Archive for the ‘Albert Jay Nock’
November 12, 2011
By: John Kindley
Category: Albert Jay Nock, Cops, Friedrich Nietzsche, Henry George, Iroquois, John Hasnas, Thomas Jefferson, Wendy McElroy
Portland police Lt. Robert King said.
The official demonization of “anarchists” by State propagandizers continues on apace, in this instance by an agent of an “agency”-without-principals which intends to violently evict Occupy protesters from Portland parks this weekend. Meanwhile, a real-life “anarch” (leader of leaderlessness), Wendy McElroy, explores, at the Daily Anarchist, what an anarchist system of justice might look like, and in reply to a comment on her post writes:
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November 09, 2011
By: John Kindley
Category: Albert Jay Nock, Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Jefferson
I am by no means a Nietzsche scholar or fan boy, but in light of what he had to say about the State I think it’s safe to say that those inclined to blame him for the Nazis are grossly mistaken. In any event, I want to distance myself from any vulgar and probably mistaken interpretation of his denigration of the “superfluous” and the “all-too-many” that I approvingly quoted along with his damnation of the State.
Albert Jay Nock notes what I think is the relevant distinction:
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November 09, 2011
By: John Kindley
Category: Albert Jay Nock, Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau, Ioz, John Brown
I spent the time I was going to use writing this post instead re-reading Henry David Thoreau’s A Plea for Captain John Brown. Here’s an excerpt that’s particularly interesting to me as a lawyer and that explains the nature of Thoreau’s “Plea,” but read the whole thing and be reminded that great heroes have lived and died in America:
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October 18, 2011
By: John Kindley
Category: Albert Jay Nock, Henry George, Martin Luther King Jr., Ryan at Absurd Results, Thomas Jefferson
(The title of this post is borrowed from the Wobblies.)
A comment by Ryan from Absurd Results on this post about the Georgist “Single Tax” and Thomas Jefferson’s “Ward System” gave me the opportunity to once again formulate, summarize, and clarify my political wish list. Ryan wrote:
As for Georgism, I have to admit, I find it intriguing—even more so when combined with Jefferson’s ward system. Actually, I think the ward system (which sounds a lot like Michael Rozeff’s panarchy) would be essential for a single tax regime, for it would more likely keep closed the door to statism by making the wards compete for citizens.
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October 16, 2011
By: John Kindley
Category: Albert Jay Nock, Castle Doctrine, Judges
“Mayor Gaynor astonished the whole of New York when he pointed out to a correspondent who had been complaining about the inefficiency of the police, that any citizen has the right to arrest a malefactor and bring him before a magistrate. “The law of England and of this country,” he wrote, “has been very careful to confer no more right in that respect upon policemen and constables than it confers on every citizen.” State exercise of that right through a police force had gone on so steadily that not only were citizens indisposed to exercise it, but probably not one in ten thousand knew he had it.” — Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, the State (1935)
Seattle crime-fighting “superhero” Phoenix Jones knows he has it, and more power to him.
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October 11, 2011
By: John Kindley
Category: Albert Jay Nock
It would never in a million years occur to me to stand on a street corner and hold a sign petitioning the State to “Tax the Wealthy” or “Tax the Bankers,” for a couple reasons:
1. The Bankers won’t be taxed unless they want to be taxed. They own the fucking State.
2. Although it’s certainly more evil to steal from the poor than from the rich, every dime in the hands of the State, whether that dime comes from the rich or from the poor, is a dime in the hands of our Enemy.
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September 11, 2011
By: John Kindley
Category: Albert Jay Nock, Iroquois
Via Wikipedia, I’ve been reading Exemplar of Liberty: Native America and the Evolution of Democracy, by Donald Grinde and Bruce Johansen. The thesis of the book is that the Founders’ contact with Native Americans and their forms of government inspired Revolutionary fervor and ultimately influenced the U.S. Constitution. Personally, I believe, with Albert Jay Nock, that, rhetoric aside, subsequent history (including the genocide of Native Americans) demonstrates that the prospects for Old World-style exploitation in the New World, and the wresting of the mechanisms for such exploitation from British hands into American hands, was a far greater motivator for the Founders and the U.S. Constitution than the libertarian example of their indigenous neighbors. Nevertheless, the Native American exemplar remains as a reminder of what America could have been, and as an indictment of what America has become.
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August 02, 2011
By: John Kindley
Category: Albert Jay Nock, Aldous Huxley, Religion
I don’t mean to get all religious on all y’all. My old blog explicitly tied religion of a certain stripe to libertarianism, and this new blog was meant to drop the religious emphasis of that blog in favor of a focus on “the philosophy and practice of law and liberty.” But I still regard “religion,” properly understood, as inextricably bound up with the quest for liberty, in the soul and in society.
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July 17, 2011
By: John Kindley
Category: Albert Jay Nock, Aldous Huxley, David Gross, Henry David Thoreau, Religion, Tony Serra
To me, the fundamental truths of anarchism have become blindingly self-evident: The politicians and lawyers who make, interpret and enforce “the laws” are, on average and as a class, less honorable, wise and just than are people in general. The State is designed, not to protect and serve, but to steal from the poor and give to the rich. The State has no moral authority. There is no law other than the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God. The State is in its essence an usurper and an imposter. We are morally obligated to obey only those of its “laws” which happen to plagiarize the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, and are morally obligated to disobey those of its “laws” which violate the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.
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January 09, 2011
By: John Kindley
Category: Albert Jay Nock, Anarchists, Articles of Confederation, Henry George, Thomas Paine
The lead article for a virtual symposium on “Land Tenure and Anarchic Common Law” being conducted by the Center for a Stateless Society begins:
There would likely be a range of legal regimes—commercial and non-commercial, religious and secular—in a stateless society. Some would be largely territorial, while others would serve people in different regions. The rules enforced by a given regime would presumably emerge from multiple sources: from the decisions of arbitrators, from the judgments of religious and other authorities accepted by participants in the regime, and from the specific contractual agreements made by regime participants. (For instance: property owners cooperating to arrange for road maintenance and other shared needs might also agree to frame their property claims in ways designed to formalize the rules governing the recognition of the transfer and abandonment of each other’s claims.) Whatever their sources, a wide variety of land tenure rules could in principle be implemented by these regimes. Disputes among anarchists about the form such rules ought to take have often focused on the differences between what can, for simplicity’s sake, be labeled occupancy-and-use and Lockean positions. (more…)
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