An Outbreak of Order in NYC

A few years ago, I was on an airliner about to make a landing in Denver. As any experienced flyer knows, a landing at this airport is always subject to the turbulence of air coming in over the mountains. But on this day, the turbulence was extraordinary; some of the worst I have experienced as a passenger. So troublesome was it that the pilot aborted his first landing try and went around for a second effort.
A woman sitting next to me was rather perturbed by the experience, and asked me "do you think we’ll ever get on the ground?" "I guarantee it," I responded. "I know enough about physics to be able to assure you that we will not be floating around up here forever. The forces of gravity will see to it that we will end up on the ground. What shape we will be in is another matter!" She laughed and, bumpiness and all, the pilot made a safe landing.

Read More: http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer187.html

The Real World Order Is Chaotic

Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. Chaos always defeats order because it is better organized. ~ Terry Pratchett

"Desperation" may well be the best word to describe our current responses to the ubiquitous malfunctioning of social systems premised on the necessity for vertically-structured, top-down, command-and-control organizational forms. Western civilization collapses all around us, and yet most of us continue to insist upon a renewed commitment to variations of the Platonic vision of a world made orderly by philosopher-kings.

Read More: http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer185.html

What Is Anarchy?

I have mixed feelings about the use of labels to describe philosophical views, whether of myself or others. It is difficult to avoid doing so because our efforts to understand and communicate about the world necessarily involve the use of words and words are, as Alfred Korzybski warned us, abstractions that never equate with what they are meant to describe. His oft-quoted statement that "the map is not the territory" offers a caveat whose implications for confusion are further compounded when addressing such abstract topics as political philosophy.
One philosophical abstraction that seems to befuddle most people is "anarchy." To those challenged by complexity – such as radio talk show hosts and cable-TV "newscasters" who are convinced that all political opinions can be confined to the categories of "liberal" and "conservative" – the word anarchy evokes an unfocused fear of uncertain forces. Images of bomb-throwing thugs who smash and burn the property of others are routinely conjured up by politicians and the media to frighten people into an extension of police authority over their lives. "Disorder" and "lawless confusion" are common dictionary definitions of this word.

Read more: http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer60.html

Anarcho-Capitalism: An Annotated Bibliography

Here is the essential reading on anarcho-capitalism, which might also be called the natural order, private-property anarchy, ordered anarchy, radical capitalism, the private-law society, or society without a state. This is not intended to be a comprehensive list. Indeed, only English-language works currently in print or forthcoming are included.

Read more: http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe5.html

Fannie, Freddie, Fascist

Ludwig von Mises had a theory about interventionism. It doesn't accomplish its stated ends. Instead it distorts the market. That distortion cries out for a fix. The fix can consist in pulling back and freeing the market or taking further steps toward intervention. The State nearly always chooses the latter course, unless forced to do otherwise. The result is more distortion, leading eventually, by small steps, toward ever more nationalization and its attendant stagnation and bankruptcy.

Read more: http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/fascist-creations-fdr.html

The Real Meaning of the Fourth of July

Although I disagree with all the nutty "god" references in this, it is still a good read and makes good points.

Contrary to popular myth, the men who signed the Declaration of Independence were not great Americans. Instead, they were great Englishmen. In fact, they were as much English citizens as Americans today are American citizens. It’s easy to forget that the revolutionaries in 1776 were people who took up arms against their own government.
So how is it that these men are considered patriots? Well, the truth is that their government didn’t consider them patriots at all. Their government considered them to be bad guys – traitors, all of whom deserved to be hanged for treason.


Read more: http://www.lewrockwell.com/hornberger/hornberger149.html

The July 4th Lie

I have long been a critic of the state’s co-option of holidays to serve governmental purposes, thus negating the messages these holidays originally served. July 4th – designed to celebrate independence from the state – has been refashioned as a holiday for revelling in the state’s favorite activity, war. Television treats us to a seemingly endless supply of John Wayne films, urging us to embrace the contradictory idea that submitting ourselves to increased state power is the way to promote our liberty! It is such twisted thinking that leads those who refuse to examine the content of their minds to bleat about the soldiers who "fight for our freedom." What nonsense. Shall we next be told that Sunset Boulevard hookers are peddling virtue?

Read more: http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer178.html

George Carlin: A Four-Letter Threat to Authority

Political systems, advertising, organized religions, corporate practices, school systems, ideologies, political and social fashions of all sorts, came in for well-deserved skewering. Prior to 9/11, he did a routine on airport security which, if performed more recently, would doubtless have earned him a visit from Michael Chertoff and his thugs. And what devotee of the new religion of environmentalism – and its global-warming sect – could withstand Carlin’s treatment of this latest racket for subjecting humanity to the control of those who fashioned themselves fit to run a planet? Before the day is over, I will get out and play part of my collection of George Carlin DVDs as a reminder of the state of mind he helped all of us to develop as an antidote for the insanities perpetrated by institutionalized thinking.
The last comment I heard George Carlin make was in a video of a book-signing, in which a young man asked him if he believed that 9/11 was an "inside job." Carlin did not offer an opinion on the matter, but only replied – in words I do not recall precisely – that it was a mistake to ever accept consensus-based definitions of reality. What better words to inscribe upon a tombstone or other memorial to this remarkable man!

Read more: http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer176.html

The Shared Faith of an Unfree Society

Wilt Alston on what we can do about it.

As I read Butler Shaffer’s outstanding piece "The Messenger is the Message," which was ostensibly about Tim Russert, but was actually about so much more, several things occurred to me. First, Dr. Shaffer almost always seems to cover the concepts I’ve been considering better than I would have. Secondly, the timing of his essay was ironic given that I had recently been pondering something: would the State "work" if the population didn’t "believe" in it? The coercive apparatus of the State, fine-tuned in the U.S. since the time of Washington and Jefferson, has risen to a level of fine art as it generates a belief in its necessity while simultaneously remaining just out of view.
Given that we are both anarchists, it is no surprise that I have enjoyed Dr. Shaffer’s essays, most recently citing him in my "Anarchy, Anarchy – Wherefore Art Thou?" piece. That the solid logic that undergirds market anarchism – or whatever you want to call it – remains somehow in doubt is one of the most troubling and fascinating subjects to which I apply my available skills of analysis and modest writing talents. Why is it that almost any suggestion of even the possibility of a peaceful, anarchistic society is so often met with pseudo-intellectual derision or worse yet, insulting, pat-on-the-head "utopian dreamer" condescension? Excluding the corruption of those who enrich themselves from the State, it is met with these responses because honest people have been conditioned over years and years of public (Read: statist propaganda-laden) schooling.

Read more: http://www.lewrockwell.com/alston/alston44.html

Black Tuesday

Originally appearing in La Jornada of Mexico, on 9/19/2001. No US publication dared run it. Many thanks to our heroic translators Greg Bresiger and Richard Wall who also brought the article to our attention. By Gore Vidal

During the last few decades there has been an implacable sanitizing of the Arab world in the American media. Given that I am a loyal American, I can’t say why this has happened, but, at the same time, it isn’t normal for us to examine the reason for these things. On the other hand, we blame others for our faults.
The Bush administration, despite its disturbing ineptitude in doing its work – except the primary task, which is to exempt the rich from taxes – has been capable of breaking treaties signed by civilized nations such as the Kyoto Protocol and a missile treaty with Russia. But the Bush administration has pillaged the Social Security Trust Fund (supposedly a trust fund). It has permitted the FBI and the CIA to operate without the least controls, and with complete the indifference of Bush, leaving in their hands the control of the last global empire, like the Wizard of Oz feigning magic tricks and hoping no one would discover him.

Read more: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/vidal1.html

Change?

Stay home on election day, says Paul Hein.

For instance, what "change" has Obama proposed, which would not be likely to occur under a Clinton presidency? Can his supporters actually cite specific significant changes that he would effect when elected? Would he, for example, abolish the Federal Reserve? Would he "privatize" social security? Would he, in contrast to Clinton’s proposal to broaden Medicare, recommend its abolition? Would he do away with myriad alphabet agencies? Of course not. Neither would she.

If people want change, let them stay home on election day. The outcome will be no different, but the rulers might get the message that people no longer want to participate in the charade of voting. Perhaps – and wouldn’t this be wonderful!! – they might even get the idea that the people have become fed up with the very concept of government!

Read more: http://www.lewrockwell.com/hein/hein190.html

The Federal Reserve’s Pile of Skulls

Scott Horton interviews Lew Rockwell on war and inflation. (audio)

Read More: http://antiwar.com/radio/2008/06/15/lew-rockwell-4/

The Government Wrecks the Economy

So what does Washington do? In an act of incredible stupidity, Congress has passed an extension of unemployment benefits. The old rule remains true: if you subsidize something, you get more of it. So this will give us more unemployment. No question about that. It will thereby worsen and prolong the problem.
It takes only a second of economic logic to see why. In a recessionary environment, we need freer, not more socialized, labor markets. Business needs to be able to hire workers at lower prices. You don’t want to increase the cost of hiring; you want to reduce it, especially with unemployment rising. Instead, Congress loots the workers of this country in order to prevent people from entering the job market.

Read more: http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/govt-wrecks-economy.html

Our Enemy, the Fed

This talk was delivered at the Future of Freedom Foundation’s conference on "Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties," on June 6, 2008, in Reston, Virginia.

The U.S. central bank, called the Federal Reserve, was created in 1913. No one promoted this institution with the slogan that it would make wars more likely and guarantee that nearly half a million Americans would die in battle in foreign lands, along with millions of foreign soldiers and civilians. No one pointed out that this institution would permit Americans to fund, without taxes, the destruction of cities abroad and overthrow governments at will. No one said that the central bank would make it possible for the U.S. to be at large-scale war in one of every four years for a full century. It was never pointed out that this institution would make it possible for the U.S. government to establish a global empire that would make Imperial Rome and Britain look benign by comparison.

Read more: http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/war-and-inflation.html