Damn, this guy has the solution to our problems! Must read for all American citizens and Ron Paul supporters! Ron Paul and the Militia
We don’t need a mandatory militia, professionals would work just fine so long as its a free market.
There are more minarchists on this forum than I thought there’d be.
I agree with JonBostwick. Also, after reading the linked article about how “the Militia” will instill love of community, a sense of service to others, and increase the nation’s security I had to grab one of my poli sci textbooks to refresh my memory on the definition of fascism, because that is what I thought of after I finished reading it.
Just what we need to throw off an oppressive central government is a military junta to take its place…
What he fails to realize is other nations (generally) don’t attack a good trading partner since it hurts them as much as the invaded nation. Get rid of the American Empire and you won’t necessarily need to have a militia take over the government to ‘protect’ you.
As someone with quite a bit of experience in the military I can tell you it isn’t a place where ‘critical political debate and action could take place’. As long as the orders they give you are lawful you have no option but to carry them out or die trying – there’s no room for debate in the chain of command.
The whole conscription issue that he is advocating is also troubling since it infringes on certain unalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of property, err happiness.
This guy seems to have a different agenda than promoting Liberty for the masses.
The author is attributing a false perspective to both Ron Paul and the Constitution.
He is stating what, in his opinion, Ron Paul “ought to do”, not what in actuality Ron Paul has ever represented as being the proper fuction of ‘militia’.
In addition, he falsely ascribes a Constitional basis for perpetual coup d’etat as the means to maintain liberty.
I didn’t catch that before.
The basis of his argument is;
When in fact the Second Amendment says;
I suppose you could interpret it his way but the way I see it the ‘necessary’ part is the right of the people to keep and bear arms so they can form a militia if conditions warranted. They were merely stating a fact that a militia is necessary if you want to remain free and not making a constitutional mandate that anyone must maintain a standing militia that involves the majority of the population as he later states.
Because that’s working soooo well in Iraq…
It worked extremely well in the case of Executive Outcomes. In fact, both Norway and South Africa have a vibrant security industry. So taking Blackwater to be the general case is outright dishonest and little more than a strawman.
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1661877.ece
http://journalism.berkeley.edu/projects/safrica/facing/hiredguns.html
Good. May Norway’s state collapse. And oh how I weep for South Africa’s poor little innocent government.
If one is unfamiliar with the idea of private defence, law and order I recommend Rothbard’s For A New Liberty, Epstein’s Anarchy and the Law and Hoppe’s The Myth of National Defense, two of which are available on Mises.org, online.
The nation of Iraq isn’t a straw man which I fling around for my own benefit, it is a nation of 25 million people. The situation in Iraq is a clear example of how contractors work when they have no emotional connection to the place where they work. Blackwater is not the only example; there’s also DynCorp, Triple Canopy, and Aegis. So while I am sure local groups who put themselves up for hire in South Africa may work better than a corrupt police force, I would caution against making a financial incentive the only incentive.
No one who works for a government and is payed in tax dollars is a participant in a market.
I’ll be voting for Ron Paul and I’m an anarchist. [;)]
It is a strawman because it has nothing to do with a free market in security; it has to do with the US hiring goons to do its dirty work instead of using its own goons to do so, and as we know, the US government is hardly the most scrupulous of clients. Also, do you mean to say the US government has an ‘emotional’ connection to Iraq?
Are you also suggesting that a corrupt police force is a unique feature of SA, as if other Western countries do not suffer from this? In Norway’s case it seems the state cannot even allocate funds properly.
I’ve talked to some of those people in the past, they are generally professional soldiers who aren’t really in it for the money but because that’s what they do. The ones I talked to were all retired Special Forces and from what I got from the conversation that’s the rule to get the job, a special operations background.
If you believe the propaganda coming out of the Iraqi government then they are a bunch of trigger-happy homicidal maniacs roaming around the countryside killing innocent civilians at will but if you actually know the job they do and have seen the conditions they have to work under then you would most certainly have a much higher opinion of the professionalism and restraint they have while doing one of the most dangerous jobs in the whole theater of operations.
How are they supposed to do their job, protecting VIPs, if they go around announcing their presence by shooting up neighborhoods and compromising the safety and security of the person they are being paid to keep safe anyway?
I don’t think anyone advocating a mandatory militia is a minarchist. They are simply a statist.
You know, I really hope that all of you who support the Mises Institute & its message will be supporting Ron Paul for president. I’m amazed at reading many forums on this and other Libertarian sites that Paul is often met with moderate hostility because he doesn’t, in their mind, represent the totality of Libertarian thought.
All I’ve got to say is, people, we have NEVER been as close to getting a man in office who espouses our most sacred beliefs than we do right now. The Libertarian Party has never been and never will be a viable political force in the system we currently function in. Ron Paul represents a very serious chance that we can dramatically change course in our failing republic.
So let’s take action and leave the quibbling about minute differences of opinion for when he’s in office.
This was in reply to me. Why? I fully support Ron Paul for President. I am the coordinator of a Ron Paul Meetup. Ron Paul does not support mandatory militia membership. Some idiot says he does, but it’s not true. Mandatory militia membership is slavery. The logic of the moron who wrote that article is “we can best keep our freedom by instituting mandatory slavery.” This is truly Orwellian, but the author does not have evil intent – he’s just fundamentally stupid. I don’t know which is actually more dangerous.
Whats the difference? [:P]
Cute.
But I’ll answer the question. One particularl brand of minarchist, at least in the U.S., is the Constitutional minarchist. I don’t believe anyone can be a “minarchist” while advocating a role for the federal government not specifically mandated by the Constitution. Since the author of the article is talking about a mandatory militia, to be enforced by President Ron Paul, it is pretty clear that this would be a federal dictate. Clearly, this is not “minarchist,” but if you want to paint all minarchists as big-government statists, fine. I guess Mises and Hayek would get hit with that brush too. What is the name of this forum, by the way? Rothbard.org?
I think most would agree that democratic authoritarianism is not minarchy.
However, there is no real clear line dividing “minarchy” and authoritarianism. As far as I’m concerned, if you believe that people can secede from any political body then you believe in voluntary relationships and are an anarchy. If you believe that an individual can be forced to join or prevented from leaving a political body then you are an authoritarian.
But it was a joke.