This problem of the disappeared dead comes up all over the world, over and over again. People disappear. Sometimes bodies are dumped in the streets. Often, they end up in an unmarked grave. It happens in small numbers, and in large numbers. It happens in all kinds of authoritarian regimes, in all kinds of countries, in all sorts of cultures.

Eventually, the central government falls or is brought down. Then the locals who know where the bodies were buried take the investigators to the mass graves, or the individual graves. Bodies are dug up. Sometimes they can be identified. And more of the truth is known.

Last redneck says that if you want a list of lost or disappeared or murdered persons in New Orleans, go to the internet. Hey, cool, and guess what, there are people on the internet compiling eyewitness lists and testimonials, and the reaction they often get is, “Oh, that’s nonsense.”

But, the same thing happened to people who published accounts of the disappeared in Latin American dictatorships. Until the regimes fell apart and bodies were dug up.

The state is inherently lawless. The people who run the state run it to benefit themselves. What problem do they have if they kill fifty people who were in jail or prison? So, they have to go find fifty families. Or, more likely, those families come looking for the murder victims. And, quick as a bunny, the people who run the state kill the families, too. If you have no people, you cannot be betrayed, but you also cannot be found.

The history of the world includes a large number of governments that went out of control, slipped the boundaries of, say, the constitutions of those countries, and massacred a lot of people. In every single one of those countries, people said, “It isn’t happening.” And they said, “It couldn’t happen here.”

And they were wrong. And if you say it isn’t happening here, and it couldn’t happen here, how do you know?

Show me the bodies? Yep. Show them to me. But, folks, take your time. It is dangerous work confronting the men and women who run the state with evidence of their brutality.

I mainly cited Auburn, AL, because that is where the Mises Institute is located, and they deligitimize the state on a regular basis.

by Harry Browne

August 19, 2005

Anthony Wile recently posted an article at FreeMarketnNews.com in which he urged that those who believe in small, limited government and those who believe in no government at all should quit arguing over their differences and unite to fight big government.

It is a excellent article and well worth reading, but as I read it, it occurred to me that all such discussions seem to ignore one angle. We have an obvious motive to be working together without even trying to work together.

Suppose there were a magic button sitting in front of you. And suppose that button would instantly reduce the federal government to only, say, $200 billion.

Would you refuse to push the button — even if you want the federal government to be 0 dollars? Would you refuse to push the button — even if you think the federal government should be $500 billion?

Once the federal government is only $200 billion, we can each go our separate way — trying to make the federal government exactly what each wants it to be. For some the federal government would be $200 billion too large, for others perhaps $300 too small. But for each a $2 trillion reduction in the size of government would be welcome. I doubt that there’s even one among us who would refuse to see the federal government at $200 billion as a first step.

So why should we waste our time arguing now over where government should go once it’s down to $200 billion.

Stating our Case

I’m always arguing that government is way too big, that government programs don’t work, that free-market programs are much more effective, more fair, less expensive.

From time to time, someone will ask me, “So how would you handle roads in your free society?”

Instead of trying to convince someone that roads should be the province of the free market, and let the discussion be steered into esoterica — leaving listeners with the idea that this is all just an attractive pipe dream — I usually say:

I have no doubt that roads — like anything else — would be far safer, far less expensive and far more practical if they were built and operated by private companies. But let’s stay within the realm of today’s possibilities. Let’s talk about reducing dramatically today’s $2½-trillion federal budget, about ending a scandalous welfare program, about stopping the wholesale destruction of our health-care and education systems by the federal government. In short let’s get government out of our lives wherever we can.

If the questioner still wants to focus on roads, he will do so at the risk of losing the support of listeners who do want to talk about reducing government in their lives — in short, about two thirds or more of his audience.

Poll after poll shows that the majority of Americans think government is much too big. This is a fertile field — one that’s ready to be shown that much smaller government can give them much more of what they want. We should be taking advantage of this bias, and pushing to mobilize this audience to flood their congressmen, legislators, governors, and the president with requests to enact legislation that will reduce and eliminate huge, bloated, government programs.

The Future

Once we’ve reduced government to $200 billion, I’ll personally head up a fund-raising drive to raise the money to rent the Super Bowl, so we can gather to argue how much smaller government should be.

Until then, I refuse to join the arguments over the ideal size of government — despite any opinions I may harbor.

How small should government be?

Government is force, and we should be eager to remove force wherever possible from human affairs.

So how small should government be?

As small as humanly possible.

This is like if I said, “4 is a number of significance in the Baghavad Gita, there are four major gods, and the main Element–Fire–has 4 counterparts, Water, Wind, Earth, and Spirit.”

That doesnt make 4 a magical number. It is an example of twisting words to try and CREATE facts that do not exist.

For the record, 12 is a repetitive number in the Bible, as are 3 and 7.

Whatever.

are extremely dubious. All technicalities.

If you’re fully committed to believing something — i.e. like LPers that their party is not corrupt — then you can cast aside 10,000 coincidences and say there’s “no proof.”

The Jesus Myth Hypothesis seems decently strong.

As a sometime resident of that fine metropolis, I can’t see that being the case. The APD maintains a monopoly, and the Lee County Courthouse and Jail are tangible. The county commission levies a property tax, and perhaps a sales tax (can’t remember).

The ill-gotten loot is used to fund various state make work projects, thugs, indoctrination and detention camps, etc. There is a separate, armed gang that claims the incorporated town as its turf, but also allows agents of the county, state, federal, and perhaps even international thugocracies to do their thing there as well.

It isn’t greatly different than any other town in the US in those respects. More free in some ways (guns, property taxes) but worse in others (vice laws, prohibition, etc).

I wish Winston Churchill didn’t exist!

No it isn’t. There are several countries which are worse off, and Somalia grew faster under anarchy economically than any other nation in Africa. Go to about any subsaharan African nation, and with some observation you will notice that the government there does none of the things that people claim are the good things that government does, and that it operates as an open, out and out thieving gang.

You might disagree with anarchists that our Western governments are just the same thing with lipstick, but there is no lipstick in Africa, and you’ll have a tough time justifying any of the regimes there when you see them in action.

If you go out in the countryside where most people live, this becomes very, very obvious, since the local government does not provide any services to the villages, but does occasionally send armed gangs of teenagers known as the state’s military to rape, loot (collect taxes), and sometimes murder and torture people. These government are universally feared and loathed by their subjects, who avoid contact with them whenever they can.

Somalia was in the shitter under the Marxists, and to some extent remained in the shitter after their bloody regime collapsed. However, it did make some progress. Parts of the country – those that actually had real anarchy, or kritarchy – were much more peaceful than others.

Likewise, I would not expect heaven on earth if/when North America achieves anarchy. There probably would in fact be some short term chaos. Things would shake out over a few years, and at that point we will be better off than we would have been otherwise. That difference will become more dramatic over time.

For some greater detail, see

http://praxeology.net/anarcres.htm

Said the socialist to the libertarian when asked if he’d read Mises’ “Socialism”

I’d be happy to debunk the Zeitgeist Part 1. But instead of hashing out the debate here, I’ll refer you to people who have done ALL the research.
http://ct.grenme.com/index.php/Zeitgeist_Part_I#Claims_of_Historical_Correlation

http://www.alwaysbeready.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=124&Itemid=107

http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/HORUS.htm

http://www.consider.org/News/2007/12.html

Also. Read “Some notes on alleged parallels between Christianity and pagan religions. And, a proof that Winston Churchill did not exist!” by ‘Justin Martyr’

Anyway, on with the threadjacking:

#

No,it isnt.

Why can’t anarcho-capitalism be a religion? It can be as passionately held a belief as any religion. It includes an ethical code, although one that does not cover everything. Sure, it doesn’t have a creation story, and no outright deity (saints perhaps, to some).

But I think the operative issue here is the deeply held belief part. That can hold equally true of political philosophies as of religious ones.