February
26th 2008
The Grumpy American
Patroon

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Frosty Wooldridges’ latest:

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15 Responses to “The Grumpy American”

  1. love the girls on 26 Feb 2008 at 9:16 pm #

    Frosty Woolridge writes :”President Teddy Roosevelt predicted our fate best when he said, “The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, or preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.””

    And the sooner it becomes such a tangle the better. Because that is perhaps the only way that the unnatural nation-state can be dismantled.

  2. Weaver on 26 Feb 2008 at 10:06 pm #

    Even a libertarian ought to be wary of opposing nationalism too strongly: the managerial state grows by dividing and absorbing. Today, the nation state may well be the best defense against leviathan.

  3. love the girls on 26 Feb 2008 at 11:00 pm #

    Weaver writes :”Even a libertarian ought to be wary of opposing nationalism too strongly: the managerial state grows by dividing and absorbing.”

    I’m a Catholic, not a libertarian.

    Further, since I, and all else around me, have long since been absorbed, why should that be a concern of mine, even if was accurate.? Which it is not accurate since the nation-state by nature seeks the homogenization of its subjects.

  4. Andrew T. on 27 Feb 2008 at 3:12 am #

    love the girls (interesting name…),

    As if there’s some dichotomy between being a Catholic and a libertarian? Lew Rockwell, Jeffrey Tucker, Thomas Woods, Joseph Sobran, all of them traditional Catholics.

  5. love the girls on 27 Feb 2008 at 4:33 am #

    Mr. T writes: “Lew Rockwell, Jeffrey Tucker, Thomas Woods, Joseph Sobran, all of them traditional Catholics.”

    So what? I also know traditionalist Catholics who associate with Claremont, does that make Jaffa any less of a gnostic? Or make their love of Lincoln any less abhorrent?

    Thomas Woods, for instance, may be the associate editor of Latin Mass Magazine, but that does not change the fact that Libertarianism is finally incompatible with the Faith.

    In this regard, both Murry Rothbard and Ayn Rand were more honest with themselves in recognizing where the principles of Libertarianism lead. With Rand, despite her poorly thought out strawman arguments, also recognizing that the principles of Libertarianism are finally incompatible with the Faith.

    ____________________

    Mr. T writes : ‘As if there’s some dichotomy between being a Catholic and a libertarian?”

    An example of dichotomy:

    The Church for instance posits that private property finally exists as a common good with the owner of that property finally acting as steward. And thus St. Thomas can argue that a man can take a loaf of bread if he is starving because the man’s sustenance supersedes the right to private property. It is also why in Leviticus 19:9 the farmer is forbidden from gleaning and reaping the corners his own fields. If private property was held as the libertarians propose, subsidiarity could not exist.

    Or take Rothbard’s argument for abortion on grounds that the mother does not have a contract with her child. The argument is completely in accord with Libertarian thought, but not with the Church because the Church recognizes the natural duty of a mother to her child.

  6. Weaver on 27 Feb 2008 at 5:11 am #

    love the girls,

    my apologies I thought you were a libertarian.

    Reg. nation-state, some degree of unity is needed but a nation-state ought to realise the importance of regional and community diversity, provided the diversity arises from within rather than from without.

  7. love the girls on 27 Feb 2008 at 2:13 pm #

    Weaver writes : “Reg. nation-state, some degree of unity is needed but a nation-state ought to realise the importance of regional and community diversity, provided the diversity arises from within rather than from without.”

    `Two days wrong!’ sighed the Hatter. `I told you butter wouldn’t suit the works!’ he added looking angrily at the March Hare.

    `It was the best butter,’ the March Hare meekly replied.

    And likewise, even the best nation-state does not suite the works of men.

    “To the size of states there is a limit, as there is to other things, plants, animals, implements; for none of these retain their natural power when they are too large or too small, but they either wholly lose their nature, or are spoiled.” Politics Book7 sec 4

  8. Weaver on 27 Feb 2008 at 5:15 pm #

    Wow, you boys from Conservative Donnybrook don’t mess around I see.

    Well, going by Aristotle, I really mean a nation confederation of states rather than a nation-state:

    # Aristotle, Politics book 3, section 1280b All those on the other hand who are concerned about good government do take civic virtue and vice into their purview. Thus it is also clear that any state that is truly so called and is not a state merely in name must pay attention to virtue; for otherwise the community becomes merely an alliance, differing only in locality from the other alliances, those of allies that live apart. And the law is a covenant or, in the phrase of the sophist Lycophron,1 a guarantee of men’s just claims on one another, but it is not designed to make the citizens virtuous and just. And that this is how the matter stands is manifest. For if one were actually to bring the sites of two cities together into one, so that the city-walls of Megara and those of Corinth were contiguous, even so they would not be one city; nor would they if they enacted rights of intermarriage with each other, although intermarriage between citizens is one of the elements of community which are characteristic of states. And similarly even if certain people lived in separate places yet not so far apart as not to have intercourse, but had laws to prevent their wronging one another [20] in their interchange of products– for instance, if one man were a carpenter, another a farmer, another a shoemaker and another something else of the kind,–and the whole population numbered ten thousand, but nevertheless they had no mutual dealings in anything else except such things as exchange of commodities and military alliance, even then this would still not be a state. What then exactly is the reason for this? for clearly it is not because their intercourse is from a distance since even if they came together for intercourse of this sort (each nevertheless using his individual house as a city) and for one another’s military aid against wrongful aggressors only, as under a defensive alliance, not even then would they seem to those who consider the matter carefully to constitute a state, if they associated on the same footing when they came together as they did when they were apart. It is manifest therefore that a state is not merely the sharing of a common locality for the purpose of preventing mutual injury and exchanging goods. These are necessary preconditions of a state’s existence, yet nevertheless, even if all these conditions are present, that does not therefore make a state, but a state is a partnership of families and of clans in living well, and its object is a full and independent life. At the same time this will not be realized unless the partners do inhabit one and the same locality and practise intermarriage; this indeed is the reason why family relationships have arisen throughout the states, and brotherhoods and clubs for sacrificial rites and social recreations. But such organization is produced by the feeling of friendship, for friendship is the motive of social life; therefore, while the object of a state is the good life, these things are means to that end. And a state is the partnership of clans and villages in a full and independent life, which in our view constitutes a happy and noble life; the political fellowship must therefore be deemed to exist for the sake of noble actions, not merely for living in common. Hence those who contribute most to such fellowship have a larger part in the state than those who are their equals or superiors in freedom and birth but not their equals in civic virtue, or than those who surpass them in wealth but are surpassed by them in virtue.

  9. Weaver on 27 Feb 2008 at 5:35 pm #

    Also, modern economies of scale and military powers are far larger than in the days of Aristotle. As such, a defensive and economic alliance is almost a necessity lest a state wishes to be at the mercy of the whims of an emperor. All states cannot exist in well defended hills such as can be found in Switzerland, and even Switzerland could have been taken by Hitler had he so desired.

    The social and cultural merits of small states are vast, and they are worth balancing against the power and wealth that comes from size.

  10. Andrew T. on 27 Feb 2008 at 9:26 pm #

    ltg,

    I’m sure that Mr. Tucker, Rockwell, Woods, and Sobran have given it as much thought as have you.

    Btw Rand hated libertarianism.

    “The Church for instance posits that private property finally exists as a common good with the owner of that property finally acting as steward. And thus St. Thomas can argue that a man can take a loaf of bread if he is starving because the man’s sustenance supersedes the right to private property. It is also why in Leviticus 19:9 the farmer is forbidden from gleaning and reaping the corners his own fields. If private property was held as the libertarians propose, subsidiarity could not exist.”

    Only by the most hard-core and ultimately illogical interpretation of the property ethic would someone reach a conclusion that someone is not beholden to saving the life of someone in their immediate vicinity if it is clearly within their means. Most mainstream libertarians actually support some kind of taxation or welfare, so this is not as simple as you make it. The libertarian property ethic actually makes more logical sense if it is taken as a predominant yet relative ethic, rather than an absolute.

    “Or take Rothbard’s argument for abortion on grounds that the mother does not have a contract with her child. The argument is completely in accord with Libertarian thought, but not with the Church because the Church recognizes the natural duty of a mother to her child.”

    Yet Ron Paul’s argument about abortion is libertarian also, but leads in the exact opposite direction, and IIRC Rothbard eventually adopted it.

  11. love the girls on 28 Feb 2008 at 12:53 am #

    Mr. T writes: “I’m sure that Mr. Tucker, Rockwell, Woods, and Sobran have given it as much thought as have you.”

    I would expect far more than I have. But it is not a matter of the Will, or of effort, but a matter of erroneous principles. Erroneous principles in the service of good intentions and effort will always lead to erroneous conclusions.
    ____________________

    Mr. T writes : “Rand hated libertarianism.”

    The difference between the two is where Ayn Rand was correct, and Libertarians in error. Nevertheless, Objectivism and Libertarianism both share the same principles of “non-initiation of force” and all human relations must be voluntary. Principles which are in error, and contrary to the nature of man.

    ___________________

    Mr. T writes : “Only by the most hard-core and ultimately illogical interpretation of the property ethic would someone reach a conclusion that someone is not beholden to saving the life of someone in their immediate vicinity if it is clearly within their means.”

    But yet Rightist Libertarians hold that property is possessed without limit, and thus according to principle: it is not a duty, but an act of charity for a man to disposes himself of his property for the good of another man who is within his “immediate vicinity.

    ___________________

    Mr. T writes :”Ron Paul’s argument about abortion is libertarian also”

    Please explain how Ron Paul’s position on abortion follow libertarian principle? And also in what manner Rothbard repudiated his prior position which he lays out in his For a New Liberty : The Libertarian Manifesto.

  12. Andrew T. on 28 Feb 2008 at 1:16 am #

    ltg,

    While it’s apparent that you are familiar with some important information, the judgment that you pass on libertarianism is, I think, too simplistic and rigid.

    Read Gene Callahan’s “Solving the Abortion Conundrum” (parts I and II) to get a feel for what I am talking about. Callahan, btw, is a hard-core libertarian and not just a small-taxer like the members of the LP.

    http://www.lewrockwell.com/callahan/callahan168.html

    http://www.lewrockwell.com/callahan/callahan169.html

  13. love the girls on 28 Feb 2008 at 3:00 am #

    Dear Mr. T,

    Callahan’s position is unnatural.

  14. Andrew T. on 28 Feb 2008 at 3:44 am #

    Is it really? I think Gene Callahan did a bang-up job explaining the pro-life position by avoiding the verbal conventions that people on the other side tend to dismiss out of hand.

  15. love the girls on 28 Feb 2008 at 5:57 am #

    Mr. T writes : “Is it really?”

    It’s unnaturalness is twofold.

    First it’s disordered by not recognize the natural relation of a mother to her child, reducing the relationship to a burden that has to be born (sic) until it can be as soon as possible dispensed with.

    Compare that attitude to “attachment parenting”.

    Secondly, Callahan proposes the disordered alchemist solution of artificial wombs. Just as birth control is a disordered use of technology, so likewise are artificial wombs.

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