Brexit: Which Kind of Dependence Now?

Is Brexit a move toward British independence? Some Leave and Remain partisans may believe so, differing only over whether that's good or bad.

But, as usual, things are more complicated. We should hope that, in one respect, Britain's exit from the EU will create a kind of dependence that did not exist while it was still a member of the union. (But see Jacob T. Levy's well-argued opposition, as well as J.D. Tucille's rebuttal of the xenophobia explanation and Matt Ridley's defense of Leave.)

Bravo for Brexit!

Excellent news out of the UK. The next step is for the anti-elites -- there, here, everywhere -- to see that the state itself is their enemy, no matter who sits on top. Only natutal-law market anarchism would fully dethrone the oppressors.

See Glenn Greenwald's discussion.

The Golden Thread

To see where we are, watch these two videos.
 

Any Banner Will Do

The Islamic State doesn't give people a reason to commit mass murder. It gives people disposed to commit mass murder a banner to hoist. Take one banner away and they'll select another -- religious, secular, whatever is at hand. There's always a banner to hoist.

Me Too

Slaves to Political Incorrectness

Why are Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio afraid to use the term "radical homophobic terrorism"? Are they slaves to political incorrectness?

Free Association Webinar: Gary Johnson's Prospects

Trump's New Surrogate

"We're just going to take your picture. Smile."

Oh Joy! With Hillary We Get Bill!

Hillary Clinton vows to draw on Bill Clinton's "wealth of experience." Let's see, that would include:

• starving Iraqi children through sanctions (helping to provoke 9/11) 
• mass murder via bombing (Bosnia, Kosovo, then Iraq -- helping to provoke 9/11) 
• promoting subprime mortgages and securitization (with the help of Andrew Cuomo -- setting the stage for the housing crash and Great Recession)
• mass incarceration
• capital punishment
• unleashing Attorney General Janet Reno, BATF, and the Delta Force on the Branch Davidians at Waco
• the coverup of the truth of the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City (which was a neo-Nazi atrocity committed in response to Waco) 
• using cruise missiles to destroy pharmaceutical factories in Africa
• threatening Russia by incorporating into NATO former Soviet allies and republics up to Russia's doorstep in violation of GHWB's assurances to the contrary
• unflagging support for Israel's violations of Palestinians' rights (again, helping to provoke 9/11).

Gotta hand it to Bill. He accomplished a lot in eight short years -- all that while fooling around with an intern. How did the man do it?

How lucky are we to have all that experience to draw on?

If You Love Freedom, Thank an Anarchist

From Roderick Long's Austro-Athenian Empire:

It’s often said – particularly on holidays like Veterans Day and Memorial Day – that Americans owe their freedom (such as it is) to u.s. military veterans.

This claim has always puzzled me. In what war in living memory was the freedom of Americans at stake? Without u.s. military action, were Japanese or German troops – let alone Italian, Vietnamese, Korean, Panamanian, Afghani, or Iraqi ones – really going to be marching though Times Square? If anything, given the notorious ratchet effect whereby wars tend to produce permanent increases in government power, it seems more probable that u.s. military action has contributed to a diminution of our freedom.

Yet Americans do enjoy a greater degree of liberty, however inadequate, than citizens of many other countries around the world. To whom do we owe that fact?

Many people wear shirts that say, “If you love freedom, thank a veteran.” I wear a shirt that says “If you love freedom, thank an anarchist.”

So what have anarchists (and other fractious dissidents) done for the cause of freedom? In answer, I quote from two recent articles:

Anarchists have never taken power. We have resisted authoritarianism and oppression in every arena. From calling out Marxism long before its draconian aspirations became public record, to fighting and dying to resist Fascism, fighting Franco until he couldn’t afford to join Hitler and Mussolini and leading the resistance against the Nazis across Europe. We’ve fought the robber barons, the czars, the oligarchs, and the soviet bureaucrats. 

And we’ve been extraordinarily popular in different regions at different points in history, although we have not yet had sufficient critical mass to completely transform the world. In every instance where anarchism surged to localized popularity with a few million adherents, as in Spain but also Ukraine and Manchuria, every surrounding power immediately put their wars on hold to collaborate in snuffing out the examples we provided of a better world, of better ways of interacting and settling disputes with one another, that do not turn to control but build a tolerable consensus for all parties when agreement is needed. 

We’ve been at the forefront not just of technology like cryptocurrencies and the tor project, but we’ve also been at the forefront of struggles against patriarchy, racism, homophobia, ageism, ableism, etc., etc. Since long before there were popular coalitions like “feminism.” We smuggled guns to slaves and ran abolitionist journals. We’ve coursed through the veins of our existing society, pioneering myriad social technologies like credit unions and cooperatives. We’ve consistently served as the radical edge of the world’s conscience, and played a critical role in expanding what is possible while developing and field testing new insights and tools. 

Anarchism – as many commentators have noted – has served as the laboratory of the left, of social justice and resistance movements around the world. Even where we remain marginal, the tools we invent eventually become mainstream.

 — William Gillis, “Transhumanism Implies Anarchism” 

[The] claim that our rights are something “given to” us, handed down from above by the government and its soldiers, is a pernicious, authoritarian, damned lie. 

Who has given us our rights? Nobody. We have taken them. Every right we have, we have because we fought for it from below. We have these rights because we resisted violations of them, because we fought those who violated them &#150 sometimes fighting “the Soldier” – and compelled the state to recognize them. And the state recognizes them because it’s afraid that if it violates them we’ll damn well fight it – and its soldiers – again. 

Rights have never been granted by authority. They have always been asserted against authority, and won from it. We don’t have our rights because the government and its soldiers are nice – but because we’re not. It’s not the Soldier – it’s the dissidents, the hell-raisers, the dirty flag-burning hippies, the folks with bad attitudes towards authority in general, who have given us our rights throughout history, by fighting for them.

 — Kevin A. Carson, “No, It’s Not ‘The Soldier’”

To Persuade, Speak the Language

To persuade people to the freedom philosophy we must speak in the vernacular. In election seasons, that entails relating ideas to candidates -- not only unacceptable ones but also superior ones when they are present. The goal is freedom through persuasion, not merely the self-gratification of purity.

Gary Johnson: The Cost of War

Revisionist History Day, 2016

Today is Revisionist History Day, what others call Memorial Day. Americans are supposed to remember the country's war dead while being thankful that they protected our freedom and served our country. However, reading revisionist history (see a sampling below) or alternative news sites (start with Antiwar.com and don't forget to listen to the Scott Horton Show) teaches that the fallen were doing no such thing. Rather they were and are today serving cynical politicians and the "private" component of the military-industrial complex in the service of the American Empire.

The state inculcates an unquestioning faith in its war-making by associating it with patriotism, heroism, and the defense of "our freedoms." This strategy builds in its own defense against any criticism of the government's policies. Anyone who questions the morality of a war is automatically suspected of being unpatriotic, unappreciative of the bravery that has "kept us free," and disrespectful of "our troops," in a word, un-American.

To counter this common outlook, which people are indoctrinated in from birth and which is shared by conservatives and Progressives alike, we should do what we can to teach others that the government's version of its wars is always self-serving and threatening to life, liberty, and decency.

In that spirit, I quote a passage from the great antiwar movie The Americanization of Emily. You'll find a video of the scene below. This AP photo is a perfect illustration of what "Charlie Madison" is talking about.

I don't trust people who make bitter reflections about war, Mrs. Barham. It's always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a Hell it is. And it's always the widows who lead the Memorial Day parades . . . we shall never end wars, Mrs. Barham, by blaming it on ministers and generals or warmongering imperialists or all the other banal bogies. It's the rest of us who build statues to those generals and name boulevards after those ministers; the rest of us who make heroes of our dead and shrines of our battlefields. We wear our widows' weeds like nuns and perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifices....

My brother died at Anzio – an everyday soldier’s death, no special heroism involved. They buried what pieces they found of him. But my mother insists he died a brave death and pretends to be very proud. . . . [N]ow my other brother can’t wait to reach enlistment age. That’ll be in September. May be ministers and generals who blunder us into wars, but the least the rest of us can do is to resist honoring the institution. What has my mother got for pretending bravery was admirable? She’s under constant sedation and terrified she may wake up one morning and find her last son has run off to be brave. [Emphasis added.]

Here's an all-too-incomplete list of books in no particular order (some of which I've read, some of which I intend to read):

• We Who Dared to Say No to War: American Antiwar Writing from 1812 to Now, edited by Murray Polner and Thomas E. Woods Jr.
• The Failure of America's Foreign Wars, edited by Richard M. Ebeling and Jacob G. Hornberger
• America's Second Crusade, by William Henry Chamberlin
• Great Wars and Great Leaders: A Libertarian Rebuttal, by Ralph Raico
• Why American History Is Not What They Say: An Introduction to Revisionism, by Jeff Riggenbach
• War Is a Lie, by David Swanson
• War Is a Racket, by Smedley D. Butler
• Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War, by Paul Fussell
• Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War, by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel
• The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, by William Appleman Williams
• Empire as a Way of Life, by William Appleman Williams
• The Civilian and the Military: A History of the American Antimilitarist Tradition, by Arthur Ekirch
• The Politics of War: The Story of Two Wars which Altered Forever the Political Life of the American Republic, 1890-1920, by Walter Karp
• The Costs of War, edited by John Denson
• Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, by Stephen Kinzer
• All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, by Stephen Kinzer
• Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, by Chalmers Johnson
• The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, by Chalmers Johnson
• War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, by Chris Hedges
• A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East, by David Fromkin (This book has serious flaws, but it nonetheless shows the cynicism of the European imperialists.)
• The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East, by David Hirst
• Faith Misplaced: The Broken Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations, 1820-2001, by Ussama Makdisi
• Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, by Max Blumenthal
• Genesis: Truman, Jews, and the Origins of the Arab/Israeli Conflict, by John B. Judis
• The Rejection of Palestinian Self-Determination, by Jeremy R. Hammond
• The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, by Ilan Pappe
• The General's Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine, by Miko Peled
• Assault on the Liberty, by James N. Ennes Jr.
• Wilson's War: How Woodrow Wilson's Great Blunder Led to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and World War II, by Jim Powell
• American Empire: Before the Fall, by Bruce Fein
• Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly World, by Jonathan Kwitny
• The Emergency State: America's Pursuit of Absolute Security at All Costs, by David C. Unger
• The War State: The Cold War Origins Of The Military-Industrial Complex And The Power Elite, 1945-1963, by Michael Swanson
• Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, by Nicholson Baker
• Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy, by Percy Greaves
• Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath, by John Toland
• Day of Deceit: The Truth about  FDR and Pearl Harbor, by Robert Stinnett
• Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, by Daniel Ellsberg
• The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, by Nick Turse
• "War is the Health of the State," by Randolph Bourne
• “War, Peace, and the State,” by Murray Rothbard
• “‘Ancient History’: U.S. Conduct in the Middle East Since World War II and the Folly of Intervention,” by Sheldon Richman
• "War's Still a Racket," by Sheldon Richman

By the way, if you can't help but think of this day as "memorial day," then at least spend part of it remembering how the U.S. government has caused the deaths of so many people.

Patriot's Lament

On Saturday, Joshua Bennett interviewed me about America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited on his radio program, "Patriot's Lament." Here's the audio.

Ya Gotta Do What You Gotta Do

Since we can never make airports perfectly safe, I guess we'll just have to liquidate the empire and stop bombing Muslim countries. Oh well, ya gotta do what you gotta do.

Put This on Your Resume, Mrs. Clinton

Can you imagine Hillary Clinton sitting in judgment over who is and is not qualified to be president? 

Ponder this: in 2011 ISIS was not in Libya, first, because Libya was not an open war zone and, second, because ISIS did not exist. Then the US, at Clinton's insistence, bombed Libya, helping to overthrow the government, while fomenting a jihadist war against the Syrian government. Today the US is fighting ISIS in Libya, Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere. 

Put that on your famous resume, Mrs. Clinton. 

The Constitution, Tom Woods, and I

I was the guest on The Tom Woods Show podcast yesterday. Our topic: America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited.

Nakba Day, 2016

Today is Nakba Day, the day set aside to remember the catastrophe that befell the Palestinian Arabs in 1948 in connection with the creation of the “Jewish State” of Israel. Over 700,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes and villages, and many massacred, in an ethnic-cleansing operation that should shock the conscience. Hundreds of villages were erased and replaced by Jewish towns. The Arabs who remained in the Israeli state that was imposed on them by the UN and Zionist military forces have been second-class citizens, at best, from that time.

Since 1967 the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, many of whom were refugees from the 1948 catastrophe, have lived under the boot of the Israeli government. Their day-to-day lives are under the arbitrary control of the Israeli government. Gaza is an open-air blockaded prison camp subject to periodic military onslaughts (the latest was last year), while the West Bank is relentlessly gobbled up by Jewish-only settlements and violated by a wall that surrounds Palestinian towns and cuts people’s homes off from their farms. For the Israeli ruling elite, the so-called peace process is a sham. Benjamin Netanyahu, who is now embarking on an unprecedented fourth term as prime minister, rejects any realistic plan to let the Palestinians go -- that is, have their own country on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. He insists that they must recognize Israel as the Jewish state, that is, as the state of Jews everywhere, even though it sits largely on stolen property (PDF) -- which raises an interesting question: Is subjugation of the Palestinians an instantiation of Jewish values or is it not? If it is (as apparently most of its supporters believe), then what does that say for Jewish values? If it is not, then what does that say for Israel's purported status as the Jewish State?

Again, I note that the best short introduction to the catastrophe is Jeremy Hammond’s The Rejection of Palestinian Self-Determination: The Struggle for Palestine and the Roots of the Israeli-Arab Conflict. Further, Hammond debunks the myth that the United Nations created the state of Israel.



Additional reading: "Why the Inconvenient Truths of the Nakba Must Be Recognized," by Tom Pessah; "The Anti-Semite's Best Friend," by Jonathan Cook;  "Israel Must Recognize Its Responsibility for the Nakba, the Palestinian Tragedy," by Saeb Erekat; and "The sacking of Jaffa during the Palestinian Nakba, as narrated by three Omars," by Allison Deger.

(Another version of this post appeared previously.)

Guess Who

At least one presidential candidate speaks favorably of printing money to pay the national debt and of taxing the rich. At least one candidate promises not to raise taxes on the middle class, although inflation (printing money) and tariffs are taxes on the middle class (and everyone else).

What Were We Thinking?

What made any of us think that Republicans wouldn't go for Trump? I mean, what were we thinking?