People are capable of understanding being cheated and stolen from. This happens to practically everyone in the status quo.
People generally accept self-determination. Ask them, do you support legalizing coccaine? No. Would you attack a country that made it legal to do coccaine? No. Why? Because you have a right to do with your own… oops!
No. But I’ve done more than my fair share, and plan to continue to do more. As a normal individual, I can never hope to be a revolutionizing force. But if I can convince 10,20,50 people that there’s something seriously wrong with the status quo because of government, that’s pretty good.
Even people who don’t like me have to deal with all the institutional corruption and lieing that goes on, so they must at least change their worldview. Its a promising start.
I admire Griffin’s work; his power elite analysis is excellent, and he is a good educator. But I feel that since finding mises.org I’ve grown beyond him.
Griffin’s theoretical shortcoming, in my view, is his inability to seperate the function of providing law/security from the concept of territory; the idea that law/security must be provided to all members within a certain geographical location, larger than property boundaries. On a generous reading, his term protectorate seems to be equivalent to ‘a PDA with a territorial monopoly’.
If Griffin is envisaging protectorates being funded voluntarily, then he is essentially proposing the Randian solution, which has been thoroughly shot down: the only way a territorial monopoly could be maintained is by initiating violence, so ‘a PDA with a territorial monopoly’ is necessarily aggressive, and hence, it is a government. However, Griffin makes it clear that he is very pessimistic about even a Randian (no taxes) government surviving…
What does he mean by social contract? If participation in the protectorate is really voluntary, he must mean the contract signed by individuals when they paid for the services, i.e. a normal contract. I don’t think this is what he has in mind; but rather, a ‘contract’ between all the individuals residing in a certain territory (and their descendants) and the entity known as the protectorate. See Spooner on the fundamental problems with the Constitution and the notion of ‘social contracts’. Griffin can’t ‘fix the loopholes’ in the Constitution, because the notion of a constitution - insofar as it creates an institution with a territorial monopoly on law/security - is incompatible with liberty.
So Griffin is unfortunately a (minarchist) statist. It’s a shame he can’t see the full implications of what he says about individualism and collectivism: that ultimately these two terms boil down to anarchism and statism. An individualist statist is a contradiction in terms.
The overriding strategy of the ‘liberty movement’, at least for now, is education. As an educational movement, I applaud the work of Freedom Force. Ron Paul is an example of how getting involved in politics can be a great thing for freedom, but only to the extent that it provides a platform for educating the masses. It is the ‘Ron Paul generation’ of liberty-lovers, many of whom become Austro-libertarians and anarchists, who will bring about liberty in the end. It is doubtful whether even Ron Paul has been able to shrink the size of government, or even slowed its pace of growth, through his direct actions as a politician (his votes in Congress, his bills, etc).
If a member of Freedom Force runs for local government, then good luck to them. Politics is, after all, a good arena for engaging people in political discussions and arousing interest in liberty. But it is utopian to think that the state can be shrunk from the inside, without mass public support.
This sounds good, but what happens next? Now that there is an individualist in local government (say), how does he shrink the state? Surely, the support of the masses is necessary (but certainly not sufficient) for this, but Griffin goes on to say:
I would characterise his organization’s goal of “removing collectivists from positions of power and replace them with individualists” as useful only as a means to the end of educating the masses and arousing ideas of liberty.
I don’t think these questions highlight anything other than that the job is not yet done.
They also highlight how ineffectively we are doing the job. We are up against a group of super-wealthy elites who control nearly every organization of widespread public influence. In America, this includes every major political party, every major media outlet, every major professional organization, and every major university. Unless pro-freedom people enter the battle within these organizations, we are just a minor annoyance that can be ignored or swatted like a fly. But after winning a battle within a power center, the influence of single person is magnified enormously.
Ron Paul could have remained a doctor, and convinced many of his friends and patients of the value of liberty. Instead he decided to run for public office, won a seat in the Senate, ran for President, and spread his message to millions of people, especially the younger generation. Imagine if there was a concerted effort in the freedom movement to train and deploy Ron Paul’s everywhere - in politics, in the media, in the universities. If this effort succeeded, imagine how much more efficient and effective the movement would become. We would be the ones proposing and writing the laws, spouting news and opinions on cable TV, and educating the next generation. That is the goal of Freedom Force - to achieve the power necessary to get the job done.
As a normal individual, I can never hope to be a revolutionizing force.
Tell that to Ron Paul.
But if I can convince 10,20,50 people that there’s something seriously wrong with the status quo because of government, that’s pretty good.
Yes, that is pretty good. Unfortunately, ABC, NBC, Fox, and CNN convince millions of people every day that the status quo is just fine. They are well-oiled propaganda machines designed to do this.
That is the root problem. In my view, there’s no point fussing about how to organize security and law in a natural order so long as a natural order society remains impossible because of the corruption of popular morals. We need to confront the moral apologists (religious leaders, social leaders, etc.) who promote and propagate these immoral beliefs and attitudes. That’s where the battle lies and the Mises Institute is the “strategy room” of that battle.
I think Mr. Griffin would agree with this sentiment. His goal is to confront the “moral apologists” (he calls them collectivists) in the organizations where they wield the most influence. The popular attitude is immoral in large part becuase public opinion is engineered by immoral leaders. During the American Revolution, public opinion was engineered by leaders who were less immoral, and therefore thousand of common men and women were willing to sacrifice their lives for their moral principles. Today we live under more tyrannical conditions, yet the public quietly, even eagerly, lines up to be slaughtered. Why do they do this? Because they have been brainwashed by immoral leaders to share the same immoral principles.
What is more effective, condemning the moral apologists from a soapbox, or actually taking their positions of power?
I agree with your analysis of the “night watchman” problem. Like you said, Mr. Griffin acknowledges that the American experiment failed, but he thinks we just need to improve on the old model. When I basically asked him “why not just have anarchy,” he did not have a convincing response. He even admitted that the first attempt at a protectorate would fail in 500 years or so, and new system would again need to be built. Maybe he thinks this is just the reality of the world, and our best hope for freedom is to keep updating the American model. Even some anarchists believe anarchy will never be achieved. Perhaps that’s why Griffin never made the final step to becoming an anarchist - he thinks it’s impossible to achieve anarchy given human nature, so instead he aims for the most limited state possible.
@Leo: I still think Mr. Griffin fails to identify the root problem of the State because he thinks that it can be changed/altered/opposed by substituting new and better leadership or through subversion or through any other political endeavor. The State itself is merely a symptom of a deeper moral sickness within society. The State does not create this moral sickness (even though it does feed back into it through propaganda that promotes the sickness). This sickness begins in the pulpits of churches, in the family, in schools, wherever moral and social leaders exert influence and use that influence to reinforce the moral idea of dual morality, double standards, and personal legal privilege. The moral justifications for the system of dual morality are myriad, labyrinthine and ancient. The long-term project of liberalism is to systematically untangle, unwind, debunk, discredit and disprove each and every one of these moral rationalizations of self-serving hypocrisy and expose the proponents of such arguments for the lying, warmongering charlatans that they are.
How much do you guys buy into Griffin’s theory that the CFR and the Round Table Society are actually the de-facto world government and that they are using the US Government, The Fed, the UN, the IMF, etc. in a coordinated effort to establish a feudalistic world state?
I’ve gone back and forth a lot on how willing I am to believe the conspiracy is as strong as Griffin claims. Sometimes it seems crazy to me, but sometimes it seems to be occam’s razor when it comes to explaining certain current political events.
When I first read The Future is Calling, it was very difficult for me to believe what Griffin was saying. However, he seemed like a perfectly sane person and his thesis was fascinating, so I continued to read the material on the FFI website, and the outside souces that this material led me to. I found myself coming back to The Future is Calling over and over again, and it made more sense each time I read it. I began to check the footnotes and look at the more concrete evidence. I began to watch cable news and pay more attention to current events, and everything seemed to fit in with Griffin’s hypothesis. It was incredible, like being released from a real life Matrix.
The whole process was, and still is, quite traumatic, and I continue to question to what extent the conspiracies are true. After all, it’s depressing to believe that we’re headed toward global feudalism. And how do you tell your family and friends you believe this without them thinking you are absolutely crazy and have been brainwashed by outlandish conspiracy theories? It’s difficult enough to talk to people about libertarianism and the economic fallacies of government intervention, let alone that there is a giant conspiracy at work to enslave us all.
In a thread about World Government, I was convinced by Clayton that a world state is highly unlikely given the nature of the power elite. But this doesn’t mean they aren’t trying…
The moral justifications for the system of dual morality are myriad, labyrinthine and ancient. The long-term project of liberalism is to systematically untangle, unwind, debunk, discredit and disprove each and every one of these moral rationalizations of self-serving hypocrisy and expose the proponents of such arguments for the lying, warmongering charlatans that they are.
I think you may be right - this is the root of the struggle. But I am impatient. We have been trying to discredit these people for a long time, and it will take a long time before we succeed. And perhaps we will never succeed. Perhaps the human brain is not capable of escaping this moral fallacy. Or perhaps the solution is out of our hands, and humans will eventually evolve into more enlightened beings in a few thousand or million years.
Whether or not FFI combats the root of the problem, it at least provides an effective strategy to avoid totalitarian oppression in the near future. And I believe that Griffin’s Creed of Freedom and the concept of individualism does strike at the root, even if it incorrectly maintains that a “just state” could exist.
I do suspect that one problem with the conspiracy angle is that it implies that the conspirators, rather than the state system itself, are the primary problem.
In a sense, it doesn’t really matter whether our present situation is the result of a conspiracy or of spontaneous social processes (certainly, it’s some sort of mix between the two). Either way, the elimination of the state should be the solution. There are many statists and socialists out there who seem to agree with the Jekyll Island thesis, but view it as an indictment of the private sector, and believe that the problem is WHO is running the show rather than the inevitable result of monopolized coercion.
“After all, it’s depressing to believe that we’re headed toward global feudalism.”
No conspiracy theory is required to recognize the ongoing destructionist policies of literally every government on the face of the earth. That people hate Capitalism and individual freedom, that most don’t even understand it, that the political system breeds antisocial behavior, that many people believe the myths regarding laissez-faire, that many believe Socialism can yield greater economic productivity, etc.. is not the result of some few master planners conspiring to enslave you. All of the people and organizations that Griffin talks about are symptom or effects, and not the main cause.
And while it may seem that we are headed towards some global feudalism, or more appropriately, global fascism/socialism, the reality is that modern civilization is simply in an ongoing process of disintegration. There will be no global socialism because that is an economic impossibility. Society would simply self destruct before we ever reach that point.
There are many statists and socialists out there who seem to agree with the Jekyll Island thesis, but view it as an indictment of the private sector, and believe that the problem is WHO is running the show rather than the inevitable result of monopolized coercion.
The Jekyll Island thesis, as presented by Griffin, is that the problem is the result of monopolized coercion. You can’t agree with Griffin and also believe that the problem is the private sector. Griffin wholeheartedly supports laissez-faire economics. He sells Economics in One Lesson at his online store. He differs from anarchists only in his belief that the state does not necessarily imply monopolized coercion. This may be incorrect, but it does not discredit his overwhelmingly anti-government stance.
There may be statists and socialists who believe in conspiracy theories, but there is no way that they support Griffin’s overall thesis.
Griffin believes that the primary problem is the ideology of collectivism. The conspiracy angle is valuable because it reveals how collectivists have gained control over society, using the state apparatus for monopolized coercion. But Griffin believes that a state run by individualists who uphold the Creed of Freedom would not be coercive - that it would only protect life, liberty, and property.
Technically you don’t need to dissolve the federal and state governments to have anarchy. You just relinquish their power to tax and enforce decisions of their courts that other courts overturned on appeal.
In fact, you could have a constitutional amendment stripping the federal and state governments of such power.
Griffin’s theoretical shortcoming, in my view, is his inability to seperate the function of providing law/security from the concept of territory; the idea that law/security must be provided to all members within a certain geographical location, larger than property boundaries. On a generous reading, his term protectorate seems to be equivalent to ‘a PDA with a territorial monopoly’.
I agree. He doesn’t want to let go of geographical boundaries. He believes an important function of the state is to control immigration.
If Griffin is envisaging protectorates being funded voluntarily, then he is essentially proposing the Randian solution, which has been thoroughly shot down: the only way a territorial monopoly could be maintained is by initiating violence, so ‘a PDA with a territorial monopoly’ is necessarily aggressive, and hence, it is a government.
“Randian” meaning Ayn Rand? Where does she propose this solution? What would you recommend I read that shoots down this solution? I have a basic understanding of Rothbardian political philosophy, but have not read much beyond The Ethics of Liberty.
What does he mean by social contract?
Yes, this needs clarification. I will ask him, and hopefully get a direct response.
See Spooner on the fundamental problems with the Constitution and the notion of ‘social contracts’.
Good recommendation. I have heard of Spooner’s work in this area but really need to read it.
Ron Paul is an example of how getting involved in politics can be a great thing for freedom, but only to the extent that it provides a platform for educating the masses. It is the ‘Ron Paul generation’ of liberty-lovers, many of whom become Austro-libertarians and anarchists, who will bring about liberty in the end. It is doubtful whether even Ron Paul has been able to shrink the size of government, or even slowed its pace of growth, through his direct actions as a politician (his votes in Congress, his bills, etc).
I agree that Ron Paul’s major contribution has been education, and that he hasn’t been effective in slowing the growth of government. But remember that he is alone in Congress. If there were more Ron Paul’s at every level of government, then these politicians could use their power to actually influence public policy in favor of liberty. As long as collectivists hold the power, public policy will always be decided in favor of tyranny.
But it is utopian to think that the state can be shrunk from the inside, without mass public support.
Why is this utopian? The state has grown from the inside without public support. The health care bill is just the latest example of this. And the Freedom Force strategy includes seeking positions of power in the media, in order to combat the constant brainwashing and engineering of support for the collectivist agenda.
Now that there is an individualist in local government (say), how does he shrink the state?
If you manage to get elected, haven’t you already won a good amount of public support? Then you can use the power of your office to fight state power, just like Ron Paul does. One person alone won’t make a difference, but freedom-loving politicians working together all over the country, at every level of government, could make a difference.
I would characterise his organization’s goal of “removing collectivists from positions of power and replace them with individualists” as useful only as a means to the end of educating the masses and arousing ideas of liberty.
The end is freedom. Educating the masses is a means to this end. But so is replacing collectivists with individualists in positions of power. Those without power cannot defend freedom. Whether this power is in the minds of masses or in the decree of a politician makes little difference.
I just re-discovered a short piece of analysis by Griffin on authority and power. I am interested to hear what people think about this. Here is a key quote from Griffin:
"…the essence of my thought on this is very simple. It really makes no difference what authority we choose. We can write proclamations all day long and claim God’s word or logic or philosophy as our authority, but they mean nothing unless we are able to back our proclamations with physical force. Those with the winning armies choose whatever authority they wish.
It wasn’t philosophy or the recognition of a Creator expressed in The Declaration of Independence that carried the day. It was the Continental Army. Those who win on the battlefield always determine the laws and can use any authority or justification they wish. Therefore, those of us who believe in freedom cite the philosophy expressed in The Creed of Freedom, and that’s quite sufficient, provided we can rely on the power of the state to enforce it. But remember, that power is greatly restricted by the Creed itself. It is limited to the defense of life, liberty, and property. However, without that limited power, we have no enforceable rights. That’s why the motto of Freedom Force is: “Those without power cannot defend freedom.”
But in an individualist / libertarian world there would be no borders except property borders. So immigration, like “national” defense, becomes a non-issue. Each individual has the right to determine who is allowed on his land; unowned land is available for homesteading. Ask: where are they immigrating to? If law/security is seperated from territory, the concept of “nation”, and hence “immigration”, dissolves.
I recommend reading For A New Liberty by Rothbard as well. You could just skip to the chapter on courts. And for a slightly different perspective, try David Friedman’s Machinery of Freedom chapter on courts. Basically, any of the essays and excerpts in Anarchy and the Law come highly recommended.
Cool. Ask him: Do you expect that protectorates will allow the right of individual secession to individuals living within the territory of the protectorate? Or maybe: do you expect the land protected by the protectorate to be roughly contiguous (like the United States), or made up of disparate patches of private land (like a hypothetical map depicting which homes are supplied by which broadband provider)?
OK, maybe utopian is not the right word, but ‘wishful thinking’.
I disagree that the state has grown without public support, and Griffin would as well, I think; after all, his whole point is that the root of evil is about the ideology. In short: there are collectivists in power because most people are collectivists. The health care bill has passed because a majority - or sufficient minority - of the public think it’s a good thing. It’s pretty easy for the elite to impose government healthcare, because most people are collectivists and can be persuaded to support, or passively accept, bigger government by the simple use of Problem-Reaction-Solution. But they would not be able to impose government health care if the people were not already collectivists. Though its not as dynamic as the market at responding to consumer desires (an understatement!), the government is, ultimately, responsive to individuals’ desires. This is the point made by Boetie, Mises and Rothbard when they say all government ultimately rests on public opinion. Ideas shape institutions.
The media, as an opinion-moulding force, is obviously very important. But with the internet, we are seeing the decline of the controlled media, and the emergence of a new, free media. There is no need to try to take over the positions of power in the controlled mainstream media. To give a slight twist to Griffin’s slogan: why fight city hall, when you can bypass city hall?
"We can write proclamations all day long and claim God’s word or logic or philosophy as our authority, but they mean nothing unless we are able to back our proclamations with physical force."
The question remains. Why must you have a coercive territorial monopoly to back up anything? The logical inference from this is that you must have a world government. There is no escaping this logical implication, which even Griffin would concede to be fallacious.
Enough with the inconsistency. Law and order are indeed vital economic services that will be in demand by any modern and complex society based on the division of labor. But like bread and other basic needs, which by the way must come before the establishment of defense agencies (or a government), they can and should be provided by the free market.