Brainpolice - All Comments

re: Walter Block: Wrong on Religion

Ron Jones — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 13:37:17 GMT

"The main reason religion sticks in the craw of secular leaders is that this institution defines moral authority independently of their power."

This is a valid and important point. However, subtler, and perhaps more important in the long run is the fact that religion has the effect of 'splitting ones allegiance.' And with your allegiance divided between two separate entities, there is less chance that you will be completely loyal to either one.

"...that knowledge must be held and selectively passed down from an elite ... who are exclusively able to properly interpret relevant texts..."

The proper response to this is "it depends upon the religion in question." The various religions, it seems, are quite diverse. So, it would be hard to cram the whole square lot of them into one round hole.

Owing largely to my western european roots I suppose...my knowledge of organized religion is limited to the catholic church. And throughout much of history rome wasn't a bulwark against state power, it WAS the state for all intents and purposes. (sure, you've got a king, but he won't make a move unless the pope/bishop/whatever approved). A religious legacy such as this would have long ago piqued my interest in atheism.

re: A Left-Rothbardian Approach To "Privatization"

ALLOLUSLADS — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 03:06:54 GMT

superb(special) locality. So to out!

re: Judeo-Christian Morality vs. The Free Society

dwight baker — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:55:51 GMT

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re: False Realism and Utopianism

Brainpolice — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 22:27:09 GMT

Good points from both of you.

re: False Realism and Utopianism

EvilSmurf — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 13:17:32 GMT

What sucks about conservatism that it totally fails at both appealing to emotion and appealing to reason. Keeping things as they are and opposing changes hardly inspirises any enthuasism, especially among young people. At the same time it worships all kind of irrational crap like religion and blind commitment to tradition. Ayn Rand, for example, was very frustated with the arguments by which conservatives defended capitalism; it made it look like that the only reason to advocate free markets was passivity, irrationality, cowardice and backward-looking personality.

re: False Realism and Utopianism

Nitroadict — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 06:16:17 GMT

It's not a strawmen at all when you consider that conservatism is ultimately futile* & is contradictory with regards to evolution, which would obviously favor a dynamism, rather than stasis.

(*Although, this point is mute if in fact, one does not believe in evolution, so for the many conservatives that are religious enough, it's easy to see why they may not see conservatism as "futile" at all.)

"Turning The Clock Back" can also mean turning it ahead 5 minutes, then turning it back 10 minutes, which is essentially (metaphoricaly, albeit) what I think conservatives tend to do: display an air of progress by trying to revert things, which ties into their romantic involvement with the past itself, while standing for the status quo.

Pull a lever, any lever! As long as the levers are being pulled, and people still believe in the levers themselves, all will be fine!

I would attribute neo-feudalism (wage slavery, credit, etc.) & continued rule by oligarchies (whether it's by representative democracy, or other form of governance which ultimately is just oligarchical rule in different clothes) as possible manifestations of "dressing the past in new clothes", and marketing it to the present as something new.

It's worth noting however, that before the Internet, it was fairly hard to quantify the amount of people who were tired of the same old "marketing of the past", aside from the assorted mailing lists and possible few friends you knew in actual life that shared similar views. Since the Internet's inception however, the communication of ideas has exceeded anyone's imagination.

Even only considering this, it's becoming increasingly obvious & apparent that less & less people are not falling for the same old game anymore, or are at least learning the 'games' rules & making moves that the 'game masters' never previously envisioned them making.

(I'm using way too many metaphors... :grumbles: )

In this view, the Internet is probably a much more radical attempt at change (and a push for dynamism), then the establishment of this country ever was, despite the overtly classical liberal nature of the 1st century or so (following the revolutionary war), due to the fact that this country was still founded utilizing a Statist-like archetype for governance, just vastly limited compared to where are today.

Another difference was that the Internet was not intentionally created to be a grand experiment and/or test with regards to the traditional means and/or systems of governence typicall utilized by humans.

However, The United States of America was intentionally started for more or less that purpose (among other important reasons), and it was done so using variations on previous systems (variations on the systems of a republic, democracy, oligarchy, aristocracy which yielded more obvious influences of plutocracy, corporate rule, etc.).

re: False Realism and Utopianism

Brainpolice — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:35:50 GMT

It could be either preserving the status quo or trying to revert back to older forms. In the context of European conservatism throughout history, it was typically on the side of monarchy and theocracy that the conservatives stood. You can see the conservative's romantisization of the past manifest itself with respect to 1950's America, colonial America and fuedal Europe.

re: False Realism and Utopianism

EvilSmurf — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:14:22 GMT

If you're conservative/reactionary enough like these primitivist environmentalists, you're actually radical and therefore you don't associate with "conservatives." I think that talking about conservatives wanting to "turn the clock back" is quite a strawman actually, conservatism is really about preserving the status quo or advocating just small and slow changes. I very rarely hear conservatives talking about going back to monarchy, theocracy and the dark ages.

re: False Realism and Utopianism

Brainpolice — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 20:31:20 GMT

Yes. Interestingly, primitivism can be interpreted as a rather conservative view in the sense that it romantisizes the past as "natural" and advocates returning to the "natural".

re: False Realism and Utopianism

wombatron — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:21:23 GMT

Good points, especially the one about the use of the word "nature" (also applicable against enviros and luddites).

re: Walter Block: Wrong on Religion

Curtis Plumb — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 07:33:44 GMT

There is no appropriate libertarian response (that's why you are asking the question) since principles are different from libertarian to libertarian.

re: Walter Block: Wrong on Religion

Cork — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 04:08:40 GMT

I also thought that Block's column was pretty strange. He argues for religion as a bulwark against state power, but never explains why it has to be religion. One could just as easily come up with a reasonable secular set of ethics that could spread and become a bulwark against state power. So why bother with religion? Religion has dragged down the human race almost as much as socialism and statism, and is one of the worst things to have ever happened to the world.

The place where I get conflicted is deciding how religious parents would be handled under ancap. Religious parents who pray to an imaginary sky pixie instead of taking their sick children in for treatment are clearly guilty of child abuse. The question is: what is an appropriate libertarian response?

re: Radicalism and Moderation

DRS — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 05:56:18 GMT

*Boink*Boink*:)

re: The Distribution of Power

scottyokim — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:37:39 GMT

People are born with different capabilities and maybe more importantly, different levels of aggressiveness (ESTJ's, say). These differences quickly foster great disparities in wealth, power, fame, etc. In fact, the greater the pool of available capital, the faster these disparities can occur.

Those with the greatest wealth can then find each other (via the fame resulting from their wealth), and pool their wealth to create not only more wealth but also corporations that create situations much like company towns. (Of course, some company towns might be more benign than others, but it's still control by a few.)

This scenario has played out many times in many places throughout history. Assuming that human nature is going to remain constant over at least the next hundred years, I presume it will happen many times in the next century.

I'm not making an argument for or against government, I just think disparities in power arise naturally and these disparities will become larger and larger over time. Just like wealth in an economy.

re: The Distribution of Power

Nitroadict — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 20:48:52 GMT

"Do we crave predictability, or relish surprise?", to quote Virginia Postrel.

It's absolutely comical to argue that the way things as they are currently will always be that way, otherwise, I don't think we would've arrived at our current attempt at an improvement (representative democracy, albeit, it's still a form of oligarchy).

Why didn't we stick to a tribal society? A caste society? Or a feudal one, for that matter? It could be argued we still have such elements (especially with regards to neo-feudalism), but change still occurred, regardless.

The face-off between stasis & dynamism, in my view, invalidates such an assumption that oligarchies are inevitable, and the interplay between the two throughout history more or less confirms this.