A state is a particular kind of organization. As I mentioned in another thread, in response to your admission to not having read any libertarian texts, you really need to read up on this stuff.
There’s no need to be condescending!
I’m not being ignorant, I’m making a point: force is force, it doesn’t matter what name you attach to it. It’s still equally evil (or equally fair).
I’m not being condescending. It’s not condescending to point out that a good part of the reason for your not understanding the difference is that you haven’t read any libertarian texts, much less the really important ones. You keep thinking that this is just a matter of names/labels. It’s not.
It’s a matter of comparing concepts, not labels. You seem to think that evil done in the name of “the state” is different from evil done in the name of some other label.
Apparently you didn’t read what I wrote very closely. I am talking about the conceppts and you don’t seem to understand the concepts involved. The state is not just something that people do something “in the name of.” The state is a particular kind of organization. You can’t see the difference between Nazi Germany (the state) and the KKK, for example?
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Whenever any organization initiates force and fights against those who want to stop it, it’s acting under your definition of “state”. I doubt I’m the only anarchist who recognizes the distinction of “the state” is arbitrary; that’s why an an anarchist!
So State=Agressor?
LOL!
Explain your “LOL”.
Whenever I decide that I’m going to initiate force and fight back against those who try to stop me, I’m essentially no different from the state.
Isn’t that the core idea ?
I didn’t think its a matter of confusing terms. The problem is the term racism is overly broad and vague.
Gee, what is difficult to comprehend about the notion of a state as an entity which claims for itself legitimacy in the role of being a coercive territorial monopolist of law and order? If a bunch of individuals meet that definition, then yes, they’re a State. If they’re just haphazard aggressors, they’re not.
JonBostwick, it’s pretty much an anti-concept, so I agree.
-Jon
I don’t think so. I really think it is just a confusion of terminology. Usually, ethnocentrism is accompanied by racism, however, not always - though that is a rarity.
In any case, I disagree with him profoundly on this situation. The Anglo-Saxons were not that great. If it weren’t for the culture from continental Europe, they’d still be praising Odin and beating eachother over their heads with the remains of their first born children.
Nock seemed more proud of his French origins than his Anglo Saxon ones. I think most of his references to his own heritage in that book were just ways of expressing himself that he knew didn’t necessarilly refer to reality. Would he say that a no Hungarian or Pole is capable of the “rationality” characteristic of the French? I don’t think so. It’s a shame if you let this ruin the book for you. I think Plauche’s dictionary examples show what he meant by “breeding.”
Nice try but, no. “Breeding” and “stock” mean what they have always meant, as is clear from Nock’s quotes:
“My grandfather’s forebears were ec/ií-English English out of the original Saxon stock that landed at Ebbsfleet;” p19
In the context of praising the community where had moved with his family and grown up he says: “These people were all of the Anglo-Saxon breed,”
"Certain inhabitants of our town seemed strangely above their station; above it in education, breeding, culture, views of life. " p60
“Another misplaced person was of a military type somewhat gone to seed, and well on the far side of middle age; tall, large, extremely handsome, and speaking the true pure German of the Hanoverian aristocracy. Whether or not a titular aristocrat, he had every mark betokening generations of good breeding.” p61
Nock is talking about genetics, pure and simple. Obviously he didn’t have the benefit of an immense and punitive state bureaucracy to teach him the correct way of thinking about race and genetics.
I don’t know why we should continue to have to belabor this point but it is obvious to anyone with deeper reading that books written in the last 10 years that Nock is NOT speaking in code. He is speaking colloquially about one’s heritage and background and all that goes with it. Ths is casual talk of the sort that was common once upon a time, the way everyone spoke without any consciousness of genetics or race or whatever. It’s ridiculous. The idea that he would be hammered for this strikes me as anti-intellectual and reactionary.
You really think Nock thought race was just a social construct?
I don’t think Nock was thinking of race at all. this is all a nutty distraction.
He was not talking about Genetics. People who wrote about genetics with a racist view in the era that Nock was writing in never skirted around the issue with terms like Nock used. They said it quite directly and without question.
Please read some of “Eugenics, Marriage, and Birth Control: Patical Eugenics” by William J. Robinson and you will see an example of modern racial writing (that was popular at the time) and perhaps see that Nock was just writing using terms that were common during that period.
breed and breeding are not meant to convey what the poster means to convey