPLC or the ADL for the frauds they are? What would be more cutting edge or “going against the flow,” to denounce “sexism” in the manner of an establishment liberal like Gloria Steinem or to defend academic and intellectual liberty for the likes of Walter Block? As far as defending outgroups goes, are groups like homosexuals, immigrants, minorities or women really “outgroups” in contemporary society? Would it not be far more radical and far more shocking to the establishment to defend gun-toting rural rednecks, drug-dealing inner-city ghetto dwellers, home schoolers and truants, practicioners of alternative medicine, strange religious sects, drug users, prostitutes and convicts, or avowedly separatist indigenous people like the Lakota Republic? What would be a greater outrage, a protest demonstration led by commie cults like the Workers World Party, or the formation of citizen militias, common law courts and secessionist movements? What would be more rebellious in nature, a recycling program or civil disobedience demanding the right to smoke in private bars and clubs, thereby giving the finger to the therapeutic state? What is more truly radical, agitating for gay marriage or a riot against the police state and prison-industrial complex similar to that which recently transpired in Greece?

The anwers to these questions are clear enough.

I’ve written rather critically of the cultural Left in the past. I do this for two primary reasons: 1) my view that left-wing concerns about matters like oppression of racial minorities, women, homosexuals, et.al., while rooted in legitimate concerns and historical realities, have metamorphed into a new kind of authoritarianism, intolerance, and dogmatic fanaticism that is only now starting to become prevalent and will likely become more predatory in the future and 2) my view that the contemporary emphasis on cultural politics from the Left has proven to be extremely destructive to the broader struggles against the forces of State, Capital and Empire.

I have had many brickbats thrown at me because I hold these positions. Some of the criticism on these matters I have received is rooted in simple disagreement or honest misunderstanding. Yet, much of the more vociferous hostility I have encountered seems to be rooted in dishonesty, mendacity, and hysteria, thereby proving my point.  I’m going to outline what I consider to be  the “proper” positions on cultural politics for libertarian radicals in the contemporary era. I say “proper,” in the sense of conformity to actual, tangible facts, relevance to the types of societies we find ourselves in, and the relationship of such questions to broader issues.

In looking around for examples of how the cultural Left typically thinks, an excellent example is a pamphlet in my possession published by a left-wing anarchist “collective” in my local community in 2002. I’m going to quote extensively from this pamphlet, and offer my own thoughts in response. The folks associated with this collective are very good people, some of whom I’ve known for over ten years, who have supported various projects of my own, whom I’ve appeared on television with, and who do very good work on many issues. In no way is any criticism I offer meant to convey hostility or personal attacks.  The first point of this left-wing anarchist manifesto calls “For An End to White Supremacy”:

We live in a culture that was founded upon the slavery of Africans, the genocide of indigenous people, and the brutal exploitation of people of color.

No disagreement so far, though there was plenty of “brutual exploitation” of white labor during early American history as well.

Since our culture has not come to terms with its white supremacist past we continue to live in a white supremacist present based upon the unrelenting economic exploitation of people of color, the mass imprisonment of black and Latino youth, and the privileging of white people and their value systems. Behind the creation and perpetuation of this white Euro-centric status quo is the drive to create profitable capitalist empire.

I thoroughly disagree that we are in a “white supremacist present” in the contemporary United States, at least as far as historic American “white supremacy” is concerned. If that were the case, a black man could not be elected President, people would not lose their jobs or public figures would not be subject to relentless opprobrium for perceived racist utterances. Nor would features such as affirmative action or sensitivity training be the institutional norms that they have become. Are people of color really subject to “unrelenting economic exploitation”? The urban underclass, which is mostly black and Hispanic, falls into this category, but so does the rural white lumenproletariat. What about the black middle class? What about the black professional class or wealthy, upper class blacks?

White people need to know that allowing people of color marginal participation in the dominant white culture is not true freedom.

The problem with a statement like this is that it ignores demographic realities. Blacks are only 12.5% of the U.S. population, so it is unlikely that blacks are ever going to be dominant or a numerical majority in institutions or social organizations. The exception would be those geographical areas where blacks are a demographic majority, and in large American cities where that is the case, black dominated local governments are quite frequently found.

People of color in North America have historically resisted their oppression and colonization by any and all means necessary. From slave revolts to riots against the police to union organizing to movements for control of their own destinies they have resisted their oppressors. The white status quo has historically conceded only what was necessary  to preserve their power and prevent the emergence of a revolutionary mass movement against white domination.

There’s no mention of what a “revolutionary mass movement against white domination” would actually involve.  So long as whites are a demographic majority, there’s only three possible ways to avoid “white domination.” One would simply be to import large numbers of non-white immigrants to such a degree that whites would no longer be a majority. Indeed, this seems to be one of the reason why the Left is rather enthusiastic about mass immigration. Yet, the consequences of such an action are likely to be quite severe. Historically, genuinely multicultural/multiethnic societies tend to be rather unstable and prone to outbursts of intercommunal violence. Oppression of minorities by majorities becomes less of an issue than persistent strife and even bloodshed between contending racial/ethnic power groups attempting to get the political upperhand. Another method might be to grant minorities political and economic privileges and power beyond that of their actual numbers. This has been done through such measures as antidiscrimination laws, affirmative action, electoral redistricting so as to guarantee a certain number of minority legislators, quotas and set asides, school “busing” policies, and many other such measures that are too numerous to mention. Yet, in spite of all of this, minority and/or left-wing claims of inequality still persist.

The third alternative may well prove to be the most satisfactory one. Towards the end of his life, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was apparently moving towards the idea of an independent black nation in North America, for the sake of achieving economic parity with the wider white society. Indeed, the level of wealth in the black community is already such that if black Americans were an independent nation, they would be one of the world’s more prosperous nations, comparable to many European or the more advanced Asian nations. Perhaps black sovereignty, and reparations for that purpose, will be the next phase of the movement for civil rights. The relative prosperity of black Americans may well be an obstacle to white embracement of reparations, as no living Americans ever owned slaves, and many were not even born when Jim Crow when still in effect. Still, there’s no denying that such past policies have prevented black prosperity of today from being what it otherwise would have been. If reparations were combined with elimination of statist social engineering policies concerning race relations, perhaps whites would not be as resistant.

We wholeheartedly support the needs and desires of people of color to organize in their own communities and workplaces free from the intrusion of the guilt-ridden consciences of white radicals. We recognize the ability of people of color to self determine their course in the world. People within the — — Collective who have white skin privileges will stand as allies and work in coalitions with people of color, when and only if, the people of color involved so desire.

Absolutely. I think the key phrase here is “when and only if, the people of color involved so desire.” Most radical groups in North American are predominately white, often exclusively so. The more rhetorically “anti-racist” they are the more all-white they seem to be. Racial minorities in North America who are politically motivated typically tend to prefer their own, separate political organizations. Some of these are obviously more about getting a bigger piece of the System, rather than overthrowing the System. But others aren’t, and it would seem the proper course of action would be to simply recognize and, when feasible, collaborate with black nationalists and related tendencies when mutually beneficial, with everyone otherwise going their own way. The emergence of groups such as Anarchist People of Color, the Lakota Republic, or the Pan-African International Movement would seem to be a positive development along these lines.

Another plank in my anarchist friends’ manifesto reads “For An End to All the Tentacles of the Patriarchy”:

We aim to shape a society based on equality, mutual respect, celebration of difference, and freedom from dominant patriarchal values and behaviors. Our society places value on labor, politics, and culture that benefits men, heterosexuals, and people who don’t bend the gender they were assigned at birth. Women, transgendered people…transvestites…transexuals…butch women…and feminine males..intersexed people… and sexual minorities (gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, etc. are in different ways oppressed by a patriarchal system that privilges the masculine, the “normative” heterosexual, and the “appropriately” gendered.

I think some qualification is in order here. As Justin Raimondo points out, certain sectors of the homosexual population are quite successful and prosperous. It’s also true that some within the “gay rights” movement have an authoritarian and destructive agenda of their own. Still, if freedom or liberty or anarchy means anything, it ought to mean the right to be different or to be a non-conformist, and there are some people who would not give a “sexual minority” a fair shake no matter what. While there’s always going to be a certain price attached to being “different,” as that’s the way human nature and human societies actually work, it is true that oppressions of this type have long been overlooked. There are religious non-conformists that have been persecuted in American history to various degrees-Quakers, Antinomians, Mormons, “witches,” Jehovah’s Witnesses, Moonies, Branch Davidians. There exists such groups today on the cultural level (drug users, for instance).  No reason exists why the oppression of sexual /gender outgroups cannot be opposed with the same vigor with which one might oppose religious persecution.

The patriarchy manifests itself in many visible ways; from the disparity of earning power between women and men…

There are reasons for this besides rank misogyny but there’s no identifiable reason why there cannot be a meritocracy whereby individual recognition is based on personal achievement and ability rather than group characteristics like gender. One of my favorite examples of such are the resistance movements in Latin America. Twenty percent of the FMLN of El Salvador’s fighting forces in the 1980s were females, and there were even all-female military units. At times, one third of the FARC of Colombia’s forces have been teenaged girls, and when it comes to leadership roles, there’s no denying the place of leaders like Lucy Parsons, Emma Goldman or Voltairine de Cleyre in the anarchist pantheon. Some of the most ferocious fighters in China’s Tai Ping rebellion in the 19th century were female warriors.

…to brutal hate crimes against queer and trans people…

Certainly, such crimes are despicable, yet they are only a very small portion of all the violent crime that occurs in America. The people who perpetrate such actions are not honored by society. Such actions often become national scandals and the perpetrators subject to arrest and lengthy terms of imprisonment. However, just as some people commit other acts of murder, robbery or rape inspite of laws, arrests and prosecutions ostensibly designed to prevent such behavior, “sexual minorities” continue to be victimized in such ways at times as well. Perhaps the Pink Pistols are the solution?

…to the inaccessibility of hormones and surgery for transexual people…

Very few people today realize that the polio vaccine was developed without state funding. Instead, it was developed through a private foundation founded by FDR, with funds provided by the March of Dimes. Perhaps there could also be a “March of Dollars” to generate funding for gender reassignment surgery for trans people?

…to the constant fear of violence that many women feel on the streets…

The obvious solution here is more women who are skilled and trained in the use of weapons, including firearms, for self-defense, and the repeal of laws restricting self-defense. This should be an issue where anti-rape and anti-sex crime feminists and conservative gun rights activists can find common ground.

Simultaneously, the patriarchy operates in many “invisible” ways; from the way that we speak and interact intimately…

Sorry, but “intimate” relationships are a matter of interpersonal relations, whatever the issues that arise, not political matters.

…to the self loathing that many queer, intersexed people, transgendered people and women feel… 

Psychological peace has to come from within. If you look to others or to society to provide it, you’ll be waiting a long time. It’s as simple as that.

…to eating disorders caused by sexist beauty standards…

Again, self-acceptance comes from within, not from without. All societies have “beauty standards” of some sort. An acquaintance of mine who is a specialist in Latin American history tells me the Mayans thought crossed-eyes were attractive. In some cultures, “plump” women are considered attractive. Such variations we will always have with us.

…to the feeling of entitlement that people socialized as male often feel…

And not just “people socialized as male.” The assholes ye shall always have with you.

As a first order of business, cultural radicals need to get past their tendency to act with reflexive hysteria whenever “conservative” social views or opinions not in line with left-wing orthodoxy are presented or expressed. The dichotomy between “change” and “tradition” or “reactionary” and “progressive” will always exist on some level. Any genuine libertarian philosophy must have freedom of thought, opinion, speech and honest and open debate as a foremost principle. Sean Gabb of the Libertarian Alliance describes the intellectual atmosphere of Hans Hoppe’s annual gathering of the Property and Freedom Society in Bodrum, Turkey:

These conferences provide a time and a place where nothing is off limits. There are no forbidden subjects, no polite suggestions that whatever is being loudly debated over dinner by the swimming pool might be “inappropriate”. The only rule is the obvious one—that you listen to the other side before making reply.

These are conferences where social conservatives sit down with anarcho-libertarians, where Czechs and Chinese discuss where history went wrong, where English is the preferred language, but a knowledge of half a dozen other languages will frequently come in handy.

They are also conferences useful for what everyone nowadays describes blandly as networking, but what the old Marxists, with a more sinister and accurate turn of phrase, called “cadre building”. It is in Bodrum, every May, that the connections and ideas that will be the future of the libertarian movement are first to be perceived.

And so it should be.

In a previous post, I outlined my view that the radicals from the 60s  have won on virtually every issue, and that the kinds of values associated with 60s radicals aren’ t all that radical anymore, but are actually rather mainstream and normal. Given the demise of Communism and the institutionalization of both social democracy and 60s-era cultural politics, it would seem that a new direction for radicals is necessary, and that such efforts would likely emerge from one or another of the libertarian camps. The surprisingly energetic nature of the Ron Paul campaign in late 2007 and early 2008 is symptomatic of this.

For some time, I held to the position that before there could be a serious anti-state movement there first needed to be a more solid intellectual foundation for anti-state radicals. At the time, libertarianism was limited largely to the bourgeoisie economics of the libertarian-right, and the warmed over Marxism, both economic and cultural, of the left-wing anarchists. More specifically, I realized that an effective radical anti-statist movement would have to have as its primary targets the forces of the State, particularly the police state that taken control of American society over the past few decades, the economic arm of the State, which is the corporate and banking system whose activities have also grown more pernicious in recent years, and lastly the American Empire, which is responsible for roughly 8 million deaths over the last 60 years of its existence. Unfortunately, most of the anti-state movements were fixated on other issues, whether the welfare state for right-libertarians or traditional forms of social prejudice (”racism, sexism, homophobia”) for much of the libertarian left.

To be sure, there have been happy exceptions. One of these in the paleolibertarian movement, which is far more radical in its critique of the State and its emanations that most of its classical liberal counterparts. Another is the militia movement of the 1990s, which was big on attitude but unfortunately short on intellectual substance. Still another is National-Anarchism, which offers potential correctives to various deficiencies in other forms of anti-authoritarian thought.  I have considered all of these to be embryos for a new kind of radicalism that might possibly emerge at some point in the future.

Just as important, however, has been the emergence of some major theoretical works, some of them from outside the various libertarian milieus, that can inform both our ideological and our strategic outlook in the future. One of these is Martin Van Creveld’s work on the origins and demise of the nation-state system. Still another is Bill Bishop’s “The Big Sort,” which indicates that Americans are creating the sociological infrastructure for a future anarcho-pluralist system, and they’re doing it all on their own, without any imput from anarchists. Additionally, we have functional models of what the politics of anarcho-pluralism might actually be in practice in the form of the many micronations currently in existence, for instance, Iceland, Liechtestein, Monaco, Luxemborg and Andorra, and the many functional intentional communities from around the world, ranging from Israel’s kibbutzim to South Africa’s Orania community.

On economic matters, the 21st century now has its own Proudhon in the person of Kevin Carson, whose work provides a magnificent continuation and synthesis of the classical anarchists, Marx, the Austrians, Rothbard, the decentralists, the distributists and others who have come before. Finally, anarchists can answer Keynes and Friedman, Marx and Mises. We also have functional alternative economic models in the form of Brazil’s Semco and Spain’s Mondragon cooperative federation.

On military matters, we have “fourth generation warfare” theory of the kind advanced by Van Creveld and Bill Lind, and a working model of a fourth generation army and social infrastructure in the form of Hezbollah. We also have others who are tired of the “culture war” psychology that dominates much of the Right and Left alike, and is seeking out something more appropriately called “culture peace,” including Kirkpatrick Sale’s pan-secessionist movement and the national-anarchists, both of which are tendenies that recognize the legitimacy of a plurality of cultural foundations and value systems, as opposed to the totalitarianism implicit in both imperialism and left-wing universalism. Likewise, the Americans for Self-Determination Plan offers a constructive “third way” beyond both old-fashioned racism and the totalitarianism of modern liberal “anti-racism.”

The various manifestations of the modern states have already been subject to penetrating critiques. Aldous Huxley and to some degree George Orwell predicted what modern states would become, and the core features of these states-therapeutism, managerialism, mass democracy, military humanism-have been dissected by thinkers as diverse as Hans Hermann Hoppe, Thomas Szasz, Noam Chomsky, Michele Foucault, James Burnham, James Bovard, Richard Lawrence Miller, Erick von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Murray Rothbard, James Kalb, C.S. Lewis, Hannah Arendt, Paul Gottfried and Alain De Benoist.

An effort to synthesize libertarian anti-statism and class analysis has emerged in the works of Kevin Carson, Walter Williams on race issues, Charles Johnson, Shawn Wilbur and others. No less respectable a figure as Vincent Bugliosi has brought forth a compilation of compelling evidence that George W. Bush and his associates deliberately went to war in Iraq under fraudulent pretenses and deliberately mishandled the war against Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. James Petras from the Left and John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt from the Center have produced comprehensive works documenting Israeli domination of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, and they have done so without relying on the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of past times.

Another work that needs to be revisited is Walter Block’s classic “Defending the Undefendable.” In my own writings, I have mentioned a large number of political, cultural and economic scapegoats and outgroups that lack political representation, and might well be cultivated as constituent groups for a future anti-state movement. Similarly, now that conservatism, which claims to be the voice of opposition to “big government,”  is in shambles, at least some of the more radical or sincere constituents for conservatism might well be steered towards some sort of crypto-anarchism.

Ultimately, the only way that anarchists can eventually gain enough influence to finally topple the State, Capital and Empire, or at least severely curtail these, is to achieve leadership positions in much larger popular organizations, economic enterprises and political coalitions. Recent events in Greece have shown the potential social power of relatively small organized cadre of anarchists.  So how do we get this revolution going?

Quote of the Week:

“As a matter of priority the new generation of “Alternative” righties are decentralists and anti-imperialists first, and culture warriors second, if at all. To them the warfare state and erosion of civil liberties are vastly more important and relevant than the overturning of Roe v. Wade or the supposed “threat” of gay marriage. Furthermore, the primary cultural issue of interest to them is probably the decriminalization of marijuana, an issue where the paleo-friendly New Right of the 80’s would have been unsympathetic at best. ”

                                                                             -Dylan Hales

McGovern and the Right by Dylan Hales

Dumb is the New Smart by Robert Weissberg

Time to End the Second Prohibition by Charles Glass

The American Puppet State by Paul Craig Roberts

Will There Be a Recovery? by Paul Craig Roberts

Anarchy 101 by Wally Conger

Ecuador Repudiates Foreign Debt: It’s About Time by Kevin Carson

The Non-Aggression Principle and the Pauline Principle from LiberaLaw

Enforcing Rights in a Stateless Society from LiberaLaw

The Holocaust of Gaza 

The Creation of the Second Great Depression by Ron Paul

On Hamas Vs. Israel by Rad Geek

A Historical Perspective on the Events in Greece by Francois Tremblay

Bargaining Power from LiberaLaw

Proudhon on Justice and the Origin of Ideas by Shawn Wilbur

It’s All One Big Lie by Pam Martens

The Gaza Bloodbath  by Mike Whitney

Israel is Immune From Criticism by Brian Cloughley

Lawrence Auster Attacking Taki by Red Phillips

Fort Collins Banner Drop in Solidarity with Greek Uprising 

What’s Happening in Gaza? by Eric Margolis

Obama is Bush III by Kevin Gutzman

Fred Reed is a Breath of Fresh Air by Doug French

American Soviet TV and the Secret Police by Becky Akers

Bombing the Other by Glenn Greenwald

The Eco-Chicken Littles by Vin Suprynowicz

Rationalizing Gaza  by Justin Raimondo

Have Bush and the Neocons Ruined It for the Israelis? by Juan Cole

Pity the Poor Neocons by Robert Parry

Military Keynesianism to the Rescue? by Robert Higgs

Top Five Lies About Israel’s Assault on Gaza by Jeremy R. Hammond

Obama’s Bay of Pigs by Michael Carmichael

The Afghan Quagmire by Bob Herbert

Why Aren’t More Americans Dancing to Israel’s Tune? by Max Blumenthal

Bush’s Last War Crime by Robert Dreyfuss

Attack on Gaza: As Usual U.S., Media, Liberals Silent by Greg Mitchell

Forces of Totalitarian Humanist Therapeutic Statism Move in Virginia

The Case Against Adolescence by Doug French

Good News for 4GW Fighters, Bad News for States by William Lind

Baltimore Police Shield Identity of PIGS Who Kill and Maim Citizens 

Dying to Win Robert A. Pape Interviewed by Scott Horton

The Empire Shrugs by Alan Bock

Israel Attacks Schools, Ambulances by Mel Frykberg

The Real Value of the Standing Army by Jacob Hornberger

Neoconservatism in the Obama Age by Patrick Krey

Why Do So Few Speak Up for Gaza? by Robert Scheer

Why Do They Hate the West So Much, They Will Ask by Robert Fisk

Many Americans Do Love Their Police State by J. D. Tuccille

Cut the Pentagon ‘Til It’s a Triangle by John Zmirak

Advertising is Rape by Robert Stacy McCain

The Vermont Gold Train Token: Alternative to Financial Disaster by Robert Gray

The End of White America? by Hua Hsu

“America Should Be On Neither Side” by Ron Paul

What Kind of Security Will This Barbarism Bring Israel? by Saree Makdisi

Bend Over, Professor Dershowiz, It’s Time for Your Checkup by Franklin Lamb

America’s Other Glorious War by William Blum

Subcomandante’s Marcos’ Speech on Gaza

PIGS Kill Unarmed Man in His Driveway 

PIGS Attack Mentally Handicapped Woman 

PIGS Kill Man Already in Custody

Therapeutic Statist General Says No on Marijuana Legalization 

Sheriff Jailed for Starvation of Inmates

Resistance to the PIGS in Oakland

Ending Tyranny Without Violence by Murray Rothbard

America, Land of Opportunity by Don Cooper

Do You Have the Guts to Be a Gun Owner? by Mike Gaddy

The Bubble of Middle East Dominance by William Norman Grigg

The Department of Injustice by Glenn Greenwald

Making Wall Street More Crooked by Bob Murphy

How to Read a Society by Theodore Dalrymple

Holocaust Denied by John Pilger

The Lessons of Gaza by Andrew Bacevich

Neoconservatism Dies in Gaza by Juan Cole

Israel’s Looming Catastrophe by Robert Parry

Obama: Listen to Iraqi Opinion by Eric Stoner

This Brutality Will Never Break Our Will to be Free by Khalid Mish’al

Obama May Follow Bush’s Foreign Policy by Stephen Kinzer

Right and Left, Diaspora Jews More Critical of Israel Than Ever by Anshel Pfeffer

Obama Is Losing A Battle He Doesn’t Know He’s In by Simon Tisball

The Difficulty of Being an Informed American by Paul Craig Roberts

A Damn Foolish Thing: Why Israel Loses Asymmetric Wars by Richard Spencer

Israel: The Bernid Madoff of Countries by Taki Theodoracopulos

Weyrich and Huntington: Rebels of the Establishment by Marcus Epstein

A War of Democracies by Grant Havers

Porn: A Cherished American Industry by Richard Spencer

Response to Lawrence Auster by Paul Gottfried

Two Cheers for George McGovern? by Daniel McCarthy

McGovern and the Neocons by Dylan Hales

Can Anyone Ever Consent to the State? by Rad Geek

Rebellion 

Montreal Activists Evict Israeli Consulate 

New National-Anarchist Website for Australia/New Zealand

An Interview with French New Right Intellectual Christian Bouchet

Anarchist Beach Cleaning from Bay Area National Anarchists

We Need Constitutional, Not Just Economic, Recovery by Paul Craig Roberts

Andrew Sullivan: Israeli Stooge by Justin Raimondo

Oakland Anti-PIG Insurrection Continues 

The Real Global Warming Threat by David Gordon

The Inevitable U.S. Defeat in Afghanistan by Ron Shirtz

The Same Old Change by Justin Raimondo

An Unnecessary War by Jimmy Carter

The Ten Biggest Problems Facing African-Americans Today from AfroChat

R.I.P. Ron Asheton

Living Through New Deal II by Lew Rockwell

Israel is Committing War Crimes by George E. Bisharat

We Can No Longer Afford the Empire by Ivan Eland

Winners and Losers in the Gaza Strip by Jesse Walker

Democrats/Republicans Cheer for Israel’s War by Glenn Greenwald

Set Up Your Own Cooperative Community 

Our World Needs a Klaatu Nikto by Flavio Goncalves

Counterattacking the Smearbund by Paul Gottfried

Inflation as Income Distribution by Sheldon Richman

It’s Time to Bring Back the Gold Standard by Thomas N. Naylor

Why Greek Youths Took to the Street by Valia Kaimaki

Oakland’s Not for Burning by George Ciccariello-Maher

Israel’s Onslaught on Gaza: Criminal and Stupid by Alexander Cockburn

New Orleans PIGS Shoot Man 12 Times in the Back 

Starbucks Vs the IWW 

Deliberative vs Participatory Democracy and the Role of the News Media by Dain Fitzgerald

Quote of the Week:

“In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous. We need men with courage to speak and write their real thoughts, and to stand by their convictions, even to the very death. When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death-that is heroism.”

                                                                                 – Robert Ingersoll

Fat Assed Neocon Slob Wants to Enslave American Youth to Kill Pakistanis

PIGS Caught on Video Murdering Innocent Civilian by Rad Geek

Punk Rock Bands Go on “Civil Disobedience” Tour 

Brad Spangler to Discuss Center 4 a Stateless Society on Live Radio 

If You’re in Richmond, March at the General Assembly on Wednesday

We Are All War Criminals by Francois Tremblay

Spain’s Last Anarchist 

Alliance Journal-new magazine from Chris Lempa 

The Coming Military Dictatorship in America by Gene Healy and Benjamin Friedman

The Revival of Local Alternative Currencies 

A Fresh Look at the Whiskey Rebellion by Carl Watner

Urban Warfare Training in Richmond 

The Paleos and the Peculiar Institution by Dylan Hales

Bush is a Bonehead by Pat Buchanan

America’s Shame by Paul Craig Roberts

Will the Government Turn to the Printing Press? by Paul Craig Roberts

The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class 

Oakland on Fire by Kara N. Tina

Russell Means Breaks the Silence on Obama by Brenda Norrell

From Vietnam to Gaza by Dave Lindorff

Economic Rescue from the Bottom Up 

The “Violence” of the Oscar Grant Riots 

Insurrection in San Francisco 

Economic Solutions from Mexico 

An Interview with Troy Southgate from Extreme Politics

Pure Propaganda by Philip Giraldi

Gaza Attack Was Long Planned by Jonathan Cook

Gaza is the Future  by Justin Raimondo

We Need an America First PAC to Counter the Israel Lobby by Juan Cole

Why Be Libertarian? by Murray Rothbard

Obama Acts Like a Neocon by Glenn Greenwald

Gaza and State Intellectuals by Karen Kwiatkowski

Repudiate the National Debt! by Murray Rothbard

Where Do Americans Stand on the Issues? from Media Matters

The Humiliation of America by Paul Craig Roberts

Pro-Life Death Merchants by Jack Hunter

America First by Jack Hunter

Prince Harry’s Hate Crime by Richard Spencer

Obama the Intellectual by Matthew Roberts

The GOP: More Marx Than Marx by Dylan Hales

No Defense by Dylan Hales

Murderous Oakland PIG Arrested 

Smash Things at Night 

Fattening the Rats by Dave Lindorff

Hezbollah Militants Chafe as Gaza Burns by Franklin Lamb

Washington or Mercer? by Patroon

Is Gaza the Revenge of Bush-Cheney? Eric Margolis interviewed by Lew Rockwell

Permanent Alliances with All, Friendship with None by Joshua Snyder

Obama Dines with Evil Neocons by Sam Stein

Half of Gazans are 13 or Younger by Dennis Kucinich

Richard Perle: Still Crazy After All These Years by Justin Raimondo

Why War? by Charles Pena

Israel Doesn’t Get Fourth Generation Warfare by Bill Lind

Bush’s Tortured Morality by Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite

Not All Jews Agree with Israel’s Gaza  Actions by Antony Loewenstein

Israel’s Free Ride Ends by Michelle Goldberg

Pro-Israel Rally Descends into Calls for Wiping Out Palestinians by Max Blumenthal

How the U.S. Magnified Palestinian Suffering by Norman and Matthew Olsen

Bailouts, Double Standards, Hypocrisy by Kevin Carson

Easing the Transition to an Alternative Economy by Kevin Carson

Is Social Conservatism Necessary? by James Kalb

I’ll Decline “the West” by Richard Spencer

Neocons Embrace Change by Richard Spencer

Virginia Takes Constitutional Convention Stage by Chuck Baldwin

Obama’s Marijuana Prohibition Acid Test by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman

Just Violence in Gaza? by Timothy Seidel

The State of Black America by Ron Jacobs

Obama and the Military-Industrial Complex by Karl Grossman

Zion Uber Alles 

Eradicating Hamas by Eric Margolis

Thomas Friedman: Terrorist Sympathizer by Glenn Greenwald

War on Terror Was Wrong by David Miliband

Communities Make Their Own Currencies 

What Does An Obama Administration Mean for Gun Rights? from the Independent Institute

Don’t the Secret Police Make You Feel Wonderful? by William Norman Grigg

Israel vs America by Justin Raimondo

Assessing the Bush Administration by Doug Bandow

It’s Hard to Be an Anti-Zionist Jew by Jeremy Sapienza

The End of an Error by Jack Hunter

The Israel Lobby Takes Off the Gloves by Taki Theodoracopulos

What Is Religion? by James Kalb

Israel, Ilana and the Paleos by Paul Gottfried

Israel, Ilana and I by Richard Spencer

Happy 200th, Pierre Joseph Proudhon 

On Distributism from No Third Solution

Alexander Cockburn Brings a Voice of Reason by Niccolo Adami

Hail to the Chief by Alexander Cockburn

Forecasting Obama by Joshua Frank

Prosecuting Bush and Cheney by Dave Lindorff

Who Runs America? by Brian Cloughley

The Facts About  Hamas and the War on Gaza by Norman Finkelstein

Republicans Staying the Course on Iraq by W. James Antle, III

Obama Should Seek Advice from Jimmy Carter by Ivan Eland

Is Ehud’s Poodle Acting Up? by Pat Buchanan

Letters from Gaza by Kenneth Ring

Israel and the United States by Frida Berrigan

Say No to Cops: The Case for Elimination and Reduction by William Buppert

A Real Discussion on TV of US Policy Towards Israel by Glenn Greenwald

Starbucks: A Zionist Entity  by Barbara Ferguson

by Peter Bjorn Perls

As an old libertarian and anarchist, news like this is not a surprise to
me anymore, and neither should it be for others of like persuasion, but
for those not accustomed to cynicism against the Establishment, a lot of
reminders of the corruption in the circles of power continually needs to
be shown, as the latest, quote:

“Bernanke, speaking in London, said in his prepared remarks that the
nearly $800 billion plan being discussed by the incoming Obama
administration and the newly elected Congress “could provide a
significant boost to economic activity.” He did not comment on or
endorse any specifics of the nearly $800 billion.

But Bernanke cautioned that the plan is “unlikely to promote a lasting
recovery unless they are accompanied by strong measures to further
stabilize and strengthen the financial system.”

link:http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/13/news/economy/bernanke_speech/index.htm?postversion=2009011308

Same ‘ol Bernanke (same as the rest of the crowd of Keynesians) – weak
on the specifics on how to spend the gargantuan handouts that they take
for granted is needed to right the economy (likewise a vaguely defined
concept). But I digress; the point of the matter here is that the US
federal handouts to the financial institutions are now so blatantly
obvious that only the blind (usually from political persuasion; I’d add)
fail to see it. The politicians already pumped sums that are
astronomical to any working man and local community, and now we are told
it’s not enough? (Will we hear that again when the next round of
bailouts come, too?)

A few bullet points to illustrate how the state works for the friends of
those in power and not those it allegedly serves – the public;

* Citigroup’s stock was busy running into the group two months back, but
recieved a big bag of cash from the feds, not only making the bankers
happy because they could stay in business for a while, but also a
Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi royalty happened to buy up a large wad of
stock shortly before the cash infusion announcement, thus making himself
an even billion dollars in the process.

link:http://current.com/items/89559833/saudi_prince_profits_from_us_taxpayer_bailout_of_citigroup.htm

* The Feds propped up the banks to keep people borrowing and spending,
but Henry Paulson had to realize that the money that went to the banks
did not go to lending; it was spent on the banks buying each other out,
quote:

“Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has said the money was aimed at
rebuilding banks’ reserves so that they would resume more normal lending
practices. But reports then surfaced that bankers might instead use the
money to buy other banks. Indeed, the government approved PNC Financial
Services Group Inc. to receive $7.7 billion in return for company stock
and, at the same time, PNC said it was acquiring National City Corp. for
$5.58 billion.”

(source: Yahoo News, article since deleted)

Then there is the case of the dying US automobile industry that went to
Capitol Hill with tears on their cheeks to beg for handouts for
themselves; after 3 decades of ever worsening business management and
ever worsening general quality of its produce; they had to go back home
two times, but as they say, three’s a charm, and they finally got their
double-digit-billion-bailout in the form of a loan. (Any bets on if it
will ever be paid back?)

Story of note why the “Big Three” bailout is foolish anyhow:

link:http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2008/11/18/93514/227

And now the latest from Bernanke, as quoted above, saying in effect that
the already-huge bailouts for banks and industry are not enough. Now, a
few comments.

First, I’m not saying that banking is a non-productive endavour, as some
other establishment critics and typically reds would have it. But it is
obvious that the federal-corporate banking symbiosis today serves the
interests of politicians and businessmen more than that of the public
and the regular customers of the banks.

Second, the banks and financial institutions are being bailed out
because they are already a privileged class; the ability to create
credit from thin air (which is what the banks do; that is part of their
business) is not something anybody can do. Only politically
rubber-stamped institutions can do that, and thus it is a very valuable
enterprise, which again means that there is a struggle to get such a
privilege. Those who pay, however, is the public, specifically the
working public, and in more than one way. (Can you survive as a “normal
citizen” in society today without a bank account? Can you be on a
company payroll without having an account at a bank?)

Third, it is a quite human, and I might add, social thing, to help your
friends and relatives, but when this cooperation takes place in the
halls of power (which is the entire point of what I’m writing here; of
course it does!), it’s happening at your expense. The pillars of a
corrupt establishment is being kept in place with your money.

(On the other hand, if you can somehow remain free of taxes, and thus
not contribute to this exploitative machinery, my hat is off to you!)

After the happenings of 2008, who can honestly say that they do not see
the nepotism of the back-and-forth exchanges between state and big
business, and how this does nothing good for themselves, their friends
and families?

Those that don’t see it, are blind. Those who see, but make excuses for
it, are naive. But those who do see it, and do excuse for it, have a
duty to start working to end this state of affairs. Yes, it may not be
possible to do much, but at least stop participating in the lie; that is
the first step.

Quote of the Week:

“It seems unlikely that many Americans will do other than breathe a long sigh of relief when George W. Bush finally leaves the White House. His farewell appearances last week were suitably bizarre, suggesting a man of limited capacity for sustained ratiocination, who, like many essentially weak people seeking to camouflage their weakness, views any admission of a mistake, or even a willingness to compromise or consider the views of another, as an unacceptable sign of the vulnerability he knows is there and doesn’t wish to acknowledge.

I’d love to see change I could believe in under a new president, and it’s worthwhile to suspend judgment for at least a bit. But the likelihood of an Obama administration actually reducing the U.S. footprint in the world seems rather low.”

                                                                                              -Alan Bock

The Trouble With Those “Shovel-Ready” Projects by Kevin Carson

Venezuelan and Argentine Influences on the Chicago Factory Occupation by Larry Gambone

James Bond on the Drug War by Roderick Long

Obama: Already Dropping the Ball on Palestine by Niccolo Adami

Stimulating Consumption Won’t Help the Economy by Sheldon Richman

Israel and the European Right by Paul Gottfried

Is Gaza the Beginning of World War Three? from the Trends Research Institute

Obama’s Economics by Stonewall

Four Surprises in Global Demography by Nicholas Eberstadt

Tales of Hard Times Reveals How Soft We’ve Become by Michael Deacon

The Findhorn Community  Watch and Find Out More 

War Criminal in Chief by Laurence Vance

No Debate, No Dissent by Glenn Greenwald

Getting Our Priorities Straight Joshua Frank interviewed by Scott Horton

Inauguration Day, A Day of Mourning by Justin Raimondo

The More Things Change by Alan Bock

How Bin Laden Bankrupted America by Jon Basil Utley

U.S. Jewish Peace Lobby Isolated on Gaza by Daniel Luban

Another War, Another Defeat by John J. Mearsheimer

Punishing the Palestinians by Ralph Nader

Gaza Agonistes by Eric Alterman

Who’s in Charge-Obama, the Pentagon or Israel? by William Pfaff

Not Just Guantanamo by Joanne Mariner

How Will History Judge America’s 43rd President? by Gene Healy

Overseas, Expectations Build for Torture Prosecutions by Scott Horton

A Suicide Foretold: The Case of Israel by Immanuel Wallerstein

Reality in Gaza is Bad Enough by Robert Fisk

How Al-Jazeera  Helped Me Think Differently About the World by Eric Calderwood

The Stories of Torture Sounded Made Up. They Weren’t by Carol Leonnig

Close Guantanamo, End the Cuban Blockade by Eric Margolis

Ehud’s Poodle by Pat Buchanan

A Deadly Stimulus by Don Armentano

Obamanomics Will Fail by Mike Rozeff

The National Anthem of the U.S.S.A. by Joshua Snyder

Predictions About the Obama Administration by Mike Rozeff

False Dawn by Justin Raimondo

The Myth of Israel’s Strategic Genius by Stephen Walt

Obama Offers Internationalist Vision by Jim Lobe

Obama’s Strategic Wasteland by Jeff Huber

Introducing the CIA to the Constitution by Nat Hentoff

Israel Wanted a Humanitarian Crisis by Ben White

Prosecute the Torturers by Glenn Greenwald

An Interview with Alex Jones from Russia Today

An Interview with Malik Zulu Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party 

Tribal Anarchy vs The State by Stefan Blankertz

Is GOP Still a National Party? by Pat Buchanan

Young Americans for Liberty by Jack Hunter

Israel and US by Tom Piatak

Israel’s Inalienable Rights by Charles Glass

Russian Anarchist Murdered by Porkupine Blog

Looking at the Wrong Depression and Finding the Wrong Solution 

Nothing Personal, Just Business by Patroon

Understanding Gaza by Gabriel Kolko

State Terrorism Against Gaza by Ralph Nader

 Archduke Wilhelm of Austria and Missed Opportunities by Ean Frick

The Pet Rock Presidency by Sean Jobst

Class Bias Against Poor Whites by Alan Travis

Seven of Nine: The Woman Who Created Obama by Sarah Gallick

Empire Undermines Tradition by Matthew Roberts

Another Real Estate Crisis is About to Hit by Paul Craig Roberts

Mandela’s Example for Obama by Martin Kelly

Health Insurance Before the Welfare State from the Independent Institute

In Defense of Internet Journalism by Kevin Carson

Chomsky, Inc. 

Steal This Journal 

The Death of Conservatism by Stonewall

The Democrats on Israel by Adriana Kojeve

The Gathering Storm Against the 2nd Amendment by Mike Gaddy

Fixing the International Monetary Disaster by Jesus Huerta de Soto

An American Mao?

Swiss Firefighters: A Living Rebuke to Right and Left by Geoffrey Wheatcroft

The Borders of Freedom of Opinion 

Death Threats Against Dutch Film Maker Should Be Condemned 

Israel’s Lies by Henry Siegman

Alex Jones Analyzes Barack Obama’s Inaugural Speech 

Norman Finkelstein on Gaza 

Mohawk Autonomous Zone by Martin Patriquin

Children Found with Bullets Lodged in Their Head by Topaz Amoore

U.S. Intel Nominee Lied About ‘99 Massacre by Allan Nairn

A Neo-Reaganite Inaugural? by Pat Buchanan

Obama and Black Pride by Jack Hunter

The Minarchist Fallacy: It’s For Leftists, Too! 

Nazi Privatization by Kevin Carson

The Ghosts at Obama’s Side by Alexander Cockburn

The Freefalling Economy by P. Sainath

In Israel, Detachment from Reality is the Norm by Patrick Cockburn

Reasons for War? by Saul Landau

It’s Time to Free Leonard Peltier by Bob Fitraki and Harvey Wasserman

The Way Forward by Dave Lindorff

U.S. Foreign Policy Writ Small by Fred Reed

Obama is Wrong About Afghanistan by George Phillips

Mengele City? by Nick Evans

The Liberals Grand Bargain by Justin Raimondo

Investigate and Prosecute the Bush Administration by Doug Bandow

Obama Was Right to Halt Guantanamo Trials by Andy Worthington

The Return of Liberal Interventionism by Doug Bandow

So Far, Obama’s Missed the Point on Gaza by Robert Fisk

Plans in Place to Close Guantanamo-Eventually  by J.D. Tuccille

Guantanamo State of Mind by Jacob Sullum

Balkanizing Barack by Gordon N. Bardos

Pentagon 1, Obama 0 by Benjamin H. Friedman

Ideology and Polarization by Dain Fitzgerald

Hey World, Pick Up Our Tab by Peter Schiff

At Least They Didn’t Call Him Sue by William Norman Grigg

Monopoly Kills Creativity-Down with Intellectual Property by Jeffrey Tucker

Nationalizing Private Life: The Legacy of the Great War by Hunt Tooley

Huckleberry Finn and PC Insanity by John Lietchy

Darkness, Tyranny and Oppression by Jacob Hornberger

Richard Holbrooke: Obama’s Neocon by Joshua Frank

The Neocons: Always Wrong, But Never in Doubt by Murray Polner

Prohibition 3: The Candy Wars

Obama Dips His Hands in Blood by Tim Reid

Prosecute Bush! by Ivan Eland

Gaza: Worse Than An Earthquake by Kathy Kelly

Obama: Off to Good Start with Detainees? by Andy Worthington

New Era of American Leadership? by Gordon Prather

War Crimes Prosecutions Scott Horton interviewed by Scott Horton

US/Israeli Terrorism in Gaza Gareth Porter interviewed by Scott Horton

Lawyers Who Can Say No by Jacob Sullum

The Degeneration of the Imperial Legions from Christian Science Monitor

Asset Forfeiture Helps FBI’s Gambling, Jewel-Studded, Jerk-Offs by Jacob Sullum

In the Age of Obama by Justin Raimondo

Just a Question by Sheldon Richman

Quotes of the Week:

“A centralised democracy may be as tyrannical as an absolute monarch; and if the vigour of the nation is to continue unimpaired, each individual, each family, each district, must preserve as far as possible its independence, its self-completeness, its powers and its privilege to manage its own affairs and think its own thoughts.

                         –James Anthony Froude (1818-1894), author and historian.
                            Source: Short Studies on Great Subjects

Save the Economy by Cutting the Defense Budget by Winslow T. Wheeler

Torture at a Louisiana Prison by Jordan Flaherty

Access to Economic Justice by Ralph Nader

How Iceland Fell by Rev. Jose’ M. Tirado

What If Israel Were in Your Neighborhood? by Russell Mokhiber

Speaking the Truth is a Career Ending Event by Paul Craig Roberts

The India Lobby: Drunk with the Sight of Power by Vijay Prashad

Bolivia Looking Forward by Benjamin Dangl

The Torture Ban That Doesn’t Ban Torture by Allan Nairn

Afghanistan Is No Threat to America by Dave Lindorff

The Ghost of LBJ by Norman Solomon

The Economy Will Collapse-Drastic Action Will Be Taken from Trends Research Institute

Noam Chomsky on Obama and Pakistan from SlackBastard

Molinari Symposium 2009: Call for Papers on Intellectual Property 

Rad Geek Speaks on Anarchism in Vegas 

The Atrocity of Hope  by Roderick Long

A Bibi-Barack Collision? by Pat Buchanan

Anti-Military Conservatives by Jack Hunter

Money for Nothing by David Gordon

Put Torture on Trial by Philip Giraldi

Meet the New Boss, He’s the Same as the Old Boss by David Henderson

Muslim World Hails the End of Gitmo by William Fisher

War Crimes in Gaza Kathy Kelly interviewed by Scott Horton

The Politics of Palestine Dean Ahmad interviewed by Scott Horton

Obama Good on Detainee Policy So Far Andy Worthington interviewed by Scott Horton

Obama’s Vietnam  by Justin Raimondo

Five Questions for George Mitchell by Sandy Nolan and Tom Engelhardt

Not Thrilled About Obama by Tony Campos

Continuing Bush Policies in Israel and Afghanistan by Glenn Greenwald

Thus Sprach Obama: Pouring Acid on Gaza’s Wounds by Chris Floyd

Gaza War Pushes Arabs to the Brink by Robert Dreyfuss

Two Prisons Pose Similar Problems for President Obama by Eric Schmitt

Did Bush’s Usurpations Keep Us Safe? by Bruce Fein

Ministry of Truth and Peace by Jeff Huber

Refuting Cheney’s Lies on Guantanamo by Andy Worthington

Is Political Islam a Threat to the West? by Wajahat Ali

Obama’s Guantanamo Opportunity by Anthony Gregory

Barack Obama, Meet Lyndon Johnson by Juan Cole

Are We Civilized Enough to Hold Our Leaders Accountable for War Crimes? by John Dean

End the Iraq Occupation by Medea Benjamin

Close Gitmo and Get Out of Cuba by Eric Margolis

Bush, Obama and the American State by Anthony Gregory

Nobody Ever Said You Needed a High IQ to Be a Celebrity 

The Answer is Freedom by Lew Rockwell

Dumb Cop of the Week 

The Greatest Depression in History is Coming Gerald Celente interviewed by Lew Rockwell

Protection Through “Law Enforcement” by Mike Gaddy

Hyperinflation and the U.S. Banana Republic by Mike Rozeff

The Torture State Endures and Prospers by William Norman Grigg

Eminent Domain in Palestine by Glenn Greenwald

George W. Bush: More Freedom Hokum by Jim Bovard

Gay is Okay to Adopt in the U.K., But Old is Not 

The Proliferation of Anti-Smoking Thugs 

The Case for Disunion by Joe Schembrie

Che Was An Asshole by Humberto Fontova

Lies of War by Chris Hedges

The Mailed Fist and the Velvet Glove by Justin Raimondo

Obama the Imperialist by Richard Seymour

Can Israel Last? by Fred Reed

What Stimulus Advocates Learned from the “Push” for War with Iraq by Jesse Walker

It is Time to End the War on Terror by Philip Giraldi

Iranians You Don’t Know by Rick Steves

Bill Kristol: A Case Study in Affirmative Action by Paul Campos

Interface: A Journal For and About Social Movements 

The New New Deal, Same as the Old New Deal by Daniel Flynn

The Institution of “Institutional Racism” by Derek Turner

The US is a Right-Wing USSR by Kevin DeAnna

Not Stimulating by Richard Spencer

RE: What Blacks Are Really Celebrating by Jack Hunter

RE:RE: What Blacks Are Really Celebrating by Paul Gottfried

Is It Time to Bail Out of the U.S.? by Paul Craig Roberts

Anarchist Canada?  from theConverted

The Center: America’s Greatest Political Threat by Sam Smith

A Pilgrim’s Progress by LiberaLaw

Tom Paine’s Birthday by Peter Linebaugh

The Future of Gaza: An Interview with Jimmy Carter by Riz Khan

Pakistan: The New Cambodia? by M. Reza Pirbhai

Whither the Two-State Solution? by Dina Jadallah Taschler

Economy Without Escape Routes by Alan Farago

Rise of the Red Tories by Phillip Blond (thanks, Ean!)

The Evil of Patents by Jeffrey Tucker

Kleptocrats of the World, Unite! by William Norman Grigg

America Is Not a Free Country by Mike Rozeff

The Anarchist Catholic Worker Movement by Ellen Finnigan

Here’s To Crime 

Belmont, California Imposes Complete Tobacco Prohibtion by David Kramer

The Presidency: The Founders’ Great Mistake by Garrett Epps

The Big Stimulus: Get Rid of the Empire by Justin Raimondo

Diplomatic Means to Militaristic Ends by Doug Bandow

The Iranian Revolution, Thirty Years On by Sadegh Kabeer

Obama’s Flock of Hawks by Stephen Zunes

Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans by Gerald Nicosia

Obama’s First Steps on Guantanamo by Joanne Mariner

Globalism vs Ethno-nationalism by Pat Buchanan

RE:RE:RE: What Blacks Are Really Celebrating by Richard Spencer

Military to Pledge Oath to Obama, Not the Constitution by Michelle Chang

LeftLiberty #1 -Call for Submissions 

Welcome, Antiwarriors by Charles Johnson

Obama and the Oddsmakers by Alexander Cockburn

The American Economy is Not Coming Back by Dave Lindorff

Gaza Will Survive by Subcomandante Marcos

Last Gasp of the Culture Wars? by David Rosen

If Deflation is Coming, Sell Your Gold by Lew Rockwell

The Misesian Case Against Keynes by Han Hermann Hoppe

The Power Elite is All Wet by Jeffrey Tucker

Elect the Cops by Dylan Hales

Increasing Even-Handedness in the Middle East by Glenn Greenwald

The Expanding War in Afghanistan by Warren Mass

Organizing National-Anarchist Networks by Bay Area National Anarchists

“Raise the Starry Plough On High” 

Rapist PIGS by Rad Geek

ALLiance is Seeking Submissions by Chris Lempa

Republican Albatross by Sheldon Richman

Give Bill Kristol’s New York Times Op-Ed Spot to Wendy McElroy by Brad Spangler

The Mafia is More Legitimate Than World Governments by Niccolo Adami

Quote of the Week:

“A war for Kuwait? A war for an oil-can! The rest is vanity; the rest is crime
… an unimaginative, ‘democratic capitalist’ Republican regime, early in 1991, committed the United States, very possibly, to a new imperialism.

                                            –Russell Kirk, The Politics of Prudence

Cystic Fibrosis Fundraiser by Bay Area National Anarchists-Donate! 

Cultural Marxism in Canada: Prosecuting Polygamy, Protecting Gay Marriage 

How to Save Money Like a Mormon by Jennifer Dobner

Israel Hopes to Colonize Parts of Iraq as “Greater Israel” by Wayne Madsen

When Did We Stop Caring About Civilian Deaths During Wartime? by Robert Fisk

Elect the Cops-The Response by Dylan Hales

Trial of Neo-Nazi Leader to Have Important 1st Amendment Implications 

America: A Bankrupt and Discredited Country by Paul Craig Roberts

War Tax Resistance lecture by David Schenk

Pro-Life Tax Resistance by Dr. Gerald DePyper

The Therapeutic State in North Carolina 

The Persecution of Michael Phelps 

Czech President Attacks Al Gore’s Climate Campaign 

Monetary Lessons from America’s Past lecture by Tom Woods

Putin to the West: Take Your Medicine by Justin Raimondo

The Return of Real Interventionism by Leon Hadar

Renditions May Expand Under Obama from AntiwarNews

Obama: Agent of Change? Well, Agent of Something… by Jeremy Sapienza

The Bogus War on Terror by Eric Margolis

End Legal Immunity for Government Officials by Bill Anderson

Going Bankrupt for “National Defense” by Tom Engelhardt and Chalmers Johnson

Our Rulers Are Destroying Our World by Bob Higgs

Coming: The Third American Hyperinflation by Mike Rozeff

Condemn the System, Not Michael Phelps by Paul Armentano

Served, Protected and Sodomized in Baltimore 

Ideology and the Internet  by Justin Raimondo

Repudiate the Monroe Doctrine by Phillip Brenner and Saul Landau

Politically, Hamas May Have Won by Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani

Obama’s Defense of Rumsfeld and Yoo by Jacob Hornberger

Neocons Spin Pentagon Budget Increase as Cut by Glenn Greenwald

What Cheney’s Daughter’s Senior Thesis Tells Us About the Bush Presidency by Zac Frank

Protect and Defend…The Military-Industrial Complex by Jeff Huber

Obama’s Wars by Bill Moyers

First, Jail All Bush’s Lawyers by Robert Parry

How the U.S. Created an Enemy in Iran by Brett Popplewell

Obama’s War Cabinet Stephen Zunes interviewed by Scott Horton

Putin’s Warning to America Justin Raimondo interviewed by Scott Horton

Military to Pledge Oath to Obama, Not Constitution by Michelle Chang

Nancy Pelosi’s New Deal by Pat Buchanan

The War on Terror is a Hoax by Paul Craig Roberts

I Saw Iceland Melt by Kevin DeAnna

Why Iceland Melted by Richard Spencer

How to Prevent Vermont from Going Down with the Titanic by Thomas N. Naylor

How Much Does It Cost Vermont to Remain in the Union? by Thomas N. Naylor

We, the Anarchists-An Interview with Stuart Christie by Chuck Morse

Resisting Anti-Panhandling Law by David Beyer

A Generals’ Revolt? by Dave Lindorff

Obama’s Lincoln Thing by Kirkpatrick Sale

What to Do About Wall Street by Ralph Nader

Reactionary Late Modernism: Back in Style! from Ean Frick

The 68ers In A Nutshell from Ean Frick

Former Trots Make Good from Ean Frick

The One-State Solution by Muammar Qaddafi

America First by Merle Haggard

The Therapeutic State Strikes in Australia and New Zealand

American Fascism by Karen Kwiatkowski

The Blessed Return of Right-Wing Paranoia by Anthony Gregory

French Cartoonist on Trial for “Anti-Semitism” 

The Iranian Revolution 30 Years On: Was it Worth it? by Angus McDowell

Stasi Britain: The Culture of Snitches by Melanie Phillips

Never Talk to the Cops 

Fractional Reserves Have Wrecked the Fascist State by Gary North

Stimulating Tyranny by William Norman Grigg

Endgame? What Endgame? by Justin Raimondo

The Nightmare of Netanyahu Returns by Johann Hari

Hold Israel Accountable for Gaza by George Bisharat

Geert Wilders and the Dutch Republic byDerek Turner

This is Just the Beginning by Peter Schiff

Reefer Madness by Jack Hunter

Those Darn Purists! by Grant Havers

Do Americans Cherish Freedom Anymore? by Chuck Baldwin

Whistleblowers and Management by Larry Gambone

More Than a Paycheck National War Tax Coordinating Committee

Simple Solutions to Stupid Problems by Rad Geek

Counter-Economic Optimism 

Authoritarians in Libertarian Clothing by Kevin Carson

Obama’s First Bad Week by Alexander Cockburn

Obama and the Empire by William Blum

Ten Reasons to Get High About Pot in 2009 by Norm Kent

Obama, Mitchell and the Palestinians by James Abourezk

Occupied Territory by Russell Mokhiber

Obama, Race and the Future of U.S. Politics by Bob Wing

Economy on a Thread by Dave Lindorff

The End of the Monroe Doctrine Saul Landau interviewed by Scott Horton

Why Not Apologize to Iran for the Coup? by Robert Naiman

Sorrows of Empire Chalmers Johnson interviewed by Scott Horton

Bush Jr.’s Foreign Policy Legacy Doug Bandow interviewed by Scott Horton

Thus far, the Obama presidency has moved along lines similar to what one might expect. The significance some would assign to his mulatto ancestry notwithstanding, Mr. Obama is very much an Establishment Man. The actions of the Obama administration in its earliest days indicate that the policies of this administration will largely be a continuation of those of the Bush administration. On economic policy, Obama has surrounded himself with neoliberals and called for deficit spending on additional bank and corporate welfare in the form of the “stimulus package.” The so-called “stimulus” is really just Phase Two of the extravagant “bailout” program enacted under President Bush. This should not be surprising, given that Obama’s primary financial backers during his campaign were Goldman-Sachs and other principal beneficiaries of the bailout, which Obama supported as a Senator. Of course, the “stimulus” program includes some additional social spending for the sake of appeasing various Democratic Party constituencies. This is the reason, along with sheer partisanship, that the Republicans are opposing the stimulus, which they are correct to do, even if they are doing so for all the wrong reasons.

On foreign policy, it appears that the Obama administration, whose foreign policy team is comprised mostly of recycled Clintonites, will continue to pursue the same set of foreign policy goals as the Bush administration. Obama has called for increased military spending, expanding the war in Afghanistan, perhaps to Pakistan, and it appears renditions will also continue. Obama does seem to be scaling back operations at Guantanamo, yet only as a public relations  maneuver so far as world opinion is concerned. It’s not like the prisoners at Guantanamo are going to be released. Indeed, it would appear that the only real difference between Bush and Obama on foreign policy is that the Obama government will be less bellicose in its formal rhetoric. As a protege’ of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Obama represents the liberal internationalist wing of the foreign policy elite, who are just as committed to the preservation of the Empire as the neoconservatives, but who are more cautious about openly giving the finger to allies, client states, and world opinion. Liberal internationalists realize that this is not conducive to the efficient administration of the Empire or its maintenance over the long haul, particularly given the current dependence of the U.S. economy on Russian, Chinese, Japanese and Arab lenders.

Obama also kowtows to the Israel Lobby, as illustrated by his appearance before AIPAC prior to his election to the presidency and his appointment of Rahm Emmanuel. James Petras has observed that the Obama administration contains as many arch-Zionists as any previous administration. There is also some indication that Israel will go to war with Iran under Obama’s watch, which could likely lead to actual U.S. participation in such a war. In fact, the overall amount of U.S. military intervention may escalate under Obama, as it did under Bill Clinton.

On “culture war” issues, Obama predictably leans somewhat to the left of the Bush government. So far, he has lifted the abortion-related “gag rule” and eased restrictions on stem cell research, and Obama has also signed an “equal pay for equal work” law as a reward for his middle-class feminist constituency. Yet Obama is far from being an ACLU civil libertarian. For instance, he voted as a Senator to authorize warrantless wiretaps and provide legal immunity to telecommunications companies engaged in such actions.

I’ve written before that the election of Obama signifies a demographic, cultural and generational shift among the American electorate. The left side of the “culture war” now has the upper hand, if it did not already. The Democrats will likely be the dominant political party for the forseeable future due to the fact that those groups who vote Democratic are growing in number and those who vote Republican are shrinking. The Obama coalition includes the left-wing of the “old elite” (demonstrated by the Kennedys support for Obama), the New Class center-left welfare state professionals, the “bourgeois bohemians” that David Brooks has written about, upwardly mobile members of the traditional outgroups now in ascension (blacks, immigrants, Jews, feminists, gays), newer ideological movements like environmentalism, younger people and a wide variety of public sector dependents. This coalition will probably prove to be stable enough to sustain itself over the next few decades even if matters like economic downturn occasionally produce a victory for the Republicans.  

Because the liberal side of the culture wars is gaining does not mean that the culture wars are over. While there is not enough of a constituency for the kind of cultural conservatism represented by the religious right  or the right-wing Republicans for these to achieve a majority in a national election, proponents of such an outlook are a large and vocal enough group to continue to be a force for political and cultural polarization for some time, even if their prospects for long-term victory are dim.

Indeed, the evidence indicates that the U.S. Congress of 2008 was the most polarized of any Congress in 120 years! The degree to which Americans are polarized has increased even in the last five years. Further, as Bill Bishop has shown, Americans are becoming more and more geographically segregated along cultural, ideological, religious, economic, ethnic, racial and generational lines.

As an old-fashioned anarchist who wishes to see an end to the U.S. empire internationally and the end of the Big Brother state domestically, I see this polarization as a welcome phenomenon. It is difficult for a state to survive when there is no consensus on primary values. If the cultural Left is going to be in the ascendency, then let’s hope that the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, et.al. turn up the volume even louder and keep the polarization coming.  Those guys really aren’t my cup of tea, but I’m all for increased divisiveness.

Divisiveness will likely escalate for a variety of reasons. One of these will be the widening gap between socio-economic classes, which Obama shows no signs of doing anything about. Another will be the social conflict associated with  increased statism as politics becomes a spoils system for different groups looking to plunder one another. Increased diversity will likely result in increased disharmony in many ways, and the massive American police state will likely be used to squelch economic unrest and sharpening demographic conflict.

If secession by regions and communities is the most viable method of dissolving the Empire, as I believe it is, then it would seem that we revolutionaries should devote ourselves to the following tasks:

1) Continue to popularize the idea of secession. A Zogby poll taken last year showed that twenty-two percent of Americans support the right of secession, with eighteen percent saying they would support a secession movement in their area. Additionally, forty-four percent say the U.S. political system is broken and cannot be fixed. We need to get these numbers up.

2) Continue to develop actual secession movements and build constituencies for these movements. For instance, the dominance of the cultural Left is likely to increase support for separatist ideas on the Right. There is a prototype for this in the rise of the militia movement during the Clinton era. Likewise, Obama is likely to prove to be a disappointment to many on the Left, both blacks and whites, and this combined with increased economic misfortune may generated secession movements from the Left. The nationwide, continent-wide proliferation of secessionist tendencies from the Right and Left against the ruling class Center would be a highly welcome event.

3) Encourage greater polarization. In some ways, we should think of Limbaugh, Hannity, Newt Gingrich, Ann Coulter, Michael Moore, Al Franken, Barney Frank and Arianna Huffington as the public relations arm for a future pan-secessionist movement as it is figures such as these who serve to create the polarization likely to result in eventual political splintering.

4) Build cross-cultural, cross-ideological alliances against the ruling class common enemy whenever feasible. If Afro-centrics, Black Muslims, militiamen and Ku Klux Klansmen can engage in common action, then what the hell is wrong with the rest of us?

Quotes of the Week:

“Nowadays the Capitalist cry is: “Nationalize what you like; municipalize all you can; turn the courts of justice into courts martial and your parliaments and corporations into boards of directors with your most popular mob orators in the chair, provided the rent, the interest, and the profits come to us as before, and the proletariat still gets nothing but its keep.”

This is the great corruption of Socialism which threatens us at present. It
calls itself Fascism in Italy, National Socialism (Nazi for short) in Germany,
New Deal in the United States, and is clever enough to remain nameless in
England; but everywhere it means the same thing: Socialist production and
Unsocialist distribution. So far, out of the frying pan into the fire.”

                – George Bernard Shaw, Everybody’s Political What’s What (1944)

“The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it.”

                                                                                                -H.L. Mencken

American Triumphalism: A Postmortem by Andrew Bacevich

The Two Faces of Libertarianism by Austin Bramwell

The New Neocons by Barron YoungSmith

The Ron Paul Youth: Young Americans for Liberty 

The Gist of Paul Gottfried by Thomas F. Bertonneau

Why Are American Literacy Rates So Low? by Christina Oxenberg

New New Nationalism by Pat Buchanan

Will the Surge Work? by Jack Hunter

Tony Blankley: Imperialist Scumbag Supremo by Dylan Hales

Obama’s Savior-Based Economy by Michelle Malkin

President and Congress Grovel Before the Fed by Chuck Baldwin

Ship of Fools-May You Live in Interesting Times by Paul Craig Roberts

Are We All Socialists Now? by Robert Higgs

Herbert Spencer: Social Darwinist or Libertarian Prophet?  by Peter Richards

Thank You for Not Breeding by Francois Tremblay

Death to the PIGS 

The Cases for Pessimism and Optimism by Wendy McElroy

History is Written by the Idiots by Francois Tremblay

Disrobing the System: Obama vs “Real Change” from Slingshot

Thoughts on the Crisis: What is Planned for Us and the Alternatives by Andrew N. Flood

Is the Global Economy Fixable? by Thomas N. Naylor

How Do People in Gaza Keep Going? by Kathy Kelly

A Commodity Called Misery by Joe Bageant

Seek Truth, But Prosecute Liars by Dave Lindorff

Taking the Bong by Binoy Kampmark

Conservatism is Dead by Sam Tanenhaus

R.I.P. Henry Ashby Turner by William Grimes

Australian Bush Fire Tragedy by National Anarchists of Australia/New Zealand

Police Watching “White Enclave” from AnarchoNation

Tribes on the High Seas from AnarchoNation

Andy Griffith and Civil Society by Darrin Knode

The Left, the Right and the State Lew Rockwell interviewed by Scott Horton

The Patent-Copyright Regime by Jeffrey Tucker

The Evil of Immunity for PIGS by Bill Anderson

Obama is Making You Poorer by Lew Rockwell

The Growing Army of Angry Men by Mark Crovelli

Obama’s Cure is Worse Than the Ailment by Eric Margolis

No Free Speech in Britain by Sean Gabb

Instead of a Stimulus-Do Nothing! Seriously! by Robert Higgs

The Porn Bailout by Doug French

The Enslavers by William Norman Grigg

The Audacity of Mendacity by Justin Raimondo

Kyrgyzstan’s Revenge by Justin Raimondo

Obama Wants a Surge of His Own by Charles Pena

Obama Lies for Israel by Grant F. Smith

Is An Empire Necessary? by Bruce Fein

The 180-Degree Reversal of Obama’s State Secrets Position by Glenn Greenwald

The Holocaust is Over by David Gordon

What if Avigdor Lieberman Were in Austria? by Glenn Greenwald

The Biden Speech: The Downside by Robert Dreyfuss

The Plight of the Skanks by Richard Spencer

Obamania in Canuckistan by Nina Kouprianova

The Old California by Justin Raimondo

The Economic Apocalypse Isn’t So Bad by Richard Spencer

Dylan Hales interviewed by Jack Hunter 

Abraham Lincoln: Taking the Gloss Off the Great Emancipator by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel

What Is Anarchism? by Rad Geek

Americans Favor a Probe of War on Terror Excesses 

Secession Workshops and Seminars Now Available 

The Largest Wave of Suicides in History 

Change We Can Smoke? by Fred Gardner

A Call to End All Renditions by Marjorie Cohn

Who’s Running Guantanamo? by Andy Worthington

Judges Nabbed for Jailing Kids for Kickbacks by Dave Lindorff

Against Military Slavery by Karen Kwiatkowski

Abe the Mass Murderer: A Lincoln Scholar Comes Clean by Tom DiLorenzo

Economic Meltdown Tom Woods interviewed by Lew Rockwell

Tim Geithner and the Ruling Class by Morgan Reynolds

Killer Greens Down Under by Andrea Petrie

Fred Reed Retires-We’ll Miss You, Fred! 

Gerald Celente on FOX 

More Gerald Celente: “The Worst Economic Collapse Ever” 

Obama Backs Bush “State Secrets” Position by J.D. Tuccille

The History of Schools from InfoAll

The Worker As Tool 

A Pierre Joseph Proudhon Reader 

Anarchism and Its Many Sects by Shawn Wilbur

How Will Obama’s Deficits Be Financed? by Paul Craig Roberts

Obama’s Great Game by Pat Buchanan

Geithner Lays an Egg by Peter Schiff

Being Honest About Abe by Jack Hunter

Libertarians, Freaks and Kooks by Dylan Hales

Comic Libertarianism by Tom Piatak and Kevin Michael Grace

Darwinian Traditionalism by Matthew Roberts

France: It Couldn’t Happen Here, Could It? by Ted Rall

On the Rocks by Alexander Cockburn

Pakistan On the Brink by Brian M. Downing

Israel’s Ball Boys by Christopher Ketcham

Why Can Judd Gregg See What Obama Can’t? by Dave Lindorff

A Short History of Business Handouts by Stephen Lendman

How the American Empire Will Fall by Tom Schmidt

Joint Venture by David Usborne

Should You Join the Military? by Laurence Vance

Stimulus to Depression Lew Rockwell on the Mark and Jim Show

Out of Iraq? by Justin Raimondo

Barack Obama’s Empire Chris Floyd interviewed by Scott Horton

The International Silence on Gaza by Ann Wright

Can Procedural Utility Lend a Hand to Paleo-Libertarianism? by Dain Fitzgerald

Quote of the Week:

“Conservatives uphold voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism. Although Americans have been attached strongly to privacy and private rights, they also have been a people conspicuous for a successful spirit of community. In a genuine community, the decisions most directly affecting the lives of citizens are made locally and voluntarily. Some of these functions are carried out by local political bodies, others by private associations: so long as they are kept local, and are marked by the general agreement of those affected, they constitute healthy community. But when these functions pass by default or usurpation to centralized authority, then community is in serious danger.

Whatever is beneficent and prudent in modern democracy is made possible through cooperative volition. If, then, in the name of an abstract Democracy, the functions of community are transferred to distant political direction why, real government by the consent of the governed gives way to a standardizing process hostile to freedom and human dignity. For a nation is no stronger than the numerous little communities of which it is composed. A central administration, or a corps of select managers and civil servants, however well intentioned and well trained, cannot confer justice and prosperity and  tranquility upon a mass of men and women deprived of their old responsibilities. That experiment has been made before; and it has been disastrous. It is the performance of our duties in community that teaches us prudence and efficiency and charity.”

                                                                                     -Russell Kirk

The Feminazi War Against Liberty, Family, and All Good Things by Stephen Baskerville

Boomers-Your Financial Crisis Has Arrived by James Quinn

Help, Help, I’m Being Repressed! classic scene from a classic film

New Boss, Worse Than the Old Boss? by Lew Rockwell

The Looting Bush Family Russ Baker interviewed by Lew Rockwell

Western Aggression Against Iran by Eric Margolis

State Money vs. Private Money by Gary North

Talk Show Leninism by William Norman Grigg

Pro-Smuggling: Because I Have a Brain by Cristina C. Espina

The Nanny State by Laurence Vance

Hold Them Accountable by Justin Raimondo

Renounce Extraordinary Rendition by Philip Giraldi

“Anti-Semitic Pandemic” by Ran HaCohen

Reckoning for Bush? by William Fisher

The Draft: Just Say No by Ron Paul

Hamas Pushed to the Wall Over Cease-Fire by Mel Frykberg

Obama Defends Torturers and Wiretappers by Thomas Eddlem

Obama Embraces Bush’s Abuses by Bruce Fein

Avoiding Another Cold War by Scott Ritter

We Are All Extremists Now! by Seuman Milne

Where Will Obama Take U.S. in Afghanistan? by Alan Bock

Crisis Over Kosovo by Ian Bancroft

Israel is Trapped, and the Chance for Peace is Ever More Remote by Bruce Anderson

Crises vs. Liberty by Jacob Hornberger

Obama’s War in Iraq May Be Longer Than Bush’s War in Iraq by Thomas Ricks

Obama: The President of Special Interests by Paul Craig Roberts

The Metrics of National Decline by Pat Buchanan

Who Remembers “Guns and Butter”? by Paul Craig Roberts

Has the Schiff  Hit the Fan? by Karen De Coster

Bipartisan Generational Theft by Jack Hunter

BBC Priggery by Derek Turner

Meltdown Tom Woods and Richard Spencer interviewed by Jack Hunter

Why Pay Less? by Cristina Oxenberg

Idiocracy by Paul Gottfried

Center For a Stateless Society -Fundraiser by Brad Spangler

Entrepreneurs in Everything by Niccolo Adami

Obama’s “Civilian National Security Force” Has Been Established 

Ten Conservative Principles by Russell Kirk

British Man Fined Over Racist Abuse…of Germans 

North Idaho Polygamist Sect Draws Scrutiny 

To Alter or Abolish by David Bardallis

The Obama Deception 

The Politics of Economic Disaster 

Beating Back Modern Lincolnism by Patroon

Evolutionary Conservatism by MRob

The Oligarchs Escape Plan by Michael Hudson

The One-Dimensional Congress by Ralph Nader

Commodifying the Revolution by John Ross

Who Is a Terrorist? by Matt Svensson

Iraq Reconstruction: The Greatest Fraud in U.S. History by Patrick Cockburn

The Meltdown: Whose Fault is It? by P. Sainath

Did George Washington Smoke Pot? by Harvey Wasserman

White Recession, Black Depression by Dedrick Muhammad

Sean Hannity-Secessionist?

Hideous He-She Hag of the Week (but not all trannies are PC turdballs-don’t be prejudiced!)

The Politics of Johann Wolfgang Goethe by Hans Hermann Hoppe

“This is the Modern Underground Railroad” 

Get Out of the Euro by Gary North

Mexicans Are Dying in the U.S. Drug War by Steven Greenhut

Time Magazine is Finished! by Dave Gonigam

The Comic Opera of Democracy by William S. Lind

Where the Wild Things Are (The Soviet-Afghani War 1979-1989) by C. J. Maloney

Smuggling: Personal Free Trade by Cristina Espina

America’s Confused Cause in Central Asia by William Pfaff

Hollywood’s New Censors by John Pilger

Counter Intelligence by Philip Giraldi

It Isn’t All About Me by Justin Raimondo

Will Obama Close the School of the Americas? by Chris Steele

Peace or the Draft William Astore interviewed by Scott Horton

The Israeli Elections Jason Ditz interviewed by Scott Horton

The Super Judge Who Wants to Rule the World by Srdja Trifkovic

“We Will Behead the Infidels of Those Who Construct Negative Images of Muslims!” 

Public Schooling and Criminal Texting by Rad Geek

A Nation of Cowards? by Stonewall

Arizona Anarchist Assembly 

Sticks and Stones-New Anarchist Periodical 

The Cleanser by Norman Finkelstein

Aftermath of a Beheading by Wajahat Ali

Afghan Pitfalls by M. Shahid Alam

The Mormon Worker 

America’s Privileged Apparatchik Class by Stephanie Fitch

Self-Management in Cuba? by Larry Gambone

Spectral Analysis  by Roderick Long

Death to the New Class  from Rad Geek

Self-Management in Cuba, Part 2? by Larry Gambone

“He Was a Man of His Times” by Francois Tremblay

The Long Retreat by Pat Buchanan

From One Assault on the Constitution to Another by Paul Craig Roberts

The Status of Women vs Diversity? by Brenda Walker

A Conversation About Race by Richard Spencer

Young Americans for Liberty Jeff Frazee interviewed by Richard Spencer and Jack  Hunter

Do We Need More Race Talk? by Lila Rajiva

Castro Did Not Improve the Lives of Cubans by Humberto Fontova

Swiss Peoples Party Stands Up to U.S. Imperialism 

Soros and Volcker: Worse Than the Great Depression 

More Americans Support Marijuana Legalization Than the Stimulus Package 

Preparing for a Domestic Surge? by William Norman Grigg

“We Are Not Responsible” by Pat Buchanan

Liking Ike by Lew Rockwell

Beyond Open and Closed Borders by Laurence Vance

Obama’s Policy on Civil Liberties: Bush Lite? by Ivan Eland

Twilight in Afghanistan? by Philip Giraldi

Our Enemy, the President by Daniel McCarthy

Smearing The American Conservative by Glenn Greenwald

Don’t Bet on Obama Reining in Defense Spending by Benjamin H. Friedman

The Emerging State Sovereignty Movement by Patroon

Liberals Jump On Obama’s War Bandwagon by Justin Raimondo

The Prince of Darkness Denies Own Existence by Dana Milbank

The Lawyer’s Tale  by Alexander Cockburn

Using the Recession to Hammer Workers by David Lindorff

War Criminals Must Be Prosecuted by Marjorie Cohn

Quote of the Week:

“Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.”

                                                                              -Friedrich Nietzsche

“Journalists and opinion makers who now deride what was revolutionary and progressive about modern capitalism (an easier life and a higher standard of living) do so as to stay ahead of the curve so they can welcome with open arms the new class war between the People (the majority of the population, those who work for a living) and the Elite (the plutocrats and oligarchs, their enablers and co-conspirators in the government, and their defenders in the MSM and upper academia) and ensure they are on the winning side. These court ‘intellectuals’ (if we can even dignify them with such a word) will speak of the very real and often underexplained and underestimated economic crisis with the same level of urgency as the entirely fictional environmental crisis, itself a secularized catastrophe fantasy designed to give these postmodern Puritans something to feel morally superior about with their lifestyle politics of Whole Foods activism and urbanite entitlement.”

                                                                                  -Ean Frick

On the Essentials of the High Modernist Era and the Current Crisis by Ean Frick

Maybe the Meltdown Wasn’t What You Think by Peter Brimelow

Why the U.S. Stimulus Package is Bound to Fail by David Harvey

Slumdog Success Story from Distributist Review

ACORN Initiates Civil Disobedience to Stop Foreclosures by Fernanda Santos

The PIGS Are At It Again from Rad Geek

Self-Management in Cuba, Part 3? by Larry Gambone

Choose Responsibility: Abolish the Drinking Age by from Thus Spoke Belinsky

How the Economy Was Lost by Paul Craig Roberts

American Homelessness Indicts Elite Heartlessness by Donald A. Collins

Why Merge Turkey with Europe? Why Merge Mexico with the U.S.? by Taki Theodoracopulos

How the Jews Got Their Smarts by Razib Khan

The Baptism of the State by Richard Spencer

Do You Really Want a “Conservation on Race”? by Pat Buchanan

Our Enemy, the GOP by Paul Gottfried

Get Those Shovels Ready to Dig Our Economic Graves by Bill Bonner

Weary Cogs in the Imperial Machine by Mark Crovelli

The Tax Attack on Persecuted Smokers by Philip Hensley

The Friendly Iranians by Will Hide

The Israel-Firsters Gasping, Dying Smear Tactics by Glenn Greenwald

Obama Should Follow Gorbachev’s Example by Eric Margolis

Republican National Socialism by Mike Tennant

Getting On With It in China  by Chris Clancy

Federal Repression of Secessionists? by Carol Moore

Twenty States Are Talking About Secession 

Puritannically Correct Cruelty by William Norman Grigg

The Rise of Avigdor Lieberman by Justin Raimondo

Empire at the End of Its Rope by Alan Bock

Cambodia’s Missing Accused by John Pilger

Peace or Peril by Chris Hedges

Obama’s Bananastan by Jeff Huber

Who Is Binyam Mohamed? by Andy Worthington

Don’t Let the Iran Headlines Scare You by Robert Dreyfuss

We Need a Truth Commission to Uncover Bush-Era Wrongdoing by James Cavallaro

Israel is Blind to Its Own Arab Citizens by Fareed Zakaria

Obama’s “Humane” Guantanamo is a Joke by Andy Worthington

Obama’s Embrace of Bush/Cheney “Terrorism” Policies by Glenn Greenwald

GI Resistance in Chicago 

Tax Time  from Second Vermont Republic

Is Nationalization Inevitable? by Peter Morici

The New War in Iraq by Patrick Cockburn

Going Up Against Big Coal in West Virginia by Mike Roselle

Obama Steps on the Pentagon Escalator by Franklin Spinney

How Credit Unions Survived the Crash by Ralph Nader

Kennedy and the Corporate Lobbies Craft a Health Plan by Helen Redmond

Murderous Atlanta PIGS Sentenced to Fed Time (don’t drop the soap, piggies!)

A Particular Universalism by TGGP

Affirmative Action Around the World by Thomas Sowell

Who Pulls the Strings: Zionism or Capitalism? Norman Finkelstein and James Petras debate

The New York Times is Going Under-Hooray!! by Eric Englund

Race Cowards in Academia by Walter Williams

Billions for Bankers, Nothing for Homeowners by Dave Gonigam

Understanding Environmentalism by Vin Suprynowicz

The Obamanians Are Dangerously Wrong by Lew Rockwell

Race Agitator by William Norman Grigg

The Sickening Media by Glenn Greenwald

Ron Paul vs Paul Volcker 

Will There Be Civil Unrest in the U.S.? 

The Forerunner to Obamanomics by Lew Rockwell

Gun Owners in the Age of Obama by Mike Gaddy

The Silence of the Liberals by Justin Raimondo

To Russia, With Hate by Justin Raimondo

Balancing Beijing by Doug Bandow

Start Closing Overseas Bases Now by David Vine

Beware Treating Afghanistan Like Iraq by Patrick Cockburn

What Obama’s Risking in Afghanistan by John Bruhns

Return of the War Party  by Pat Buchanan

Obamaland by Charles Glass

Affirmative Action GOP by Jack Hunter

Poverty Does Not Cause Terrorism by Austin Bramwell

The Transition to a Relocalized Manufacturing Economy by Kevin Carson

So Much for the Freedom to Protest by Francois Tremblay

South Carolina House Adopts State Sovereignty Resolution 

Alternatives to Panic: Rising from the Ashes of the Old Economy by P. B. Floyd

Teacher and Student: The New Class Struggle by Niranjan Ramakrishna

Obama’s Non-Withdrawal Withdrawal Plan by Chris Floyd

Afghanistan: Chaos Central by Chris Sands

All About Greed by Sheldon Richman

Wall Street Journal Says Limited Liability Plays a Role in Current Crisis 

The Pentagon is a Money Toilet by John Zmirak

We Should Laugh at Race-Based Jokes, Says Clint Eastwood 

PIG Assaults 15-Year-Old Girl 

It Would Be Cheaper to Fight WW2 Again by Robert Higgs

Glenn Beck is a Worthless Piece of Shit

The Economics of Empire David Henderson interviewed by Scott Horton

Drawdown Plan May Leave Combat  Brigades in Iraq by Gareth Porter

Obama’s Afghan Problem by Thomas Eddlem

Doomed to Repeat History in Afghanistan by Joseph Galloway

Starting the Second Korean War by Doug Bandow

Obama’s War on Terror by Joanne Mariner

Obama’s Iraq Plan Ain’t It by Robert Dreyfuss

Obama’s Debt Orgy by Peter Schiff

Anarchism and Radical Governments by Larry Gambone

PIGS Occupy California High School 

Is Nancy Pelosi Really Against War Crimes? by Alexander Cockburn

From Bush to Obama: Seven Years of Wartime Propaganda by Anthony DiMaggio

The Banks War on Workers by Mischa Gaus

Ruining Young Lives for Profit by Nicole Colson

National-Anarchist Beach Cleanse by Bay Area National Anarchists

Quotes of the Week:

“Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.”

                                                                               -H. L. Mencken

“The anarch understands that the particular identity of the authorities over him has come about randomly, with no inner connection with his true inner nature – he merely happens to be born or live in their domain, for the time being. Whether a Greek or an American, within a communist, capitalist or fascist structure – how could such a random association with his own nature expect special deference or respect from him? But he knows that he needs the authority for his own purposes and as a practical man, he therefore learns about its particularities and adjusts his behaviour accordingly.

Consciously recognizing the absence of any credible superior virtues or mandates in the authorities requires him to be more reliant on his own judgements and critical faculties. His understanding of history gives him a basis on which to critically judge the offers and boasts of authorities – he does not naively buy whatever is sold to him.”

                                                                                                         -Karl Fraser

National-Anarchism and Tribalism, Part One by Andrew Yeoman

National-Anarchism and Tribalism, Part Two by Andrew Yeoman

Left-Libertarianism Explained from The Radical Whole

A Kinder, Gentler Totalitarianism by Robert Weissberg

Pitchfork Time by Pat Buchanan

What’s Wrong with the Right? by Jack Hunter and Richard Spencer

A Banana Republic by 2012? by Paul Craig Roberts

Outlaw Thoughts by Doug French

The Denationalization of Money by Mike Gaddy

Ruling Class Libertarianism by Lew Rockwell

Banksters and Leftists: The Unholy Historic Alliance by Lew Rockwell

Bob Schieffer interviews Ron Paul 

Bob Schieffer interviews Ron Paul, Part Two

Obama, Pull Out of Iraq, or Dig In by Eric Margolis

Working in “Communist” China by Chris Clancy

The Communist Origins of Political Correctness by Agustin Blazquez

Is Obama a Potential Dictator? by Glenn Greenwald

Obama is Grabbing Your Medical Records by James Bovard

The Government Cannot Spend Its Way Out of a Depression Bob Higgs interviewed by Dennis Praeger

Radical Rethink Needed in Washington, D.C. by Philip Giraldi

It’s Obama’s War, Now by Chris Hedges

Mission Accomplished Indefinitely by Jeff Huber

Iran, the Jews and Germany by Roger Cohen

Obama’s State Secrets Echo Bush by Nat Hentoff

Obama’s Retreat on Iraq by Steve Chapman

Conservatives Need a Humbler Foreign Policy by Gene Healy

Lessons from LBJ’s Failed Presidency by Bob Herbert

Shouldn’t MoveOn Oppose Obama on Afghanistan? by John Nichols

New York Was Supposed to Have Been Immortal, But in the End It Couldn’t Deliver by Thomas Naylor

The Economics of Autonomous Zones 

Ethnic Cleansing and Israel by Conn Hallinan

The Changing Game in Afghanistan by Brian M. Downing

Banana Republic, USA by Tom Woods

Is the Political Class Deliberately Blocking an Economic Recovery? by Bill Anderson

Two Checks on Tyranny by Jacob Hornberger

Increase Revenues for California-Legalize Marijuana by Dale Gieringer

Voting Sucks! 

Hegemony or Survival? Noam Chomsky interviewed by Scott Horton

Endless War by Margaret Kimberley

Intel Head Draws Ire of Israel Lobby by Daniel Luban and Jim Lobe

War Comes Home to Britain by John Pilger

Read the Fine Print by Ivan Eland

Playing Defense by Winslow Wheeler and Pierre Sprey

Is It Now Okay to Talk About Hitler’s Assumption of Dictatorial Power? by Jacob Hornberger

Obama’s Coalition of the Unwilling by Amy Goodman

Setbacks for Pro-Israel Hawks in the U.S. by Bernd Debusmann

War Crimes and Double Standards by Robert Parry

Iran in the Crosshairs by Gareth Porter and Ray McGovern

The Ultimate Earmark: U.S. Military Aid to Israel by Bill and Kathleen Christison

Afghanistan: For Your Reading Pleasure by Robert Dreyfuss

Can Anti-Prohibition Cops Be Trusted? 

Shoplifting in a Free Store from Silent Radical’s Blog

Ask An Anarchist from Rad Geek

Responses to “Anarchism and Radical Governments” by Larry Gambone

Interview with Tucker Carlson by Red Phillips

Being Serious About Torture…Or Not by William Blum

Blueprint for a Police State by Marjorie Cohn

Will the Winds of Change Reach El Salvador? by Mark Engler

What’s Hezbollah Done for Us Lately? by Franklin Lamb

Porn Star Blows PIG,  Avoids Drug Arrest 

Manufacturing Fictive Kinship by John Robb

Kropotkin on Ants (from Mutual Aid) 

A Rambling Discussion of National-Anarchism 

Support the Center for a Stateless Society 

Sean Gabb Review’s Kevin Carson’s Organization Theory 

Legalize Drugs-Or See Mexico Become Afghanistan South! by Pat Buchanan

Montana Has It Right on 2nd Amendment by Chuck Baldwin

What We’re Fighting  by Evan McLaren

The Last Word on CPAC by Richard Spencer

Tax Revolt by Dylan Hales

Losing Majority by Dylan Hales

A Confession to Austrian Libertarians by Jeremy Weiland

Stylistic Reaganism and Right-Wing Existentialism by Ean Frick

Beating Back Obamanomics by Lew Rockwell

Recession and Recovery  by Bob Higgs

The Greatest Crash in History by Tom Woods

Harlots High and Low by Alexander Cockburn

Georgia Injustice by Rebekah Ward

My Day at the Terror Charity by Patrick Cockburn

We Want Obama to Fail by Peter Schiff

The Deck Chairs Are Fine Where They Are by Tom Woods

If Only Paul Krugman Were a Moron by Lila Rajiva

No More Reefer Madness by Steve Huntley

The Coming Second American Civil War? 

Drug Wars in Mexico Alan Bock interviewed by Scott Horton

U.S. Out of Afghanistan Jeff Huber interviewed by Scott Horton

Obama’s Appointments  Jim Lobe interviewed by Scott Horton

Bush Tyranny: Why Did So Few Americans Give a Damn? by William Pfaff

Afghanistan’s Graveyard of Invaders by Jurgen Todenhofer

Things Fall Apart (including the EU) by Richard Spencer

Front Porch Socialism by Dylan Hales

Freedom to Consume, or Not by Sheldon Richman

Quote of the Week:

“All universal moral principles are idle fancies.  All, all is theft, all is unceasing and rigorous competition in nature;…Are not laws dangerous which inhibit the passions? Compare the centuries of anarchy with those of the strongest legalism in any country you like and you will see that it is only when the laws are silent that the greatest actions appear.”

                                                                                      -Marquis De Sade

We Are All Collapsitarians Now by Kevin Kelly

The Pestilence of Fanaticism by U.S. Senator James A. Reed, 1925

Social Characteristics of Tribalism by Bay Area National Anarchists

9th Annual Berkeley Anarchist Students of Theory and Research and Development from Bay Area National Anarchists

All You Need to Know About the Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair 

Communism vs Agorism from No Third Solution

Randian Collective Action from theConverted

Considering Redistribution of Property from No Third Solution

Axis of the Expendable: Frum vs Limbaugh by Jack Hunter

Lyndon Baines Obama by Pat Buchanan

Conservatism: Ideology of the Old? by Razib Khan

Little Miss Zionist Gossip Queen by Adam Kharij

It’s the End of the World As We Know It by Nina Kouprianova

Did Somebody Say “Democracy”? by Kevin R. C. Gutzman

The Paleo-Punks by Dylan Hales

“The Greatest Depression” Underway from Second Vermont Republic

Too Big…Period by Ralph Nader

Stop Demonizing Iranians by Eric Margolis

Doomsday by Doug French

The Neocons Are Losing Their Grip by Glenn Greenwald

Enough with the “Diversity” by Walter Block

Sentence First, Trial Never by William Norman Grigg

Gunowners Are In Trouble by Mike Gaddy

A Victim of the State Speaks Out by Becky Akers

Signs of Progress and Danger by Justin Raimondo

Imagine An Occupied America by Ron Paul

A Convenient Scapegoat by Philip Giraldi

Enduring Blunder by Jeff Huber

Why the U.S. Under Obama Is Still a Dictatorship by Andy Worthington

Seeds Sprouting in the Rubble by Kevin Carson

Corporate Extortion from theConverted

That’s Politics for You by Sheldon Richman

Tax Revolt in Argentina from The Picket Line

The American Criminal Injustice System by Paul Craig Roberts

Decentralism or Bust Dylan Hales and Richard Spencer interviewed by Jack Hunter

Lessons From Kirkpatrick Sale by Dylan Hales

Can’t Get Enough Frum vs Limbaugh by Red Phillips

The Coming Evangelical Collapse by Dostoevsky

Bottom Feeders at the Trough  by Sharon Smith

Israeli Spying in the United States by Christopher Ketcham

Obama Caves in to the Lobby by Ray McGovern

The Doublespeak of a Discredited IMF by Eric Toussaint and Damien Millet

Prisons, Profits and the Banality of Evil by Chris Floyd

Making a Difference by Bay Area National Anarchists

The Fed Has Destroyed Your Retirement by Gary North

Home Defense in the Coming Depression Greg Perry interviewed by Lew Rockwell

Caesar Is Not God by Ryan McMaken

Do We Want the Republicans Back? by Laurence Vance

The Economics of Depression Lew Rockwell interviewed by Brian Wilson

The Drug War vs Civilization by Anthony Gregory

China: The Next Big Enemy? by Justin Raimondo

The Groundwork Has Already Been Laid for Martial Law by John Whitehead

Don’t Fear China Doug Bandow interviewed by Scott Horton

Why Is Obama Defending John Yoo? by Daphne Eviatar

Empire of Bases by Hugh Gusterson

Barack Obama, Meet Team B by Scott Ritter

The Necons Strike Back by Robert Parry

Dick Cheney’s Death Squad by Seymour Hersh

The Totalitarian Therapeutic State by Sheldon Richman

Go to Cancun With Your Virginity, Leave With 20 Kilos of Heroin 

In Defense of McCarthyism by Dylan Hales

The Parable of the Shopping Mall by Alexander Cockburn

Is This Really the End of Neoliberalism? by David Harvey

How Israel Gives Jews a Bad Name by Saul Landau

Drug War Doublespeak by Laura Carlsen

Imprisoning Immigrants for Profit by Tom Barry

Criminalizing Poverty by Chris Mobley and Leela Yellesetty

Anarchist-Communist Appeal Against NATO Summit 

San Diego IWW Demonstration for Fired Organizer 

Texas Police Exploit Black Motorists 

It’s “Racist” to Oppose Afghan War by Harrison Bergeron 2

Wrong Classical Liberal Predictions by TGGP

Individualism and Self-Defense by Mike Gaddy

A Vintage Fight Over Wine by Michael A. Lerner

The Destruction of Mexico by Guy Lawson

Crisis in Pakistan Eric Margolis interviewed by Scott Horton

Charles Freeman’s Victory by Justin Raimondo

In Memory of Rachel Corrie by Gila Svirsky

Quotes of the Week:

“Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.” -Edmund Burke

“Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of the government.”

                                                                        -Pierre Joseph Proudhon

“The State calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime.”

                                                                                      -Max Stirner

My Anarchism Problem by Bob Black

A Washington, D.C. Heretic is Punished by Eric Margolis

America’s Ivy League College: The Dumbass Factory by C. J. Maloney

Traveling in the New China by Chris Clancy

The Ides of March Got a Bad Rap by Cheryl Vanbuskirk

Et Tu, Switzerland? by Balz Bruppacher

Drunk Driving Laws Are Absurd by Mark R. Crovelli

The Drug War vs Civilization Anthony Gregory interviewed by Scott Horton

Continuity and Change by Justin Raimondo

These Secretaries Can’t Even Type by Jeff Huber

Taliban Plan Drags Obama Deeper by Gareth Porter

Obama Follows Bush on Detainees by William Fisher

Who Are the “Worst of the Worst”? by Andy Worthington

Of Patriots and Assassins by Pat Buchanan

John Stossel Takes Down Sean Hannity 

Zionism is the Problem by Ben Ehrenreich

What We Don’t Know About Iraq by Philip Bennett

How Abu Ghraib Was Politically Defused, Part One by James Bovard

Ending Our Imperial Foreign Policy by Fareed Zakaria

The More Things Change… by Srdja Trifkovic

Racist Jim Clyburn by Jack Hunter

The Domestic Costs of Empire from Richmond Left-Libertarian Alliance

San Francisco PIGS Attack Demonstrators 

Wobblies March in San Diego 

Racist Abuse of Pennsylvania Prisoners 

Shut Down IMF/World Bank Meeting 

Santa Cruz Anarchist Convergence, May 7-11 

Obama and the Empire by Bill and Kathleen Christison

Victory for the Left in El Salvador by Richard Gott

Americans Want Justice for Wall Street Crooks by Ralph Nader

Coxey’s Army Will March Again! by Stephen Fleischman

Dismantling the Killer Elite by William Norman Grigg

EU Bans “Miss” and “Mrs” As Sexist (the journey into the Cultural Marxist Twilight Zone continues)

California to Legalize Marijuana? 

What Should We Do in the Face of Private Firearms Confiscation? by Mike Gaddy

The Emerging Marxist Church by Bill Anderson

The Confiscation of Privately Owned Weapons by Tim Case

What Happened to the War? by Laurence Vance

Some Truths About Guantanamo Bay by Lawrence Wilkerson

Compulsory National Service On Its Way? 

A Great Debate on Afghanistan by Jacob Hornberger

My Life in the New Left by Kevin MacDonald

Systemic Failure by Pat Buchanan

Israel’s American Chattel by Paul Craig Roberts

Was the Bailout Itself a Scam? by Paul Craig Roberts

Launching Lifeboats Before the Ship Sinks by Paul Craig Roberts

Empire, Secession and the Left Kirkpatrick Sale interviewed by Jack Hunter and Dylan Hales

States’ Rights and the Left by Jack Hunter

A Lexicon of Conservative Bullshit by Dylan Hales

Is Capitalism Making Life Better? by Noam Chomsky (hat tip to Francois Tremblay)

Massive French Protests and Ontario Factory Occupation by Larry Gambone

Economics: The Abysmal Science by Thomas N. Naylor

Open Letter to the Antiwar Movement 

London PIGS Fear Insurrection at G-20 Meeting 

Conservatives In Name Only by Filmer

The Economy in Two Eras of Democrats by Sam Smith

Bedouin Villages Left in the Dark Ages by Jonathan Cook

Where Are We Leaving Iraqi Women? by Yifat Susskind

U.S. Human Rights Abuses in the War on Terror by Joanne Mariner

A Grand Bargain for the Culture Wars by TGGP

We’re Dropping Down an Economic Hole by Gerald Celente

The U.S. Dollar, R.I.P. by Peter Schiff

An Open Letter to Chuck Norris by Chuck Norris

The Big Takeover by Matt Taibbi

Warning from Bosnia for Iraq by Ivan Eland

Iran: A Way Forward by Philip Giraldi

Obama’s New Message to Iran  by Glenn Greenwald

Obama and the Neocon Middle East Agenda by Stephen Sniegoski

Negotiate with the Taliban, Free John Walker Lindh by Kelley Vlahos

Why It Matters That the Army Was on the Streets of Samson, Alabama by J.D. Tuccille

Chuck Norris: Revolutionary? 

Cops Cause Crime by Francois Tremblay

Canning for the Revolution by Chris Lempa

Enemies of What State? by Kevin Carson

Institutionalized Sadism by Rad Geek

Annual Anti-Police March in Montreal 

On the Edge of the Volcano by Alexander Cockburn

When Things Fall Apart by Paul Craig Roberts

Slumdogs vs Billionaires by P. Sainath

Local Currencies by John Robb

Targeting Banksters? by John Robb

Quote of the Week:

“As an anarch, I am determined to go along with nothing, ultimately take nothing seriously-at least not nihilistically, but rather as a border guard in no man’s land, who sharpens his eyes and ears between the tides.”

                                                                                            -Ernst Junger

“My notion of the law as written is that it was conceived to catch every whore and make every mean man rich.”

                                                                                               -Norman Mailer

The Dangerous Movement for States’ Rights by Dylan Hales

Sarah the Populist? by Paul Gottfried

State of Revolution by Jack Hunter

What Happened to the War on Terror? by Jack Hunter

Going Weimar by Pat Buchanan

States, Not Washington, D.C., Need Our Attention by Chuck Baldwin

Attending Anarchist Events from Bay Area National Anarchists

New Australian National-Anarchist Video 

Are You a Domestic Terrorist? 

On Revolution and Counter-Revolution by Larry Gambone

Hollywood Always Loves the State from Out of Step

Off the PIGS!! 

Our Next Debacle by Harrison Bergeron 2

Obama’s Gang of Four by Thomas N. Naylor

Obama’s Team of Losers by Michael Donnelly

Denial and Evasion on Afghanistan by Norman Solomon

Cat-and-Mouse Off Hainan Island by William S. Lind

IDF Fired on Medics in Gaza 

Capitalism From the Standpoint of Its Victims by M. Shahid Alam

Israel’s Most Revolting Law by Uri Avnery

Bush the Teacher by Ralph Nader

The Rules of Engagement in Gaza: Fire on the Rescuers by Amira Hass

The Stark Facts About Violence Against Women by Elizabeth Schulte

The Intellectual Origins of “Militant Democracy” by Dain Fitzgerald

Terror Begins at Home by Philip Jenkins

The Attempt to Silence Walter Block by Tom DiLorenzo

A Fifteen-Year-Depression by Phil Davis

FDA Totalitarianism by Bill Sardi

The Case for Norman Mailer Conservatism a classic from Murray Rothbard, 1969

The Virtues of Patriarchy by Bob Higgs (as Aster begins to snivel and drivel in-between slurps, “Boo-hoo-hoo-hoo, I’m so oppressed, sniffle, sniffle, sob, sob, poor, poor me, boo-hoo-hoo”)

The American Empire: A Finale by Justin Raimondo

Tangled Webs by Philip Giraldi

The Long War Generals by Jeff Huber

Non-Interventionists Need Not  Apply by Michael Scheuer

NATO: Still Mission-Creeping at 60  by Alexander Cockburn

Obama Doesn’t Talk Like Bush, He Just Acts Like Him by Ted Rall

Russia: Big Threat or Paper Bear? by Eric Margolis

It’s Time to Let Go of NATO by Pat Buchanan

Politics, Jews and Israel by Razib Khan

Barney’s Bitches by Ilana Mercer

Thomas Woods interviewed by Richard Spencer 

Reefer Madness by Jack Hunter

War and the Neoconservative Mind by Jack Hunter

Containing Jihad by Mark Hackard

Old Right, New Beck? by Dylan Hales

Is the Bailout Plan Breeding a Greater Crisis? by Paul Craig Roberts

What the Drug Warriors Have Given Us by Sheldon Richman

Cost Plus Mark-Up and Mandatory Overhead by Kevin Carson

The Fallacy of Prevention From theConverted

What Games Are Conditions? by Francois Tremblay

London Protesters Threaten Bankers, Evoke Executions 

Obama’s Fall Guy  by Alexander Cockburn

How the Scam Works by Michael Hudson

The Insolence Abroad: A Defense of Iceland by Gregory A. Burris

The Broken Stone of Corporatism by Stephen Martin

The Mafia Without Moralizing by Kim Nicolini

Why Do We Need a Health Insurance Industry? by Dave Lindorff

The Big Con on Iraq by Gareth Porter

Billions More for Failed Banks by Dean Baker

Sexting: A First Amendment Challenge by David Rosen

Another System Atrocity 

The Portuguese National-Syndicalist Movement by Flavio Goncalves

The War on Drugs is Now the War on Guns by Mike Gaddy

Drug War Idiocy by Jacob Hornberger

The Threat of Hyper-Depression by Bob Murphy

How I Got In Trouble Walter Block interviewed by Lew Rockwell

How Do a Free People Lose Their Liberty? by Bob Higgs

Get a Van! You’ll Need a Back-Up Home by Joe Schembrie

Breaking with Israel by Justin Raimondo

The Nation Formerly Known As Yugoslavia by Justin Raimondo

Judge Terrified of Citizen (poor baby) by Paul Hein

I’m Tired of What My Country Has Become by Don Cooper

Traveling in China by Chris Clancy

The Truth About Guantanamo Lawrence Wilkerson interviewed by Scott Horton

Diplomacy in the Obama Administration Philip Giraldi interviewed by Scott Horton

The Facts About Iran’s Uranium Enrichment Program Muhammad Sahimi interviewed by Scott Horton

The “Rule of Law” Nuisance by Glenn Greenwald

Obama’s Afghan Quagmire Deepens by Simon Tisdall

A Terrorist-Producing Machine by Jacob Hornberger

China: Don’t Buy Government Bonds by Sheldon Richman

Afghanistan: Waiting for the “Exit Strategy” by Robert Dreyfuss

Lost History Hurts Obama’s Iran Bid by Robert Parry

The Global Impact of U.S. War on Terror, Part Two by Joanne Mariner

Debate Over Israel Lobby Clout Returns by Nathan Guttman

U.S. Spills Afghan War Into Pakistan by M K Bhadrakumar

Will Israel Be Brought to Book? by Seumas Milne

National-Anarchists in the Military

Hero of War Song from Rise Against

The Only Place Where Freedom Has Any Meaning by Jeremy Weiland

Dead Culture Walking by Brenda Walker

Bash Back: Solidarity with Cop Killers 

Pink and Black Attack: New Gay Anarchist Publication 

A Ban on Global Currency? by Red Phillips

Bush Administration Torturers to be Put on Trial by Harrison Bergeron 2

Too Big to Fail? by Arno J. Mayer

Quotes of the Week:

“I read the Social Democratic newspapers. I saw their disgusting attitude towards anything that bore even the slightest revolutionary character, and I realized that there could be no reconciliation between a revolutionary party and a party trying to earn a reputation for ‘moderation’ in the eyes of the government and the bourgeoisie.”

                                                                                 -Peter Kropotkin

States Rebellion Pending by Walter Williams

David Allan Coe: American Rebel by Will Forbis

“The FARC Think These Americans Are Pussies” by Christina Oxenberg

Tory Hacks Give Lip Service to Localism and Communitarianism by Sasha Issenberg (thanks Ean!)

911 Truths by Jack Hunter

On Loving to Hate the South by Paul Gottfried

Globomoney by Richard Spencer

Conspiracy Theories by Dylan Hales

Obama’s Attack on the Middle Class by Paul Craig Roberts

Is Notre Dame Still Catholic? by Pat Buchanan

Terror Begins At Home by Philip Jenkins

Neocon Obama Fans by Harrison Bergeron 2

Saint Wal-Mart? by Roderick Long

Patri Friedman on Seasteading (hat tip to Kevin Carson)

Open Source Health Care

Hollywood’s Democratic-Capitalist Self Censorship by Francois Tremblay

Which Politician Came Up With the Idea That Dying for Your Country is a Good Thing? by Sheldon Richman

They Really Give Nobel Prizes Away Like Candy These Days by Paul Krugman

R.I.P. Burt Blumert (1929-2009) by Wally Conger

Sheldon Richman on Arkansas Public TV 

Libertarian Essays by Roy Halliday 

All Hail Tax Resistance! from The Picket Line

Lessons from the Gulag Archepelago from The Picket Line

Virginia: Human Rights Abuses at Red Onion Supermax Prison 

UK: Protests Against Capitalism and the G20 

More Reasons To Be Against Happiness by TGGP

Early Mormon Cooperative Economics (thanks Chris!)

Barack of Kabul by Eric Margolis

Explaining the Boom and the Bust by Bob Murphy

Newsweek Actually Tells the Truth for Once? by Glenn Greenwald

End the War on Drugs by Ron Paul

We’re On the Edge of the Abyss by Peter Schiff

Burt Blumert: Liberty’s Benefactors by Lew Rockwell

Here Come the Food Police by Vin Suprynowicz

Fiat Money and Inflation by Chris Clancy

Civil War by Bill Bonner

The Obamamites Go to War by Justin Raimondo

To Reduce Violence, End the Drug War by Justin Raimondo

Stop Arming Israel by Philip Giraldi

Yes, We Have No Bananastan by Jeff Huber

Another Lost War? by William S. Lind

U.S. Cries Wolf Over China? by David Isenberg

National Anarchist-Syndicalist Union 

Leftism 101 by Lawrence Jarach

Prospects for Global Depression and Unrest by John Robb

Oppose Internet Censorship from National-Anarchists Australia/New Zealand

A New Global Debt Crisis by Nicholas Dearden

The Obama Betrayal by Dave Lindorff

“We’ll Make You See Death” by Joanne Mariner

Obama’s Pakistan Gambit by Ron Jacobs

Economic Inequality: The Foundation of the Racial Divide? by Dedrick Muhammad

What Next in Afghanistan? by Patrick Cockburn

Where’s All the Money Coming From? by Ralph Nader

Obama Bombs by Ray McGovern

Syria Calling by Seymour Hersh

The New Far Right Philo-Semitism 

Is Angelina Jolie Bad for Africa? 

“I’m Having a Very Good Crisis,” says George Soros 

The New American Interviews Antiwar.Com’s Eric Garris Part I Part II

What Is the State? by Lew Rockwell

Civil Unrest, Ghost Malls and Another American Revolution Interview with Gerald Celente

The Role of Government in a Free Society Lecture by Walter Williams

Asshole PIG Resigns 

Minneapolis PIGS Plant Gun on Teen After Murdering Him 

Mexico Has a U.S. Problem, Not a Drug Problem by Fred Reed

Blessed Are the Warmakers? Laurence Vance interviewed by Lew Rockwell

Neocon Victimology by Glenn Greenwald

Why Do PIGS Kills Dogs? by J.D. Tuccille

Guns, Gold, Secession by Karen De Coster

New World Disorder by Gary North

Dead Banks Walking by Lila Rajiva

The Scam of Political Representation by Gerard Casey

The Outlook for the Dollar Peter Schiff interviewed by Eli Neusner

Collapse: The Dollar’s Destination by Mike Rozeff

It’s All A Conspiracy! by Richard Spencer, Dylan Hales and Jack Hunter

Catholics and the Left John Zmirak interviewed by Richard Spencer

The Green Revolution Saved Lives? by Kevin Carson

The New Proudhon Library from Shawn Wilbur

John Taylor Gatto: State-Controlled Consciousness from Francois Tremblay

Tax Day Protests Planned from The Picket Line

Sheldon Richman on the Financial Crisis from Social Memory Complex

Affluenza and the Economic Meltdown of America by Thomas N. Naylor

Will There Be Anarchy After the 1930s? 

Modesto Citizens Retaliate Against PIGS 

Carter Conservatism by Sean Scallon

Obama and the Ruling Class  by David Macaray

Assassination Attempt Against St. Louis Green Party Leader by Don Fitz

Surging Further Into the Afghan Abyss by Chris Floyd

Dershowitz Encounters a Worrying Future by Michael Scheuer

Mandatory National Service on the Way? James Bovard interviewed by Scott Horton

The Truth About Guantanamo Lawrence Wilkerson interviewed by Scott Horton

Repeating Vietnam War Errors in Afghanistan by Matt Steinglass

How Do We Save NATO? We Quit by Andrew Bacevich

Fake Faith and Epic Crimes by John Pilger

The Greatest Blunder in British History by Laurence Vance

New Issue of Black Oak Presents by Michael Kleen (thanks Flavio!)

Is India Headed for Hyperinflation? by Subroto Roy (thanks Peter!)

Fucking Retards (thanks Ean!)

The Forest for the Trees by Ean Frick

An Introduction to Carl Schmitt by Gary Ulmen

National Lampoon by Austin Bramwell

How I Became a Domestic Terrorist by Ilana Mercer

Let’s Play Pretend by Peter Schiff

The Real Federal Deficit  by Tim Worstall

On the Justice of Clearing Ward Churchill by Dylan Hales

Being Honest About Abe by Jack Hunter

Should We Kill the Fed? by Pat Buchanan

Homesteading Detroit: On Urban Farming by No Third Solution

An Exercise to Clear Your Mind by Francois Tremblay

Bring on the Summer of Rage! by Charlie Brooker

Defining Terms by Thomas Fleming (thanks Chris!)

Republic Magazine: Issue # 14 (thanks Flavio!)

But in Anarchy, Who Would Make the Roads? (thanks Peter!)

Coming to a Town Near You, the BANA Newstand! 

An Interview with Noam Chomsky 

Solidarity with the Students: An Open Letter from Greek Soldiers 

Veganarchists on the London Insurrection 

PIGS/Protestors Clash in Paris 

From Twin Towers to Twin Camelots by Alexander Cockburn

Homeless in Tent City, USA by Kathy Sanborn

Girding for a Depression by Morici

The War on Drugs is a War on You by Michael Boldin

Biden, Nixon and Latin America by Saul Landau

Nuclear Power Plants: Fooling with Disaster? by Sue Sturgis

Was Gaza Israel’s Waterloo? by John Goekler

The Federal Railroading of Victoria Sprouse by William Anderson and Candice Jackson

Death to D.A.R.E. by William Norman Grigg

The Humanitarian with the Printing Press by Anthony Gregory

The PIGS Are Out to Get You by Brian Cohoon

Marijuana Reduces Tumors 

Christianity is Not a Neocon Death Cult by Tom Woods

Small Town Anarchy by J.L. Bryan (thanks Folk n’ Faith!)

There Will Be Hyper Inflation  by Thorstein Polleit

The Fair Tax is a Scam by Laurence Vance

The Goldberg Syndrome by Justin Raimondo

How to Combat Mexican Drug Cartels by Ivan Eland

Obama’s Neoliberals: Selling His Afghan War by Jeremy Scahill

An Ominous Parallel by Jacob Hornberger

Obstruction of Justice by Chris Hedges

Quote of the Week:

“The categories of ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ are paradigmatically modernist. It is not an accident that they date back to the French Revolution, and that they fade with the decline of modernity. In the early 19th century, the distinction referred primarily to the relation to the French Revolution, with the Right defending the status quo ante, and the Left the new bourgeois regime. Later, after it became clear that there was no way to restore the ancien régime, the categories came to characterize the split between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. But, even that became obsolete with the development of social democracy and the integration of the labor movement into the system at the turn of the century. Subsequently the Bolshevik Revolution introduced a seven-decades-long distortion, which only now is beginning to disappear, whereby Left and Right were identified with political regimes based respectively on capitalism and socialism. The capitalist turn in Communist China and the predominance of social democracy in the capitalist West indicate the extent to which the reduction of politics to economics presupposed by the distinction was a Cold War fraud. Consequently, after 1989, the distinction has become increasingly blurred; it lingers on by default, pending the development of better alternatives and of a political climate that will make it possible to recast the political in terms other than those deployed by the ruling elites.

In other words, how to reconfigure the political is itself a political issue, whose outcome is a function of political struggle. Today, the Left/Right split remains an ideological smokescreen concealing the real distinction: between neo-liberals (as well as neo-conservatives) and communitarians.

The former are committed to ever-growing state intervention, bureaucratic rationality, and the bourgeois values of abstract individuality, formal equality, social justice, representative liberal democracy, and unrestricted inclusiveness. This is the ideology of the therapeutic New Class, camouflaging its axiological particularity as universal truth, proceduralizing politics, and privatizing morality. The hypostatizing of bourgeois values to universal truths warranting their imposition on dissidents, now degraded from political opponents to pathological or criminal cases, is part of that general process of depoliticization entailed by the liberal project from its very beginning: the reduction of politics to administration.

The latter (communitarians) insist on insist on local autonomy, direct democracy, cultural particularity, and traditional values of solidarity, belonging, and the identity of politics and morality. Opponents are neither pathologized or criminalized, but classified as ‘enemy’ or ‘friend’ and treated accordingly (within various kinds of confederal, federal, or international agreements) or ostracized, confronted, and, in extreme cases, forcibly coerced.”

                                                                                          -Gary Ulmen

The Forest for the Trees by Ean Frick

The Neocon Credo by Dan McCarthy

The Marcuse Factor  by Paul Gottfried

In Search of Anti-Semitism by Paul Gottfried

The Mondragon Cooperatives: All in This Together from the Economist (thanks Brady!)

Taking Communism Away from the Communists: The Origins of Modern Liberalism by Fred Siegel

Liberals and Conservatives: Relics of the Past by Thomas Naylor

Global Currency: One Step Closer by Evans Ambrose-Pritchard

Progressive Warmongers by Justin Raimondo

The Two Faces of Barack Obama by Justin Raimondo

National Security: The Last Refuge of Scoundrels by Kevin Carson

Let a Thousand Nations Bloom by Patri Friedman

America’s Imperial Wars: Why We Need to See the Horrors by David Lindorff

America’s Friends: The Kkmer Rouge 

The Suicide of the West by Justin Raimondo

Left and Right Against the Military-Industrial Complex by Jon Basil Utley

Iraq Disaster Still a Mystery to Some by Alan Bock

Beware the Cult of Obama by Gene Healy

Cowardice in the Time of Torture by Ray McGovern

Ten Ways the U.S. Is Turning Afghanistan Into Iraq by Juan Cole

Obama Threatens North Korea Over Launch 

New and Worse Secrecy and Immunity Claims by Glenn Greenwald

No Excuses for Ongoing Concealment of Torture Memos by Glenn Greenwald

What About the Other Missing War Photos? by Greg Mitchell

Obama’s Flawed Nuclear Free Vision by John Nichols

A Missile Launch for Dummies by Donald Kirk

Let’s Hope Obama Keeps His Cool Toward N. Korea by John Gittings

North Korean Rocket Stirs Hawks by Katrina Vanden Heuval

March Madness, 1939 by Pat Buchanan

How Freedom Was Lost by Paul Craig Roberts

The Function of Political Ideologies by Larry Gambone

A Different Approach to Socialism by Jeremy Weiland

The Postmodern Alliance by Mark Hackard

Korean Straits  by Richard Spencer

2.7 Million People Demonstrate in Italy 

The IMF Rules the World by Michael Hudson

Prison Talk 

The Democrats and the Afghan War by Normon Solomon

Newt’s Foreign Policy Fantasies by Jack Hunter

Gangsta Gifts by Ilana Mercer

Screwing the Country by Jack Hunter

Americans Don’t Need New Cars by Richard Spencer

Riots and Intrigue in Eurasian by Mark Hackard

Kooks and Blue State Republicans by Robert Stacy McCain

White Europeans: An Endangered Species? from Yale Daily News

More Cultural Enrichment? by Thomas Fleming

Democrats for Plutocrats by Roderick Long

Against Privateering by Rad Geek

Fun With Totalitarianism by Roderick Long

Priority Number One for the PIGS by Rad Geek

Obama Expands Bush’s Wiretapping Program by Harrison Bergeron 2

The Decade of Darkness by Mike Whitney

What Would It Take to Mend Fences with Islam? by Patrick Cockburn

Israel’s Master Plan for Transfer by Ellen Cantarow

Obama and Israel’s Threat to Strike Iran by Gareth Porter and Jim Lobe

Obama’s Bloated Military Budget by Jeremy Scahill

Escaping the Drug War Quagmire by Kevin Zeese

Prosecuting the Bush Torture Team: Spain Leads the Way by Marjorie Cohn

Secession-One Year Later by Bill Buppert

Be in Charge of Your Own Health Care by David McKalip M.D.

After Torture, Resurrection by Ray McGovern

America’s Drug War Is Destroying Mexico Guy Lawson interviewed by Scott Horton

Goodbye, Bill of Rights by Philip Giraldi

The Ballad of John Singer by William Norman Grigg

Why Europe Won’t Fight by Pat Buchanan

The Wise Man of Liberty by Justin Raimondo

Common Sense Bye-Bye by Peter Schiff

The Radical Right by Jack Hunter

Good News: $PLC Loses $50 Million by Patrick Cleburne

Wilhelm Ropke’s Swiss Front Porch by Allan Carlson

Cash Strapped Communities Are Printing Their Own Money by Marisol Bello

G.K. Gets Real by Patrick Deneen

Chavez in China Touts “New World Order” 

Squatters Resist Foreclosures 

Student Revolt in NYC 

Resurrection and Revenge by Alexander Cockburn

How the Media Bought the Surge by Saul Landau

Obama’s Afghanistan Plan and India-Pakistan Relations by M. Reza Pirbhai

The Ideology of Barack Obama by William Blum

Obama’s Crossover Dribble on Marijuana by Fred Gardner

Don’t Believe Barack by Lew Rockwell

My Censored Reply to the Sheriff by William Anderson

Nullification: Its Time Has Come Again by Clyde Wilson

Barack Obama: Torture Enabler by Ted Rall

Fujimori’s Lesson for Bush by Jacob Hornberger

Liberals Line Up with Militarism by Chris Floyd

Essential Skills for the Post-Apocalyptic World 

China’s Threat to the U.S. is Exaggerated by Ivan Eland

Obama Worse Than Bush on State Secrets Glenn Greenwald interviewed by Ivan Eland

Why Big Government Always Wins by Harrison Bergeron 2

A People Apart? Paul Gottfried interviewed by Richard Spencer

The Union Makes Us Weak by William Gillis

The German Anarchist Movement in NYC: 1880-1914

by Peter Bjorn Perls

Over the last few days, there’s been an interesting discussion going on over at the blog of left-libertarian philosopher Charles Johnson (also known as “Rad Geek“). I’ve avoided posting there, due to the presence of an individual who has declared themself my mortal enemy (a role I’m happy to assume), but the subject matter of the discussion provides a very good illustration of why any sort of libertarian philosophy that demands a rigid universalism cannot work in practice. A poster called “Soviet Onion” remarks:

It seems that both social anarchism and market libertarianism have respectively come to adopt forms of collectivism typical of either the statist left or right. That’s a result of the perceived cultural affinity they have with those larger groups, and partly also a function of the fact that they appeal to people of different backgrounds, priorities and sentiments (and these two factors tend to reinforce each other in a cyclical way, with new recruits further entrenching the internal movement culture and how it will be perceived by the following generation of recruits).

On the “left” you have generic localists who feel that altruism entails loyalty to the people in immediate proximity (they’ll unusually use the term “organic community” to make it seem more natural and thus unquestionably legitimate). Most of them are former Marxists and social democrats, this is simply a way to recast communitarian obligations and tacitly authoritarian sentiments under the aegis of “community” rather than “state”. This comes as an obvious result of classical anarchism being eclipsed as THE radical socialist alternative by Leninism for most of the twentieth century. Now that it’s once again on the rise, it’s attracting people who would have otherwise been state-socialists, and who carry that baggage with them when they cross over.

On the “right”, it’s a little more straightforward. Libertarians have adopted the conservative “State’s Rights” kind of localism as a holdover from their alliance with conservatives against Communism, to the point that it doesn’t even matter if the quality of freedom under that state is worse than the national average, just so long as it’s not the Federal Government. And with this, any claim to moral universality, or the utilitarian case for decentralism go right out the window. Like true parochialism, it hates the foreign and big just because it is foreign and big.

That’s also one of the reasons why I think there’s a division between “social” and “market” anarchists; they each sense that they come from different political meta-groups and proceed from a different set of priorities; the established gap between right and left feels bigger than the gap between they and statists of their own variety. And the dogmatisms that say “we have to support the welfare state, workplace regulations and environmental laws until capitalism is abolished” or “we should vote Republican to keep taxes down and preserve school choice” are as much after-the-fact rationalizations of this feeling as they are honest attempts at practical assessment.

The problem with left-libertarianism (or with the 21st century rebirth and recasting of 19th century individualism, if you want to imperfectly characterize it that way), is that instead of trying to transcend harmful notions of localism, it simply switches federalism for communitarianism. It does this partially as a attempt to ingratiate itself to social anarchists, and partly because, like social anarchists, it recognize that this idea is superficially more compatible with an anti-state position. But it also neglects the social anarchists’ cultural sensibilities; hence the more lax attitude toward things like National Anarchism.

These are some very insightful comments. And what do they illustrate? That human beings, even professed “anarchists,” are in fact tribal creatures, and by extension follow the norms of either their tribe of origin or their adopted tribe, and generally express more sympathy and feel a stronger sense of identification with others who share their tribal values (racism, anti-racism, feminism, family, homsexuality, homophobia, religion, atheism, middle class values, underclass values, commerce, socialism) than they do with those with whom they share mere abstractions (”anarchy,” “liberty,” “freedom”).

Last year, a survey of world opinion indicated that it is the Chinese who hold their particular society in the highest regard, with 86 percent of Chinese expressing satisfaction with their country. Russians expressed a 54 percent satisfaction rate, and Americans only 23 percent. Observing these numbers, Pat Buchanan remarked:

“Yet, China has a regime that punishes dissent, severely restricts freedom, persecutes Christians and all faiths that call for worship of a God higher than the state, brutally represses Tibetans and Uighurs, swamps their native lands with Han Chinese to bury their cultures and threatens Taiwan.”

 ”Of the largest nations on earth, the two that today most satisfy the desires of their peoples are the most authoritarian.”

What are we to make of this? That human beings value security, order, sustenance, prosperity, collective identity, tribal values and national power much more frequently and on a deeper level than they value liberty. Of course, some libertarians will likely drag out hoary Marxist concepts like “false consciousness” or psycho-babble like “Stockholm syndrome” to explain this, but it would be more helpful to simply face the truth: That liberty is something most people simply don’t give a damn about.

The evidence is overwhelming that most people by nature are inclined to be submissive to authority. The exceptions are when the hunger pains start catching up with them and their physical survival is threatened, or when they perceive their immediate reference groups (family, religion, culture, tribe) as being under attack by authority. We see this in the political expressions of America’s contemporary “culture wars.” During the Clinton era, many social or cultural conservatives and religious traditionalists regarded the U.S. regime as a tyranny that merited armed revolt. During the Bush era such rhetoric disappeared from the Right, even though Bush expanded rather than rolled back the police state. Meanwhile, liberals who would denounce Bush as a fascist express polar opposite sentiments towards the Obama regime, even though policies established by Bush administration have largely continued. So how do we respond to this? Soviet Onion offers some suggestions:

The proper position for us, and what could really set us apart from everyone and make us a more unique and consistent voice for individualism in the global Agora, is to recognize all cultures as nothing more than memetic prisons and always champion the unique and nonconforming against the arbitrary limitations that surround them, recognizing their destruction as barriers in the sense of being normative. And to that end there’s the instrumental insight that the free trade, competition, open movement and open communication are forces that pry open closed societies, not by force, but by giving those who chafe under them so many options to run to that they make control obsolete, and thus weaken control’s tenability as a foundation on which societies can reasonably base themselves. Think of it as “cultural Friedmanism”: the tenet that open economies dissolve social authority the same way they render political authority untenable.

THAT’s what left-libertarianism needs to be about, not some half-baked federation of autarkic Southern towns filled with organic farms and worker co-operatives. It can still favor these things, but with a deeper grounding. It doesn’t ignore patriarchy, racism, heterosexism, but opposes them with a different and more consistent understanding of what liberation means.

But how far should our always championing of the “unique and nonconforming” go? If, for instance, a group of renegades happen to show up at the workers’ cooperative one day and commandeer the place, should we simply say, “Hell, yeah, way to go, noncomformists!” As for the question of the “Big Three” among left-wing sins (”racism, sexism and homophobia”), are we to demand that every last person on earth adopt the orthodox liberal position on these issues as defined by the intellectual classes in post-1968 American and Western Europe? Why stop at “patriarchy, racism and heterosexism”? Soviet Onion points out that many “left-wing” anarchists do not stop at that point:

I; used to be an anarcho-communist. Actually, I started out as someone who was vaguely sympathetic to mainstream libertarianism but could never fully embrace it due to the perceived economic implications. I eventually drifted to social anarchism thanks to someone who’s name I won’t mention, because it’s too embarrassing.

After hanging around them for a while I realized that, for all their pretenses, most of them were really just state-socialists who wanted to abolish the State by making it smaller and calling it something else. After about a year of hanging around Libcom and the livejournal anarchist community, I encountered people who, under the aegis of “community self-management”, supported

• smoking and alcohol bans
• bans on currently illicit drugs
• bans on caffeinated substances (all drugs are really just preventing you from dealing with problems, you see)
• censorship of pornography (on feminist grounds)
• sexual practices like BDSM (same grounds, no matter the gender of the participants or who was in what role)
• bans on prostitution (same grounds)
• bans on religion or public religious expression (this included atheist religions like Buddhism, which were the same thing because they were “irrational”)
• bans on advertisement (which in this context meant any free speech with a commercial twist)
• bans on eating meat
• gun control (except for members of the official community-approved militia, which is in no way the same thing as a local police department)
• mandatory work assignments (ie slavery)
• the blatant statement, in these exact words, that “Anarchism is not individualist” on no less than twelve separate occasions over the course of seven months. Not everybody in those communities actively agreed with them, but nobody got up and seriously disputed it.
• that if you don’t like any of these rules, you’re not free to just quit the community, draw a line around your house and choose not to obey while forfeiting any benefits. No, as long as you’re in what they say are the the boundaries (borders?) of “the community”, you’re bound to follow the rules, otherwise you have to move someplace else (“love it or leave it”, as the conservative mantra goes). You’d think for a moment that this conflicts with An-comm property conceptions because they’re effectively exercising power over land that they do not occupy, implying that they own it and making “the community” into One Big Landlord a la Hoppean feudalism

So I decided that we really didn’t want the same things, and that what they wanted was really some kind of Maoist concentration commune where we all sit in a circle and publicly harass the people who aren’t conforming hard enough. No thanks, comrade.

These left-wing anarchists sound an awful lot like right-wing Christian fundamentalists or Islamic theocrats. Nick Manley adds:

Quotes:

“Liberals: they’d support Nazi death camps if it raised more money for public schools (also invented by German autocrats).”

                                                                                                         -Soviet Onion

“The fact is that the average man’s love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice, and, truth. He is not actually happy when free; he is uncomfortable, a bit alarmed, and intolerably lonely. Liberty is not a thing for the great masses of men. It is the exclusive possession of a small and disreputable minority, like knowledge, courage, and honor. It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty- and is usually an outlaw in democratic societies. It is, indeed, only the exceptional man who can even stand it. The average man doesn’t want to be free. He simply wants to be safe. . . .”

                                                                                             -H. L. Mencken (thanks Ray!)

“Chavez has always been a non sequitur. 20th century politics in the 21st. It’s all part of the same ruse as the false left/right “division” which is the
private enterprise/public sector “division.” Would you rather have your life
controlled by a corporate shill or an arrogant, uneducated state bureaucrat? How come, neither is never an option in mainstream discourse?”             

                                                                                                             -Ean Frick

“Spare me the mewling about “ordered liberty,” please – 50 years of conservative pieties about “ordered liberty” led to Dick Cheney and a movement full of “men” who dared not open their mouths to defend liberty when she needed it most. Give me disorderly hinterland rebels any day.”

                                                                                        -Bill Kauffman (thanks Jeremy!)

Unprincipled Conservatism: The Tea Partyers by Jeremy Weiland

The Big Government/Big Business Axis of Evil by Chuck Baldwin

Empire Nearing Its End? by Alan Bock

Inflationary Depression is on the Way by Eric DeCarbonnel

Progressive Consensus Against Obama Emerges by Glenn Greenwald

Drug Decriminalization in Portugal Glenn Greenwald and Peter Reuter

The Declining American Empire by Eric Margolis

Payback: The U.S. Has Already Lost in Afghanistan by Michael Scheuer

The Fourth Generation Armies Are Winning by William S. Lind

Anarchy and Chaos in Black Communities by Robert Wicks

Peace Out by Justin Raimondo

Getting Beyond Race by Walter Williams

Confessions of a Liberal Anarchist by Ray Mangum

Hey, Tea Partyers, Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is from The Picket Line

Homesteading on the High Seas for Liberty by Patri Friedman

Developmental Aid for Africa is Not Working by Dambisa Moyo

How the Vulgar Libertarians Work Against Liberty by theConverted

Richard Dawkins and Lalla Ward on the Police Abuse of Atheists from Francois Tremblay

The Grammar of War  from Rad Geek

Taxation with Misrepresentation by Sheldon Richman

Charles Schumer is a Scumbag from Rad Geek

Attend the Tax Protest of Your Choice from The Picket Line

John Demanjuk and the True Haters by Pat Buchanan

NORML for Aspen by Christina Oxenberg

Extending Our Firepower by Paul Gottfried

Mark Sanford, the Alternative Right and Me by Jack Hunter

New Midwest Anarchist Website 

Wild Weekend in NYC 

Anarchist Organizing Conference in Chicago 

114 British Activists Arrested 

The Censorship of Norman Finkelstein 

French Comedian to Face Trial for Anti-Semitism 

Vulgar Childish Liberals by Filmer

Happy Easter! by Ean Frick

The Holocaust Justified My Values by TGGP

Iraqi Militia Fear Reprisals After US Exit by Patrick Cockburn

A Test for Habeus Corpus by Jeremy Scahill

Bossnapping by John V. Walsh

Marry a Farmer Rana Foroohar interviews Jim Rogers

A Mother is Tased After Learning Her Child Was Dead 

Pirates and Presidents 

Jon Stewart is Half Way There 

Open Hearings for War Crimes by Philip Giraldi

The Fog of Warmongering by Jeff Huber

Neoconned Again by Michael Brendan Dougherty

A Message from Der Tax Commissar (umm, IRS Commissioner) from Rad Geek

How Do We Get Out of the Financial Crisis? by Sheldon Richman

Generational Theft  by Jack Hunter

Tea Partyers in Charleston by Jack Hunter

The LaRouchian Madness by Ean Frick

Noam Chomsky and Robert Faurisson 

The Corporate Lobbyists Behind the Tea Parties by Jane Hamsher

Youth for Western Civilization Banned in UNC by Richard Spencer

A Clusterfuck is Descending on the IMF/WB Summit Meetings

Fire to the Prisons Issue # 6 Needs Submissions 

Put All Your Eggs in One Basket Jim Rogers interviewed by David Bogoslaw

To Mexicans, the U.S. is Not a Friendly Nation by Fred Reed

94 Years of Serfdom by Paul Craig Roberts

Texas to Secede by Rick Perry

Why the End of America is Closer Than You Think by Mike Adams

Tax Resistance, Then and Now podcast with Charles Adams

Revolution is the Only Solution by Gerald Celente

Optimism Opium from Second Vermont Republic

Snatch-and-Jail Justice by Dave Lindorff

No Blank Check for the IMF by Robert Weissman

Taxing Grandma to Subsidize Goldman Sachs by Peter Morici

Letter to Obama on the Rights of Native Hawaiians 

Solving Palestine While Israel Destroys It by Bill and Kathleen Christison

Bush, the Torture Decider by Ray McGovern

Obama and the Pirates by Justin Raimondo

U.S. Foreign Policy and the Drug War by Liz Harper

Youngstown PIGS Put 13 Shot Into Puppy  by Rad Geek

Death by Homeland Security by Rad Geek

Invitation to Open Conspiracy by John Taylor Gatto

Peace Through Statism? by Roderick Long

Help Challenge the $PLC by Peter Brimelow

Vermont Secession Video Archives

The Resurrection of Guy DeBord by Andrew Gallix

“Feral Futures” Gathering in Colorado 

Jimmy Carter Conservatism 

Thin Ice from Here to the Horizon by Alexander Cockburn

Persia Rising by Franklin Lamb

The Greedsters Are Back! by Ralph Nader

Obama’s Chimerical Marijuana Policy by Fred Gardner

Economic Fallout Hits Families Hard by Kathy Sanborn

Latin America Changes by Benjamin Dangl

Thinking Like an Afghan by Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould

Banning Barbie  by Christopher Brauchli

The Book of Ruth by Kevin R.C. Gutzman

Tea Party Terrorists  by Richard Spencer

Rendering Unto Caesar by Pat Buchanan

Are the Tea Parties Radical and Paranoid Enough? by Richard Spencer

Youth for Western Civilization by David Reid Saucier

The Terrorists at Home by Dylan Hales

A Jeffersonian in Texas or a Hot Air Peddler? by Kevin R.C. Gutzman

Obama’s Inflationary Depression by Peter Schiff

Revenge of the “Waco Gene” by William Norman Grigg

No More Commie Highways by Walter Block

Cal Thomas and the Gospel of the Pharisees by Christoper Manion

Political Winds Whift in Favor of Legalized Pot by Carla Marinucci

The Conspiracy Theorists Were Right All Along by Gary D. Barnett

The Right-Wing’s A.N.S.W.E.R. by Anthony Gregory

These United States: Too Big to Fail? by Justin Raimondo

Delusions of Omnipotence by William Pfaff

How Obama Excused Torture by Bruce Fein

Expedience and the Torture Amnesty by David Bronwich

The West’s Hysterical Reaction to North Korea by Scott Ritter

U.S. Military Spending and the Cost of the Wars by Chris Sturr

Freedom by Permission by Jacob Hornberger

Stop the War, Stop the Spending by David Boaz

Tea and Sympathy by Roderick Long

Manufactured Consent by Peter Schiff

Sleepless Goat Workers’ Cooperative 

The Peoples’ Economic Forum in Washington, D.C. on April 25 

Piracy: The Family Business

The Waco Butchers Are Back by Anthony Gregory

Prepare for Austerity by James Howard Kunstler

Is Secession “Anti-American”? by Larry Beane

Tim McVeigh: Blowback, American Style by C.J. Maloney

Quote of the Week:

“Yes, something very ugly has surfaced in contemporary American liberalism, as evidenced by the irrational and sometimes infantile abuse directed toward anyone who strays from a strict party line. Liberalism, like second-wave feminism, seems to have become a new religion for those who profess contempt for religion. It has been reduced to an elitist set of rhetorical formulas, which posit the working class as passive, mindless victims in desperate need of salvation by the state. Individual rights and free expression, which used to be liberal values, are being gradually subsumed to worship of government power. . . . For the past 25 years, liberalism has gradually sunk into a soft, soggy, white upper-middle-class style that I often find preposterous and repellent. The nut cases on the right are on the uneducated fringe, but on the left they sport Ivy League degrees. I’m not kidding — there are some real fruitcakes out there, and some of them are writing for major magazines. It’s a comfortable, urban, messianic liberalism befogged by psychiatric pharmaceuticals.”

                                                                                                    -Camille Paglia

We Live in a Fascist State Gerald Celente interviewed by Russia Today

Putting the Bush Years on Trial by Alexander Cockburn

If Obama Were Not a Pawn of Wall Street and Corporate America by Thomas Naylor

Sovereignty Resolutions, Nullification and Tea Parties: Much Ado About Nothing by Thomas Naylor

The Tea Parties: A Step in the Right Direction? Richard Spencer and Jack Hunter

Secede and Survive: Prepare to be Overwhelmed by Secession by Carol Moore

Go to CNN and Vote on Secession (looks like the poll has closed)

Conservatives Are Evil by Ryan McMaken

Libertarianism vs “Libertarianism“ by Justin Raimondo

If Only Libertarians Had Cards, So They Could Be Taken Away by TGGP

Bay Area National Anarchists Participate in Cystic Fibrosis Walkathon (good work, comrades! good outreach and a good cause!)

Just How Big a Disaster is the American Military by Bill Lind

Why the State is Our Enemy Robert Higgs interviewed on C-Span

Does the New Class Oppress Traditional Religious Communities? by David R. Hodge

The National-Anarchist Litmus Test by Keith Preston

Too Small to Fail: The Wilhelm Roepke Solution to Our Economic Woes by Dermot Quinn

Secession, the Fed and Tomorrow Ron Paul interviewed by Lew Rockwell

War Socialism and National Bankruptcy by David Gordon

The Amazing Catholic Bullshit Generator by John Zmirak

PIGS Ambush Citizen in Milwaukee by William Norman Grigg

The Apologist by Pat Buchanan

A Storm in a Cup of Tea by Jack Hunter

The Real Tea Parties by Ilana Mercer

First They Came for the Fatties by Richard Spencer

On Nation and Nationalism by Matthew Roberts

The War on Family Farms by Richard Spencer

The Thin and Thick, the There and the Here by Razib Khan

Are Hierarchies Rational? by Francois Tremblay

Missing the Point on Secession by Rad Geek

A Match Made in Hell by Roderick Long

Government Spending is No Cure for Recession by Sheldon Richman

The Real Debate on Foreign Policy: Intervention vs Non-Intervention by Sheldon Richman

Dangerous Men in Uniform by Rad Geek

Tea and Sympathy by Roderick Long

Legal Purgatory and John Demjanjuk by Binoy Kampmark

Ten Years After Columbine: The Tragedy of Youth Continues by Henry A. Giroux

Drug War Persecution Continues by Fred Gardner

The American Empire Foreclosed? by Marc Engler

The FARC Can’t Dance by Belen Fernandez

Norman Finkelstein with Martin Indyk on Gaza 

Survivalists: Regular People Get Ready for the Worst 

Ex-President of Colombia Says America Should Decriminalize Drugs 

The Ultimate Reaping of What One Sows: The Reich-Wing Edition by Glenn Greenwald

The Republic Strikes Back by Bill Kauffman

Against All Flags by Jesse Walker

Bush’s Torturers by Justin Raimondo

When Torture Isn’t “Torture” by Thomas R. Eddlem

Reading the Case of Roxana Saberi by Henry Newman

Japan Pays Foreign Workers to Go Home from Global Business

The Dark Side of Dubai by Johann Hari

Murdering Police Scum 

The Europe Syndrome and The Last Man 

A Federalism Amendment to the Constitution? by Randy Barnett

End the Cuban Embargo! by Sheldon Richman

Keynesian Conservatives by Sheldon Richman

Direct Action Gets the Goods: Syndicalist Action Against Starbucks by Rad Geek

U.S. Militant Workers Union Formed: Workers Unite Beyond Left and Right! 

A Nation of Helpless Idiots by Karen De Coster

Fuck Single Mothers by Gavin McInnes

The Soul of Booker T. Washington by Dylan Hales

The Ghosts of Earth Day’s Past by Dylan Hales

Get In Touch With Your Inner Bigot by Robert Stacy McCain

Obama Plays Hamlet on Torture by Ray McGovern

The Torture Commission Trap by Michael Ratner

Deconstructing the Taliban by Fawzia Afzal-Khan

Torture, War and the Imperial Project by Chris Floyd

Unemployment Across the USA by Chris Wilson

Obama’s Afghan Plan: Fracturing the Antiwar Movement by Vijay Prashad

The Tyranny of Bad Economics by Dean Baker

White Privilege in the Americas by Aisha Brown and Dedrick Muhammed

A Reflection on the “Left” and My Arrest by Joaquin Cienfuegos

PC Gestapo Disrupts Meeting at UNC 

Man Sentenced to 10 Years for Defending His Home Against PIGS 

Man Arrested for Murder for Defending Property Against Masked Criminal 

Obama the Bubble Pricker by Tom Woods

Don’t Criticize the Somali Pirates by John Higgins

Why is there a Totalitarian Drug War? by Jacob Hornberger

Banning Black Cars: The Latest Eco-Insanity by L.K. Samuels

The American Police State vs Little Boys by Paul Craig Roberts

The Servants of the Reptilian State by William Norman Grigg

Economic Survivalists by Judy Keen

Harmanic Convergence  by Justin Raimondo

The Cuban Embargo is a Proven Failure by Michael Kinsley

Of Course It Was Torture by Gene Healy

The Obedience Circuit  by Francois Tremblay

Rather Than Say This Myself from Back to the Drawing Board

Torture by Sheldon Richman

Paul Krugman is Right About Something from Back to the Drawing Board

In Counting There Is Strength by Rad Geek

Don’t You Wish It Really Could Be This Way? from Back to the Drawing Board

Educrat PIGS Molest Little Girls by Rad Geek

Obama Positioning for Back Door Gun Control by Chuck Baldwin

Immigration Hitting American Workers Hard by Peter Brimelow and Edward S. Rubenstein

Is Sean Hannity Now Cool? No!! by Jack Hunter

Religion and Politics by Razib Khan

Free John Walker Lindh by Dave Lindorff

Are Democrats Afraid of Investigating Torture? by Jeremy Scahill

A Housing Crash Update by Mike Whitney

Obama and the Housing Crisis by Anthony DiMaggio

The Debt Looters by Greg Moses

Blowback in Pakistan by Stonewall

Marijuana Advocates See Tipping Point by Brian Montopoli

Matt Taibbi’s The Great Derangement a review

TV Military Analysts Are Paid Pentagon Shills  by Glenn Greenwald

The Crime That Cannot Be Wiped Away by Laurence Vance

Never Trust a Commie or a Conservative by Jeffrey Tucker

Our Economic Future Peter Schiff interviewed by Lew Rockwell

The Shamelessness of Jane Harman by Justin Raimondo

Newt’s Sword of Damocles by Gordon Prather

How to Deal with North Korea Doug Bandow interviewed by Scott Horton

On Somali Piracy Jesse Walker interviewed by Scott Horton

Obama’s Foreign Policy Ron Paul interviewed by Scott Horton

Obama’s First 100 Days: Give Him a “D” by Ivan Eland

Soldier Killed Herself After Refusing to Take Part in Torture by Greg Mitchell

Lately, when surveying the works of various anarchist/libertarian/whatchamacallit writers, commentators or bloggers, I’ve starting applying what I call the “National-Anarchist Litmus Test.” That is, I’ve come to think that a fair standard for measuring some anarchist ideologue’s level of intellectual, political, emotional or psychological maturity is his/her ability to discuss the ideas of National-Anarchism without falling into something resembling an epileptic seizure. For those who want to know more about National-Anarchism and its actual ideas, go to the Synthesis website and real some of the articles in their archives. Then go check out AnarchoNation, Bay Area National Anarchists, Folk and Faith, A Heretickel Anarchyste, National Anarchists of Australia and New Zealand, Ean Frick, and  Revolution International. Make up your own mind.

I’m only a fellow traveler to National-Anarchism, but if I had to summarize it with one idea, I’d say it’s primary message is self-determination for all the world’s diverse peoples. You know, all those Tibetans, Palestinians, Kurds, Basques, Irish, Chechnyans, Lakota, Maori, Hmong, Oaxacons, Miskito and other occupied, colonized or oppressed peoples that the Left pretends to give a flying fuck about. Another idea might be the self-preservation of all the world’s diverse peoples. You know, kind of like those endangered spotted owls, snail darters, and sea turtles the Left is always wringing hands over.

Of course, what really gets a hair up the ass of the Left is the fact that National-Anarchists apply the same standards to indigenous Europeans that they do to other peoples. For some reason, this seems to evoke images in the Leftist mind of apartheid, Jim Crow or Nazism, although it would seem to a rational person that self-determination for all peoples is the polar opposite of a stratified racial caste system like Jim Crow or apartheid, much less a genocidal ideology like Nazism.

As I write this, there is a discussion going on over at the Rad Geek blog concerning the infamous Keith Preston and the shady National-Anarchist forces of darkness for whom I am supposedly a front man. Many anarcho-leftoids regard me as similar to the “Mr. Morden” character in the earlier episodes of the old 90s sci-fi show Babylon Five. For non-sci-fi fans, Morden was a human who acted as an operative for unseen sinister alien forces. Ironically, a thread that starts off as a very good and helpful discussion of Starbucks workers organized by the IWW soon degenerates into this from Soviet Onion:

As wishful as it sounds, it’s a welcome antidote to the left-libertarian tendency to treat localism and decentralization as THE POINT rather than an instrumental tool to some more fundamental desire. That shit’s also vulnerable to corruption by every kind of village fascism under the sun. Hence the enabling attitude toward things like National Anarchism coming from Keith Preston and Jeremy Weiland that almost makes ANTIFA-style gang beatdowns seem like a more intelligent response to the phenomenon.

Never one to allow herself to be outdone, my Number One Cheerleader Aster pipes in:

It is hard for me to express how much I appreciate your speaking out against the national anarchist Trojan horse. Thank you.

And that’s precisely it- replacing rights with decentralism completely throws out the principle of liberty. I want the implementation of a specific social system which guarantees individual rights and supports individual autonomy. I’m not interested in a politics which switches this for the goal of acceptance of existing social systems. whether individualist or not. Liberty requires a conscious and rational set of values and institutions which are incompatible with traditional organic society.

I’m a moderate on decentralisation- actually, I think the original 1789 American federal system buttressed by an extensive and enforceable Bill of Rights fully incorporated against local tyranny is a fairly good model. I’m at the moment inclined to say yes to decentralisation in economic matters, no in educational matters, and to favour a mixed system in politics. I think we do need broad regional social organisation in a form which maintains an easy flow of goods, people, and ideas- I think this aspect of the Roman, British, and American empires was a good thing (have you read Isabel Paterson’s God of the Machine?).

Incidentally, I think Jeremy Weiland (if he’s Jeremy of Social Memory Complex) means well, in the sense of wanting a world in which human beings are really happy. I still disagree with him, but he’s not like Preston or Troy Southgate. I’ve been unjustly nasty to him in the past and regret it.

So political and economic decentralization really aren’t so bad so long as an enlightened cultural elite gets to control a nationalized educational system in order to properly brainwash the young with The Official Enlightened Progressive Truth. You know, notions like the idea that human history can be primarily defined in terms of the historic, dialectical, objectively revolutionary, linear struggle for the inalienable, inevitably triumphant sacred human right to suck cock in the men’s room at the airport. Next up is Marja Erwin:

In my admittedly incomplete understanding, collectivist anarchism has historically involved either or both of two kinds of community control. The first being near-monopolistic but temporary; a transitional confederation instead of Marx’s transitional state. I think this was Bakunin’s pragmatic proposal. The second being community control of specific institutions, but neither requiring participation nor forbidding competition.

I think Parecon has sowed the seeds of Prestonism, because it imagines a permanent system which subjects individual choices to community decision, and forbids independent exchange. … And the primitivists like that!

Huh??

Then comes Rad Geek (a writer I actually like, BTW):

For what it’s worth, on this specific issue, I think you’re being subjected to a bit of six-degrees-of-Heinrich-Himmler here, and I think it’s unfortunate and unfair to you. Although Keith Preston is not himself an anarcho-fascist he has put a lot of effort into being accommodating towards anarcho-fascists; and you’ve put a lot of effort into being accommodating towards Keith Preston. I think the links in that chain are worth talking about individually, but I don’t think it’s fair to describe what you’ve been doing as “enabling” the anarcho-fascists by some kind of transitive property.

And pot-smoking leads to cocaine-sniffing, which leads to crack-smoking, which leads to heroin-addiction, which leads to junkie whores turning tricks for their dope, which leads to junkie whores selling their daughters to pedos for their dope, which leads to the collapse of civilization and the conquest of America by homosexuals, al-Qaeda and liberals.

Now for some other jewels. Says William:

Although a majority of folks express annoyance at it (generally by deriding the partisans as rat-bastard “theorists”, and ridiculing the notion that folks should be forced to choose between hugging a tree or holding a union card) Red / Green hostilities nevertheless play an enormous role in shaping the movement. In the muddled mainstream of the movement virtually everyone calls themselves “anti-civ” and supports the IWW in a desire to avoid conflict. The campus activist derived folk side more with the Syndicalists, while the Crimethinc romantic punx side more with the primmies. The fringes are the one’s that produce substantive thought.

In the isolated, insular core of these wings (ie, Eugene and NEFAC) the primmies are likely to write MAs off as irrelevant and the syndicalists are likely to go batshit insane a la McKay.

Might I dare to suggest that an ideological conflict between “primmies” and syndicalists means about as much to Actually Existing Reality as a theological conflict between snake handlers and Scientologists?

My buddy Aster:

There’s some obnoxious political correctness stuff… I got bugged about prostitution a few times (mildly), and one has to mind vegetarian and recycling Ps and Qs to avoid hassles. I got involved in a reasonably benevolent individualist/collectivist anarchist schism which began (I am not making this up) over recycled toilet paper.

These are the folks that old tolerance-mongering Aster prefers to hang out with? Sheesh. Soviet Onion:

I could perhaps try to initiate the conversation (that is supposed to be one of the functions of the Alliance of the Libertarian Left), but I think it would be frustrating at best and dangerous at worst. The Libertarians don’t know enough about the currents of anarchist movement/scene continuum to even “get” the conflict, and social anarchists would react with all the courtesy and consideration currently reserved for the interwebs, if not being equally confused. Given that I’ve also witnessed conversations where market anarchists have been compared to neo-Nazis, I honestly wouldn’t even feel safe doing that, at least alone with a group of them.

What? “Dangerous”? “Wouldn’t even feel safe”? Around all those inclusive, tolerant, humane-humanitarian-human rights loving, sensitivity-mongering anarchists?

Well, isn’t it great that we’ve got that giant squid to keep us from killing each other. It’s a bit like Iain McKay’s strategy of easing up on the mutualists only because he sees anarcho-capitalists as a bigger aberration and threat (and to avoid having to cede history and ideological pedigree to the “other side”).

Someone needs a “strategy” for that? Sounds about as important as a “strategy” for jerking off or picking your nose. William again:

The superficial story is that the primmies control the NW, the SW desert and the Appalachians, while the Reds control the entire NE block and have a mild advantage everywhere else. Also don’t forget that primitivism got much of its start in the UK. Its just that the Reds and Greens have relatively zero interaction there.

Sounds like the Bloods and the Crips. Rad Geek:

For reference, when you refer to a “left-libertarian tendency” to fetishize localism and decentralism, do you have anyone particular in mind, other than Jeremy Weiland? (There’s also Keith Preston, presumably, but he doesn’t consistently identify as a left-libertarian, and in any case I’m not willing to grant him the description.)

Oh, well, poor me.

Folks, this is right out of the parody of leftist anarchism in Monty Python’s “The Holy Grail”: “Help, help, I’m being repressed!!”

This is precisely what the anarcho-leftist milieu was like when I was a hard-core participant in it going on three decades ago now. Unfortunately for anarchism, it does not seem to have progressed one iota since then. Fortunately for the rest of humanity, this sort of thing will be permanently relegated to youthful or bohemian subcultures with nothing better to do. I remember when I first became involved in leftist anarchism and was explaining my new found enthusiasms to my father, who didn’t share my enthusiasms (to say the least). Said Dad: “That just sounds like some fad  that will never amount to anything but crap.” Sorry, dad, you were right.

In contemporary American political discourse, we often hear talk of “the legacy of slavery,” primarily in discussions of racial issues. To be sure, the “legacy of slavery” has had a damaging impact on American race relations (it wasn’t so wonderful for the actual slaves, either). Many of the rather severe social problems found among certain sectors of Americans of African ancestry today are often attributed to this legacy. I tend to think such claims are often overstated. For one thing, the overwhelming majority of American blacks are far from being the social or economic basket cases many people imagine them to be. As the black economist Dr. Walter Williams puts it:

If one totaled black earnings, and consider blacks a separate nation, he would have found that in 2005 black Americans earned $644 billion, making them the world’s 16th richest nation. That’s just behind Australia but ahead of Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland. Black Americans have been chief executives of some of the world’s largest and richest cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. Gen. Colin Powell, appointed Joint Chief of Staff in October 1989, headed the world’s mightiest military and later became U.S. Secretary of State, and was succeeded by Condoleezza Rice, another black. A few black Americans are among the world’s richest people and many are some of the world’s most famous personalities. These gains, over many difficult hurdles, speak well not only of the intestinal fortitude of a people but of a nation in which these gains were possible. They could not have been achieved anywhere else.

Of course, there is another side to this question, primarily the ongoing gap in accumulated wealth between whites and blacks, and the even more serious problem of the enormous black “underclass.” I’m inclined to think these latter problems have broader and more recent causes, such as ongoing patterns of class conflict, repression, politically imposed hinderances to the economic self-advancement of blacks, and attacks on the organic community life of the lower classes by the state. Still, there’s no doubt the “legacy of slavery” contributes to the disproportional representation of blacks among the lower classes that are impacted most heavily by such things.

There’s still another way in which the “legacy of slavery” has damaged American politics, and that is the persistent identification of ideas like local sovereignty, community autonomy or political decentralization as code words for slavery or compulsory racial segregation of the kind associated with Jim Crow. For instance, in much of American higher education, the classical American republican doctrine of “states’ rights” is simply dismissed as an anachronism that never had any purpose other than to defend the interests of slave-holders. Having studied American history in an advanced academic setting, I’ve noticed the general tendency is to present the unfolding of American history as an evolutionary struggle towards the achievement of “progress,” meaning overcoming reactionary ideas like states’ rights, limited government and other impediments to the glorious victory of the federal welfare state and centralized micromanagement of local race relations. Joe Stromberg’s parody of a modern course in what used to be called Western Civilization, which can be viewed here, is only a slight exaggeration.

The obsession with slavery has corrupted not only political discourse in elite academic circles, and among mainstream “progressive” thinkers, but also among fringe radicals as well. For this reason, my Number One Fan Aster feels it necessary to place this item in the proposed constitution for her rendition of Utopia:

The principle applies to places not subject to the jurisdiction of the County of Bohemia too, but this isn’t an excuse to bomb foreigners and take their stuff. Or to get other foreigners to ruin their livelihoods so they have to work in your sweatshops for virtually nothing. It even applies to BROWN people, believe it or not- and the fact that it took you this long to figure that out means you suck.

Section VII. Aster shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Actually, anyone who wants to stop a slavery situation should feel empowered to do it. Figuring out the enforcement and incentive structures will be a bitch, though- but that’s not an excuse for giving up and just letting slavery happen, Keith.

Soviet Onion:

Aster has written some unwarranted misrepresentations of Keith (I prefer to think he enables fascists rather than being one himself) and even more of Jeremy, but this isn’t one of them. Consider Keith’s mission statement that he’s a single-issue activist looking to bring down the Empire and will work with everybody from Fascists to Stalinists to do that, so long as they’re willing to secede, go their separate ways and dominate their own territories once the job is done. If he’s so ecumenical that he’s willing to work with all these people, then why not also some small-scale secessionist group that ended up practicing slavery in their area? What would make them so special that, given his stated criteria, Stalinoids are OK but they’re not?

If you include authoritarian forms of parenting, education and marriage as forms of slavery, then those are cases where he does directly advocate slavery. Unfortunately, that just makes him like everybody else.

So should we “just let slavery happen”? First of all, where does contemporary slavery actually take place? Mostly in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. You know, the places where all of those supremely virtuous “people of color” tend to be found and who would have remained in the Garden of Eden if only those evil white European snake-devils hadn’t come along and fucked up their otherwise idyllic world. If only those evil white-devil slave traders hadn’t brought Africans to the Western hemisphere as slaves, perhaps their current descendents could enjoy living in the paradise of Nigeria, where seven percent of the population are still enslaved. Maybe the prosperous members of America’s black middle class (roughly seventy-five percent of American blacks) could even be in the oasis of Mauritania, where twenty percent of the population are still slaves. Of course, to their credit, the Mauritanians did pass an anti-slavery law in 2007. Who says they’re not progressive?

Do we need to “just let slavery happen?” No, a coalition of nations could invade the African continent and force the locals to free their slaves, in the style of U.S. Grant, Bill Sherman and Phil Sheridan. However, the only nations with the level of wealth and/or military power to even attempt such an effort (disaster though it would be) would be those of North America, Europe and Russia (plus the wild card of China). Problem is it’s mostly white folks who live in those nations. So a liberatory invasion of Africa and other slavery hotbeds seems to be off the table. Otherwise, we might be practicing European colonialism, or even white supremacy. Plus, it’s been done already. Wasn’t decolonialization supposed to be a “progressive” thing? So, yes, it looks like we do indeed need to “just let slavery happen.” Anything else might even be racist or white supremacist. Of course, we could assist those actual groups who really are doing something to oppose slavery in place like Africa. For instance, those groups who have actually purchased the freedom of Sudanese slaves. Problem is a lot these actually effective anti-slavery groups seem to be Christian in orientation, and we couldn’t endorse that, given that they are all no doubt frothing-at-the-mouth homophobes who express skepticism as to whether anal sodomy and/or rimming ought to be elevated to the level of sacramental rites, right along with eucharist, baptism and the last rites.

Actually, I don’t think we should be that hard on the African slave-holders. After all, they’re not so different from us white Americans of a mere 150 years ago. Plus, the slave-holders in places like Nigeria or the Sudan never got to go to U.S. or Western European public schools, receive multicultural education, or participate in “teaching tolerance” programs whose curriculum was designed by the Southern Poverty Law Center. So give them a break.

Of course, it is sometimes argued, though usually not by sensible people, that American-style antebellum slavery was of a particularly nasty variety, unlike the sunny and hedonistic kinds that existed in places like South America, Africa, China or the Islamic world. And while we would not want to impose Eurocentric Western values like slavery abolition on places like Africa (to do so would be racist), surely the recent ancestors of us white Americans, at least the enlightened ones from up North, should not have “just let slavery happen” in the states of the Old Confederacy? Africans enslaving Africans, Chinese enslaving Chinese, or Arabs enslaving Arabs might be something we can tolerate because, well, it just couldn’t be all that bad if “people of color” are doing it, but the idea of white American Southerners (and Christians, no less) enslaving Africans, well, that’s just, well, worse than awful, for some reason or another.

I reject the claims of modern day Confederate patriots that the U.S. Civil War had nothing to do with slavery and that it was all about tariffs, agriculture and states’ rights. However, I agree that the motivation of the Union was self-preservation rather than slavery abolition because, well, the President of the Union said so. Still, wasn’t the victory of the Union a victory for liberty? Yes, if we want to overlook the imposition of the draft in both the North and South during the course of the war, the killing of hundreds of thousands of people, and the maiming or displacement of millions more. Well, wasn’t it at least a victory for “anti-racism”? Well, not really, considering the next major military effort after the defeat of the Confederacy was the conquest of the Indian territories in the West. There’s also the thorny question of the fact that there were both Indians and blacks on both the Union and Confederate sides.

Then there’s the question of the impact of the Civil War on the future of American politics. The war marked the death of the old confederal republic and the creation of a centralized, Jacobin, nationalist regime and continental empire. If America had been split into two republics in the 1860s, the Wilson regime might not have entered World War One a half century later. It was American involvement in that war that led to the total destruction of Germany, the subsequent rise of Nazism, World War Two, the genocides that transpired during the war, the invention of atomic weapons, the Stalinist occupation of Eastern Europe, the Cold War, the nuclear arms race, the brush wars in Asia, the present day American world empire and other not-so-nice things. Indeed, the war for slavery abolition advocated by many of Lincoln’s abolitionist supporters would seem to be an example of the “armed doctrine” that Edmund Burke warned against. Of course, that does not mean that an actual guerrilla war against the Southern slaveholders of the kind advocated by the anarchist Lysander Spooner would not have been justified.

So back to Soviet Onion’s comments:

Consider Keith’s mission statement that he’s a single-issue activist looking to bring down the Empire and will work with everybody from Fascists to Stalinists to do that, so long as they’re willing to secede, go their separate ways and dominate their own territories once the job is done. If he’s so ecumenical that he’s willing to work with all these people, then why not also some small-scale secessionist group that ended up practicing slavery in their area? What would make them so special that, given his stated criteria, Stalinoids are OK but they’re not?

If you include authoritarian forms of parenting, education and marriage as forms of slavery, then those are cases where he does directly advocate slavery. Unfortunately, that just makes him like everybody else.

Aside from the fact that comparing “authoritarian” parenting, compulsory school attendance and marriage to chattel slavery does little except make others think that anarchism is a philosophy not suitable for anyone over the age of fifteen, there are certain significant qualifications that would need to be added for this to be an accurate description of my actual views. I am for the dissolution of the American regime into smaller, more manageable units. Presumably, America’s international empire would no longer be able to sustain itself. Those nations are that are now colonies, vassalages, or client-states of the U.S. would achieve their full independence. However they choose to organize themselves upon achieving independence is none of my business. If the Italians elect a representative of the fascist Italian Social Movement as mayor of Rome, or if the Venezuelans prefer Chavez as their leader, or if the Cubans fail to rise up against Castro as the Romanians did to Nicolae Ceausescu, then that’s none of Keith’s goddamn business.

The question of what political factions or ideologies, if any, should be excluded from a pan-secessionist alliance in North America is indeed an interesting one. While ideologies like Nazism and Stalinism are too alien to American political culture to ever become mass movements, it is possible small bands of such groups could carve out separatist enclaves for themselves. There could theoretically be autonomous urban neighborhoods run by skinheads, or rural compounds of neo-nazi survivalists, or communes organized by Stalinist or Maoist groups. Groups of this type could even hold fairly large tracts of land that would be their de facto private property. If such communities are entirely voluntary in their membership, then there can be no political objection to them on libertarian grounds. Of course, others might have aesthetic, moral or cultural objections. But that’s too bad.

In a case where, say, a Neo-Nazi or hard-core Communist group were to seize a wider city or town, I would say the degree to which such an effort should be challenged or recognized should depend on the circumstances. At bare minimum, I would want those who wished to leave to be given the chance to do so on a model similar to, say, the partitioning of India and Pakistan in 1947. If such requests were refused, should surrounding communities engage in military action against the offending community? Perhaps, or perhaps not, depending on the circumstances, potential costs of such an action, the degree of severity of the offense given, and the probably of victory by the self-appointed policemen.

Ironically, this debate has relevance to an issue that I have raised with anarchists and libertarians in the past, and it is an issue where I have never received a satisfactory answer. What about a scenario where a libertarian or relatively libertarian society, or a federation of anarchies, was threatened by domestic political movements of an authoritarian or totalitarian nature? The classic example of this is the Weimar liberal republic, where the center collapsed and the two largest political parties were Hitler’s NSDAP and the Stalinist KPD, with each of these maintaining their own private armies, and engaging in routine, violent streetfighting with each other. To what degree do such groups cease to be mere political organizations using their rights of association, free speech and right to bear arms and become outright domestic invaders? Would the broader alliance of citizen militias, mercenaries, guerrillas, paramilitaries, posses, gangs or whatever that would comprise the defense forces of an anarchist federation ever be justified in suppressing the activities of a group like the NSDAP or the KPD? I believe they would, if such groups grew large enough, powerful enough, disruptive enough or violent enough to pose a “clear and present danger” to the survival of the anarchist federation. There is no reason why a confederacy of anarchies should tolerate an insurgency bya Khmer Rouge or a Shining Path.

I’ve even made similar arguments concerning immigration. To what degree should a host society allow or tolerate immigration by persons demonstrating values or originating from societies whose values are hostile to those of the host society? What constitutes a legitimate demographic threat? Should a billion Chinese be able to migrate to the U.S. tomorrow if they so choose, irrespective of the wishes of the natives? Should liberal-Enlightenment or Greco-Roman Western nations accept immigration from theocratic Islamic societies unconditionally? I think not.  It would seem that political, economic and civilizational survival would be an issue that trumps the migratory rights of immigrants.

These are difficult questions, and appeals to rigid ideological formulations and overblown juvenalia do not help to answer them.

Imagine, for one horribly unpleasant moment, that the anarchist movement (movements?) in North America, in their present form, were to carry out an actual revolution. What kind of social or political system would be the result? The Wikipedia entry on anarchism in the United States lists a number of individuals who represent North American anarchism in different ways. These include Michael Albert (Chomskyite proponent of participatory economics-”parecon”), Ashanti Alston (black power anarchist), Hakim Bey (lifestyle anarchist), Bob Black (nihilist and reputed psychopath), Kevin Carson (Proudhonian mutualist), Noam Chomsky (Marxo-syndicalist-anarcho-social democrat), Peter Coyote (love generation), Howard Ehrlich (social anarchist), David Friedman (anarcho-capitalist), David Graeber (anarcho-anthropologist), Hans-Hermann Hoppe (anarcho-monarchist), Derrick Jensen (primitivist), Jeff Luers (eco-anarchist prisoner), Judith Malina (anarcho-pacifist actress), the late James J. Martin (individualist anarchist and Holocaust revisionist), Wendy McElroy (Rothbardian anarcho-feminist individualist), Jason McQuinn (post-left anarchist), Cindy Milstein (Bookchinite), Chuck Munson (anarchist without adjectives), Joe Peacott (individualist-anarchist), Sharon Presley (left-libertarian feminist), Keith Preston (agent of the forces of darkness), Lew Rockwell (Rothbardian paleolibertarian), Jeremy Sapienza (market anarchist), Crispin Sartwell (individualist-anarchist), Rebecca Solnit (environmentalist), Starhawk (neo-pagan eco-feminist), Warcry (eco-anarchist), Dana Ward (anarcho-archivist), David Watson (primitivist), Mike Webb (murder victim), Fred Woodworth (atheist anarchist), John Zerzan (primitivist) and Howard Zinn (New Left anarcho-Marxist).

This list does not even begin to mention all of the ideological tendencies to be found among anarchists, e.g., indigenist anarchism, anarcho-communism, national-anarchism, insurrectionary anarchism, Christian anarchism and many others. Even so, anarchists collectively probably do not comprise even one percent of the population at large. Imagine if the anarchist milieu were to grow to include tens of millions of people. Most likely all of these specific tendencies would grow exponentially, and some new ones no one has heard of yet would probably appear. How would anarchists go about organizing society if indeed anarchism were to become a mass movement and the state in its present form were to disappear. More specifically, how would we reconcile the differences between all of these different tendencies, and how would anarchists co-exist with persons of other belief systems? Unless we want to start sending people to re-education camps, or placing them in gulags, or engaging in summary or mass executions we had better start thinking some of this out.

There are really only three ways. One would be anarcho-totalitarianism, where whatever anarchist faction or group of factions that happens to have the most power simply represses their rivals, anarchists and non-anarchists alike. Another would be anarcho-mass democracy, where we have an anarchist parliament consisting of the Syndicalist Party, Primitivist Party, Libertarian Party, Ecology Party, Feminist Party, et.al., perhaps presided over by, say, Prime Minister Chuck Munson. While this might be an interesting situation, it ultimately wouldn’t be much different than the kinds of states we have today.

The only other alternative is the dispersion of power to local units. These could be localities where everything is completely privatized (Hoppe) or everything is completely collectivized (anarcho-communism), or some point in between. The specific anarchist tendencies these communities represented would be determined according to prevailing ideological currents at the local level. One contemporary anarchist observes:

The superficial story is that the primmies control the NW, the SW desert and the Appalachians, while the Reds control the entire NE block and have a mild advantage everywhere else.

So “after the revolution” the “primmies” would be dominant in their regions and the “Reds” in theirs, and presumably the Free Staters in theirs, and the queer anarchists in theirs,  and so forth. It’s also interesting to observe how radically different the value systems and definitions of “freedom” employed by different kinds of anarchists are. One anarchist has noted that some anarchists wish to bar alcohol, drugs, tobacco, meat, porn, S&M and prostitution from their communities. This should go along way with those libertarian-libertine anarchists for whom anarchy is synonomous with all sorts of legalized vice.  Then there’s the conflict between the ethno-preservationist national-anarchists and the anti-racist left-anarchists, and between the proprietarian anarchists and the communal anarchists. I’ve even come across an anarchist proponent of the draft. Of course, the different kinds of anarchists will insist that others are not true anarchists, but that’s beside the point. Each of the different anarchist factions consider themselves to be the true anarchists, and that’s not going to change.

The adherents of many of these philosophies act as though the fate of the world depends on their every move, when in reality each of these tendencies will often have no more than a few thousand, maybe a few hundred, maybe even just a few dozen sympathizers (or even fewer than that). Rarely is any attention given to the question of how anarchists will ever achieve any of their stated goals, to the degree that anarchists have any common goals, or any goals at all.

If anarchists want to have any impact on the wider society whatsoever, I believe there is only one way. First, anarchists, whatever their other differences, need to band together in large enough numbers to become single-issue political pressure group. This would be a pressure group just like those in the mainstream: pro-choice, pro-life, pro-gun, anti-gun, pro-gay marriage, anti-gay marriage, marijuana decriminalization, etc. The purpose of this pressure group would be to reduce political authority down to lowest unit possible, which, I believe is the local community, i.e., cities, towns, villages, districts, neighborhoods,etc. I recognize some anarchists wish to reduce politics down to the individual level. I’m a little more skeptical of that. For instance, I’m not so sure competing criminal codes could exist in the same territorial jurisdiction, but I’m willing to agree to disagree on that. I say let’s work to reduce things down to the city-state, county or village level, and then debate how much further to go from there. Such a pressure group could include not only anarchists of every kind, but also left-green decentralists, conservative local sovereignty groups, regionalist or secessionist tendencies or even good old fashioned Jeffersonian states’ rightsers. This idea does not mean that every locality would need to be an independent nation unto itself. They could be sovereign entities within broader territorial confederations, so long as they retained their right of withdrawal or to veto policies favored by the larger bodies. This way, even communities with radically different cultural values or economic arrangements could collaborate on projects of mutual interest such as maintenance of transportation systems, firefighting, or common defense.

Meanwhile, outside the context of this single-issue movement for radical decentralization, the different anarchist factions could continue their other interests in different contexts. Libertarians could continue to push for private money or competing currencies. Syndicalists could continue to push for anarcho-syndicalist unions. Primitivists could set up tech-free communes or villages. Anti-racists could protest Klan marches, and national-anarchists could set up ethnic separatist intentional communities. Pro-lifers could agitate against abortion and feminists could agitate against pro-lifers. Gun nuts could simultaneously belong to the NRA and pacifists could belong to the Catholic Workers. Anarcho-communists could organize Israeli-style kibbutzes and anarcho-capitalists could set up their preferred private defense agencies.

Additionally, different factions with different beliefs could target certain geographical areas for colonization as the Free Staters are doing in New Hampshire, the Christian Exodus is doing in South Carolina, the Native Americans are doing in the Lakota Republic, or the Ron Paulites are doing in the Liberty Districts. Indeed, Bill Bishop’s interesting book “The Big Sort” describes how Americans are in the process of self-separation along the lines of culture, religion, ideology, political affilitation, sexuality, age, income, occupation and every conceivable other issue. Colonization can then become a movement for full-blown local secession. The values and ideals of those whom you disagree with are not as personally threatening if you do not have to live under the same political roof , and the worse someone’s ideas are, the better that they be separate from everyone else.

This does not mean that sovereign communities cannot have institutionalized protects for individual liberties, minority rights, or popular rule. Some state constitutions or municipal charters already have protections of this type in some instances, and sometimes on a more expansive level than what is found in the U.S. Constitution. Individual sovereign communities could make such protections as extensive as they wanted. Nor does this mean that libertarian anti-statism is the “only” value. There are some values in life that transcend politics, and one can also be committed to other issues while also being committed to political decentralization and local sovereignty. For instance, I am also interested in prisoners’ rights, legal, judicial, penal and police reform, ending the war on drugs, repealing consensual crime laws, abolishing compulsory school attendance laws, opposing zoning ordinances, eminent domain, the overregulation of land and housing markets, sex worker rights, the right to bear arms, self-defense rights, the rights of students, the homeless, the handicapped, medical patients and psychiatric inmates, freedom of speech and the press, labor organizing, worker cooperatives, mutual aid associations, home schools and alternative education, credit unions and mutual banks, LETS, land reform, indigenous peoples’ rights, alternative media, non-state social services, and many other topics. My primary area of interest is foreign policy. In fact, foreign policy was the reason I became an anarchist and have remained one, in spite of being continually underwhelmed by the organized anarchist movement. I think the American empire and its effects on peoples throughout the world is an abomination, and I want to see it ended. Yet, I think at the same time an agglomeration of anarchist communities in North America would need some kind of “national defense” system, given that Europe and Asia may not “go anarchist” at the same moment, which is why I am interested in the paleoconservatives with their traditional American isolationist views.

At the same time, there are some topics that many anarchists are committed to that don’t particularly interest me. Environmentalism is one of these. Like all reasonable people, I think we need clean air and water, and it’s not cool to build a toxic waste dump in a residential area. Yet, the eco-doomsday ideologies associated with ideas like global warming and peak oil are not things I’m sold on as of yet. I also really just don’t see what the big deal about endangered species is. The overwhelming majority of species that have existed thus far have already gone extinct, so what’s a few more? Still, if this is an issue others care passionately about, then by all means enaged in direct action on behalf of sea turtles or spotted owls or against urban sprawl. Don’t let me get in your way. Gay marriage is another topic I really just don’t give a fuck about, not because I’m anti-gay but because I view marriage as an archaic religious and statist institution that anarchists or libertarians or radicals of any stripe should not be promoting. But that’s just me. As an atheist, I also don’t care much for the militant politicized atheism found in some circles. I agree that compulsory religious instruction and practice should not exist in state-run schools, but I think extending this idea to things like prayers at city council meetings or football games, or extracurricular religious clubs in state institutions, is taking things a bit far. It is this sort of thing that alienates the usually religious poor and working class from radicalism.

Lastly, we need to consider how to appeal to all those ordinary folks out there whose assistance we might need in order to achieve these kinds of goals. An anarchist-led, libertarian-populist, radical decentralist, pan-secessionist movement that appealed to the tradition and ideals of the American Revolution is the only possible avenue. What I have outlined here is essentially the same set of views promoted by Voltairine de Cleyre in her essays “Anarchism without Adjectives” and “Anarchism and American Traditions“. If you don’t like my views, then come up with a plan of your and let the rest of us hear about it.

Quote of the Week:

“In spite of the unceasing efforts made by men in power to conceal this and to ascribe a different meaning to power, power is the application of a rope, a chain by which a person will be bound and dragged along, or of a whip, with which he will be flogged, or of a knife, or an ax with which they will cut off his hands, feet, ears, head—an application of these means or the threat they will be used. Thus it was in the time of Nero and of Ghenghis Khan and thus it is even now, in the most liberal of governments.”

                                                                                                              -Leo Tolstoy

“”One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words socialism and communism draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, Nature-cure quack, pacifist and feminist in England… “We have reached a stage when the very word socialism calls up, on the one hand, a picture of airplanes, tractors and huge glittering factories of glass and concrete; on the other, a picture of vegetarians with wilting beards, of Bolshevik commissars (half gangster, half gramophone), or earnest ladies in sandals, shock-headed Marxists chewing polysyllables, escaped Quakers, birth control fanatics, and Labour Party backstairs-crawlers. “If only the sandals and pistachio-colored shirts could be put in a pile and burnt, and every vegetarian, teetotaler and creeping Jesus sent home to Welwyn Garden City to do his yoga exercises quietly. As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.”

                                                                                                     -George Orwell

The Drug War: A Bonanza for the Enemies of Freedom by Kevin Carson

Prosecute ‘Em by Jack Hunter

New Issue of Synthesis

What Happened to the Peace Movement? Scott Horton interviewed by Lew Rockwell

Farewell, US Hegemony by Andrew Bacevich and Tom Engelhardt

America’s Shame by Eric Margolis

Is the State Necessary? by Kirkpatrick Sale

National-Anarchist Portraits: Andrew Yeoman

Taking Secession Seriously-At Last by Kirkpatrick Sale

H.L. Mencken Speaks Wow!!

Shrink the State: A Leftist Aim by Chris Dillow

Secession Is Our Future by Cliff Thies

Let a Thousand Nations Bloom from Free Guptastan

Revisionism: A New, Angry Look at the American Past from TIME, 1970

Why We Fight the Power by Roderick Long

Neocons on the Danube by Paul Gottfried

Credit Card Deform by Sheldon Richman

Don’t Know Much About Capitalism by Thomas Woods

African Anarchism in Zimbabwe by Larry Gambone

Is GDP Decreasing? by Francois Tremblay

Outside the Gates: Turkey and Europe by Mark Hackard

Debt as a Way of Life by Richard Spencer

The Taliban’s Road to Kabul by Patrick Cockburn

Death at Work in American by Joann Wypijewski

Zionist Lobby Targets Another Tenured Professor by Doug Henwood

The Nuremberg Truth and Reconciliation Committee by Jeremy Scahill

Will Iceland Be Handed Over to a New Gang of Kleptocrats? by Michael Hudson

Israeli Fascism by Uri Avnery

Why the U.S. Still Hates Cuba by Frederico Fuentes

Obama’s Sins of Omission by Andrew J. Bacevich

The Secessionist Option: Why Now? by Ian Baldwin

George Washington on Entangling Alliances 

James Madison on War 

Most Women Oppose Preferences in Hiring Blacks by TGGP

Unsubstantiated Blanket Statements by Ean Frick

“Get Your Hands Off My Country” 

Military Moronity by William S. Lind

The Secessionist Bookshelf by Bill Buppert

Anarchy and the Law of the Somalis by Dick Clark

The Fed Has Wounded You Gerald Celente interviewed by Lew Rockwell

To Vaccinate or Not to Vaccinate? by Charles Pena

The Case for Prosecuting Bush by David Henderson

Some Might Call It Treason by Philip Giraldi

Calamity Jane by Justin Raimondo

The U.S. is Addicted to Imperialism Eric Margolis interviewed by Scott Horton

Get Out of Iraq George McGovern interviewed by Scott Horton

The U.S. Should Cut Military Spending by One Half by Benjamin Friedman

We Are All Torturers in America by Naomi Wolf

The Greatest Gay Rights Song Ever Written -here’s the lyrics

Secession: The True Bioregional Way by Kirkpatrick Sale

The Ten Core Values of Survivalism 

The Greatest American President of All by Thomas Woods

Is is Time to Bring Back the Lone Star Republic? by Kelse Moen

Is a Hyperinflationary Depression Ahead? John Williams interviewed by Howard Ruff

The Rich Capitalist Who Co-Founded Communism by Robert Service

The Lobby Wants War by Justin Raimondo

Obama Looks Unimpressive on Civil Liberties After 100 Days by J.D. Tuccille

The Dark Core of the Empire by Jacob Hornberger

Tortured by the Past by Frank Snepp

The Obama-Netanyahu Showdown by Robert Parry

What This Country Needs is a Good Pirated Version of Kindle E-Books by Kevin Carson

Really Small Firm Size by Shawn Wilbur

Help Arthur Silber

Fair Taxers-Friends or Foes? by Dylan Hales

Obama and “Two States” by Ellen Cantarow

The McCarthyism That Horowitz Built by Dana Cloud

The Cocaine Powder/Crack Sentencing Disparity by Jasmine Tyler and Anthony Papa

Obama Disses Tea Partyers by Red Phillips

The Flu Hysteria Agency by Bill Anderson

The Evil of Eminent Domain by David T. Beito

Secede, Georgia! 

Is Neocon Foreign Policy Finished? by Ivan Eland

Dictatorial Powers Unchallenged by Andy Worthington

Bibi’s Holocaust-or Ours? by Gordon Prather

Freedom of Expression, Dissenting Historians and the Holocaust Revisionists by David Botsford

Thought Police Muscle Up in Britain by Hal G.P. Colebatch

Why Many Chinese Don’t Want Freedom by Richard Bernstein

Economic Policy and Growth by TGGP

Jon Stewart the Hypocrite by Francois Tremblay

May Day 2009 by Rad Geek

The Shadow of the Panther by Hugh Pearson

Remembering Gustave Landauer-He Was Killed 90 Years Ago Today 

Strictly Personal  by Chuck Baldwin

The Road to Weimar America by Robert Stacy McCain

“Do You Take This Pony?” by Evan McLaren

Thoroughly Modern Marxism by Richard Spencer

Is the GOP Too Conservative? by Jack Hunter

The Swine Are Loose by Ilana Mercer

Technofascism, Not Socialism by Thomas Naylor

Dissing the Declaration by Harrison Bergeron 2

Kabul’s New Elite by Patrick Cockburn

The Israel Boycott is Biting by Nadia Hijab

Quote of the Week:

“There’s the populist wing of the libertarian movement, and then there’s the Washington crowd that’s still trying to sell libertarianism, or their version of it, to elites. These people want to go along and get along. As long as they can abort their babies and sodomize each other and take as many drugs as they want to, they are happy. They don’t care who is being killed in Iraq and how many Iraqis are dying. That’s their hierarchy of values.”

                                                                                                          -Justin Raimondo

Joke of the Week:

“Watching Keith Preston shows me beyond the shadow of the doubt that life isn’t worth living as a cold manipulator.”

                                                                                              -Anonymous Lunatic

The Tyranny of Tolerance by Hal G.P. Colebatch

Soft Totalitarianism by Thomas Jackson

“Hate Crimes” Prevention Bill Will Suppress Speech by Paul Craig Roberts

The Left Attacks the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle by Matthew Yglesias

Torture and Mr. Obama by William Blum

Obama’s War Budget by Jeff Leys

The Marijuana Dilemma: Free Market Decriminalization vs Bureaucratic Legalization by Daniel Flynn

When Norman Mailer Ran for Mayor of NYC by John Buffalo Mailer

Obama’s Afghan-Ignorant Policy by Michael Scheuer

Ignore AIPAC at America’s Peril by Philip Giraldi

The Great Depression of 2009 by Gerald Celente

Exempting Israel From Criticism by Paul Craig Roberts

Is Obama Taking on the Israel Lobby? by Justin Raimondo

Obama Must Break from Past Israel Policy by Jonathan Steele

National-Anarchists Smash Shop Windows in San Francisco by BANA

Dead Souls by Alexander Cockburn

Jailed for Caring by Neve Gordon

Why the Left Hates Decentralization by Thomas Woods

The Case for All-Black Schools by Jeff Severns Guntzel

Andrej Grubacic on Anarchism for the 21st Century 

“They Had Swords”: Anarchist Mayhem in San Francisco 

Anarchist Common Action General Assembly Meets in the Pacific Northwest 

IWW Starbucks’ Workers Organizing Efforts Extend to Chile 

American Exceptionalism (And Why American Extremists Tend to Be Anarchists Rather Than Communists and Fascists) by Seymour Martin Lipset

Bush POWs Treated Worse Than Americans Captured by the Chinese by Glenn Greenwald

Afghans to Obama: Get Out, Take Karzai With You by Patrick Cockburn

The Torturer’s Apprentice by Richard Neville

To Power a Nation: Nuclear Bombs or Sunshine? by Manuel Garcia, Jr.

Pork and Baloney: Obama’s Defense Budget by Winslow T. Wheeler

Pakistan in Crisis by Deepak Tripathi

Stanford Alumni Call for Investigation of Condoleeza Rice by Marjorie Cohn

Who’s Behind the Financial Meltdown? 

The AIPAC Spy Case by James G. Abourezk

Afghan Ayatollahs Push Marital Rape Law by Patrick Cockburn

Dropping the AIPAC Spy Case by Gary Leupp

Economy on the Ropes by Mike Whitney

Is the GOP Finished Yet? by Pat Buchanan

The Mexican Flu by Jack Hunter

I Committed Treason Last Week by Kevin D. Annett

Remembering Isabel Paterson by Stephen Cox

The Case Against the State from LiberaLaw

“Communism” vs Communism by Milan Valach

We Are Brainwashed to Believe We Are in a Classless Society by Francois Tremblay

Doing Tax Resistance from the Picket Line

Dialectical Anarchism by Roderick Long

Against Rothbard and Keynes, for Marx by TGGP

The Copyright Nazis’ Latest Venue: Newspapers by Kevin Carson

Liberty Creates Order by Sheldon Richman

The Ruling Class Nature of the Federal Reserve by Sheldon Richman

Moral Nihilism and Existentialism from Back to the Drawing Board

Victim of Amerika  by William Norman Grigg

Want to Get Out of Debt? 

Hero of Gun Rights by Jeff Snyder

Texas Highway Robbery-by the Cops!! by Gary Tuchman and Katherine Wojtecki

Armed Student Saves Lives 

The Taliban Are Coming! The Taliban Are Coming! by Eric Margolis

The Federal Government is Increasingly Totalitarian by Mark Crovelli

Survivalism: It’s Just Common Sense by Tim Elliot

Money Must Not Be State Provided by Mike Rozeff

Waterboard an A-rab for Jesus by Laurence Vance

Ron Paul, Surveillance and the GOP by James Bovard

“Democracy at Gunpoint” Strategy Guarantees Defeat by William Pfaff

A Nation of Men, Not Laws by Nat Hentoff

A Vietnam Warning  by Robert Dreyfuss

At What Point is a Traitor a Patriot? by Bill Buppert

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republicans

Jon Stewart: Wimp, Wuss and Moral Coward by Justin Raimondo

Congressional Retards Call for a Ban on “Indecent” Viagra Commercials by Butler Shaffer (and the proper response)

AIPAC Stooge Jane Harman: Fuck That Bitch article by Glenn Greenwald

How to Survive the Depression and Worse Jack Spirko interviewed by Lew Rockwell

Student Loan Debt: The Next Big Crash?

U.S. Policy Breeds Revolution in Pakistan Eric Margolis interviewed by Scott Horton

How Israel Avoids a Palestinian State by David Bromwich

Nukes and National Independence: The French Example by Edouard Husson

A Conspiracy to Prevent Torture Prosecutions? by Thomas R. Eddlem

Taking Liberties With the “Justice” System by Andy Worthington

Another Cheney Cover-Up? by David Corn

The New Face of the Senate? 

French Mutualism Beyond Proudhon  by Shawn Wilbur

How Good People Turn Evil, and Why the State is the Problem by Francois Tremblay

The Forces of the American Occupation (of America) from Rad Geek

From a Slave to His Former Master, in 1865  from Roderick Long

Can Christians Serve in the New World Army? by Chuck Baldwin

The New Racism by Pat Buchanan

Casualties of Obama’s War by Patroon

Stuff White People Like by Robert Weissberg

Can Local Government Work for the Poor? from IFPRI Forum

Another Federalist of the Left? from The Volokh Conspiracy

The End of Arrogance: Decentralization and Anarchist Organizing by the Curious George Brigade

Bush is a Felonious Torturer by Judge Andrew Napolitano

Should a Christian Join the Military? by Laurence Vance

Empire Contributed to Economic Crisis by Ivan Eland

Rangoon’s Renaissance by Doug Bandow

Obama Readies Troops as Afghans Die by Jeremy Scahill

Give Up Your Empire or Live Under It Jacob Hornberger interviewed by Scott Horton

Why We Fight: U.S. Troops Die for Rapists by Ted Rall

Taking Up Where Clinton-Gore Left Off by Gordon Prather

The President and His Troublesome Allies by Tony Karon

U.S. Foreign Policy Caused the Taliban Problem by Jacob Hornberger

The Torture BITCH by Justin Raimondo

Happy Days  by Peter Schiff

A Woman Dumber Than John McCain? by Ilana Mercer

Fuck the PIGS from Rad Geek

A Full Court Press for Pakistan War by Chris Floyd

Marilyn Chambers, R.I.P. by Warren Hinckle

In Praise of Revolutions  by Serge Halimi

Hilary and Latin America by Mark Weisbrot

Recessions and Labor Unions by David Macaray

Mothers and War by Ron Jacobs

A Break from the Past in the Drug War? by Kevin Zeese

Party of Rush by Robert Fantina

A Hymn to Political Incorrectness (and another one!)

Reflections on Urban Sociology by Chris Rock

Quote of the Week:

“The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.”

“Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always civilized and tolerant.”

                                                                                              H. L. Mencken

“Why is the US making itself impotent fighting wars that have nothing whatsoever to do with is security, wars that are, in fact, threatening its security?  The answer is that the military/security lobby, the financial gangsters, and AIPAC rule.  The American people be damned.”

                                                                                            -Paul Craig Roberts

Secede! Bill Buppert interviewed by Lew Rockwell

Did Somebody Say Secession? by Jack Hunter

How Dare Anyone Question the Fed? by Thomas Woods

Who Rules America? by Paul Craig Roberts

It is Getting Very Serious Now by Chuck Baldwin

Do You Feel Safer Now? from No Third Solution

Intellectual Property: A Libertarian Critique by Kevin Carson

The Great American Bank Robbery (of US) by Thomas N. Naylor

Twelve Axioms of American Foreign Policy Towards Israel by Thomas N. Naylor

The New Neocons  by Justin Raimondo

Hillary and the Sleeping Dragon by William S. Lind

A Practical Path to Secession by Bill Buppert

King of the Hate Business by Alexander Cockburn

Local Barter Clubs Proliferating by Hazel Henderson

Money Talks  by Tomislav Sunic

Workers Power and the Ultra-Right by Ean Frick

Apostle of Catastrophe Kirkpatrick Sale interviewed by Derek Turner

Pentagon Gluttons by Charles Pena

Pelosi the Ennabler by Robert Scheer

The Inside Fight Over Torture by Nick Baumann

New General, Same War by Robert Dreyfuss

10th Amendment Showdown by John Bowman

Obama’s Latest Effort to Conceal Evidence of Bush Era Crimes by Glenn Greenwald

Saving Israel from Itself by John J. Mearsheimer

The Hidden Hand of Dick Cheney by Juan Cole

Torture Cannot Be Justified to Save Lives by Klint Alexander

Surprise! by Harrison Bergeron 2

On Cops and Gangs by Manuel Lora

The Cure for Layoffs: Fire the Boss! by Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis

PIGS Kill Teenager Over Expired License Tags 

Employees Occupy Their Company in Rochester 

Where Were All of the Business Schools When Wall Street Needed Them Most? by Thomas N. Naylor

PIGS Attack Stuffed Animal with Taser 

The Shell Game of Democracy by Ray Mangum

Judicial Restraint by TGGP

Wanted: A Fighting Party by Pat Buchanan

Savage Nation by Derek Turner

Remembering the Great Screaming Lord Sutch by Ray Mangum (check it out!

Bull Markets in the Cocaine Game by Mark Easton

The U.S. Descends Deeper into the Third World 

PETA Founder Comes Up With Another Howler by Francois Tremblay

The Fascist Federation vs Free-Market Aliens by John Bowman

The Rule of the “Experts” by Justin Raimondo

Saigon Again? by Philip Giraldi

What a Horrible Weapon the Taser is… (especially in the hands of the PIGS) by William Norman Grigg

We Face Economic Destruction by Murray Rothbard

Understanding the Long War by Tom Hayden

Saberi’s Plight and American Media Propaganda by Glenn Greenwald

It’s Time to End the Cold War by James Bissett

Obama’s Empire by Sheldon Richman

The Case Against World Currency Schemes by David Gordon

Obama Can’t Fix the Military Commissions by Denny LeBoeuf

Becoming What We Seek to Destroy by Chris Hedges

The Bubble to End All Bubbles by Gerald Celente

Bill Would Turn Bloggers Into Felons by John Cox

Mohawks March on Canadian Border by Michael Peeling

The Bomb Iran Faction by Gary Leupp

Obama Chooses a Reliable Dictatorship by Wajahat Ali

Why Isn’t Obama Turning to Credit Unions? by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman

Pseudo-Science and Wrongful Convictions in the War on Drugs by John Kelly

Who Killed 120 Civilians? by Patrick Cockburn

New York Governor Does the Right Thing by Anthony Papa

Jon Stewart and Truman, the War Criminal by Paul Krassner

Savage Nation by Derek Turner

A Hypocrisy That Can Win by Richard Spencer

Ron Paul Republicans by Jack Hunter

Social Solidarity is Overrated by Richard Spencer

The Economics of the Meltdown interview with Tom Woods

Michael Savage is Our Business by Marcus Epstein

Star Trek and Humanity by Razib Khan

Glen Beck Discusses Anarchy with Penn Jillette hat tip to Francois Tremblay

Bakunin on Order hat tip to Brad Spangler

 Where Russia Went Wrong by Michael Hudson

The Limits of Liberalism by Lance Selfa

Obama Channels Cheney by Dave Lindorff

Obama and Latin America: No Light, All Tunnell by Robert Sandels

The Banker Boys Are Alright: Time to End the Bailouts by Dean Baker

It’s Time for Another Stock Market Correction interview with Jim Rogers

A Sucker’s Rally by Gary North

The Bitterly Clinging Obama by Vin Suprynowicz

Death of a Civilization by Dave Deming

Four Traits of the Really Successful Investors by Chris Clancy

1984: The Book That Killed George Orwell by Robert McCrum

Christians for Torture by Laurence Vance

U.S. Out of Pakistan and Afghanistan by Ron Paul

The Social Benefits of Saving by Hans Hermann Hoppe

Gangbangers in Blue by William Norman Grigg

Jesse Ventura Wants Cheney on a Waterboard from Larry King Live

Support Your Local Police? by Laurence Vance

Tax Revolt in California by Gary North

What Did Nancy Know? by Justin Raimondo

Twenty Years After the Fall by Eduoard Husson

The Politics of Excusing Torture in the Name of National Security by John Dean

Obama Administration Statements on Iranian Nukes Not Backed by Intelligence by Jeremy Hammond

The Sematics of Torture by John McQuaid

Obama: A Careerist, Not an Ideologue by Pat Buchanan

National Bankruptcy by Peter Schiff

Child Abusers in Uniform? from No Third Solution

The Tragedy of Classical Liberalism by Gus diZerega

For Reproductive Anarchy by Roderick Long

Anarcho-Communists for Private Property? by Roderick Long

Film Crew Arrested for Filming PIG from Rad Geek

How the Left Killed Hollywood Drama by S.T. Karnick

Is College Worth It? by Tom Piatak

You Can’t Do This on Television or Can You? by Dylan Hales

Cultural Continuity and Revolution 

Neo-Slavery Re-Emerging as a Business Strategy by Brenda Walker

Obama Picks Up Where Bush Left Off by Mike Whitney

A Real History of Rupert Murdoch by Bruce Page

The Black Shirts of Guantanamo by Jeremy Scahill

Vaginas from Outer Space! by Kim Nicolini

PIGS Assault Pastor

Can Star Trek’s Non-Violent Utopia Happen?

A Special Kind of Feminist

You’ve Got to See This One to Believe It

Recently, ATS/ARV associate Jeremy Weiland put forth some questions that are well worth considering. Here goes:

- Is opposition to the state something that can genuinely serve as a rallying point for broad-based revolutionary change? What kind of language would this need to be articulated in?

“Anti-statism” in the more abstract sense that libertarians and anarchist theoreticians conceive of it is not something that can be a “rallying point” for the average person. Most people are not ideological or philosophical by nature. Most people do not have the aversion to authority that is implicit in libertarian ideologies. No movement calling itself “anarchist” is ever going to be a mass movement, nor will the dogmatic libertarianism of the anarcho-capitalists. Simply trying to convert “the masses” to anti-statism of the kind that, for instance, Tolstoy or Alexander Berkman or Rothbard preached will be no more successful that an attempt to convert them to Scientology. However, a rebellion against a state that has lost its perceived legitimacy is far more probable, and has many precedents throughout all sorts of cultures. The particular rhetoric employed should be strongly rooted in the cultural, political and historical traditions of the particular society in question. Therefore, for the U.S., the rhetoric of secession, self-determination, “sic semper tyrannis,” and appeals to the legacy of 1776  are appropriate because it resonates well with the political education of the ordinary person. These things seems familiar, while exotic ideologies simply seem weird. Of course, that doesn’t mean that leaders, activists, organizers, intellectuals, writers or particular groups cannot be influenced or motivated by such ideologies.

- What would a single issue, cross-ideological coalition look like, and what would keep disparate parties united in action? I’ve seen arguments on either side about this matter, but it seems we’re merely speculating.

I agree that at this point in the game it’s merely a matter of speculation. However, I do not think it would be different from similar coalitions that have existed in the past. For instance, the movement to oppose the extension of slavery into the western territories of the pre-Civil War period included racists and nativists who opposed slavery because they did not want the black population to expand westward, and it also included abolitionists who wanted to see an end to slavery for it’s own sake, and believed that containing it in the South would bring its eventual demise. The New Deal coalition included Northern blacks and civil rights activists, and Southern segregationists. These kinds of political coalitions of seemingly opposite groups are not as uncommon as many seem to think. Because the center-left is likely to be dominant for the forseeable future, the question is what kind of political re-alignment would need to take place in order to effectively challenge the hegemony of the center-left? My guess is that it would not be any kind of “conservatism” as presently understood, though it could include issue-oriented factions that are currently part of the official “conservative” milieu. Most probably, the future of radicalism is with some kind of anti-liberal left. For instance, something like Norman Mailer’s “left-conservatism,” which is in many ways polar opposite from conventional “conservatism.”

- Similarly, is it possible to promote a program for political change that is motivated by radically different political / ethical / philosophical constructions and analyses? Can we agree on the means and not the ends, or do we have to be agreed on both, or maybe just the latter?

Thus far in the secessionist movement, there are everything from socially conservative Christians to left-wing environmentalists, and some of the latter have anarchist backgrounds. So the seed is already being planted.

- What is the relationship between political belief and identity, and how does coalition deal with this effectively? Seems like a lot of the talk in the thread centers around whom one “rejects” or “is happy to work with”. Well, what does that mean, and to what extent does either affect our sense of what “side” we’re on, and therefore what the constellation of possible coalitions actually is?

Those who spend so much time discussing whom they “reject” tend to be ideologues who wish to maintain a level of purity and enforce a set of cultural values in a such a way that simply doesn’t work when it comes to practical politics. American politics operates on the basis of shifting coalitions of divergent political interest groups, which is why you find everything from the Log Cabin Republicans to the disciples of Rev. Pat Robertson among the Republicans, and everything from the traditional labor unionists and the gay lobby among the Democrats. Many of my harshest critics in the “anarchist” and “left-libertarian” milieus are not really the kinds of folks I would envision as being leaders or constituents for a pan-secessionist movement, anyway. The reason I participate in those forums is not to convert them en masse, but to reach those isolated individuals who may be sympathetic to what I’m saying, because it is an individual of that type that might very well play a leadership role at some future point.

How do we evaluate progress towards the goal of decentralizing power? This to me is a crucial problem: the coalition must be useful to these different interests. How much of this anarcho-pluralist idea depends on actual subsidiarity vs. the symbolic dissolutions of the state and other centralized institutions as such? The former seems much more fundamental but more slippery; the latter serves as a definite milepost, but could be superficial as well.

Well, how do we evaluate the success of the expulsion of the forces of King George III during the American Revolution? How do we evaluate the success of the attempted secession of 1861? For any one faction to remain in a political coalition, the faction’s leadership and members must believe they have more to gain by staying put than by leaving. At the same time, it is the nature of coalitions that some factions are more successful at achieving their objectives within the context of the coalition than others. Among Democrats, pro-NAFTA neoliberal business interests were successful than anti-NAFTA union interests. Among Republicans, neocons have been more successful than traditionalist conservatives and right-libertarians.

For example, let’s say that the panarchist lobby achieves a significant amount of local autonomy for communities in America. How would this be regarded if it did not involve the formal dissolution of the U.S.?

The end result could either be that the U.S. is broken up entirely (like the Soviet Union) or the U.S. could remain in some kind of defanged, confederated form (like the Article of Confederation). I suppose how well this would be regarded would depend on one’s perspective. Hard-core anarcho-capitalists and “purist” anarchists of other kinds would probably say this is still too much government. Perhaps these could take things further still in their own local areas.

How would we be able to TELL that the decentralization meets the coalition’s requirements? Or would we require a formal renunciation of central authority to validate our mission? I see a great deal of possible confusion occurring because preserving but weakening the central state could serve some coalition interests and not others. I go back and forth on how important it is to smash the state vs. rendering it irrelevant.

Again, the devolution of power could take on a radical decentralist flavor within the context of the wider U.S. as a nation-state (the Bill Kaufmann/Norman Mailer vision) or involve dissolution into independent political units (the Kirkpatrick Sale/League of the South vision). Within the present secessionist movement, there are proponents of both perspectives: for instance, the differences between the Second Vermont Republic and the Free State Project, as the latter does not advocate formal secession.

It seems to me like the more diverse the cross-ideological coalition, the fuzzier the end goal is. What does it mean for a particular ideological / ethnic / lifestyle group to have sufficient autonomy, and are there any attendant formalities to achieving that condition? Otherwise, how do all parties determine their particularist interests are being met by the general mission?

I suppose each party would have its own standards as to how it judges it success as a coalition member. I don’t think there can be any generally agreed upon guidelines for that. The same is true of the various members of the Democratic and Republican coalitions. How does the NRA evaluate its success as a member of the GOP coalition? How does the NAACP regard its success within the Democratic Party?

There’s another problem of achieving the big sort on terms that make sense to the anarcho-pluralist project. How quickly could an even “bigger sort” occur, and how would we handle the quite likely situation where breaking up national state power does not coincide with the self-segregation of different political tendencies into distinct, homogeneous communities?

Well, if another “big sort” occurs, there can be another round of secession or division. It’s very likely the breakup of the central regime will lead to both some communities being organized along ideologically distinctive lines (like the Free State Project or Christian Exodus) while anothers may be the ideologically mixed administrative systems that we have now.

Decentralizing power right now with the current demographics would very likely just yield hundreds of little status quo Americas over the short and medium term.

So what? The purpose of decentralization is to create a marketplace of governments and communities that collectively acts as a constraint on what any one tyrant or political interest group can impose. What you’ve described here would also be the de facto end of the empire.

How do we build popular support for a position that, essentially, breaks up existing communities filled with the non-ideologically motivated population? If I don’t give a shit about decentralizing power, I don’t see why I’d be interested in picking up and moving just because some dick comes to power in my community.

My guess is that a pan-secessionist movement would be a coalition of regional and local movements representing the prevaling cultural and ideological currents in their respective regions and communities. Secessionism in large cities might have an African-American orientation. In Oregon or Vermont it might be green-oriented. Secession movements in the South, Texas or the Western states might have a more conservative/libertarian/populist approach. It could vary even more at the local level. For instance, I think a secession movement in Texas that had a generally conservative outlook would need to strengthen its positions by providing assurances that it would not rule tyrannically over liberal enclaves in places like Austin. This is one of the reasons why I think something like “states’ rights” by itself is not enough. Something like a Swiss cantonal system would be a means to autonomy for dissident communities within a seceded area. An even more serious problem would be something where multiple factions claim the same territory: for example, Aztlan Nation and the Republic of Texas both claim Texas, and the League of the South and some of the “new Afrika” groups claim the South. Christian Exodus has its sites on South Carolina, but I’ve also seen articles by gays in South Carolina who are sympathetic to secession. So a regional confederal system, perhaps one that is polycentric in nature, may be necessary in order to handle such differences.

With regards to the first question I asked, “How do we define success”, there’s a different way of asking it that may be more useful: has there ever been a successful revolutionary / secessionist movement that only articulated a negative platform? Is merely being against the state enough, or do we also need to unite around being “for” something as well? In other words, is there historical evidence for the kind of ideologically-neutral anti-statism you’re proposing, or is there perhaps a need to articulate a positive agenda?

I think there needs to be a few overarching principles that serve as points of unity, like the legitimacy of secession, the legitimacy of decentralism or separatism as means of handling severe cultural and ideological differences, or recognition that the empire is a failure and that communities of scale are more beneficient. The thing to do is to promote and work to popularize these ideas in the wider political culture, just like proponents of gay rights, pro-life, gun control, gun rights, etc. do all the time. Beyond that, I would say that individual regional, local or private forces in a wider pan-secessionist movement could have whatever internal beliefs or practices they wished. As far as actual examples of revolutions with anti-statism as a primary item in the platform, there are a couple that have come close, like the American Revolution and the Anarchist uprising in Catalonia. I don’t think the idea of pan-secessionism is purely negative in content. It includes the positives of “self-determination” of distinctive cultures, regions, and communties; independence of subjugated populations from an oppressive overarching state, human scale institutions that maximize accountability to those whom they are supposed to serve; achievement of political peace among otherwise hostile ideological or cultural groups; and the proliferation of many different kinds of communities that allow an individual greater freedom of choice in terms of associations and lifestyles. A realistic pan-secessionist movement would likely have a number of other generally shared secondary ideas as a complement to the primary ideas. For instance, if pan-secessionism were rooted heavily in the lower classes and the less formally educated, then an economic outlook combining a variety of libertarian and populist themes would likely be present, as well as a social or cultural outlook that is generally disinterested in so-called “political correctness,” as the latter is generally the ideology of the left-wing of the educated, upper-middle class.

Of course, you do enounter the issue of groups that will not join a coalition that also includes other groups that they strongly disagree with. But these kinds of groups will necessarily have to fall by the wayside. The way to compensate for this is to focus on where we can get the greatest numbers. That’s why I’ve advocated synthesizing secessionism with populism and an emphasis on certain socio-economic classes, demographic and political groups. Generally speaking, I suspect a movement of this type that grew large enough to achieve something approaching actual success would include more lower class people than upper class, more lower educated than academic elites, more young than old. Also, while “right-wing populist” currents would likely be present in such a movement, I’m not yet convinced they would be the dominant current. Much of the populist right represents forces that are in decline and losing ground politically. I think the more relevant question for the future would be: If the center-left is likely to be the dominant ideological paradigm for some time to come, what would the opposition to the center-left from a more radical left look like? Some evidence indicates that the prevailing currents might well originate from what might be called the “independent” Left or even ethno-nationalist elements among the racial minority groups, given that research has shown that there is actually more support for genuinely radical ideas like secession among self-identified “liberals” and racial minorities. With regards to the former, I would say the real source of class conflict in modern American society is between the lumpenproletariat and the New Class. With regards to the racial minorities, I am no way suggesting that we regurgitate the “anti-racism” hysteria of the Left. I am simply saying that a future pan-secessionist political/military alliance might include secessionist movements of an African-American or Hispanic nature as core players. I am not making any PC suggestions here. I’m just recognizing that racial minority secessionists might be part of a pan-secessionist coalition in the same manner as particular nations in a military alliance. The emerging “alternative Right” might also grow into a “true left” (i.e., radical, revolutionary) opposition force at some point in the future. There is also the need for such a movement to identify those groups most under attack by the state, and with the least to loose by rejecting the state, or who lack political representation within the state, and cultivate these as constituents for a wider movement. This is what I tried to do in essays like this one.

Essentially, I see the dominance of center-left liberalism being eventually challenged by a political re-alignment that draws from the populist right, radical middle, independent left, minority nationalists, lumpenproletarian class, urban underclass, rural neo-peasantry, petite bourgeoisie, de class elements and eco-radicals. These groups would then break down into different issue-oriented groups, cultural factions and so forth. I suspect their will also be some big splits among the Left’s constituent groups in the future: genuine eco-radicals vs liberal enviros, elite vs lumpen racial minorities, upper middle class feminists vs poor and working women, etc. For instance, I recall seeing an exit poll after the Bush-Kerry election in 2004 that indicated that twenty-five percent of self-identified homosexuals actually voted for Bush. As the economy worsens and class divisions continue to widen, and as the police state continues to tighten its grip, I suspect there will be plenty of homos, lesbos, trannies, et.al who will put their own material and political survival first. For instance, I’ve seen occurrences of anti-Zionist demonstrations including Muslims and anti-Zionist Jews, left-anarchists and national-anarchists, homos/trannies and Communists, as part of the same demo, and I suspect there will be more of that in the future. So it’s not like the Left’s favored “oppressed” groups all have the same interests or politics. Collectively, all of these things might comprise constituent groups for a pan-secessionist movement that evolves into a mass secession movement like the secession of the colonies in 1776 or the attempted secession of the Confederacy in 1861

On the other side, would be neocons, jingoists, American nation-state -based nationalists, imperialists, globalists, liberal internationalists, neoliberals, totalitarian humanists, cultural Marxists, multiculturalists, elite members of traditional outgroups, the political class, the state-capitalist economic elite, the New Class, war and police state profiteers, Zionists, and others with a stake in maintaining the status quo.

Quote of the Week:

“The exception is more interesting than the rule. The rule proves nothing; the exception proves everything: It confirms not only the rule but also its existence, which derives only from the exception. In the exception the power of real life breaks through the crust of a mechanism that has become torpid by repetition.”

                                                                                                   -Carl Schmitt

“The secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people.”

                                                                                                  -George Bernard Shaw

Barack Obama: From Antiwar Law Professor to Warmonger in 100 Days by Alexander Cockburn

The Humanitarian Face of the State, With Fangs by Lew Rockwell

Why Liberals Love Obama by Justin Raimondo

The Limits of Race by Paul Gottfried

Beheading on a Bus: Why Do Psychiatrists Excuse a Killer? by Thomas Szasz

To Serve and Protect (Themselves) by Thomas Knapp

Gangsters in Blue by Kevin Carson

Tracking the Fall of Empire Chalmers Johnson interviewed by Scott Horton

American Death Squad by Justin Raimondo

Challenging the Lobby by Murray Polner

Obama Steers Toward Endless War with Islam by Michael Scheuer

Secession is in the Water by Tom Wrobleski

Picking on AIPAC? by Philip Giraldi

Vermont Patriots: Alternative to Empire by Thomas N. Naylor

Torture and Empire by Stephen Walt

The Unlikely Survivalist by Susan Carpenter

Why I Became a Wobbly by Mike Ballard

Arrogant and Ignorant: U.S. Aggression Against Pakistan and Afghanistan by Eric Margolis

Secession and Nullification Are All Around You by Patroon

Own It by Ilana Mercer

British Surveillance State Attacked-with Axes!! by Ben Leach

Richard Neuhaus: The Failures of a “Public Intellectual” by David Gordon

Torture: The Plot Sickens by Alan Bock

Unexceptional Americans: Why We Can’t See the Forest or the Trees by Noam Chomksy

Bipartisan Disaster by Jack Hunter

The Toll Booth Economy by Michael Hudson

Bibi’s Next War by Pat Buchanan

Work is Hell by Michael D. Yates

Whiteout by Jared Taylor

Meet the Climate Change Lobby by Marianne Lavelle

Opening the Conservative Mind by Paul Gottfried

Gitmo: A Prison Built on Lies by Andy Worthington

White Pride is Uncool by Steve Sailer

Zero Tolerance in the Workplace by David Macaray

The Limits of Bacevich by Richard Spencer

Oil and the American Nightmare by Grant Havers

Bacevich, Consumption, and Empire by Dylan Hales

War and Torture by Robert Rodriquez

Throw the Bums Out by Taki Theodoracopulos

Josef K: Citizen of the USA by Ray Mangum

Police Violence: How Many Kicks to the Head Does It Take? by Ben Rosenfeld

Thoughtcrime and Doublethink in England by Ray Mangum

 Brazil’s Black Market Economy More Than One Quarter of GDP

Economic Advice to My Children (And You)  Jim Rogers interviewed by Lew Rockwell

Biden and the Balkans Nebojsa Malic interviewed by Scott Horton

Armed Citizens Are Free Citizens by Karen De Coster

 The Decline and Fall of the Globalist Empire by Joe Schembrie

Obama, Accessory After the Fact by Glenn Greenwald

We Are the “Enemy of the State” by Mike Gaddy

The Coercive Education Industry by Myron Weber

How the Tamil Tigers Were Beaten

When a Cop is Charged with Assault by William Norman Grigg

Former South African Deputy President Pisses Off Gays

Supporting Police Abuse by Bill Anderson

Texas Builds Border Wall to Keep Out Unwanted Americans 

Woman Handcuffed for Not Holding Escalator Handrail by Karen De Coster

Jesse Ventura on the Lying Torturing U.S. Government 

Economists and the Zimbabwe Solution by Bill Anderson

Same Old Boss, But Talks Pretty from Social Memory Complex

The State is Still the Main Evil from Free Association

Did Bibi Box Obama In? by Pat Buchanan

Remember the Victims of the Therapeutic State from Free Association

Watching Obama Morph Into Dick Cheney by Paul Craig Roberts

Neocons Happy with Obama from Free Association

Race Difference, Immigration, and the Twilight of the European Peoples by Richard Lynn

Just Say No to Government by Jack Hunter

Workers Shut Down Wal-Mart Warehouse from Dead End

10th Division by Ilana Mercer

Ron Paul is Under Lindsey Graham’s Skin by Patroon

White Like Us by Richard Spencer

Women and Immigration  by TGGP

Is Waterboarding Torture? by Jack Hunter

Russia Rejects the U.S. Dollar 

Thoughts on White Nationalism by Dylan Hales

Radicals Battle PIGS in Greece

Celebrity Worship   by Taki Theodoracopulos

Kudos to Clinton and Canada by TGGP

An Empire of Desire by Mark Hackard

Weimar Hyperinflation: Could It Happen Again? by Ellen Brown

Obama’s Animal Farm by James Petras

Barack Obama and Black Power by Malik Zulu Shabazz

The New Bubble is the Biggest Ever by Gerald Celente

The Successor to the Dollar by Jim Rogers

Modern Survivalism  by Jack Spirko

Blowing Smoke on Gitmo by Ivan Eland

A New Libertarian Classic by Jeffrey Tucker

The Virtues of Gorbachevism by Eduoard Husson

An Introduction to Revisionism by Jeff Riggenback interviewed by Scott Horton

Cheney: Support for Israel Feeds Terrorism by Ray McGovern

The Empire is Bankrupting America by Jacob Hornberger

War President: They’re All War Presidents by Glenn Greenwald

Facts and Myths About Obama’s Preventive Detention Proposal by Glenn Greenwald

Choose the Right Gun by Charley Reese

How Long Does It Take? by Alexander Cockburn

The Morality of Torture by Laurence Vance

Obama, Torture and John Walker Lindh by Michael Teitelman

No More Commie or Fascist Highways by Walter Block

King Abdullah’s 57-State Solution by Rannie Amiri

Bartering is Booming by Kevin Simpson

Obama to Honor Confederate Dead by Lew Rockwell

PIG Assaults and Maims Innocent Man  

PIG Causes Deadly Crash While Driving 109 Miles an Hour

In his autobiography, Jerry Rubin, the late leader and co-founder of the 1960s era leftist-anarchist court jester faction the “Yippies”, told a story about how during a speech he had remarked that hippie kids should “kill their parents for the revolution.” He was speaking metaphorically, suggesting that the perceived stodgy or overly jingoist values of the pre-60s generation should be overturned, not that hippie kids should procure a knife from the kitchen and off Mom and Pop, Charlie Manson-style. But a menacing photograph of Rubin subsequently appeared on the cover of the National Enquirer with the bold headlines: “Yippie Leader Tells Kids to Kill Their Parents.” And so both a legend and a scandal were born.

I really don’t know what to make of the reaction to my recently published essay, “Is Extremism in the Defense of Sodomy No Vice?” in the circles of what is called “left-libertarianism,” particularly considering that I have been only peripherally associated with that “movement.” Given the rather extensive number of blog posts and comments threads that have appeared in response, perhaps someone in a “man from Mars” position could be forgiven for assuming that Keith Preston must be someone of overwhelming importance, perhaps a presidential candidate or leader of a mass movement of millions, with its own mass army, and who has called for a “night of the long knives” purge of the left-deviationist, homo-erotically-inclined, Ernst Roehm wing of the Left Libertarian Anarcho-National Socialist Workers Party, no doubt to secure my own grip on the Chancellorship. I suppose I should be honored that others consider my pronouncements to be of such significance, though my first inclination is to respond with the immortal words of William Shatner, who said in a comparable context: “Get a life!”

With the notable exception of Kevin Carson’s very gracious “Open Letter,” most of the criticisms expressed either a) do not contain enough substance to merit the dignity of a response or b) originate from individuals who have already rejected my own positions fairly thoroughly, anyway or c) both of the aforementioned. However, there have been a few critics who raise issues worth addressing, and if others find my own ideas to be important enough to merit the volume and kinds of response that has been generated, I suppose I should make the effort to insure that my views are being accurately understood and represented in the discussion that is taking place. So here goes.

Totally Unrepentant: A Reply to Mike Golguski

Mike Golguski is someone I know absolutely nothing about, except that he’s the fellow who renounced his American citizenship and has become officially “stateless” as someone who is not a citizen of any particular nation. If all that is true, then I very much respect him for taking such an action, given that such doings can hardly be in his own personal self-interest. Apparently, Golguski is the one who got the ball rolling in the flood of responses to my “sodomy” piece, and I’ve already posted a response on the No State blog. I want to follow up by addressing Golguski’s final sentence: “Without substantial work at repentance, Keith will not be welcome at my table, nor in my tent.”

I do not care if Golguski does not want me at his table or in his tent. After all, this whole anarcho-libertarian thing is supposed to include something about freedom of association and property rights, and that goes double for a pan-separatist like bad old me. Unlike some of my more vociferous critics, I do not care if others wish to “exclude” me from their midst. What do I find interesting is Golguski’s use of the term “repentance.” This would seem to provide evidence for the claims that I and others far more capable than myself like Alain De Benoist, Tomislav Sunic, Murray Rothbard, Samuel Francis or Paul Gottfried have made that modern “cultural leftism,” “multiculturalism,” “political correctness,” “cultural Marxism” or whatever one wishes to call it is, like orthodox Marxism and American-style liberal-progressivism before it, a type of secularized, pseudo-Christian moralism. As Thomas Sowell has mentioned, ideological leftists often tend to regard their opponents as not being not only in error, but in sin, in the same manner as their ostensible Christian rivals. Suffice to say that as a pagan, a Machiavellian, a Nietzschean, and a Stirnerite, Keith Preston does not “repent” of anything. I am reminded of an incident from well over twenty years ago when I received a letter from a former pastor of the Christian Reconstructionist church I went to as a kid, urging me to repent of the Satanic monstrosities I had inflicted on the world as an adult. I replied with a brief note saying, “Fuck you, Jesus Freak!” or something to that effect. I’d say something similar in this particular context as well.

People, Revolution and Warfare: A Reply to Brad Spangler

 Brad Spangler has a post up that seems to be sincere in intentions but is a grotesque misrepresentation of my actual views. The ideas Spangler attributes to me are something like what I would imagine a parody of Keith Preston to be like.

First, as I see it, Preston mistakes the sociopathic proclivity for personal violence commonly encountered among white nationalists for martial prowess and “fighting spirit”. Simply put — every bigot is a bully, and every bully is a coward. If we are to fight, let us fight at the side of the brave. There is no Nazi utopia. The handful of “damaged personalities” who would lay down their lives for a twisted, dystopian vision would undoubtedly be no challenge for a suitably well-armed Girl Scout troop.

 I actually agree with everything Spangler says here. The problem is these comments have nothing to do with my actual views. If one wishes to understand the nature of what I have called “martial spirit,” then read “In Storms of Steel” by Ernst Junger, who, by the way, was a close personal friend of the martyred Jewish anarchist Erich Muhsam. I also disagree with the view that everyone bearing the label “white nationalist” fits the narrow stereotypes derived from images of George Lincoln Rockwell-influenced, Hogan’s Heroes-imitating, neo-nazis being described here. In fact, one could make the ironic claim that there might just be a little bit of the dreaded “bigotry” involved in such characterizations and generalizations. I will say that I actually agree with Spangler’s analysis of the psychology of those who do fit such stereotypes. I know very few such people, probably because there are very few such people. Occasionally, some of these Hogan’s Heroes types will creep into the periphery of my circle. I tend to regard them as an interesting oddity and curious sociological phenomena and little more. And, yes, most of them are sociopaths and damaged personalities, not unlike many of their counterparts on the Left, which is why they’re useless as political allies.

Secondly, despite wearing the grandiose term “American Revolutionary Vanguard” on his sleeve, that same above statement by Preston betrays an apparently very crude, shallow and underdeveloped understanding of anarchist revolution as simply insurrection. It appears that in Preston’s view, if we can manage to collect enough of those who simply want to kill people and blow things up, we “win”. A more credible understanding is the notion that by attacking the illusionary moral legitimacy of the state we build a revolutionary class consciousness among the victims of statism that can compel them to cooperate in defending themselves against the state. And since you can’t blow up a set of dysfunctional social relationships, Preston is metaphorically flailing about at imagined nails because the only tool he apparently respects is a hammer.

I actually agree that delegitimizing the state is a fundamental part of a revolutionary effort. Where I suspect Spangler and I would disagree is that I think it unlikely that “the masses” will ever become self-proclaimed “anarchists,” and reject abstractions like “the state”, much less “authority,” “hierarchy,” “domination,” yadda, yadda, in some carte blanche sense. Without getting too deep into it, I’ll say that I don’t think the evidence from social psychology indicates that hopes for such an occurrence are warranted. However, there is much precedent of particular states losing their perceived legitimacy, usually do to their perceived violation of long-established cultural, political and historic traditions within a particular society. That is why I advocate a secessionist strategy. Secession has strong roots in American political culture, and we need to assemble a critical mass that recognizes that the present ruling class is illegitimate according to popular norms of what constitutes legitimacy. What I have in mind would simply be a repetition of 1776 and 1861, that is all.

Third, Preston suffers from a failure to understand the realities of multilateral conflict in failing states. I’ll use Iraq as an example. Ba’athists, tribal militias and Islamists commonly do cooperate on the battlefield on a per-project basis when it suits them, despite the gross differences in their visions of what they are fighting for. They create no unifying organization. Preston’s laughable proposal to “purge” an entire family of related movements with no centralized command and control speaks volumes about his understanding of organization. He’s acting as if he seeks some sort of neo-Maoist political coalition unified in thought and action — and any thoughts would apparently be okay, as long as those thoughts gather together a sufficient amount of cannon fodder.

Umm, excuse me, but has anyone ever heard of Lexington and Concord? Fort Sumter? The Durruti Column? Nestor Makhno? I simply advocate political and military alliances against common enemies, not alliances based on ideological abstractions. Nations and armies do this all the time. The issue of internecine fighting among alliance members is obviously a genuinely serious matter. That’s part of the reason why I am a pan-separatist. The anti-imperialist resistance needs its own Peace of Augsburg.

Immigration Uber Alles? A Reply to Charles “Rad Geek” Johnson

Johnson offers the same criticisms as others, with the addition of a rather intense focus on issues related to immigration, reflected in these comments pulled from different blog postings:

Similarly, I wonder what you think about the several paragraphs Keith spends attacking “the most extreme forms of pro-immigrationism,” by which he apparently means the plumb-line libertarian position against government border checkpoints, papers-please police state monitoring, and government prohibitions on hiring immigrant workers [?!]. When Keith claims that the anarchistic position is to enforce border checkpoints and police-state monitoring of national citizenship papers, the use of government immigration enforcement to exile from the country those that the American government declares “criminals [or] enemies of America” (?!) and suggests government prohibitions against employing undocumented immigrants, and apparently also government prohibitions against employing any immigrants at all during a strike (?!) — when, in short, he calls, over and over again for the expansion of the state and an increase in the power of government border police, in the name of nationalist politics, and attempts to justify this Stasi-statism by pointing to the majority opinion among those approved to vote in government elections by the United States government (?!) — what do you think of that? Do you really think of that as just a problem of “tone”? Or is a problem with the substance of his position?

The only place in which decentralization is mentioned in the discussion of immigration politics is to suggest that criteria for naturalization — that is, extending the status as politically-enfranchised citizens to immigrants — be spun off to “local community standards.” Once that’s done, though, he has nothing to say about changing how the central state treats people who are or are not counted as naturalized. Nowhere does he suggest dismantling existing centralized definitions of “national borders.” Nowhere does he suggest dismantling or even decentralizing existing agencies of border fortification, border checkpoints, border patrol, immigration-status documentation and surveillance, imprisonment and trial of alleged undocumented immigrants, paramilitary immigration enforcement, forcible deportation, etc. etc. etc. Instead he suggests giving these existing centralized government agencies more to do. He explicitly calls for deployment of the existing centralized government immigration control system: he explicitly calls for “designated checkpoints” to be run by the government, with “an objective screening process,” which is designed to screen out “criminals, enemies of America” (?! how the fuck do you suppose you ban entry to government-defined “enemies of America” in a decentralized fashion?) and people with “certain kinds of contagious diseases”; he calls for deportation of those who don’t have permission slips for their existence from the worthless megamurdering United States government (from where to where? if it’s outside the borders of the U.S.A., we’re not talking about decentralization, are we?); he adds calls for new government prohibitions on “employers … using immigrants as scab labor” and “employer use of illegal immigrant [sic] labor”. How do you suppose you go about enacting and enforcing these government prohibitions and government bans on peaceful, consensual labor contracts, without expanding the size, power, and reach of the State?

For instance, how about the several paragraphs that he devotes to arguing that anarchists, of all people, ought to be calling for the expansion of government checkpoints, documentation requirements, and prohibitions against immigrant workers? I don’t know about you, but I’d say that there’s some ideological shortcoming going on when a professed anti-statist goes around arguing for the escalation of police state tactics by government border thugs (because, hey, a majority of government-approved voters want it! well, hell, sign me up!).

I wonder what you think about the several paragraphs Keith spends, in an essay which, according to you, is mainly defending freedom of association and dissociation, attacking what he characterizes as “the most extreme forms of pro-immigrationism,” by which he apparently means the plumb-line libertarian position against government border checkpoints, papers-please police state monitoring, and government prohibitions on hiring immigrant workers.

When Keith claims that the anarchistic position is in fact to enlist the United States government to enforce border checkpoints and police-state monitoring of national citizenship papers, to demand the use of government immigration enforcement to exile from the country those that the American government declares “criminals [or] enemies of America” (?!); when he suggests escalating government prohibitions against employing undocumented immigrants, and apparently also creating new government prohibitions against employing any immigrants at all during a government-recognized strike (?!) — when, in short, he calls, over and over again for the expansion of the state and an increase in the power of government border police, in the name of nationalist politics, for the purpose of a systematic assault on free markets and free association, and then attempts to justify this Stasi-statism by pointing to the majority opinion among those approved to vote in government elections by the United States government (?!) — what do you think of all that? Do you think that this is defending the claim that “people can associate however they want in a libertarian world”? Do you think that this propaganda for growing the size, scope, and intensity of government enforcement, is the sort of thing that would make libertarianism more attractive to “regular (?) anti-government” types?

I think it can be assumed rather safely that Johnson cares a great deal about this topic. Here’s what I have written on immigration elsewhere: See here , here (section VII), here , here , and here.

Rather than rehash all the pro and con libertarian arguments concerning immigration, which aren’t going to convince anyone anyway, I’ll simply describe how my own views on this topic have evolved over time. Until I was in my thirties, I was an unqualified “open borders” libertarian. If there was one individual who could be credited with motivating me to modify my views, it would be the late Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, a great irony considering the context of this debate, as Fortuyn was a flamboyantly gay man. Fortuyn argued against allowing mass Third World immigration into the West, and he argued from the Left rather than the nationalist or racialist Right. Simply put, his position that the “liberal” cultural values of the West, such as secularism, civil liberties, women’s rights, gay rights, and, in the case of Holland, tolerance of drug use and consensual prostitution, as well as the wider intellectual culture of the Enlightenment, were endangered by the importation of large numbers of persons from cultures that do not share such values. Fortuyn was mostly critical of Islamic immigration, but he gained the support of many among older Muslim communities in Holland, who believed immigration policy had become so indiscriminate as to allow criminals, terrorists, career welfare recipients and other such elements into the country.  For his efforts, Portuyn was assassinated, not by a Muslim, but by a fanatical leftoid.  I was in Holland myself when all of this happened, and it was a bit of a wake-up call.

Today, I would consider myself a moderate on the immigration question. I’m not ready to embrace the “immigration is the root of all evil” rhetoric of Vdare, yet I am also skeptical of Johnson’s free-for-all approach. I tend to agree with the analysis of Laurence Vance on this question. Most of the proposed policies that I have thrown out in the past concerning immigration are merely ideas for discussion, and nothing I’m particularly committed to. I will formally commit myself to only one policy concerning immigration: That immigration policy itself be taken out of the hands of the federal government and ruling class elites and as Hans Hermann Hoppe says:

More specifically, the authority to admit or exclude should be stripped from the hands of the central government and re-assigned to the states, provinces, cities, towns, villages, residential districts, and ultimately to private property owners and their voluntary associations. The means to achieve this goal are decentralization and secession (both inherently un-democratic, and un-majoritarian). One would be well on the way toward a restoration of the freedom of association and exclusion as it is implied in the idea and institution of private property, and much of the social strife currently caused by forced integration would disappear,…and to solve the “naturalization” question somewhat along the Swiss model, where local assemblies, not the central government, determine who can and who cannot become a Swiss citizen.

From there, vigorous debate can take place concerning how much or how little immigration there should be, and under what circumstances and conditions.

Because my association with national-anarchists seems to be a particular thorn in the side for many of my critics, I will refer the reader to an essay I wrote assessing national-anarchism back in 2003. It can be viewed here. As for the libertarian credentials of national-anarchism, I will cite this interview from the movement’s founder, Troy Southgate. Beyond that, I will say that in my personal experience with national-anarchists, I have found all of them, to a person, capable of civil disagreement concerning major issues in a way that is completely absent from the “anarcho-leftoid” milieu. In other words, it is the leftoids who are the ones with the problem. Additionally, I know a number of people who consider themselves to be both left-libertarians and national-anarchists, and I know of number of national-anarchists who are sympathetic to many of the economic ideas of left-libertarianism, and I also know left-libertarians who personally disagree with national-anarchism but can approach the issue calmly. Unfortunately it is the leftoid loudmouths who seem to dominate the left-libertarian milieu’s online presence.

When Aster kicked you out of her Salon Liberty, I thought (and still think) she did so on inadequate grounds, and that nothing you’d said up to that point on your strategic approach (as outlined above) warranted such a reaction. As I recall, I said as much on her Salon at the time.

A bit of clarification is in order. When Aster booted me from her “salon” (which I can assure everyone was a long, long, long, long way from being the most tragic thing that ever happened to me), I actually defended her decision privately to others who criticized her. As a proponent of freedom of association, private property rights, the right of exclusion and pan-separatism, I have no problem with someone saying they don’t want me on their discussion list, or in their house, or in their backyard, or in their country club, or wherever. When Aster booted me, I bowed out in a way that, I think, was actually rather gracious. However, Aster has since that time persistently engaged in what quasibill has called “serial slander and cyber-stalking” towards me, at times attempting to do so anonymously but not very competently, and has attempted to draw wedges between me and others with whom I have no real quarrel. Furthermore, Aster’s clique of “friends” has refrained from criticizing her for doing so, but reacted with outrage and joined in her personal attacks when I have retaliated by throwing personal insults in her direction. The reasons for this double standard ought to be obvious.

But since she evicted you, I’ve noticed that your general language toward gays and transgender people has become increasingly “colorful” (i.e., deliberately demeaning) and hostile, by what seems like an order of magnitude or so.

No doubt about it. As this particular faction within left-libertarianism has escalated the personal attacks directed at me, I have retaliated. It’s a two-way street. I make no apologies for that. I reject the argument that the physical or sexual characteristics of others are off-limits when it comes to rhetorical political combat. For instance, the opponents of the Nazi movement during the Weimar Republic period used to refer to Goebbels as “Mickey Mouse” because of his large ears. I have no problem with such rhetoric. If others do, that’s their prerogative, but I simply do not share their conviction. If they wish to disavow or disassociate themselves from me because of it, then I would once again uphold the principle of free association and encourage them to do so.

Also, I should clarify that this war between myself and the anarcho-leftoids long pre-dates my conflict with Aster. I mean, for God’s sake, Aster’s internet postings read like a schizophrenic on an acid trip. Do I really give a damn about such a person? Of course not. The quality and content of my anti-leftoid rhetoric has not changed one bit since I first encountered Aster a couple of years ago. If one takes a look at this old article, and this, this, this, this, and this, one can see what I mean. All of these pieces were written before I ever heard of Aster, and make the same arguments and use similar rhetoric. It is true I had largely avoided such rhetoric in the left-libertarian milieu itself, as there was no need for it, but that changed as Aster and company began to attack me.

Likewise, you have become increasingly dismissive of all who express concerns about racism or fascism–even when they do not endorse thuggish “antifa” tactics–purely out of what seems to be your own increasingly knee-jerk hostility toward the “cultural left.”

I think there’s a point here that can be well-taken, with the qualification that in order to really answer this charge thoroughly I would need some working definition of what “racism and fascism” actually are, given that these terms are typically thrown about so loosely. I do concede that I find professional “anti-racism” hysterics to be a particularly ridiculous lot, and have also frequently been on the receiving end of their attacks, and consequently I have spent an excessive amount of time mocking them.

I recall a scene from the film “Born on the Fourth of July” where Tom Cruise portrays Ron Kovic, a disabled Vietnam vet who becomes a figure in the antiwar movement. In the early part of the film, Kovic is a gung-ho young guy who says he’s going off to fight in the Vietnam War in the name of anti-communism. As he is planning this escapade, a cynical but very sensible friend remarks, “Communists? Where are they? I don’t see them!”

 On a more personal level, I get a very strong sense of deja vu whenever this “fascism” question is raised. When I was in the Central America solidarity movement, I used to get a lot of accusations of “communism” thrown in my direction, or else I was accused of being an abettor of “communism.” No matter how much effort I would put into explaining the difference between anarchism or anarcho-syndicalism and Stalinism or Maoism, no matter how much I insisted the issue in Central America was not between “democracy” and “communism” but between imperialism and self-determination, there were always plenty who didn’t want to hear it. I assure everyone, this got to be rather annoying-particularly when it was coming even from Mom!! Now twenty-three years later, the political winds have shifted and most of the serious revolutionaries are on the Right (at least in the U.S.). So I have shifted accordingly. Actually, I haven’t so much shifted as much as I’ve gone from being a “communist” to being a “fascist” simply by remaining in place.

In the advanced industrial democracies where nearly all of us reside, there are no organized “fascist” movements or parties of any significance. The closest thing I know of is the U.S. Republican Party, whose neoconservative ideology seems to share certain traits with fascism, such as jingoistic militarism and nationalism. See here, here and here.  But neoconservatism also has a liberal-universalist dimension to it that would probably make it more compatible with Jacobinism that fascism. Either way, when my critics talk about “fascism,” I don’t think they’re talking about the neocons anyway.

Some might point to an incident like a former member of the Italian Social Movement getting elected mayor of Rome, but this would seem to be about as significant as David Duke getting elected to the Louisiana state legislature some years ago. Italian politics has always had a freakish dimension to it. It had the largest Communist party in Europe in the 70s, and in the 80s the Italians elected a porn star to Parliament. Others might point to something like France’s National Front, but that has black members and a pro-Israel stance, so it’s obviously a long way from what is typically meant by “fascism.” The bottom line is that there’s not going to be a “fascist” mass movement in North America anymore than there’s going to be a Maoist or anarcho-communist mass movement. These ideologies are completely alien to our own society, and regarded as utterly freakish by 99.999% of observers.

As for “racism,” there are few things that have become greater taboos among Western elites than this. In some countries, charges of “racism” will land you in the joint. Even an eminent scientist like Dr. James Watson is not immune from professional retaliation over the issue of “racism.” Nothing destroys a public figure’s career quicker than “racism,” as Don Imus found out. I see no threat of “racism” whatsoever, just as I saw no threat of “communism” when I was in the Central America solidarity movement two decades ago. Indeed, I would argue that in many countries today, so-called “anti-racism” has become a force for obscurantism rather than enlightenment, just as “anti-communism” has played a similarly obscurantist role in the past. On such questions, I would agree with most of the views outlined in Sean Gabb’s book, “Cultural Revolution, Culture War.” Indeed, if one takes Gabb’s analysis and applies it to the United States, one would have the essential views of Keith Preston.

I just can’t see how “racism” is that big of a deal in a society where blacks are thirteen percent of the population, yet where a black man is head of state, and where things like this go on. I’ve spent years around universities and graduate schools, and decades around leftist political groups, so I’m familiar with the arguments concerning “institutional racism” and the major works upholding such themes. I don’t fully discount all such arguments. Likewise, I’ll certainly concede that there are subsets of blacks who aren’t doing so well, whether because of state policies like I’ve written about here, here and here or self-inflicted wounds. Beyond that, I’ve argued for the justifiability of reparations on “forty acres and a mule” grounds, endorsed black secessionist movements, and amnesty for blacks imprisoned for “victimless crimes” and other frivolities. I’ve even characterized the L.A. Riots as a lumpenproletarian class uprising against the police state and capitalism. What else is there?

But while I could respect your willingness to tolerate loathsome people on pragmatic grounds, I can’t remain neutral when you advocate purging the anti-state movement in order to appease those loathsome people. You have “evolved,” if you can call it that, from a willingness to share a tent with racists and homophobes for the sake of defeating Empire as the primary enemy, to promoting an active purge of anti-racists and gays from the anti-Empire movement because the majority of your anti-state coalition might find them offensive. In short, you have “evolved” from tolerating racist and homophobic groups as a means to an end, to withdrawing support from the “cultural left” in order to appease the right wing of your coalition.

Well, the problem is that it’s the “cultural left” faction that’s causing all the ruckus. I rarely, if ever, get these kinds of personal attacks from “the right wing of my coalition,” even among people with whom I have significant differences. The only exceptions are rare nutcases like one fellow whose ideology was some kind of Hitler-Stalin synthesis (”Aryan Communism”). Also, I’ve noticed that it’s the right-wingers who are better at policing their own movements, e.g., not tolerating shitty behavior from favored in-groups while “calling out” everyone else’s real or imaginary offenses, and responding with indignation to every cross word thrown in their direction.

Once again, I’m also being given too much credit in some respects. There is no “anti-Empire” movement in North America beyond scattered individuals and tiny groups. The real anti-Empire movement is in places like Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, and, to some degree, Russia. Also, as I indicated, this conflict between me and the “cultural left” is nothing new. It’s been going on as long as I’ve advocated these positions. For instance, the Infoshop.Org crowd has been attacking me for years now, and in the same manner and for the same reasons. Attack the System came under assault from the cultural left, commies and anarcho-leftoids from the moment we first went online eight or nine years ago. Likewise, the overwhelming majority of the “left-libertarian” milieu in which we are swimming at the moment has always rejected my own pan-secessionist, third-positionist outlook. It certainly didn’t start with my “sodomy” essay, nor did it start with my conflicts with Aster and her cohorts.

If my choice is between “self-hating whites, bearded ladies, cock-ringed queers, or persons of one or another surgically altered ‘gender identity’,” and Nazis, Klansmen and white nationalists, I know which side I’ll take.

There are no Nazis in my circle, except occasional gate-crashers on the periphery. To my knowledge, there are no Klansmen. As for white nationalists, that’s a term that’s about as varied as “socialists.” See here and here . Just as not every socialist is a Pol Potian, every white nationalist is not a Nazi.  Raimondo has a current piece critiquing white nationalism. While I would agree with many of Raimondo’s criticisms, I wouldn’t dismiss someone like Jared Taylor quite as quickly, given that Taylor raised questions that ought to at least get a fair hearing, but that no one is allowed to ask.

I do not ask that you revise your original strategic assessment that the threat of Empire justifies a broad secessionist coalition that includes some (in my opinion) very objectionable people on the right. I do not ask that you share my judgment that such objectionable people alienate more potential support than do those on the cultural left. I ask only that you 1) repudiate the flame-war quality of demeaning rhetoric that you have increasingly adopted toward sexual minorities since your breach with Aster,

I will go further than that and cease participation in the “left-libertarian” milieu altogether, on the grounds of “irreconcilable differences,” with two exceptions. One exception will be for my relationships and associations with those individual left-libertarians who are also part of the pan-secessionist, national-anarchist, anarcho-pluralist, New Right, left-conservative or other movements that I am also associated with. There are more of these than some might think. The other exception will be for the promotion of left-libertarian scholars whose work I respect (such as Kevin).

As for the issue of my prior rhetoric concerning sexual minorities, I suppose I would respond to that in the same way I might respond to someone who criticized me for calling the cops “PIGS” as I consistently do. There are no doubt some cops who are good people just trying to do a job, and hoping they might actually help out some crime victim, accident victim, missing child, etc. in the process. To those cops, I would say: If you’re a cool cop, then don’t take my “pig” rhetoric personally, because it’s not about you. Likewise, with sexual minorities, if you’re a cool Joe/Jane Sixpack gay guy, lesbian, transgendered person, transvestite or whomever, and you just want to be left alone to do your own thing without anyone messing you, then you’re okay with me. Don’t take it personally, because it’s not about you.

and acknowledge that you allowed a personal grudge to goad you into overreaction on that score.

No, it’s about a whole lot more than that. As I said, the battle between me and the “anarcho-leftoids” began years ago, long before I ever heard of Aster. It is certainly true that the battle has intensified within the left-libertarian milieu itself in more recent times, and that Aster’s persistent attacks on me and my counterattacks have been a big part of that.

and 2) repudiate your call for a purge of anti-racists, gays, transgender people and the cultural left in order to appease the majority. 

Again, that’s taking me way too seriously. I have no power to “purge” anything except a turd out my own ass. I will “re-phrase” what I originally said. In the context of a revolutionary anti-state, pan-secessionist movement, I have no problem with the participation of individuals who happen to be anti-racists, gays, transgender people or who might think of themselves as “cultural leftists.” For instance, I have no problem with these categories of persons being in a revolutionary guerrilla force, militia, cooperative business enterprise, copwatch or neighborhood watch program, alternative media project, non-state social services project or other such alternative or intermediary institutions. I have no problem with them holding leadership positions, or being “equal” members of secessionist organizations or support organizations, just as I have no problem with Mormons, pot-smokers, punk rockers, snake-handlers, Christian Scientists, vegetarians, or persons with tattoos and piercings being engaged in similar participation. I have no problem with them having separate organizations to promote their own interests or simply for fraternal purposes. In fact, I would encourage them to do so. Nor do I have any problem with individual secession movements within a broader pan-secessionist alliance having an explicitly “cultural left” or “sexual minority” orientation. Nor would I have any problem with a secessionist tendency specifically oriented towards racial/ethnic minorities being part of a pan-secessionist alliance. For instance, the Peoples’ Democratic Uhuru Movement advocated an independent black city-state in the majority black section of St. Petersburg, Florida some years ago. Then as now, I supported them in their ambitions.

I would view sexual minorities in the same manner that I would view other marginal social groups like drug users, prostitutes or polygamists, or fringe religious sects like Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, or Scientologists, or subcultures like Grateful Deadheads, bikers, or heavy metal rockers. I would gladly undertake a lengthy battle with those who wished to engage in the genuine persecution of such groups. In fact, though I started out as a foreign policy radical, it wasn’t until I began to notice the “war on drugs,” and the related police-state and prison-industrial complex, and the police state atrocities at Ruby Ridge and Waco which involved precisely the sort of oppression or marginal religious sects I’m discussing here, that I began to turn my attention to domestic political matters within the United States.

What I do reject is the claim that a revolutionary anti-state, pan-secessionist movement should be built up around such proclivities, or that other people with different value systems should be excluded for not sharing or agreeing with such proclivities. Here’s an illustration: Within the context of the present day secessionist movement in North America, many of the groups involved have something of a “right-wing populist” orientation, such as the League of the South, Christian Exodus, Alaskan Independence Party, and the Republic of Texas. Some of these right-wing secessionists are explicitly Christian, while others are not. Others are oriented towards indigenous peoples of different kinds, such as the Lakota Republic, the Kingdom of Hawaii or the movement for Puerto Rican independence. Some are ideological libertarians, like the Free State Project and United Texas Republic. Others are non-ideological and advocate secession for its own sake, like the movement for Long Island independence. Some seem to be rather centrist (or perhaps “radical middle) in their actual politics, like the proposed New England Confederation. Still others involve people who have their roots on the Left, such as the Second Vermont Republic , Novocadia Independence Party, and Cascadia, and secessionists from the Left often have a very strong green-decentralist-ecologist-bioregionalist orientation. The North Star Republic, which is based in Illinois, is self-described as “Marxist-Leninist.”

Now, in my view, this is precisely what a pan-secessionist movement would and should look like. It makes perfect sense that secessionists in “conservative” regions would generally hold conservative values, and secessionists in “liberal” regions would generally hold liberal values and so forth. However, as we might expect, “left-wing” secessionists like the Second Vermont Republic have been attacked by various forces of liberal-totalitarianism, such as the $outhern Poverty Law Center, for being part of an alliance that also includes factions from the Right. I think Kirkpatrick Sale’s answer to these critics has been both cogent and correct:

Concern has arisen in some quarters in recent weeks regarding secessionist organizations that express values—or are charged with expressing values—that others do not like, and questions have been raised about alliances with such groups. The Middlebury Institute would like to establish a basic response to such concerns and questions.

First, the secessionist movement is made up of organizations of many different kinds that are alike in their advocacy of secession—of secession in general and of secession of their particular part of the planet. That is what makes them colleagues and allies—because in this difficult task of making secession and separatism a legitimate political goal they stand shoulder to shoulder with each other.

Second, it is not up to any organization in the movement (or its friends) to judge the attitudes, philosophies, or beliefs of others. While one would hope to have those compatible with one’s own, it must be understood that different people in different places will have different ideas, desires, goals, and strategies—that, after all, is the whole point of secession. A group is for secession precisely because it does not want to be part of a larger entity whose beliefs and actions it does not like, and wishes to live free on its own terms.

Third, the kind of people who insist on telling others how to live and think so as to have one unanimous right-minded uniformity are dangerous people and precisely the kind that establish national governments and pass laws applicable to entire populations. Fascism is one obvious and ugly form of this, but mass industrial democracy is a similar, if often more benign, form. And it is exactly this that secession and separatism are opposed to.

Fourth, as to the League of the South, it is demonstrable that as an organization it is not racist and would not establish a racist state if they were successful in secession. The Middlebury Institute has offered to be a co-sponsor with the LOS of the next Secessionist Convention this year squarely because it believes it to be an honorable and legitimate—and non-racist—organization sincerely and intelligently devoted to peaceful secession  from the empire.

We accept the fact that there may be people in the LOS who have expressed intemperate and intolerant opinions—but of what group, we ask, could that not be said? (And the scare-mongering charges along these lines by the Southern Poverty Law Center have much more to do with its desire to squeeze money out of people made to be afraid of hobgoblins than by any genuine exposure of misbehavior.] Moreover, even if there are, as individuals, LOS people we could from our point of view deem racist, that would matter not one whit as to whether they were legitimate colleagues in the secessionist movement. It is irrelevant.

People turn to secession because they want their own form of government, on their own terms, and hope to create a state that will live out their beliefs, principles, ideals. It is no more justifiable for one organization to question or criticize or castigate those goals if they work toward a Christian-directed government that outlaws abortion and adultery than if they work for a secular democracy favoring gun-control and same-sex marriages. The beauty of secession is that it looks toward having a world where those and many other kinds of states can exist, free and independent, and not impose its ideas on others or have others’ ideas imposed on it.

Ultimately we in the secessionist movement stand divided, but we standtogether. We believe in secession, each of us, and though the ends we work for may be different—and what a thriving, vibrant, multi-variant world that would bring us to—the means we use unites us all.

What Sale is saying here is simple: The purpose of the pan-secessionist movement is to promote pan-secessionism, not to promote any one faction’s cultural particularities, ideological specifics or lifestyle interests, and certainly not to allow outsiders who oppose or are indifferent to secessionism in the first place to dictate who may or may not join a pan-secessionist movement or to dictate what sort of political or cultural values they must hold. Ditto.

Some Predictions

I envision the future political struggle in the United States as something that will constitute an intra-Left struggle that essentially pits whiteys against whiteys, rather than a racial struggle or a Left vs Right struggle. Most of the political groups that now constitute the Right represent cultural, generational or demographic factions that are in decline. I’ve discussed that a bit here. I see two lefts emerging. One of these will be an establishment Left oriented towards political correctness, therapeutism, multiculturalism, what I have called “totalitarian humanism,” globalism and corporate social democracy. In other words, the present-day center-left coalition that is currently seizing the reins of power and consolidating its position. The other will be a kind of revolutionary left that transcends current left/right boundaries. This will happen for a number of reasons:

1) Over the next few decades the inherent problems associated with mass immigration will become painfully obvious. Consequently, the new revolutionary left will take a more skeptical view of multiculturalism.

2) As political correctness becomes more deeply entrenched in institutions, it will be ever more bold about showing its fangs. Hence, many people will get a wake-up call.

3) The present day left-wing coalition of traditional outgroups will splinter. This will happen for several reasons: a-growing class divisions that transcend such boundaries, b-ideological differences among the left (multicultural vs universalism), c-the incompatibility of some of the left’s constituent groups (socially conservative blacks and homosexuals, for instance),d-the decline of the traditional Right as a common enemy and unifying force for the center-left, e-the economic bankruptcy of state-socialism

4) A decisive factor will be the increased opposition to Zionism, the Israel Lobby, AIPAC, however one wishes to term it in the years ahead. The cat is out of the bag on this issue, and there is nothing that is currently more divisive among the Left than the Israel question. Recent anti-Zionist demonstrations I have observed have featured leftists, nationalists, anarchists, national-anarchists, Communists, anti-Zionist Jews, anti-Semites, libertarians, gays, transgendereds, minorities, racists, feminists, male chauvinist pigs, Greens and Muslims under the same political banners. I suspect such a “third position” left is the future of the Left, as left-liberalism becomes ever more status quo. Indeed, I suspect the PC Left will become with increasing frequency the enforcement arm of PC statism. These “anti-racist” and “antifa” hoodlums, for instance, maybe even some reading this right now, may well be the secret police of the future.

As for the relevance of all this to my wider pan-secessionist, anarcho-pluralist outlook, see here, here, here, and here.  In American political conflagrations of the past, the various out-groups of the era tended to end up on both sides of the fence. For instance, there were blacks and Indians on both sides on the American Revolution, Indians, Germans, Jews and Irish on both sides of the Civil war, even a few black Confederates. There were blacks, civil rights liberals and segregationists in the New Deal coalition. I suspect a pan-secessionist movement, for instance, a movement where, say 30 states and 50 major cities attempt to leave the U.S., would include gays, transgendereds, blacks, Jews, Hispanics, etc. on both sides of the fence, but for the most part it would be a white vs white conflict.

The Question of Empathy

As a final word, I will note that some have criticized my alleged “lack of empathy.” While I in no sense consider myself to be a liberal-humanist-humanitarian, I have been involved in the past in a good number of efforts on behalf of the genuinely downtrodden. In fact, I suspect some would be shocked by some of the activities of bad old Nazi/fascist/racist/bigoted/terrorist  Keith Preston in this regard. However, I prefer to keep such things separate from my wider political agenda (as it’s mostly irrelevant). There also reasons of prudence why such things should not be broadcast too loudly. Lastly, perhaps the one aspect of my Christian upbringing that I retained was the view that actions of piety or virtue are best done in secret rather than in the public square.

Quote of the Week:

“An intellectual is someone who has discovered something more interesting than sex.”

“That all men are equal is a proposition which, at ordinary times, no sane individual has ever given his assent.”

“There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.”

                                                                                         -Aldous Huxley

The Struggle Against the State by Nestor Makhno

The Empire and Its Ideology by Hans Hermann Hoppe

What Is the Ruling Class? by Sean Gabb

Who Will Stand Up to America and Israel? by Paul Craig Roberts

Obama’s Democratic Authoritarianism by Justin Raimondo

Where Would We Be Without Our Prison-Industrial Complex? by TGGP

Back Into the Cold: Conservative Russia/Revolutionary America by Mark Hackard

Americans Succumb to the Dark Side by Paul Craig Roberts

The Populist Patriotism of Gore Vidal by Bill Kauffman

Who is Oswald Spengler? Austin Bramwell

Military Commissions, Round Three by Joanne Mariner

“Empathy” and International Affairs by Stephen M. Walt

A New Low in Political Correctness? by Sarah Netter

End Medical Slavery by Bill Sardi

The Subconscious Modernism of Graffiti Removal by Ean Frick

Libertarians Against Sprawl by Kevin Carson

Doublespeak on North Korea by Paul Craig Roberts

Is North Korea About to Blow Up the World? No, but lets’s not push by Justin Raimondo

How to Start Your Own Country from The Futurist

Can China Save the World from Depression? by Walden Bello

Jewish Anarcho-Nationalism? from State of Exile

It’s Official: Racism Causes Weight Gain by Harrison Bergeron 2

The Trouble with Prison by Kenneth Hartman

Enriching Our Lives? from Conservative Times

“War on Pot” Overrides “Support Our Troops” by Fred Gardner

The Worst Companies in the World  by Francois Tremblay

America’s Wise Latina Lady by Richard Spencer

How Lew Rockwell Took Over the Libertarian Movement by Gary North

Cheney Made Us Less Safe by Jack Hunter

Muslims Are Good Folks by Charley Reese

Housing: The Bubble Hasn’t Burst (Yet) by Peter Schiff

Middle American Anti-Imperialism by George Leef

The Cheney Doctrine by Pat Buchanan

Colleges Eyes 3-Year Degree Programs by Valerie Strauss

Torture at the Crossroads: Which Way America? by Ron Paul

Setting a Higher Standard for Making a War by Philip Giraldi

The Tamil Tigers Have Been Defeated by Eric Margolis

Gerald Celente on the Economic Apocalypse

When It Rains, It Pours by Charles Pena

MoveOn Remains Silent on War by Tom Hayden

Obama: Preventive Detention is My Policy by Thomas Eddlem

More on That “Bogus” Terrorist Plot in New York by Robert Dreyfuss

Is Israel Planning to Provoke Iran? by Tony Karon

Was Rape an Enhanced Interrogation Technique? by Jacob Hornberger

Downsize the Imperial Presidency by Gene Healy

The Great But Unacknowledged Wisdom of Doing Nothing by Arthur Silber

Feingold’s Constitutional Objection to “Prolonged Detention” by John Nichols

Obama in Netanyahu’s Web by Roger Cohen

Suburban Survivalists by Gillian Flaccus

Another Reason to Secede by Lori Montgomery

Life in Vichy America by Bill Buppert

Christiania Loses Court Challenge

Support Your Local “Domestic Warrior-Heroes by William Norman Grigg

Nationalists Without a Nation by Justin Raimondo

Canadian Anarchist Book Fair Targeted by PIGS 

Big Man Obama and His Diversity Princess by Ilana Mercer

Soviet America?  by Stanislav Mishin

Mark Levin Sucks by Jack Hunter

Sotomayer and the Last of the WASPS by Alexander Cockburn

There is No Authentic American Right by Kevin R.C. Gutzman

Iraq: The Mother of All Corruption Scandals by Patrick Cockburn

The Snitch Faces Human Nature by Razib Khan

When Workers Rights Go Unenforced by David Macaray

A Redneck View of Obamarama by Joe Bageant

Defending Israeli War Crimes by Stephen Zunes

First, Muslims; Next, Maybe You by Steven Greenhut

The Death of Corruption by John Pilger

The End of American Exceptionalism by Eric Black

Becoming Barbarians by Rod Dreher

by Keith Preston

Perhaps the most interesting, poignant and, possibly, threatening  type of writer and thinker is the one who not only defies conventional categorizations of thought but also offers a deeply penetrating critique of those illusions many hold to be the most sacred. Ernst Junger (1895-1998), who first came to literary prominence during Germany’s Weimar era as a diarist of the experiences of a front line stormtrooper during the Great War, is one such writer. Both the controversial nature of his writing and its staying power are demonstrated by the fact that he remains one of the most important yet widely disliked literary and cultural figures of twentieth century Germany. As recently as 1993, when Junger would have been ninety-eight years of age, he was the subject of an intensely hostile exchange in the “New York Review of Books” between an admirer and a detractor of his work.(1) On the occasion of his one hundreth birthday in 1995, Junger was the subject of a scathing, derisive musical performed in East Berlin. Yet Junger was also the recipient of Germany’s most prestigious literary awards, the Goethe Prize and the Schiller Memorial Prize. Junger, who converted to Catholicism at the age of 101, received a commendation from Pope John Paul II and was an honored guest of French President Francois Mitterand and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl at the Franco-German reconciliation ceremony at Verdun in 1984. Though he was an exceptional achiever during virtually every stage of his extraordinarily long life, it was his work during the Weimar period that not only secured for a Junger a presence in German cultural and political history, but also became the standard by which much of his later work was evaluated and by which his reputation was, and still is, debated. (2)

Ernst Junger was born on March 29, 1895 in Heidelberg, but was raised in Hanover. His father, also named Ernst, was an academically trained chemist who became wealthy as the owner of a pharmaceutical manufacturing business, finding himself successful enough to essentially retire while he was still in his forties. Though raised as an evangelical Protestant, Junger’s father did not believe in any formal religion, nor did his mother, Karoline, an educated middle class German woman whose interests included Germany’s rich literary tradition and the cause of women’s emancipation. His parents’ politics seem to have been liberal, though not radical, in the manner not uncommon to the rising bourgeoise of Germany’s upper middle class during the pre-war period. It was in this affluent, secure bourgeoise environment that Ernst Junger grew up. Indeed, many of Junger’s later activities and professed beliefs are easily understood as a revolt against the comfort and safety of his upbringing. As a child, he was an avid reader of the tales of adventurers and soldiers, but a poor academic student who did not adjust well to the regimented Prussian educational system. Junger’s instructors consistently complained of his inattentiveness. As an adolescent, he became involved with the Wandervogel, roughly the German equivalent of the Boy Scouts.(3)

          It was while attending a boarding school near his parents’ home in 1913, at the age of seventeen, that Junger first demonstrated his first propensity for what might be called an “adventurist” way of life. With only six months left before graduation, Junger left school, leaving no word to his family as to his destination. Using money given to him for school-related fees and expenses to buy a firearm and a railroad ticket to Verdun,  Junger subsequently enlisted in the French Foreign Legion, an elite military unit of the French armed forces that accepted enlistees of any nationality and had a reputation for attracting fugitives, criminals and career mercenaries. Junger had no intention of staying with the Legion. He only wanted to be posted to Africa, as he eventually was. Junger then deserted, only to be captured and sentenced to jail. Eventually his father found a capable lawyer for his wayward son and secured his release. Junger then returned to his studies and underwent a belated high school graduation. However, it was only a very short time later that Junger was back in uniform. (4)

Warrior and War Diarist

Ernst Junger immediately volunteered for military service when he heard the news that Germany was at war in the summer of 1914. After two months of training, Junger was assigned to a reserve unit stationed at Champagne. He was afraid the war would end before he had the opportunity to see any action. This attitude was not uncommon among many recruits or conscripts who fought in the war for their respective states. The question immediately arises at to why so many young people would wish to look into the face of death with such enthusiasm. Perhaps they really did not understand the horrors that awaited them. In Junger’s case, his rebellion against the security and luxury of his bourgeoise upbringing had already been ably demonstrated by his excursion with the French Foreign Legion. Because of his high school education, something that soldiers of more proletarian origins lacked, Junger was selected to train to become an officer. Shortly before beginning his officer’s training, Junger was exposed to combat for the first time. From the start, he carried pocket-sized notebooks with him and recorded his observations on the front lines. His writings while at the front exhibit a distinctive tone of detachment, as though he is simply an observer watching while the enemy fires at others. In the middle part of 1915, Junger suffered his first war wound, a bullet graze to the thigh that required only two weeks of recovery time. Afterwards, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant.(5)

At age twenty-one, Junger was the leader of a reconnaissance team at the Somme whose purpose was to go out at night and search for British landmines. Early on, he acquired the reputation of a brave soldier who lacked the preoccupation with his own safety common to most of the fighting men. The introduction of steel artifacts into the war, tanks for the British side and steel helmets for the Germans, made a deep impression on Junger. Wounded three times at the Somme, Junger was awarded the Iron Medal First Class. Upon recovery, he returned to the front lines. A combat daredevil, he once held out against a much larger British force with only twenty men. After being transferred to fight the French at Flanders, he lost ten of his fourteen men and was wounded in the left hand by a blast from French shelling. After being harshly criticized by a superior officer for the number of men lost on that particular mission, Junger began to develop a contempt for the military hierarchy whom he regarded as having achieved their status as a result of their class position, frequently lacking combat experience of their own. In late 1917, having already experienced nearly three full years of combat, Junger was wounded for the fifth time during a surprise assault by the British. He was grazed in the head by a bullet, acquiring two holes in his helmet in the process. His performance in this battle won him the Knights Cross of the Hohenzollerns. In March 1918, Junger participated in another fierce battle with the British, losing 87 of his 150 men. (6)

            Nothing impressed Junger more than personal bravery and endurance on the part of soldiers. He once “fell to the ground in tears” at the sight of a young recruit who had only days earlier been unable to carry an ammunition case by himself suddenly being able to carry two cases of missles after surviving an attack of British shells. A recurring theme in Junger’s writings on his war experiences is the way in which war brings out the most savage human impulses. Essentially, human beings are given full license to engage in behavior that would be considered criminal during peacetime. He wrote casually about burning occupied towns during the course of retreat or a shift of position. However, Junger also demonstrated a capacity for merciful behavior during his combat efforts. He refrained from shooting a cornered British soldier after the foe displayed a portrait of his family to Junger. He was wounded yet again in August of 1918. Having been shot in the chest and directly through a lung, this was his most serious wound yet. After being hit, he still managed to shoot dead yet another British officer. As Junger was being carried off the battlefield on a stretcher, one of the stretcher carriers was killed by a British bullet. Another German soldier attempted to carry Junger on his back, but the soldier was shot dead himself and Junger fell to the ground. Finally, a medic recovered him and pulled him out of harm’s way. This episode would be the end of his battle experiences during the Great War.(7)

In Storms of Steel

Junger’s keeping of his wartime diaries paid off quite well in the long run. They were to become the basis of his first and most famous book, In Storms of Steel, published in 1920. The title was given to the book by Junger himself, having found the phrase in an old Icelandic saga. It was at the suggestion of his father that Junger first sought to have his wartime memoirs published. Initially, he found no takers, antiwar sentiment being extremely high in Germany at the time, until his father at last arranged to have the work published privately. In Storms of Steel differs considerably from similar works published by war veterans during the same era, such as Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front and John Dos Passos’ Three Soldiers. Junger’s book reflects none of the disillusionment with war by those experienced in its horrors of the kind found in these other works. Instead, Junger depicted warfare as an adventure in which the soldier faced the highest possible challenge, a battle to the death with a mortal enemy. Though Junger certainly considered himself to be a patriot and, under the influence of Maurice Barres (8), eventually became a strident German nationalist, his depiction of military combat as an idyllic setting where human wills face the supreme test rose far above ordinary nationalist sentiments. Junger’s warrior ideal was not merely the patriot fighting out of a profound sense of loyalty to his country  nor the stereotype of the dutiful soldier whose sense of honor and obedience compels him to follow the orders of his superiors in a headlong march towards death. Nor was the warrior prototype exalted by Junger necessarily an idealist fighting for some alleged greater good such as a political ideal or religious devotion. Instead, war itself is the ideal for Junger. On this question, he was profoundly influenced by Nietzsche, whose dictum “a good war justifies any cause”, provides an apt characterization of Junger’s depiction of the life (and death) of the combat soldier. (9)

This aspect of Junger’s outlook is illustrated quite well by the ending he chose to give to the first edition of In Storms of Steel. Although the second edition (published in 1926) ends with the nationalist rallying cry, “Germany lives and shall never go under!”, a sentiment that was deleted for the third edition published in 1934 at the onset of the Nazi era, the original edition ends simply with Junger in the hospital after being wounded for the final time and receiving word that he has received yet another commendation for his valor as a combat soldier. There is no mention of Germany’s defeat a few months later. Nationalism aside, the book is clearly about Junger, not about Germany, and Junger’s depiction of the war simultaneously displays an extraordinary level detachment for someone who lived in the face of death for four years and a highly personalized account of the war where battle is first and foremost about the assertion of one’s own “will to power” with cliched patriotic pieties being of secondary concern.

Indeed, Junger goes so far as to say there were winners and losers on both sides of the war. The true winners were not those who fought in a particular army or for a particular country, but who rose to the challenge placed before them and essentially achieved what Junger regarded as a higher state of enlightenment. He believed the war had revealed certain fundamental truths about the human condition. First, the illusions of the old bourgeoise order concerning peace, progress and prosperity had been inalterably shattered. This was not an uncommon sentiment during that time, but it is a revelation that Junger seems to revel in while others found it to be overwhelmingly devastating. Indeed, the lifelong champion of Enlightenment liberalism, Bertrand Russell, whose life was almost as long as Junger’s and who observed many of the same events from a much different philosophical perspective, once remarked that no one who had been born before 1914 knew what it was like to be truly happy.(10) A second observation advanced by Junger had to do with the role of technology in transforming the nature of war, not only in a purely mechanical sense, but on a much greater existential level. Before, man had commanded weaponry in the course of combat. Now weaponry of the kind made possible by modern technology and industrial civilization essentially commanded man. The machines did the fighting. Man simply resisted this external domination. Lastly, the supremacy of might and the ruthless nature of human existence had been demonstrated. Nietzsche was right. The tragic, Darwinian nature of the human condition had been revealed as an irrevocable law.

In Storms of Steel was only the first of several works based on his experiences as a combat officer that were produced by Junger during the 1920s. Copse 125 described a battle between two small groups of combatants. In this work, Junger continued to explore the philosophical themes present in his first work. The type of technologically driven warfare that emerged during the Great War is characterized as reducing men to automatons driven by airplanes, tanks and machine guns. Once again, jingoistic nationalism is downplayed as a contributing factor to the essence of combat soldier’s spirit. Another work of Junger’s from the early 1920s, Battle as Inner Experience, explored the psychology of war. Junger suggested that civilization itself was but a mere mask for the “primordial” nature of humanity that once again reveals itself during war. Indeed, war had the effect of elevating humanity to a higher level. The warrior becomes a kind of god-like animal, divine in his superhuman qualities, but animalistic in his bloodlust. The perpetual threat of imminent death is a kind of intoxicant. Life is at its finest when death is closest. Junger described war as a struggle for a cause that overshadows the respective political or cultural ideals of the combatants. This overarching cause is courage. The fighter is honor bound to respect the courage of his mortal enemy. Drawing on the philosophy of Nietzsche, Junger argued that the war had produced a “new race” that had replaced the old pieties, such as those drawn from religion, with a new recognition of the primacy of the “will to power”.(11)

Conservative Revolutionary

Junger’s writings about the war quickly earned him the status of a celebrity during the Weimar period. Battle as Inner Experience contained the prescient suggestion that the young men who had experienced the greatest war the world had yet to see at that point could never be successfully re-integrated into the old bougeoise order from which they came. For these fighters, the war had been a spiritual experience. Having endured so much only to see their side lose on such seemingly humiliating terms, the veterans of the war were aliens to the rationalistic, anti-militarist, liberal republic that emerged in 1918 at the close of the war. Junger was at his parents’ home recovering from war wounds during the time of the attempted coup by the leftist workers’ and soldiers’ councils and subsequent suppression of these by the Freikorps. He experimented with psychoactive drugs such as cocaine and opium during this time, something that he would continue to do much later in life. Upon recovery, he went back into active duty in the much diminished Germany army. Junger’s earliest works, such as In Storms of Steel, were published during this time and he also wrote for military journals on the more technical and specialized aspects of combat and military technology. Interestingly, Junger attributed Germany’s defeat in the war simply to poor leadership, both military and civilian, and rejected the “stab in the back” legend that consoled less keen veterans.

After leaving the army in 1923, Junger continued to write, producing a novella about a soldier during the war titled Sturm, and also began to study the philosophy of Oswald Spengler. His first work as a philosopher of nationalism appeared the Nazi paper Volkischer Beobachter in September, 1923.

Critiquing the failed Marxist revolution of 1918, Junger argued that the leftist coup failed because of its lacking of fresh ideas. It was simply a regurgitation of the egalitarian outllook of the French Revolution. The revolutionary left appealed only to the material wants of the Germany people in Junger’s views. A successful revolution would have to be much more than that. It would have to appeal to their spiritual or “folkish” instincts as well. Over the next few years Junger studied the natural sciences at the University of Leipzig and in 1925, at age thirty, he married nineteen-year-old Gretha von Jeinsen. Around this time, he also became a full-time political  writer. Junger was hostile to Weimar democracy and its commercial bourgeiose society. His emerging political ideal was one of an elite warrior caste that stood above petty partisan politics and the middle class obsession with material acquisition. Junger became involved with the the Stahlhelm, a right-wing veterans group, and was a contributer to its paper, Die Standardite. He associated himself with the younger, more militant members of the organization who favored an uncompromised nationalist revolution and eschewed the parliamentary system. Junger’s weekly column in Die Standardite disseminated his nationalist ideology to his less educated readers. Junger’s views at this point were a mixture of Spengler, Social Darwinism, the traditionalist philosophy of the French rightist Maurice Barres, opposition to the internationalism of the left that had seemingly been discredited by the events of 1914, irrationalism and anti-parliamentarianism. He took a favorable view of the working class and praised the Nazis’ efforts to win proletarian sympathies. Junger also argued that a nationalist outlook need not be attached to one particular form of government, even suggesting that a liberal monarchy would be inferior to a nationalist republic.(12)

In an essay for Die Standardite titled “The Machine”, Junger argued that the principal struggle was not between social classes or political parties but between man and technology. He was not anti-technological in a Luddite sense, but regarded the technological apparatus of modernity to have achieved a position of superiority over mankind which needed to be reversed. He was concerned that the mechanized efficiency of modern life produced a corrosive effect on the human spirit. Junger considered the Nazis’ glorification of peasant life to be antiquated. Ever the realist, he believed the world of the rural people to be in a state of irreversible decline. Instead, Junger espoused a “metropolitan nationalism” centered on the urban working class. Nationalism was the antidote to the anti-particularist materialism of the Marxists who, in Junger’s views, simply mirrored the liberals in their efforts to reduce the individual to a component of a mechanized mass society. The humanitarian rhetoric of the left Junger dismissed as the hypocritical cant of power-seekers feigning benevolence. He began to pin his hopes for a nationalist revolution on the younger veterans who comprised much of the urban working class.

In 1926, Junger became editor of Arminius, which also featured the writings of Nazi leaders like Alfred Rosenberg and Joseph Goebbels. In 1927, he contributed his final article to the Nazi paper, calling for a new definition of the “worker”, one not rooted in Marxist ideology but the idea of the worker as a civilian counterpart to the soldier who struggles fervently for the nationalist ideal. Junger and  Hitler had exchanged copies of their respective writings and a scheduled meeting between the two was canceled due to a change in Hitler’s itinerary. Junger respected Hitler’s abilities as an orator, but came to feel he lacked the ability to become a true leader. He also found Nazi ideology to be intellectually shallow, many of the Nazi movement’s leaders to be talentless and was displeased by the vulgarity,  crassly opportunistic and overly theatrical aspects of Nazi public rallies. Always an elitist, Junger considered the Nazis’ pandering the common people to be debased. As he became more skeptical of the Nazis, Junger began writing for a wider circle of readers beyond that of the militant nationalist right-wing. His works began to appear in the Jewish liberal Leopold Schwarzchild’s Das Tagebuch and the “national-bolshevik” Ernst Niekisch’s Widerstand.

Junger began to assemble around himself an elite corps of bohemian, eccentric intellectuals who would meet regularly on Friday evenings. This group included some of the most interesting personalities of the Weimar period. Among them were the Freikorps veteran Ernst von Salomon, Otto von Strasser, who with his brother Gregor led a leftist anti-Hitler faction of the Nazi movement, the national-bolshevik Niekisch, the Jewish anarchist Erich Muhsam who had figured prominently in the early phase of the failed leftist revolution of 1918, the American writer Thomas Wolfe and the expressionist writer Arnolt Bronnen. Many among this group espoused a type of revolutionary socialism based on nationalism rather than class, disdaining the Nazis’ opportunistic outreach efforts to the middle class. Some, like Niekisch, favored an alliance between Germany and Soviet Russia against the liberal-capitalist powers of the West. Occasionally, Joseph Goebbels would turn up at these meetings hoping to convert the group, particularly Junger himself, whose war writings he had admired, to the Nazi cause. These efforts by the Nazi propaganda master proved unsuccessful. Junger regarded Goebbels as a shallow ideologue who spoke in platitudes even in private conversation.(13)

The final break between Ernst Junger and the NSDAP occurred in September 1929. Junger published an article in Schwarzchild’s Tagebuch attacking and ridiculing the Nazis as sell outs for having reinvented themselves as a parliamentary party. He also dismissed their racism and anti-Semitism as ridiculous, stating that according to the Nazis a nationalist is simply someone who “eats three Jews for breakfast.” He condemned the Nazis for pandering to the liberal middle class and reactionary traditional conservatives “with lengthy tirades against the decline in morals, against abortion, strikes, lockouts, and the reduction of police and military forces.” Goebbels responded by attacking Junger in the Nazi press, accusing him being motivated by personal literary ambition, and insisting this had caused him “to vilify the national socialist movement, probably so as to make himself popular in his new kosher surroundings” and dismissing Junger’s attacks by proclaiming the Nazis did not “debate with renegades who abuse us in the smutty press of Jewish traitors.”(14)

Junger on the Jewish Question

Junger held complicated views on the question of German Jews. He considered anti-Semitism of the type espoused by Hitler to be crude and reactionary. Yet his own version of nationalism required a level of homogeneity that was difficult to reconcile with the subnational status of Germany Jewry. Junger suggested that Jews should assimilate and pledge their loyalty to Germany once and for all. Yet he expressed admiration for Orthodox Judaism and indifference to Zionism. Junger maintained personal friendships with Jews and wrote for a Jewish owned publication. During this time his Jewish publisher Schwarzchild published an article examining Junger’s views on the Jews of Germany. Schwarzchild insisted that Junger was nothing like his Nazi rivals on the far right. Junger’s nationalism was based on an aristocratic warrior ethos, while Hitler’s was more comparable to the criminal underworld. Hitler’s men were “plebian alley scum”. However, Schwarzchild also characterized Junger’s rendition of nationalism as motivated by little more than a fervent rejection of bourgeoise society and lacking in attention to political realities and serious economic questions.(15)

The Worker

Other than In Storms of Steel, Junger’s The Worker: Mastery and Form was his most influential work from the Weimar era. Junger would later distance himself from this work, published in 1932, and it was reprinted in the 1950s only after Junger was prompted to do so by Martin Heidegger.

In The Worker, Junger outlines his vision of a future state ordered as a technocracy based on workers and soldiers led by a warrior elite. Workers are no longer simply components of an industrial machine, whether capitalist or communist, but have become a kind of civilian-soldier operating as an economic warrior. Just as the soldier glories in his accomplishments in battle, so does the worker glory in the achievements expressed through his work. Junger predicted that continued technological advancements would render the worker/capitalist dichotomy obsolete. He also incorporated the political philosophy of his friend Carl Schmitt into his worldview. As Schmitt saw international relations as a Hobbesian battle between rival powers, Junger believed each state would eventually adopt a system not unlike what he described in The Worker. Each state would maintain its own technocratic order with the workers and soldiers of each country playing essentially the same role on behalf of their respective nations. International affairs would be a crucible where the will to power of the different nations would be tested.

Junger’s vision contains a certain amount prescience. The general trend in politics at the time was a movement towards the kind of technocratic state Junger described. These took on many varied forms including German National Socialism, Italian Fascism, Soviet Communism, the growing welfare states of Western Europe and America’s New Deal. Coming on the eve of World War Two, Junger’s prediction of a global Hobbesian struggle between national collectives possessing previously unimagined levels of technological sophistication also seems rather prophetic. Junger once again attacked the bourgeoise as anachronistic. Its values of material luxury and safety he regarded as unfit for the violent world of the future. (16)

The National Socialist Era

By the time Hitler took power in 1933, Junger’s war writings had become commonly used in high schools and universities as examples of wartime literature, and Junger enjoyed success within the context of German popular culture as well. Excerpts of Junger’s works were featured in military journals. The Nazis tried to coopt his semi-celebrity status, but he was uncooperative. Junger was appointed to the Nazified German Academcy of Poetry, but declined the position. When the Nazi Party’s paper published some of his work in 1934, Junger wrote a letter of protest. The Nazi regime, despite its best efforts to capitalize on his reputation, viewed Junger with suspicioun. His past association with the national-bolshevik Ersnt Niekisch, the Jewish anarchist Erich Muhsam and the anti-Hitler Nazi Otto von Strasser, all of whom were either eventually killed or exiled by the Third Reich, led the Nazis to regard Junger as a potential subversive. On several occasions, Junger received visits from the Gestapo in search of some of his former friends. During the early years of the Nazi regime, Junger was in the fortunate position of being able to economically afford travel outside of Germany. He journeyed to Norway, Brazil, Greece and Morocco during this time, and published several works based on his travels.(17)

Junger’s most significant work from the Nazi period is the novel On the Marble Cliffs. The book is an allegorical attack on the Hitler regime. It was written in 1939, the same year that Junger reentered the German army. The book describes a mysterious villian that threatens a community, a sinister warlord called the “Head Ranger”. This character is never featured in the plot of the novel, but maintains a forboding presence that is universal (much like “Big Brother” in George Orwell’s 1984). Another character in the novel, “Braquemart”, is described as having physical characteristics remarkably similar to those of Goebbels. The book sold fourteen thousand copies during its first two weeks in publication. Swiss reviewers immediately recognized the allegorical references to the Nazi state in the novel. The Nazi Party’s organ, Volkische Beobachter, stated that Ernst Jünger was flirting with a bullet to the head. Goebbels urged Hitler to ban the book, but Hitler refused, probably not wanting to show his hand. Indeed, Hitler gave orders that Junger not be harmed.(18)

Junger was stationed in France for most of the Second World War. Once again, he kept diaries of the experience. Once again, he expressed concern that he might not get to see any action before the war was over. While Junger did not have the opportunity to experience the level of danger and daredevil heroics he had during the Great War, he did receive yet another medal, the Iron Cross, for retrieving the body of a dead corporal while under heavy fire. Junger also published some of his war diaries during this time. However, the German government took a dim view of these, viewing them as too sympathetic to the occupied French. Junger’s duties included censorship of the mail coming into France from German civilians. He took a rather liberal approach to this responsibility and simply disposed of incriminating documents rather than turning them over for investigation. In doing so, he probably saved lives. He also encountered members of France’s literary and cultural elite, among them the actor Louis Ferdinand Celine, a raving anti-Semite and pro-Vichyite who suggested Hitler’s harsh measures against the Jews had not been heavy handed enough. As rumors of the Nazi extermination programs began to spread,  Junger wrote in his diary that the mechanization of the human spirit of the type he had written about in the past had apparently generated a higher level of human depravity. When he saw three young French-Jewish girls wearing the yellow stars required by the Nazis, he wrote that he felt embarrassed to be in the Nazi army. In July of 1942, Junger observed the mass arrest of French Jews, the beginning of implementation of the “Final Solution”. He described the scene as follows:

“Parents were first separated from their children, so there was wailing to be heard in the streets. At no moment may I forget that I am surrounded by the unfortunate, by those suffering to the very depths, else what sort of person, what sort of officer would I be? The uniform obliges one to grant protection wherever it goes. Of course one has the impression that one must also, like Don Quixote, take on millions.”(19)

An entry into Junger’s diary from October 16, 1943 suggests that an unnamed army officer had told  Junger about the use of crematoria and poison gas to murder Jews en masse. Rumors of plots against Hitler circulated among the officers with whom Junger maintained contact. His son, Ernstl, was arrested after an informant claimed he had spoken critically of Hitler. Ernstl Junger was imprisoned for three months, then placed in a penal battalion where he was killed in action in Italy. On July 20, 1944 an unsuccessful assassination attempt was carried out against Hitler. It is still disputed as to whether or not Junger knew of the plot or had a role in its planning. Among those arrested for their role in the attemt on Hitler’s life were members of Junger’s immediate circle of associates and superior officers within the German army. Junger was dishonorably discharged shortly afterward.(20)

Following the close of the Second World War, Junger came under suspicion from the Allied occupational authorities because of his far right-wing nationalist and militarist past. He refused to cooperate with the Allies De-Nazification programs and was barred from publishing for four years. He would go on to live another half century, producing many more literary works, becoming a close friend of Albert Hoffman, the inventor of the hallucinogen LSD, with which he experimented. In a 1977 novel, Eumeswil, he took his tendency towards viewing the world around him with detachment to a newer, more clearly articulated level with his invention of the concept of the “Anarch”. This idea, heavily influenced by the writings of the early nineteenth century German philosopher Max Stirner, championed the solitary individual who remains true to himself within the context of whatever external circumstances happen to be present. Some sample quotations from this work illustrate the philosophy and worldview of the elderly Junger quite well:

“For the anarch, if he remains free of being ruled, whether by sovereign or society, this does not mean he refuses to serve in any way. In general, he serves no worse than anyone else, and sometimes even better, if he likes the game. He only holds back from the pledge, the sacrifice, the ultimate devotion … I serve in the Casbah; if, while doing this, I die for the Condor, it would be an accident, perhaps even an obliging gesture, but nothing more.”

“The egalitarian mania of demagogues is even more dangerous than the brutality of men in gallooned coats. For the anarch, this remains theoretical, because he avoids both sides. Anyone who has been oppressed can get back on his feet if the oppression did not cost him his life. A man who has been equalized is physically and morally ruined. Anyone who is different is not equal; that is one of the reasons why the Jews are so often targeted.”

“The anarch, recognizing no government, but not indulging in paradisal dreams as the anarchist does, is, for that very reason, a neutral observer.”

“Opposition is collaboration.”

“A basic theme for the anarch is how man, left to his own devices, can defy superior force – whether state, society or the elements – by making use of their rules without submitting to them.”

“… malcontents… prowl through the institutions eternally dissatisfied, always disappointed. Connected with this is their love of cellars and rooftops, exile and prisons, and also banishment, on which they actually pride themselves. When the structure finally caves in they are the first to be killed in the collapse. Why do they not know that the world remains inalterable in change? Because they never find their way down to its real depth, their own. That is the sole place of essence, safety. And so they do themselves in.”

“The anarch may not be spared prisons – as one fluke of existence among others. He will then find the fault in himself.”

“We are touching one a … distinction between anarch and anarchist; the relation to authority, to legislative power. The anarchist is their mortal enemy, while the anarch refuses to acknowledge them. He seeks neither to gain hold of them, nor to topple them, nor to alter them – their impact bypasses him. He must resign himself only to the whirlwinds they generate.”

“The anarch is no individualist, either. He wishes to present himself neither as a Great Man nor as a Free Spirit. His own measure is enough for him; freedom is not his goal; it is his property. He does not come on as foe or reformer: one can get along nicely with him in shacks or in palaces. Life is too short and too beautiful to sacrifice for ideas, although contamination is not always avoidable. But hats off to the martyrs.”

“We can expect as little from society as from the state. Salvation lies in the individual.” (21)

Notes:

1. Ian Buruma, “The Anarch at Twilight”, New York Review of Books, Volume 40, No. 12, June 24, 1993. Hilary Barr, “An Exchange on Ernst Junger”, New York Review of Books, Volume 40, No. 21, December 16, 1993.

2. Nevin, Thomas. Ernst Junger and Germany: Into the Abyss, 1914-1945. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996, pp. 1-7. Loose, Gerhard. Ernst Junger. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1974, preface.

3. Nevin, pp. 9-26. Loose, p. 21

4. Loose, p. 22. Nevin, pp. 27-37.

5. Nevin. p. 49.

6. Ibid., p. 57

7. Ibid., p. 61

8. Maurice Barrès (September 22, 1862 - December 4, 1923) was a French novelist, journalist, an anti-semite, nationalist politician and agitator. Leaning towards the far-left in his youth as a Boulangist deputy, he progressively developed a theory close to Romantic nationalism and shifted to the right during the Dreyfus Affair, leading the Anti-Dreyfusards alongside Charles Maurras. In 1906, he was elected both to the Académie française and as deputy of the Seine department, and until his death he sat with the conservative Entente républicaine démocratique. A strong supporter of the Union sacrée(Holy Union) during World War I, Barrès remained a major influence of generations of French writers, as well as of monarchists, although he was not a monarchist himself. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Barr%C3%A8s

9. Nevin, pp. 58, 71, 97.

10. Schilpp, P. A. “The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell”.  Reviewed Hermann Weyl, The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 53, No. 4 (Apr., 1946), pp. 208-214.

11. Nevin, pp. 122, 125, 134, 136, 140, 173.

12. Ibid., pp. 75-91.

13. Ibid., p. 107.

14. Ibid., p. 108.

15. Ibid., pp. 109-111.

16. Ibid., pp. 114-140.

17. Ibid., p. 145.

18. Ibid., p. 162.

19. Ibid., p. 189.

20. Ibid., p. 209.

21. Junger, Ernst. Eumeswil. New York: Marion Publishers, 1980, 1993.

Bibliography

Barr, Hilary. “An Exchange on Ernst Junger”, New York Review of Books, Volume 40, No. 21, December 16, 1993.

Braun, Abdalbarr. “Warrior, Waldgaenger, Anarch: An Essay on Ernst Junger’s Concept of the Sovereign Individual”. Archived at http://www.fluxeuropa.com/juenger-anarch.htm

Buruma, Ian. “The Anarch at Twilight”, New York Review of Books, Volume 40, No. 12, June 24, 1993.

Hofmann, Albert. LSD: My Problem Child, Chapter Seven, “Radiance From Ernst Junger”. Archived at http://www.flashback.se/archive/my_problem_child/chapter7.html

Loose, Gerhard. Ernst Junger. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1974.

Hervier, Julien. The Details of Time: Conversations with Ernst Junger. New York: Marsilio Publishers, 1986.

Junger, Ernst. Eumeswil. New York: Marsilio Publishers, 1980, 1993.

Junger, Ernst. In Storms of Steel. New York: Penguin Books, 1920, 1963, 2003.

Junger, Ernst. On the Marble Cliffs. New York: Duenewald Printing Corporation, 1947.

Nevin, Thomas. Ernst Junger and Germnay: Into the Abyss, 1914-1945. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996.

Schilpp, P. A. “The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell”.  Reviewed Hermann Weyl, The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 53, No. 4 (Apr., 1946), pp. 208-214.

Stern, J. P. Ernst Junger. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953.

Zavrel, Consul B. John. “Ernst Junger is Still Working at 102″. Archived at http://www.meaus.com/Ernst%20Junger%20at%20102.html

By Keith Preston

Discussion:

Carl Schmitt

The Crisis of Parliamentary Liberalism 

The Concept of the Political

The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (p. 331, 334-337, 342-345)

          The editors of The Weimar Republic Sourcebook attempt to summarize the political thought of Carl Schmitt and interpret his writings on political and legal theory on the basis of his later association with Nazism between 1933 and 1936. Schmitt is described as having “attempted to drive a wedge between liberalism and democracy and undercut the assumption that rational discourse and legal formalism could be the basis of political legitimacy.”(Sourcebook, p. 331) His contributions to political theory are characterized as advancing the view that “genuine politics was irreducible to socio-economic conflicts and unconstrained by normative considerations”. The essence of politics is a battle to the death “between friend and foe.” The editors recognize distinctions between the thought of Schmitt and that of right-wing revolutionaries of Weimar, but assert that his ideas “certainly provided no obstacle to Schmitt’s opportunistic embrace of Nazism.”

          As ostensible support for this interpretation of Schmitt, the editors provide excerpts from two of Schmitt’s works. The first excerpt is from the preface to the second edition of Schmitt’s The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, a work first published in 1923 with the preface having been written for the 1926 edition. In this excerpt, Schmitt describes the dysfunctional workings of the Weimar parliamentary system. He regards this dysfunction as symptomatic of the inadequacies of the classical liberal theory of government. According to this theory as Schmitt interprets it, the affairs of states are to be conducted on the basis of open discussion between proponents of competing ideas as a kind of empirical process. Schmitt contrasts this idealized view of parliamentarianism with the realities of its actual practice, such as cynical appeals by politicians to narrow self-interests on the part of constituents, bickering among narrow partisan forces, the use of propaganda and symbolism rather than rational discourse as a means of influencing public opinion, the binding of parliamentarians by party discipline, decisions made by means of backroom deals, rule by committee and so forth.

          Schmitt recognizes a fundamental distinction between liberalism, or “parliamentarism”, and democracy. Liberal theory advances the concept of a state where all retain equal political rights. Schmitt contrasts this with actual democratic practice as it has existed historically. Historic democracy rests on an “equality of equals”, for instance, those holding a particular social position (as in ancient Greece), subscribing to particular religious beliefs or belonging to a specific national entity. Schmitt observes that democratic states have traditionally included a great deal of political and social inequality, from slavery to religious exclusionism to a stratified class hierarchy. Even modern democracies ostensibly organized on the principle of universal suffrage do not extend such democratic rights to residents of their colonial possessions. Beyond this level, states, even officially “democratic” ones, distinguish between their own citizens and those of other states. At a fundamental level, there is an innate tension between liberalism and democracy. Liberalism is individualistic, whereas democracy sanctions the “general will” as the principle of political legitimacy. However, a consistent or coherent “general will” necessitates a level of homogeneity that by its very nature goes against the individualistic ethos of liberalism. This is the source of the “crisis of parliamentarism” that Schmitt suggests. According to the democratic theory rooted in the ideas of Jean Jacques Rosseau, a legitimate state must reflect the “general will”, but no general will can be discerned in a regime that simultaneously espouses liberalism. Lacking the homogeneity necessary for a democratic “general will”, the state becomes fragmented into competing interests. Indeed, a liberal parliamentary state can actually act against the “peoples’ will” and become undemocratic. By this same principle, anti-liberal states such as those organized according to the principles of fascism or bolshevism can be democratic in so far as they reflect the “general will.”

            The second excerpt included by the editors is drawn from Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political, published in 1927. According to Schmitt, the irreducible minimum on which human political life is based is the friend/enemy distinction. This friend/enemy distinction is to politics what the good/evil dichotomy is to morality, beautiful/ugly to aesthetics, profitable/unprofitable to economics, and so forth. These categories need not be inclusive of one another. For instance, a political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly. What is significant is that the enemy is the “other” and therefore a source of possible conflict. The friend/enemy distinction is not dependent on the specific nature of the “enemy”. It is merely enough that the enemy is a threat. The political enemy is also distinctive from personal enemies. Whatever one’s personal thoughts about the political enemy, it remains true that the enemy is hostile to the collective to which one belongs. The first purpose of the state is to maintain its own existence as an organized  collective prepared if necessary to do battle to the death with other organized collectives that pose an existential threat. This is the essential core of what is meant by the “political”. Organized collectives within a particular state can also engage in such conflicts (i.e., civil war). Internal conflicts within a collective can threaten the survival of the collective as a whole. As long as existential threats to a collective remain, the friend/enemy concept that Schmitt considers to be the heart of politics will remain valid.

           An implicit view of the ideas of Carl Schmitt can be distinguished from the editors’ introductory comments and selective quotations from these two works. Is Schmitt attempting to “drive a wedge” between liberalism and democracy thereby undermining the Weimar regime’s claims to legitimacy and pave the way for a more overtly authoritarian system? Is Schmitt arguing for a more exclusionary form of the state, for instance one that might practice exclusivity on ethnic or national grounds? Is Schmitt attempting to sanction the use of war as a mere political instrument, independent of any normative considerations, perhaps even as an ideal unto itself? If the answer to any of these questions is an affirmative one, then one might be able to plausibly argue that Schmitt is indeed creating a kind of intellectual framework that could later be used to justify at least some of the ideas of Nazism and even lead to an embrace of Nazism by Schmitt himself.

          It would appear that the expression “context is everything” becomes a quite relevant when examining the work of Carl Schmitt. It is clear enough that the excerpts from Schmitt included in the The Weimar Republic Sourcebook have been chosen rather selectively. As a glaring example, this important passage from second edition’s preface from The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy has been deleted:

“That the parliamentary enterprise today is the lesser evil, that it will continue to be preferable to Bolshevism and dictatorship, that it would have unforseeable consequences were it to be discarded, that it is ’socially and technically’ a very practical thing-all these are interesting and in part also correct observations. But they do not constitute the intellectual foundations of a specifically intended institution. Parliamentarism exists today as a method of government and a political system. Just as everything else that exists and functions tolerably, it is useful-no more and no less. It counts for a great deal that even today it functions better than other untried methods, and that a minimum of order that is today actually at hand would be endangered by frivolous experiments. Every reasonable person would concede such arguments. But they do not carry weight in an argument about principles. Certainly no one would be so un-demanding that he regarded an intellectual foundation or a moral truth as proven by the question, What else?” (Schmitt, Crisis, pp. 2-3)

          This passage, conspicuously absent from the Sourcebook excerpt, indicates that Schmitt is in fact wary of the idea of undermining the authority of the Republic for it’s own sake or for the sake of implementing a revolutionary regime. Schmitt is clearly a “conservative” in the tradition of Hobbes, one who values order and stability above all else, and also Burke, expressing a preference for the established, the familiar, the traditional, and the practical, and an aversion to extremism, fanaticism, utopianism,  and upheaval for the sake of exotic ideological inclinations. Clearly, it would be rather difficult to reconcile such an outlook with the political millenarianism of either Marxism or National Socialism. The “crisis of parliamentary democracy” that Schmitt is addressing is a crisis of legitimacy. On what political or ethical principles does a liberal democratic state of the type Weimar purports to be claim and establish its own legitimacy? This is an immensely important question, given the gulf between liberal theory and parliamentary democracy as it is actually being practiced in Weimar, the conflicts between liberal practice and democratic theories of legitimacy as they have previously been laid out by Rosseau and others and, perhaps most importantly, the challenges to liberalism and claims to “democratic” legitimacy being made by proponents of totalitarian ideologies from both the Left and Right.

          The introduction to the first edition and first chapter of Crisis contain a frank discussion of both the intellectual as well as practical problems associated with the practice of “democracy”. Schmitt observes how democracy, broadly defined, has triumphed over older systems, such as monarchy, aristocracy or theocracy in favor of the principle of “popular sovereignty”. However, the advent of democracy has also undermined older theories on the foundations of political legitimacy, such as those rooted in religion (”divine right of kings”), dynastic lineages or mere appeals to tradition. Further, the triumphs of both liberalism and democracy have brought into fuller view the innate conflicts between the two. There is also the additional matter of the gap between the practice of politics (such as parliamentary procedures) and the ends of politics (such as the “will of the people”). Schmitt observes how parliamentarism as a procedural methodology  has a wide assortment of critics, including those representing the forces of reaction (royalists and clerics, for instance) and radicalism (from Marxists to anarchists). Schmitt also points out that he is by no means the first thinker to point out these issues, citing Mosca, Jacob Burckhardt, Belloc, Chesterton, and Michels, among others.

          A fundamental question that concerns Schmitt is the matter of what the democratic “will of the people” actually means, observing that an ostensibly democratic state could adopt virtually any set of policy positions, “whether militarist or pacifist, absolutist or liberal, centralized or decentralized, progressive or reactionary, and again at different times without ceasing to be a democracy.” (Schmitt, Crisis, p. 25) He also raises the question of the fate of democracy in a society where “the people” cease to favor democracy. Can democracy be formally renounced in the name of democracy? For instance, can “the people” embrace Bolshevism or a fascist dictatorship as an expression of their democratic “general will”? The flip side of this question asks whether a political class committed in theory to democracy can act undemocratically (against “the will of the people”) if the people display an insufficient level of education in the ways of democracy. How is the will of the people to be identified in the first place? Is it not possible for rulers to construct a “will of the people” of their own through the use of propaganda? For Schmitt, these questions are not simply a matter of intellectual hair-splitting but are of vital importance in a weak, politically paralyzed democratic state where the committment of significant sectors of both the political class and the public at large to the preservation of democracy is questionable, and where the overthrow of democracy by proponents of other ideologies is a very real possibility.

          Schmitt examines the claims of parliamentarism to democratic legitimacy. He describes the liberal ideology that underlies parliamentarism as follows:

“It is essential that liberalism be understood as a consistent, comprehensive metaphysical system. Normally one only discusses the economic line of reasoning that social harmony and the maximization of wealth follow from the free economic competition of individuals…But all this is only an application of a general liberal principle…: That truth can be found through an unrestrained clash of opinion and that competition will produce harmony.” (Schmitt, Crisis, p. 35)

For Schmitt, this view reduces truth to “a mere function of the eternal competition of opinions.” After pointing out the startling contrast between the theory and practice of liberalism, Schmitt suggests that liberal parliamentarian claims to legitimacy are rather weak and examines the claims of rival ideologies. Marxism replaces the liberal emphasis on the competition between opinions with a focus on competition between economic classes and, more generally, differing modes of production that rise and fall as history unfolds. Marxism is the inverse of liberalism, in that it replaces the intellectual with the material. The competition of economic classes is also much more intensified than the competition between opinions and commercial interests under liberalism. The Marxist class struggle is violent and bloody. Belief in parliamentary debate is replaced with belief in “direct action”. Drawing from the same rationalist intellectual tradition as the radical democrats, Marxism rejects parliamentarism as sham covering the dictatorship of a particular class, i.e., the bourgeoise. True democracy is achieved through the reversal of class relations under a proletarian state that rules in the interest of the laboring majority. Such a state need not utilize formal democratic procedures, but may exist as an “educational dictatorship” that functions to enlighten the proletariat regarding its true class interests. Schmitt then contrasts the rationalism of both liberalism and Marxism with irrationalism. Central to irrationalism is the idea of a political myth, comparable to the religious mythology of previous belief systems, and originally developed by the radical left-wing but having since been appropriated by revolutionary nationalists. It is myth that motivates people to action, whether individually or collectively. It matters less whether a particular myth is true than if people are inspired by it.

          It is clear enough that Schmitt’s criticisms of liberalism are intended not so much as an effort to undermine democratic legitimacy as much as an effort to confront the weaknesses of the intellectual foundations of liberal democracy with candor and intellectual rigor, not necessarily to undermine liberal democracy, but out of recognition of the need for strong and decisive political authority capable of acting in the interests of the nation during perilous times. Schmitt remarks:

“If democratic identity is taken seriously, then in an emergency no other constitutional institution can withstand the sole criterion of the peoples’ will, however it is expressed.” (Sourcebook, p.337)

          In other words, the state must first act to preserve itself and the general welfare and well-being of the people at large. If necessary, the state may override narrow partisan interests, parliamentary procedure or, presumably, routine electoral processes. Such actions by political leadership may be illiberal, but not necessarily undemocratic, as the democratic general will does not include national suicide. Schmitt outlines this theory of the survival of the state as the first priority of politics in The Concept of the Political. The essence of the “political” is the existence of organized collectives prepared to meet existential threats to themselves with lethal force if necessary. The “political” is different from the moral, the aesthetic, the economic or the religious as it involves first and foremost the possibility of groups of human beings killing other human beings. This does not mean that war is necessarily “good” or something to be desired or agitated for. Indeed, it may sometimes be in the political interests of a state to avoid war. However, any state that wishes to survive must be prepared to meet challenges to its existence, whether from conquest or domination by external forces or revolution and chaos from internal forces. Additionally, a state must be capable of recognizing its own interests and assume sole responsibility for doing so. A state that cannot identify its enemies and counter enemy forces effectively is threatened existentially.

          Schmitt’s political ideas are more easily understood in the context of Weimar’s political situation. He is considering the position of a defeated and demoralized Germany, unable to defend itself against external threats, and threatened internally by weak, chaotic and unpopular political leadership, economic hardship, political and ideological polarization and growing revolutionary movements, sometimes exhibiting terrorist or fanatical characteristics. Schmitt regards Germany as desperately in need of some sort of foundation for the establishment of a recognized, legitimate political authority capable of upholding the interests and advancing the well-being of the nation in the face of foreign enemies and above domestic factional interests. This view is far removed from the Nazi ideas of revolution, crude racial determinism, the cult of the leader and war as a value unto itself. Schmitt is clearly a much different thinker than the adherents of the quasi-mystical nationalism common to the radical right-wing of the era. Weimar’s failure was due in part to the failure of political leadership to effectively address the questions raised by Schmitt.

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ABSTRACT: The widely believed claim that many voters in American elections are voting against their economic interests (“lower income Republicans versus affluent Democrats”) in favor of their social or cultural values is not supportable by the data concerning class voting patterns. American voters are polarized on both a class and cultural basis. Economic polarization takes place on a national level, and cuts across regional and local boundaries, with rich Americans overwhelmingly voting for the Republicans and poor Americans leaning strongly towards the Democrats. Cultural polarization represents intra-class conflict within the middle class, primarily the upper middle class, with affluent people in wealthier states voting for the Democrats and persons with a comparable class position in the poorer states voting Republican. Furthermore, the “red-state/blue-state” electoral map represents conflict not between states per se as much as conflict between ideologically polarized Congressional districts, local communities, counties and neighborhoods.

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In recent years a stereotype has emerged in American politics. The picture

presented by much of the media is one of lower income persons voting Republican and upper income persons voting Democratic. In other words, many people have started voting against their own economic interests in favor of their cultural values, with upper income, urban, educated, cosmopolitan elites voting for liberal social policies, and lower income, rural, religious voters favoring conservative policies. This image is often depicted on electoral maps as the “red state/blue state” divide with the socially conservative red state poor and working class pitted against affluent but socially liberal

residents of the blue states.  This picture is widely accepted, but is it true? Is it an accurate depiction of the class and cultural divisions among voters? The evidence indicates that it is not. The available data shows that the voting patterns of the poor are reliably Democratic. Instead, the red state/blue state divide is symptomatic of cultural conflict among middle to upper-middle income persons, and of intra-class conflict among the affluent or wealthy.

A leading and perhaps most well-known proponent of the “poor conservatives versus rich liberals” thesis is Thomas Frank, who outlined his views in the popularized work What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America.  Frank provides a straightforward summary of his views:

If you earn over $300,000 a year, you owe a great deal to this derangement. Raise a glass sometime to those indigent High Plains Republicans as you contemplate your good fortune: It is thanks to their self-denying votes that you are no longer burdened by the estate tax, or troublesome labor unions, or meddling banking regulators. Thanks to the allegiance of these sons and daughters of toil, you have escaped what your affluent forebears used to call “confiscatory” income tax levels. It is thanks to them that you were able to buy two Rolexes this year instead of one and get that Segway with the special gold trim. (Frank, 2004, p. 2)

According to Frank, Republicans have been able to successfully appeal to the social conservatism of blue collar workers and the rural poor on cultural controversies like abortion, gay rights, immigration, the role of religion in public life, gun control and affirmative action. Frank sees this as a “bait and switch” tactic on the part of the Republican Party, whereby working class voters are pushed to vote according to their cultural values, and are then given economic policies that are harmful to their own interests. Frank describes what he regards as the consequences of this arrangement:

Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors; receive electricity deregulation.Vote to get government off our backs; receive conglomeration and monopoly everywhere from media to meatpacking. Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization. Vote to strike a blow against elitism; receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our lifetimes, in which workers have been stripped of power and CEOs are rewarded in a manner beyond imagining.(Frank, 2004, p. 7)

Liberals who agree with Frank’s analysis will argue that working class Republican voters are under the grip of what the Marxists call “false consciousness,” meaning such voters are distracted by what the Left would consider to be religious superstition, irrational prejudices like racism or homophobia or conservative economic propaganda generated by

corporate-funded think tanks and media outlets. Allegedly, such distractions prevent working people from perceiving and voting for their rational economic self-interest.

Even some conservatives will agree with Frank’s general thesis, but from a polar opposite perspective. These conservatives will argue working class Republicans really do perceive their economic interests accurately, and that it is perfectly legitimate for workers to desire tax cuts in order to increase their take-home pay and deregulatory policies that ostensibly accelerate economic growth and therefore job creation and rising living standards. (Gelman, Park, Shor, Bafumi, Cortina, 2008, p. 16) An even more extreme argument is offered by the neoconservative commentator David Brooks, who suggests

that because the red state/blue divide appears to be driven more by cultural and social issues than by class or economic ones, that perhaps the idea of “class,” which he derides as “Marxist” in nature, is not applicable to American society at all.  Brooks sees Americans divided on the basis of cliques rather than classes, with these cliques being comparable to the various teenage subcultures one might find at a high school, such as “nerds, jocks, punks, bikers, techies, druggies, God Squadders,” etc. (Brooks, 2001)

The methodology utilized by commentators like Frank and Brooks is

problematical. Frank relies very heavily on anecdotal evidence gathered from his experiences with Republican-leaning, working-class Kansas communities of the kind that he grew up around. He provides examples like a friend’s father, a man with liberal economic views but whose Catholic religious beliefs led him to the pro-life Republicans. (Frank, 2001, p. 4) Much of Frank’s work includes sweeping political, cultural and historical analysis with very little in raw statistical data provided as supporting evidence.  Likewise, many of Brooks’ arguments are anecdotal in nature, relying on his personal experiences of living in an upper class liberal community and his ventures into conservative working class towns and conversing with the locals.

What Does the Data Show?

            The most comprehensive and up to date analysis of the available data concerning voting patterns in relation to class position, income, occupation and cultural background is provided by Andrew Gelman, David Park, Boris Shar, Joseph Bafumi and Jeronimo Cortina. This group of scholars published their research in 2008 under the title Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote The Way They Do. Contra Frank, these researchers found that the image of “working class conservatives versus affluent liberals” is a false one, arguing instead that “lower-income Americans don’t, in general, vote Republican-and, where they do, richer voters go Republican even more so.” With regards to Kansas, for instance, that particular state has leaned Republican by ten percent greater than the national average for sixty years, and the real source of Republican strength in Kansas is the middle to upper classes. (Gelman, 2008, pp. 14-15)

Political scientist Larry Bartels argues that it is only in the South that the trend of whites without college education voting Republican has emerged.(Bartels, 2006) Even so, Gelman, Park, et.al. found that in the 2004 presidential election the “poor vote” went to Democratic candidate John Kerry in all of the Southern states except Texas!(Gelman, 2008) Bartels maintains that there is no identifiable pattern of white working class voters favoring cultural issues over economic ones. Jeffrey Stonecash argues that “the last 40 years shows a growing class division in American politics, with less affluent whites more supportive of Democrats now than 20-30 years ago. Indeed, even in Kansas less affluent legislative districts are much more supportive of Democrats than affluent districts.”(Stonecrash, 2005)

The evidence indicates that the rich are overwhelmingly Republican in their

voting preferences. Republican candidate George W. Bush only won thirty-six percent of the vote from those earning less than $15,000 annually in the 2004 election. Among those earning over $200,00 Bush obtained sixty-two percent of the vote. (Gelman, 2008, p. 9) As mentioned, Bush’s home state of Texas was the only southern state where Bush won the “poor people” vote in the 2004 election. Yet even in Texas there was a significant class division in voting patterns. In Zavala County, the poorest Texas locality, Bush won

twenty-five percent of the vote. However, in the wealthiest Texas community, Collin County, Bush won seventy-one percent of the vote. The capital city of Austin is located in Travis County, where the mean income of $45,000 is solidly middle class, and where Bush received fifty-three percent of the vote. (Gelman, 2008, p. 12) 

Voting patterns indicate that poor voters are overwhelmingly Democratic, as are racial minorities. This is not to say that there are no significant cultural differences among the poor. After all, “the poor” can include everything from rural Alabama whites who belong to the Ku Klux Klan to black street gang members in the inner city areas. Yet there is no evidence that such differences play significant roles in American electoral politics. Many poor people do not vote at all. Those who do are, by a wide margin,  consistently Democratic-leaning.  The growing gap between socio-economic groups that has escalated over the past thirty years has been widely documented, but this growing divide between rich and poor is not the source of the red state/blue state divide.

The evidence supports the conclusion that the red state/blue state divide has its roots in cultural conflict within middle to upper-middle income groups. As Gelman summarizes:

There is still a rich-poor divide in voting, in popular perceptions of the Democrats and Republicans, and in the parties’ economic policies. But voting patterns have been changing, and the red-blue map captures some of this. The economic battles have not gone away, but they intersect with cultural issues in a new way. In low-income states such as Mississippi and Alabama, richer people were far more likely to vote (Republican)…But in richer states such as New York and California, income is not a strong predictor of individual votes. (Gelman, 2008, p. 17)

In the poor states, the pattern of wealthy people voting Republican and poor people voting Democratic is very reliable. In states where the mean income is more in the middle, the pattern begins to blur somewhat, and in the wealthiest states, income is not a determining factor in voting patterns. While the middle to upper classes in wealthier states are just as likely to favor the Democrats as poor people, the same socio-economic groups in the poor states are more likely to favor the Republicans. To break it down further on a regional basis, Democrats only win the “rich vote” in the most liberal states. For instance, in the 2004 election the Democrats won the vote of those with an income of over $200,000 annually in only four states: California, Connecticut,

Massachusetts, and New York. Middle class support for the Democratic Party is the strongest in the Northeast, parts of the upper Midwest/Great Lakes region, and on the West Coast.  To break it down to the level of local communities, affluent to wealthy urban people tend to lean towards the Democrats, even though the majority of affluent people are Republicans. The wealthiest states are also those which are the most urbanized. (Gelman, 2008, p. 19-20)

A key question that arises from these observations concerns the matter of why voting patterns are more divided on the basis of income in poor states. These patterns are relatively new. For instance, in the 1976 presidential election, the Democrat Jimmy Carter won the South, and the Republican Gerald Ford won California, New Jersey and parts of New England. In the 1976 election, the level of correlation between the wealth of a state and partisan sympathies was relatively small. Why do affluent people in poor

states hold such greater differences in their political allegiances than poor people when compared to affluent people in wealthier states? Gelman and associates offer four primary explanations:

1.      Race. Division between races is the most evident in poor states in the South. This racial division overlaps with a class division. Because of the relationship between race and class position, economic policies such as social welfare programs that involve transfer payments from rich or affluent persons to the poor are seen as race-based entitlements for African-Americans.

2.      Religion. Wealthier people in the poor states attend church more regularly or frequently than poor people, and are also more likely to belong to conservative religious denominations than persons with comparable levels of wealth in richer states.

3.      Geography and history. The wealthier states have a much larger number of unionized workers, more large cities, and stronger immigrant communities, thereby creating a more liberal political and cultural atmosphere in these states. A direct correlation exists between cosmopolitanism and Democratic voting patterns.

4.      Mobility. Middle to upper income persons have greater freedom and ability to choose where they will live and whom they will associate with. For instance, affluent persons with liberal social or cultural views tend to migrate towards urban enclaves such as Portland, Seattle, Madison, Minneapolis, San Francisco or Montgomery County, Maryland where such views are most prevalent. (Gelman, 2008, p. 22)

Political polarization in the United States occurs on two levels, the economic and the cultural. A divide exists not only between rich and poor, but between affluent Americans holding different cultural values.  Analysts differ as to the causes of this polarization. Political scientists Nolan McCarty, Keith Poole, and Howard Rosenthal attempt to explain contemporary American political polarization as an outgrowth of growing income inequality.  Between the 1920s and the mid-1970s, patterns of wealth distribution in the United States were comparable to those of other nations with relatively similar levels of

economic, industrial and technological development. However, economic inequality has grown immensely in the United States in the last thirty-five years, and at a much greater rate than what can be found in other comparable nations. McCarty, Poole and Rosenthal also point out that this wealth gap has appeared within the individual American states, and not among them. The growth of wealth inequality has transpired on a class rather than sectional basis. (McCarty, Poole, Rosenthal, 2008)

Since the mid-1970s, many of the more underdeveloped areas of the U.S. have improved their economic standing. Wealthy people in wealthy states have been have been getting rich at a quicker pace, while poor people in poor states have been rising out of poverty at a quicker pace. This is no doubt attributable to a variety of causes, including the growth of the industrial base of the so-called Sunbelt, the effects of tax cuts and deregulation policies implemented by several administrations, and the expansion of

the welfare state as a barrier to total poverty. Economic inequality has also grown in Democratic states and decreased in Republican ones. Concerning economic policies that primarily affect individuals, Republicans will generally favor the affluent while Democrats will favor the low-income. However, Gelman and associates point out that there is deviation from this pattern when it comes to policies that affect regions, states or local communities. In some instances, Democrats will favor more affluent communities while Republicans will favor poor localities. Gelman observes that “one might see certain

policy areas where Democratic officeholders, as friends of the rich areas, become friends of the rich people, for example, in supporting the federal tax deduction for state income tax (which benefits taxpayers, especially upper-income taxpayers, in New York and California).” (Gelman, 2008, pp. 61-62) Also, interstate social transfer payments are greater from Democratic states to Republican states rather than vice versa. The richest ten states receive only eighty cents in federal spending for every dollar paid in taxes while the poorest ten states receive $1.60. (Gelman, 2008, p. 62) The evidence indicates that while economic inequality is indeed growing, this expanding class divide is not expressed in regional divisions and cannot explain the conventional “red state/blue state” political

polarization.

The Voting Patterns

It has been mentioned that in the 2004 presidential election, the “rich people vote” (persons earning more than $200,000 a year) went overwhelmingly for the Republicans, with the votes of this group going to the Democrats in only four states. In the same election, the Democrats won the middle income vote (between $15,000 and $200,000) in California, Washington, Oregon, Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois and all of the northeastern states from Maryland upward. The Republicans won the “poor people” vote (less than

$15,000) only in Bush’s home state of Texas, Indiana, and the sparsely populated western states of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho and the Dakotas. 

It is much more striking to observe the voting patterns with regards to church

attendance. In the 2004 election the Republicans won the votes of those who attend church at least once a week in forty-eight of the fifty states! The Democrats won the votes of regular churchgoers only in Maryland and Massachusetts. Among semi-regular churchgoers, the Democrats won fourteen states: California, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Arkansas, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland. The Republicans won the

votes of non-churchgoers only in ten states: Texas, Idaho, Utah, South Dakota, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina.

According to the World Values Survey, the United States is unique in that it is the only one of the world’s wealthier nations with a high level of religiosity. (Inglehart, 2005)) Some observers attribute this to the fact that many Americans are descended from immigrants who were often from the poorest and most religious sectors of the countries from where they came. The comparatively high level of economic inequality in the U.S. makes the nation more likely to display characteristics more common to poor countries

like a greater amount of religious practice or belief. Still another explanation is America’s tradition of separation of church and state. The lack of an established national church opens up the “religion market” to competition among a wide variety of denominations and sects that must rely on the voluntary participation and contributions of adherents in order to remain active. (Gelman, 2008, pp. 76-77)

It would certainly appear on the surface that the “red/blue divide” simply reflects the polarization between the religious and the non-religious and that this polarization is played out in terms of party loyalty and voting patterns.  The reputation of the Republican Party as the “Party of God” is a relatively new phenomenon. The identifiable pattern of religious people voting Republican by a significant margin did not appear until the 1992

presidential election when the incumbent George H. W. Bush obtained twenty percent greater support among those who church attendance was consistent than among those who were not regular church goers. (Gelman, 2008, p. 84) While Ronald Reagan received the enthusiastic support of the newly organized “religious right” in the 1980 and 1984 elections, the data shows that the impact of the religious vote in those two elections was actually less significant that it had been in the election between Gerald Ford and

Jimmy Carter in 1976 (Gelman, 2008, p. 86)

The overall level of religiosity in the United States has decreased significantly

since the early 1960s. The number of people who say they never or rarely attend church when responding to surveys has grown from only a few percent of Americans in 1960 to twenty-five to forty percent, with the variation being dependent on such factors as geography, class position and income levels. Additionally, American society has become more liberal with regards to a wide variety of issues including race relations, gender roles, sexuality, and abortion. This social liberalization has coincided with an increased

secularization of public educational institutions. Even some religious denominations have followed the wider trend of liberalization by, for instance, accepting women and gays into the ranks of the clergy. Not surprisingly, this process of greater liberalization and secularization of society at large and greater liberalization within religious institutions themselves has produced a conservative backlash. Religious conservatives have become more politically active since the 1970s, and some religious people with more traditional

views have sought out more conservative denominations in response to the increased liberalism of their former denomination. All of this is well-known.  It is also well-known that the “red states” tend on average to possess more devoutly religious people that the “blue states.”

However, there are problems with interpreting the “red/blue” conflict as purely religious in nature, though it may be tempting to do so from a surface look at the data. Class and geography are also important parts of the wider picture. For instance, lower-income people are much more likely to claim the importance of religion to their own lives, attend church, pray or engage in other religious practices regularly, or to describe themselves as “born-again” Christians.  The class division between the religious and the non-religious is also greatest outside the “Bible Belt” of the southern states. These are fairly predictable statistics.  What is more interesting is to observe the relationship

between income levels and church attendance within individual states. In the poor states,  the higher one’s income, the likelihood of regular church attendance increases. In the richer states, the higher one’s income, the less likely one will be to attend church regularly. In other words, in poor “red” states, more affluent people are more likely toattend church than poor people, but in the wealthier “blue” states it is the other way around. (Gelman, 2008, pp. 83-84)

With regards to denominational affiliation, mainline Protestants have traditionally tended to vote Republican, but these have started to move away from consistent support for the Republicans as the party’s conservative wing has become dominant and the older Rockefeller-Eisenhower Republicans have been eclipsed. Catholics have traditionally supported the Democratic Party, but the Catholic vote has been less consistently Democratic as the party has become more liberal on social questions such as abortion and

gay rights. Prior to the 1980s, “evangelical,” conservative, or fundamentalist Protestants were primarily a Democratic constituency. Yet the evangelical vote has shifted by a wide margin to the Republicans since the liberalization of the Democratic Party and the advent of the “religious right.” (Gelman, 2008, p. 86)

What Does the Data Mean?

The red state/blue state divide and the division between religious and non-

religious voters did not appear until 1992.  As Gelman, et.al. explain:

Part of the story is Bill Clinton, who repelled many religious conservatives who saw a connection between his adulterous lifestyle and his support for liberal social causes. (Reagan had been divorced, but that was long in the past, and he sided with the Religious Right on many issues.) There was also the growing strength of the evangelical movement as followers of Pat Robertson and other gained influence in state Republican parties…On the other side, Democrats became more committed to liberal positions on abortion and gay rights…With the closer alignment of moral issues to the political parties, voters have sorted themselves on these attitudes. (Gelman, 2008, p. 87-88)

Within this political framework and alignment of political parties with particular social causes and sets of cultural values, a voter who is both affluent and religious will unsurprisingly vote for the Republicans. A voter who is poor and religious could vote either Democratic or Republican. The data also shows that wealthy, non-religious people are about evenly divided between the two parties. In other words, support for the Republicans comes primarily from middle to upper class people who are also religious. Support for the Democrats comes from the non-religious and lower-class religious people. Contra the Marxist view of religion as the “opium of the masses” whereby the

working classes are distracted from pursuing their material interests because of religious or cultural values or biases, the evidence indicates that it is the affluent whose politics  are most influenced by their cultural norms. Gelman, Park, Shor, Bafumi and Cortina offer this assessment of their research:

Voters consider cultural issues to be more important as they become more financially secure. From this perspective it makes perfect sense that politics is more about economics in poor states  and more about culture in rich states. And it also makes sense that, among low-income voters, political attitudes are not much different in red or blue states, whereas the cultural divide of the two Americas looms larger at high incomes. For predicting your vote, we suspect that it’s not so important whether you buy life’s necessities at Wal-Mart or the corner grocery, but that it might be more telling if you spend your extra income on auto-racing tickets or on a daily gourmet coffee. We can understand differences between red and blue America in terms of cultural values of upper-middle-class and rich voters. Religious attendance is associated with Republican vote most strongly among high income residents of all states. This does not mean that lower-income Americans all vote the same way-far from it-but the differences in how they vote appear to depend less on religious values. (Gelman, 2008, pp. 89-92)

As an illustration, the data from the 2004 election demonstrates that the relationship between income and church attendance was a predictable indicator of how one would vote in heavily Democratic states, heavily Republican states and “battleground” states alike. In all three types of states, high income persons who attend church were likely to vote Republican, while in strongly Democratic states there was no demonstrable relationship between income and voting patterns.

Why Is the South Different?

The Southern states present two distinct anomalies. The first of these is Bartels observation that it is only in the South that the phenomenon of white voters lacking college education voting Republican emerges. (Bartels, 2006) Even so, it has been established that lower-income voters in the South overwhelmingly vote Democratic. What makes the South distinct is the proportionately high number of blue-collar whites who vote Republican, generally lower-middle class persons with annual earnings in the

$20,000-$40,000 range. Even more interesting is that prior to the civil rights revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, the Democratic Party was so deeply entrenched and institutionalized in the South that the Southern states essentially comprised a one-party region. Indeed, the South was known as the “Solid South” in national electoral politics because the region’s Democratic loyalties were so predictable. It was not until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the subsequent Voting Rights Act that white

voters in the South began to drift towards the Republicans. These pieces of legislation had been passed by a Democratic-controlled Congress and signed into law by the Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson. (Lamis, 2005)

This explains the shift of the South to the Republicans generally but what about working class whites in the South? It was this class of whites that proved to be the most resistant to civil rights in the South. Upper-income whites were more accommodating to the institutionalization of civil rights, as it was these whites who stood to gain the most from the economic transformation of the South during the postwar era from a predominately agricultural society to a modern industrial society, which necessitated at

least some degree of social modernization as well. Furthermore, upper-income whites were more able to insulate themselves from the perceived “negative” effects of civil rights, such as racially integrated public spaces and institutions (schools, parks, pools, golf courses, theaters, etc.) Many of these whites simply formed private schools and recreational associations for themselves that remained de facto segregated, and often resided in neighborhoods where the price of housing was cost prohibitive for blacks. In

other words, upper class whites could enjoy the economic and political benefits of public desegregation while essentially retaining segregation for themselves on a private basis.

This was not true of the white working class. Urban working class whites

whose resistance to desegregation failed would then relocate to racially homogenous white neighborhoods in suburban areas outside of cities. Hence, the well-known pattern of “white flight.” These patterns of a shift from public segregation to private segregation by upper-income whites and white flight by working class whites tended to push Southern whites in general towards fiscal conservatism. Simply put, these whites did not want to pay taxes to support public institutions and facilities that they regarded as having been “handed over” to blacks. (Kruse, 2005) Consequently, fiscal and economic conservatives associated with the Republican Party in the Northern states began to regard de jure or de facto “racial conservatives” in the South as their natural allies and the two forces began to bend towards one another. (Lewis, 2006) Over time, the openly racial dimension of this phenomenon would fade into a middle-class oriented fiscal conservatism that emphasized “color blindness.” It would be an overstatement to claim that contemporary working class Southern whites who vote Republican in the name of fiscal and economic conservatism are simply closet racists who hide their real views

behind something more socially acceptable. Indeed, many of them may well be unaware of the origins of this particular brand of conservatism, and some of these contemporary Southern white conservative Republicans are transplanted Northerners (or their descendents) who had little or no personal exposure to the old system of segregation, but the roots of contemporary Southern white working class political conservatism in resistance to civil rights is a demonstrable fact. (Lassiter, 2004; Hall, 2005)

The other anomaly to be found in the South is the greater attachment of upper-income persons to organized religion over lower-income persons. This phenomenon defies the usual pattern not only in the United States, but world wide. In most societies, the higher one’s class position, the less likely one will be to practice formal religion. The American South reverses this pattern. Thus far, it does not appear that enough research has been done on this situation to make a thorough understanding of its origins or causes available. One possibility may be the fact that the South was for all practical purposes a

feudal society with a rigid racial caste system and a primarily agrarian economy until the post-World War Two era. The use of religion as a means of social control by the traditional Southern white ruling class is well-known. For instance, each of the major U.S. Protestant denominations split into northern and southern factions over the issue of slavery prior to the Civil War. Hence, the existence of such contemporary denominations as the Southern Baptists and Southern Methodists. White fundamentalist preachers were

often defenders of the segregationist status quo during the civil rights era as well.

If indeed religion was used as a force for social control, it is understandable that a tradition of greater than usual attachment to religious institutions would develop among privileged Southern whites. Likewise, it would certainly be understandable that lower-class persons would experience greater alienation from religious institutions in such a situation, leading to an inversion of the usual norm where it is the lower classes that are more religiously devout than the upper classes. Similar situations have emerged in other nations. For instance, the radical labor and peasant movements in Spain during the pre-

Franco years included many otherwise culturally conservative persons who developed a militant anti-clericalism in response to the role of the Catholic Church in Spain as accomplices to a highly oppressive ruling class. (Bookchin, 2001)

The American South displays characteristics concerning the relationship between personal religiosity, class position and political affiliation that are in some ways similar to what is often found in Latin American countries. The American South is also more similar in its history to Latin America than other regions of North America. Both the South and most of Latin America have a feudal or quasi-feudal past as agrarian societies with a rigid class structure with organized religious institutions being very much on the side of the ruling class. In Latin America, the lower-classes tend to be very religious on a

personal level, while formal displays of religious piety through such things as regular church attendance are more common to the middle classes. The upper layers of the Church hierarchy in Latin America tend to be very conservative. Voting patterns in Latin American countries are such that the lower classes typically vote for the Left, while the middle classes will vote for the center-right Christian Democratic parties, and the upper classes will vote for the “hard Right.” (Yglesias, 2007) This fairly closely mirrors class voting patterns in the southern states in the U.S.  It is also true that evangelical religion in Latin America takes on different forms depending on the class position of the participants. Middle to upper class Latin American evangelicals will often

espouse social or political views similar to those of the U.S. “Religious Right.” The Guatemalan dictator Rios Montt was an example of this. On the other hand, lower class evangelicalism in Latin America tends to take on a “social gospel” flavor much like African-American religion in America or past expressions of left-wing evangelicalism that emerged in American populism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. (Freston, 2008) The American South and Latin America are similar to one another in unique ways in that both regions have both a fairly recent quasi-feudal, agrarian past and democratic governments. This would set both regions apart from the rest of North America, Europe, Asia, Africa or the Middle East. There appears to be unique and similar dynamics working in both regions that give these two regions characteristics that are difficult to find elsewhere.

The Big Sort

Still another factor affecting voting patterns in American elections is what author Bill Bishop has called “The Big Sort.” This is a phenomenon where persons with the financial means of doing so will relocate to a neighborhood, community or even a state that is more compatible with their cultural interests. This creates a system of cultural self-segregation among middle to upper income Americans.(Bishop, 2008) To demonstrate his argument, Bishop acknowledges that in the 1976 Ford-Carter election, the number of counties in the United States where either candidate won by a landslide (a margin of

twenty percentage points or greater) was significantly fewer in number than the number of counties where victory was determined by a landslide in the Bush-Kerry election of 2004. Bishop also describes his experience of living in a liberal enclave in the Austin, Texas area:

My wife and I…didn’t intend to move into a community filled with Democrats, but that’s what we did-effortlessly and without a trace of understanding about what we were doing…In 2000, George W. Bush…took sixty percent of the state’s vote. But in our patch of Austin, Bush came in third, behind both Al Gore and Ralph Nader. Four years later, eight out of ten of our neighbors voted for John Kerry. (Bishop, 2008, p. 1)

Like other observers of these issues, Bishop traces the beginnings of the “big sort” to the cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s and the subsequent backlash from social conservatives and religious traditionalists. However, Bishop maintains that the sorting process really did not begin to manifest itself until the 1990s. During that decade, the baby boom generation, the first to be heavily influenced by the 1960s-era “cultural revolution,” entered middle age. The economic expansion of the 1990s and the growth of the educated population converged to create a situation where large numbers of persons

existed who possessed a combination of affluence, education and a relatively liberal social outlook. Consequently, both middle aged baby boomers and their younger, “Generation X” cohorts began to congregate in urban centers “where they would not be bound by old ideas or tight social ties.” (Bishop, 2008, p. 144)

It is also important to recognize that the “big sort” occurs primarily at the level of local communities, and sometimes individual neighborhoods, rather than at the state level.  John Tierney observes that in the 2000 presidential election, George W. Bush received the smallest numbers of votes in the states of Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York and Hawaii. However, all of these states had Republican governors at the time. Tierney believes such patterns indicate that the “red state/blue state” divide is a myth, and that most Americans are centrists. (Tierney, 2005) Jonathan Kandel observes that in the 2000 election, there were only five red states

(Wyoming, North Dakota, Utah, Nebraska and Idaho) and one blue state (Rhode Island) where the candidate of either party won by more than sixty percent. Kandel also observes that of the eleven states that passed initiatives prohibiting same-sex marriage in 2004, two of these states (Oregon and Michigan) went for the Democrats in the presidential election, and many others were competitive in that neither party won the presidency by more than sixty percent. (Kandel, 2006)

Bruce Oppenheimer argues that the division between red and blue states

represents divisions between Congressional districts rather than states, and he attributes this to partisan redistricting, which groups together voters with similar views and partisan sympathies and has the effect of creating “safe” districts for incumbents or their parties. (Oppenheimer, 2005) Yet the most compelling evidence is that offered by Bishop. According to Bishop, in 1976 only twenty-six percent of Americans lived in what he calls “landslide counties” where the presidential vote is determined by more than a sixty

percent total for the winner. By 1992, the year that Gelman and associates consider to be the starting point for the “red/blue” divide, thirty-eight percent of voters resided in landslide counties. That percentage increased with each subsequent presidential election, and by 2004, forty-eight percent of Americans were living in landslide counties. (Bishop, 2008, pp. 9-10)

The 2008 Presidential Election

Bishop has updated his research to include the 2008 presidential election.  In

2008, the number of Americans living in landslide counties was the same as in 2004: forty-eight percent. This division has tilted strongly towards the Democrats. In 2004, 94 million lived in Democratic landslide counties, while in 2008 it was only 64 million. In 2008, 53 million Americans were in Republican landslide counties, while in 2004 it had been 83 million. Among states, the average winning margin was seventeen percent, as opposed to sixteen percent in 2004, fifteen percent in 2000, and ten percent in 1976. The

number of landslide states increased to thirty-six from twenty-nine in 2004. The number of states where the election was decided by five or less percentage points was down to seven, from eleven in 2004. Barack Obama won forty-three percent of the rural vote, up from Kerry’s forty percent in 2004, and fifty-seven percent of the urban vote, up from Kerry’s fifty-one percent.  Bishop attributes Obama’s greater vote totals in rural America

over Kerry to the success of his strategy of targeting college towns within rural areas. Also, the 2008 election demonstrated strong divisions among racial and ethnic groups. In those counties where Obama won by a landslide, only 1.3 whites can be found for every minority. Yet in McCain-landslide counties, there are five whites for every minority. (Bishop, 2008)

The Future

The most striking feature of the 2008 election is the fact that while the number of landslide counties remained the same, on a partisan basis the number of persons living in a landslide county increased by a third for Democrats and decreased by about the same amount for Republicans. Bishop attributes this to a higher out-migration rate among Democrats, who relocate to traditionally “red” areas but bring “blue” values with them, and consequently influence voting patterns in their new localities accordingly. (Bishop, 2008) However, such a shift in a four year period might also be attributed to much more far reaching demographic, cultural and generational change. In 1997, the conservative writer Peter Brimelow made this prediction:

The Republican hour is rapidly drawing to a close. Not because the (Republican base) of the West and the South, of the middle class and urban blue-collar voters, is breaking up in the traditional manner. Instead, it is being drowned—as a direct result of the 1965 Immigration Act…Nine-tenths of the immigrant influx is from groups with significant—sometimes overwhelming—Democratic propensities. After thirty years, their numbers are reaching critical mass. And there is no end in sight.

To estimate the future impact of Immigration, we took the 1988 presidential race, in which George Bush beat Michael Dukakis with 53 per cent of the vote. This figure happens also to be the average vote received by the Republicans in presidential elections since 1968—the largest advantage won by any party over any six elections in American history. And it is the vote received by Republicans in 1994, when they took control of the Senate and House. It can reasonably be regarded as the Republican high-water mark.

Then we lowered this high-water mark by accounting for the shifting ethnic balance that the Census projects will result from immigration, assuming that the ethnic groups continued to vote as they did in 1988. The results are startling…Even if the Republicans can again win their 1988 level of support in each ethnic group—which they have miserably failed to do against Bill Clinton—they have at most two presidential cycles left. Then they go inexorably into minority status, beginning in 2008. (Brimelow, 1997)

Subsequent events since the publication of Brimelow’s article in 1997 would seem to vindicate his prognosis. Another work making a similar prediction was published by two writers associated with The New Republic in 2002. In their The Emerging Democratic Majority, authors John P. Judis and Ruy Teixeira predicted the rise of a new electoral majority rooted in educated urban professionals, racial and ethnic minorities, feminists and educated working women, college students, environmentalists, secularists, gays and

lesbians. Judis and Teixeira refer to this phenomenon as “George McGovern’s Revenge” as these were largely the groups that comprised the 1972 McGovern coalition that lost in a landslide to President Nixon.

However, there is another constituent group among Judis and Teixeira’s predicted Democratic majority: the white working class. Observing how the Democratic Party lost substantial numbers of blue collar white voters during the post-civil rights era over race issues, foreign policy, crime, the rise of the counterculture and the conservative religious backlash, gun control and the economic downturn of the 1970s, Judis and Teixeira argued that these voters began to return to the Democrats because of the recession that occurred

in the early 1990s during the administration of President George H.W. Bush. In other words, blue collar whites were returning to the Democrats at precisely the same time as the emergence of the red state/blue state electoral divide. President Reagan won the votes of unionized white workers in 1980 and 1984. George H. W. Bush lost these voters by four percentage points in 1988. Clinton won the white unionized worker vote by an average of twenty-three percentage points in 1992 and 1996. Yet, it is during these years

that the current electoral divide emerges, so clearly the conventional view offered by Thomas Frank and others of “working class Republicans versus upper class Democrats” is false and likely rooted in outdated stereotypes left over from the Nixon and Reagan eras.  Indeed, Judis and Teixeira point out that the composition of the “white working class” has changed significantly, with nearly fifty percent of white workers being women by 2000, and a significant number of younger, urban white workers with relatively liberal

views on social issues like abortion, the environment or gay rights. Like Brimelow, Judis and Teixeira predicted that 2008 would be the year that the new Democratic majority eventually became dominant. (Judis and Teixeira, 2002, p. 14, 37-66)

Gelman and associates demonstrate rather clearly that the primary driving force in the red state/blue state “culture war” is religion. The primary indicator of whether a middle class person will vote Democratic or Republican is whether they attend church regularly or not. According to the American Religious Identification Survey, nearly all American religious denominations have lost members over the last twenty years. Catholics and Baptists, the two largest denominations, lost one and four percent of their membership, respectively. The number of people claiming the generic label of “Christian” has dropped by half a percentage point. Mainline Protestant denominations

have lost nearly a third of their membership since 1990. Persons claiming no religion at all and persons with agnostic views of religion have both doubled in the past twenty years, and collectively, skeptics, atheists, agnostics and other unbelievers are the single largest religious group in the U.S. at twenty percent, except for Catholics with twenty-five percent.

Adherents of the Jewish religion have decreased by one third. Fringe

Protestant denominations like the Pentecostals, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses or Seventh Day Adventists have either remained the same numerically or increased slightly, but these are still very small when compared to American society as a whole. The only religions that have experienced real growth in the past twenty years have been those from outside traditional American culture. The number of U.S. Muslims and adherents of

“Eastern” religions like Buddhism or Hinduism have doubled, largely due to

immigration, and adherents of so-called “new age” spiritualities, neo-paganism, and Wicca have grown by one third. (Grossman, 2009)

Summary and Conclusion

It has been demonstrated that the popular view of the red-state/blue-state “culture war” divide as one pitting working class conservatives against affluent liberals is false. This view is rooted in archaic stereotypes that have not been especially relevant to U.S. electoral politics since the “red-state/blue-state” dichotomy has emerged. Specifically, the defection of white working class voters to the Republicans in the 1970s and 1980s has since reversed itself. The only region of the United States where the blue collar class votes Republican in any significant numbers is in the South, and this is due to that

region’s unique history in matters of race, religion and economics. The present-day red-state/blue-state divide first begins to appear on the electoral map in the 1992 presidential election, precisely the time that blue collar whites were returning to the Democrats.

Nor is this divide a matter of “rich versus poor.” The United States is indeed

polarized along class lines, but this economic polarization takes places on a national rather than sectional basis. As the overall pattern of wealth and income distribution in the U.S. has become more uneven in recent decades, support for the Democratic Party among working class voters has actually increased. Instead, the “red/blue” conflict represents an intra-class conflict within the middle class, primarily the upper middle class, with middle

class voters in wealthy states being more culturally liberal than their counterparts in poorer states. The driving force behind this middle class culture war is religion, with church attendance being the primary indication of how a middle class person will vote.  Geographically, this cultural polarization transpires more at the local community level rather than at the state level, pitting rural versus urban areas and conservative neighborhoods against liberal ones, though differences among states are not insignificant.