THE LATEST IN THE DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA: OUR CURRENT FEATURE ARTICLE
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FROM BEHIND ENEMY LINES:A Conservative Libertarian Inside Academia
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NEW WORLD ORDER, UNITED NATIONS, ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT AND AMERICAN SOVERIGNTY
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Compiled and Summarized by
Dr. Jimmy T.(Gunny)LaBaume
Our Enemy, The State: A Study of Social Power vs. State Power and of The State in Colonial America by Albert Jay Nock. Available from the Mises Institute at www.mises.org
Chapter 6. The State and the Remnant (Pages 133-146)
In the Middle Ages the Church controlled the distribution of certain privileges and immunities and stood as something to be run to in any kind of emergency. The same sick view pervades society today with regard to the State. This is especially true for those who take the State's charade at face value and see it as a social institution whose interventions are needed and good. Then there is the majority that has no idea about the State and simply accepts it without thinking.
Every State intervention permits another, and this, in turn, another, and so on indefinitely.
Someone then figures out how to exploit these interventions—then another, and another, until general disorder reigns. The logical thing to do would be to recede and let the disorder settle in the only effective way—through the operation of natural law. But that is never thought of and, if it is, it is labeled lunacy. Instead disorder solicits an immediate clamor for the State to arbitrarily interfere between cause and effect and clear it up. The result is that the State then imposes another set of complications upon the first. These, in turn, are found exploitable and the cycle is repeated over and over until the “problem” becomes acute enough for some political shark to organize a coup d'etat by claiming “necessity” (the tyrant's plea).
Most often the fundamental issue arises from some original intervention of the State (allotment of the political means)—in the form of a license to appropriate the labor-products of others without compensation. Then, when such a license is issued, the State must intervene to “regulate” its use. This phenomenon is recorded in the history of the tariff and also the regulation of railways. The railroads did not come about in response to any sort of economic demand. They were speculative enterprises enabled by state intervention. The same is true with shipping and shipbuilding, as well as farming. There are very few problems in farming that are not directly traceable to State intervention.
The Unbroken Record of State Power
Ignorance and delusion concerning the nature of the State combine with extreme moral weakness and short sighted self-interest. The result is that the aid of the State is immediately called for when the slightest dissatisfaction arises in spite of the fact that it has a record of inability to do anything efficiently or honestly.
We are often asked: Where are we to go for relief from the misuses of social power if not to the State? We have no other place to go under our existing political organization. However, the question rests on the misunderstanding that the State is a social institution. The fact of the matter is that it is an anti-social institution. Therefore, the question is absurd.
The government's business is to make justice costless, easy and informal. But, since the State's concern is with injustice it is disposed to put justice as far out of reach and as costly and difficult to access as possible. Government, by nature, is concerned with the administration of justice. The State, on the other hand, is by its nature concerned with the administration of law—which the State itself manufactures for the purpose of fostering its own ends. Once again, the question is based on the absurd presumption that the State might actually act out of character.
Arbitrary interference with the order of nature is an attempt to avoid the penalty which nature lays on every form of error. Any disregard of natural law will have consequences. The only recourse is worse consequences. Nature cares not about intentions—good or bad. She does not tolerate disorder and is very particular about getting her full pay for any attempt to create it. That pay may be indirect, roundabout or unforeseen, but she always gets it. Our civilization is bent on finding some means of avoiding natural law which nature will tolerate. There is no such means and we strongly resent the fact that we can not have our cake and eat it too.
Under a regime of natural order (actual individualism and free competition) misuses of social power would be corrected. Such a system can not possibly coexist with the State. Nock avoids suggesting that such a regime is practical. He opines that it might become so perhaps eons from now. But, the remoteness, uncertainty, ignorance, moral enervation and other similar forces at work against it render it highly unlikely.
He refers to these forces as “spiritual influences.” Add to them the over-weaning physical strength of the State—its rapid build up of an enormous apparatus of armies and police forces. Furthermore, he points out that there has been no revolution in the modern world since 1848. Every so-called revolution has been nothing but a coup d'etat . He opines that talk of a revolution in America is ignorant and dishonest because even Lenin acknowledged that a revolution is impossible anywhere until the military and police forces become disaffected.
Given the State's physical strength and the force of powerful spiritual influences behind it, there is simply nothing that can be done against the State's progress in self-aggrandizement. Our civilization is on the same course as a man in a rowboat on the lower reaches of the Niagara. Nature does not care about motive or intention. She cares only for order and makes sure disorder is vindicated.
A dozen empires have already finished this course. The course of events of all these civilizations was the same. “Conquest, confiscation, the erection of the State; then the sequences which we have traced in the course of our own civilization; then the shock of some irruption which the social structure was too far weakened to resist, and from which it was left too disorganized to recover; and then the end.”
Our great highways will one day lie under vegetation and…heavily overgrown hillocks will cover the debris of our skyscrapers. We know that our civilization will come to this because we know there never has been, never is, and never will be, any disorder in nature…
What we will see is a steady progress in collectivism eventually turning into a severe military despotism and finally into to a system of forced labor. And finally, at some point a collision of State interests will result in an industrial and financial dislocation too severe for the social structure to bear.
The Remnant; Certain Alien Spirits
So, if we are so far gone as to make this outcome inevitable, what is the use of a book like this? By its own hypothesis it is useless. There are two reasons for such a book—one general and one special.
The general reason is that, when someone has a plain intelligible view of the order of things, it is proper that he record that view publicly with no thought of the practical consequences.
The special reason is that, in every civilization there are always alien spirits who outwardly conform to the requirements of the civilization. And yet, as a result of their intellectual curiosity concerning the order of nature, they still keep a disinterested regard for the plain intelligible law of things. Irrespective of any practical end, a book like this is not useless to them. They will be aware that it was for them and only them, that it was written.
Copyright ©2004, FlyoverPress.com
Jimmy T. LaBaume, PhD, ChFC is a full professor teaching economics and statistics in the School of Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences, Sul Ross State University, Alpine, TX. He does not speak for Sul Ross State University. Sul Ross State University does not think for him.
Dr. LaBaume has lived in Mexico and spent extended periods of time in South and Central America as a researcher, consultant and educator.
“Gunny” LaBaume is a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War and Desert Storm. His Marine Corps career spanned some 35 years intermittently from 1962 until 1997 when he refused to re-enlist with less than 2 years to go to a good retirement. In his own words, he “simply got tired of being guilty of treason.”
He is also currently the publisher and managing editor of FlyoverPress.com, a daily e-source of news not seen or heard anywhere on the mainstream media. He can be reached at jlabaume@sulross.edu.
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