Étienne de La Boétie

"Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces."

co The Mises Store.

Hm. Can't link it right now. Wonder what's up. Here's the ebook.

"The State is just

this bitch that we've been married to for the last 10,000 years."

--Stefan Molyneux, podcast FDR 1645.

Here's something to think about

If you like that song, the guy wants you to do something.

Here's a fun interview of Doug Casey

by the Whiskey and Gunpowder boys: Anarchy Is the Solution to the Evil Idiocy of the State. And here's an interview of him and Tom Woods:



Update: here's a bit from Anarchy, Part II:

Doug: I find the concept of a necessary evil rather repugnant. It’s largely sophistry, usually trotted out to justify some type of criminality. Can anything that’s evil really be necessary? And can anything that’s necessary really be evil?

Entirely apart from that, people say the state is necessary because that’s all they’ve ever known. But it’s not, in fact, part of the cosmic firmament. There have been times and places in history when central authority was so distant, or negligent, that the people did function — and prosper — in what was essentially a functioning anarchy.

What's Nietzche talking about here?

A little guessing game.

Ah! even in your ears, ye great souls, it whispereth its gloomy lies! Ah! it findeth out the rich hearts which willingly lavish themselves!

Yea, it findeth you out too, ye conquerors of the old God! Weary ye became of the conflict, and now your weariness serveth the new idol!

Heroes and honourable ones, it would fain set up around it, the new idol! Gladly it basketh in the sunshine of good consciences,--the cold monster!

Everything will it give YOU, if YE worship it, the new idol: thus it purchaseth the lustre of your virtue, and the glance of your proud eyes.

It seeketh to allure by means of you, the many-too-many! Yea, a hellish artifice hath here been devised, a death-horse jingling with the trappings of divine honours!

Yea, a dying for many hath here been devised, which glorifieth itself as life: verily, a hearty service unto all preachers of death!

You don't have to look far here to find out.

I'd say it's funny that I didn't remember that passage, but reading Also Sprach Zarathustra is like hitting yourself in the head repeatedly with a 2x4. It does feel good when you quit.

Oops! Forgot to H/T William Norman Grigg at Lewrockwell.com

Here are two of Stefan Molyneux's videos

that I think are particularly hard hitting:


An internet aquaintance has translated this into Finnish. I'm working on reading that.

Update: I just replaced that version with the one with Chinese subtitles.

Here's the other one:



Stef misspeaks Joe Stack's name a couple times. I wonder if he was making a freudian connection with Richard Speck on the first one. No guesses on the later one.

I like this guy

I like Marc Stevens too. Here he is reading from Lysander Spooner's No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority:

Molyneux:

People will do anything to believe that they are good.

Men will die and kill for the State, if they believe that a good man fights for his country. People will surrender more than half their income to the State, if they believe that the State is helping the poor, housing the homeless, healing the sick, or other such nonsense. They will cheer blank-eyed murderers if they are convinced that a good person "supports the troops." They will give up their liberties if they believe that doing so is "patriotic."

The lesson – and our potential salvation – is that morality rules the world. Whoever controls morality controls the hearts, minds and future of mankind. Morality is the invisible physics that rules all our fundamental choices. Why do thousands of Muslims kneel together? Because they believe that they are good for doing so. Why do parents still herd their children into the vicious pens of government-run schools? Because they believe that education is essential, and without the State, poor people would be a trapped, ignorant underclass. Why do they support spiraling taxes and murderous waiting times in state-run health care systems? Because they don’t want poor people dying in the streets.

Our enemies, the statists, know this well. Look at their language. ‘The Patriot Act.’ Who doesn’t want to be a patriot? Social Security. Health and Welfare. Who wants to be against those things? Medicare. Who’s against medical care?

Staring at their pillaged paychecks and property taxes, people hate the State in their hearts, but they feel guilty for it, because the State owns the moral discourse (which is, incidentally, why the State had to take control of the schools first). As they say, once a Catholic, always a Catholic. The same is true for morality. Once a statist, always a statist. We can fight all we want, but if we don’t utterly condemn the morality of the statist argument, we will always lose.

You woke me up, guys!

Actually, I've been making a wooden bucket. I bought a couple books a plane and a small anvil for the purpose. I'll try to get you a picture of what I've got so far, as soon as I track down my digital camera.

I ran across this pamphlet, NATURAL LAW or THE SCIENCE OF JUSTICE, by Lysander Spooner yesterday:

Chapter I, The Science of Justice

Section I

The science of mine and thine - the science of justice - is the science of all human rights: of all a man's rights of person and property; of all his rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is the science which alone can tell any man what he can, and cannot, do; what he can, and cannot, have; what he can, and cannot, say, without infringing the rights of any other person.

It is the science of peace; and the only science of peace: since it is the science which alone can tell us on what conditions mankind can live in peace, or ought to live in peace, with each other.

These conditions are simply these: viz., first, that each man shall do, towards every other, all that justice requires him to do; as, for example, that he shall pay his debts, that he shall return borrowed or stolen property to its owner, and that he shall make reparation for any injury he may have done to the person or property of another.

The second condition is that each man shall abstain from doing to another, anything which justice forbids him to do; as, for example, that he shall abstain from committing theft, robbery, arson, murder, or any other crime against the person or property of another.

So long as these conditions are fulfilled, men are at peace, and ought to remain at peace, with each other. But when either of these conditions is violated, men are at war. And they must necessarily remain at war until justice is re-established.

Through all time, so far as history informs us, wherever mankind have attempted to live in peace with each other, both the natural instincts, and the collective wisdom of the human race, have acknowledged and prescribed, as an indispensable condition, obedience to this one only universal obligation: viz., that each should live honestly towards every other.

The ancient maxim makes the sum of a man's legal duty to his fellow men to be simply this: "To live honestly, to hurt no one, to give to every one his due." [“Honeste vivere, neminem laedere, suum cuique tribuere" - Ulpianus, Regularum in Digesto, lib. I, 10, 1].

This entire maxim is really expressed in the single words, to live honestly: since to live honestly is to hurt no one, and give to every one his due.

Or, as The Duke put it, "I won't be wronged. I won't be insulted. I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people. I expect the same in return."

Did I say that before? That word "wronged" seems a little ill-defined. As, of course, does "insulted." And what are the consequences? These thing need to be laid out plainly. Spooner starts to do just that here.