In 2001, three years before his death, SEK III provided the website Libertarian Peacenik, with a brief history of the new libertarian philosophy that emerged after the movement split in 1969.

In July 1969, the Students for a Democratic Society split in Chicago four ways and the Anarchists were purged. Over Labor Day Young Americans for Freedom split.  The Anarchist Caucus and then-separate Libertarian Caucus were purged the following month. In October (Columbus Day weekend) the two groups met at the Hotel Dipomat [sic] in New York City at the first Libertarian Conference hosted by Murray Rothbard and Karl Hess.  The following February, Los Angeles (USC) hosted the Left- Right Festival of Liberation, with such luminaries as SDS ex-president Carl Oglesby (who recently ran for Congress as LP), Robert LeFevre, Karl Hess (again), and many others not as well remembered.

Five Hundred people showed up. The conference was covered in the LA Free Press and many Establishment papers, got extensive reporting on KPFK (which had a Libertarian radio show) and KUSC (which had TWO Libertarian shows, Lowell Ponte’s and Ron Kimberling’s).

I attended all of the above except the first-mentioned (since I was a YAF “libertarian” minarchist until September 1969); I worked side by side with Dana Rohrabacher on the last-mentioned.  He may be an Orange County congressman now, but back then he was the Johnny Grass-seed of the movement, travelling to YAF chapters, singing his libertarian folk songs, and “turning on” the conservatives so they would “tune in” to Libertarianism.

Our Movement grew exponentially through 1972 and even 1973, going from a few thousand students to over 100,000 and recognition in such publications as TV Guide (where Edith Efron, a sympathizer, equated us with conservatives and liberals in an article about equal time provisions).

One of the terms I personally coined, “minarchist,” partly to amuse Murray Rothbard, appeared in Newsweek.

Also in 1971, two Libertarians I had recruited from Columbia University (with the help of David Friedman), got a full-color, full-page cover in the magazine section of the New York Times, standing in front of a red fist above the words “Laissez Faire!”  That was Stan Lehr and Lou Rossetto.  Some of you know the latter from his entrepreneurial days as the original publisher of Wired magazine.

We then organized an East Coast Libertarian Conference at Columbia with the help of Gary Greenberg (remember my posting, “One of Ours at Ground Zero”?).  During that Conference, Jeffrey St. John attempted to defend minarchy from Roy A. Childs.  St. John’s trouncing pretty much ended minarchy as a serious intellectual position within the Libertarian Movement.

Then and only then did David Nolan (who had been active in the earliest formation of the YAF Libertarian Caucus in 1967 but missed the explosive events “under the arch” in St. Louis in 1969 and had not been radicalized) announce the formation of the Libertarian Party.

New Libertarian (my magazine, begun 1970, currently up to 188 issues, and usually #3 in circulation after Reason and Liberty/Libertarian Review), then called New Libertarian Notes, published a debate between David and me in the November 1972 issue which came out just before the presidential election.  The Libertarian Party idea was met with universal scorn by movement activists, either on principle (LeFevrians, Revolutionary Rothbardians) or as hopelessly premature (Right Rothbardians, more conservative types).  And Hospers-Nathan did get a pathetic vote total.

Remember, few people calling themselves Libertarians in 1972 would vote and those were arguing over who would stop the war without socializing the economy the worst: McGovern or Schmitz (theBircher candidate of the American Party).  Surprisingly, both Rothbard and Ayn Rand came out for Nixon!

What kept you partyarchs (a term meaning “sell-out anarchist who claims to oppose the State but embraces a State’s Party,” so technically you minarchists cannot be partyarchs) in the running was the defection of Roger MacBride, a Nixon elector, breaking his pledge (i.e., breaking a contract, appropriate for the start of a State or a Party) and voting for Hospers-Nathan.  Thus was the LP put on the political map, and MacBride was rewarded with the next nomination (1976).  The LP was taken over by “anarchists” (i.e., partyarchs, which is why I coined the term) starting with New York’s Youngstein for Mayor Campaign in 1973.

Then Ed Crane brought Charles Koch’s billions into the LP (bought the national party) and the LP’s highest vote total (for president) was achieved for Ed Clark in 1980 in an orgy of wasted spending. The LP has yet to recover to that level.

Most anti-political Libertarians simply avoided contact with party supporters after 1974.  Ironically,Harry Browne, who had made his fortune denouncing any form of political action, or even overt social action, in 1973, denounced me for going to LP meetings and inviting LPers over to debate us. The LP’s total membership has never been more than 5% of the total number of people calling themselves Libertarian.

There is a LOT more detail, but this should get you started.  Feel free to check any and all facts presented here.  Back in 1974, much of this was published in a special issue of New Libertarian called “Anarchist Graffiti: Where Were You in 1969?” and the rest in 180 or so other issues of NL.  You can also find some of it in back issues of Reason and Libertarian Review, and if you can find them, The Abolitionist and Outlook.  The Society for Individual Liberty, which ultimately absorbed most of the old YAF Libertarian Caucuses had a magazine (Rational Individualist) and a newsletter (SIL News); if you can find the issues, you’ll get a lot of first-hand views of the events at the time.  SIL was merged with the Libertarian International in 1990 to form the International Society for Individual Liberty (ISIL) which still hosts the majority of Libertarian Conferences around the world.

Other countries with major Libertarian Movements (very few with parties) include England, Estonia, Costa Rica, Canada (especially Alberta, my home province), Australia, France, The Netherlands and New Zealand.  Last I checked, only Costa Rica and NZ had parties, although Costa Rica calls its party Movimento Libertario or Libertarian Movement.  They have a very popular congressman in office.

Estonia has both a large Agorist (counter-economic, black market) AND an above-ground political movement.

Although they didn’t call themselves Libertarian, you might include Czechoslovakia’s recent government of Vaclav Klaus.  Then again, since they were ousted for corruption, you might not want to.  Poet, playwright, and intellectual leader Vaclav Havel is still pretty hard-core.

This is just a taste. At least you can’t claim ignorance in our future exchanges. (Yes, some back issues of NL are still available; I sell them on the literature table at the Karl Hess Club every Third Monday of the month. KHC traces its history all the way back to 1971 when Dana Rohrabacher and Seymour Leon started the very first Libertarian Supper Club of Los Angeles.)

–  Freely as ever, SEK3 (Original Libertarian, who earned his Capital L in the streets and the convention halls of the Battle of St. Louis)

“War is the Health of the State.”  – Randolph Bourne, 1918.

During this embryonic stage of identity, we have sought after the historical beginnings and trailblazers who helped shape these ideas. The one thing you notice when researching, is that there isn’t much new material on the subject presented in the 21st century. This is the very reason we decided to launch this site, coupled with self-sufficiency and personal empowerment. The idea of making an updated documentary, or series of videos on the subject in a practical modern sense, is something we are working for in the future as well.

It seems that some other non-statist brothers and sisters have had the same idea, they are seeking to produce a modern documentary on anarchism. We applaud the efforts of Aragorn, Steffi and friends, as they take on this big project.

Please help them in anyway you can to help their idea manifest to a reality that will benefit us all.

Agora! Anarchy! Action!

—–

Via Anarkismo.net

To the best of our knowledge, no comprehensive documentary about anarchism has ever been made. This is a project to create a documentary which is as much a basic introduction to anarchism, as well as a story which looks at anarchism historically and globally.

Anarchism: A Documentary

Fellow anarchists!
To the best of our knowledge, no comprehensive documentary about anarchism has ever been made.

Of the often very dated films on anarchist themes that are available, most either misrepresent anarchism (1981’s pro anarcho-capitalist ‘Anarchism in America’), are focused on specific moments in anarchist history (‘Living Utopia’, ‘The Angry Brigade’, ‘Lucio the Anarchist’, etc), or discuss the wider social justice / alter-globalisation movements (‘Fourth World War’).

Such an absence is unfortunate, for we think that now, more than ever, a broad, accessible documentary introduction to anarchism would be of tremendous value to those of us who wish to share the history, ideas and promise of our diverse, protean movement with a general audience.

Instead of complaining though, we’re just going to knuckle down and make it ourselves!

We envisage creating, over the next year or so, an engaging, entertaining, relatively mainstream film that will cover – via interviews with prominent anarchists mixed with archival footage, narration, person-on-the-street discussions and explanatory animations – a historical overview of anarchism, an explanation of the core principles (anti-authoritarianism, anti-capitalism, mutual aid…you know the stuff!) and an exploration of all the contrasting but ultimately complementary views held by contemporary anarchists from around the world.

We’d also like to deliver a message of realistic hope and a call for action in this time of social and ecological crisis.

Being long-time anarchists ourselves, we recognise the importance of a supportive community in ensuring our project succeeds in fairly portraying both contemporary and historical anarchism and does not fall prey to personal biases or prejudices. We will thus be communicating openly and honestly with the broad anarchist community about our progress and underlying vision.

More pressingly though, we also recognise the importance of mutual aid and so, even though we’re soliciting it through capitalist channels, we humbly request your modest donations (at http://www.indiegogo.com/Anarchism-A-Documentary). These will help us with our frugal travel, eating and living expenses, as well as with editing and post-production costs. Those who cannot help financially are more than welcome to offer couches for the night. Shared dinners and good company will also be essential to the completion of this ambitious task we’ve set ourselves, and if you donate some music to the soundtrack we’d be eternally grateful

We eagerly await your participation, your suggestions and your constructive criticisms. We promise to weigh them up fairly as long as you promise not to pepper pie us if, in some cases, we respectfully disagree.

With love and hope,
Steffi, Aragorn and friends

PS: Our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Anarchism-A-Documentary/1…=info
Both pages linked here contain a FAQ section for further information.

Related Link: http://www.indiegogo.com/Anarchism-A-Documentary

Anarchy logo at top of article by anarchia89

Oscar winning documentary on freedom activist Karl Hess.

Via Wikipedia

Hess began reading American anarchists largely due to the recommendations of his friend Murray Rothbard. Hess said that upon reading the works of Emma Goldman he discovered that anarchists believed everything he had hoped the Republican Party would represent, and that Goldman was the source for the best and most essential theories of Ayn Rand without any of the “crazy solipsism that Rand was so fond of.”

From 1969 to 1971 Hess edited The Libertarian Forum with Rothbard.

Hess eventually put his focus on the small scale, on community. He said, “Society is: people together making culture.” He deemed two of his cardinal social principles as being “opposition to central political authority” and “concern for people as individuals.” His rejection of standard American party politics was reflected in a lecture he gave during which he said “The Democrats or liberals think that everybody is stupid and therefore they need somebody… to tell them how to behave themselves. The Republicans think everybody is lazy…”

In 1969 and 1970, Hess joined with others, including Murray Rothbard, Robert LeFevre, Dana Rohrabacher, Samuel Edward Konkin III, and former Students for a Democratic Society leader Carl Oglesby to speak at two “left-right” conferences which brought together activists from both the Old Right and the New Left in what was emerging as a nascent libertarian movement. Hess later joined the Libertarian Party which was founded in 1971, and served as editor of its newspaper from 1986 to 1990.

Here is another great interview from Mother Jones about Hess.

"…The [Nazi] dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway… Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies,’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

"How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have. And everyone counts on that might…”

— Excerpt from They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45, pp. 166-73, by Milton Meyer

Many people often seem to think that the ideologies of genetic elitism, selective-breeding, hereditary inheritance of power (monarchies as one example), eugenics toward the promotion of a super-race — all of these things that strike us as an Hitlerian anathema — have somehow faded into the fog of history with the fall of the Third Reich; and before that, with the rise of Western Democracy.

Hitler did not operate in some philosophical vacuum, he was not some fluke of nature who came out of nowhere — he studied the writings of widely-accepted scientists and academicians; both contemporary and historical. Hitler simply took that agenda and ran with it — and how far and fast he ran. His philosophical mentors were more inclined toward multi-generational incrementalism, as it was less likely to cause popular uproar; as witnessed in the world’s reaction to Hitler’s actions.

In fact, just at a surface level, American and European monied interests (including, though possibly indirectly, Prescott Bush — George W. Bush’s grandfather) funded Hitler’s war machine.

And it was not just a desire to make a fast buck; many of the people in these companies — along with the foundations they started or sponsored — were intellectually in line with Hitler’s agenda, and actively supported it. A great work on the subject is Edwin Black’s book, War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race

“How American corporate philanthropies launched a national campaign of ethnic cleansing in the United States, helped found and fund the Nazi eugenics of Hitler and Mengele — and then created the modern movement of ‘human genetics.’”

“…The main culprits were the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune, in league with America’s most respected scientists hailing from such prestigious universities as Harvard, Yale and Princeton, operating out of a complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island…”

The same established industrialists, who were historically the cause of so much pain and suffering both in the US and abroad, have not truly gone anywhere. Instead, they have merely metastasized; and in so doing have couched their agendas in different, more “socially acceptable” terms.

The idea of a Divine Right of Kings has never faded, only the terminology — it is now the Genetic (or technological, meritocratic, democratic) Right of Governors. I would posit that this ideology (divine right) has always been the true ideology and raison d’être for those seeking to rule — and not simply pablum for the masses. This ideology has simply been renamed to fit the thinking of the times. It is survival of the fittest writ large, and incorporates all manner of criteria for “fitness,” conveniently defined by those already in a position to meet that definition.

Those who follow such thinking — or at least those will the ability to implement it — already portend to know who the Kings/Rulers/Owners/Governors are and should be; and base their decisions regarding the rest of us, upon their ideal that their position of multi-generational power and influence is proof-positive of their evolutionary (and/or gubernatorial, intellectual) superiority — that they have already made an evolutionary leap; and that the rest of us are the unfit remainder.

At best, we are seen as pitifully ignorant lemmings, in need of a guide and shepherd; and, at worst, we are seen as defective specimens, in need of extermination.

It is not my aim to point to the continuation of elitist eugenics and supremacist thinking as the sole motive (though an important one) for pursuing immediate and effective anarchistic action against it; but to point out that insidious elitism was — and continues to be — the driving force behind a vast percentage of global policy. It is this ideal that upholds the vision of “inevitable” and “necessary” global governance; a concept often swathed in platitudes about benevolence, equality, and plenty; all the while masking the true aims of any state: the enrichment of an elite at the cost of humanity at large.

I cannot support the concept that global governance is either inevitable or desirable. I believe we could have a condition of general global cooperation (that is, between stateless human beings around the planet), without a state of global rule. Radical decentralization is the only sure way to preserve freedom for any sizable number of individuals; as it allows those individuals to move and work within, and toward, a variety of potential societies — while somewhat insulating the remaining societies from the damage created should one of those societies collapse.

A truly global state — however “benevolent” — will retain, by virtue of its effective existence, the machinery necessary to completely enslave or destroy the unified world. Whereas now, even with the many extant, somewhat unified, de facto global rulers; there remain pockets of resistance — both active and incidental; e.g., national law, patriotism/nationalism/jingoism, “uncooperative” nations like those in the “Axis of Evil” — all of which at least present a speed-bump to global directives, even while being highly problematic to true freedom in their own right.

Beyond these truly negative, “enemy of my enemy” entities, there is also a growing individual and community resistance to corporate global domination. This is attested to by the perpetual protest against the WTO, IMF, G8/G20, Bilderberg, etc., as well as the mainstreaming of the Fair Trade movement and its analogs. Right, wrong, on-target, or misguided; there is clear indication that “ordinary” people around the world smell something rotten in Denmark.

There is no doubt in my mind that the global power-holders are headed in the direction of open (and total) global governance; and that they have been headed there for a long time. Indeed, calls for it by people of influence have already been going out with ever greater frequency. There is also no doubt that the actors in pursuit of that goal have absolutely no empathy nor experience in the world of the average human being. At best, we are seen as pitifully ignorant lemmings, in need of a guide and shepherd; and, at worst, we are seen as defective specimens, in need of extermination.

…there would never be a truly definitive “line in the sand;” and, even if there was, it would probably be too late by then to do anything about it.

It is safe to say that the globalist agenda is not swayed by appeals to natural law, morality, the good of humankind, nor by any such arguments. While certainly its apologists will readily and publicly appeal to those very concepts, it should be abundantly clear that such appeals are nothing but pablum — as is always the case when elitists desire to convince a population to march toward the slaughterhouse without resistance.

This brings the subject of gradualism and incrementalism back into sharp focus. If indeed the goal is dictatorial corporate rule over the globe, it should be the case that the would-be dictators would seek to achieve this goal as quickly and fully as possible. They realize, of course, that such speedy action is not tenable. Much like herding cattle, there is a balance that needs to be struck between speed and control. Pushing the cattle too rapidly may cause them to stampede; quite possibly injuring or killing the cattle-herder, and certainly making the cattle more difficult to control, and thus more difficult to make use of.

Whether this analogy is accurate in reality doesn’t matter; as it is the analogy that elitists use to describe the relationship between themselves and the population they wish to control. Very rarely does this gradualist technique break down; and when it does, the reaction to it is handled by further “Problem/Reaction/Solution” methods.

What does this mean for anarchism?

Mike Gogulski of NoState wrote about this incrementalism, regarding his decision to leave the United States and renounce his citizenship:

…I had told myself as early as 2006 that I would renounce when the US attacked Iran, detonated a nuclear weapon, deployed a bio-weapon, declared martial law, annexed another territory or canceled an election. I became very involved for that reason in watching the news closely for signs that any of those eventualities might be approaching. In doing so, however, I came to the realization that I needed no further justification. America’s record as a domestic and international governmental entity is beyond appalling, and no further reason to denounce it and renounce my association with it was needed…

Mike was not alone in his “just one more atrocity” line of thought. As illustrated by the opening quotation, the process of modern fascism and totalitarianism is almost never heralded by overt and evil-sounding proclamations. It is most often, as Sinclair Lewis put it, “wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.”

Fortunately for Mike, he was able to realize that there would never be a truly definitive “line in the sand;” and, even if there was, it would probably be too late by then to do anything about it (by the way, the quotation at the start of this article is from a chapter entitled, “But Then It Was Too Late”).

Many others throughout history have realized the insidiousness of elitist gradualism, and have begun to take steps as they see fit to combat it. Often, these steps have taken the form of “reverse gradualism” — that is, moving to slow the progress of the globalist machine by taking part in the system, and working toward the reversal of harmful policies as they appear. As is the case with incrementalism in either direction, compromise is an integral part of the equation. The globalists will readily take an inch, working their way to a mile; likewise, the anti-globalists will take an inch in the other direction, hoping to buy more time.

This system of compromise clearly advantages those people with the most flexible morals — the most willingness to let the ends justify the means. For a movement that purports to be based upon principles of human freedom and non-aggression, compromise of this nature quickly erodes and corrupts its very foundation, thus allowing for more statist inroads; as the statists are more than willing to throw bones to freedom in order to further their own agendas.

Further, this concept of battling the enemy on their own turf is a time and resource sink; as illustrated by the fact that the world is in the position it is today, despite decades — or even centuries — of effort to combat global corporate and mercantilist power. Whether this methodology has indeed slowed the globalist machine is impossible to tell; but that it has many unseen opportunity costs is abundantly clear.

…these movements are [not] meaningless; rather they are symptoms of unrest and dissatisfaction that has not yet found a beneficial outlet.

To reuse the cattle-to-the-slaughter analogy, it is my view that working within the system serves only to provide a more comfortable path to eventual butchery — acting as a Temple Grandin to the globalist human-ranchers. This analogy applies to both the political “right” and the political “left.”

On the right, you have support for big business by removing regulation, while at the same time reducing or eliminating welfare. On the left, you have support for regulation while increasing welfare. In both cases, the workers — the “average person” — are supposed to benefit; either by “trickle down” economics or by direct support. In both cases, the corporatist elites get to continue their exploitation of the workers; the former by retaining their positions of financial influence and generally increasing pay (though in the grand scheme, not enough to challenge their own influence), and the latter by sating the needs of the workers just enough to keep them calm (without shouldering much of the costs themselves).

In the event of US collapse (or any national major collapse) the global financial powers that be are prepared to ride in on a white horse to save the day — perhaps by offering to back regional currencies with a global standard. Many might go so far as to say that such collapses are engineered for that very purpose.

Collapse can be beneficial to multiple parties. While the globalists at some point may wish to de-nationalize the US to a large degree, the effects of that transition do not have to be entirely bad. This is where agorism and direct-action anarchism come most into play.

It is quite clear from events and polling around the globe, that people are generally dissatisfied with their governments. This dissatisfaction often turns to anger and violence, as witnessed recently in Greece; or to political agitation, as witnessed by the Tea Party, et al. Both methods are insufficient to truly address the issue at hand. In violence, a new power-structure quickly forms to combat or co-opt it; as Mikhail Bakunin warned: “If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself.”

In political action, compromise sets in, as outlined above; and the very nature of such actions lead to support for the very system it seeks to oppose. But, that does not mean that these movements are meaningless; rather they are symptoms of unrest and dissatisfaction that has not yet found a beneficial outlet.

When states become overwhelmed — by their own internal boondoggles, by popular pressure, or both — the power-vacuum becomes the womb of change, either positive or negative. Typically and historically; this power-vacuum has been filled by the most violent internal faction, leader, or external conqueror. As anarchists, I believe it to be our duty to begin to fill it right now; not by asserting some grand, monolithic “Anarchist Party,” but by working toward the necessary prerequisites for allowing individuals and communities to be their own power-centers. Means and methods for doing this are the main focus of JustLive, and many others as well; but the movement needs to understand the dual nature of such actions:

1. Withdrawing support from the state/corporate structure in order to foment its collapse.
2. Being ready at all times to survive and thrive without that structure, in order to prevent or inhibit the filling of the resultant power-vacuum with yet another centralized power.

Clearly, these goals constitute essentially the same set of actions, but I do believe they need to be kept in mind as defined goals. Yes, collapsing the state is worthwhile, in a Rothbard’s Button sense; but having resources in place to fill that void is an equally important and pragmatic goal.

Coming back to popular political movements, it is essential — I believe — to create alternatives to state reliance both now and in the future. When members of these various political movements begin to witness the ultimate futility of their actions, their choices will be despair and submission; or wonton, misdirected violence — neither of which will prove beneficial to anyone but the statist elite.

Education is essential, of course, but even more importantly perhaps is the existence of working alternatives that will be ready to supplant the failing state with decentralized, individual, and community-based support systems.

Waiting for the next shoe to drop is not a viable option, because it’s not going to drop. It’s going to slide down a ramp, slowly at times, more rapidly at others, but when it gets to the bottom it will be too late. The time to act is now.

—————–

(main post image modified from source at Stan.at. Oligarch playing chess image from plamuek76 on Photobucket. Direct action image by Eric Drooker from DFCKR. Agorism image from thorsmitersaw at DeviantArt)

In this award-winning, feature length, two-hour broadcast-quality documentary you will learn about the latest developments in the field of Free and Zero Point Energy from Tesla to Dennis Lee.

Hosted by Bill Jenkins, formerly of ABC Radio, this comprehensive documentary features physicists and inventors who are challenging orthodox science to bring this non-polluting technology forward despite ridicule and suppression.

See actual working prototypes that defy classical physics including phenomenal experiments in anti-gravity and the transmutation of metals.

From Nicola Tesla to cold fusion, magnetic motors to anti-gravity propulsion ­, this program presents powerful information!

Visionary Inventors and Scientists Reveal Non-Polluting Technologies That Will Change Our World

A groundbreaking and inspiring look at the leading theories and practical devices that tap into “zero point energy” – now acknowledged by physicists to exist in all space as a “running river” of infinite and accessible electromagnetic energy.

Follow the fascinating stories of dedicated inventors and scientists engaged in the struggle for revolutionary innovations that will change our collective future forever.

This program will transform the way you think about science and the natural laws of the universe by illuminating the historical contributions of the visionaries pioneering this field.

Nominated for the UN Sasakawa Environmental Award

Explore the latest Free Energy breakthroughs, including:

• Technologies based on working with nature instead of against it.
• Radical inventions that emit hydrogen and oxygen as by-products.
• Transmutation processes that neutralize radioactive waste.
• Electric vehicles with magnetic motors that recharge their own batteries.

Featuring:

• The Patterson cold fusion power cell
• Troy Reed’s Magnetic “Surge” motors
• Paul Pantone’s GEET processor for increasing fuel efficiency in cars
• Joseph Newman’s rotating magnet “over unity” motor
• Dennis Lee’s Low temperature phase-change technologies
• John Hutchison’s amazing anti-gravity experiments

Along with internationally recognized scientists and authors:

Tom Bearden, Hal Fox , Shiuji Inomita, Moray King, Eugene Mallove, Jeanne Manning, Brian O’Leary, Tom Valone

Run Time: 109 minutes

Via Psychedelic Adventure Blog

Rather, as the excerpt points out, they were more interested in freedom for their kind of man.

the rich and well born, the other the mass of the people. … The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct permanent share of government. … Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy. Their turbulent and uncontrollable disposition requires checks.

This excerpt is posted at the Mises Institute with footnotes.

—————

[Excerpted from chapter 5 of Albert Jay Nock's Jefferson]

The Constitution looked fairly good on paper, but it was not a popular document; people were suspicious of it, and suspicious of the enabling legislation that was being erected upon it. There was some ground for this. The Constitution had been laid down under unacceptable auspices; its history had been that of a coup d’état.

It had been drafted, in the first place, by men representing special economic interests. Four-fifths of them were public creditors, one-third were land speculators, and one-fifth represented interests in shipping, manufacturing, and merchandising. Most of them were lawyers. Not one of them represented the interest of production — Vilescit origine tali. ["The dice were rigged from the start." — JL Ed.]

In the second place, the old Articles of Confederation, to which the states had subscribed in good faith as a working agreement, made all due provision for their own amendment; and now these men had ignored these provisions, simply putting the Articles of Confederation in the wastebasket and bringing forth an entirely new document of their own devising.

Again, when the Constitution was promulgated, similar economic interests in the several states had laid hold of it and pushed it through to ratification in the state conventions as a minority measure, often — indeed, in the majority of cases — by methods that had obvious intent to defeat the popular will. Moreover, and most disturbing fact of all, the administration of government under the Constitution remained wholly in the hands of the men who had devised the document, or who had been leaders in the movement for ratification in the several states. The new president, Washington, had presided over the Constitutional Convention. All the members of the Supreme Court, the judges of the federal district courts, and the members of the cabinet were men who had been to the fore either in the Philadelphia Convention or in the state ratifying conventions. Eight signers of the Constitution were in the Senate, and as many more in the House. It began now to be manifest, as Madison said later, who was to govern the country; that is to say, in behalf of what economic interests the development of American constitutional government was to be directed.

Mr. Jefferson was slow to apprehend all this. He had hitherto regarded the Constitution as a purely political document, and having that view, he had spoken both for it and against it. He had criticized it severely because it contained no Bill of Rights and did not provide against indefinite tenure of office. With these omissions rectified by amendment, however, he seemed disposed to be satisfied with it. Its economic character and implications apparently escaped him, and now that for the first time he began, very slowly and imperfectly, to get a sense of it as an economic document of the first order, he began also to perceive that the distinction between Federalist and anti-Federalist, which he had disparaged in his letter to [Francis] Hopkinson, was likely to mean something after all.

He set out on March 1, 1790, for New York, the temporary capital, where he found himself a cat in a strange garret. Washington and his entourage greeted him cordially, and the "circle of principal citizens" welcomed him as a distinguished and agreeable man. He had grown handsomer as he approached middle age, and his elaborate French wardrobe set him off well. His charm of manner was a reminiscence of Fauquier; he was invariably affable, courteous, and interesting.

The people of New York could have quite taken him to their hearts if they had not felt, as everyone felt in his presence, that he was always graciously but firmly holding them off. Yet if they had any suspicions of his political sentiments and tendencies, they put them in abeyance; his attitude towards the French Revolution had shown that he was amenable to reason. As soon, no doubt, as this well-to-do, well-mannered, highly cultivated, and able man of the world saw which way the current of new national ideas was setting, he would easily fall in with it.

At any rate, everything should be made easy for him. "The courtesies of dinner parties given me, as a stranger newly arrived among them, placed me at once in their familiar society." But every hour thus spent increased his bewilderment. Everyone talked politics, and everyone assiduously talked up a strong government for the United States, with all its costly trappings and trimmings of pomp and ceremony. This was a great letdown from France, which he had just left

in the first year of her revolution, in the fervor of natural rights, and zeal for reformation. My conscientious devotion to these rights could not be heightened, but it had been aroused and excited by daily exercise.

No one in New York was even thinking of natural rights, let alone speaking of them. The "principal citizens" held the French Revolution in devout horror. "I can not describe the wonder and mortification with which the table conversations filled me." Where indeed was the old high spirit, the old motives, the old familiar discourse about natural rights, independence, self-government? Where was the idealism that these had stimulated — or the pretence of idealism that these had evoked?

One heard nothing here but the need for a strong government, able to resist the depredations which the democratic spirit was likely to make upon "the men of property," and quick to correct its excesses. Many even spoke in a hankering fashion about monarchy. All this, manifestly, was nothing to be met with the popgun of Constitutional amendments providing for a Bill of Rights and rotation in office; manifestly, the influential citizenry of New York would but lift their eyebrows at a fine theoretical conception of the United States as a nation abroad and a confederacy at home.

Mr. Jefferson’s ideas were outmoded; nothing was of less consequence to the people about him; he might have thought himself back in Paris in the days of Calonne, at a soirée of the Farmers-General. Other ideas were to the front; and when Washington’s cabinet came together, Mr. Jefferson confronted the coryphaeus of those ideas in the person of a very young and diminutive man with a big nose, a giddy, boyish, and aggressive manner, whom Washington had appointed secretary of the treasury.

II

Alexander Hamilton came to the colonies at the age of sixteen, from his home in the West Indies, dissatisfied with the prospect of spending his days in "the groveling condition of a clerk or the like … and would willingly risk my life, though not my character, to exalt my station. … I mean to prepare the way for futurity."

Where indeed was the old high spirit, the old motives, the old familiar discourse about natural rights, independence, self-government?

This was in 1772. He found the country ripe for him. There was something stirring all the time, something that an enterprising young man might get into with every chance to make himself felt. At 18 he came forward in a public meeting with a harangue on the Boston Port Bill, and he presently wrote a couple of anonymous pamphlets on public questions, one of which was attributed by an undiscriminating public to John Jay, who, as Mr. Jefferson said, wielded "the finest pen in America," and therefore resented the imputation of authorship with a lively chagrin. He showed his bravery conspicuously on two occasions in resisting the action of mobs: once to rescue the Tory president of King’s College, now Columbia; and once to rescue another Tory named Thurman.

He saw that war was almost certainly coming on, bearing a great chance of preferment to the few in the colonies who had learned the trade of arms; so he studied the science of war, and the outbreak of hostilities found him established as an artillery officer. He had an unerring instinct for hitching his fortunes to the right cart-tail. Perceiving that Washington would be the man of the moment, he moved upon him straightway, gained his confidence, and remained by him, becoming his military secretary and aid-de-camp.

But the war would not last forever, and Hamilton had no notion of leading the life of a soldier in time of peace. Arms were a springboard for him, not a profession. He served until the end of the campaign of 1781, when he retired with some of the attributes of a national figure and with the same persistent instinct for alliance with power. He always gave a good and honorable quid pro quo for his demands; he had great ability and untiring energy, and he threw both most prodigally into whatever cause he took up.

Money never interested him. Although he inaugurated the financial system which enriched so many, he remained all his life quite poor, and was often a good deal straitened. Even in his career as a practicing lawyer, conducting important cases for wealthy clients, he charged absurdly small fees.

His marriage in 1780 with one of the vivacious Schuyler girls of Albany, made him a fixture in "the circle of principal citizens" of New York; it was a ceremony of valid adoption. He was elected to Congress in 1782, he served as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1787, and now he was in the cabinet as the recognized head of the centralizing movement.

The four great general powers conferred by the Constitution upon the federal government were the power of taxation, the power to levy war, the power to control commerce, and the power to exploit the vast expanse of land in the West. The task now before Congress was to pass legislation appropriate to putting these powers into exercise. There was no time to be lost about this. Time had been the great ally of the coup d’état.

The financial, speculative, and mercantile interests of the country were at one another’s elbow in the large towns, mostly on the seaboard; they could communicate quickly, mobilize quickly, and apply pressure promptly at any point of advantage. The producing interests, which were mostly agrarian, were, on the other hand, scattered; communication among them was slow and organization difficult. It was owing to this advantage that in five out of the thirteen states, ratification of the Constitution had been carried through before any effective opposition could develop. Now, in this next task, which was, in Madison’s phrase, to administration the government into such modes as would ensure economic supremacy to the non-producing interests, there was urgent need of the same powerful ally, and here was the opportunity for the great and peculiar talents that Alexander Hamilton possessed.

A foreigner, unprivileged, of obscure origin and illegitimate birth, ‘the bastard brat of a Scots pedlar,’ as John Adams testily called him, he had climbed to the top by sheer force of ability and will.

Perhaps throughout, and certainly during the greater part of his life, Hamilton’s sense of public duty was as keen as his personal ambition. He had the educated conscience of the arriviste with reference to the social order from which he himself had sprung. A foreigner, unprivileged, of obscure origin and illegitimate birth, "the bastard brat of a Scots pedlar," as John Adams testily called him, he had climbed to the top by sheer force of ability and will.

In his rise he had taken on the self-made man’s disregard of the highly favorable circumstances in which his ability and will had been exercised; and thus he came into the self-made man’s contemptuous distrust of the ruck of humanity that he had left behind him. The people were "a great beast," irrational, passionate, violent, and dangerous, needing a strong hand to keep them in order. Pleading for a permanent president and Senate, corresponding as closely as might be to the British model of a king and a House of Lords, he had said in the Constitutional Convention that all communities divide themselves into the few and the many, the first being

the rich and well born, the other the mass of the people. … The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct permanent share of government. … Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy. Their turbulent and uncontrollable disposition requires checks.

He had no faith in republican government, because, as Gouverneur Morris acutely said, "he confounded it with democratical government; and he detested the latter, because he believed it must end in despotism, and be in the meantime, destructive to public morality."

But republican government was here, and he could not change it. Of all among "the rich and well-born" who talked more or less seriously of setting up a monarchy, there was none doubtless unaware that the republican system could hardly be displaced, unless by another coup d’état made possible by some profound disturbance, like a war. Hamilton, at any rate, was well aware of it.

The thing, then, was to secure the substance of absolutism under republican forms; to administration republican government into such absolutist modes as the most favorable interpretation of the Constitution would permit. Here was the line of coincidence of Hamilton’s aims with the aims of those who had devised and promulgated the Constitution as an economic document. These aims were not identical, but coincident.

Hamilton was an excellent financier, but nothing of an economist. Insofar as he had any view of the economics of government, he simply took for granted that they would, as a matter of course and more or less automatically, arrange themselves to favor "the rich and well-born," since these were naturally the political patrons and protectors of those who did the world’s work. In a properly constituted government, such consideration as should be bestowed upon the producer would be mostly by way of noblesse oblige.

The extent of his indifference to the means of securing political and economic supremacy to "the rich and well-born" cannot be determined, yet he always frankly showed that he regarded over-scrupulousness as impractical and dangerous. Strong in his belief that men could be moved only by force or interest, he fearlessly accepted the corollary that corruption is an indispensable instrument of government, and that therefore the public and private behavior of a statesman may not always be answerable to the same code.

It tended powerfully to indoctrinate the public with the idea that the close association of banking and government is a natural one.

Hamilton’s general plan for safeguarding the republic from "the imprudence of democracy" was at bottom extremely simple. Its root idea was that of consolidating the interests of certain broad classes of "the rich and well-born" with the interests of the government. He began with the government’s creditors. Many of these, probably a majority, were speculators who had bought the government’s war bonds at a low price from original investors who were too poor to keep their holdings.

Hamilton’s first move was for funding all the obligations of the government at face value, thereby putting the interests of the speculator on a par with those of the original holder, and fusing both classes into a solid bulwark of support for the government. This was inflation on a large scale, for the values represented by the government’s securities were in great part — probably 60 percent — notoriously fictitious, and were so regarded even by their holders. A feeble minority in Congress, led by Madison, tried to amend Hamilton’s measure in a small way, by proposing a fair discrimination against the speculator, but without success.

Before any effective popular opposition could be organized, Hamilton’s bill was driven through a Congress which reckoned nearly half its membership among the security-holders. Its spokesmen in the House, according to [Sen. William] Maclay, who listened to the debate, offered little argument, and contented themselves with a statesmanlike recourse to specious moralities.

Ames delivered a long string of studied sentences … He had "public faith," "public credit," "honour, and above all justice," as often over as an Indian would the "Great Spirit," and if possible, with less meaning and to as little purpose. Hamilton, at the head of the speculators, with all the courtiers, are on one side. These I call the party who are actuated by interest.

Hamilton’s own defense of indiscriminate funding was characteristic; he declared that the impoverished original holders should have had more confidence in their government than to sell out their holdings, and that the subsidizing of speculators would broadcast this salutary lesson.

Hamilton’s bill contained a supplementary measure which reached out after the state creditors, united them with the mass of federal creditors, and applied a second fusing heat. The several states which had at their own expense supplied troops for the Revolutionary army, had borrowed money from their citizens for that purpose; and now Hamilton proposed that the federal government should assume these debts, again at face value — another huge inflation, resulting in "twenty millions of stock divided among favored States, and thrown in as pabulum to the stock-jobbing herd," as Mr. Jefferson put it.

Two groups of capitalist interest remained, awaiting Hamilton’s attentions: one of them actual, and the other inchoate. These were the interest of trade and commerce, and the interest of unattached capital looking for safe investment. There was no such breathless hurry about these, however, as there had been about digging into the impregnable intrenchments of funding and assumption.

The first group had already received a small douceur in the shape of a moderate tariff, mostly for revenue, though it explicitly recognized the principle of protection; it was enough to keep them cheerful until more could be done for them. Considering the second group, Hamilton devised a plan for a federal bank with a capital of $10,000,000, one-fifth of which should be subscribed by the government, and the remainder distributed to the investing public in shares of $400 each. This tied up the fortunes of individual investors with the fortunes of the government, and gave them a proprietary interest in maintaining the government’s stability; also, and much more important, it tended powerfully to indoctrinate the public with the idea that the close association of banking and government is a natural one.

There was one great speculative interest remaining, the greatest of all, for which Hamilton saw no need of taking special thought. The position of the natural-resource monopolist was as impregnable under the Constitution as his opportunities were limitless in the natural endowment of the country. Hence the association of capital and monopoly would come about automatically. Nothing could prevent it or dissolve it, and a fixed interest in the land of a country is a fixed interest in the stability of that country’s government — so in respect of these two prime desiderata, Hamilton could rest on his oars.

In sum, then, the primary development of republicanism in America, for the most part under direction of Alexander Hamilton, effectively safeguarded the monopolist, the capitalist, and the speculator. Its institutions embraced the interests of these three groups and opened the way for their harmonious progress in association. The only interest which it left open to free exploitation was that of the producer. Except insofar as the producer might incidentally and partially bear the character of monopolist, capitalist, and speculator, his interest was unconsidered.

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Albert Jay Nock (October 13, 1870 – August 19, 1945) was an influential American libertarian author, educational theorist, and social critic of the early and middle 20th century. Murray Rothbard was deeply influenced by him, and so was the whole generation of free-market thinkers of the 1950s. See Albert Jay Nock’s article archives.

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Massimo de Angelis of the editor’s blog has a fascinating story about the cooperative economy in the Salinas region of the Ecuadorian Andes. The Salinas area, a region centering on the village of the same name, includes some thirty communities comprising a total of around six thousand people. The area economy is a network of cooperative enterprises, commonly called “the organization,” that includes some 95% of the population.

The “organization” is in reality a quick name for several associations, foundations, consortia and cooperatives, ranging from cheese producers to textile, ceramic and chocolate making, herbal medicine and trash collection, a radio station an hotel, a hostel, and a “office of community tourism”.

In his article, Carson discusses the ways in which this system was established and is currently working; as well as its potential pitfalls, and application to the development of similar societies in the future.

The area has an interesting history. Only a generation or so Salinas was the typical domain of a Latin American patron, the Cordovez family. The Cordovezes owned the common land of the area pursuant to a Spanish crown grant and were the main employer–most notably via the family salt mine. As such, Salinas is an unlikely location for such an egalitarian economic experiment.

The origin of “the organization” is reminiscent of a couple of more famous distributist experiments: the Antigonish movement in Nova Scotia, and the Mondragon system in the Basque country of Spain. Like those two previous experiments, the organization started out with a single cooperative enterprise and from there grew by mitosis into an entire federated network of cooperatives. The first cooperative, formed in the 1970s, was a credit union created as a source of independence from the loan sharks who preyed on the poor. (This initial nucleus, as was also the case with Antigonish and Mondragon, was the project of an activist Catholic priest, the Italian immigrant Fr. Antonio Polo) The credit cooperative offered to buy the Cordovez family lands.

From my own perspective, I have a hard time quoting descriptions of such feudal land domains as legitimate “private property” with a straight face. Anyone collecting rent from the rightful owners of the land should be grateful to go to bed at night with his head still attached to his body, let alone actually receive a purchase price for the land. You may recall the old joke about the delegation of peasants from an English village who confronted the lord of the manor: “By what right do you claim property in this land, which our ancestors worked time out of mind, and collect rent from us?” “Why, I inherited it from my father, the previous lord of the manor. And he inherited it from his father, and so on, going back to our ancestor the first lord of this manor, who fought for it under William the Conqueror.” “Ah, well then,” said the delegation. “Now we’re going to fight you for it.” [...]

[...] Like Mondragon, the cooperatives disconcertingly maintain a two-tier labor force, including a lower tier of wage laborers who are not member-owners. The wage laborers frequently do contract work in their homes, on something like the old “putting out” system. The contract work is part-time, supplementing subsistence production.

As I’ve argued elsewhere, the character of such arrangements depends heavily on the bargaining power of the workers involved. If access to the means of subsistence production is ready and cheap, and they can afford to take work or leave it at any given time with a sufficient economic cushion to wait for terms more to their liking, such arrangements may well be consistent with an economy of a generally libertarian character. I have no idea from the article what the current nature of land tenure is for the contract workers who engage in subsistence agriculture; but the relations between them and the cooperatives seem to be fairly relaxed and transparent, which suggests the core of permanent members doesn’t hold the whip hand over them.

This impression is reinforced by the fact that a significant social safety net operates in the village, funded by the surpluses of various cooperative enterprises, on a gift economy basis. And it’s possible to earn exchange value outside of wage labor by contributing to something like a time bank. [...]

Check out Somewhere Near Salinas at Reason for more commentary.

And in southern Asia, stretching from the Vietnamese highlands up into the Tibetan plateau and as far west as Afghanistan, would be a single sprawling mountain realm that is home to more than 100 million people. This is Zomia.

Zomia is a rugged swath of Asia that for 2,000 years has remained culturally aloof from the traditional centers of power and the pull of empires. Its inhabitants, Asia’s “hill people,” have earned a reputation for egalitarianism, insurrection, and independence.

Drake Bennett of the Boston Globe provides this fantastic look at James Scott’s book painting Zomia as “a sort of counter-history of the evolution of human civilization.”

In it, he describes the ways in which the people of Zomia have remained staunchly against and without the oppression fostered by dependence upon a state. Scott argues that Zomia represents a contemporary anarchist society — one with no tolerance for coercion and rulership; and little desire or need for the trappings of modern civilization.

What Zomia presents, Scott argues in his book “The Art of Not Being Governed,” is nothing less than a refutation of the traditional narrative of steady civilizational progress, in which human life has improved as societies have grown larger and more complex. Instead, for many people through history, Scott argues, civilized life has been a burden and a menace.

“The reason why some people didn’t become civilized, why some people didn’t ‘develop,’ may not be a question of them not having the talent, or being backward and so on, but may be historically produced by their desire to avoid what they saw as the inconveniences of states,” says Scott.

This article is well worth reading in full, and goes into a fair bit of detail regarding Scott’s view on these unique cultures. If nothing else, this article provides a great platform for further research; and certainly is a source of inspiration regarding the idea of a ruler-less society in practice.

Further, all of this was accomplished without the presence of a state-controled monopoly on force. The paper outlines the various private means by which protection, order, and dispute-resolution were accomplished; each without resorting to centralized government control. A lengthy excerpt follows, but be sure to read the whole paper; as it goes into important detail, and includes footnotes to cited quotes and sources.

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Excerpt from: Anderson, Terry & Hill, P.J. “An American Experiment in Anarcho-Capitalism: The Not So Wild, Wild West.” Journal of Libertarian Studies. Vol. 3 Num. 1: pages 13-15

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Before turning to specific examples of anarcho-capitalistic institutions in the American West, it is useful to examine the legendary characterization of the “wild, wild West.” The potential for chaos is a major objection to trust in the market for enforcement of rights and many histories of the West seem to substantiate this argument. These histories describe the era and area as characterized by gunfights, horse-thievery, and general disrespect for basic human rights.

…the Western frontier was a far more civilized, more peaceful, and safer place than American society is today…

The taste for the dramatic in literature and other entertainment forms has led to concentration on the seeming disparity between the westerners’ desire for order and the prevailing disorder. If the Hollywood image of the West were not enough to taint our view, scholars of violence contributed with quotes such as the following: “We can report with some assurance that compared to frontier days there has been a significant decrease in crimes of violence in the United States.”

Recently, however, more careful examinations of the conditions that existed cause one to doubt the accuracy of this perception. In his book, Frontier Violence: Another Look, W. Eugene Hollon stated that the believed “that the Western frontier was a far more civilized, more peaceful, and safer place than American society is today.”

The legend of the “wild, wild West” lives on despite Robert Dykstra’s finding that in five of the major cattle towns (Abilene, Ellsworth, Wichita, Dodge City, and Caldwell) for the years from 1870 to 1885, only 45 homicides were reported-an average of 1.5 per cattle-trading season. In Abilene, supposedly one of the wildest of the cow towns, “nobody was killed in 1869 or 1870. In fact, nobody was killed until the advent of officers of the law, employed to prevent killings.” Only two towns, Ellsworth in 1873 and Dodge City in 1876, ever had five killings in any one year.

…Government became the province of criminals who used the legal monopoly on coercion to further their own ends…

Frank Prassel states in his book subtitled “A Legacy of Law and Order,” that “if any conclusion can be drawn from recent crime statistics, it must be that this last frontier left no significant heritage of offenses against the person, relative to other sections of the country.” Moreover, even if crime rates were higher, it should be remembered that the preference for order can differ across time and people. To show that the West was more “lawless” than our present day society tells one very little unless some measure of the “demand for law and order” is available.

“While the frontier society may appear to have functioned with many violations of formal law, it sometimes more truly reflected community customs in conflict with superficial and at times alien standards.” The vigilance committees which sprang up in many of the mining towns of the West provide excellent examples of this conflict. In most instances these committees arose after civil government was organized. They proved that competition was useful in cases where government was ineffective, as in the case of San Francisco in the 1850’s, where government became the province of criminals who used the legal monopoly on coercion to further their own ends, as in Virginia City, Montana Territory in the 1860’s.

Even in these cases, however, violence was not the standard modus operandi. When the San Francisco vigilante committee was reconstituted in 1856, “the group remained in action for three months, swelling its membership to more than eight thousand. During this period, San Francisco had only two murders, compared with more than a hundred in the six months before the committee was formed.”

To understand how law and order were provided in the American West, we now turn to four examples of institutions which approximated anarcho-capitalism. These case studies of land claims clubs, cattlemens’ associations, mining camps, and wagon trains provide support for the hypotheses presented above and suggest that private rights were enforced and that chaos did not reign.

(Ed. – Some paragraph breaks and punctuation may not be exactly as they appear in the original paper, due to the OCR done on it)

Most of the article is a very informative historical accounting of the lengths the Hunt family went to to acquire godly sums of silver as a hedge against possible declines in the oil market (their main source of wealth); but which quickly became a pursuit worthy of its own empire.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, (the [Hunt's] Circle K Ranch in Texas) brother in law Randy Kreiling and his brother Tilmon held a shooting contest amongst the cowboys to find the best marksmen. The dozen best marksmen were hired for a special assignment to ride shotgun on one of the largest private silver transfers in history.

The Circle K cowboys flew on 3 specially chartered 707 jets to Chicago and New York where they were met by a convoy of armored trucks during the middle of the night. Forty million oz of silver was loaded onto the planes and they immediately flew to Zurich where they were met by another convoy of armored trucks. The cowboys loaded the trucks and silver was dispersed to six different storage locations in Switzerland.

The transfer cost Bunker and Herbert [H.L. Hunt's sons] $200,000. The storage costs for the 40 million oz in Switzerland and the 15 million oz still in the US amounted to $3 million/year.

LaBorde concludes his retelling with a warning regarding the way and form in which they acquired their precious metals, and how it lead to their eventual downfall. This is a must-read for anyone considering entry into the precious-metals market.

The article also discusses how “the Department of Homeland Security asked the Census Bureau in 2003 for details about where Arab populations live in the United States.”

Further, it outlines various news stories from censuses past; detailing cases about failure to submit, to answer all questions, etc., as well as varying opinions and party platforms surrounding the moral validity of the census.

When the US Government rounded up Japanese-Americans in 1942, they used the “supposedly private” census data to tell the soldiers how many Japanese lived on each block. The Census Bureau handed out the data needed to put them into prison camps or otherwise be harassed. Reams of information came from the “strictly confidential” census. In 1943, a direct tabulation of “Every Japanese person living in Washington, DC”, including name, address, sex, age, marital status, citizenship, profession, and employer, all taken directly from individual census records, was provided to the Secret Service. Throughout the war, individuals “of interest” to the FBI and Secret Service were looked up, and their private information was released for purposes of government harassment.

Don’t participate in the census, don’t work for it, don’t fill it out, and feed it false data whenever you can. There is no effective law against doing so; the maximum penalty was $100 (Congress recently raised it to $5000), no jail, and it is VERY rarely enforced. The Constitution authorizes them to count heads every ten years, not to ask how many bathrooms you have and what racial group your ancestors are from.

On the contrary, it not only wasn’t it a nightmare, it was downright inspiring:

“Medieval Iceland had no bureaucrats, no taxes, no police, and no army. … Of the normal functions of governments elsewhere, some did not exist in Iceland, and others were privatized, including fire-fighting, criminal prosecutions and executions, and care of the poor.”

Even at its worst, it was no more heinous than an average day in the US:

“During more than fifty years of what the Icelanders themselves perceived as intolerably violent civil war, leading to the collapse of the traditional system, the average number of people killed or executed each year appears, on a per capita basis, to be roughly equal to the current rate of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter in the United States.”

Keep in mind, that was during a civil war that eventually led to the downfall of the Free State. However, unlike this country, the Icelanders managed to stave off such conflict for nearly 300 years.

“We should be cautious in labeling as a failure a political experiment that flourished longer than the United States has even existed.” Indeed, given Diamond’s criterion of instability, the United States cannot be called stable until it survives the year 2108. (Though one could argue that it has already failed the test: the United States had to wait only 85 years from its founding before plunging into a catastrophic civil war, by contrast with Iceland’s 290 years.)

This article is well worth reading, as it points out both the failures and successes of this historical anarchist society, as well as contemplating the reasons for both. On top of that, the “Further Reading” section at the end of the article is a treasure trove of similar works. Check it out.