The Beautiful Fruit of Freedom and Why Nobody Buys.

I always feel the urge to write a piece or two around my birthday.  I don’t have an answer as to why this urge comes over me other than to say it makes for a good time to measure how far one has come along in this life and then reflect on the lessons in that time. 

So, as it is, I feel in a bit of quandary as to my role on this stage.  This feeling isn’t because I neglected to carve out a nice piece of pie for myself and my family –I have. Nor, do I feel any sense of regret as to anything I’ve done thus far –I couldn’t imagine it any differently.  I suppose those on the outside would say of me that I have a pretty nice life, whatever that means – I suppose I do.  I asked my wife the other day if I were a complex person or simple person.  She replied that I was simply complex and then asked if that made sense to me – It did. 

My quandary is one of my own making, I suppose. It wasn’t until this year that I truly found out it being so.  It is, after all, a time to look back on things and assess and process. For a good part of my life I have been a person with an eye on freedom.  Freedom’s decline since the time I was old enough to understand it has, to me, been so apparent that I had difficulty in understanding why hardly a sole didn’t see it too.  I had found a small remnant that also picked up on this trend with the same concern as I. I cannot say how I found this remnant of people other than I remember seeking them out.  When one finds a fruit tree it isn’t long before you find those eating the fruit. As any good orchard will tell, you have to bring your fruit to the market and ideas are no different.

My friends and I brought our ideas to the market.  Others in the remnant had been bringing ideas to the market for decades, my own involvement only being a dozen or so years.  At this time I believed that we had a sizable marketplace for these ideas. After all, who would not want freedom? I had an overwhelming sense that the masses of people were simply not aware of the situation.  Perhaps they were too busy to notice or just didn't fully understand how to make sense of it all.  I felt compelled to bring the news to folks that libertarianism was the answer and that statism was not. I cannot even begin to remember all the remarkable things we tried to do in bringing these ideas to the market.  We were and still are dedicated individuals who are completely serious about what we feel is our duty to civilization.  We had thought up every trick, scheme, and strategy in hopes of changing the minds of people in our own communities. We "worked" all the regular events and even the not-so-regular. We did gun shows, walked parades, rallies of all kinds, County fairs, Christmas events, conventions, protests, stood in unbearable weather for hours.  We had given so much of our own time, energy, and money to the cause with so little results for years and no new members to our group to show for. I think I can safely say that our little libertarian group was more interested in spreading the news than electing any certain people for party purposes- Although we spent our fair share of promoting these bastards as well.  I, unfortunately, once walked a parade holding an "Elect Bob Barr for President" sign, for Christ sake!  I say unfortunately because even at the time of his nomination to be Libertarian candidate for President, we knew that Bob Barr was scantly libertarian. Even when the tide seemed in our favor, we were knocked back down to Earth, as was the case with the very first Tea Party events in our area -which of course, we organized.

In the case of the Tea Party, I experienced my first great awakening, an almost spiritual event that changed me forever.  The “Tea Party” is of course now a complete joke, but at the time of its spontaneous arising we saw it as a sort of perfect storm to organize people who were in all likelihood on our side of the fence.  What a huge success the first Tea Party was in drawing people! Finally, we thought, the tide was turning and people were waking up.  However, even with all the success of the first Tea Party event, we had nothing to show for it.  The second Tea Party event, which was right around the time it was being hijacked by Neo-Conservative talking heads, was a complete disaster.  Again, what little gains we made here did not translate to any new membership or change any minds.  Today, nearly 3 years after, the membership is the same. 

So, I reflect and assess the time since these life changing affairs and it has brought me to a frightening conclusion. After all our extraordinary effort over the years, we were no closer than when we started.  We were like immigrants that landed in a new world who had a beautiful and erotic fruit to sell that nobody had a taste for. Let me put it more bluntly; the great masses of people do not want freedom.  That is to say, not here, not right now, and most likely not for a long time.  Of course, when asked if one wants freedom outright, you will scarcely find a soul to admit being against it, but their actions prove otherwise. When asked about whether a “necessary” function of government should be eliminated or which current war they approve of, you’ll have your answer.  As Thoreau once said, “there are some, who, if they were tied to a whipping-post, and could but get one hand free, would use it to ring the bells and fire the cannons, to celebrate their liberty.” Attempting to bring any rational argument to these people will also prove to be pointless. The language has changed and now it is common to hear things like freedom and democracy, for example, as interchangeable synonyms of one another. 

I know that to the reader this must sound impossible, unnatural, even insane to suggest that people do not want freedom- It came to a great surprise to me as well. The processing of this has become clearer as time passes and with how those with larger audiences had fared as well.  Perhaps it is unfair to say that Ron Paul’s message of, “people want freedom”, as he declared, can be tested by the fact that people brought us the likes of Mr. Obama or Mr. Romney or any other criminal in congress, but these are the facts.  Ron Paul’s message, like the messages of Goldwater and Taft before him, will be marginalized and ultimately forgotten except by those with their eyes on freedom. Ron Paul may go down as the greatest champion of libertarianism in all of history to this date and we need only take a walk down any street in America and ask what libertarianism, the Federal Reserve, or Austrian economics means to people to have an idea of just how successful Ron Paul’s fruit stand was in ratio to ours in our own community. 

I was part of a discussion on why more people were not influenced by the Ron Paul movement.  The consensus of that discussion was that the message failed with some because Ron Paul did not speak to the lowest common denominator of the worst in humanity – which is inherent in the vast majority of people -I agreed. People can’t stand for their own freedom because that would mean that others would be free as well.  The thought of people having their own liberties is so frightening to the moralist, unrewarding to the knave seeking privilege, and dangerous to the psychopath craving power.  Our age is so full of these people that one wonders if any progress will ever be made.  What Ron Paul did accomplish very well was making libertarians more libertarian and that accomplishment should not go unnoticed.  However, this in no way undermines my thesis that the great majority of people do not want freedom. 

This brings me to my self-imposed quandary. If knowing that people do not wish to buy the fruit that Libertarians are selling, if not giving away, why try? Perhaps we should pack up our stands and head for those lands more receptive to the taste of our fruit? This is supposed to be the part where the writer makes his argument for something different, but I have no idea how to move ahead.  One thing that is remarkably clear is that moving the message of liberty through the political means is an enormous waste of time, energy, and money.  This should at least now be the basis of where to start out with the message of libertarianism, but I doubt that will change either.  Those with more experience in the cause to spread the news have started enterprises outside of the political means with more success than within. It is surprising that libertarians cannot grasp the fact the political means does not work for them because it is contrary to their ideas.  It strikes me that each year they are dumbfounded they gain nothing in the polls and cannot understand why.  Perhaps more disturbing to me is that some libertarians believe they are gaining ground when all evidence shows otherwise. 

It is not my intention to “beat up” libertarians or diminish any type of success, perceived or otherwise, they may have felt personally.  Nor is this a defeatist piece about how nothing libertarians try will ever work.  I happen to believe that over the very long-term, our ideas are winning.  The change is so slow that it doesn’t feel as though any progress is being made.  However, we may be currently in a great valley of an overall upward trend.  Ideas are moving faster and are getting easier to find as time marches forward. Better ideas always win in the long run.  Of the some 10,000 years of human existence total, it was only 400 years ago that Earth was discovered to not be the center of the universe. It was only 150 or so years ago that people felt it proper to physically own other people. It may take another 150 for the rest to discover they are slaves too.

My intention, of course, is only to help my fellow libertarians start from a new basis on which to start selling their fruit so they can minimize their start-up costs. Believing that masses of people actually want freedom is untrue -Those who wish to start out with the premise they do, be warned.  I will leave the reader with the words of José Ortega y Gasset from his book, “The Revolt of the Masses”:

I know well that many of my readers do not think as I do. This also is most natural and confirms the theorem. For although my opinion turn out erroneous, there will always remain the fact that many of those dissentient readers have never given five minutes' thought to this complex matter. How are they going to think as I do? But by believing that they have a right to an opinion on the matter without previous effort to work one out for themselves, they prove patently that they belong to that absurd type of human being which I have called the "rebel mass." It is precisely what I mean by having one's soul obliterated, hermetically closed. Here it would be the special case of intellectual hermetism.

Evolving from Neolithic Man?

I cannot say whether this has happened to anyone else but I find that I am a frequent lighting rod for debate about the socio-political landscape that we find ourselves a part of.  I find that once one stumbles across some self evident scrap of human knowledge it becomes impossible for them to retract the former drifting at sea, if you will.  I say this because I have stumbled across axioms that I simply cannot retreat from. In fact, given any evidence to the contrary of such things, I will not retreat from.  However, this got me thinking about the opposite side to my socio-political discussion. It leaves me to wonder, do they also have the same self evident/axiomatic reasons as I? Do they drift aimlessly between whatever their misguided version of what they consider "fair" or "just" is? Do they have a different chemical in their brain? Or, is it something else?

The question of why people think the things they do is utmost important in understanding why they do the things they do. However, this question is not easily solved. As it happened, I was not the only one thinking in line with these questions. In my endless stumbling I found a piece by Ralph Adams Cram, through Nock's, "Memoirs of a Superfluous Man", that sparked another possibility in why people think the way they do.  The piece, titled "Why We Do Not Behave Like Humans" suggests, bluntly, that we hold the human race in too high regard. In short, when we visualize "man" or "humans" we conjure images of the best of what the human race had to offer and not what humans, for the most part, have been since the Neolithic age of approximately 10,000 years ago.  Furthermore, Cram puts forth that while humans have experienced great advancements since the introduction of coal, iron, and plow, we have evolved very little, if at all, physically and mentally since our Neolithic ancestors. Once one has this bit of information in hand, the necessity to answer the question becomes less relevant.  The question may be answered by simply coming to terms with the possibility that you are debating with the Neolithic man and not what you perceive as a Shakespeare, a Henry Ford, or a Gandhi. Food for thought.

Clarence Forehand was a Farmer

Clarence Forehand was a farmer. I suppose one could say he was my first co-worker, even though the farm we worked on was his. It wasn’t long before we developed a friendship in what seems now as the short time I spent working on the farm that he built with his son’s Gerald, my uncle, and Dale.

The Amish have a belief that the closer a man is to the soil, the closer he is to God. Since the fall of Adam from Eden, man has been relegated to provide his own sustenance. Certainly, ol’ Clarence, being associated with farming his entire life, fit the bill. If one had spent a few days with the man they would surely come to the same conclusions as I. Clarence was doing God’s work.

Clarence was an old man 20 years ago, at least that’s how I saw it. He would, no doubt, agree with me on that point. I’ve never known the full truth of whether it was my father’s idea or whether it was my Uncle Gerald's idea to hire me to go and help feed calves on the farm. Twice a day I would bike what must have been 5 miles to the farm to feed the calves that were weaned and born by the very dairy cows that Clarence milked twice daily. I accepted the job eagerly on the account that I could use the ATV to gather up the milking cows for Clarence in the evening and when the moment struck I could sneak in driving a tractor or some other piece of large machinery that I had no business driving.

Naturally, I passed by Clarence many times while performing my duties on the farm. It seemed like he had a joke every day he wanted to tell me. As a boy, I didn't have the heart to tell him that I didn't understand a majority of them. I would just smile and laugh and make small talk in an attempt to learn what I could from him. He was a very mild tempered man; he didn't drink, smoke, or swear. I only saw him raise his voice once when one of the sows in the milk house was kicking the door while feeding. He never gossiped, told lies, never had an absolute opinion that he let be known. He never talked politics, had any agendas, or ever had an overwhelming sense to save any souls. He was generous, he spoke fondly of others, and he never seemed to have any great desires for material wealth. Clarence had carved out a relatively comfortable living and I never heard him talk of wishing for more. He had a kind of a go-with-the-flow personality. He was, as they say, unquestionably, salt of the Earth.

When the day came for the funeral of my old friend, I sat in the halls of the church thinking about how pieces of what made Clarence Forehand so great had somehow transferred into pieces of me. The Buddhist describe death not as a continuation of the soul in an afterlife but as if one flame of the candle touching the wick of another candle. In this way, the flame from the first candle does not die, but merely gets passed on. There is just too much agnostic blood in me to believe in one form of life or another but surely the Buddhist were on to something. Nonetheless, one cannot help but feel at a funeral that the time spent with our loved ones was taken for granted. I can’t help but wish I would have had a more suitable goodbye in the flesh. Regardless of any regrets or wishes, I had paid my respect to the man who always seemed to have a contagious smile on his face and was one of the kindest persons I ever had the pleasure of meeting.

The funeral was as funerals go. The events are carefully scripted, only the dead and their family change periodically. I listened intensively to the pastors assigned to speak at Clarence’s funeral expecting to hear of the fine things he had done in his life. And, just as I predicted, those kind words were extended in the memory of dear ol’ Clarence. However, much to my shock, one of the pastors had taken the opportunity to break up the usual monotony of the script to share a few personal stories about Clarence. Yes, Clarence had certainly made an impression upon this man of God. He had rented a parcel of land at an unusually small price and had even received a calf from Clarence, which to Clarence probably seemed like the neighborly thing to do. He had remarked about Clarence’s driving and his propensity to never let people pass him on those country roads near the farmstead. It’s true, there was something you just couldn’t quite lay a finger on with Clarence –somewhere between a quiet fire and a tame hellraiser.

Along with the personal stories of Clarence, the pastor took the opportunity to do what institutionalized men of God do; that is, to take every opportunity to spread his doctrine of soul saving agenda. It’s something that Clarence didn’t have the stomach for. My greatest surprise was to hear the pastor mention that despite all the good things Clarence had done in this world –even the wonderful things he had done for the pastor himself – would not put him in the mansions that Christ had went before to prepare. The Bible, you see, is filled with all sorts of passages telling us that “good works”, as they are referred to, will not punch a ticket to heaven. The sixth verse in the Gospel of John was quickly cannibalized to support his claim. There are conditions that need to be met and it seemed Clarence had fell short in some vital areas to be a taken in as an “official” Christian –whatever that means. The pastor even remarked at all the opportunities that poor Clarence missed in order to fulfill these conditions and had simply refused to do so. I’m sure to most in the audience this seemed a pretty fearful prospect. It was put in such a way that it left some doubt as the direction of Clarence’s soul. To the official Christians in the audience this must have been standard fare. Other’s probably missed the point of the pastor altogether and had become hypnotized to the scheme that funerals seem to have. However, I took notice and it made me smile and proud, as strange as that sounds.

It seemed that the pastor didn’t know Clarence after all. It seemed I didn’t know Clarence at all either! To me, Clarence had taken Christ’s Sermon on the Mount and lived it to the letter. I had always assumed he was the God fearing church going regular that the pastor had always wanted him to be. It’s ironic that in my mind he should have been everything the pastor was looking for. It was official for Clarence here on Earth, his judgment done. I was thinking how great it would be to know what Clarence would have said after the pastor’s speech about him. He probably would have laughed to himself and smiled, as I did. After all, he was one flame of the candle passing to a wick of another. In my eyes, the world needs more Clarence Forehands –Free of conditions and agendas while exhibiting the best characteristics of what it means to be human. No, Clarence Forehand was more than just a farmer, and if there is a God he would have seen that all the conditions had been met.

Origins Of the State and Why It Matters

Introduction

Is the State an institution created by society to do good? Is the State needed to provide social goods that can in no ordinary sense be provided in any other manner? Was the State created by the weak to protect it from the strong? Just how was the State created? For the first 28 years of my life it never occurred to me to even ask the questions. I certainly was never educated through my State ran schools nor did I ever hear of anyone else talking about such things or why it even mattered. My attempt here is to enlighten others on some things I’ve discovered. My brief attempt to expose the State for what it is does not break any new ground. This is my attempt to write as if I were explaining what I know now to a person who was ignorant of the State, particularly, about its origins.

Theories of the Origin of the State

There have been many theories as to the origin of the State. Aristotle believed the State was a natural “thing” and required no explanation or examination because he, like many philosophers, could not conceive of it not existing. Still others believed that the State was created from divinity; that God created man and then man, in his image, created the State –known as the divine right of Kings. Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau each believed that the State originated by some form or another from the “social contract”. Marx believed the State was solely a creation of the capitalist class and only the dictator of the “proletariat” could end its exploitation. On the other hand, Libertarians such as Robert Noziak claimed the State was created from an “invisible hand” –popularly mocked as the Immaculate Conception Theory. Modern theories have tried explaining the creation of the State as a result of factors of environment, or created from the “genius” of men, or was a “historical accident”, even theories suggesting it arrives from the family. Still, today, it is common to hear some form of these theoretical and usually mystical beliefs about the origin of State. The question is never seriously considered or studied today – political “science” only starts with the assumption that the State or government exists and never delves into such things as to where it generates its power or why it would matter.

It wasn’t until the sociologists began actually studying early States that the origins of the State began to be understood in less philosophical ways and more from how they actually form in reality. From the sociological framework the Genesis of the State is nearly unanimous in principle and only differing in the specifics. However, what is clear is that the State is born from aggression, i.e., force, threats, coercion, theft, war, etc. Solely, at its origin, it arrives from conquest and confiscation. The conquest theories were mainly attributed to the work of Ludwig Gumplowicz, Franz Oppenheimer, and Gustav Ratzenhofer.

The Origin of the State

It is the sociologists “conquest” theory that truly explains the core of State and its origins. What is clear is that the State was not a creation of the weak over the strong. On the contrary, it was the systematic predation over a given territory by the ruling caste. It has only come about through conquest or confiscation and, thus, not by any “social contract”. Oppenheimer made the clear distinction between State and Society. “The State, completely in its genesis, essentially and almost completely during the first states of its existence, is a social institution, forced by a victorious group of men on a defeated group, with the sole purpose of regulating the dominion of the victorious group over the vanquished, and securing itself against revolt from within and attacks from abroad”.[i]

Before the State there was society and since every society is made of individuals, each of us must face the fact that in order to improve our lot in life we act to do so. It follows, then, that we must choose to either transform our labor through “productive” means or we may choose to steal from those doing the producing, i.e., use the political means.

In particular, it was Franz Oppenheimer who identified the State as the institution of the political means. And, although he emphasized that the State by his definition was merely an institution that is the “summation of privileges and dominating positions which are brought into being by extra economic power.”[ii] It goes without much discussion that the only way this was possible was through force. He personally challenged the scientific world to invalidate his thesis. For a time, it was believed that the Mayan civilization posed a threat to his conclusions. It was believed by the archeological community that Mayans were the exception to the rule. However, the Oppenheimer thesis was fully vindicated with the discovery of the Bonampak murals, showing the early Maya at war and reveling in the torture of war captives. Then, excavations around Tikal revealed large earthworks partly surrounding that Classic Maya city, pointing clearly to a military rivalry with the neighboring city of Uaxactun.[iii] At present, no other challenges have been brought forward.

In brief, evolution of the State may be summed up as the following: It hit upon the State that instead of killing the vanquished it would serve its needs best by selling the idea of security; it may take charge of the markets, roadways, waterways, to gain revenue. It has evolved from marauding tribesmen to sovereign kings to dictators and democracies of all forms. However, whatever form it takes or whatever power it was granted by society since matters not –the characteristic stays the same.

The State is not society. The State is any institution that holds a coercive monopoly over the use of force in a given territory. Society, on the other hand, is made of those individuals whom the State feeds off of – those who have no power or will to rob, murder, kidnap, and cage other individuals. In turn, the forces of State and social power, like yen and yang, emerge, strengthen, and weaken in relation to one another. A rise in State power is a weakening of social power and vice versa. Perhaps Albert Jay Nock said it best when remarking of the State, “It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can there be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.”.

Why it Matters

If the State is not a social benefactor and if it only arrives over a vanquished populace to continually coerce and exploit them, then it is clear that it does not add to society’s benefit – it only seeks to sap its production, thus, preying upon its production. Today it is not only commonplace for people to believe in the necessity of the State but of how it can provide society with “necessary” services. It never occurs to those with these beliefs that those services are at the expense of the vanquished, whomever they may be. Everything the State has “given” society was given by coercing someone of their property to give to whichever favored class it chooses.

The belief in the power of the State has greatly increased with the rise of democracy as it seems to give people the sense they have a choice in the affairs of the State. It’s prestige has been elevated to a point where people believe that whatever the State declares as wrong is wrong because the State says so and that whatever the State declares right is right because the State says it is right.

The origin matters because, unlike the famous claims of the philosophers and theorist, the weak did not create the State to protect it from the strong. All historical evidence supports the opposite.

---

[i] Franz Oppenheimer, The State (New York: Vanguard Press, 1926) pp. 15.

[ii] It should be noted that this may resemble Marx’s theory of the State. The resemblance is in the wording and not the ideas. The State itself is the institution of exploitation, period.

[iii] Carniero, R.L. 2006. A theory of the origin of the state. Reprinted in L. Grinin, D. Bondarenko, N. Kradin, and A. Korotayev (editors), The Early State, Its Alternatives and Analogues: 55-70. Volgograd, Russia, Uchitel Publishing House.