White Genocide

A few days ago, a professor at Drexel University offered: “All I want for Christmas is white genocide.”

The university is apparently taking the situation very seriously.

There are several thoughts that come to mind, easy thoughts.  If the professor wrote this about Black genocide or Mexican genocide or Jew genocide would the university take it seriously or would the professor already be fired? 

Leave it to Robby Soave, an associate editor at Reason.com, to get this all wrong.

It sounds like the professor, George Ciccariello-Maher, was probably joking.

Maybe.  How does Robby know?  Is genocide something to joke about?  Has the professor come out and said that this tweet was a joke?  What about his past comments along similar lines?

I think it's probably fair to say there's a double standard here: an alt-righter tweeting about black genocide would be more likely to face a Twitter ban.

In a heartbeat.

But then again, the alt-right person might not be joking.

But he might.  How does Twitter know? 

And the professor might not be joking.  How does the esteemed Mr. Robby have any idea one way or the other?  Why give the benefit of the doubt to the white mass-murderer and not the Jew mass murderer?

In any case, I don't really want people punished for saying stupid things on Twitter, though the social network is well within its rights to take whatever action it deems necessary.

It isn’t up to you, Bob.  And it isn’t only up to Twitter.  The university is free to take whatever action it chooses, within the bounds of its policies and contractual terms with the professor.

Drexel should not discourage a professor from expressing his mind on Twitter—if faculty members must worry that any stray thought can land them in hot water, then the university is failing to cultivate an environment of maximally free speech.

This sounds like standard left-libertarian claptrap.  Who says the university is required to hold a policy of “maximally free speech”?  Private property and all that.

Finally, to end with a bang, the witty editor at Reason.com offers:

University administrators everywhere should resolve to engage in fewer acts of petty censorship in 2017.

Is a comment about “genocide” “petty”?  would it be petty if it was “black genocide”?

As for everyone else:

May your days be merry, and bright

And may all your genocides be white

Good for you, Robby, exercising your free speech and all in a politically very safe manner.  You run no risk with this one.  I also have a similar thought for Christmas: May you be the first in line.

Conclusion

Such so-called libertarians prove themselves time and time again that they should not be taken seriously; due to such so-called libertarians, libertarian philosophy will never be taken seriously by a meaningful portion of the population. 

Robby cannot get private property right.  Robby also believes that just because someone “can” do something under the NAP, that he “should” or “must” do something under the NAP.  No society will survive such licentiousness.  “Libertarianism” will never be the result.

Then again, it is obvious by now that achieving a libertarian society is not the end game of the sponsors of Reason.com.

Timeline to War Update

Once again, an update to my labor of love….

The period through 1938 is here; the period beginning 1939 is here.

This update includes relevant dates from the book “A Peace to End All Peace,” by David Fromkin; “The Good War that Wasn’t,” by Ted Grimsrud; “The Lost History of 1914,” Jack Beatty.  The new items are in red. 

Prelude to the Great War: France

It is well known, the bullet that killed crown prince Franz Ferdinand of Austria.  There is a second, equally important bullet that drove – or in this case, kept clear – Europe’s drive toward suicidal war.

The Lost History of 1914: How the Great War Was Not Inevitable, by Jack Beatty.

The bullet was fired by Henriette Caillaux, killing Gaston Calmette, the editor of Le Figaro.  She believed he was about to expose secrets about her marriage.  Apparently her husband was a man about town…and these secrets might have been equally embarrassing to her.

Except for the bark of her Browning, Henriette’s husband Joseph Caillaux would have been France’s premier in July 1914.

Caillaux was known for easing tensions in Europe, and certainly with Germany.  He was known for not favoring France’s military alliance with Russia.  He was not from Alsace-Lorraine, and therefore did not feel the same pull toward restoring these lands, lost to Germany some forty years earlier.

The shot rang out on March 16, 1914, just weeks before the election; the trial ended just days before the beginning of the war.  In the months before the shot, Caillaux was attacked regularly – over 110 articles, cartoon, and the like – on the pages of Le Figaro.  In the elite circles of France, the attacks were a success; with the working class, not so much.  He was considered a thief for abusing his power and finance minister and a traitor for having the audacity to pursue secret negotiations with Germany during an earlier crisis regarding Morocco.

The crisis was no small affair, and no isolated incident.  The Europeans were in the midst of carving up much of Africa and the Middle East.  The treatment of the native populations was brutal; they died by the tens of millions.  Voice to such atrocities was given by a Moroccan chief, prior to attacking a French garrison:

Know that, since your arrival in the Sahara, you have badly treated weak Muslims….You have made our country suffer intense harm.

This message was delivered before 15,000 Muslim men attacked a garrison of 75 French men…oh, armed with two 80 mm cannon.  Wave after wave, the Muslims attacked.  The slaughter was immense.  There was no report of French loss of life.

Germany was late to the party, nevertheless by this time rather engaged; meanwhile, the French violated or ignored previous treaties that were to have recognized German claims to the African coast.  Into this mess stepped Caillaux, who found a way to compromise in a manner satisfactory to all; a manner that allowed all to save face.

He would have been premier in July 1914.

Conclusion

Henriette was found not guilty; a crime of passion, and a bullet fired not meant to kill.

Before the trial, Raymond Poincaré conceded that if the verdict was “not guilty,” he would have no choice but to name Caillaux the premier.  However, by the time the trial ended and the verdict reached, Europe was on the brink of war.  It would not do to have a premier who desired peace with Germany and no military alliance with Russia.

Democracy be Damned

With an acknowledgement to Hans Hoppe and his Democracy: The God That Failed, I offer an examination of similar sentiments from Bertrand de Jouvenel’s On Power: The Natural History of its Growth.

In my initial post on this book by de Jouvenel, I skipped ahead – choosing to comment on the usefulness to Power of the phrase “all men are created equal.”  With this post, I will begin at the beginning.

This condemnation of our current state of governance begins in the Foreword, written by Dr. Dennis Wilson Brogan:

It was an illusion of the framers of the early American constitutions that they could set up “a government of laws and not of men.” 

Somewhere I recall Rothbard writing something to the effect: if utilizing a written constitution as a check on government failed in the most propitious conditions, what’s the point?  Where can it then be expected to succeed?

The issue is the not the mechanics of legislating, but instead the object of law; how is the law structured and enforced to minimize abuse by the ruler?  What is under the ruler’s authority?

All governments are governments of men though the better of them have a high admixture of law too – that is, of effective limitations on the free action of the rulers.

The most thorough example of such law of which I am aware is the law as understood and enforced during much of the Germanic Middle Ages.  The law was custom and culture; the law was only law if it was both old and good.  The king had no role in legislating law; his only role was to enforce the law as understood by those who voluntarily supported (and could also remove this support) him as king.

“Law” was not delegated to some third party, experts acting supposedly on behalf of the rest of us.  Skipping ahead to de Jouvenel:

Now Power in medieval times was very different: it was tied down, not only in theory but in practice, by the Lex Terrae (the customs of the country), which was thought of as a thing immutable.  And when the English Barons uttered their Nolumus leges Angliae mutari [“We object to changes in the laws of England”] they were only giving vent to the general feeling of the time.

The consecrated king of the Middle Ages was a Power as tied down and as little arbitrary as we can conceive.  He was simultaneously constrained by standing human law, i.e., custom, and by the Divine Law, and could hardly trust his own reading of his duty about anything.

Yves de Chartres, for instance, wrote in these terms to Henry I of England after his accession: “Never forget it, Prince: you are the servant of the servants of God and not their master; you are the protector and not the owner of your people.”

This leash on power saw its final fraying beginning with the Reformation and continuing with the ideas of the Enlightenment achieving prominence.

Returning to the Foreword:

Politics are about power; we cannot evade that truth or its consequences.  We dream of a better world but it is in Utopia – that is, nowhere. 

The check on power is not to be found in a written constitution or in democratic elections.  Such mechanisms support the illusion that the people are in control, the people have the power.  It is Utopia.  It also pacifies the people; no, more accurately, it gives the people feelings of being accomplices.

It is in the popularity of the pursuit of Utopia that the aggrandizers of state power find their most effective ally.

And this is why the enemy is always the state.  Those who dream of making the state more efficient, of bending the state to serve the good of the people, of believing that their vote matters – such are playing directly into the hands of state power; such are power’s most effective ally.

The sacrifices demanded of the people today, under the supposedly most free form of government devised, were never seen under the despots that came before: what was asked of the French people under the Republic made the days under even Louis XIV seem idyllic.  The weight of government for Americans – who supposedly gained their freedom over 200 years ago – would be unrecognizable to the farmer in South Carolina in 1775; “why did we bother fighting,” he would wonder.

If a religion or a general cause not identified with the nation-state asked for these sacrifices, we should be far more critical than we are.

God thought ten percent was the upper limit.  God knew that the sons would be called to war and the daughters to service.  To paraphrase RJ Rushdoony, we tithe our children to the state – handing over their most precious asset, their ability to think and reason, to be formed in accord with the state’s wishes.  We sacrifice to the state infinitely more than we offer to any other individual or institution; to offer the same to our church or our neighbors would seem preposterous – but to offer the same to the state seems…normal.

Further, “we the people” has only afforded those in control of Power to exercise it more freely, with less concern for revolution – after all, “we the people” would only be revolting against…ourselves.  Moving on to the words of de Jouvenel, here citing Benjamin Constant:

…once let them entrust [power] to mandatories chosen by themselves, and there are no limits to what they will think its desirable extension.

As de Jouvenel offers: “No absolute monarch ever had at his disposal a police force comparable to those of modern democracies.”

Both the Jesuits and Hobbes come in for criticism from de Jouvenel: the Jesuits for offering that it is the community which establishes Power; Hobbes…well, for being Hobbes.  Citing Hobbes:

By this establishment of the Republic, each individual is the author of whatever the sovereign does: consequently, anyone who claims that the sovereign is wronging him is objecting to acts of which he himself is the author, and has only himself to accuse.

Conclusion

Democracy is the ultimate usurper; returning to the Foreword:

…a majority can do no wrong, if it is our majority; that is, if we are part of it, it cannot do anything disastrously silly.  It can and does.

A most important task for libertarians is to discredit the state – even (and especially) a state where “we the people” are supposedly in charge. 

In this regard, the success of both Brexit and Trump are valuable to the libertarian cause. 

Stephen F. Cohen Drops the Mic

One of my regular listening habits is the weekly discussion of Professor Stephen F. Cohen, hosted by John Batchelor.  The interview from this week, I will suggest, offers the most powerful and direct comments offered by Cohen on what he has long described as “the new Cold War.”  Several of his comments demonstrate his contempt for the mainstream media and for the US War Party.

I have listened to this interview twice – I have never done this before.  I have listened to several of Cohen’s comments more than twice.  I offer below several of these comments – paraphrased, not direct transcripts.  I suggest that the entire interview is worthy of a listen

------------------------------------------

Let me be blunt: people like Senators McCain and Graham, the New York Times and Washington Post would prefer to fight Russia as opposed to international terrorism.  What they say about Russia verges on pornography, not analysis.

These people lack humanity.  Let me say as flatly as I can: people like McCain, these senators, the editors of the New York Times and the Washington Post have become the enemies of American national security; considering the actual existential dangers to the United States – not the fictitious ones – Vladimir Putin is potentially the most important national security partner the United States can have.  The road to American national security runs through Russia.  For these people to block that road – and they are blocking it now with vigor, because they are afraid Trump may go down that road – this is undermining our national security.

There is no CIA.  There are many factions in the CIA, each with its own agenda.

This [US] congress today is more uncritical, more easily manipulated, more docile, more politically cowardly than any American congress I have ever seen.

Regarding charging Putin with war crimes for Aleppo: many people would point out that with what the Americans are doing in Mosul to free it from the Islamic State, the civilian casualties are every bit as significant as what is going on in Aleppo.

Obama said he would isolate Putin; today it is Obama that is isolated.  Putin is perceived in China, Europe, Latin America, not as a demon but as a man who stood up to the American hegemon – the America that tried to dictate not only power in the world but what people believed.