Philosophy and Methodology

In Nock's view, the usurpation of social power by state power went hand in glove with a rise in war, intra-social conflict, arbitrary authority, indebtedness, and many other injustices.

It is the business of legal violence to defend persons and their property from violent attack, from molestation or appropriation of their property without their consent.

Utilitarian economists, grounded on no ethical theory of property rights, can only fall back on defending whatever status quo may happen to exist.

Jordan Peterson is turning his eye toward Austrian economics. Unlike the many conservatives who see free market advocacy as some sort of "dangerous fundamentalism," Peterson seems to get it.

According to this theory, cooperation among any number of persons is more productive than the individual efforts of the same persons in isolation from one another.

History is only a tiresome repetition of one story. Persons and classes have sought to win possession of the power of the state in order to live luxuriously out of the earnings of others.

Jordan Peterson is turning his eye toward Austrian economics. Unlike the many conservatives who see free market advocacy as some sort of "dangerous fundamentalism," Peterson seems to get it.

There is, in short national liberation (good) versus national "imperialism" over other peoples (bad). Once we get over simplistic individualism, this distinction should not be difficult to grasp.

The Lou Church Memorial Lecture, sponsored by The Lou Church Foundation.

Here is Murray N. Rothbard's 1968 demolition of trends in conservative thought, as printed in Ramparts magazine.