Hans Hoppe Welcomes You to his Fantasy Island
I have often observed that libertarian principles can corrupt the character even of good men. Whether that is the reason or simply personal vanity, but Hans Hoppe's account (on VDARE) of the departure of Libertarians from the John Randolph Club, while it is filled with many intelligent and useful insights, is founded on an historical lie. The lie is that Hoppe, Rockwell, and the others left the Club over ideological differences having to do with the Buchanan campaign's economic policies, which we supported because we refused to study economics. He also complains about how difficult I am to get along with, but anyone who has experienced Hans' towering ego--"You should invite me to more meetings because I am a celebrity"--will know with how many grains of salt to take that observation
The Club was certainly divided on the economic nationalism that Buchanan had borrowed from Sam Francis. The split was not libertarian versus conservative since, on balance, Clyde Wilson and I (among many others) were never nationalists, much less economic nationalists. I supported Buchanan partly because I thought he was the best and most honest candidate to offer himself to the voters in many a year and partly because he was and remains a friend. I know personal loyalty does not mean much to libertarians, but that is one more sign of their insanity. I did not expect Buchanan to have the chance to test Sam's theories and since I agreed with a good deal of what he was saying, I thought it more polite not to criticize views for which I had some moral sympathy but which I regarded as economically impractical, except insofar as it would be useful to attack global free trade as an instrument of internationalism aimed at hurting the American people. As Hoppe must know, our tax policies do not give American industry a fair shake.
Then what did cause the libertarian defection? The truth is that Hoppe, backed by Rockwell, precipitated the exodus. Hoppe, in a speech attacking economic nationalism in fairly extreme terms, referred to Sam Francis's position as a form of national socialism. Later in the meeting, I took the opportunity in my speech to suggest that the man who had referred in a previous meeting to "Jews, Gypsies, and other human garbage" was in no position to compare anyone with the Nazis. I went on to say that the essence of the JRC was vigorous and open debate among friends who disagreed with each other. Name-calling that gave weapons to our enemies was a moral betrayal of the Club and its members.
Rockwell had vigorously campaigned for Pat in 1992, and so long as Murray was alive he had not regarded his economic views as an insuperable obstacle to libertarian support. But, somewhat to my surprise, he backed Hoppe all the way, and he led the libertarian walkout. have heard from some, who would deny it today, that Rockwell gave orders not to attend meetings or write for Chronicles. From what I have heard from disgruntled Misesians, they run their program in Auburn like--to quote a phrase--"a Stalinist indoctrination camp"--in which every one is required to cheer for the home team. At the fateful meeting, I talked with my friend Burt Blumert, a major supporter of the Mises Institute and a good man. He said, and I can remember it very well:
"Tom, when we started the Club, the two sides were fairly evenly matched. With Murray gone, we just don't have the same power. All Lew has is Hans, and he has to stick with him." I might add that Hoppe's complaint against the cheap hotels in which we held our meetings was remedied as soon as the libertarians left. A number of their followers were impoverished dead-beats who complained about high prices. We have held meetings in quite nice hotels in Washington, Philadelphia, and Chicago, and the next meeting will be held in the very beautiful Mills House in Charleston.
I understood the difficult position Rockwell was in: In general, Libertarians cannot tolerate dissent, and he must have been taking flak from his supporters and donors even for hanging around with us. I remember when Ed Crane criticized Rockwell and Rothbard for associating with people who did not appreciate sexual diversity, and for a year they never referred to the head of Cato except as S.D. Eddy. I never quarreled with Burt of Justin Raimondo or David Gordon. I would have remained on good terms with Rockwell, if I had not received a series of reports of his hypocrisy and slander. One small example will do. When I remarked to him that Joe Sobran was now calling himself a libertarian, Rockwell asked me--entirely in jest--whether he was a tax cheat or a child molester, explaining that people became libertarians to find a justification for their moral failings. Imagine my surprise when Rockwell began telling me that I had authored this rather brilliant insight.
I would rather not have had to write this column. I will go to my grave with a sense of gratitude for having known Murray Rothbard and with respect for the achievements of several libertarians I have known, such as Justin Raimondo, David Gordon, and Hans Hermann Hoppe, but when Hoppe's dishonest and self-serving account was published on a website directed by someone we regarded as our friend, I thought it necessary to speak out.
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You did the right thing.
Hoppe is an astonishingly arrogant character. I am afraid the man never struck me as sincere, and seemed rather an intellectual celebrity of sorts.
Oh, and by the way sir, I have not seen a man use so many quotation marks in an article.
My non-pedantic but intelligent high school English teachers always remarked that such a writing style shows a manner of making yourself look like only you and the reader know better.
I think you must be referring to another article. Here, so far as I can tell, the quotation marks all indicate actual quotations. I do have the habit of putting words like "Christian" and "conservative" in quotation marks to avoid tedious expressions such as, "self-styled" and "soi-disant." In a world of lies, irony becomes a habit, as it was in the old Soviet Empire.
I was referring to Hoppe's article on VDare, not you.
Sorry!
I remember Hoppe's speech at the JRC. I thought then, who is this presumptous foreigner with his absurd accent lecturing Americans on what we should think? At the time, Hoppe was living here, but he has since abandoned America, as he had previously abandoned Germany, and as he will no doubt abandon Turkey as soon as better prospects come along. Betrayal is of the essence to Hoppe's brand of libertarianism.
I also find it amusing that a man who advocates stateless anarchy dismisses Buchananism as impractical. What Hoppe advocates is on the same level of rationality as belief in astrology, the healing power of crystals, and Atlantis.
I read the title of this post and I thought, "Is Hoppe starting his own libertarian seasteading project?"
Dr. Hoppe mistakes disagreement for ignorance (of the holy writ of Austrian economics). Those of us who liked Buchanan's economic nationalism had grown skeptical of Austrian free trade theories as we watched the American industrial base migrate overseas. The actual process is not trade at all but wage arbitrage (as described by the professional economist Dr. Paul Craig Roberts). The end result is a de-industrialized, low-wage economy dominated by Wal-Mart type vendors and not the rosy scenario the Austrian ideologues are selling.
Mr. Van Oosbree's comment @7 is exactly right.
I'll throw my lot in with economic ignoramuses if the alternative is moral/social ignoramues.
What a strange ideology it is to believe in total freedom except for the freedom to say "Hey, maybe this isn't such a good idea" or "Perhaps we should think more about this" or "Have we really thought this out?"
Another phrase that our once colleagues are not at liberty to say is, "However in practice..."
I recall one JRC meeting where Dr. Hoppe was speaking, and I was outside the room in the hallway talking to the late Joe Brown. Dr. Hoppe was making some disparaging remarks about Jews, and Joe was very upset. He said that Hoppe should not be saying things like that. On a happier note, I am looking forward to the upcoming meeting in Charleston.
Just to make sure that no one would mistake Harold O.J. Brown for an ecumenical liberal, he was a stout Christian, honestly critical of Israel and cognizant of the Muslim threat. He had not a drop of cowardice in him. As a Christian, however, he seriously disapproved of any attempt to stir up group hatreds based on stereotypes. For my neoconfederate friends, I would also like to draw attention to the fact that he was basically Southern (Florida) and left the deserts of the Midwest for the paradise of the Carolinas. And, I might add, he was Aaron Wolf's beloved teacher.
Although I've always appreciated that Hoppe has been more of a realist about immigration than most other Lew Rockwell libertarians (whose position now seems in no substantial way to differ from that of Linda Chavez or Carlos Slim), I was taken back by Hoppe's piece at VDare, which otherwise is an excellent website and has been critical of many of the absurdities of libertarianism:
http://www.vdare.com/misc/080514_pendleton.htm
Libertarianism is a fantasy utopia -- a form of economic reductionism not unlike Marxism. As I've said before, if libertarians ever are successful at destroying the therapeutic state, what will arise in its place will not be the deracinated economic individualism that is preached in the gospel of libertarianism but a form of communitarian tribalism -- the manner in which man has lived since time immemorial. The libertarian's atomistic individualism lives in a symbiotic relationship with the managerial state.
Libertarians have some good instincts and their desire to end the managerial state is certainly laudable -- and I consider myself a friend to numerous libertarians -- but I have never appreciated their peculiar obsessions. Even at the end of the day, many of the best intentioned libertarians seem to be more beholden to a system of thought than to the West, its people and traditions. For me, the hypothetical question whether I'd live in a socialist England or libertarian Brazil is not even a question requiring thought, but apparently for many libertarians it does.
Painting with broad strokes, one can observe certain tendencies in the history of Western man -- at least until the last century or so. Western man has largely been religious; from the ancient pagans to Western Christianity, man has found comfort in religion. Western man has largely been ethnocentric and preferred homogenous communities. Western man has largely been tribalistic, from the Athenian democracy or Roman republic predicated upon tribal systems to modern European nations still reflecting the Völkerwanderung. Yet, when looking at these general patterns, one can see that libertarianism truly is a product of the modern state. Not only would the libertarian's precepts have appeared patently absurd to European man for almost all of his recorded history, they apparently still have no widespread appeal today. The European Right largely rejects libertarianism as form of puerile American utopianism, and even within the U.S. libertarians are an extremely small minority. (One could say that that actual right-wingers are a small minority, but at least they, unlike the libertarian, can take comfort in the fact that many of their ideas were actually taken seriously for thousands of years.) In short, libertarianism is contrary to human nature, as evidenced by Aristotle who long ago said man is a "political [i.e. social] animal," contrasted with the Marxist / libertarian who wants to maintain that man is a deracinated "economic animal."
Could it be the German coming out?
I have noticed that libertarians tend to cherry-pick history the same way regular leftists do. They are talking a lot these days about Nullification as it were a trick to be pulled out of a bag, with no understanding that it has to be an act of a State as a distinct and self-conscious polity---which no longer exists.
Dr. Fleming, I agree. Professor Brown was one of the finest men I have ever known. He was a fine Christian and a true gentleman.
Yes, "regular leftists" as opposed to the libertarian variety. It is the mark of the true ideologue and religious fanatic that human life and human history can only be viewed according to one narrow perspective. If one is a Catholic fanatic, then all Protestants have been wrong-headed all the time, but political ideologues seem to go further because no aspect of existence is exempt from their one-size-fits-all approach. Rockwell defends McDonalds as the purveyor of good and wholesome food simply because the chain makes a lot of money. A sober libertarian would be content to argue that people have a right to make their own mistakes and if they want to kill themselves eating junk food, that is their business (assuming our National Health Service does not have to take care of them). But, no, the freedom to choose almost turns into the glorification of bad choices. In political history, they turn real historical situations into abstractions. Thus if the South was right to secede, then so is Kosovo. They not only cannot distinguish between means and ends, but they fail, as Prof. Wilson points out, even to begin to understand what a genuine polity is, as opposed to a random collection of individuals whipped into line by an intolerable empire. I should add that HHH's other great weakness--other than his abstraction and ego-mania--is his ignorance of history, including German history. While he has some very good general insights, they are often marred by amateurish mistakes of fact and interpretation. Rothbard was prone to make these mistakes when he discussed the ancient or Medieval world, but he did make some detailed studies of American economic history that gave him a ballast that few libertarians have. One of the reasons they stand in awe of David Gordon is that he is possessed of genuinely humane learning in number of broad areas, not just economics and analytic philosophy. And, to beat the dead horse one more time, it is this historical ignorance and habit of abstraction that has made Tom Woods such a bad interpreter of Catholic theology. In effect, he turns the Catholic faith into one more abstract ideology on which he passes judgments. No need to study Spanish Scholastics when you can simply rewarm Rothbard's mistakes.
Thomas Fleming writes: As a Christian, however, he (O.J.Brown) seriously disapproved of any attempt to stir up group hatreds based on stereotypes.
In reference to Mr. Hoppe Clyde Wilson later writes: Could it be the German coming out?
Fascinating.
Many libertarians also have a very shallow understanding of Locke. For some reason, they never seem to leave the state of nature, and ignore the many changes Locke postulates for the very different state of civil society. Locke is very slippery, and one has to read him with great care, even leaving aside Straussian hermeneutics. They also seem to accept Locke's rather imperfect views on human psychology as Dr. Fleming has pointed out in the past. I have also greatly enjoyed my conversations with David Gordon, and have learned a great deal from his written work. Richard Vedder and Robert Higgs are others in the same vein.
It is the mark of the true ideologue and religious fanatic that human life and human history can only be viewed according to one narrow perspective.
I have, however, noticed that two sorts of people are particularly insipid with regard to their narrow-mindedness: libertarians, and Keynesian economists. Ideologues are always irritating, but whenever I hear or observe these two types even at their best I almost always--and the exceptions are few and very far between--get that nasty shivery panic reaction that comes from attempting to write on paper with a dry felt-tip pen.
Knowing only of it in words, the image in my head, of Rothbard giving that speech in Jan. 1992--I was still in high school, and it would be 8 more years before I read it-- that a group of folks who loved their country such as it was and cobbled as best they could a response in the wake of the Fall of Anti-Communism, will always have my respect.
These were people who could easily embrace post-anti-communists in a moment in time, all being forgiven.
I'll ditch the myth of the Founders faster than the crew of '92. It was afterall, Ron Paul or Pat Buchanan in 1992, use your illusion and all that, and the insider took the nod. With friends like Bill Hawkins, whom Mr. Piatak has quoted even after the fact, who knows the full inside baseball stuff.
Anyway, I like Chronicles because it's more anarchist then the anarchists and any seething paleo-lib should think about that.
Dr. Fleming,
The last paragraph I take as sincere and is all the difference one should consider.
Bah. How sad it is for me to see one my favorite writers attacking another favorite writer.
I hope you dont withdraw your previous mostly-praise of his wor, Dr Fleming ('serious thinker'). Even though Hoppe does have a massive ego, he is like water in the desert among libertarian writers. Most of the rest are one loud echo.
I do applaud those libertarians, however, who, although free traders, maintain that one can be an immigration restrictionist. In theory, this seems possible, although in practice it leaves much to be desired. It seems to me that rife free trade fosters a type of globalist and cosmopolitan mentality (which has aided in the inundation of mass immigration we've experienced over the last fifty years), while undermining self-sufficiency and isolationism (natural bulwarks against mass immigration).
Perhaps more dishonest, however, is the libertarian attempt to paint any opponent of free trade as statist or Marxists, which is odd considering that Karl Marx himself supported free trade. As Tom Piatak has pointed out, both Marx and Bastiat supported free trade for the purpose of undermining Western identities. Likewise, until recent times, most on the Right have been skeptical of free trade (the 19th century South notwithstanding). In Anthony Trollope's novels, for instance, it is almost always the radical Liberal (with a questionable character) advocating free trade, while he is opposed by the Tories and more conservative Liberals. Trollope does a masterful job at painting the free trader (e.g. in Can You Forgive Her?) as an ideologue.
As a side note, I notice that HHH in his Blogroll, unlike Chronicles, does not link to VDare:
http://www.hanshoppe.com/
@23
Marxists, and I believe Marx himself made a flip on the free trade argument later as it allowed certain corporations to expand their property and financial holdings. Among modern marxists, you will hear 'international investment' listed as a major sin.
A further thought: the more time that has passed since this 'break', the more egalitarian and boring the LvMI has gotten. They still have the usual good economic insights, and several remaining excellent writers (although Hoppe seems to have a limited involvement since his return to Europe) but at some point it started sounding just like all the usual libertarian claptrap - libertines and hedonists, with a large 'youth' component.
I have nothing against hedonism -- living well is a basic right of anyone. Intellectually lazy Groupthink, however, gets under my skin. Too many libertarians are sheep deep down, terrified that the People at the Top will yank their libertarian credentials and cast them out of paradise. Eeek! Horrors!! No more allies. It's lonely on the edge.
Mr. Roberts is welcome to play that Free trade--Marxist angle until the cows come home, but for the serious, more importantly, the serious anglo-celt, the subject is fiat currency, progressive income tax, and inheritance tax--those planks of the Communist Manifesto, which doesn't mention free trade in those ten planks--hmmmmmm....
Who comes out better on that account?
Any hoot, young lads, raise a toast to the good men of the original JRC:
...be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition
Fascinating ? Pathonomonic ?
I have sympathy like many here for libertarian principles but have come to the conclusion after many years of trying to define myself that I don't feel comfortable in any system of political thought that is an 'ism'. With regard to doctrinaire libertarians, I believe there is a disconnect between theory and reality.
About a year ago I got into an email exchange with a senior fellow at the Mises Institute over intellectual property laws. He argued that all patents should be abolished. I countered saying that small companies innovating and coming up with new intellectual property needed some protection for a period of time. The alternative is that the oligopolies will see the invention and basically steal the idea without repercussions. Since I am involved in technological startups I was talking from experience knowing the practices of the GE's of the world. After a few exchanges he refused to budge from his position and told me to stop arguing with him. I guess I am considered a heretic.
Having studied economics when I was younger, libertarian economics assumes free markets and a level playing field. They (libertarians) are even not opposed to monopolistic and oligarchic behavior saying that in the long run these aberrations are doomed due innovation and lower prices. Free and open markets are just a theory....not a reality and we live in a corporatist and statist system where the government, Wall Street and the oligopolies make a mockery of traditional libertarian principles.
While well intentioned and in many cases right on the mark, libertarians remind me of Darwinians. They refuse to acknowledge or integrate data that doesn't fit their model. When you tell them to look at the wreckage of the US industrial base or the hordes of illegals destroying our institutions like education and health care, they explain that in the long run the 'lost' jobs will return when economic parity is achieved through competition and the illegals will also assimilate and conform and become good Americans.
However, like Keynes said, in the long run we are all dead.......and the libertarians will not live to see the outcomes of their theories from the grave just as they do not see reality of today's world sitting in their ivory towers.
To Mr. Maxwell, I would remind him that I am setting the record straight. I have consistently praised and will continue to praise Hoppe's originality and his contributions to rightist thought. But after many years in which I have received information of the LvMI people's distortions, Hoppe's easily refutable fiction was one too many. If it had appeared on a strictly libertarian website, I would have ignored it, as we ignore most such attacks, but since it appeared on the website of someone I have for many years regarded as a friend, it could not be ignored without tacitly seeming to agree with it. There is nothing to be sad about. This incident taught me little I did not know about the libertarian movement whose members are all too often eager to lie in a good cause. But in that, they are scarcely unique.
The substance of Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s John Randolph Club talk is available at http://mises.org/daily/1766
Is it even accurate to consider Hoppe to be synonymous with the LvMI anymore? Sure, he still moves in their circles when he is in the US and talks at some of their conferences, but he seems to be moving in a much a different direction. He hasnt written much original material for them in years.
Hoppe is a much needed antidote on the right. He has the guts to admit what other libertarians do not - that a society of 'tolerant' libertines is doomed to fail or be conquered. Other libertarians really believe that the Meso-Americans and Muslims will embrace the free market and liberty, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Lew's putting some "perspective on the oil spill."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/59442.html
It's beyond ridiculous.
Here's my favorite sentence from that article:
" Yet by the mid-1990s—and I pride myself in having played an important role in this development—Lew Rockwell had transformed the institute, significantly located far away from Washington DC, in provincial Auburn, Alabama, into the very first and only free market think tank that had openly renounced the goal of limited government as impossible and come out instead as an unabashed advocate of anarcho-capitalism, deviating thereby from a narrow, "literal" interpretation of its name sake and yet staying true to his spirit in pursuing the rigorous, Misesian praxeo-logical method to its ultimate conclusion."
Abandon the impossible goal of limited government and pursue the much more achievable goal of anarcho-capitalism?!!
In the remainder of that sentence, he proceeds to tell us what we already know. That libertarians should completely remove themselves from politics and spend their time publishing academic papers for their journals.
Bruce, it's not what they SHOULD do.
It's what they have ALREADY done.
All libertarians have divorced themselves completely from the political process. At the moment, they have only one goal - keep saving and investing most of their income. They do this, because they understand business cycles and know that crack-brained government policies will cause more. Now, it's only about doing what one can to protect one's family's future. Not affecting any change. The most they do is educate others. The least they do is not vote - since liberty and democracy are incompatible.
As a believer of the merits of limited government, I still believe limited government is impossible to achieve. At least on a long-term consistent basis. Any government that once was small and honest eventually is no longer so. Those "anarcho-capitalists" still simply stick to educating themselves and others. They are not interested in changing anything. They know that the power and status quo involved in government is the reason for it being the way it is. Government will not voluntarily cut spending and reduce its intervention. Anybody can only protect his own family's future; changing government is impossible now.
This website used to regularly publish Paul Craig Roberts. Many Chronicles readers used to call him senile and crazy (rightly so). Paul Craig Roberts, supposedly a freedom fighter, himself had doubled the American fiscal deficit and increased the size of US government, as an advisor to Ronald Reagan. Somehow, even this rogue freedom fighter himself would encourage government excesses when he was actually a member of the government. Let's remember, this was the Reagan government, which killed thousands in wars abroad - and yet this anti-war Roberts never had much to say about wars abroad that happened when he was part of the government. This means that anybody actually inside government gives up principles and does the same harmful things.
I believe Hoppe has stated that we should hope for smaller states in lieu of of actual, perhaps impossible, 'anarcho-capitalism'.
And Mr Sanjay, speak for yourself. Im not one of those that thinks voting is 'evil' - you've been hanging out on the LvMI forums too much. I make a point to vote against all school levies and tax hikes, as well as vote out any crook who is a gun grabber ('single issue voter').
Why single out LvMI?
You do realize those aren't the only anti-democracy people? There are economists, the mainstream and widely reputed kind, who have been against democracy, and they come from all ranges of the economic spectrum. They convinced me against democracy long before I even heard of the Austrian School.
Thomas Sowell gave a strong case against it in every one of his books.
Gary Brecker also gave a criticism of democracy in one particular paper called Competition and Democracy.
Milton Friedman - an egalitarian statist - was also troubled by the problems of democracy.
Paul Krugman, at the far Keynesian end, has slowly been turning anti-democracy in his articles.
Political leaders with sound grasp of economics, like British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury, were against democracy.
It's not voting that is evil. It's the effects of voting that are destructive. I was shaken deeply on that afternoon, when I read Sowell's "Fallacies on Race" in his book Facts and Fallacies - of how the black family was torn apart in America after the Civil Rights Act and various other populist measures instituted by leaders promising utopian solutions to everybody. This democracy is nothing but people choosing to vote their interests against other people, until everybody ruins each other as a whole. This democracy sets society against itself, just to focus on short-term solutions at the expense of long-term stability and values.
What you do as a single issue voter, you end up voting for someone whose other policies may still cause much harm. In voting for a person who won't raise taxes, you may still end up voting for a man who might push for reducing school autonomy, for encouraging policemen to rough up teenagers to root out delinquent youth, and so on.
Economists have made a rather thin case against democracy--not that it is wrong--because they have a thin understanding of moral and political life. MF was brilliant as an economist but his slogan "free to choose", which does fairly represent his approach, begs all the important questions. The real case against democracy has been made by the best philosophers and practical political heads--Plato and Aristotle and Hume, Cicero and the French counter-revolutionaries. Today the best arguments are coming again from France. My friend Claude Polin has published enough on this to fill several volumes and I urging him to put together. A book in English.
Certainly hyperspecialization plays a part, but it's more because modern day economics has been ruined by men like Paul Samuelson, who totally mathematized economics. Social sciences are not physics or engineering, and people are not planets and atoms.
But great economists have acknowledged moral philosophy as the root of human civilization, and worked everything up from there.
And here the discussion comes back to Hoppe. Hoppe beautifully explained that in any advanced society - any human existence that goes beyond living alone with enough for mere sustenance - moral lines are investigated and drawn by people for the sake of their survival. Thus, it is through these moral lines that civilization can actually progress, and through these moral lines that people can conduct any activity that does not exist in isolation.
Understanding moral life has made some economists more valuable than others. Thomas Sowell did explain that dishonest and immoral societies never last long, and the difference between the poor world and the rich world was actually a moral difference. There is a cost to being dishonest, with large and important transactions becoming impossible to execute without legal assistance and without constant supervision - a misallocation of scarce resources. All matters of allocating resources are moral matters.
The difference that Friedrich Hayek, Henry Hazlitt (who was a theatre critic), and Murray Rothbard made was that they saw saw liberty and economics as smaller parts of a greater philosophy of what makes high civilization survive.
It is not that Hayek and Hazlitt, Rothbard and Hoppe have not been basically right about the moral preconditions for liberty but that their analysis is historically, culturally, politically, and morally thin gruel compared with hundreds of other writers, both predecessors and contemporaries. Their inadequacy comes out, particularly, in two ways: their inability to understand human community as opposed to the mechanisms of the modern state which they read back into history, and in their extremely limited view of morality which is a little like the big business view of education. Just as education is important insofar as it produces trained workers, technicians, and executives, morality is important because without it workers shirk and merchants cheat. Morality for them consists of a brief list of "shalt-nots" whereas in the classical tradition it the way men and women live in conformity with nature which is a reflection of a divine order. Human happiness does not consist in feeling good about being successful but in living the way we were made to live. In this respect, HHH's beautiful explanations can be seen more as a grotesque trivialization of deeper arguments that go back thousands of years. Those who wish to study morality and political ethics can learn a great deal more from reading a few hundred lines of Vergil than all the works of Hayek, more from a single essay of William Hazlitt than from all the writings of the justly esteemed Henry Hazlitt. Why is it that one so rarely finds allusions to serious literature or philosophy in libertarian writers. When they do make a nod to literature or music, it is usually to some pop novel or to pop music. And, as I pointe out in my review of HHH, why are they so ignorant of the facts of history as opposed to big theory? A Christian would say it is because they have no incarnational sense, but I would point out that the ancient Greeks had a very similar incarnational sense of the value of human life.
What the libertarians do not grasp is anything that lies beyond process and method. Free to choose? Choose what? Lead a good life? Good for what and for whom? Ethics is not really about what not to do but how to live, and the entire liberal tradition--with the exception of conservative dissidents like Maine and Stephen--has very little--and none of it beautiful-- to contribute to such a discussion. Where they are correct, they are offering unoriginal and usually trivialized versions of ancient arguments, and where they are original they are usually wrong.
I think you misunderstand my position. I am not 'single-ling out' LvMI for being anti-democrat, but only the 'voting is evil' position. I am one of Hoppe's biggest fans. I look at it the same way Leo XIII did - French monarchists were boycotting the French Third Republic, which gave the left an almost total monopoly on power, which they were using to make the republic extremely anti-clerical and socialist. Restoration of the monarchy was hopeless, as the main French Bourbon line had just died out. HH Leo XIII implored them to accept the republic as means to stop the left's agenda.
Dr Fleming, can you recommend some other good works by Frenchmen against mass democracy? Usually, I have found their arguments too idealogical; usually they have been this simple - democracy is bad because the Ancien Regime didnt have it, and we all know the Ancien Regime was flawless (never mind its Gallicanism and the French habit of total centralization).
The French monarchist case is anything but abstract and the centralization of France is frequently overstated. Burke acknowledged that they still had the basic elements of a healthy social order--elements the Jacobins did their best to eliminate. There is no one writer or book to recommend. Until you read some history and literature you won't know the positive order they are defending. And it is not just the monarchy but also the Church and the historic regions. This is a basic problem today. Our education seems to consist of litle more than indoctrination into lies and hatred. Where does one begin? Henc e the Aeneid..,
It is not just some meager observation from across the pond; I know a number of French monarchists online, although they are a bit young. I am not saying that the old order was not worth preservation despite whatever problems it may have had.
Surely you would not suggest that someone could form an accurate opinion of French anti-democratic thought by looking at websites? How would someone otherwise ignorant of French traditions know which websites were legitimate? There are more than a few intelligent and capable rightists, philosophers, historians, jornalists but I do not often see their work on line or even in English. Tomorrow I'll suggest a few in addition to Polin.
Actually, it has been through several years of following the Traditionalist Catholic movement, of which Frenchmen are a major part; I have spoken to and known several of them, although through the internet and not often in person. There are some excellent signs in their movement - unlike some so called nationalist groups in other countries, the French movement is unabashedly Christian and Catholic. However, I think some aspects of French leadership of Traditionalist Catholicism has bled into the American version - which often leads to the view of some that the US has some kind of 'Original Sin' so we cannot love our country (a topic we've discussed before).
I don't think I am getting my point across. I am referring to serious study of significant writers and not of chance meetings or Internet browsing. Have you read for example Bernard Dumont or Christophe Reveiilard or Jean de Viguerie, to name only a few serious men?
I will be modest: no, I have not. I have done some reading back to Louis XIV but not much in the way of the French counter-revolutionaries. You're right, I am merely speaking to the young foot-soldiers and not the learned men who know what they are talking about.
#38. The black family did not come apart with the Civil Rights Act, it came apart as the moral force of the ancien regime in the South dissipated. The Great Society and such measures were not "populist" measures. They were bureaucratic/political impositions never wanted by the people. You are looking in the wrong places for America's troubles. We could use more genuine populism, not less. It is not "the people" who initiate needless wars, encourage crime and disorder, and vote speculators trillion dollar bailouts. You need less theory and more acquaintance with American reality. It is not the form of the government that counts but who it actually represents.