Tom Palven
10-02-2009, 04:14 AM
In 1996, before George Bush's extravagant wars of choice and Barack Obama's extravagant bank and big business bailouts, Claire Wolfe began her book "101 Things to do Before the Revolution", by saying "America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to change the system, but it's too soon to shoot the bastards." Recently, on the web and elsewhere we see little state secessionist movements cropping up from North to South and East to West, and people asking "Is it Claire Wolfe time?" Some are pointing to the recent "Tea Parties" and asking if something like another Kent State incident could set off a successful revolution in the US.
Absolutely not. Although it is sometimes said that it takes only a tiny percentage of committed activists to lead a successful revolution; perhaps less than 5% of the population, along with a majority of people giving tacit approval, in the US this would mean millions of insurgents or tax rebels, and right now almost all of the people who are extremely dissatisfied with the Obama administration are waiting anxiously for the next election so they can throw the rascals out and install Sarah Palin or Mitt Romney to provide "change they can believe in". It is most definitely not Claire Wolfe time.
Some potentiial insurgents in the US already have their revolutionary heroes such as the fictional Dagny Taggart and John Galt of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged,1957; Murray Rothbard, author of For a New Liberty,1974; Timothy McVeigh, who bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in retaliation for the federal massacre of a religiously incorrrect group in Waco, Texas; and Carl Drega, who fought authorities in the "Live Free or Die" state of New Hampshire. Some day historians may say that the second American revolution began in the 20th century, but it will take decades to gain momentum.
Stability and spontaneous order in society must develop from the ground up, and cannot legitimately be imposed in sledgehammer fashion from above and afar by traditional coercive colonial methods. The road to prosperity, as Adam Smith noted in The Wealth of Nations, 1776, and which Thomas Jefferson endorsed, is not better government, but less government--less tariffs, subsidies, licensing, and bureaucratic meddling in general, and thus Obama, despite a probably good heart, is pushing both the US in exactly the wrong direction, not that any Republican or any other politicians have any real intention of, or the remotest possibility of, given the nature of politicians and Congress, changing direction
The direction the US is taking is down Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, but it will be years, if ever, before the majority of Americans realize it. The Russian Empire did not partially dissolve until there was literally no bread in the stores. The few things on Russian grocery shelves were such oddities as 3-gallon jars of pickled cherries, and still, when Gorbachev threw in the towel there were many old Russians who longed for the days of Stalin, thinking that increased repression and regulation would set things right.
But., let's look on the birght side. The coming collapse of the US economy can be viewed as an opportunity to advance individual liberty. The Magna Carta dealt a blow to the prevailing politically correct belief in the Divine Rights of Kings and Popes of it's period. The Bill of Rights in the US constitution struck another blow for human freedom despite the fact that blacks were not free and women were not allowed to vote. The next step in the evolution of individual liberty may be what law professor Butler Shaffer desribed in Boundaries of Order, 2009, where society is organized outside the boxes of Chruches and States, in a horizontal fashion instead of a pryramidal fashion with a politician at the top- a "Decider-in-Chief, as George Bush would have it.
Some decades before Christ's Sermon on the Mount Rabbi Hillel said "Do not unto others that which is hateful to you. This is the whole of the law; the rest is commentary." And a hell of a lot of commentary there is. The US income tax code alone, available on line from the government printing office, is thousands of pages long, and there are tens of thousands of other laws at the federal, state, and local levels.
Three hundered years before Hillel, Confucius was allegedly asked if he could describe ethics in one word, and he said "Shu", which means reciprocity. This may be the earliest known recognition of the Golden Rule. It may be the only rule we really need. The rest is not only commentary, but probably inefficient, stifling, inhumane, and probably counterproductive.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon stated that: "To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so." When one considers that no on e wants to be governed in this fashion, being bullied by authorities, one can see that The Golden Rule is completely compatible with individual liberty as opposed to collectivism with politicians claiming partial owenership of all our lives.
In short, no, it is not Claire Wolfe time. Despite the further impending economic crises in the US, there will be bread in the stores for a long time. The health care reform package will help bankrupt the the Fourth Reich and and perhaps discourage new incursions by it's foreign legions, but a new VAT may delay bankruptcy, keeping the US at that awkward stage. We can hope and try to plan our lives so that when it is Claire Wolfe time that we don't have to shoot the bastards; that we can have a modern "velvet revolution", and that we can work to achieve a peaceful American Revolution II.
Absolutely not. Although it is sometimes said that it takes only a tiny percentage of committed activists to lead a successful revolution; perhaps less than 5% of the population, along with a majority of people giving tacit approval, in the US this would mean millions of insurgents or tax rebels, and right now almost all of the people who are extremely dissatisfied with the Obama administration are waiting anxiously for the next election so they can throw the rascals out and install Sarah Palin or Mitt Romney to provide "change they can believe in". It is most definitely not Claire Wolfe time.
Some potentiial insurgents in the US already have their revolutionary heroes such as the fictional Dagny Taggart and John Galt of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged,1957; Murray Rothbard, author of For a New Liberty,1974; Timothy McVeigh, who bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in retaliation for the federal massacre of a religiously incorrrect group in Waco, Texas; and Carl Drega, who fought authorities in the "Live Free or Die" state of New Hampshire. Some day historians may say that the second American revolution began in the 20th century, but it will take decades to gain momentum.
Stability and spontaneous order in society must develop from the ground up, and cannot legitimately be imposed in sledgehammer fashion from above and afar by traditional coercive colonial methods. The road to prosperity, as Adam Smith noted in The Wealth of Nations, 1776, and which Thomas Jefferson endorsed, is not better government, but less government--less tariffs, subsidies, licensing, and bureaucratic meddling in general, and thus Obama, despite a probably good heart, is pushing both the US in exactly the wrong direction, not that any Republican or any other politicians have any real intention of, or the remotest possibility of, given the nature of politicians and Congress, changing direction
The direction the US is taking is down Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, but it will be years, if ever, before the majority of Americans realize it. The Russian Empire did not partially dissolve until there was literally no bread in the stores. The few things on Russian grocery shelves were such oddities as 3-gallon jars of pickled cherries, and still, when Gorbachev threw in the towel there were many old Russians who longed for the days of Stalin, thinking that increased repression and regulation would set things right.
But., let's look on the birght side. The coming collapse of the US economy can be viewed as an opportunity to advance individual liberty. The Magna Carta dealt a blow to the prevailing politically correct belief in the Divine Rights of Kings and Popes of it's period. The Bill of Rights in the US constitution struck another blow for human freedom despite the fact that blacks were not free and women were not allowed to vote. The next step in the evolution of individual liberty may be what law professor Butler Shaffer desribed in Boundaries of Order, 2009, where society is organized outside the boxes of Chruches and States, in a horizontal fashion instead of a pryramidal fashion with a politician at the top- a "Decider-in-Chief, as George Bush would have it.
Some decades before Christ's Sermon on the Mount Rabbi Hillel said "Do not unto others that which is hateful to you. This is the whole of the law; the rest is commentary." And a hell of a lot of commentary there is. The US income tax code alone, available on line from the government printing office, is thousands of pages long, and there are tens of thousands of other laws at the federal, state, and local levels.
Three hundered years before Hillel, Confucius was allegedly asked if he could describe ethics in one word, and he said "Shu", which means reciprocity. This may be the earliest known recognition of the Golden Rule. It may be the only rule we really need. The rest is not only commentary, but probably inefficient, stifling, inhumane, and probably counterproductive.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon stated that: "To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so." When one considers that no on e wants to be governed in this fashion, being bullied by authorities, one can see that The Golden Rule is completely compatible with individual liberty as opposed to collectivism with politicians claiming partial owenership of all our lives.
In short, no, it is not Claire Wolfe time. Despite the further impending economic crises in the US, there will be bread in the stores for a long time. The health care reform package will help bankrupt the the Fourth Reich and and perhaps discourage new incursions by it's foreign legions, but a new VAT may delay bankruptcy, keeping the US at that awkward stage. We can hope and try to plan our lives so that when it is Claire Wolfe time that we don't have to shoot the bastards; that we can have a modern "velvet revolution", and that we can work to achieve a peaceful American Revolution II.