The Life of Muhammad

                                                

    Muhammad was born into a relatively poor Arab clan.  His youth was spent in poverty. In his youth he had traveled widely with his uncle and had the opportunity to meet a variety of Christian monks or priests and Jewish rabbis.  One such meeting which he had at the age of twelve seems to have  made a special impression upon him. It was probably his first meeting with a Nestorian monk who called him God’s messenger. At the age of twenty five he married a 40 year old wealthy widow whose trading caravan he had accompanied.  Many caravans at the time passed from the area of the Yemens in the south to Damascus in the north. These caravans would pass through or near Mecca or Medina.   Damascus was already a long occupied city which had existed since at least 2500 BC.  Arabia was populated by tribal societies.  There were as many as six Arab tribes,  and large populations of both Arab Jews and Arab Christians.  The groups and tribes which were most actively engaged in trade both from Damascus to Yemen and from Egypt to Bagdad  were wealthy. The Arab tribes which were more nomadic in their life style were poorer.  Muhammad had come into personal means when he married, and for fifteen years he lived as a caravan driver and trader. He remembered the poverty and difficulty of his youth.   There was the great Persian empire in the far east, and the Byzantine empire in the north west.   Arabia was divided by tribal society and the multiplicity of religions including Judaism, Christianity, and Arab paganism.  The Byzantine and the Persian empires were routinely engaged in struggles for control of  the areas of Palestine, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq.   Neither the Byzantine empire nor the Persian empire had significant control over Arabia.  These lands were the crossroads of world trade and their control was lucrative.

     Arab paganism at the time included a belief that God begat daughters and that they became angels who among many Arabs were worshiped as gods.  There were at the same time a number of Arab theists who were fundamentalists who had repudiated idolatry and polytheism and were pursuing an ascetic life style.  Muhammad was casually familiar with all of these through contact with individuals and not from personal study inasmuch as he himself was illiterate.  Muhammad held ideas which were ethnocentric or nativist, and  he saw the differences of religion, language, wealth and tribe were keeping Arabia from being united. He saw a world in which others had huge organized empires while Arabs were mired in tribalism, with a multiplicity of languages and religions.  Muhammad saw diversity not as a strength, but as a weakness of Arab culture. Anti-sectarian and anti-schismatic themes emerge frequently in the Koran. For example:

6:160    “Have nothing to do with those who have split up their religion into sects.”

15:90    “We will surely punish the schismatics, who have broken up the scriptures into separate parts,  believing in some and denying others.”

30:32    “Do not divide your religion into sects, each exulting in its own doctrines.”
                                                                        
At the age of forty he had spent time in caves contemplating these ideas and began ‘reciting’ the words of the Koran. These recitations were in classical Arabic.  These  words were either committed to memory and recorded later by someone else, or were recorded by someone who was with him at the time. Some have noted the apparent contradiction of Muhammad who was illiterate in producing the classical Arabic poetry of the Koran.  Modern examples are available of individuals who are voluble and use language freely who at the same time are illiterate.  One must observe that there are many employed in the recording  industry who sell millions of recordings. Yet there remains a deep suspicion that if some of these were handed a pencil and paper they would be exposed as functionally illiterate.
                                                                                                                                                       
     At the age of 43 he began public preaching of the words of the Koran. He began to gather around himself followers, and it was at about this time he began to lead his followers in paramilitary operations against unsuspecting trading caravans. He was not well received and at an age of 45 his followers fled to Ethiopia.  At 52 he himself fled Mecca for Medina.  He condemned in his ‘recitations’ what he regarded as the polytheism of Christianity,  Arab paganism, and the corruption of Scriptures by the Jews.  He was regularly engaged in a variety of activities such as extortion, murder, beheading  and selling his victims into slavery.  He was already in middle age when his raids began, and he directed attacks from the safety of the rear.  At middle age, he avoided  hand to hand combat against those who were half his age.  Muhammad’s role was  that of motivator and Prophet, rallying and urging his followers into battle. He was the one who articulated the promises of heavenly sexual bliss. The earthly rewards of booty and a fresh supply of slaves was the temporal bonus. 
                                                                        
            With no distinction between individual law and universal law in his thought, it became legitimate for him to impose his religious, political, and social views on others by force. He embraced  a realized eschatology:

3:52     “When Jesus observed that they had no faith, he said: Who will help me in the cause of God?”

22:41      “...whoever helps God shall be helped by Him.  God is powerful and mighty: He will     assuredly help those who, once made masters in the land, will attend to their prayers, and     render the alms levy, enjoin justice and forbid evil.”

47:6     “Believers, if you help God, God will help you and make you strong.”

Brief contemplation of this idea will reveal its lack of humility, and its  profound arrogance and even stupidity.  All of those who unite individual law and universal law  and pursue a realized eschatology, in both ancient and modern times,  believe they are helping God.  It never occurs that God does not need help.  If God needed help,  He would not be God. The first step in acknowledging God for anyone who would become a  believer is disabusing oneself of the notion that God is a dependent Being in desperate need of help without which He might fail.  Political leadership in current day Iran accepts this view, and even openly express the idea that they must act in such a way as to usher in the end of days, supposing or leaving the impression that God cannot do this on His own.  This idea originates in an overestimation of the abilities, and perfectability of man, and so presents a God of diminished capacity.  The philosophical position of uniting individual law and universal law  led Muhammad and  his followers  to the view that in human governance the exercise of power is its own legitimization.

2:251      “ Had God  not defeated some by the might of others, the earth would have been utterly corrupted.” 

This is a very common idea throughout history.  It is the attribution to God of one’s own conduct or behavior. Judaism and Christianity understood that the corruption of original sin came from a very early time.  None of them  should have supposed  that following a military policy of conquest would lift the world’s burden of sin and darkness.   Yet, it should be noted  that ideas of conquest and subjugation of the defeated for proximate ends were common in seventh century cultures.   The reality of the seventh century was that all of  the world  powers  wanted undisputed control of the region for economic reasons. The difference was that Muhammad sought this explicitly through creating a religion, uniting Arab culture, motivating his army of followers, and disposing of any who resisted, and establishing his own realized eschatology.
                                                                        
    Over the centuries Christians have  engaged in the effort to develop a doctrine of just war. Today the doctrine of just war addresses a number of considerations and among these are:  necessity, proportionality, and purpose. Necessity suggests that just war follows after all other negotiated  options have been exhausted. Historically, it has been thought just war must be  proportional, but a powerful case can be made that just war should be disproportional so as to achieve the earliest possible result.  The purpose of the just war must be survival, or defensive in character, and not for the expansion of spheres of influence, or the imposition of hegemony in a region or in the world.  A theology of just war for Christians does not envision the  punishment of moral turpitude, or the enforcement of moral rectitude, or the propagation of the faith as just cause for war.  Yet, these are the precise purposes endorsed by the Koran and envisioned in the violent expansion of Islam.

     It should be noted that a theology of just war would not include waging war for the purpose of spreading western values, opening commercial markets, or imposing security on the high seas. A theology of just war does not envision ‘making the world safe for democracy.’ The purpose of a government whose foundation is natural law is not messianic, apocalyptic, or  eschatological .  Its purpose is protecting and ensuring the liberty and independence of those who have consented to its governance.  The prosecution of a just war must from its beginning  include the intention of winning.   The prosecution of a war without an intention of winning displays in a palpable way the total contempt for the value of life,  as it views those engaged as disposable or expendable for proximate ends.   No government could be regarded as justly prosecuting a war in which they were not mindful of the sacrifice required of those committed to combat.  Furthermore, once just war has been engaged, the least immoral way of prosecuting it should be pursued.   This requires placing a higher value on the lives of one’s own combatants than on the lives of the enemies innocent civilians. While it would not be moral to deliberately  target the enemies civilians, the primary responsibility for the safety and security of their own civilians is that of each warring party.  Minimizing the occasions for war is the only moral course which one might follow.  This would include the active pursuit of independence and  the intolerance of interdependence.  War is the precipitate of interdependence.
                                                                                                                                                  
    Increasing sophistication of technology has forced reconsideration and debate of the idea of preemptive war.  One should approach this idea with great caution as it is demonstrable that the capacity of nations to wage war has vastly exceeded both their competence and their intelligence.  
                                                                                                                                  
.            Muhammad assumed the mantle of subjugating,  cleansing,  and perfecting  the world. He was an early ethnic cleanser.  It was an enormous task before him, but he had to start somewhere, and the absolute submission of those who lived in Arabia came first.  He became a sort of highway robber, taking his followers and attacking unarmed trading caravans on a variety of the many roads crossing Arabia.
                                                                        
      A discussion of the 624 AD Battle of Badr (Surah 8:1-8) confirms these tactics as it describes a plan to attack an unarmed caravan which was changed due to the approach of Meccans coming to the rescue of the caravan. The Muslim force of 319 engaged and killed the Meccans  force of 1000.  The intention of the God of the Koran in this description is to demonstrate a sort of  high moral standard, but accomplishes the reverse by revealing the character of Muhammad in at first planning the attack against those who were unarmed. Moreover, engaging the Meccans  was a tactical military decision not a moral one. It occurs when Muhammad is 54 years old. The Battle of Badr is widely considered to be the first truly military victory of Muhammad and his forces. It was a victory over the Quraysh tribe (Muhammad’s own tribe) of Mecca. Many of the attacks  in the period of 613-623 AD were against the unarmed or the minimally defended commercial caravans.  When his band of followers were successful in their raids in this period  they would split up the booty, kill the men and sell women and children into slavery.  For a full decade  prior to more formal military operations Muhammad was simply a  highway robber or terrorist.

    The distributions of the property stolen in these many raids is a matter of concern  for the God of the Koran.  A significant portion was to be reserved for God’s prophet, Muhammad, and for his extended family. Residual amounts were for those in need.

8:41   “Know that one-fifth of your spoils shall belong to God, the Apostle (Muhammad), the          Apostle’s kinsfolk, the orphans, the destitute, and the traveler in need.....”

    Additional revenues were obtained through assessment for ‘alms’ on desert Arabs.  Some of these ways of revenue raising would today be considered as extortion or a protection racket.  The distributions to the poor  began to make him popular among some of the desert  tribes and he attracted more and more followers willing to engage in the violent  activities necessary to acquire this largess.  Much of his popularity may be attributed to the scheme of redistribution. Eighty percent of the booty was reserved for those willing to engage the enemy.  With eighty percent of the stolen property reserved for the combatants, his forces were willing to fight fiercely even when they were substantially outnumbered, because the booty would be distributed over fewer participants, and the greater the military victory, the greater the prize at the end.

 Since Muhammad was assured of a significant share in the prize, there was no need for him to personally engage the enemy. However, it was after the victory at Badr that Muhammad became briefly overconfident if not reckless. He was substantially overweight.  At the battle of Uhud (625) he was wearing his customary two coats of mail armor and instead of remaining far to the rear in his own tent as was his custom he allowed himself to be caught up in the battle.  He was struck down and wounded in the eye.  For a time he was thought to be dead, but he survived and in the remaining few years of his life never again allowed himself to be overtaken by the battle.                                                                          
                                                                       
      Muhammad would periodically have additional ‘recitings’ which would clarify the word of God or justify his own behavior.  A fine example of personal self-justification occurs in which  Muhammad admonishes two of his wives to repent their objections to his affair with a Coptic slave from whom he had promised to separate:

66:6    “It may well be that, if he divorce you, his Lord will give him in your place better wives than               yourselves, submissive to God and full of  faith, obedient, penitent, devout, and given to                         fasting; both formerly wedded and virgins.”
                                                                          
This reflects a sentiment which could just as easily be expressed by a  religious  polygamist of modern times. There can be no doubt that this type of cult-like manipulative abuse of his wives was both practiced  by Muhammad,  and was central to the instruction which is provided to his followers.

     Those who were his victims regarded him as a charlatan and an imposter. He was the object of ridicule.  The Jews commonly joked about him.  Arab pagans wrote satirical poetry about him. He was generally  regarded with contempt.  His activities were quite profitable and the distributions to the poor brought him many followers.  His recitings of the Koran  provided a cohesive ideology for Arab society.  Many of his ‘converts’ were converts of convenience who would rather not die or have their trading activities totally destroyed.  Armies were raised who fought against him, but eventually Muhammad and his forces prevailed.
                                                                          
     A few years before his death the Byzantine empire defeated the Persian empire.  This left  somewhat of a power vacuum into which Muslim forces could eventually expand, and hardening even more Muhammad’s opposition to Christianity. Once Arabia had been unified under the Muslim yoke, resistance to the Byzantine empire and expansion of the Muslim lands was inevitable.
                                                                          
    The man and the movement were from the outset about imposing Islam,  unifying the diverse Arab tribes,  and  establishing hegemony on the peninsula of Arabia and in the region.  This could not be accomplished without killing or converting Arab Christians and Arab Jews and Arab pagans. It required waging a war against the ‘rich’ and raising an army from the ‘poor.’ The movement was religious, social, political, and military.  In addition it was about the personal acquisition of power and wealth of both Muhammad and his followers.  Islam as envisioned by Muhammad  is less of a religion and more of a criminal enterprise.  It is  a sort of religious protection racket characterized by astonishing barbarism. Muhammad’s broader goals were not achieved until several years after his death, as Islam spread into Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia.

    The irrational hatred which he had for the Jews was undoubtedly related to the fact that they were thoroughly engaged in commerce and were wealthier than many of the Arabs.  They provided a target rich environment for his activities of plunder.  The religious justification was that they ‘had corrupted the Scriptures.’   Yet on even a more base level his hatred for Jews may have been motivated by a more shocking and adolescent attitude:  “I am more monotheistic than you are!”  This personal prejudice probably was magnified by Muhammad’s personal knowledge of the Byzantine emperor Phocas and his persecutions of Jews and Monophysite Christians in the period 602-610 AD in the regions of Syria and Mesopotamia.

The National Security Requirements of Non-interventionism

A non-interventionist foreign policy has long been integral to libertarian thought.  The non-aggression principle suggests that it is incumbent upon the free state to avoid interfering in the choices and policies of foreign states. This 'incumbency' is a matter of moral obligation.   The idea that the free state should not be imposing its will on a foreign states is not the same as saying that the free state should 'respect' the choices and policies of foreign states.   One might very well reach the conclusion that the policy of a foreign state is destructive of prosperity, or even of world peace.  This conclusion might very well lead one to a reasoned disrespect and even contempt of the foreign state.    The free state is nevertheless under the moral obligation not to act unless attacked.   It is upon attack alone that force is justified and even required.   The necessary and sufficient cause for military action is an attack upon the free state.  It is in the very purpose of the formation and consent to the free state that it act to defend those who have consented to its governance. 

Long before such an attack occurs the enemy of the free state may declare his intentions of initiating hostilities.  Such is the case with a number of terrorist states of our own time....notably Iran.  In this case, as in the historical case of Pearl Harbor, it is incumbent upon the free state to take such actions as would defend against hostilities principally by following a policy which would deny the enemy the opportunity of attaining his strategic objective.

The purpose of the Navy of the free state is not to 'project power,' or guarantee the security of the high seas (Mahan notwithstanding), but to prevent the military penetration or invasion of coasts.   The idea that the general taxpayer should subsidize import and export, by providing security on the high seas is nonsense.   The security of such trade is a private matter and the associated costs should be carried by those engaged in this activity and their customers. 

Iran has openly declared its hostility to the United States on numerous occasions even as the historic policy of the United States toward Iran has not been without fault.   Without engaging in an historical tit-for-tat argument,  one must consider a policy going forward.   Nothing is gained by wallowing in ideas of recriminations and revenge.

The strategic objective of Islamo-fascists everywhere is to invade western civilization, corrupt western culture, demand imposition of Shariah law, and prepare to fold all nations into an international caliphate.  This strategic objective is easily defeated.   It is easily defeated by the free state merely carrying out its fundamental mandate of defending its own borders and preventing invasion.   The victorious strategist is as suggested by Sun Tzu is one who recognizes the conditions of victory first and then only fights if necessary, and the greatest strategist is one who achieves a victory without engaging in battle.

Those who attacked the United States on 9/11/2001 were first allowed by United States policy to enter the country.   Whether on student visas, or visitor visas, or work visas....these are matters which are of no account.  The fact that the terrorist were already in the United States constituted what was arguably the greatest example of the dereliction of duty in the history of man.  This is the case, because the requirement that the free state defend those who have consented to its governance is a fundamental moral obligation.

Today there are already in the United States between two and three million illegal aliens whose homes of national origin are terrorist dominated states. It is not a stretch to suppose that many of these are merely waiting for a single phone message of only one word:  'Now!'    What shall we do?

Successive administrations of both political parties have taken the view that the 'war on terrorism' be conducted on foreign shores thousands of miles from the United States and have turned a blind eye to the terrorists in our midst.   Recently, the Obama administration even characterized the Fort Hood massacre as 'work place violence.'   This spurious definition meets at once the needs of political correctness, and the need to escape the constitutional responsibility for the maintenance of national security.

The security of the borders of the United States does not  merely involve issues of  the southern border, nor is it directed at only one ethnic group,  but it is about all borders, all ports of entry, all types of visas, and all ports and coasts.  It is about having a vetting process for those legally entering the United States that weeds out the underpants bombers.  It is about having a vetting process that weeds out the terrorist from the ranks of the uniformed military.   It is about having a limited student visa program that eliminates those interested in learning how to build bombs or fly commercial aircraft.  It is about rounding up those conspiring to damage the nation and deporting them. None of these activities need to require a repeal of the fourth amendment.   We need only admit that there is no natural law obligation upon the free state formed by consent to admit anynew applicants.

  Finally, it is about having a stiff criminal code that imposes suitable punishments upon those who are actively seeking to kill their neighbors and death penalties for those who succeed in doing so.   When we consider these types of activities we must concede that in recent years the truly effective means of achieving victory in the 'war on terrorism' remain largely unused.

The 'most dangerous' of policies are those which fail to carry out these basic responsibilities.  Those who insist on invasions of foreign countries and 'nation building'  either have not read or understood the wisdom of Sun Tzu which suggests that he who fights first and then looks for victory is destined for certain defeat.

These ideas do not mean those who desire 'preemptive' military action are merely 'Muslim haters' as has been recently suggested.  It means only that they are ignorant of how to achieve strategic victory.  In the end, the security of the free state will be best preserved in an atmosphere of economic prosperity un-sapped by the costs of perpetual war and nation building.

The Economic Depression and the Election of 2012

            Beginning in the fall of 2011 there has come about a widespread misunderstanding among the class of talking heads and political pundits.   It is widely assumed that the election of a Republican President and Republican takeover of the Senate will mark such a change in policy that the nation will be delivered from the deliberate destruction of the economy which has been wrought by the Obama administration. This notion is fatuous.  It is highly unlikely that any change in economic policy will save the nation from the new normal of approximately 25% unemployment and negative inflation adjusted GDP growth.

            The reasons that the current economic collapse will undoubtedly stretch out over at least three decades are very clear.  In the first instance, there has been a multiple decade policy of subsidizing housing which created a bubble in the real estate market.   Ever increasing market values had the ancillary effect of subsidizing consumer spending as home equity was widely used to support an unreal and unsustainable standard of living. At the same time that this policy of subsidizing consumption was occurring federal policy deliberately subsidized oversees manufacturing and punished domestic manufacturing.   Moreover, overseas production of petroleum was subsidized while earnest efforts were being made to put domestic production out of business. These policies left the United States with a consumer based economy and chronic huge trade deficits.   The reasons why these policies were followed is simply because it was believed (ideology) that these policies would raise the standard of living of producer nations and bring prosperity to everybody in the world who previously lived in a cave and wore a loincloth.

            The path to economic recovery will require a repudiation of all of these failed policies of the past after an honest acceptance of the reality of demonstrable failure.  The ideology (sometimes called Progressivism) has failed. This failure was entirely predictable.  Every thing government taxes aggressively to changes hands in a black market, and everything the government subsidizes booms in an economic bubble which inevitably collapses.  The bubble in real estate has burst and the United States can no longer support the level of consumption which was previously quite artificial.   The bursting of the real estate bubble has cause huge international demand destruction.   Those nations who entered into this period with large debt are in the worst shape.  For them the recovery will be many decades in the future.  The producer nations which entered into this period with large reserves have only seen a delay in the arrival of the ubiquitous economic destruction. They may have stored up supplies of commodities for future production, but they have lost a huge percentage of their customer base.   Many economic pundits have suggested that the increasing incomes of persons living in producer nations will pick up the slack in consumer demand.   This notion is thoroughly mistaken.   The reality is that it does not matter how many billions of people are earning five dollars per day.  They will not replace the destroyed American consumer.  The loss of home equity in the United States is in the range of fifty trillion dollars and there is nobody anywhere in the world whom has a similar pile of stored value available to support consumer spending.

            In the process of the last many decades of policy incompetence and failed ideology which has been forthcoming from Washington there has been built up about fifteen trillion dollars in debt and one hundred trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities.  Economic recovery from this catastrophe would require sufficient budget cutting to produce a five hundred billion dollar annual operating surplus in perpetuity and at the same time serious efforts to restrain the growth in unfunded liabilities as far as the eye can see.  Frankly, there are only two Republican candidates in the Presidential sweepstakes who would attempt this, and there are no probable Republican candidates who could succeed in implementing these policies. Even if these policies were to be implemented, a recovery in the United States economy would require the addition of five hundred thousand net new jobs every month for twelve years. Such a happy result is simply beyond the scope of the possible.

            This is an exercise in realism.  A realistic appraisal of the situation suggests economic depression continuing for at least three decades, and the sad fact is that this will be our future regardless of election results of 2012.

The Emerging Punitive Tutelary Fascist State

The Obama administration's economic policies have transformed America into a culture of despair.  It is more than a single policy which has led to this result, but a whole panoply of ill advised policies.

There is the failure to recognize the true causes of the housing collapse, and the extent of worldwide demand destruction.  There has been the obsequious obedience to the demands of unionized labor.  There has been the bail-outs of failed major industries including General Motors, Chrysler, AIG, and the largest financial institutions in the nation. Efforts have been increased to drive domestic energy producers out of business and create an even higher reliance on foreign sources of energy.

There has been the constant refrain for higher taxes.  Even as all of this was occurring there was the inexplicable explosion in government employment, the refusal to trim federal spending, the progressive and continuing devaluation of the dollar.  Meanwhile there has been an incredible  pretense to having created jobs even as unemployment soars to levels not seen since the great depression, and lest we forget there has also been the willingness to embark on new foreign military misadventures without consulting Congress.

The only apparent talents of the President to have emerged in his disastrous first 44 months in office has been the ability to tour foreign countries and deliver impassioned speeches filled with apologies on behalf of the United States of America. It is now finally apparent that while Obama occasionally speaks well, when his teleprompter is functioning, in the end he is not an educated man and is incapable of thinking outside of the ideological orthodoxy in which he has been steeped.

In the respect, Obama is a man of the past.   Even his progressive ideology is in the midst of international failure as the New World Order of Globalism is collapsing all over the world.  The vision of a one world community of nations engaged in competitive devaluations of fiat currencies is over.  Even as these words are being written there are howls of anger and pain arising from many quarters at the German reluctance to underwrite Eurobonds and bail out the weakest hammock economies of Europe.  The next stop for those carrying the tin cup will be the United States, but the United States has nothing left but paper.  It seems highly unlikely that any nation with large foreign reserves like China would step up to the plate.

So the New World Order of Globalism is in the process of passing away into the dust bin of history.   And what will take its place?     First, there will be violence.  It will be initiated by those who lose benefits  in every and country and state where the depletion of available resources will be unable to sustain the cradle to grave welfare state. Reductions in public pensions will undoubtedly create the most discontent. After the violence subsides there will be a resumption in earnest of the Punitive Tutelary Fascist state.

This will be the back drop of the 2012 general election.   Unfortunately, the most likely result is that a Republican will win.....but win only on the abysmal economic performance of the Obama Administration.  The danger is that the new administration arrives without a mandate to entirely deconstruct the Punitive Tutelary Fascist state. The new policies which might reasonably be initiated by a  new administration will not be sufficient to rescue the nation from total economic destruction.   Tweaking around the edges of the tax code won't be enough.  For these reasons, the results of the election of 2012 probably won't matter.   We have simply passed the point of no return.

THE UNREPORTED STORY: THE COLLAPSE OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER OF GLOBALISM

     For several decades, since the 1971 abrogation of the  Bretton Woods agreement,  the ushering in of the Progressive’s New World Order has been the design of domestic and foreign policy of many nations.  This New World Order has been constructed on the notion of competitive devaluations of fiat currencies over time and the merging of all nations into an Hegelian synthesis of world governance.   

     Taking the leadership role in this transformation of the world, the greatest since Westphalia, has been the United States.   The United States has filled the role of consumer of last resort to all nations and the printer of the underlying fiat currency, the US dollar.   The ideology has presumed that by subsidizing consumer spending and housing in the United States, the economy of the world could be driven to prosperity, bringing a higher standard of living to everyone in the world who previously lived in a cave and wore a loincloth.  Prosperity would be the result and the causes for war minimized. 

     But even as a house may be built on sand, so also nations may be built on a tissue of lies, only to realize an eventual collapse. 

     The truth is that governments are severely limited in what they may do when they seek to interfere in the market place.  They may tax and create a black market, or they may subsidize and create an eventual bubble. When the bubble bursts everything receives the discipline of market correction.

  

     This is where we find ourselves in our current state of affairs.   The collapsing real estate market world wide has destroyed vast amounts of wealth previously used to support consumer spending.    But now that is all gone.   There is no substitute, no alternative to this vanished wealth, left to support consumer spending.   So the New World Order of phony currency and subsidized consumer spending has reached the end of the road.   There are no last second exits, no unexpected off ramps, and no redemption from the punishments that always come to forms of rationalism.  The New World Order of Globalism must collapse as a result of the vast amount of demand destruction which it has wrought.

     The real world is a world of execution and performance. It is a world of real stores of value and real mediums of exchange. The real world may not be synthesized into an Hegelian Utopia.  The idea of world governance would require universal values based on universal natural law.   But even among nations and cultures which would subscribe to some idea of natural law, there is disagreement as to what the natural laws are.  Moreover, today there are many nations which repudiate any idea of natural law and openly subscribe to varieties of tribalism.  There is as a result no universal system of values.  The flaw in Quigley's "Inclusive Diverisity" is its inclusiveness.   Liberty may never be sacrificed to the false god of 'Unity.'

     And so much of mankind is a characteristic tribalistic being,  content only to survive within the context of his own tribe, and only very cautiously venturing beyond the limits of his personal knowledge and experience.  The repeated efforts of the Progressives to overcome this fact, to suggest modest increases in taxation or modest decreases in expenditures,  are like the proverbial dog returning to its own vomit.  

     As the economy of the New World Order  enters into a period of permanent collapse, there are those who suppose that the gap between expenditures and revenues worldwide can be closed by significantly higher taxes.    But, no amount of revenue can close this gap.  Nations of sound fiscal policy will not in the end support the profligate, nor should they.  Even if they were willing to do so, eventually the numbers of freeloaders would totally overburden the productive and the whole system would collapse.

     This is the great unreported story of our time.  It is the collapse of an ideology which has held sway for many decades, and has finally now reached its predictable end.

Is Man Capable of Governing Himself?

       Is man capable of governing himself?  The answer of the Statist, the Fascist, the Communist, the Democrat, Republican, and the Libertarian is precisely the same.   Man is not capable of governing himself. If man were capable of governing himself there would be no need for any sort of  government, consensual or otherwise at all.  None would need defend his person or property at any time. But, this is not the case.  As Paine said, "government is built upon the ruins of the bowers of Paradise."  Government in its very nature presumes  to stand in an executive place of a moral authority not found in any man.

      When one surveys the long and sorry history of man, one can draw no other conclusion than that he is incapable of governing himself.   One may wish to search the record of ancient civilizations or take the progressive approach and only look at  modern times.  The answer remains the same.  Man is not capable of governing himself.   This is a demonstrable fact. There is no need to adduce here a lengthy list of wars, genocides, mass murders, national bankruptcies, or intrigues which have punctuated history.  That  man may occasionally rise above himself does not negate this fundamental principle.  Man is not capable of consistently and without flaw governing either himself or all of his affairs much less the lives of others.

       The statist of any variety reasons that because man is incapable of governing himself, he must be governed by another.  The statist view is that the vast panoply of activities of every man must be circumscribed, lest his predatory nature be loosed on the rest of mankind.   However, this is faulty logic.  If man is incapable of governing himself, how could any honest person presume to govern others and manage the minutia of their lives?  Is not the fundamental flaw of any statist government hubris?  If those whose lives are to be regulated are free moral agents, certainly the same must be true of rulers.

      All of mankind are free moral agents who act primarily in self interest.   What then are the limits of action in self-interest?  Are there not equally limits of actions of government so as not to extend to hubris?  The limits on self interest applicable to individuals must equally be applied to governments.    I am free to act howsoever I wish so long as I do not invade the same space of another.  This  must equally apply to any form of government.  Persons may not by consent grant to government a power not resident within themselves by Nature.  The power granted to individuals by Nature are powers of self preservation.  No other power or authority exists. 

      The Libertarian stands out from every other view of human governance in society.  The Libertarian refuses to accept a dichotomy in the nature of man. Thomas Paine wrote of the 'unity of degree of man.'  Thomas Jefferson used the phrase 'created equal.'   The view of the Libertarian is that all men are equally free moral agents, made so by the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God.  If the individual is by nature prohibited from imposing force on another except in self preservation, then the same must be true for any government formed by consent.  Government may not exercise force except in self preservation of itself and those whom have consented to its formation.

      All of the statist views presume an elite which is in some way 'better' than other men, and that these two conflicting groups  exist side by side.  Statism always implies some sort of moral transcendence, i.e. that not all of mankind are morally imperfect.   Through whatever mechanism:  birth, ideology, indoctrination,  racial or religious identity, all statists believe and accept a dichotomy in man.  There are those who are holy and whose behavior is laudable who are endowed with rights to dominion.   There are others who are sinful and whose behavior is odious who are endowed with obligations of servitude.

     The statists of any variety see the fundamental existential truth of the universe as the punishment of the sinful obligors into submission.   It is their view that the great bulk of humanity (the obligors) must be led, fed, and most of all punished. The statist claims free moral agent status for himself, and that unlike others he neither stumbles nor falters.    Nevertheless he repudiates the notion of the same claim made by any of the obligors. The statist view is that he is entitled by his own transformed humanity to punish the obligors into submission and that if this is done without mercy and with sufficient vigor, all of man will be transformed.   The statist believes that by denying  the status of  free moral agent to all of the obligors  he will usher in an Utopian state.

      But man is a free moral agent.  A man may be denied the use of a limb or an eye.  He may be tortured, starved, beaten, and compelled to suffer every imaginable abuse.  Nevertheless, he remains a free moral agent. He may choose.  Sometimes he may choose the 'good,' and other times he may choose the 'evil.'  Man is made this way by the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God.  There is no evidence of any group or sub-group of  elites who are not  subject to the same errors and  infirmities as the obligors.   At some point all men make mistakes which uncorrected  lead toward a path of self destruction.  

       The obvious truth that all men are free moral agents implies self ownership.  I am not compelled by any Law of Nature or of Nature's God to any moral course. Nature might have made me without moral choice, indistinguishable from the animals of the field, but I have been left free to choose.   I own my own body even as I own the right to choose.  This does not mean that a man is always going to choose wisely or 'rightly.'  In fact, experience shows that all men choose badly.... some more or less frequently  than others.

       What then are the alternatives for the social relations of man?

      Men may form by consent a state based on the dubious ideology of the punishment of man into submission.  One may honestly accept the notion of two types of human beings.  One may accept a dichotomy in the nature of man.  The vast majority of all societies which have ever existed have taken the approach of a dichotomy of man and of the punishment of the obligors into submission.

       Alternatively, men may form by consent a state based  on the idea of a contract for mutual protection without any jurisdiction beyond the self preservation with which all mankind are empowered within themselves, and leave all other considerations to individual choice and action.   The Libertarian does not suggest that such a course of action ushers in an Utopia, but only a flawed reality preferable to others.   All mankind remain free moral agents, and the only function of the government formed by consent is to protect all equally from the predations of any other.

       That 'evil' exists in such a state is no different from its existence in the absence of such a government formed by consent.    Such a government is not empowered to transform or perfect man, but instead accepts the idea that the fundamental existential truth of the universe is grace triumphant in the affairs of man.    If anything 'good' is to happen, it must be done by the broad self interested acts of all men or the narrow altruistic activities of individual men.  Short of those activities all of society would end in greed and squalor.

        It is the judgment of the Libertarian that capricious acts of punishment do not form as sound a basis for human governance and civil society as fortuitous acts of grace.   These are the two societies from which man as a free moral agent  has always been compelled to choose.  

The Elephant in the Progressive Room

       

     At the very heart of modern Progressivism is its epistemological weakness. It is the elephant in the room.

     The assertion that the "progress of man" is inevitable or inexorable is patently false on its surface.   One is hard pressed to find greater examples of the depravity of man than may be adduced from the twentieth century.  There was a seemingly endless list of the merciless butcheries of tyrants....Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, and so forth.  In the face of all of these any assertion of the continual moral betterment of man is absurd. 

      Beyond the question of ethics or morals there is the question of technology or material betterment.  A thorough review of history will disclose that many technologies and even engineering achievements have been lost for extensive periods of time.  Perhaps the greatest wholesale case of this being true is the example of the dark ages from 500 AD to 1000 AD in which much of the hard won knowledge and technology of Rome was lost.

       Ludwig von Mises suggests that it is not even necessary for us to point to historical examples of regression to disprove the faith of the Progressive.  

      "Mankind is almost unanimous in its appraisal of the material accomplishments of modern capitalistic civilization. The immense majority considers the higher standard of living which this civilization secures to the average man highly desirable. It would be difficult to discover, outside of the small and continually shrinking group of consistent ascetics, people who do not wish for themselves and their families and friends the enjoyment of the material paraphernalia of Western capitalism.
     If, from this point of view, people assert that "we" have progressed beyond the conditions of earlier ages, their judgment of value agrees with that of the majority. But if they assume that what they call progress is a necessary phenomenon and that there prevails in the course of events a law that makes progress in this sense go on forever, they are badly mistaken.
To disprove this doctrine of an inherent tendency toward progress that operates automatically, as it were, there is no need to refer to those older civilizations in which periods of material improvement were followed by periods of material decay or by periods of standstill. There is no reason whatever to assume that a law of historical evolution operates necessarily toward the improvement of material conditions or that trends which prevailed in the recent past will go on in the future too.
       What is called economic progress is the effect of an accumulation of capital goods exceeding the increase in population. If this trend gives way to a standstill in the further accumulation of capital or to capital decumulation, there will no longer be progress in this sense of the term.
Everyone but the most bigoted socialists agrees that the unprecedented improvement in economic conditions that has occurred in the last two hundred years is an achievement of capitalism. It is, to say the least, premature to assume that the tendency toward progressive economic improvement will continue under a different economic organization of society."

        The view here of Mises is that the assumption of a law of historical evolution is simply unwarranted.  The Hegelian historical dialectic is at the very least premature.  Nevertheless, the Progressives insist on conducting these experiments which invariably end in failure.  Public schools, progressive income taxation, welfare statism, and every imaginable structure of tutelary fascism have reached hitherto unimaginable dimensions of failure.

        Perhaps the most recent and popular of these experiments is the test of the proposition that corporate welfare produces economic growth.  After many years of this experiment we may at last admit that this idea too is a complete failure.  In all of these  respects we might repair to the view of Alexander Hamilton,   who suggests in Federalist #6,   "Let experience, the least fallible guide of human opinions, be appealed to for an answer to these inquiries."