I claim that values are particular kinds of facts, that values relate to a specific person and for a particular reason. That is not to say that the process of evaluating which actions an individual ought to pursue is left to personal discretion, only that there are circumstances (or context) by which objective evaluations are made. For example, eating an apple provides a value (the satisfaction of my hunger) under certain circumstances. (Those certain circumstances, just to name a few, are whether I own or have permission to eat the apple, if the apple is sanitary and if the apple is ripe or not.) Since the decision to remain alive or to die is the only fundamental alternative I face, choosing to live establishes that my life is an ultimate value, an end in itself. My very own life, should I choose to remain living, is the only logically consistent standard of value I can have. I can discover these certain circumstances because they have empirically observable consequences on the standard by which I evaluate values. And it is that ultimate standard of value that can be used as a yardstick to evaluate the choice of alternatives within a given context, like eating the apple. That which promotes my life is a value, and that which hinders my life is a disvalue. Since this is true of all individuals, each individual’s life is an end in itself. For intrinsicists, values are not related to any particular purpose or any purpose at all since values just exist on their own. If someone were to ask an intrinsicist why eating an apple is a value, assuming the intrinsicist did believe eating an apple were a value in and of itself, the intrinsicist would say that eating an apple is the right thing to do. And why is it the right thing to do? Because eating an apple is a value. That is circular logic.

According to intrinsicism, a value resides in an object, thus shaping what that object is. So instead of saying that the nature of reality (what is) determines what are values, religions like Christianity are claiming that values determine the nature of reality (what is). A value would reside in the aforementioned apple, and it would be the right thing to do to eat more apples than less, regardless of the circumstances. One might object that stealing apples might not be appropriate since stealing is prohibited in the Bible, which is true. However, intrinsicism does not provide a way to formulate a moral code (or hierarchy of values) to evaluate possibly conflicting actions in light of particular circumstances. Since intrinsicism contends that values exist independent of their relationship to a particular valuer for a particular reason, intrinsicism cannot account for why an apple would be a greater value when a person is hungry rather than not, for example. Without a cognitive standard to make comparisons, a person would be left to decide which value is greater based on his or her desires (because one’s desires (or lack of) would be all that values shared in common). In practice, intrinsicists have to guess or take other people’s word for it. That is one reason why intrinsicism is a more elaborate form of subjectivism.

My experience is that theists will appeal to so-called innate moral knowledge as proof of objective morality. Yet, this so-called innate moral knowledge is often mistaken, according to theists, when confronted with the problem of evil. Suffering brought about by natural disasters or genocide would all be preventable by a god, yet those tragedies are permitted and orchestrated to take place by god. Because there is no empirical verification of innate knowledge, the argument is that god must have some reason unbenounced to humans for this destruction of innocent life to take place, which tells us that any innate moral knowledge is untrustworthy. The three possible conclusions (all of which theists deny is true) are that objective morality exists independent of a god, objective morality does not exist, or god is not naturally good.

Moreover, Christians are mistaken when they claim they believe that god is an ultimate value and that therefore god is the ultimate standard of value. For Christians, the ultimate value and the standard of value is the grace (or approval) of god. A value is that which one acts to gain or keep. Christians are seeking to gain or keep the grace of god so that they are accepted into the kingdom of god. Logically speaking, through, the grace of god cannot be an ultimate value because the grace of god is contingent on god’s decision to grant grace in the first place. God’s decision to grant grace could only take place if granting grace or not granting grace would somehow affect god, a purportedly all-powerful, all-knowing eternal being. An individual’s decision to accept and pursue god’s grace has no bearing on god, who is incapable of destruction and who is not susceptible to time constraints. Nothing can affect god, who cannot be changed in any respect. God would have nothing to gain and nothing to lose, so nothing can be of value to god. If nothing can be of value, there is no reason for god to act, let alone grant grace.

For the intrinsicist, these values — since they serve no actual purpose — are actually just duties. Why is it that god’s grace is something worth pursuing, one might ask? Because it is the right thing to do. Why is that? Because god’s grace is a value one ought to pursue. That is question-begging, and the illogic of that should be apparent before I can say “infinite regress.”

Frustrated, reasonable people might ask why should they accept that god’s grace is the standard of value. The answer is pretty straightforward: because you can either live in bliss with god or be tortured for eternity. The next question then becomes why should I consider living in bliss with god a good thing and being tortured a bad thing. Christians have one of two choices, as far as I can see. They can either return to the infinite regress of intrinsicism, or the intrinsicist can say that living in bliss with god feels pleasurable and being tortured feels painful. That does not really answer any questions either. Why should pleasure be considered good and pain considered bad? After all, pleasures can sometimes be harmful. For kids, only eating sweets might be pleasurable, but always eating sweets is not a good thing. Exercise phrases like “No pain, no gain” are expressing that one’s own life is the standard of value. Exercising can help an athlete become stronger, faster or build endurance. That is important because the achievement of those values helps one become a better basketball player or win more games, which would further boost self-esteem, a component of happiness. Genuine happiness is a consequence of achieving life-promoting empirical (fact-based) values and is a rationally consistent purpose of living one’s life.

A final argument given by intrinsicists is that their god is the lawmaker and that fact establishes the authority of god’s law. In fact, intrinsicists argue, god is responsible for every fact in the universe. Not only would god be responsible for the creation of existence, god is responsible for the identity (or nature) of all that exists. So things, including values and consequently morality, are what god chooses them to be. This would be the most overt and grandiose appeal to subjectivism imaginable and really underscores the subjective nature of a belief in god. If the subject of consciousness (god) has primacy over the subjects of consciousness (entities in existence) then nothing can be objective. If even a single consciousness has primacy over existence, then the law of identity, the basis for metaphysical objectivity, is meaningless.

Religious values are not based on facts, but on feelings. All the way around it, people accept religious teachings on faith. They accept on faith that god’s grace is the ultimate value because they feel like it. If the subjectivist teachings of religion were isolated to just theists, that would still be tragic. Unfortunately, it is much worse, and it is rooted in the truly evil idea that someone or something else is the beneficiary of another’s life. If the beneficiary of my life is god or god’s grace, I have no sanction to live my life for my benefit. Obviously, that is going to create some conflict. With all the religions in the world, not everyone is going to agree — particularly since god’s grace is not observable — what honors god’s grace and what dishonors god’s grace.

Since most everyone (including most atheists) agrees that I have no right to live my life according to my own judgement, then it is perfectly acceptable to apply coercion so that I might live my life by someone else’s judgement. The only things subjectivists have ever had in their favor are guilt and the gun. That is moral cannibalism.

To his major points, the rabbi begins his letter with an immediate misunderstanding of atheism. He said “that there really are no true atheists” because such a belief would require absolute knowledge of the universe. But again this is wrong for at least three reasons.

Atheism is a lack of belief in a god, meaning there is no empirical (fact-based) evidence to support a belief in a god. For many atheists, that is the extent of their claim. They do not say that the existence of a god is impossible, only that they do not possess any empirical evidence to believe there is one.

The second fault in the rabbi’s thinking is that the burden of proof is not on atheists to prove that there is no empirical evidence for theism. The burden of proof lies with theist to prove that they have empirical evidence for their belief, since theists are the ones making a positive claim. A belief without empirical evidence is arbitrary, as in not grounded in reality, and therefore neither true nor false. If such definitive empirical evidence existed, there would be no reason to rely on faith, which is the act of acquiring a belief in knowledge in the absence empirical evidence or, more often, in spite of the available empirical evidence.

Even with those clarifications, the third fault in the rabbi’s reasoning is that we can prove by logical deduction that there is no god. Part of the difficulty in proving there is no god is that there are so many definitions for the word “god.” Some will say god is love or energy or the perfect good. We already know what those notions are or at least understand the thinking behind them, so there is no reason to use the word “god,” which brings with it supernatural connotations. At a minimum, “god” is defined as an eternal incorporeal being responsible for the creation of existence. Existence would be defined as the totality of all that had existed, that does exist and that will exist. The notion “god” can be proven to be self-contradictory and therefore non-existent in reality in the same way that a square circle cannot exist. Self-contradictory notion can be used as figurative tools, but it would be pointless to search the universe for a square circle, a married bachelor or an instance where two plus two is five.

Logically proving the self-contradictory nature of the notion “god,” an eternal incorporeal being responsible for the creation of existence, is as follows.

1. Consciousness is the faculty to perceive that which exists.
2. Consciousness can only occur if something exists to perceive.
3. In the absence of existence, nothing exists to be conscious of to perceive.
4. A being that lacks consciousness is unconscious.
5. An unconscious being cannot act purposefully to create existence.
6. The notion “god” exists as a manifestation of the human mind, which is an entity in existence.
7. Therefore, there is no god.

The basic summation is that if there were a god, it could never act. By the fact that existence exists, there can be no god.

The supposed attributes of quantitatively infinite goodness, presence, knowledge and power are themselves self-contradictory as well. As Leonard Peikoff said, ” ‘Infinite’ as applied to quantity does not mean ‘very large’: it means ‘larger than any specific quantity.’ That means: no specific quantity—i.e., a quantity without identity. This is prohibited by the Law of Identity.”

Having shown why the notion “god” contradicts the fundamental meta-physical principles of reality, I do not think that the rest of the rabbi’s open letter is founded. However, he does mention the good that has come of people’s belief in Judaism. Even if it were the case that Judaism was less opposed to human happiness and equality, that should not warrant its belief. Considering the teachings of other religions, Judaism had a pretty low hurdle to cross. Of the points he made about the positive impact of his religion, in no way is a religious belief required to perform them. Atheists are just as capable of justice and love as atheists.

Pointing to “Hitler, Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot” as examples of secular injustices gives his case away. In the case of Hitler, he was very outspoken about his Christian belief. What united all of them were beliefs shared almost universally by theists, the virtue of self-sacrifice to the collective.

To the rabbi’s final point, atheism does not have to be asserted on faith. He added, “Being a rationalist, of course, you know that failing to make such an observation is different from proving that there isn’t one [a god], which, by its very nature, is an impossible task.” That is what the rabbi does not understand. A negative statement, such as one that there is no god, can be demonstrated as true if it is true. To demonstrate that two plus two is not five or 20 or 55 only takes proving that two plus two is four. To demonstrate that there is no god only takes demonstrating that existence exists and A is A, both (irrefutable) axiomatic primaries of logic. To say that one cannot prove a negative statement is itself a negative statement. So if the statement is true, it refutes itself. If the statement that one cannot prove a negative is false, that means negative statements, including that one, are then arbitrary and therefore meaningless. In either case, the statement that one cannot prove a negative is untrue. The purpose for the rabbi’s use of the statement that it is impossible to prove “that there isn’t one [a god]” is to deny that knowledge is even possible. If it is impossible to rule out the possibility that two plus two is not five, it is equally impossible to claim knowledge that two plus two is four. If I cannot prove that this thing I am punching my fingers on is not a poisonous snake, I cannot claim with certainty that it is keyboard either. The statement that one cannot prove a negative statement is a claim to knowledge that denies knowledge is possible.

Forgiving the fact that the rabbi completely misunderstands atheism and peddles the idea that we cannot use reason, even as he communicates through the use of our reason, I welcome having an “open mind and a spirit of appreciation for our shared humanity.” It is just that so many theists do not see it that way. The goal of this post is not to rob people of their beliefs, and for the most part I do not initiate conversations about religion with theists nor do I support violence in the name of my beliefs — if only I could say the same for statists, some theists and some anarchists (for that matter).

• Committing Genocide — In the first book of the Bible, God decides Man is so evil that almost all living things must be killed in a worldwide flood, including children and animals. There is little discussion of why such a step is taken, and no convincing explanation is offered. Also left unanswered is why it was necessary to kill so many animals, which could have provided some value to the poverty stricken people of that time. It is inconceivable that it could be. Unfortunately, this would not be the last time God was responsible for the premeditated murder of children.

  In Egypt, the Israelites were being held as tax slaves to the state. Following a series of plagues that God commanded in an effort to besiege the pharaohs into freeing the Israelites, God concluded by killing the firstborn child of Egyptian families. By comparison, the American government’s economic sanctions and illegal invasion of Iraq, which together have resulted in more than a million deaths, seem tame.

• Condoning Chattel Slavery — I have never heard of a respected living conscious being that has ever condoned slavery, save for God. Surely, he must have seen the shift in public opinion coming.

  Throughout the Bible, though, slave owners are told how to conduct themselves but not that slavery is evil, that the pretense of the ownership of another person is evil. Sickeningly, slaves are even told to obey their masters.

• Enforcing Inherited Guilt — A central tenent of Christianity is that everyone is evil as a result of the fall of Adam and Eve from God’s grace in the Garden of Eden. The early parts of the Bible display cases of people being punished for the sins of the father. Really, what sense does that make?

  Morality is a matter of choice. To say that human beings are inherently evil (or good) would mean that they are not responsible for their decisions. It would be like a doorman forcing me into a casino to play craps only to find out during my roll that I have no choice but to play with the trick dice provided by the casino. I then have to pledge my unquestioned support and offer remuneration to pay off the inevitable debt I have incurred. The whole idea is mad and undermines a proper conception of morality.

• Punishing Victimless Crimes — For not supporting god, according the the Bible, I can expect eternal punishment. The belief as to what exactly such a punishment consists of spans across a wide spectrum. Some believe this punishment will consist of unspeakable torture, while others say an unbeliever remains in an oblivious unconscious rest.

  A central tenant of a civilized legal theory is that a crime has only occurred when a non-consenting individual has sustained an articulable injury to one’s person or property. Refusing my allegiance to the Bibilical god can in no way be an injury to a living person, much less to an immaterial entity. For example, even if I refused to acknowledge that Michael Jordon existed or if I believed that he was a terrible basketball player, I am not causing an injury to his body or property. A further difference is that Michael Jordon exists in material reality, while believers in the concept of god concede that god exists only in an immaterial supernatural realm that I presently am not able to experience.

  Since I can pose no possible injury to a god, I have a pretty strong case of being a victim of extortion since this almighty god has purposefully made such an ambiguous threat of eternal torture against me.

These are just some of the more egregious moral failures of the Biblical god. Even for those who believe the concept of god is valid, the tyrannical god described in the Bible could very well be a test of a believer’s moral code. So even if we played Pascal’s wager, there is at least as much reason to not lend your support for such a vile creature.

Richards opens that “Radical libertarians are equivalent to leftist Saul Alinskyites. Both despise government and the Constitution, seeking to destroy America.” To say something like that reveals she has never given much serious thought to either. Alinsky was a utilitarian, inside-the-system guy. Mr. Libertarian, a deontological private property natural law supporter, denounced the system and was an “Enemy of the State.” Economically, methodologically, historically, and culturally they were polar opposites. It was precisely that Rothbard insisted on practicing his radicalism, where Alinksly used more pragmatic means. Rothbard was not concerned with accumulating power; he wanted to destroy it.

So already we are off to a shaky start. Also, it is not so much that libertarians despise government — which some people connote to mean rule and order — but the state, an organization within a given territory that maintains the monopoly authority to designate the legal use of force. Nor do libertarians conflate America with the government, as Richards seems to do. Quickly, she conveniently deliniates society from government when she said Rothbardians think that society “prevented war, rape, and pillaging” prior to the development of the modern nation-state. In actuality, Rothbardian libertarians see the state as needlessly exacerbating those tragedies.

Laughingly, Richards said, “Society can’t survive and thrive without leadership and checking and balancing leaders.” As if. An organization with sovereign immunity cannot be held accountable, particularly if those checks and balances are maintained within the same organization to be rendered as consequential as costume jewelry. The founding fathers that conservatives so prize had some understanding of this, calling the constitution only for a moral people as John Adams did. It was Thomas Jefferson who said “were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” John Locke called the state of nature a “state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal … .” So clearly, these classical liberals thinkers did not believe it was the government that kept order.

Richards states that libertarians do not believe people are evil, only governments. That is an odd insight to make, for who does she think libertarians believe occupy government? Libertarians like Hans-Hermann Hoppe have made the point that the incintive structure of the state lends itself toward accumulating more power and inviting conflict. That is true. More so, they argue that precisely because people are capable of committing evil, then a centralized organization with the popular legitimacy to commit acts of aggression should not stand because evil people will be attracted to that unique source of power.

Even taking at face value the conservative point that all people are to some degree evil, then the existence of a government in no way minimizes that problem. In fact, by regularizing and legitimizing the morally criminal behavior of the state, those evils are compounded because the most evil would have the most to gain from that system. Of course, any social system will work more smoothly if people tend to be more peaceful and honest, yet which of these systems encourage that behavior and punish anti-social affairs? As Rothbard himself said, “[W]hatever the mix of man’s nature may be at any given time, liberty is best.”

Later in the article, Richards again conflates government with society. For the most part, this is also the modern conservative view, which is why so many want to criminalize what they deem to be immoral acts among consenting adults instead of educating others about their mistaken ways. In that sense, they are ideological cousins of liberal authoritarians like former law professor and current Obama regulatory “czar” Cass Sunstein. They see government as the source of all technological advancement and at the root of civil society.

Richards is wrong again on a few more points, as well. While a popular myth, it is not true that war is part of human nature. While it is true that conflict will exist over (limited) resources, we have found ways to minimize those conflicts, such as through the use of property rights and arbitration. Besides, the existence of a state makes war more affordable for the war makers as the costs of building an empire can be defused over the population through taxation. As war makers have become removed from the consequences of their violence, constant war has become costlier than ever before. It is government that is civil war, according to French anarchist Anselme Bellegarrigue. While modern warfare may consume fewer actual lives, the aggregate labor stolen by the war machine is no less wasted. The life of each one of us is drained again and again day after day to fund the most successful criminal enterprise in history.

In another failure, Richards cites a Karl Marx quote from Ralph Raico’s lewrockwell.com article on Marx’s insights into the state, which she takes to mean an acceptance of Marxist political economy even as Raico makes explicit that he is “far from being a Marxist.” The point of Raico’s quote was to reveal Marx’s own dualistic view of the state as first, continuously under the exploitative hand of the capitalist class, and at other times as an organ of exploitation of whatever party in control.

In fact, some of the very few accurate protrayals she offered was calling radical libertrians leftists who believe we can “endure without states and central leadership.”

Looking back, Richards has claimed that Rothbardian libertarians want to “destroy man and his right to Life,” believe “depravity is nonexistent in man’s nature,” are “anti-wealth,” and favor “communal control.” For these points, Richards offers not a single quotation from Rothbard or any other libertarian.

I am drawn to one of my favorite Frederic Bastiat quotes, when he said:

Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.

We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.

With some credulity, statists have become conditioned to let others — even words written on paper — have dominion over their lives. When someone offers the radical notion that no one else owns your body, they are called the dangerous ones. When some point out that the state has no resources of its own and can only exist by usurping our rights, with some arrogance, they are told to be the enemies of individual rights.

To Richards, I say trust in yourself and treat your neighbors as an equal. So long as you look to leaders for the change you seek, you can bet to be changing out one set of dogs for another while ignoring the things all of us can do for the betterment of ourselves and those around us.

I understand the definition of “faith” to be the means of acquiring a belief in a concept that lacks emperical evidence of its existence or, better yet, a belief in something in spite of the available evidence. By this, making a judgement on the best available emperical evidence, even if incomplete, would not be acting on faith. I do not mean faith in the colloquial sense either, like remaining faithful.

For clarity’s sake, I understand virtues to mean the consistent actions by which one achieves moral values.

But everyone has faith in something, some might argue. Even if true (and I am not conceding it is) that would not mean people ought to have faith. “If all your friends jumped off a bridge ….” You get my point. No doubt, some benefit from their faith and achieve things they might have never dreamed possible.  In the coming paragraphs, I hope to prove that faith is not something that can be practiced consistently in order to achieve moral values.

For sure, we accept ideas everyday without a complete understanding of the facts, but we can still deduce (or infer) beliefs from previous evidence we believe is true. In order to do so, we use logic to decide what evidence is relevant, what evidence is lacking, and how important is each in order to make a decision or withhold from making a decision. When I am driving down the street, how do I know that the driver coming in the opposite direction is not going to steer into my lane and cause a head-on collision?  Since everyone has a free will, I can never know absolutely.  Based on the preponderance of the emperical evidence, I have no reason to believe the typical driver will cause a collision. My judgement could be mistaken, but the only way of knowing that is by studying the consequences of the empirical evidence.

The distinction between human beings and the lower animals is our ability to form concepts and choose values. We are not especially superior in any physical sense to other animals, who can see better at night, travel faster, carry proportionally more weight, and adapt to the environment more quickly. But we sit atop the food chain. The greatest advantage we have is our ability to conceptualize.

Yet, we are also at another disadvantage. We do not not inherit knowledge from birth. We are a blank slate. Since values — those things which one wishes to gain or keep — are not given through instincts, they must be discovered with the only tool available to us for integrating perceptions of (objective) reality. We have the choice to make our character what we want it to be. We can choose good or evil. If we want a happy life, we have to discover and uphold rational, life-promoting principles (virtues) that make it possible. They are the actions that further and sustain one’s life when practiced consistently.

The extent to which people neglect or reject their their greatest tool of survival is the extent that they retard their life. The extent to which people believe something in the absence of evidence or in spite of it is the extent to which people believe something because they want to. They believe because they feel like it, meaning faith is a form of subjectivism. Unwittingly, they build their support for absolute truth on the soft sands of subjectivism.

Yet, many people of faith defend their religious belief because God gives authority to the purpose of morality. If God did not exist, anything goes, they might say. But without realizing it, supporters of faith concede that reality is not objectively knowable, that reason is a handicap to be subordinated to revelation, dogma and mysticism, and that support for morality rests on a whim.

I am not disparaging feelings or emotions. They are important factors, as are our cognitive powers. Emotions are the automatic responses to value judgments produced by the premises we hold. Conflict between reason and emotions only arises when the premises of our emotions are in conflict with reality.

Subjectivism as Sacrifice

The invariable contradictions that arise from such a mindset lead to incredible frustration and self-doubt. As people reject the crippling effects of faith, which they increasingly are, many cling to their subjectivist preconceptions of morality. They have heard all their life that without God, anything goes. So with their newfound disbelief, the truth is what you feel it is.

Morality becomes the domain of society. The “common good,” “the public interest,” and “majority will” become the dominant motives of morality. “If individuals have to be sacrificed to satisfy morality, then so be it.” Evil becomes “necessary.” The good is not longer tied to the individual but to the collective.

Life as the End

Meanwhile, the true paradigm is that without an objective reality, then morality does not exist. But reality does exist; therefore I am. Faith is not necessary to believe in morality. The law of identity, the law of causality, and the corollary law of non-contradiction are not debatable. They are the axiomatic metaphysical givens that underlie every action we take. The very attempt of dispoving them demonstrates their validity. They are absolute, self-evident and unchanging.

Individuals are all there are. The “common good” is a meaningless concept because the collective is only a metaphor. Try and point to a collective without pointing to the individuals or the consequences of their actions. We as humans are given a choice: to live or not to live. If we choose life, and there are objective reasons to live and prosper, the process of achieving that value (our life) is called morality. The concept of a value presupposes the existence of a valuer. Without life, values would be a meaningless concept. This means that sustaining one’s life is the purpose of all moral values; it is how they come to be. As life exists only in individuals, each individual’s life is an end in itself and should not be sacrificed to others or to metaphorical collectives.

That is why faith is so dangerous. It gives people an easy excuse to believe what they want, which others are sure to disagree with for their own subjective reasons. The only way to settle this dispute is by majority vote if we are lucky and by force of arms if we aren’t so lucky. In either case, the rule is might means right. The victory goes to the most underhanded, the most violent, and the most deceitful.

On Thursday, Feb. 25, Rockwell published three anti-state articles on his own site. I wouldn’t go so far to call them pro-anarchism articles, but they do undercut some false rhetoric about the beloved republic.

The first article, “Doomed from the Start,” is from Thomas DiLorenzo, who explores some of the misbeliefs that the framers of federal constitution ever meant to limit the powers of the national government. He writes how the Jeffersonian notions of state secession and nullification were deliberately attacked by the nationalists to ensure an expansionist government. Alexander Hamilton and his “disciple” John Marshall, who served as the chief justice of the Supreme Court for three decades, worked to undermine the any constitutional restraints.

It was Hamilton who first invented the expansive interpretations of the General Welfare and Commerce Clauses of the Constitution, which have been used for generations to grant totalitarian powers to the central state. He literally set the template for the destruction of constitutional liberty in America the moment it became apparent at the constitutional convention that he and his fellow nationalists would not get their way and create a “monarchy bottomed on corruption,” as Thomas Jefferson described the Hamiltonian system.

Hamilton’s devoted disciple, John Marshall, was appointed chief justice of the United States in 1801 and served in that post for more than three decades. His career was a crusade to rewrite the Constitution so that it would become a nationalist document that destroyed states’ rights and most other limitations on the powers of the centralized state. He essentially declared in Marbury vs. Madison that he, John Marshall, would be the arbiter of constitutionality via “judicial review.”

The second article is titled “The Government Is Just a Referee? Hardly.” It is probably the least informative with new thoughts, but it does provide a good quote.

Given the government’s failure at its refereeing role, it seems fair to ask: Is it better to have a biased, powerful referee who helps his friends win, or is it better to have no referee at all? Obviously the optimum situation would be to have an impartial and competent referee; but it seems that fewer and fewer people still believe that it is possible for the government to play this role. History has shown us that the impartial arbiter inevitably evolves into the protector and benefactor of certain players in the game. And because the government as referee can use guns, fines and imprisonment to enforce its will, it is indeed a formidable benefactor for its favored ones, and a formidable oppressor for its disfavored ones.

The third anti-state article, “Romans 13 and Anarcho-Capitalism,” deals with who constitutes “the governing authority,” according to the Christian belief. The Bible’s “Romans 13″ reads:

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.

This sound pretty authoritarian to me, and has been used by those in power to justify their assault. I don’t know much about The Bible, but it’s my guess that passage and the “turn the other cheek” verse were written and or preached after Christianity became the dominant religion. Just a hunch.

The author, Jim Fedako, said, “As Christians, we are to obey the legitimate governing authority, but it does not follow that the authority must be the state. Paul’s instructions are the same no matter who is in charge. And in an anarcho-capitalist world, we would only be forced to obey the governing authorities whose properties we chose to enter.”

I don’t call myself an anarcho-capitalist for the reason Fedako believes property defense is a Lockean absolute demand rather than a Rothbardian degree of proportionality.

George Donnelly makes two contributions today. The first is his rebutal to the grieved Joseph Stack, who published a suicide note online before flying a single-engine plane into an Austin building housing the offices of the Internal Revenue Service on Feb. 18. Stack had claimed he was left no other option, stating that “violence not only is the answer, (sic) it is the only answer.” Donnelly wrote:

Am I powerless? My vote doesn’t count. My voice is not heard in the corridors of power in Washington. My bank account is too small to fund political change. My salary is siphoned off into FICA taxes, income taxes, gas taxes, mortgage payments, credit card payments and inflated grocery bills before I see a dime. At any time I could be assaulted by the cops, fined by meter maids, tasered by the state police, murdered by the ATF, seized by the FBI or left penniless by the IRS. I am a punching bag standing patiently in line for my turn in the wringer. …

When I’m frustrated I remember that none of it matters. It doesn’t matter that the wrong candidate won office. He doesn’t rule me! He only has as much power as I voluntarily grant him. I never agreed to be bound by the laws he passes. I live my own life with integrity and honor by following the natural law: I do not aggress against others and I keep my word. …

As I grow more happiness and independence in my own life, I will help others do the same. I’ll boycott the strategies, agencies, options and involuntary obligations that once led me into vulnerability. I’ll exhort others to do the same. Soon we will be free, happy, at peace and prosperous. I am powerful. I have many options. I can overcome. I can make a better life for myself. I can.

In another post, “We Must Live in Alignment with Our Principles,” Donnelly makes a point I’ve been reconciling in my own mind.

Liberty starts with each of us. If we can’t make the voluntary society happen in our own lives, what hope is there of making it happen on a large scale? Change requires that good people set good examples. If nothing else, your efforts will keep the promise of liberty alive until conditions become more favorable. It’s our best option. No one will make this happen but ourselves. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

~ Answering the ‘Yes, But the State is Inevitable’ Falsity

For context, Benjamin Tucker defined government as “the subjection of the noninvasive individual to an external will.” BK Marcus answered whether government was inevitable.

And for me, the question “Isn’t some form of State inevitable?” is like saying We will never get rid of rape and robbery, murder and torture, so what sense does it make to take a principled stance against these things? They will always be with us.

It’s sad to me that such a basic thing as the principled opposition to coercion is considered to be extremist, unreasonable, unrealistic. Why do I have to believe in permanent peace to oppose war? How is it utopian to denounce force?

I share your confidence that force and fraud will always be with us, and I will always oppose them. But Statism is more than the prediction of “the subjection of the noninvasive individual to an external will.” Statism is the claim that institutionalized proactive coercion is justified. Anarchism rejects that conclusion” (emphasis in original).

~ The New Normal for Government Services

Wendy McElroy has a post from TechDirt about the new ways that government is servicing you. In California, the city of Tracy is going to charge residents $300 and non-residents $400 when the fire department is called to a medical emergency. I would completely support this but for the fact that residents already have to pay for the fire department with taxes. The reason the city is having to take such measures is to pay back the government-backed labor union that lobbies for excessive compensation and funded the city council member’s election campaigns. The city spends $9 million per year in a city of 80,000 on employee pensions and deposits ¢33 for every dollar the police and fire fighters make in wages.

No charge will be issued when the fire department responds to a car collission or a fire. So the solution is simple enough, according to McElroy: “In short, if you see someone have a heart attack in the street, you should quickly set a trash bin on fire.”

~ Think Small, Change the World

Libertarian persuasion guru Michael Cloud has some advice and motivation for activists.

Because the vital few, the great men and women, the key events were indispensable and necessary to what happened — but they were *not* sufficient to make it happen.

Without the vital, indispensable small actions of many forgotten individuals, the great events would have faltered, fizzled, and failed. …

Think small. Start small. Work small. For liberty. You can change the world.

~ Speaking of Changing Minds

Seth Godin has a post on the importance of extremists. He concludes:

It’s interesting to note that an enormous amount of apparently principled argument goes on about relatively tiny movements in where the line is being drawn. In most cases, to paraphrase an old joke, “we’ve already figured out what sort of girl you are, now we’re just arguing about the price.” It’s not the principle, in fact, it’s just the degree of compromise we’re comfortable with and content to argue over.

And so it’s left to the zealots. The people at either end have little hope of moving the masses all the way to their end of the argument. Instead, what they do is make it feel safer to change the boundaries, safer to recalibrate the compromise. Over time, as the edges feel more palatable, the masses are more likely to be willing to edge their way closer to one edge or another. Successful zealots don’t argue to win. They argue to move the goalposts and to make it appear sane to do so.

She said, “Forcing me to get a license on my property is like using the aggression of the law to take what is rightfully mine.” Quoting from Bastiat’sThe Law , she said, “When a portion of wealth is transferred from the person who owns it — without his consent and without compensation, and whether by force or by fraud — to anyone who does not own it, then I say that property is violated; that an act of plunder is committed.”

Mayor Bill Lanford then responded to Katy. In one exchange he said, “I want to rebut the idea that your property is yours and we have to leave it all alone. That’s not true; that’s not true. It never has been true.” The mayor also admitted they were committing an act of violence by using force against residents, saying “We forcibly take your tax money; we make you pay taxes.” Calling liberty a “half-truth,” he said aggressive force is necessary to create a sense fear, or what he deemed “responsibility.”

Katy responded, “I do fundamentally disagree because before there were laws, we had rights. Our rights are derived from property; our rights are derived from God. When we keep putting registration on people, when we keep asking people to pay taxes on things they have worked so hard to own, then we are violating people’s rights.”

During a break in the meeting, I interviewed assistant city manager Chuck Barnett. I asked what should happen to someone who refuses to obey or pay the fine. He said it was acceptable to imprison someone who does “challenge the system.”

We’ll try to better organize opposition to the proposal next time. The council did not set a hard date for reintroduction, so we don’t know when it will be heard again. The most frustrating thing for me was to hear little principled opposition, like debating with a pirate how deep the sword should go. That’s election politics. I can only hope that the council members ask themselves what is it about their psychology that they are willing to use force against peaceful people.

I forgive them, of course, for their transgressions, but it is still wrong.