Against Anarchism

[Xray]

Initially you were talking about whether rights exist.

I talked about that rights exist. They exist because no human society can exist without rules. But all rights are created by humans. They don't exist naturally awaiting 'objective discovery'.

Now you're talking about why it's rational to divide human action into two categories: rights and crimes.

It was you who presented this opposition. I suggested using legal/illegal instead, the goal being to make a proposition conform to reality.

Sorry Xray, I don't think you're really very honest. I think your equivocation is totally on purpose, and you're doing it to try to trip people up. And if that is not the case, then you are far too incompetent to deal with anyway. So unless you can explain yourself in some other terms that permit me to comprehend your bizarre illogic, I'm not responding to any more of your posts here.

Anyone presenting his/her theory on an internet philosophy discussion forum presents it to public scrutiny. In case the theory contains contradictions, as a rule these will be pointed out.

Edited April 3, 2011 by Xray

[sjw]

Initially you were talking about whether rights exist.

I talked about that rights exist. They exist because no human society can exist without rules. But all rights are created by humans. They don't exist naturally awaiting 'objective discovery'.

Again with the equivocation. The subject was *my* view of rights as being types of human action. You pretend to be dealing with my theory, when really you want to pontificate about your own. OK, pontificate all you want. Just don't pretend that we're talking about my theory.

Anyone presenting his/her theory on an internet philosophy discussion forum presents it to public scrutiny. In case the theory contains contradictions, as a rule these will be pointed out.

You're just living in your own little world. Either deal with my view of rights as categorizations of human action or just go off in your own thread pontificating about the status quo "rights are fundamentally rules" view. You have full liberty to criticize my division of human action into two categories, and then calling one category a right and the other a crime. But actually do it. To do it you have to do something more fundamental that repeating the "rights are rules" dogma. You're going to have to make an epistemological argument, because this is an issue of definition. The things being referred to in my definition are real and objective, and the dividing line is clear. You're going to have to argue that the division is useless. And that's going to be difficult. (Which is probably why you're resorting to equivocation).

Shayne

[Brant Gaede]

By focusing on government or its lack, anarchism and minarchism, instead of individual rights, any debate or argument will eventually devolve into a turf war. It is entirely incongruous because you can't get there--an ideal polity--from here that way. It's really all individual rights, critical and honest thinking, education. That's where the action should be. No system can reform human beings. The system eventually conforms to how people are, though it can mess them up badly first and then continue to mess them up consequently.

--Brant

You are absolutely right that the fundamental has to be education, honest thinking, etc. about individual rights. But this debate is not "instead of individual rights", it's "as a consequence of individual rights." The anarchist/minarchist debate is about what the ideals of liberty mean in the real world.

You can't just sit on the fence. Either government of a certain kind is valid or anarchism is. It can't be both. It can't not matter.

Shayne

It doesn't matter now except to the debaters. The correct premise is moving toward more and more freedom, not rebellion and the establishment of a new order. A long time from now there may be so much freedom and so little government such a debate might be truly apropos.

--Brant

I did not mean to attribute to Shayne that he advocated "rebellion and the establishment of a new order" (altho Jefferson was agreeable if it came to that). I should have written, "The correct premise is moving toward more and more freedom, not for instance a violent rebellion and the establishment of a new order which seems to me the only way to get to any of these ideal political states. So how do we get there otherwise? Can we?"

--Brant

I hope this clears up that

[Brant Gaede]

It doesn't matter now except to the debaters. The correct premise is moving toward more and more freedom, not rebellion and the establishment of a new order. A long time from now there may be so much freedom and so little government such a debate might be truly apropos.

--Brant

Cease and desist with your obnoxiously putting words in my mouth. Nowhere did I ever encourage "rebellion and the establishment of a new order." You've definitely got screws loose if you get that out of my writing.

Shayne

This is the way to get into a prolonged argument instead of clearing things up immediately. This type of slash and burn ratiocination means I cannot engage you in the future as it is characteristic of how you handle these situations.

--Brant

[sjw]

It doesn't matter now except to the debaters. The correct premise is moving toward more and more freedom, not rebellion and the establishment of a new order. A long time from now there may be so much freedom and so little government such a debate might be truly apropos.

--Brant

Cease and desist with your obnoxiously putting words in my mouth. Nowhere did I ever encourage "rebellion and the establishment of a new order." You've definitely got screws loose if you get that out of my writing.

Shayne

This is the way to get into a prolonged argument instead of clearing things up immediately. This type of slash and burn ratiocination means I cannot engage you in the future as it is characteristic of how you handle these situations.

--Brant

You are the one slashing and burning. All I did was strenuously object to what you actually said. And all you had to do was take a little responsibility for sloppy writing and that'd be that. But you have to get all touchy instead. I submit that if people dealt with each other the way I do then they'd be a lot more rational and productive, and that your method leads to inefficiency and pointless division. At the heart of your method is some unjustified premise along the lines of "how dare YOU talk to ME like that." This was Rand's failing as a rational thinker as well.

Shayne

[sjw]

I did not mean to attribute to Shayne that he advocated "rebellion and the establishment of a new order" (altho Jefferson was agreeable if it came to that). I should have written, "The correct premise is moving toward more and more freedom, not for instance a violent rebellion and the establishment of a new order which seems to me the only way to get to any of these ideal political states. So how do we get there otherwise? Can we?"

--Brant

I hope this clears up that

You have brought this up before but it's always as an unquestionable assertion of yours, you've never wanted to discuss it, you've just wanted me to accept it (which is also part of why I was pissed off).

Now I can tell you the reasons why I think it is important as part of the education project to have some generalized specifics on the "order", but you just don't seem to have any interest whatsoever, you just want to tell me not to do X because you said so. How did you put it to me? "This stuff is weak..." No Brant, your criticisms are weak, but they pose as the final word.

Shayne

[Brant Gaede]

It doesn't matter now except to the debaters. The correct premise is moving toward more and more freedom, not rebellion and the establishment of a new order. A long time from now there may be so much freedom and so little government such a debate might be truly apropos.

--Brant

Cease and desist with your obnoxiously putting words in my mouth. Nowhere did I ever encourage "rebellion and the establishment of a new order." You've definitely got screws loose if you get that out of my writing.

Shayne

This is the way to get into a prolonged argument instead of clearing things up immediately. This type of slash and burn ratiocination means I cannot engage you in the future as it is characteristic of how you handle these situations.

--Brant

You are the one slashing and burning. All I did was strenuously object to what you actually said. And all you had to do was take a little responsibility for sloppy writing and that'd be that. But you have to get all touchy instead. I submit that if people dealt with each other the way I do then they'd be a lot more rational and productive, and that your method leads to inefficiency and pointless division. At the heart of your method is some unjustified premise along the lines of "how dare YOU talk to ME like that." This was Rand's failing as a rational thinker as well.

Shayne

I can't adjust to someone kicking me in the balls for writing a sloppy post and then ignoring that to deal with the supposed substance. If I had deliberately set out to misrepresent you, your reaction would have been expected and I'd have phlegmatically countered with additional bad faith and misrepresentation. In the end I suspect you'll only be talking to yourself--or George.

--Brant

all this waste of time and energy

[sjw]

I can't adjust to someone kicking me in the balls for writing a sloppy post

That is not what happened. What happened is that your sloppy post had you saying something that was very seriously bad for a number of reasons. Instead of staying long enough to figure out why I was so pissed off, you flounced off. If you had stayed long enough to sort it out, then you would have understood why I was so angry, and I would have learned that I need to move the bar once more on what kinds of things you'll say without actually intending to.

I am already gun shy with you (being shy about my own gun...). I mean, now when you say something that seems crazy, I try to look for alternative interpretations, but you're just too sneaky for me for sometimes. In this particular case it the problem was compounded with what I pointed out in my last post.

Shayne

[Brant Gaede]

grace

--Brant

[Peter]

Xray wrote:

But the philosophical issue is whether the idea of "Changes in Objectivism" is implied in the concept of Objectivism at all.

End quote

That’s my girl.

You are digging into the true controversy; expressed Randian Contextualism, which was emotionally attacked by Rand herself and to this day by the Ayn Rand Institute, and how that applies to this thread.

Is anarchism contextual objectivism?

George wrote:

The main argument of Antifederalists was that the Constitution was a betrayal of the principles of the American Revolution and constituted a serious threat to individual liberty. They were largely right.

End quote

Let me repeat the sentence George H. Smith frequently says, Xray, without any disclaimers, and which always sets me off. I will speak to him.

George, you said, “They were largely right.”

There you go again. Anarchists find traitors to THEIR freedom among the founding father’s machinations at the creation of the Constitution.

I have a problem with that position. What if your chickens come home to roost? In the past you have claimed America IS your choice of residence. Then, you claim no hypocrisy, if you “logically” claim Anarchism is a device to create a better place to live, while you simultaneously choose to live in America. You espouse the Anarchism’s dream to destroy the Constitution which would destroy the country of America . . . where you chose to live.

Patriots who might want to amend the Constitution, to better protect individual rights, see you as the destroyer, who wishes to have a hand in the demise of the Constitution and our country. Therefore, there can be no alliance between the Anarchist and the Patriot, or the Anarchist and the Objectivist. Anarchism is not a device to explore a way to strengthen the Constitution.

It baffles me that anyone raised in America could not swear to uphold the Constitution. Or, that you could swear to uphold the Constitution and be lying.

Can an anarchist honestly salute the flag or pledge allegiance? Can he sing “The Star Spangled Banner,” or “America the Beautiful,” celebrate the Forth of July, or even root for our side?

Your rights are protected by soldiers, sailors, and airmen, fighting for this country you want to destroy. America is the best place in the world for you to destroy America.

For god’s sake George, how can someone who ruthlessly critiques untrue belief on the one hand, propose untrue belief on the other?

Redeem yourself. Fix the Constitution. Drop the label Anarchist if that is not your game. Roy Childs did.

In the future you may make an appearance before The House Un-American Activities Committee where you will face a modern day Joseph McCarthy’s charges. Don’t take the fifth. Be able to truthfully deny the charges. You had a change of heart

Oscar Wilde said, "Be yourself, everyone else is already taken." Your friend Roy Childs was who he was. His change of heart against anarchism, whatever his reasons, was not only justified at the time, is was true belief.

Semper cogitans fidele,

Live long and prosper,

Peter Taylor

[Brant Gaede]

I don't know, Peter, I fought in Vietnam (and Cambodia) for the freedom of the Vietnamese to vote themselves into communism, which was a lie, of course; they had that freedom which was denied and not by the communists in the 1950s. It was too much of a cluster-fuck so I left and had no intention of ever doing something like that again. I'd say that you can say our men in uniform may have fought for freedom in the first three wars the last being the War of 1812 (impressment on British warships?), but ever since it's been one unnecessary insanity after another. Wars have begot wars and the more powerful the United States the bigger the wars until the nuclear age made for proxy wars and the need for oil made for oil wars, etc. While this is a gross over-simplification on many levels--the Indian wars and the Spanish-American War were not bigger wars than the "Civil War," WWI led to (communism and Nazism) WWII led to the Cold War--the general thrust is correct. Now we are fighting three wars at once and the only freedom we are fighting for is the freedom to drink all the oil we can and to go absolutely bankrupt, morally, politically and economically. Watch out you don't end up by your reasoning supporting an up and coming American fascist dictatorship. The fascists themselves are already in position, doing what they can, getting into shape for when they'll need to fight to save their asses wherever they are.

--Brant

can you believe my Google word-check thinks half the words it IDs as misspellings are actually real and correctly spelled by me?--like "impressment"--and what's the matter with using "begat" instead of "begot"?

Edited April 4, 2011 by Brant Gaede

[Xray]

You have full liberty to criticize my division of human action into two categories, and then calling one category a right and the other a crime. But actually do it.

There is a contradiction in your argumentation here: for how can I criticize your division of human action into two categories ("right" and "crime"), while at the same time applying those very same categories to label every human action as either "a right" or "a crime" myself?

To do it you have to do something more fundamental that repeating the "rights are rules" dogma.

You're going to have to make an epistemological argument, because this is an issue of definition.

Pointing out that rights exist because every human society has rules IS an epistemological statement. There is nothing dogmatic about it.

The things being referred to in my definition are real and objective, and the dividing line is clear.

What is real and objective is that different legal systems have different categorizations when it comes to "rights" and "crimes".

But I suppose your focus is less on that because you want to present your own moral ideal regarding this issue.

Edited April 5, 2011 by Xray

[Peter]

Brant wrote:

I'd say that you can say our men in uniform may have fought for freedom in the first three wars the last being the War of 1812 (impressment on British warships?), but ever since it's been one unnecessary insanity after another.

End quote

The Second World War was not an unnecessary insanity. We were attacked. We destroyed the Japanese war machine and helped their people become peaceful and prosperous. That was not insanity.

We helped destroy the Nazis. They were insane, not us. Considering the scale of Hitler’s near, world domination we helped get rid of the worst dictator of all time. We saved countless Jewish lives by doing that, as well as the Brits, French, Canadians, ourselves, and the Germans. That was not insanity.

We fought a cold war against the next worst dictators after Hitler: Stalin and Mao. We won that cold war and the world is a better place for it.

We knocked out Noriega in Panama. Good for our side.

We destroyed the Iraqi Republican Guard and got Saddam Hussein lynched for his war crimes. May god bless America!

You are mistaken if you think we Americans are insane, or in a quest for the subjugation of the world. We could destroy every enemy or rival on the planet in three days.

Brant wrote:

Watch out you don't end up by your reasoning supporting an up and coming American fascist dictatorship. The fascists themselves are already in position, doing what they can, getting into shape for when they'll need to fight to save their asses wherever they are.

End quote

Oh, I know. Remember how the left complained about crony capitalism under Bush and Cheney? Halliburton? That was not crony capitalism, unless on a tiny scale.

Now look at the real fascists. Look at the real crony capitalism of Obama with GE, look at their exemptions to Obamacare granted to other corporations. Look at their accumulated slush fund of one billioin dollars to wage their campaign in 2012. Look at their brown-shirt union thugs and the Fascist puppet master George Soros. Look at the ominous parallels. The left is fascist.

Brant wrote:

can you believe my Google word-check thinks half the words it IDs as misspellings are actually real and correctly spelled by me?--like "impressment"

End quote

I have been watching parts one and two of “Longitude” with Jeromy Irons about the 20,000 pound prize Queen Anne offered to anyone who could correctly gauge longitude at sea. It took 50 years for one man to win the prize. That movie was exciting.

And my god, what crony capitalism and outright theft of property went on amongst the Brits. The Royal Astronomic Society was so prejudiced against anyone who was not a member of the ruling class that they would rather British sailors die at sea than give the prize to the rightful, lower class *genius* carpenter who finally won the prize.

In short, Brant, your pessimism about America, and all of Western Civilization is unfounded. We have the philosophy, the limited government tradition, the stalwart, “silent majority living on Main Street, and the powerful means to dig ourselves out of any hole, and that means is our reason.

As always, Brant. Thank you for your service to your country.

Peter Taylor

[Brant Gaede]

Peter: Once Germany attacked the USSR it was finished.

--Brant

no hope for Peter

Edited April 4, 2011 by Brant Gaede

[Selene]

Peter: Once Germany attacked the USSR it was finished.

--Brant

no hope for Peter

Brant:

I have seen solid arguments by a military historian from Hillsdale College on C-span that without the US propping up the Soviets with lend lease that they would have collapsed under the blitzkrieg.

Have you ever heard that line of argument before?

Adam

[George H. Smith]

George wrote:

The main argument of Antifederalists was that the Constitution was a betrayal of the principles of the American Revolution and constituted a serious threat to individual liberty. They were largely right.

End quote

Let me repeat the sentence George H. Smith frequently says, Xray, without any disclaimers, and which always sets me off. I will speak to him.

George, you said, “They were largely right.”

There you go again. Anarchists find traitors to THEIR freedom among the founding father’s machinations at the creation of the Constitution.

You are going off the rails again, Peter, and becoming hysterical.

I never said anything about traitors. Nor does my comment have anything to do with my anarchism. I merely stated the position of many Antifederalists.

Do you not count opponents of the Constitution as founding fathers? They included George Mason, author of the magnificent Virginia Bill of Rights and a delegate to the Constitutional Convention who said he would rather cut off his right hand than sign the document. What about Richard Henry Lee, the Virginian who made the original resolution for American independence in the Second Continental Congress? What about Patrick Henry, who refused to serve as a delegate to the Convention because he "smelt a rat"? What about Sam Adams? What about Mercy Otis Warren, the woman who wrote a two-volume history of the Revolution and who warned that the Constitution, by failing to provide sufficient safeguards for freedom, would eventually become a virtual blank check for the expansion of federal power? What about all those Quakers and other opponents of slavery who protested that pro-slavery document?

Historians estimate that over half of America's population opposed ratification of the Constitution. The political tricks and maneuvering used by Federalists to overcome this liability have been been well documented by historians.

A few years ago, at an ISIL conference in Williamsburg, I gave two lectures on the topic, "Was the U.S. Constitution a Betrayal of the American Revolution?" My talk was very balanced, as I presented the strong and weak points of each side objectively. But whether one wishes to use the term "betrayal" or not, the fact that the Constitution departed radically from many essential principles of the Revolution is indisputable. This was a hot button topic at the time, widely discussed, and Hamilton discusses it in the Federalist Papers. He freely acknowledges the differences, but argues that the Constitution, by dramatically increasing the power of the federal government, was a change for the better.

Then there is the fact that the Philadelphia Convention exceeded its legally authorized mandate, which was to correct and amend the Articles of Confederation. This is one reason why Rhode Island never even sent delegates and why Lansing and Yates, two of the three delegates from NY, left in protest not long after the Convention began. Antifederalists objected to this illegality and demanded that a new convention be held -- one that was legally authorized and was not stacked with nationalists. In the Federalist Papers, Madison pretty much concedes the illegality argument but goes on to say that the Constitution was a new revolution, in effect.

As a pro-Constitution newspaper put it at the time: The War with Britain was a revolution in favor of freedom. The Philadelphia Convention is a revolution in favor of government.

In my two ISIL talks (which run around 2-1/2 hours total, and which may be available from ISIL), I present a detailed list and discussion of the many ways in which the Constitution departed from the principles of radical republicanism that animated the Revolution. Revolutionary principles included short terms in office, compulsory rotation in office (i.e., term limitations), a deep suspicion of executive power, a preference for local governments over a centralized government, limits on taxing power, the insistence that all powers exercised by a government must be enumerated and expressly granted by the people, a preference for federalism over nationalism, etc., etc. In virtually every case, modern libertarians would agree with the Antifederalists, not the Federalists, on these issues.

Fortunately, the nationalists did not get everything they wanted. (Hamilton, for example, wanted a president elected for life who would have to power to veto all state legislation.) Hence the final document was, in Madison's words, a "bundle of compromises." It also incorporated a number of good ideas that both Federalists and Antifederalists shared. This is why I said the Antifederalists were largely correct.

Virtually every one of their predictions about the growth of governmental power that would occur under the Constitution has come to pass, and they correctly identified the reasons for this, such as the "general welfare" clause and the "necessary and proper" clause. The Antifederalists were amenable to changes in the Articles, but they wanted to close the loopholes that the Constitution left for the expansion of power.

The dire warnings of the Antifederalists were widely dismissed as anti-government hysteria, but it was not long before Hamilton, in his defense of federal subsidies for private businesses, presented his detailed defense of the Implied Powers Doctrine. According to this doctrine, the Constitution implicitly vests Congress with powers that far exceed the enumerated powers in Article 1, Section 8. This broad interpretation of the general welfare clause, which effectively renders the enumerated powers (Art. 1, Sec. 8) null and void by vesting Congress with indefinite and undefined powers, was confirmed by the Supreme Court in 1936. The majority decision declared:

Hamilton…maintained the clause confers a power separate and distinct from those later enumerated, is not restricted in meaning by the grant of them, and Congress consequently has a substantive power to tax and to appropriate limited only by the requirement that it shall be exercised for the general welfare.

Many Antifederalists, such as Mercy Warren, saw this coming and insisted that the Constitution should be rewritten so as to leave no doubt that Congress had only those powers that were expressly delegated to it.

I discussed these issues in some detail in the four Knowledge Products tapes that I wrote on the Constitution -- two on the proceedings of the Constitutional Convention and two on the text of the Constitution itself. My four tapes (around 200 manuscript pages) were part of an eight tape set, and in 1988 this set, after receiving the approval of a committee of leading historians, became the official Bicentennial tapes on the U.S. Constitution. I mention this in case you think that an anarchist is incapable of writing good history.

Some time ago, during an earlier incarnation of our debate, I urged you to read the Antifederalists and to become more educated about how the Constitution was written and ratified. You obviously ignored my advice. Fine, that is your prerogative -- but waving the American flag in my face is no substitute for knowledge.

America, considered in terms of her fundamental principles, will find no greater champion than I. You would know this if you ever listened to some of my lectures on American history, such as the three I delivered for over a decade at Cato summer conferences. A set of these used to be available from Laissez-Faire Books, but I don't know if they still are.

I have alway detested patriotism rooted in ignorance -- that jingoistic, "love it or leave it attitude" that should never be expressed without first putting on boots and a cowboy hat. By studying and teaching early American history, I have done more to honor this country than you ever have, or ever could.

If anything, the fact that I am an anarchist enables me to appreciate early American history even more. The anitauthoritarian spirit of anarchism runs deep in American history. We see it in the antinomianism of Roger Williams; in the revolutionary ideology of the colonial period; in the "that government is best which governs not at all" attitude of Thoreau; in the radical Jeffersonian individualism of William Leggett and the Loco-Focos; in the voluntary experimental communities of Josiah Warren, Moses Harman, and other social nonconformists; in the "Constitution of No Authority" of Lysander Spooner; in the condemnation of the Constitution as "a covenant with death and an agreement with hell" by William Lloyd Garrison and other abolitionists whose passionate belief in self-ownership often cost them their lives; and in many other fountainheads of American freedom.

Then some ignoramus like you happens along and, while tap-dancing to "God Bless America," tells me to love it or leave, and that I cannot appreciate America if I don't blindly believe in the mythology of the U.S. Constitution.

Ghs

[sjw]

What a brilliant, excellent post George. That has to be one of the best posts I've ever seen you write. It really should be published as an article, not addressed to Peter in particular, but to all like him.

That said, I wish you wouldn't sully this very important message with anarchism. The Antifederalists were NOT anarchists. You can speak for the true, original Americans, the ones whose spirit made this country so great, and who were indeed betrayed by nationalists. But you can't do that by painting them as anarchists or associating them with anarchism.

Shayne

[Brant Gaede]

Peter: Once Germany attacked the USSR it was finished.

--Brant

no hope for Peter

Brant:

I have seen solid arguments by a military historian from Hillsdale College on C-span that without the US propping up the Soviets with lend lease that they would have collapsed under the blitzkrieg.

Have you ever heard that line of argument before?

Adam

Who hasn't. But we weren't talking about the effect of lend lease or such on Soviet military capabilities. The German advance on Stalingrad, Moscow and Leningrad was stopped by the winter of 1941 before we flooded the country with equipment, no? It seems to me we just made possible the conquest of Eastern Europe by the communists. And we didn't ship Nappy any stuff, did we?

--Brant

[George H. Smith]

What a brilliant, excellent post George. That has to be one of the best posts I've ever seen you write. It really should be published as an article, not addressed to Peter in particular, but to all like him.

That said, I wish you wouldn't sully this very important message with anarchism. The Antifederalists were NOT anarchists. You can speak for the true, original Americans, the ones whose spirit made this country so great, and who were indeed betrayed by nationalists. But you can't do that by painting them as anarchists or associating them with anarchism.

Shayne

Where on earth did you ever get the idea that I painted the Antifederalists as anarchists or associated them in any way with anarchism? I never said a word about them in connection with anarchism. I didn't even list any Antifederalists in my final paragraph about the "spirit" of anarchism.

I happen to be an anarchist, but so what? This doesn't mean that I associate everything and everyone I happen to like with my personal beliefs. I was not writing a general article about the Antifederalists. I was responding to a post by Peter, and he is the one who keeps bringing up the anarchist stuff. I made my position very clear at the outset:

I never said anything about traitors. Nor does my comment have anything to do with my anarchism. I merely stated the position of many Antifederalists.

I wish you guys would get anarchism off the brain when discussing historical matters. I mentioned some time ago that I will frequently put on different hats when discussing topics from different perspectives. I don't even think of anarchism when I write about history, unless I am studying the history of anarchism.

Ghs

[Selene]

Peter: Once Germany attacked the USSR it was finished.

--Brant

no hope for Peter

Brant:

I have seen solid arguments by a military historian from Hillsdale College on C-span that without the US propping up the Soviets with lend lease that they would have collapsed under the blitzkrieg.

Have you ever heard that line of argument before?

Adam

Who hasn't. But we weren't talking about the effect of lend lease or such on Soviet military capabilities. The German advance on Stalingrad, Moscow and Leningrad was stopped by the winter of 1941 before we flooded the country with equipment, no? It seems to me we just made possible the conquest of Eastern Europe by the communists. And we didn't ship Nappy any stuff, did we?

--Brant

Brant:

I am looking for the C-span show, as there was more to this than the drive being stopped by the by the winter of 1941, which was my assumption also until I watched this presentation. I will post the info as soon as I can find it.

Believe me, I was surprised by it also.

Adam

perplexed

[Brant Gaede]

Adam: The German invasion of the USSR was delayed about a month because Hitler was diverted by Greece. I wonder if that made all the difference? However, once the Germans got those three big cities, then what? Nappy got into Moscow, what was left of it.

--Brant

Edited April 5, 2011 by Brant Gaede

[Peter]

George H. Smith wrote:

Then some ignoramus like you happens along and, while tap-dancing to "God Bless America," tells me to love it or leave, and that I cannot appreciate America if I don't blindly believe in the mythology of the U.S. Constitution.

End quote

Well said, George. I second Shayne. That was brilliant! You backed up YOUR “argument from intimidation” while presenting meaningful facts, AND, at the same time maintaining, that MY letter was an argument from intimidation.

Stop reading here.

Well, my bringing up a forthcoming HUAC against Anarchists instead of Communists was over the top. In truth, your influence is miniscule compared to 1940, and 50’s American Communism and their fellow travelers.

In November 1997, George H. Smith wrote, “IN DEFENSE OF RATIONAL ANARCHISM:”

Quote

I don’t defend anarchism because I ever expect to see an anarchist society. (An anarchist America is almost as unlikely as an Objectivist America.) But I do think we can effectively combat statism with the right intellectual ammunition, and this includes the total repudiation of political sovereignty in favor of individual rights and voluntary institutions.

End quote

I said, stop reading George! This is just for everyone else.

For years you have said the above, that anarchy is never going to happen in America. Lately, you have hinted, though in a sarcastic voice, of also moving away from calling yourself an anarchist, (I could not find the quote but you were obviously saying, “no I won’t” to Shayne, you bow to his brilliance, etc.) but even to bring that up?

George later wrote:

I don't even think of anarchism when I write about history, unless I am studying the history of anarchism.

End quote

Maybe some comment like that is what I am thinking of, but will you do what Roy did? What would it take? Money from book sales when the book does not have atheism or anarchism in the title? The scholarly and personal respectability you will never have unless you support your country and the constitution? A potential libertarian political bid?

I urge you to drop the Anarchist pose if that is not your game, like your friend Roy Childs did. You continue to say the label is productive. I say it is self-smearing.

Please, please stop reading George. Consider the consequences.

Will you pledge by your sacred honor that Rational Anarchism is *justified* and *true belief*?

Peter Taylor

And with that Peter ended his heartfelt letter with this: "Now for a couple Stella Artois and an episode of “House.”

[sjw]

Well I agree with Peter on one thing: American Antifederalism suits George far better than anarchism. This anarchism stuff is an aberration that should be cast off.

And also: that post of George's needs to be published as an independent article. If I had a magazine I'd buy it myself. Of course, I don't know who else would buy it but anarchist circles, and only if he put an anarchist spin on it.

Shayne

[sjw]

Also what would improve George's magnificent piece is to add an additional emphasis about how the American Antifederalists are the true Founding Fathers, and encourage Americans to read select works of theirs to renew a proper kind of American patriotism. Actually, a small book by George with this as the lead-in, and followed up by selections of his from the Antifederalist papers and other writings to buttress his points about true American values would be even more magnificent.

What about it George? If you can't find a publisher I'll donate some time to help you self-publish it.

Shayne

[sjw]

Also what would improve George's magnificent piece is to add an additional emphasis about how the American Antifederalists are the true Founding Fathers, and encourage Americans to read select works of theirs to renew a proper kind of American patriotism. Actually, a small book by George with this as the lead-in, and followed up by selections of his from the Antifederalist papers and other writings to buttress his points about true American values would be even more magnificent.

What about it George? If you can't find a publisher I'll donate some time to help you self-publish it.

Shayne

Also what should be done is to pick up from where the best Founders left off, highlighting each particular problem they faced, and to paint an alternate picture of how they could have resolved them selling out to what ultimately became the slippery slope to nationalism. Unfortunately, this is where George's anarchism would get in the way.

Shayne