Laotzu recommends not-striving. In fact, he recommends the achievement of non-action. The paradoxical language of Laotzu captured by achieving (an action if there were one) non-action invites the reader to look beyond a literalist fundamentalism. But like Buddha and the recommendation to cease craving, Laotzu employs the rhetoric of disassociation when characterizing the way. Let …
Continue reading “6.2_Laotzu, Disassociation and Sage Status”
A return to the maybe-sages. Voluntary association grows less and less in most countries. Beginning with forced association with the territorial monopoly for services such as security (police) and dispute arbitration (courts) and price control of such services (taxation), and flowing from that source to the innumerable ways in which otherwise innocent citizens are caught …
Continue reading “6.1_Buddha, Disassociation and Enlightenment”
Here we move toward an understanding of what the implications of violence are. The ultimate goal is to understand the systemic (an in vogue word these days) effects of government. By violence I mean to focus on initiated aggression. Initiated aggression is to be contrasted with defensive aggression. Initiated aggression, as a category, includes any …
This puritanical libertarian finds reason for sorrow all around. Sorrow can lead to despair or, as the sage Jesus recommends in his beatitudes, sorrow(blessed are the mourners) can lead to submission to what is right (blessed are the meek). Libertarians are not known for their attention to meekness, but submission to nonaggression and voluntary contract …
Continue reading “5.16, On Theoretical Sorrow and Recent News”
I have made much of the right to use self-defense. All the while I have wondered if my words could be misused by he who would rationalize evil by my words. I would like to state plainly when violence may be employed (defense) and when it may not be employed but disassociation may be. Disassociation …
This puritanical libertarian operates under the following presuppositions: first, virtue is best. Second, liberty is a presupposition of virtue. I will argue for neither. Take them or leave them. From those points I examine the words of the sages and the moral judgments handed down. Hammurabi’s Code and the later Hebrew Ten Commandments prohibit “bearing …
**The following analysis is made for understanding only. Action requires much more consideration. I do not recommend the lie. But I can recommend its analysis. What has been traditionally condemned in every decent society, and even among rogues and criminals when they are in league with each other is the principle that lying is wrong. …
This particular puritanical libertarian finds himself constantly running into a kind of resistance to his efforts to expand liberty (property rights, voluntary production and trade) and all the fruits he is sure lie therein. He is no longer surprised to encounter otherwise thoughtful and sincere men who argue from the following always unstated but always …
Oppression comes in degrees or amounts. One finds oneself involuntarily committed to one degree or another. That the human animal revolts at involuntary commitment is not even worth evidence. The beneficiaries of course do not revolt. They grovel. In the recently prior posts we have looked at a few considerations about the relationship between development, …
In 5.9 I presented a version of Hoppe’s profoundly intuitive and unassailable argument for private property rights. But it was limited to the private property right to the body. Today we extend that to other things outside the body. Private property rights are the foundation of liberty. In 5.6-5.8 I showed how Herbert Spencer, John …
