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Yeah, that would get it attacked by the US as part of our corporate welfare program.

I don't see any difference in how things are operating with Obama than they operated with Bush/Clinton/Bush/Etc. and things would be the same with McCain with the exception that republicans wouldn't be complaining over the issues they are now even though the same things would be coming to pass. Seems the republican party did want McCain and if he isn't their pick again in 2012 someone just like him and who ever the (D)'s pick will be.

Thanks for the excerpt but it does nothing to change my comments from above. And no, Barak, I didn't read nor did I need to read a 500 page paper to address your comment. Sometimes, experience in the actual process itself provides more than an adequate basis to address the issue.

You show me a guy who doesn't have the weight of court enforcement of it's orders hanging over his head and I'll show you the guy who won't expend any effort whatsoever to satisfy an award or judgment entered against him.

JasonB...Until you get a little more time here under your belt, I wouldn't be questioning why members project themselves into a conversation. If you want to address a specific point, then do so, but your comment above will draw little more than an "Ahhh, that's cute" kind of response from folks who've put in their time here dealing with the abyss our friend Barak calls home.

Ah...but you don't have experience in the actual process itself, unless you've been practicing since before 1925.

Neither have I, which puts us on an equal footing.

Or perhaps not so horribly equal, after all, as it turns out, because I've read the paper (and several other works that reference it, among other things).

(grin)

Let me just ask you this: if private arbitration can't possibly work without State courts to enforce its judgments, then how could the lex mercatoria have been so successful for over four hundred years?

How does Barakistan defend itself from the Aggressors of the world. Could free men organize a defense against a neighbor like Saddam or Hugo Chavez in time to thwart an invasion and enslavement? Would Barakistan be a sitting duck for takeover?

Not illegitimate: immoral.

All governments are by definition legitimate--or at least legitimized: that's what differentiates them from gangs of thugs.


I prefer to see US troops in general as misled or deceived by the State's intellectuals, like most of the rest of the population, than as actively evil. Not all libertarians agree with me on that, of course, but I've known too many soldiers to believe otherwise.

You, for example: I'll bet you're under the impression that you spent your career defending American freedom, right? That's what I mean. Motivated by honorable intentions, but deceived by government propaganda.


Ah...you're one of the special-deference-for-the-military folks, hey? You think a soldier is somehow fundamentally worthy of more respect than a shopkeeper or an assembly-line worker? I suppose I can see, then, why you'd have a problem with me.

They did in medieval Ireland, several times. Of course Oliver Cromwell finally did manage to conquer them and make it stick, but he had to kill a third of them to do it.

Curious, since all things are hypothetical here, if the soldier's were actually saving your butt, I mean - invading army had guns pointed at you, soldiers came and saved your bacon, to what personal and societal regards should they be held? Would it be any different if it were a loved one instead?

And does it matter compared to people that were not being paid to be soldier's and therefore did nothing?

So . . .

Didn't you just disprove your entire premise?

A good question.

Of soldiers who were actually protecting Americans from invaders, rather than killing brown people on the other side of the world to save the jobs of American politicians, the standard government propaganda about defending American liberties would be true. It'd be a definite step forward.

I'd certainly be personally grateful to any soldier who saved my bacon, same as I would to a doctor or a lawyer or a plumber who did. Soldiers as a class, though, are just people with jobs that they do, some well, some not, and it's unclear to me that they're fundamentally worthy of any more respect or deference than any other tax-feeder.

Does that answer your question?


I don't understand. Can you rephrase?

"soldiers who were actually protecting Americans from invaders, rather than killing brown people on the other side of the world to save the jobs of American politicians"



sigh....you know, Barak, sometimes you sound just like Hugo Chavez

No.

If Ireland had been a State, Cromwell would still have been able to conquer it by killing a third of its population. As a matter of fact, it could be argued that if Ireland had been a State, Cromwell could have conquered it much more easily. The US conquered Japan, for example, by killing only 0.3% of its population--a proportion a hundred times smaller.

So no, Cromwell's eventually-successful conquest of Ireland does not demonstrate that States are more resistant to invasion than free societies; it leans further toward demonstrating just the opposite.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Read the book entitled "Target Switzerland" it will answer your question.

And Ireland is a free republic today with Irish culture on the rise. Where's Britain heading?

You are perplexed because I say that a free society cannot exist without government, since only government can create the framework within which we have liberty. I say this, however, because history has taught me that man's natural state in any sort of advanced society is to be in either one of two classes, subject or ruling.

The ruling class has traditionally been that class which controls the levers of state power over the remainder of the people, and tends to be a very tiny percentage of the over all population. The only two conditions which alter this situation are 1) when the ruling class is very distant from the people, and the people live as if there were no ruling class at all, or 2) when the people at large impose government to one degree or another on the ruling class and on the state's power (such as happened in England starting with the imposition of the Magna Carta), power which the ruling class would otherwise wield entirely according to its own whims.

Government is, in other words, the solution to the natural state of the majority of men in society, i.e., that of mere subjects to the state, and of the ruling class that wields its power. Government, by the imposition of the rule of law, restrains the state, its rulers, and its agents, thus carving out for The People various spheres of liberty, i.e., refuges against the state's power.

If, for example, while government is in place and functioning according to its properly laid foundations (as the Founders might have phrased it), an agent of the rulers of the state chose to arrest you (a non-member of the ruling oligarchy) because you were speaking out against a member of the ruling oligarchy (or one of its agents), then you are empowered by government (which has imposed the rule of law on the wielders of state power) to assert your rights. The state actor is then bound by the rule of law to either show legal cause before a neutral judge, or release you.

You were able, in the above scenario, to successfully assert your rights as against the state only because of the existence of government, which both established and imposed the restraints of the rule of law (the opposite of arbitrary rule) on the power of the state.

Stated more concisely, government creates the only framework within which authentic liberty can, in the natural order of things, exist.

In example number one above, practical liberty exists only because the rulers are distant and unaware of your existence, but should the rulers or their agents ever come into contact with a subject in that context, and there was no government to restrain them, the rulers may act arbitrarily with regard to that individual subject, there being no government to impose on them the rule of law. Liberty, in that case, is illusory, not real.

That leaves ONLY number two, above. Only when government is in place and functioning according to its properly laid foundations can all human beings living in a society of any level of advancement enjoy authentic liberty, liberty being defined as the legal freedom to do that which is your right to do within the context of a prohibition on arbitrary action by the state, its rulers, and its agents.

Certainly, I can rephrase. But you already answered it in a way.

Taking out the politics of the brown people comment, the context is that you consider a soldier, who is saving lives from invaders as no more or less important than any other tax payer, essentially since they are doing a job. Being a tax-payer and doing their chosen tax paying job is the criteria here.

However, a lawyer that is not financially compensated to save lives and therefore does not, is not be held in any different regard according to the premise that they are paying taxes for their chosen occupation.

I am not sure how many soldiers actually go into the service wanting to be used as a political pawn. But isn't the fact that they are knowingly accepting harms way in defense of an abstraction such as liberty, patriotism, and your (personal) rights and bacon, worthy of a twinge more respect than someone who isn't?

Does the gratitude only take place when you are personally served?

Good topic here.

What happens when your government becomes a tool of the ruling class? What do we do have a civil war to replace the ruling class with a new ruling class?

If we accept as a given, as I do, that there will always be a state power, the choice becomes 1) a state power which is bound up in the rule of law, i.e., under the control of government, or 2) a state power which is not bound up in the rule of law, i.e., not under the control of government.

It is the nature of the state to attempt always to free itself from the restraint of government. The degree to which this can be forestalled is the degree to which the government has been well designed.

This is the imperfect state in which we are forced to live in this world. It is this way because of human nature, and human nature is, for all practical purposes, immutable. Best we can do, therefore, is learn from history ways to make government better, as the Founders did. It will never be perfect, but in 1789 we came closer than any other society in the history of the planet. That would likely, therefore, be a good place to start in our efforts to restore good government.

This government and nation-state is over so where do we go from here? A civil war?

We are never going to get the present nation-state back to 1787. Heck, as soon as the ink dried the present nation-state started to unravel.

If human nature is human nature than there is no hope. Only war with occasional peace breaking out from time to time.