Libertarianism on Ethics and Order

Libertarianism on Ethics and Order

Thomas Allen

The following discusses libertarian ethics and the libertarian view of order verse liberty.

Libertarian Ethics
The following is an example of ethics in a libertarian society. It is also the ethics of the Puritan Yankee.

A city government decides to pursue the libertarian goal of abolishing itself. As part of this program, it privatizes its water and sewer system and its streets. Thus, it sells its waters and sewer system to A Company. Also, A Company buys the city streets. Finally, the city government abolishes itself.

Moreover, the city was built over a geological formation that requires wells to be drilled thousands of feet deep to produce water.

Now, having a monopoly over water and transportation, A Company raises water rates a hundredfold, which is the price just below the cost of drilling a well. (Some libertarians argue that monopolies are impossible.) If any customer fails to pay his water bill, the company immediately cuts off his water. Next, the company prevents any water from being transported over its streets. It also charges the residents an exorbitant fee for using its streets.

Without water, the residents are forced to sell at a great loss — if they can find any buyers, which is doubtful. Magnanimously, the company offers to buy their property at 0.01 percent of its last tax evaluation. If this offer is rejected, the resident has to either abandon his property or let the company take it for nonpayment of his water bill and street usage.

After the residents have been forced to abandon their property or sell it to A Company at a tremendous loss, A Company owns the city. Now, it can do with the city whatever it pleases to do.

Puritan Yankees would compliment the managers of A Company as shrewd businessmen. Because these shenanigans were by a private company, libertarians would defend the company’s actions. They would argue that the residents should have bought insurance to protect themselves from such an event. However, what insurance company would insure such an unknown, unpredictable event — at least at an affordable price? Libertarians would argue that the residents should have sold before A company established its monopoly, although some libertarians deny the possibility of monopolies. In short, the typical libertarian would blame the residents for their predicament and not the company.

As an alternative to insurance, the residents could hire a private security firm to protect their interest and to obtain water for their use and access to the streets. In retaliation, A Company hires a security firm to maintain its monopoly. Soon, the two security firms are warring, and the might of arms solves the disagreement.

Such are the ethics of the typical libertarian. They are almost indistinguishable from the ethics of the Puritan Yankee. A major difference between the two is that the Puritan Yankee does not hesitate to use the government to gain an advantage, while the libertarian loathes using the government.

Order and Liberty
Libertarianism, especially the anarcho-capitalist wing, is built on the false foundation of the notion that liberty and order are antagonistic principles. That is, liberty and order limit each other. As one increases, the other decreases. Locke, Blackstone, Hobbes, and Rousseau, among many others, espouse this notion. This notion led to the French Revolution.

Opposing this notion that liberty and order are antagonistic principles is the notion of the divine sanction of government. Under this notion, an increase in order leads to an increase in liberty. True liberty can only exist within the bounds of divine law. A just government maintains these bounds. (Despotic governments cause disorder and, by that, reduce liberty. Moreover, order may require a government, but it abhors a state because a state leads to disorder.) This is the notion that lead to the American Revolution.

Adherents of the antagonistic principle believe that natural liberty is a state of perfect freedom where a person acts as he thinks fit, without any restraint or control, i.e., the power to act as each man wills and pleases. Thus, public order reduces private liberty.

On the other hand, adherents of the divine sanction notion believe that natural liberty is a state where a person acts as he thinks fit within the bounds of divine law, i.e., the power to act as God wills. Thus, public order is necessary for private liberty.

Under the antagonistic principle, civil society arises from a surrender of individual rights; therefore, the right, power, or authority of society is derived from a transfer of individual rights. The law and government restrain the liberty of human will.

Under the divine sanction notion, civil society arises from a right originally possessed by all, i.e., from a solemn duty originally imposed upon all by God; therefore, the right, power, or authority of society is not derived from a transfer of individual rights; thus, neither the right to life nor liberty is transferred to society. The law and government restrain the tyranny of human will.

According to the antagonistic principle, freedom can be extracted and exist apart from the social whole. According to the divine sanction notion, freedom is inseparable from the social whole: Freedom cannot be separated from right reasoning.

Advocates of the antagonistic principle believe, or at least act as though they believe, that man is innately good, which is contrary to all history. Advocates of the divine sanction notion believe that man is naturally sinful, which history and personal experience easily support.

Thus, libertarianism rests on the false premise that humans are naturally good. Unbridled capitalism, as long as governmental collaboration is avoided, can sufficiently regulate, control, and suppress any sinful tendencies — so, libertarians believe. For the most part, a free-market economy may adequately regulate economic order and liberty. However, it fails as a regulator of political and social order and liberty.

Copyright © 2020 by Thomas Coley Allen.

More political articles.

Questions on Israel Identity

Questions on Israel Identity

Thomas Allen

The following looks at the responses of an Israel Identity advocate to three questions. He identifies the United States as Ephraim (presumably, he believes that most Americans are descendants of Ephraim or at least the Israelite tribe named after him). However, he admits that he is not conducting a class. (Israel Identity, also called British-Israelism, Christian Identity, and Kingdom Identity, claims that the lost tribes of Israel became the Germanic and Celtic tribes that invaded Europe and settled in Western Europe.)

The questions and responses on Israel Identity are in the appendix below. Basically, his answers claim that genetics are irrelevant.

The first question notes that Ephraim and Manasseh had an Egyptian mother, and, therefore, they were not pure Israelites. He responds that the mother’s race and ethnicity, i.e., her genetics, are irrelevant. He uses Ruth, David’s great-grandmother, as an example. As do most people, he claims that Ruth was a Moabite. She was not; she was an Israelite (see “The Bible, Segregation, and Miscegenation” by Thomas Allen).

Moreover, according to him, a person can become an Israelite by adoption. Thus, a Negro, Turanian, or Melanochroi can become an Israelite, who were originally Aryan (White), merely by adoption. Accordingly, a Turanian Korean can become an Aryan Israelite by adoption and, presumably, can intermarry with the Aryans without violating God’s law prohibiting miscegenation — how absurd (see “The Bible, Segregation, and Miscegenation” and “One Thing Your Pastor Will Not Tell You”). (Does this Israel Identity person believe that God forbids miscegenation?)

Following his reasoning, if the Ephraimites had migrated to Ethiopia instead of Europe and settled among the Melanochroic Gallas where they are absorbed into the Gallas or the Gallas are absorbed into them through interracial marriage, then, according to this Israel Identity person, the offspring of the male Ephraimites are also Ephraimites because the mother’s genetics do not matter. Furthermore, the offspring of these Galla-Ephraimite-mixed males would also be Ephraimites, and likewise all the following generations. Additionally, the Ephraimites could have adopted all the Galla males, and, thereby, making all the Gallas Ephraimites. After many generations when all the Ephraimite chromosomes, except perhaps the male Y chromosome, have been bred out of this gene pool, these people would still be true Ephraimites. Consequently, what was once an Aryan people is now a Melanochroic people. (Is it possible that the Ephraimites in the United States are not from Europe but are from Ethiopia and Somalia?)

The second question inquires about distinguishing Israelites from non-Israelites. Since he cannot make such a distinction, he gives a hazy answer. However, he seems sure that he is an Israelite of the tribe of Ephraim. How does he know for sure? According to him, only God can tell an Israelite from a non-Israelite. However, this does not help the Israel Identity people. They place great importance, not only on distinguishing between an Israelite and a non-Israelite, but they also place great importance on identifying the tribes of the Israelite. (I have yet found an Israelite Identity person who can distinguish a real Israelite from a mixed Israelite from a non-Israelite White based solely on physical features.)

The third question asks about what happened to the people of the land to which the Israelites migrated. He answers that the Israelites absorbed them and, by that, amalgamated the two people into one people. (This answer applies to the European migration and not to the Palestinian migration. When the Israelites entered Palestine, the Promised Land, they either killed or expelled most of the inhabitants.) Thus, that any pure Israelite exists today is highly unlikely. So, why this concern about identifying the Israelites, even down to the tribe, when they may no longer exist?

To summarize his responses, genetics do not matter. Yet, identifying Israelites, even down to the tribe, is of great importance, even if today’s Israelites have few if any genetic connection with the Israelites that entered the Promised Land. Accordingly, Israelites can be of any race — at least that is what this Israel Identity person implies.

Appendix
Questions
First, Ephraim and Manasseh were not pure Israelites because their mother was an Egyptian.

Second, you are telling me that if we lined up a thousand Whites who are the same size, age, dress, etc., and you know nothing about them except what you see, you can tell me which ones are descended from which tribe of Israel and which ones are not Israelites.

Third, what happened to all the White people who inhabited Europe before the Israelites arrived?

Response
First, the male line is always what determines tribe. A Moabite was King David's great grandmother but no one would accuse him of not being a fully Jewish Israelite. And Jesus is considered a Jew even though His literal male line is pure Divinity, not Jewish. He was adopted by a Jewish father, Joseph. (His mother was a Levite, not a Jew.) Not only were Ephraim & Manasseh fathered by Joseph but were also adopted directly by Jacob, doubling the lineage.

Second, I am not saying that at all but nations have characteristics that define them as a people otherwise there wouldn't be nations. We're seeing the polarization now between the true Americans (both physical and spiritual) and the pagan parasites. That separation will continue until the parasites are purged by God Himself.

Third, the same thing that happened to people who inhabited the areas where the original tribes took over. And no nation is ever completely homogeneous, least of all Ephraim. In fact, one of Ephraim's identifying hallmarks is all the foreigners he invites in that sap his strength and overwhelm him. No nation ever did that before the American "melting pot".

Study Ephraim and ask Jesus to teach. There is lots of material out there. I am just pointing at a line of study, not conducting the class.

Copyright © 2020 by Thomas Coley Allen.

For more religious articles.

Basic Principles of the Modern Left

 Basic Principles of the Modern Left

Thomas Allen

In “The Modern Left Is Not Marxist, It’s Worse,” Chronicles, November 2020 (page 19), Paul Gottfried identifies four basic principles or practices of the modern left. The modern left rose after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

(1) Leftists are globalists or universalists. They find Western Christian White society revolting and seek its demise. Unlike the right that values particularity and the sanctity of local and natural traditions, the left rejects particularity and traditions.

(2) Leftists worship equality and endeavor to obliterate all human distinctions and differences. Nothing is more valuable than equality. Consequently, the ideal human is a unisexual (asexual, hermaphroditic, sexually fluid — any sex except male or female), motley, mongrel being — and all these humans have the same intelligence, beauty, talents, skills, and standard of living.  Thus, the ideal society consists of indistinguishable beings. (Since most rightists are racial nihilists, they agree with the leftist desire to create motley, mongrel humans, but they disagree on the sexual part.)

(3) Since “historically grounded natural rights do not advance equality or ‘human dignity,’” leftists promote the expansion of “human rights.” Human rights call for the extinction of social and historical distinctions. They want to replace “long established customs and conventions” with whatever “journalists and academics deem conducive to greater equality.”

(One equality that modern leftists shun is equality before the law, which is an equality that rightists accept. For leftists, anyone who promotes equality and other leftist agendas can violate all sorts of laws with immunity. Examples of lawbreaking leftists escaping punishment are the Clintons and members of Black Lives Matter or Antifa.)

(4) Leftists believe that humans are perfectly malleable. For example, any male  can become a female including replacing his male Y chromosome with a female X chromosome.  Likewise, any female can become a male including replacing one of her female X chromosomes with a male Y chromosome. Judges and other governmental officials should defend the right of a person to become any of the more than 100 current sexes, and everyone should accept such sex, even if it changes daily, and find it admirable and heroic. Consequently, leftists spurn the notion of the right that “human identities are rooted in tradition and nature.” Thus, the left believes that genetics do not influence a person’s nature (many rightists also hold this belief).

Therefore, the goal of modern leftists is to destroy sexual identity, the White race and other races (racial nihilism) if they are consistent, Western civilization, and Christianity — the last two because they are products of the White, Aryan, race. All distinction and differences are to be sacrificed on the altar of equality.

Gottfried notes that the old left of the Soviet-Union days focused on economic equality (socialism, communism, welfarism) and gave little attention to social equality except for the civil rights movement (which they orchestrated). The modern left focuses more on social equality. Nevertheless, modern leftists do not ignore economic equality. However, they prefer welfarism with a highly progressive income tax, expanded welfare programs, and other wealth redistribution programs. Instead of governmental ownership of businesses, industries, and farms as advocated by the old left, the modern left advocates a highly regulated economy. Thus, they prefer the fascist model of socialism where governmental central planning is through governmental control of privately owned businesses, industries, and farms.

Also, Gottfried observes that some of the biggest supporters and pushers of modern leftism are major multinational corporations. Could it be that these corporations promote the leftist agenda because it leads to a homogenous market? After all, the leftist lust for equality destroys diversity. The destruction of diversity would result in a homogenous market, and a homogenous market would reduce the cost of production and marketing because everyone would want the same things.

Whereas old leftists emphasized economic equality, modern leftists emphasize social equality. Thus, modern leftists advocate racial nihilism and the new morality with no sexual differences — that is, racial and sexual amalgamation. Moreover, they seek to annihilate the White race, Christianity, and Western civilization. They strive to nullify human nature and to remake mankind to be contrary to his natural genetic makeup. Individuals, races, and the sexes are naturally unequal and can never be made equal. Naturally low-quality people can never be raised to the level of naturally high-quality people. However, high-quality people can be suppressed. Consequently, leftists need to institute a totalitarian government to achieve equality by suppressing everything superior — except the ruling elite. Ironically and hypocritically, although they preach equality, leftists believe that they are superior to rightists and other deplorables — yet, most leftists may deny their superiority.

Copyright © 2020 by Thomas Coley Allen.

More political articles.

Biden the Unifier

Biden the Unifier

Thomas Allen

Biden pledged to be a unifier as President. So far, he is not acting as a unifier. He and his disciples and supporters, the Bidenites, hurl extremely vehement, vicious, venomous, vindictive diatribes, tirades, condemnations, and revilings at half the population of the country — the deplorables. Moreover, the Bidenites want to censor the deplorables and to deny them access to the internet, the right to travel, and even their jobs and access to their bank accounts. With Biden’s approval and support, the Bidenites urge the dehumanizing and making the deplorables nonpersons. They want to treat the deplorables worst than the Nazis treated the Jews.

Biden’s first step as a unifier is condemning Senators who supported Trump in objecting to the stolen election as Nazis. Then he proceeds to declare war on the deplorables by declaring them to be terrorists. How long will it be before he declares martial law and begins rounding up deplorables and imprisoning them indefinitely if not just murder them outright?

(What Biden means when he says that is a unifier is that he will eliminate everyone who disagrees with the globalist plan to destroy Western Civilization, to genocide the White race, and to turn America into another China. Then everyone will think alike, act alike, and be alike — so much for diversity being our strength.)

Also, Biden says that our darkest days are ahead of us. Will he fulfill his prophecy? So far, he has been striving to fulfill it with his rhetoric and lack thereof — that is, so far, all that he has done has been to instill fear and strife and to stifle hope and reconciliation. If Biden keeps half his promises, then the half of the population who love liberty, the deplorables, will face dark days. However, those who love oppression, i.e., his disciples and supporters, will have great joy as their dreams come true.

Trump is merely the figurehead who represents the deplorables, which is why Biden and the Bidenites are viciously attacking him. As much as Biden and the Bidenites hate Trump, they utterly disdain and absolutely loathe the deplorables. Biden’s and the Bidenites’ treatment of Trump shows what they want to do to the deplorables.

If Biden really wanted to unify the country, he would seek reconciliation with Trump and the deplorables. Instead, Biden the unifier and his disciples and supporters seek unification by destroying Trump and annihilating the deplorables.

All indications are that Biden will continue Obama’s work for the globalists. Thus, we will witness further destruction of America and Western Civilization and the genocide of the White race. If Biden is successful, by 2024, America will become like China. It will become a two-class country with a few elite living in luxury and feeding their lust for power at the top and the rest, including nearly all of the Bidenites, living like proletarians and peasants on the bottom — and almost no one in between.

The election: All the proof that a rational person with a functioning brain cell needs to know that the Democrats cheated and stole the election is their attitude toward Trump’s allegations of voter fraud. If Trump’s allegations were false, the Democrats would be in the forefront of demanding a thorough, open, transparent, impartial investigation into voter fraud to prove that Trump is wrong and, thus, embarrassing him. Instead, they object to and block any investigation.

The Capitol Building riot: In discovering the real culprits behind the Capitol Building riot, one needs to use the cui bono principle, for whose benefits. Trump and his supporters did not benefit. The riot greatly harmed them and seriously damaged their cause. However, the riot immensely advances the cause of the Democrats, globalists, and Chinese by devastating Trump and his supporters. Besides, Democrats are notorious for accusing Republicans of crimes of which the Democrats are guilty.

Copyright © 2021 by Thomas Coley Allen.

More political articles.

Indirect Taxes and Direct Taxes

Indirect Taxes and Direct Taxes

Thomas Allen

In Out of Step: The Autobiography of an Individualist (New York: The Devin-Adair Company, 1962), Frank Chodorov gives a good comparison of indirect taxation with direct taxation, pages 219–227. A summary of that comparison follows.

Taxes fall into two categories: indirect taxes and direct taxes. Indirect taxes are levied on goods and services before they reach the consumer. Examples of indirect taxes are sales taxes, excise taxes, value-added taxes, and tariffs. Direct taxes are mostly levied on the accumulation of wealth. Examples of direct taxes are property taxes, income taxes, social security taxes, inheritance taxes, and poll taxes.

Chodorov describes indirect taxation as “a permission-to-live price.” Numerous indirect taxes are hidden in the price of every good and service that is for sale. People can only avoid these taxes by refusing to buy and, thus, depriving themselves of the meaning of life and even life itself. Consequently, they pay the tax to survive and to give their life meaning. “The inevitability of this charge on existence is expressed in the popular association of death and taxes.” For most products, taxation is the largest single item in the cost.

Indirect taxes impact the poor much more than the rich. Because there are more low-income people than high-income people, low-income people consume more overall and, therefore, pay a greater share of the indirect taxes.

The state prefers indirect taxes to direct taxes because they are usually hidden. “It is taking, so to speak, while the victim is not looking.” About people who justify taxation as moral, Chodorov writes, “Those who strain themselves to give taxation a moral character are under obligation to explain the State’s preoccupation with hiding taxes in the price of goods. Is there a confession of guilt in that?”

Unlike indirect taxes, the taxpayer cannot pass direct taxes onto others. Direct taxation taxes people on what they have instead of something that they buy. It taxes people “on the proceeds of enterprise or the returns from services already rendered, not on anticipated revenue.” Consequently, the taxpayer has no way of shifting the burden of a direct tax.

The envious have always supported direct taxes because they believe the “soak-the-rich propaganda.” Also, among the adherents of direct taxation are the promoters of democracy; they see it, along with universal suffrage, as necessary to the achievement of democracy.

As history has shown, the greed of the state does not stop with taxing the rich. Its direct taxation spreads to cover the lowest-paid workers. Because in the aggregate, the poor generally have more to be taken than the rich; consequently, the state soon goes after the poor. As with indirect taxes, low-income people bear a much higher burden under direct taxation than do the rich. A small tax on the income of a low-income earner causes more hardship than a larger tax on a high-income earner.

Because direct taxes directly deny “the sanctity of private property,” they are more vicious than indirect taxes. “By its very surreptition the indirect tax is a back-handed recognition of the right of the individual to his earnings.” Thus, the state covertly takes what it needs, “but it does not have the temerity to question the right of the owner to his goods.” However, with direct taxation, the state claims, without embarrassment or shame, the right to all property. Thus, with direct taxation, “private ownership becomes a temporary and revocable stewardship.” Direct taxation leads to the Marxist concept of state supremacy replacing the Jeffersonian ideal of inalienable rights.

About taxation, Chodorov writes:

Taxes of all kinds discourage production. Man works to satisfy his desires, not to support the State. When the results of his labors are taken from him, whether by brigands or organized society, his inclination is to limit his production to the amount he can keep and enjoy.

Replacing the Federal Income Tax with a National Sales Tax
Some tax reformers are proposing to replace the federal income tax with a national sales tax. Typically, they propose a rate of 20-some percent to make the revenue from the sales tax to be approximately equal to that from the income tax. Further, they provide an out for war, national emergencies, etc. Congress can use these outs to raise the tax rate, apparently without limit. Most of these proposals do not prevent Congress from reimposing the income tax other than the integrity of Congress.

These proposals are highly flawed and do not improve the tax situation. Worst, most fail to prevent the return of the income tax. Consequently, Americans end up paying the new sales tax along with an income tax.

If a sales tax is to replace the income tax, it needs to be done by a constitutional amendment, which includes repealing the income tax amendment. Moreover, the repeal amendment or the sales tax amendment should specifically prohibit an income tax and any other similar taxes. Also, the tax amendment should cap the sales tax at a low rate, say 2 percent. It should have no outs; Congress could not exceed the cap even because of war or a national emergency. Another provision should prohibit the federal government from borrowing so that it cannot avoid the tax restrictions with the inflation tax. (This provision must also prevent the issuance of government notes, such as US notes, which is borrowing with noninterest paying loans.)

How could the federal government survive under such revenue restraint? It would have to eliminate all unconstitutional programs that it is currently administrating. This would include the elimination of nearly all the programs that the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, and Transportation administer. It would also require ending the undeclared wars that the United States are involved in and ending the American Empire.

Copyright © 2020 by Thomas Coley Allen.

More economic articles.