leftlibertarian.org

Steve Herrick, of Just Things and Chlorophyll Blog, asked me to pass along an announcement:

Buses are being organized from various Midwestern locations to this summer's U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta. If you're interested, check here for more info.

Here’s the rules:

1. Pick a quote of one or more paragraphs from something you’ve read, in print, over the course of the past week. (It should be something you’ve actually read, and not something that you’ve read a page of just in order to be able to post your favorite quote.)

2. Avoid commentary above and beyond a couple sentences, more as context-setting or a sort of caption for the text than as a discussion.

3. Quoting a passage doesn’t entail endorsement of what’s said in it. You may agree or you may not. Whether you do isn’t really the point of the exercise anyway.

Here’s the quote. This is from chapter 21 of Harry Browne’s How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World (1973).

Raising the Child

As early as possible, it’s valuable to establish relationships with your child that are similar to the relationship you have with your lover.

The child should have his own world where he is clearly the sovereign. That means a room of his own that is subject to his control alone. If he doesn’t take care of it, he’ll learn the consequences of that sooner or later. But if he’s forced to keep it as his parents wish, he’ll never discover for himself the consequences of alternative courses of action.

He should also have other property to use in whatever way he chooses. Property isn’t owned if it can be used only in approved ways.

You’ll have to decide how he’ll obtain his property. He can earn it, receive an allowance, get outright gifts, or he can receive property in any combination of these ways.

But once he receives something, it’s important that he learn to understand what it means to own something and be responsible for its preservation. He shouldn’t be taught to expect automatic replacement of any of his property that he might destroy.

The importance of his sense of ownership can be seen by observing the difficulties many adults have in dealing with the world. For close to two decades, most people are led to believe that they aren’t sovereign.

Then, suddenly, they’re thrust out into the world, and expected to make far-reaching decisions concerning their lives. It’s no wonder that they have difficulty foreseeing the consequences of their actions and fall back on any authority that appears to be competent to make decisions for them.

I believe the child will be far better equipped to face the world if he understands how the world operates right from the beginning. He can easily learn what it means to make decisions and to experience the consequences of his decisions.

This means, too, that he should be helped to understand that you have your property, also. Show him which areas are off limits to him or require permission before he can use them. Even the dining table he eats on will belong to someone; part of his arrangement with the owner can include table privileges.

Obviously, a two-year-old child won’t have an explicit understanding of these matters. But there are two ways that he can understand them at the earliest possible age. One is that he can learn by example if the entire family operates in this way.

The second way is by never being taught otherwise. For some reason, many parents seem to think it important to change systems at some point in a child’s age. They first teach him he has no authority over his life, and then try later to instill a sense of responsibility in him. In the same way, they first want him to believe that Santa Claus loves and rewards him and then later want him to understand that it’s the parents who love him. I think it would make a considerable difference if the child were never taught anything that you intend to reverse later.

It’s important that each of the three of you be a separate human being with his own life, his own interests, and his own property. None of you is living for the benefit of the others; rather, each should be there because he wants to be. And each will want to be there if it’s a setting where he can live a meaningful life of his own choosing.

It obviously isn’t necessary that each member of the family own his own washing machine, stove, and living-room furniture; nor is it necessary for permission to be requested every time a non-owner wants to use something. Various things can be made available to other members of the household on a till further notice basis. But the ultimate ownership should never be in doubt.

If these principles don’t seem attractive to you, it may be because you’ve never been married. You may never have seen the hundreds of insignificant joint decisions that preoccupy most married people.

I’ve never known a family who used these principles who didn’t find them a great relief and advantage over normal ways of handling such matters.

A Sovereign Child

If you want your child to understand that he lives in a world in which his future will be of his own making, encourage that by letting him deal directly with the world as much as possible. Let him experience the consequences of his own actions.

Naturally, you don’t intend to let him discover first hand a very dangerous consequence of something he wants to do. But it’s important to deciade in advance where you will draw the line. How far will you let him go in making his own decisions? Don’t leave it to decide each time the matter arises. Have a clearly defined policy in advance that will prevent inconsistencies.

Be available to let him know your opinions—without implying that your opinions are binding on him. Let him think of you as a wiser, more experienced person—but not as a moral authority who stands in the way of his living his own life.

Be a source of information and opinion concerning the consequences of acts. Let him learn that the nature of the world he lives in (not the attitudes of people bigger and smarter than he is) sets the limits on what he can and cannot do in the world.

If you recognize him as an individual who is allowed to learn for himself, a genuine friendship can develop between you. He’ll be willing to talk to you about his ideas, plans, and problems—because he won’t have to fear the moral retribution that most parents inflict when they disagree with their children’s ideas and actions.

Parents who fear letting their children make decisions fail to realize that their children do make decisions on their own. You can’t possibly control all your child’s actions. So the best security you can have comes from two conditions: (1) allowing the child to learn as early as possible that his actions have consequences to him; and (2) developing a friendship that will make it possible for him to come to you when he needs help.

If either of these conditions is missing, you shouldn’t be surprised if you find out about crises only after they’ve happened. A child who knows that acts have consequences and who knows that he has a wise friend will be more likely to consult his friend before risking something dangerous.

Love and understanding are important to a child. And you’ll show your love more by respecting his individuality and appreciating him for what he is, not for what you force him to be.

—Harry Browne (1973), How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, pp. 240–243

“Even when reading is impossible, the presence of books
acquired (by passionate devotion to them) produces such an
ecstasy that the buying of more books than one can
peradventure read is nothing less than the soul reaching
towards infinity … we cherish books even if unread, their
mere presence exudes comfort, their ready access,
reassurance.”

– A.E. Newton

From a Cleansheets Yahoo group digest

(Revisions included removing two commas)

The Usual Drug War Horrors

US GA: Chain of Lies Led to Botched Raid

If such raids weren’t happening in the first place than you wouldn’t have to worry about this type of thing.

No More Mass Murder Please

Is the U.S . Already at War with Iran?

Are we seeing a repeat of 1953?

The Lies of the Times: NYT Pushes Bush Line on Somalia

The renewed U.S. intervention in Somalia has taken a backseat to the Iraq conflict.

Fight Terrorism: Get Out of Iraq

This is a very very good summary of the evidence for an imperialist foreign policy being a motivation for terrorist attacks on American soil.

From Canadian custody into cruel hands

I could put this under cultural issues — and it’d apply to enthusiasm for torture in current U.S. culture as well — too since the current Afghan landscape contains some extremely vicious personalities. This story is a horrifying reminder of their existence!

Voices of Iraq: Ramadi-Cards

I don’t watch CNN or FOX News much, but I wonder if they’d be highlighting a story like this?

Civil Liberties Versus Police Statism

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

Makes me wonder about whether it’s desirable to be a public dissident in these times or not.

Laughing Out Loud

It Wuz Always ‘Bout Tha Numbahs

I’ll just let it speak for itself

Please Don’t Take my Pawn!

A Delightful Game I Played

I finally updated the chess blog

Since 1998, nearly 200,000 aspiring college students have been stripped of their financial aid just because they have drug convictions, usually for small-time marijuana possession. Meanwhile, convicted murderers and rapists are eligible to continue receiving federal student loans and grants.Thankfully, Congress is currently considering getting rid of this harmful and unfair aid elimination penalty. But legislators won’t act unless they hear from you!To make taking a stand as easy as possible, we’ve created a pre-written letter that you can edit and send to legislators.

Just thought folks may be interested in this.

(Also posted at the Carnival of Anarchy)

Pacifism gets a bad rap; a very bad rap. At least, by those eager to place brutality and violence upon a pedestal (1). Indeed, I have experienced moments where my own inclination has been to romanticize the violently confrontational militant. I was once very much enamored with the imagery of the black bloc — and I mean the Starbucks window smashing kind — and participated in one at the IMF/World Bank protests of 2002 (2).

I relate all this personal history to illustrate how my perspective has changed dramatically over time. I now consider myself a near pacifist and anarchist philosophy to represent a striving towards the ideal that pacifism aims for. I haven’t rejected violence as never legitimate, but believe that all realistic non-violent methods of dealing with others should be exhausted first.

Only in the narrowest of circumstances — and those circumstances would only sanction defensive force –, do I see violence as justified. It’s only because I cannot view defensive violence as evil that I don’t call myself a pacifist (3). It holds a great appeal for me because part of my attraction to anarchist thinking is its identification of the state for what it is; an institution representing cold and inhumane organized force (4).
This is why anarchism is actually very pacifistic in the sense of positing the ideal of a society not reliant on coercion or the threat thereof. An unadulterated anarchy of this kind may never be realized, yet this is no reason to not view it as an inspiring vision worth attaining.

Notes:
1. I realize that individuals who don’t wish to celebrate brutality or violence also reject pacifism. It’s not my intention to accuse any critic of the doctrine of an eagerness to embrace violence or brutality.
2. In case anyone is wondering, I didn’t engage in any property destruction or witness any. This black bloc experience involved marching in a huge crowd through the streets of Washington D.C. I am almost entirely sure that this march had all of the required permits and/or clearances.
3. It’s my understanding that pacifism is defined by its moral opposition to all uses of violence.
4. I was thinking of Nietzsche’s quote about the state being a cold dead monster or something to that effect.

There have been a series of discussions / arguments / pointless pissing contests in recent months, revolving around the question of just what sorts of property, and what sorts of actions, are authorized by mutualist theory. Mutualism begins—literally, in Proudhon's What Is Property?—with a sense that "property" may be a problem without a really satisfactory solution. What, then, does that mean about the mutualist understanding of property relations, particularly in a setting where other property systems may be in place, or in competition. The short answer is probably that mutualism authorizes very little. If the best we can do is to determine workable conventions for the best title, it is not clear that we will always be able to clearly distinguish between competing systems on the grounds of equity and justice. In practice, the extension of rights is largely a matter of current convention. Of course, liberty, certainly the core value for any libertarian, will shape our practices in a very basic way—and sometimes it may shape them in unexpected ways. Benjamin Tucker, in all phases of his career, was sensitive to the ways in which even a "plumb-line" libertarian philosophy could set values at odds with one another, and pose problems in practice. In the essay that follows, he writes about the distinction between right and rights.

Benjamin R. Tucker, "Right and Individual Rights," Liberty, 1, 12 (January 7, 1882), 3.

Right and Individual Rights.

Until somebody shall have formulated and demonstrated a correct science of Justice, the way is ever open to constant confusion as regards the subject of right and rights. The column of a newspaper are not the place to develop such a science; nevertheless, the matter is so important that we have determined, reconsidering our previously-announced purpose to drop it, to once more re-state our position. On several occasions our editorials have been sharply criticised by parties who are supposed to know something of the principles of Liberty; not that they would differ from us, if they carried in mind the distinction that must necessarily be kept in view in discussing the bearings of Liberty upon human acts but simply that they have got into the habit of carelessly defining acts without reference to the sphere of the individuals acting.

The right to do a thing and the abstract right of a thing involve two essentially different principles. For instance, we have defended the right of individuals to make contracts stipulating the payment of usury, and should strike at the very essence of Liberty if we did not; but this defense of individual right by no means carries with it the defence of usury as an equitable transaction per se. In defending the right to take usury, we do not defend the right of usury. He who cannot see this has not mastered the A B C of social analysis. One of our critics, who has twice challenged our defence of individuals who voluntarily choose to be parties to usury, strenuously defends "free rum." Would he like to be accused of saying thereby that it is a right, as a matter of principle, to drink rum inordinately? No, he is a severe believer in the wrongfulness of excessive rum-drinking. But he believes that the rum-drinker and the rum-seller have the right to execute a contract involving a practice wrong in itself, and that no third party has the right to step between them by force and dictate the terms of their mutual and voluntary transactions. That is exactly, and no more than, what Liberty affirms with regard to usury. Wherein, then, have we so grievously sinned?

To say that it is absolutely right to do a thing is to say that to do it is to do that which will administer to the greatest possible good, when every possible element involved in the transaction is seen and weighed. But who possesses that sublime omniscience which can see and weigh every element, past, present, and future, that enters into a transaction? And even If one could, who I to vouch authoritatively that his weights, measures, and balances are correct? In this dilemma the theologians, of course, find an easy way out by setting up a pure fiction labelled "God" and stamped infallible. This trick, however, being "played out" with our critics, how do they propose to get at the absolute right of a thing? Is there, indeed, in practice, any absolute right?

Nor does it solve the matter at all to bring in the cost principle, and say that that is absolutely right which is done solely at the cost of the individual who act. There is no mentionable act, not even the dropping of a pin in the middle of the Desert of Sahara, of which It can infallibly be said that it is done solely at the cost of the individuals acting. The loss of that pin as a necessary surgical instrument to treat the disabled camel may cot its life and with t the lives of the whole party. We believe in the cost principle as a standard, and the best at our service, but its observance can never result in the universality of absolute right, since no man or set of men can over attain to the omniscience of foreseeing the entire bill of costs, or on which side of scales all the consequents will arrange themselves. In short, with our human limitations, absolute right practically has no existence.

The only way even to approximately solve the right and wrong of human acts is to leave every individual free to make such contracts with his fellows as to them seem good. The fact of how far given transactions are executed at the cost of others will soon be made evident in every case by the protest of those on whom the cost unjustly falls. If every individual is left free to make contracts and ever free to enter an effectual protest against transactions wherein the cast falls upon his shoulders without his consent, the consequent adjustments will reach the nearest possible approach to absolute justice. The monster that Liberty invites true reformers to help battle down and exterminate is the State, whoso purpose is, first, to enforce unjust contracts through forcible defence of monopoly, and, second, to make effectual protest impossible by defending ill-gotten properly from the natural retribution which attends tyranny and theft.

Liberty, therefore, must defend the right of individuals to make contracts involving usury, rum, marriage, prostitution, and many other things which it believes to be wrong in principle and opposed to human well-being. The right to do wrong involves the essence of all rights. Perfect liberty to contract for what is wrong is the shortest and surest way to abolish that wrong, provided the State can be made to step down and out and leave the wrong to it merits in a fair fight with no favors. The State, however, almost invariably takes sides with the wrong, and declares the advocates of a fair contest between right and wrong enemies of law and order. The right, losing its head in that most dangerous of superstitions known as patriotism, is stupid enough to take up arms against itself and everything goes to suit the oppressor.

Given the untrammelled right to take usury on the one hand, and the untrammelled right to protest that its cost shall not be shouldered by the innocent on the other, abolish all State interference, and then usury can work no harm to humanity. The minimum of its harm is measured by the total abolition of the State, and in the last analysis usury is wrong, in practice, solely because the State is suffered to exist. To those who cannot meet us on this ground as radical reformers we respectfully announce that we decline to waste any more time and type over their future shufflings.

So Prince Harry's request will be accepted, and he will get to be a war criminal - that is, he will get to fight in a war any educated soldier (as he is) must know is illegal and immoral.

In a sense, though, he is a war criminal one can respect, much as one may respect a movie villain who at least shows personal courage. Harry won't just order people to their deaths, and he won't sit comfortably somewhere and insist on his laptop that other people fight the war. Instead, he himself is willing to die "for his country." Stupid, but courageous.

In America, something around 30% of the people still support this war. Let's say 90 million - and they think the rest of us are anti-American and treasonous. 90 million is more than Germany had went it almost won two world wars. From this population alone, one could raise an army in the millions, more than enough to overwhelm the Iraqi insurgency, and at ever-decreasing risk for each soldier.

So why aren't they overwhelming the recruiting offices? Why are there Young Republican clubs on college campuses - why aren't all the young Republicans in uniform?

The fact is, it wouldn't matter what the majority of Americans think - things are accomplished, for good and bad, by determined minorities. If 80 million Germans were so close to going 2-0 against the entire world, surely 90 million pro-war Americans can subdue one nation of 27 million people, no matter what the other 210 million of us think.

Instead of blaming antiwar folks for the war's failure, the pro-war crowd should look in the mirror. It isn't our nation's "lack of will," but the cowardice of pro-war Americans to fight themselves, that is the reason we have insufficient numbers in Iraq and the military is stretched to the breaking point.

Prince Harry they're not.

IN MORDOR-ON-THE-POTOMAC wheels begin to turn. Hardy County lies in their path.

Although you may not think Richmond is in danger of military occupation, Mayor Wilder wants the Marines to be prepared for any possible contingencies. From April 19th through the 29th, the U.S. Marines - in cooperation with the FBI - have been using our community as their prop for military training. No cause for alarm, though, according to this press release from the Mayor's office:

“We are pleased to support the Marine Corps in its efforts to better prepare our soldiers for potential combat in urban areas abroad as well as right here on home soil, if ever needed,” commented Mayor L. Douglas Wilder.

Citizens may see and hear low-flying helicopters during the time period and may hear simulated sounds of combat, including gunfire with blank ammunition, particularly on April 29.

Representatives are planning to go door-to-door to alert individuals who live around areas where combat simulations may take place.

Isn't that thoughtful of them?

One of the big reasons I'm excited about the potential of this group is to coordinate activism on matters such as this one, where left libertarians have a very clear and vehement position. I just now found out about protests that happened yesterday on this very issue - hopefully with the establishment of the alliance, we can better coordinate with our leftist friends.

Come out to the (first) Alliance meeting tomorrow, where we'll talk about left libertarianism, the menace of the State and its military, and what we can do to advance the former over the latter. And drink beer.