Category Archives: Political Theory

Murray Rothbard: the chattering classes and war…

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“In his magnum opus, Man, Economy and State, Rothbard wrote that “in all countries the State has made certain that it owns and monopolizes the vital nerve centers, the command posts of the society.”5 Such “command posts” include defense (territorial monopoly or near-monopoly of the legitimized use of violence), communications, “education,” the monetary system (central banking), ultimate say over land-use and ownership, control of rivers and coasts, and the post office. Other social thinkers who noticed this phenomenon shrugged, made reference to “natural monopolies” and such, and went on to other topics. Rothbard, intent on a critical understanding of state-behavior, did not.

Control of education and communication was central to the state’s peaceful existence, and here we find the relationship between states and intellectuals – a problem much larger, unfortunately, than a few art-phonies demanding state subsidies for their bad paintings. States everywhere have understood the need to “keep” intellectuals to spread the word of the state’s good intentions, nobility, supremacy, necessity, and so on. In the past, priesthoods sometimes filled this role. With the rise of state-monopoly school systems matters grew much worse. Add to this the state’s leverage over the airwaves and printed communication, and you have important command posts, indeed. No wonder the usual suspects want to police the web to protect us from all those private criminals out there.

This goes to what Rothbard called “the mystery of civil obedience”6 – or why do people put up with the various oppressions of states over the long haul? Part of the explanation is the role state-allied intellectuals play in shaping public opinion. Matters are even worse in so-called “democracies,” where bureaucrats and special interests reign supreme, while the people comfort themselves with the notion that, in some way, “we are the government” – a proposition that will not withstand the slightest serious inquiry.

The spectacle of the intellectuals rallying around the state, denouncing the “selfish” ordinary citizen as a slacker who fails to understand the heroic things the state is doing for him, is especially noticeable in wartime. The late Cold War, by blurring the distinction between war and peace, greatly heightened the process. Now, with constant demands that the American Empire invade and bomb all malefactors everywhere in the name of keeping “peace” – not to mention Universal Brother/Sisterhood – the distinction looks to remain blurred – quite deliberately, of course. If “war is the health of the state” – Randolph Bourne’s phrase which Rothbard often quoted – then permanent mobilization and endless “peacekeeping” are the perfect setting for long-run growth of state power as against “social power….”

More at Antiwar by Joseph Stromberg.

Noah Feldman on tradition and modernity among conservative Jews

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Joey Kurtzman refers me to a remarkable and relevant article in the New York Times:

“Quite a coincidence: I discovered your interlocutor Scimitar just last night, when I was up late reading a discussion he had in the comment thread to a post on a white nationalist website. Very interesting stuff, though totally outside the realm of accepted discourse. I’m eager to get back into some of these issues, and I’m going to try to grab a chunk of time to read your interaction with him.

At this very moment I’m in the middle of doing an e-mail interview with Noah Feldman, a professor at Harvard Law school and observant Jew who had an already-controversial article titled “Orthodox Paradox” in today’s NY Times Magazine. He states his professional interest as “the predicament of faith communities that strive to be modern while simultaneously cleaving to tradition,” and in the article he discusses (among other things) some of the ugliest aspects of the theology of traditional Jewish communities, the sort of Judaic dirty laundry I’ve not seen discussed before in the mainstream media. Very interesting.

If you read the article any time today or tomorrow, and have any questions you’d like him to answer, just send them to me and I’ll bounce them off him.”

Well, here’s an excerpt from the piece for publishing which the New York Times deserves a round of applause:

“Goldstein committed his terrorist act on Purim, the holiday commemorating the victory of the Jews over Haman, traditionally said to be a descendant of the Amalekites. The previous Sabbath, he sat in synagogue and heard the special additional Torah portion for the day, which includes the famous injunction in the Book of Deuteronomy to remember what the Amalekites did to the Israelites on their way out of Egypt and to erase the memory of Amalek from beneath the heavens.

This commandment was followed by a further reading from the Book of Samuel. It details the first intentional and explicit genocide depicted in the Western canon: God’s directive to King Saul to kill every living Amalekite — man, woman and child, and even the sheep and cattle. Saul fell short. He left the Amalekite king alive and spared the sheep. As a punishment for the incompleteness of the slaughter, God took the kingdom from him and his heirs and gave it to David. I can remember this portion verbatim. That Saturday, like Goldstein, I was in synagogue, too.

Of course as a matter of Jewish law, the literal force of the biblical command of genocide does not apply today. The rabbis of the Talmud, in another of their universalizing legal rulings, held that because of the Assyrian King Sennacherib’s policy of population movement at the time of the First Temple, it was no longer possible to ascertain who was by descent an Amalekite. But as a schoolboy I was taught that the story of Amalek was about not just historical occurrence but cyclical recurrence: “In every generation, they rise up against us to destroy us, but the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hands.” The Jews’ enemies today are the Amalekites of old. The inquisitors, the Cossacks — Amalekites. Hitler was an Amalekite, too.

To Goldstein, the Palestinians were Amalekites. Like a Puritan seeking the contemporary type of the biblical archetype, he applied Deuteronomy and Samuel to the world before him. Commanded to settle the land, he settled it. Commanded to slaughter the Amalekites without mercy or compassion, he slew them. Goldstein could see difference as well as similarity. According to one newspaper account, when he was serving in the Israeli military, he refused to treat non-Jewish patients. And his actions were not met by universal condemnation: his gravestone describes him as a saint and a martyr of the Jewish people, “Clean of hands and pure of heart.”

It would be a mistake to blame messianic modern Orthodoxy for ultranationalist terror. But when the evil comes from within your own midst, the soul searching needs to be especially intense. After the Hebron massacre, my own teacher, the late Israeli scholar and poet Ezra Fleischer — himself a paragon of modern Orthodox commitment — said that the innocent blood of the Palestinian worshipers dripped through the stones and formed tears in the eyes of the Patriarchs buried below.

Ron Paul Road Show (cont): Do we need the government to make us moral (revised)…

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This post takes up a previous post by a communitarian blogger, who wrote in to distance himself from the Ron Paul campaign. The blogger, Scimitar, objected to some Ron Paul critics who had made a wrong-headed connection between racialist or racist ways of thinking and Paul’s libertarian’s position.

Scimitar correctly noted that libertarianism is a philosophy that undermines collectivist policies or group-based policies – of any kind. He argued that it would also tend to undermine more benign racialism – feelings of group identity and solidarity with people of the same language, race, or culture. I tend to disagree with him on that, although I think, over the long haul, libertarianism (since it leaves people free to be individuals), does encourage people to be open to others — but that’s very different from forcing them to.

Scimitar then identified libertarianism with license and moral relativism, and a blogger at Cynical Nerd seconded that, calling libertarianism a kind of a “nothing” when it comes to political ideology and the “goals” of life.

Well – surprise – I agree.

Libertarianism has “nothing” to tell you about what ends or goals you should choose for yourself or what gods you should worship or refuse to worship. So, if you are looking for an explanation of the universe that fits the whole world, a religion that works for everyone, a “truth” you can bite into like an apple — libertarianism won’t give it to you — at least not in an obvious way.

But that is just why I am a libertarian. Libertarianism is ONLY a theory of how people or groups should best associate; and it is the ONLY approach to politics with enough sophistication to understand that different groups and peoples might have different beliefs about how to conduct their lives. Politics, note, are not the end-all of life and libertarianism starts from that assumption. That is its beauty.

Libertarianism is not moral relativism – it is pluralism. It is perpectivalism. It involves understanding that our moral language is itself ambiguous and depends on context — Libertarianism simply leaves room for the greatest number of contexts. It does not assume there is NO objective truth or truths; it just involves an agreement that a government is not the best place to find them and that were there any sort of truths and “final ends” found embodied in a government, they would only be corrupt forms of them.

Scimitar: by checking the growth of the state, libertarianism is the only theory about human association, that lets those civic associations you like flourish – churches, cultural groups….

The bigger the state gets, the more energy is taken away from those associations…

Does libertarianism lead to anarchy?

Yes – and that’s a good thing. Anarchy is not chaos. Even chaos is not chaos, as scientists have long ago conceded.

Chaos and what we called randomness have patterns of far greater complexity than we have suspected so far. Those patterns are actually disrupted and destroyed by government interference. Left to themselves, humans are hardwired to associate in very complex ways that self-regulate and avoid the excesses of crime we now have everywhere, which we falsely blame on human nature alone.

Of course, human nature is not solely good. But libertarianism is realistic enough about that too. That’s why it allows for self-interest and natural limits to regulate human beings , rather than the government. If you have an Augustinian view of life, if you think human beings are inherently flawed, why would you give a few human beings so much concentrated power?

Who will guard the guardians — doesn’t that thought occur to you?

Contrary to your criticism, libertarianism sees through that kind of “guardianship” and is humble and wise enough to see that nature herself possesses self-regulatory mechanisms that would work if we did not get in the way. Bargaining for goods in a market (and a market, however free, always has laws – the question is only what kind of laws) is one way; family and kinship groups are another; even death and disease are hard facts which set limits to how far our license can go.

Do too many serious drugs and you will die… or go nuts. That’s a pretty sharp boundary just there. Does the state really need to waltz every petty marijuana possessor off to jail?

Or take last night, when the ever vigilant MSM (mainstream media)- NBC in this case – ran an investigative piece on what it called sexual predation by adults on teens. It takes some doing to get me to start defending sexual predators, but what I saw last night sounded like straight entrapment. I don’t know what the resumes of those men were, but to me, at least, it seems that if you chat up a police decoy posing as a teen who explicitly sets up an occasion for a crime and leads you into it — that’s not just an undercover operation. That’s entrapment. That’s creating a crime that would not have occured without you.

(More on this expose another time…and no, this is not a defense of pedophiles).

Libertarianism does recognize the faults in human beings but it also recognizes that the state incentivizes, exacerbates and multiplies those faults — because it relies on collectivist thinking; because it manipulates and lives off the lowest common elements in the nature of mass man. It appeals to the mass and not to the individual, and masses of men – mobs – are very different from aggregates of individuals. The mass can be manipulated by propaganda, as I write in this piece.

A mob is not a group. Individuals in groups do not need a political messiah to rescue them from their own uniqueness. An individual might have a relationship with Jesus Christ or a guru or the Unknown God. But only a mass wants a superman in front of it to lead it to the third reich, manifest destiny, the worker’s paradise…or most likely, hell on earth…

Only the mass wants to exchange the freedom to shape your own life and to think for yourself for the questionable intoxication of merging with the crowd.

Individuals, lightly restrained, develop self-government.

Masses, overregulated and terrorized by power, develop nothing but hero worship and a love of slavery.

Does that mean we should not have laws?

No, of course not. Anarchy does not mean the absence of law or morality or order. It is simply a refutation of state (admittedly corporate-state) imposed law, morality or order.

In my reading of anarchism anyway (I know there are some anarchists who think all law is coercive and all inequality or hierarchy illegitimate – I tend to think their position misguided) would not, for example, do away with customary laws, common law, and more organic, community based standards. It would simply prevent an estranged, alienated state and a distant judiciary imposing laws and regulations, however well-meaning, for the “good” of a non-existent or ambiguous collective that is so large that meaningful identification of its “interests” is difficult if not impossible in many areas.

Those are my random thoughts this Sunday morning. I am listening to Garrison Keillor and thinking – to a lot of people (including me) — that’s America. Not the U.S. government – its past or its future…

Now, I need to get to two other points Scimitar made:

First – that he is more an American because his ancestors were here long before those of more recent immigrants and because they lost their lives in the wars that shaped the geographical boundaries of this state:

(In his comments below, Scimitar says I do not correctly state his position, which, he says, was simply a belief most “whites” held until the 198os. As I understand his clarification, he does not claim to be “more” American than other immigrants, he only says that being American before the 1980s meant giving centrality to the traditional cultural heritage of the country — constitutionalism, classical republican thought, Christianity, etc etc).

Of course, the immediate question that comes to me is — which Christianity? Whose idea of federalism (it was controversial from the start, right?…but that aside, here is his original comment:

“Well, I reserve the right to celebrate, defend, and honor the customs of my people. We used to have a word for this. It was called “American.” Some of us have deeper roots in this country than others. My ancestors were here in the seventeenth century – before there was even a “United States.” The men who fought and died at Charleston, Cowpens, Camden, Horseshoe Bend, and the Alamo, who marched with Scott at Veracruz, Monterrey, and Mexico City, with Lee at Fredericksburg, Antietam, and Gettysburg shared this understanding of America. “We are a nation of immigrants” is not something they would have understood. ”

(Reading this over, I am not sure he is right to say I misunderstood him. What I said sounds like a pretty good inference from what he says…

Still, I accept the correction and take it from there)

S’s second point was that Jews, as a group, have pursued their own self-interest as a minority by advocating government policies that change the racial mix in the country against white, Christian culture (these are Scimitar’s categories, not mine), while at the same time, making their position impregnable. That is, he thinks critiques of imperialism and racism against whites are political moves to decrease white power and increase the power of minorities ...ostensibly, although, he says, the ones who really benefit are the opinion makers, who – he claims – are largely Jewish.

I am going to refrain from dismissing this out of hand as anti-Semitic, which I know a lot of people would do, perhaps with justification. But since this is a blog about propaganda and mass thinking, I don’t shy away from the topic and want to address it seriously. But carefully. Because, it’s something that isn’t really clear in my mind, though I have talked about it before in relation to hate speech laws – which I oppose. Coincidentally, there was a fascinating discussion of a John Derbyshire post, “Be Nice or We’ll Crush You” (- this is not an endorsement of D’s positions on this or any other matter) at Jewcy.com, which has a penchant for taking on controversial topics – at the invitation of its very bright, entertaining, and open minded editor, Joey Kurtzman, who writes:

“Even interested non-scientists like you and me, John, have learned that human populations have different distributions of various alleles (variants of a certain gene); that some of these variations between groups result in different distributions of biological traits such as Tay-Sachs disease, sickle cell anemia, and so on; and that we need prepare ourselves for the very real possibility that the list also includes psychological and behavioral traits.

I’m not asking for crudeness or intentionally insulting behavior, of course. But if puncturing some of our American and Jewish anxieties about race-related language will make it easier to have the honest discussion I’m looking for, then, hey, I say let’s go for it. Jewess is innocuous enough—let’s you and I agree to use it. If anyone calls you an antisemite or asks you to take one of the ADL’s sensitivity courses, you just tell them that a Jew gave you permission—nay, urged you!—to use the word. Pass the buck to me.”

I say carefully, because again, I find the tools of analysis – the terms (American, whites, Jews) elusive when you look at them closely and because ascription of intent or motivation to a whole group is usually a bit of an exercise in futility.

Given that, however, let’s look at what he is saying closely…

When I said that the topic of the alleged mongrelization of the state by Jewish opinion makers is one to be negotiated carefully, I wasn’t merely referring to the possibility of being seen as anti-Semitic, I was also wondering about the actual validity of the argument, its elusiveness as an analytical tool.

After all, Jews are well represented across the whole spectrum of political beliefs (from socialism to neo-liberalism, WSJ style, to Austrian economics to anarchism). If they hold these views out of self-interest only, their self-interest must then be a remarkably protean creature.

What’s more, it isn’t clear to me that the policies that opinion makers pursue are the ones that represent the interests of ordinary Jews either here or in Israel. Even if they do represent Jewish elite interests, it’s usually also true that they represent other non-Jewish elite interests. In which case, to what degree can any policy they pursue be seen as specifically or solely Jewish?

It’ s not that I don’t see from where S is coming…or even some one like Kevin McDonald. I do. But I tend to think that there isn’t all that much to be gained analytically by going down that track — although censoring discussion of it also doesn’t do much good.

You have to differentiate between the opinions of Jews and the opinions of Jewish lobbying groups and action committees. Then too, Jews are highly represented in espousing views that are called anti-Semitic — from Shahak, in Israel, decribed here by Christopher Hitchins to Norman Finkelstein, Noam Chomksy and Jeff Blankfort here in the US. What does S say to that?

Or to the fact that two of the leading theorists of libertarianism (which he sees as undermining communitarian ethics) were Ayn Rand (with whom I go along only partly and warily) and Murray Rothbard, both Jewish, and both interested in the flourishing of civic society. That’s what S wants to see flourishing and which he thinks libertarians undermine.

Here is Rothbard on family, education and government in

“The Progressive Era and the Family,” (Joseph R. Peden and Fred R. Glahe (eds.), The American Family and the State (San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute, 1986).

“The expansion of compulsory public schooling stemmed from the growth of collectivist and anti-individualist ideology among intellectuals and educationists. The individual, these “progressives” believed, must be molded by the educational process to conform to the group, which in practice meant the dictates of the power elite speaking in the group’s name.”
And here is a quote from Rand on individualism and the flourishing of moral law:

“Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.”

Or take the case of immigrants. Is an immigrant like me always more suspect than say an Anglo-American, for instance, in such matters as espionage against the country? I think it is not self-evidently the case. For myself, if the US were to go to war with India and the US were at fault, I would find it extremely difficult to remain here and would probably leave or even give up my citizenship. On the other hand, say the issue was Indian immigration here. I would not side with my own racial group if it was in violation of the law or of ethics, certainly, but also, I think, in other less clear cut situations. I would tend to bend over backwards to the community in which I lived, as a matter of generosity to the racial “other” (NOT because I was kow-towing to the dominant thinking of the state on the issue). That is a subtle but important moral distinction.

In other words, I would more than likely injure my own racial self interest out of an obligation to the immediate community in which I lived and to which I also feel a group affiliation.

And I think that obtains with Jews, as well. Some Jewish opinion leader probably hold views that might seem mistaken or even prejudiced to an outsider, simply from their own perceptions of obligation and from multiple affiliations that have nothing to do with intent to propagandize. In other words, they may genuinely see things that way. On the other hand, I do not think the same of some Jewish-American politicians, like Douglas Feith or Richard Perle, whose actions seem to be more like the “pursuit of group self-interest” model you reference.

Besides, group affiliation itself, as I noted, is complex.

I am an Indian, but also a Christian. Isn’t my Christianity (which is as old as European Christianity) less tainted by the antiSemitism of European Christianity? Or does that have to be weighed against my third-world affiliation, which with its assumed Arabism, is seen by some as necessarily anti-Semitic?

Or is seen also as having its own racism. As a Jewish reader at this blog said – “Gandhi didn’t like blacks” ?

Is that the slur which Indians now have to juggle to survive the ideological smell test?

Can you see how convoluted these questions get?

And isn’t it possible also that state policies can be enacted because of structural reasons that coincide with the group preferences of opinion- makers, but are not caused by them in some simple one to one manner? Does there need to be intent? If so, whose specifically and how?

Mind you, I see the same problems in discussions of imperialism which too simply conflate it with “white” and “Christian” — there is certainly a bit of both in Western imperialism, but how it operated is not as clear cut as people make out.

Aren’t Jews also white…and American…and even Anglo? And doesn’t the racial mongrelization that S says their opinion makers pursue apply also to them?

Isn’t it also true that while this and related topics are taboo in leading opinion journals and universities, they are still discussed everywhere in less prestigious outlets, and that if there is censorship, quite a bit of it is self-censorship? And the self-censorship arises out of our own servility to power and prestige?

And if you don’t speak up forthrightly about what you find important or truthful, whose fault is that?

And if you are afraid you might lose a job or a promotion or a review, then how deeply held and morally important are your convictions?

Isn’t it also true that some part of the reason why this debate can never take place openly is not really because of the arguments themselves but because we do not trust each other enough?

That we do not really feel that we are above board in doing justice to each others’ claims?

And that, in fact, we are not above aboard?

Only look at the way people debate each other – the level of vituperation. Neither left nor right is able to see each other with any degree of respect and consideration. And isn’t that really the reason we resort to political correctness and other speech codes?

Who really is persuaded solely by arguments? The reason Marxism had such a hold over the third world was because its adherents often showed more concern for the welfare of ordinary people than adherents of other ideologies. People were persuaded not by the ideas alone but – at least initially – by the kind of people who held the ideas. Lack of trust does not persuade.
And isn’t every debate about race and gender in this country poisoned by that lack of trust? And isn’t that why we try so desperately to show our ideological purity? To prove our guiltlessness by distancing ourselves from anyone who might contaminate us, as though they were untouchables?

Isn’t that really why we are afraid of ideas that are free of fashionable dogmas? They are not”pure”?

Isn’t that really how propaganda works here — by our own self-censorship and weakness in articulating our own thoughts?

Would we really be afraid to be called anti-Semites, or whatever else, if we were completely free in our consciences about it?

And when we are free of such feelings — or at least — are struggling at all times to be free of them, then, wouldn’t what we said carry a weight and a force which would be infectious and free us of our fear?

Isn’t it the case that reason backed by moral qualities and emotional truth has a power that we fail to possess not because we lack the ability to argue but because we lack that kind of moral clarity and consideration for other human beings…. and it shows?

And that, S., is what I meant when I talked about rationality.

I don’t mean appealing to logic – as if rationality were a matter of syllogism. Rationality as a tool to coerce or manipulate is only the rationality of the state – a bureaucratic rationality that reduces everything to mass man and mass ideas.

But individuals are not mass men. They are developed not only in logic, but in their emotions, in their intuitions, in the full range of their humanity. They are able to love – to have caritas – for the other, to see the other as human in the same ways as they are.

That “right reason,” rooted in emotions and intuition, is precisely what allows us as individuals to self-organize outside the coercion of the state. That kind of reason is what libertarianism values and sets free in individuals.

A reason that is not seperate from conscience and belongs only to the individual — not to the group.

Which is why I am a libertarian.

(Note: I should add that since Lib. posits reciprocal behavior that respects individuals’ life, liberty and property it assumes a certain set of ethics…

To that extent it certainly does impose norms – only not in an obvious way. How then would a Lib. community defend itself from another imperialist community? Well – it would do so by banding with other libertarian groups. Would that always work? It might not. But a state, too, has no guarantee of surviving the depredations of another state. My idea, however, is that it’s only propaganda (by interested elites) that gives the state its legitimacy. That is, you have to have a priesthood preaching the divine right of the king, or, now, you have to have opinion-makers touting the sanctity of the corporate-state for the rulers to acquire power. For, contrary to popular assumption, governments ultimately only get their power from the submission of the governed. In a so-called democracy, the masses submit because they are hit over the head, not with a baton – although that, too — but with propaganda.

Murray Rothbard: a libertarian society….

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“For a thousand years, then, ancient Celtic Ireland had no State or anything like it. As the leading authority on ancient Irish law has writ­ten: “There was no legislature, no bailiffs, no police, no public enforce­ment of justice…. There was no trace of State-administered justice.”9

How then was justice secured? The basic political unit of ancient Ireland was the tuath. All “freemen” who owned land, all professionals, and all craftsmen, were entitled to become members of a tuath. Each tuath’s members formed an annual assembly which decided all common policies, declared war or peace on other tuatha, and elected or deposed their “kings.” An important point is that, in contrast to primitive tribes, no one was stuck or bound to a given tuath, either because of kinship or of geographical location. Individual members were free to, and often did, secede from a tuath and join a competing tuath. Often, two or more tuatha decided to merge into a single, more efficient unit. As Professor Peden states, “the tuath is thus a body of persons voluntarily united for socially beneficial purposes and the sum total of the landed properties of its members constituted its territorial dimension.”10 In short, they did not have the modern State with its claim to sovereignty over a given (usually expanding) territorial area, divorced from the landed prop­erty rights of its subjects; on the contrary, tuatha were voluntary associa­tions which only comprised the landed properties of its voluntary mem­bers. Historically, about 80 to 100 tuatha coexisted at any time throughout Ireland.

But what of the elected “king”? Did he constitute a form of State ruler? Chiefly, the king functioned as a religious high priest, presiding over the worship rites of the tuath, which functioned as a voluntary religious, as well as a social and political, organization. As in pagan, pre-Christian, priesthoods, the kingly function was hereditary, this prac­tice carrying over to Christian times. The king was elected by the tuath from within a royal kin-group (the derbfine), which carried the hereditary priestly function. Politically, however, the king had strictly limited functions: he was the military leader of the tuath, and he presided over the tuath assemblies. But he could only conduct war or peace negotiations as agent of the assemblies; and he was in no sense sovereign and had no rights of administering justice over tuath members. He could not legislate, and when he himself was party to a lawsuit, he had to submit his case to an independent judicial arbiter.

Again, how, then, was law developed and justice maintained? In the first place, the law itself was based on a body of ancient and immemorial custom, passed down as oral and then written tradition through a class of professional jurists called the brehons. The brehons were in no sense public, or governmental, officials; they were simply selected by parties to disputes on the basis of their reputations for wisdom, knowledge of the customary law, and the integrity of their decisions. As Professor Peden states:

… the professional jurists were consulted by parties to disputes for advice as to what the law was in particular cases, and these same men often acted as arbitrators between suitors. They remained at all times private persons, not public officials; their functioning depended upon their knowledge of the law and the integrity of their judicial reputations.11

Furthermore, the brehons had no connection whatsoever with the individ­ual tuatha or with their kings. They were completely private, national in scope, and were used by disputants throughout Ireland. Moreover, and this is a vital point, in contrast to the system of private Roman lawyers, the brehon was all there was; there were no other judges, no “public” judges of any kind, in ancient Ireland.

It was the brehons who were schooled in the law, and who added glosses and applications to the law to fit changing conditions. Furthermore, there was no monopoly, in any sense, of the brehon jurists; instead, several competing schools of jurisprudence existed and competed for the custom of the Irish people.

How were the decisions of the brehons enforced? Through an elabo­rate, voluntarily developed system of “insurance,” or sureties. Men were linked together by a variety of surety relationships by which they guaran­teed one another for the righting of wrongs, and for the enforcement of justice and the decisions of the brehons. In short, the brehons them­selves were not involved in the enforcement of decisions, which rested again with private individuals linked through sureties. There were vari­ous types of surety. For example, the surety would guarantee with his own property the payment of a debt, and then join the plaintiff in enforcing a debt judgment if the debtor refused to pay. In that case, the debtor would have to pay double damages: one to the original cred­itor, and another as compensation to his surety. And this system applied to all offences, aggressions and assaults as well as commercial contracts; in short, it applied to all cases of what we would call “civil” and “crimi­nal” law. All criminals were considered to be “debtors” who owed restitution and compensation to their victims, who thus became their “creditors.” The victim would gather his sureties around him and pro­ceed to apprehend the criminal or to proclaim his suit publicly and demand that the defendant submit to adjudication of their dispute with the brehons. The criminal might then send his own sureties to negotiate a settlement or agree to submit the dispute to the brehons. If he did not do so, he was considered an “outlaw” by the entire community; he could no longer enforce any claim of his own in the courts, and he was treated to the opprobrium of the entire community.12

There were occasional “wars,” to be sure, in the thousand years of Celtic Ireland, but they were minor brawls, negligible compared to the devastating wars that racked the rest of Europe. As Professor Peden points out, “without the coercive apparatus of the State which can through taxation and conscription mobilize large amounts of arms and manpower, the Irish were unable to sustain any large scale military force in the field for any length of time. Irish wars… were pitiful brawls and cattle raids by European standards.”13

More from Murray Rothbard, “For a New Liberty,” Chapter 11, at the Mises site.

 

An American Conservationist…..

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The original link to MSN has disappeared so I’m linking this to a blog where I found the article reproduced:

“Eustace Conway is probably as close to Rousseau’s ideal of the “noble savage” as it’s possible to be in modern-day America. The product of a middle-class American family, Conway decided at an early age that being at one with nature was more important than being at one with conventional society.

So he left home at 17 and moved into a teepee. He wore buckskins and lived off the land. Still, he managed to earn a college degree with honors from Appalachian State University.

Within a few years he had begun to acquire acreage in the North Carolina mountains that eventually would become the 1,000-acre Turtle Island Preserve, a working 19th century Appalachian “heritage” farm that also serves as Conway’s environmental pulpit. His original audacious vision was that Turtle Island would be a green beacon lighting the way for a large-scale return to nature — think of John Winthrop’s “city on a hill” but in reverse.

Along the way, Conway, 45, has had the sort of adventures that rank him among the great outdoorsmen of all time. He has crossed the continental United States on horseback in a record 103 days, hiked the full length of the Appalachian Trail and kayaked Alaska’s south shore, always living off the land or sea and carrying equipment more befitting a 19th century explorer than a modern-age adventurer. The details of his extraordinary life, as well as its whys and wherefores, are chronicled in Elizabeth Gilbert’s celebrated biography, “The Last American Man.”

But what of his vision? With Turtle Island recently turned 20, MSN asked writer Philipp Harper to talk with Conway about the way his vision — and his level of environmental optimism — have changed over the years.

MSN: Does how you live give you a greater respect for the earth?

CONWAY: Oh, my gosh, so much greater! It’s made an inestimable difference.

MSN: What was your goal when you retreated to Turtle Island 20 years ago? Did you see yourself having a profound impact on society?

CONWAY: I’m not exactly sure what was on my mind. I’m not sure I had a grand scheme. But basically the idea was that I’d show folks something invaluable and they’d see the light, that what they were doing was killing themselves and the planet.

MSN: Has this changed over the years?

CONWAY: Yes, but only because I’ve failed at the larger goal. I’ve gotten more in touch with the realistic perspective that masses of folks aren’t going to change because of my showing them the light.

MSN: How about changing behavior in small, practical ways?

CONWAY: There are so many possibilities. The main thing is to motivate people to reevaluate some basic assumptions. As far as practices, it’s about getting closer to some of the basics in life, not only where they come from but where they go.

For example, if you save your urine and put it in a sawdust bucket you produce compost, something which goes back into the life cycle. Now, take that compost you made and go grow something, even if it’s one tomato plant on a window sill.

It’s all about taking individual steps. Without that you can’t go any further, and the first step is usually the hardest.

MSN: What else?

CONWAY: Well, composting food waste. What is food waste and where would it go if I didn’t compost it? Start weaving a thread of consciousness. See waste turned around.

If we say we want to take better care of the planet, let’s just take five minutes a day thinking about compost or looking at our trash.

We’re the most wasteful people who’ve ever existed.

MSN: Describe your relationship with the environment.

CONWAY: Everything is about relationships. Everything is connected to everything else, all aspects of life. Every movement has an opposite and equal reaction. Every move we make as human beings results in consumption and degradation.

For 27 years I’ve used leaves instead of toilet paper because I think toilet paper is detrimental. As you get in touch with the natural world, the environment that’s the source of all things, you understand how life in modern America puts us so far away from it.

Personally, I am in touch. I went right out to where food comes from. I made my own shelter and my own clothes. I found out about the roots of existence. I feel the weather and I taste the fruit of my labor. I have really fresh food because I grow it and harvest it. My milk is fresh squeezed from my goats. I have a very deep conscious and unconscious oneness with the earth.

MSN: Some self-described environmentalists have criticized you in the past for killing and eating animals and clothing yourself in their skins. How do you respond?

CONWAY: When I shoot a deer and take its meat and skin, I’m intensely connected to the forest. Manufacturing blue jeans and T-shirts decimates the environment. So the environmentalist who wears blue jeans and a T-shirt and tells me I’m not doing a good job by killing a deer is missing the point.

MSN: What’s the energy situation like at Turtle Island?

CONWAY: For nearly 20 years we had no electricity but now I have a small hydroelectric plant and some solar on the edge of the compound at my shop. But in the main part of the preserve we have no electricity. We use fire for lighting and cooking and heating.

MSN: But in burning fossil fuels aren’t you producing greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming?

CONWAY: Well, firewood is a renewable resource, plus our level of consumption is extraordinarily different from what’s commonplace in modern America. Here you walk 30 feet and pick up some firewood instead of shipping it from the other side of the world. Also, it puts people back in touch with their roots.

MSN: Are you more or less optimistic than you used to be about man’s ability to save the environment?

CONWAY: Unfortunately, I’m less. I’m the last one who wants to give up, but the writing on the wall says that we’re going downhill. And it’s pretty indelible ink on that wall.

MSN: You haven’t lost your will to fight, have you?

CONWAY: No, I haven’t lost my will to fight, but I haven’t got as much will to fight as I used to. And I don’t have nearly the hope I used to have.

MSN: But isn’t there more awareness of the need to be

“green” than there used to be?

CONWAY: Yeah, there’s more information about it, but people aren’t doing more. If information is all over the place and people still aren’t doing one-twentieth of what’s needed, that’s a reason for deep concern, isn’t it?

MSN: Ok, then, what’s the answer?

CONWAY: One of the main things is education, especially starting with young people. Each individual has to have the dedication to care about what’s right. My hero, Jacques Cousteau, pointed out that people only care about what they understand. If people don’t understand the sources of life, how can they put a lot of energy into loving the planet? My argument all along is that we have to be interested.