Tag: left

How Understanding History Helps Understanding the Present and the Future

Lew Rockwell today shared his reflections of a recent book released by Hans-Hermann Hoppe called ‘Getting Libertarianism Right“. In it, Hans shares an insight he himself learned from Murray Rothbard, which is …:

never to trust official history, invariably written by the victors, but to conduct all historical research instead like a detective investigating a crime. Always, first and foremost and as a first approximation, follow the money in search of a motive

It is only by knowing the true history can one form the proper frame of mind to understand current issues as well as the future state for our kids and grand-kids.

I have to be honest, when I read how this was not talking just about a libertarian approach to life as being fundamentally and logically correct, but that the word “right” also meant as opposed to left, I hesitated. But in true Hoppe form, Hans can take the logical route and prove that in the long-term, the left as it is defined today is a destructive course. Not because the right, as it exists today, has a great record, it doesn’t, but there is a fundamental aspect of the right that is essential in understanding life.

“Knowing libertarian theory — the rules of peaceful interactions — is like knowing the rules of logic — the rules of correct thinking and reasoning. . . just as every logician who wants to make good use of his knowledge must turn his attention to real thought and reasoning, so a libertarian theorist must turn his attention to the actions of real people. Instead of being a mere theorist, he must also become a sociologist and psychologist and take account of ’empirical’ social reality, i.e., the world as it really is” says Hans

OK, but what about right verses left thinking? Lew summarizes Hans’ thoughts:

The Right accepts the reality of human differences but the Left does not. Because Leftists try to make everyone equal, they favor massive interventions by the State to abolish human differences.

So true. Anyone alive today has to eventually see through the left’s agenda. True equality is not what they want, because they would be out of a job. Their effort is the “process”, which can never be successful, of making everyone equal. This is so very similar to the progressive path that came out of the 19th century and flourished toward building some utopia, that of course had government as a key initiator and sustainer in.  You know, like a god!

Hans points out that even the most ardent leaders of the left’s agenda deep down knows the truth. I mean, even the common man on the street knows the honest truth. Hans does not mince words .. he too knows that this agenda benefits some and not others:

“The egalitarian worldview of the Left is not only incompatible with libertarianism, however. It is so out of touch with reality that one must be wondering how anyone can take it seriously. The man-on-the-street certainly does not believe in the equality of all men. Plain common sense and sound prejudice stand in the way of that. And I am even more confident that no one of the actual proponents of the egalitarian doctrine really, deep down, believes what he proclaims. Yet how, then, could the Leftist worldview have become the dominant ideology of our age? At least for a libertarian, the answer should be obvious: the egalitarian doctrine achieved this status not because it is true, but because it provides the perfect intellectual cover for the drive toward totalitarian social control by a ruling elite”

So in the present state (no pun intended), many people are caught up in this dream world for the future that they will never see. By the time they realize this, it will be too late for them to enjoy the freedom of every person, being uniquely created and uniquely gifted to accomplish their unique work in this world that can make societies and communities a better place.

So what does Hans attribute this drift and now free-fall away from libertarian principles? The keystone seems to be a supreme judicial authority that quickly became politically aligned. I suggest, and Thomas Jefferson agreed, that America from the get-go was an experiment. The tweak in this experiment from the Articles of Confederation in 1781 to the Constitution in 1787 broke it even more. By the 1790s, Americans were paying more in taxes than they were in 1775!

Hans shares his insight:

“Predictably, the monopolist will use his position as ultimate decision-maker not only to resolve conflict between contending property owners, but increasingly also to initiate or provoke conflicts with private property owners, in order to then decide such conflicts in his own favor, i.e., to expropriate the just property of others to his own advantage on the basis of his own made-up laws. And on the other hand, the price to be paid for justice will rise. In fact, the price of justice will not simply be a ‘higher price’ that justice seekers may or may not be willing to pay (as would be the case for any other monopoly), but a tax that justice seekers must pay whether they agree to it or not.”

With this capstone, the effort that most people assume is that the drive is to control the state apparatus as history shows political struggles becoming at times physical wars (War of 1812, War Against Southern Independence, Spanish-American War, WWI, WWII, etc. * I got tired of typing all the wars the US has fueled). However, Hans turns this thought on its head as well:

“Only with democracy, however, i.e., the free and unrestricted entry into the State, are all moral restraints and inhibitions against the taking of others’ lawful property removed. Everyone is free to indulge in such temptations and propose and promote every conceivable measure of legislation and taxation to gain advantages at other people’s expense. That is, whereas in a natural order everyone is expected to spend his time exclusively on production or consumption, under democratic conditions, increasingly more time is spent instead on politics, i.e., on the advocacy and promotion of activities that are neither productive nor consumptive, but exploitative and parasitic of and on the property of others.”

More time spend on politics, that are not productive, but exploitative and at its root, parasitic towards the property of others! Ain’t that the truth. Everyone these days wants government money (the government has no money of its own, just the power, the sword, the gun to extort money from you). This is not sustainable, but the average politician is in this only for short-term gains. They have zero concerns about our kids and grand-kids. ZERO! Speaking of politicians, Hans has a few things to say:

“If measured by the standards of natural law and justice, all politicians, of all parties and virtually without any exception, are guilty, whether directly or indirectly, of murder, homicide, trespass, invasion, expropriation, theft , fraud, and the fencing of stolen goods on a massive and ongoing scale. And every new generation of politicians and parties appears to be worse, and piles even more atrocities and perversions on top of the already existing mountain, so that one feels almost nostalgic about the past. They all should be hung, or put in jail to rot, or set to making compensation.”

The very people who lied us into the Iraq War (and other wars) walk free today and yet the very people who broke the truth about these and other wars are now behind bars and are not free (Assange, Manning, others). Justice has been turned upside-down. We are not free. The lie has been for sometime that our troops have been fighting for our freedom. This is only a convenient cover for a parasite (global elites, US Empire, Washington DC, Deep State all the way down to the local police state) sucking all it can out of its people as well as those around the world that they sanction, drone and harass for “freedom”.

I plan to read this 120 page book by Hans this weekend and will get back to you. It has come to that. We need to be very aware of the past so we can understand the red flags around us (the ‘red flag laws’ popped in my mind, that is another post), and then prepare ourselves, our family and friends for the future. Not just physically, but psychologically as well!

At the end of the day I trust that the Judge will make all things right and all things new, but even His Son who lived in this broken world knew that critical thinking would be needed to navigate life under an empire, in His case, the Roman Empire. His example was to sell a coat for a sword, but also to have hope that there is a better day coming, as the Father would present us something fantastic, not only peace in the middle of the storm of this very broken world, but a future home where there would be no tears.

Signing off

-SF1

 

Words Do Matter, Definitions Help – What is Really Behind ‘Right’ and ‘Left’?

Obviously, calling oneself right or left means nothing. Beyond this, talking as well might give someone an insight into a person being “right” or “left”. Actions speak the loudest however, and in tough times it is one’s actions that create a legacy between “right” and “left”.

From Bionic Mosquito’s article comes some interesting thoughts on past and present efforts involving society and individuals, the relationships therein and the role of “right” or left”. Bionic starts off with this quote that I love:

As long as you’re living right, then you don’t have to worry about what people see.

– Clay Aiken

So true. I learned at an early age, I think age 5, that to lie I had to remember not only the lie itself, but who I told it to, and when .. and so I settled on just telling the truth and letting the chips fall where they may. I sleep good at night.

Bionic has been spending some time with Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn’s work called: ” Leftism: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Marcuse ” that is online courtesy of the Mises Institute.  He quotes Erik in saying:

..  In all European languages (including the Slavic idioms and Hungarian) right is connected with “right” (ius), rightly, rightful, in German gerecht (just), the Russian pravo (law),pravda (truth) ..

This is just the way the European’s organized things .. maybe based on:

On The Day of Judgment, the righteous are to be on the right, and the punished on the left; Christ, of course, sits on the right.

The Bible. In any case, once we have a definition that can be agreed upon, we can compare it with experience. So let us start looking at that it all means.

So, what is “right” for man? Man – each one a unique individual – needs room; room to grow, room to be left alone, room to think, room to thrive. Much of political reality over the course of a few centuries has been to crush this:

“…all the great dynamic isms of the last 200 years have been mass movements attacking – even when they had the word “freedom” on their lips – the liberty, the independence of the person.”

Individual-based, not the collective.  So how free were those before and after the Revolutionary War? Well, truth be known, any freedoms gained were quickly evaporated by a centrist agenda early before the Constitution was created (even though the Articles of Confederation were SUPPOSED to be modified by the convention in Philadelphia). The “fear” that the British Empire might again have eyes on this young republic made people opt for the collective again and freedoms were picked off one by one.

Bionic quotes Erik once more:

“The right has to be identified with personal freedom, with the absence of utopian visions whose realization – even if it were possible – would need tremendous collective efforts; it stands for free, organically grown forms of life.”

I do believe that the influence of Jesus and His followers had an impact on furthering the natural rights of individuals regardless of their class or skin color (i.e. Galatians 3:28 “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”)

While the leftist dreams of restoring some mythical golden age, the rightest looks to the past to find what is eternally true, and build on this:

“The true rightist is not a man who wants to go back to this or that institution for the sake of a return; he wants first to find out what is eternally true, eternally valid, and then either to restore or reinstall it, regardless of whether it seems obsolete, whether it is ancient, contemporary, or even without precedent, brand new, “ultramodern.”..”

The right recognizes the uniqueness in each individual; the left dreams of uniformity. Politically…

“… [t]he leftists believe in strong centralization. The rightists are “federalists” (in the European sense), “states’ righters” since they believe in local rights and privileges, they stand for the principle of subsidiarity.”

The left cannot stand for competing authority or allegiance:

“Leftism does not like religion for a variety of causes. Its ideologies, its omnipotent, all-permeating state wants undivided allegiance. With religion at least one other allegiance (to God), if not also allegiance to a Church, is interposed.”

OK, so let us unpack this .. know that Republicans are not “right” (since they crushed the peaceful attempt at an exit of sever southern states in 1861) and the German National Socialist (Nazi) regime was not “right” either ..

What does true conservatism support?

“All conservative movements in Europe are federalistic and opposed to centralization. Thus we encounter in Catalonia, for instance, a desire for autonomy and the cultivation of the Catalan language among the supporters of the extreme right as well as the left”

With this understanding, the way one approaches history can be greatly enhanced, especially understanding the hate that developed of the Jews during the 1920s and 1930s as shared by Thomas Dilorenzo in his Lew Rockwell article today:

The economic policies of the Nazis, wrote Hayek, are “full of ideas resembling those of the early socialists.” The dominant feature of Nazism was a fierce hatred of anything capitalistic — “individual profit seeking, large-scale enterprise, banks, joint stock companies, department stores, international fiance and loan capital, the system of ‘interest slavery,’ in general.” Nazi policy, wrote Hayek, was nothing less than “a violent anti-capitalistic attack.” “It is not even denied, wrote the Nobel Prize-winning economist, that “many of the young men who today [1943] play a prominent part [in the Nazi Party] have previously been communists or socialists.”

The “common trend” of German journalists and others who supported the Nazis “was their anti-liberal and anti-capitalist” beliefs. The even adopted as their “accepted dogma” the phrase “the end of capitalism.”

The Jews were singled out for special hatred by the Nazis, who viewed them as symbols of capitalism. “The party . . . combats the Jewish-materialist spirit within and without us,” they wrote in their “25-Point Platform of the Nazi Party.” And as Nazi apologist Paul Lensch wrote in his book, Three Years of World Revolution (p. 176), the ideas of “freedom and civic right, of constitutionalism and parliamentarianism . . . derived from that individualistic conception of the world,” must be gotten “rid of to assist in the growth of a new conception of State and Society. In this sphere also Socialism must present a conscious and determined opposition to individualism”

So let us be clear, the left’s socialism is much closer to the Nazi state than efforts of decentralization like what happened to the USSR and what is happening in Spain with Catalonia.

So in summary, those that call themselves “conservatives” or “right” these days are usually not. Listen to their words BUT inspect their actions. As Tom Woods pointed out in his article on Woodrow Wilson back in 2003:

There is the prudence and perspective of the conservative. No conservative, whose hallmark is a disposition toward stability, would risk his own country’s well being, both financial and moral, in a ceaseless crusade of visionary schemes. A real sense of history, as well as an appreciation of what is possible in this fallen world, should sober us up from the utopian fantasies of liberalism. Great American statesmen of the past understood this: we can be an example to the world, but beyond that we dare not go. No mother should ever have to be told that her sons died trying to straighten out the political situation in Nigeria. As Lord Byron said, “Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow.”

It is NOT America that must go abroad to bomb nations into democracy, America would have done better to be a model group of republics much like what is seen around Russia these days as they already have seen the bad side of collectivism in the USSR.

History helps one from repeating the mistakes of others .. just do your own research!

SF1