Libertarian Internationalism

Libertarian Internationalism

The Prolegomena to a Libertarian Foreign Policy*
Divesting Governments of Authority
To Micro-Manage Our Lives
Is the Only Path to World Peace
-----------------
This Essay
In Memory of a Peace Warrior,
Maj. Gen. Bert Stubblebine
06 Feb 1930 - 06 Feb 2017 
http://drrimatruthreports.com/general-bert-rest-in-peace/

Video Version
https://youtu.be/hvw2sNWG0gk

We live in a world where the promise of peace and prosperity has become a lie used to empower a globalist elite with its genomicidal agenda, where relations among nations resemble the brutal behavior of thugs - a Hobbesian international order.

As the lack of intellectual viability of statism in its various racial, religious, national, bureaucratic, imperialist and other forms becomes increasingly exposed, the need to articulate an alternative libertarian approach to relations among people of different cultures and "nations" becomes critical. As the nation state and its institutions (including internationals, such as the UN) become increasingly irrelevant in an economically globalized, post-singularity world, a market-oriented internationalism is urgently needed.

The juridical subjects of International Law, "International Actors," include nation states (even micro-states like the Vatican), certain few private associations (like the Red Cross or Sovereign Knights of Malta), and international agencies like the UN and its associated institutions (like certain privileged NGOs and "specialized agencies"). What is not included in this list are actual private persons, such as you and me, and even juridical persons such as private associations and registered corporations.

The humans and human organizations with which we usually interact are missing from international relations.

We individuals don't exist in the currently dominant statist view of international law.

In the eyes of International Actors, we real people and our associations are little more than disregarded entities. This state of affairs is entirely unsatisfactory to libertarians. Libertarians understand, taught by Mises' brilliant philosophical exposition in his master work Human Action, that there is only one set of actual actors in human affairs: individual humans.

To paraphrase Mises: only individuals think, plan and act. 

The belief that collective nouns such as "state" or "corporation" or "class" and the like engage in human action is a superstitious delusion that has led to much human suffering.

Any truly humane international law must, going forward, take this grave error into account.

Consider the long march of human history and how treating individual humans as objects led us to endless millennia of statist imperial warfare, culminating the 20th Century's killing fields and nuclear incinerations. Consider the necessary role of statism in the imposition of what Spooner saw as the Great Monopolies: the horror of slavery, vicious state churches, the legal "incapacities of women" and the King's trade monopolies.

Consider therefore the false "glories" of the State as a human institution. Consider it and condemn this most vile of accretions of a brutal past.

“A state, is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it also lies; and this lie creeps from its mouth: "I, the state, am the people." It is a lie! ... Destroyers, are they who lay snares for many, and call it the state: they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them. Where there is still a people, there the state is not understood, but hated as the evil eye, and as sin against laws and customs.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

As the vicious old concepts: chattel slavery, religious and racial bigotry, institutionalized inequality of women and various others, have become anathema to civilized people, so called,  the very concept a "sovereign" government, not subject to the same rule of law that applies to private persons, must be rejected.

Then we will see the great sweep of human history as the (not always steady) advance in knowledge and enterprise. We will see the inventors, creators, entrepreneurs, as the proper subjects of human admiration, leaving behind childish fascination with bright war medals, glittering crowns and presidential pomp.

Jefferson understood the essence of libertarian foreign policy: “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations...entangling alliances with none” .

The natural implementation of that view is the non-interventionist foreign policy of the Founders of the American Republic.  That glorious era of non-interventionism lasted for over a hundred years (with notable lapses regarding Mexico, Mormons, native peoples, and two failed invasions of Canada). TR's reckless charge up San Juan Hill ended the policy of libertarian non-interventionism.

Libertarians always stand against war. Whether Thoreau asking Emerson why his friend was not in the jail cell with him for refusing to pay the Mexico War Tax, or Murray Rothbard telling my Viet Nam bound contemporaries exactly how "the coldest of all cold monsters" used selective servitude to centrally plan the welfare/warfare state.

Whether Warren, Tucker and Spooner decrying the uncivil war to make America safe for bureaucracy or Mencken poking at the hubris of the world war warriors, libertarian-Americans stood against every war since the Rebellion of 1776. And stood with every resistance since the Whiskey Tax Rebellion of 1791.

[1] So the very first principle of a libertarian approach to foreign affairs is Peace -- Anti-War.

Standing for peace, we stand with the victims of war, including those murdered "in our names" and those forced to pay for the carnage, "Trillions and trillions wasted..." Ron Paul

Libertarians understand that the main result of an interventionist foreign policy is death; millions of deaths... and the resulting "blow back" that brings the war back home. Do Americans really think we can escape the results of violating other people? For most of the years since the adoption of the Constitution of 1787 the Republic as been at war.

"War no more; war never again." Pope Paul VI.

Does that mean I oppose people overthrowing tyrannies by force? No. I applaud self-determination. Americans, however, have a special obligation to keep our "coldest of cold monsters" within its assigned borders. That means bringing all the troops home. The Founders understood that a standing army spread across the globe would be an invitation to disaster. We need to stop it. That's the best we could do for peace and freedom.

[2] The second principle must be Individualism. 

There is no "collective action" and no collective guilt. There is only individual Human Action. This must be the bedrock ground of any sane approach to international relations. The universal rights of real humans must be respected in international law and individuals must have standing to act internationally.

Chief among these rights is the Right of Informed Consent in all things pertaining to our bodies:  http://TinyURL.com/InformedConsentProtection. As General Bert taught us, the individual's right to "Informed consent is the defining issue of the 21st Century."

[3] And the third, Free Trade. 

Despite the mercantilist errors being spouted by Trumpists and their (G)OP [reluctant] allies, protectionism is simply taxation -- and we are Taxed Enough Already. Whether penalizing companies for following market forces or imposing new tariffs, it is just tax policy and the incidence of the tax will fall where all taxes fall: on production of real goods and services, paid for by the consumers. Who benefits? The Bureaucracy.

In economic science the issue was settled literally centuries ago.

First, the market price is the just price. Therefore, any government imposition that restricts the market price must be unjust.

Second, as early as the Corn Law Debates in England in the 1830s it has been conceded by all thinking economists that free trade benefits those countries that adopt it, even if other countries continue irrationally to impose protectionist policies. If you read the economic literature and do the math, you will realize that protectionism is a con.

Peace -- Individualism -- Free Trade: lead to a libertarian world. 

As a practical matter, urgent steps in that direction require a wholesale planetary divesting of authority from political systems that is used to micro-manage Human Action. Every regulation abolished, every tax reduced, is a victory for humanity. The direct political program therefore must be "abolish two old regulations for each new one proposed." And the same as to taxes and bureaus.

Just as the market price is the only just price we can know (https://mises.org/library/myth-just-price) humans free to act with their own property (including their bodies) as they choose will make, on the whole, on average, the best choices. Far better than those being made for us by a self-appointed globalist elite that will do anything to maintain power and privilege, shrinking not even from genocidal weaponized pandemics.

The existence of international libertarian organizations, such as Libertarian Parties, Mises Circles and the like is very encouraging. Here is what the libertarian protesters in Brazil are saying:

L. von Mises understood it clearly. He warned us, from his vantage point of the 20th Century, the Century of Genocide, the consequences of statist interventionism:

"Man's freedom to choose and to act is restricted in a threefold way. There are first the physical laws to whose unfeeling absoluteness man must adjust his conduct if he wants to live. There are second the individual's innate constitutional characteristics and dispositions and the operation of environmental factors; we know that they influence both the choice of the ends and that of the means, although our cognizance of the mode of their operation is rather vague. There is finally the regularity of phenomena with regard to the interconnectedness of means and ends, viz., the praxeological law as distinct from the physical and from the physiological law. 

The elucidation and the categorial and formal examination of this third class of laws of the universe is the subject matter of praxeology and its hitherto best-developed branch, economics. The body of economic knowledge is an essential element in the structure of human civilization; it is the foundation upon which modern industrialism and all the moral, intellectual, technological, and therapeutical achievements of the last centuries have been built. It rests with men whether they will make the proper use of the rich treasure with which this knowledge provides them or whether they will leave it unused. But if they fail to take the best advantage of it and disregard its teachings and warnings, they will not annul economics; they will stamp out society and the human race." -- L. von Mises, Human Action

Libertarians need to apply Mises' profound understanding to our advocacy for a peaceful world.

Only then can we achieve human freedom, peace and prosperity.

.-------------------
* My Prolegomena to Any Future Political Philosophy is here:  http://vitaminlawyerhealthfreedom.blogspot.com/2011/10/liberty-in-ancient-city-and-internet.html

Americans Want a Third Major Party

A Clear Majority of Americans
Ready for a Major Third Party
http://tinyurl.com/ThirdMajorParty

2018 Election Update: Libertarian Party Now the Major Third Party

 http://www.opensourcetruth.com/opinion-time-for-a-major-third-party/

---------- Original Blog ----------

At the beginning of 2013 I analyzed the potential for a broad-based third party in American politics [1], taking as my model the extraordinary, albeit temporary, 2008 coalescence of third parties engineered by Dr. Ron Paul [2]. I also considered the Gallop Poll that, for decades, has asked whether a third major party was supported by the voters:

For generations Americans were taught that the “two party system” was a necessary part of American politics. And a strong majority always supported the “system.” The cross-over point was 2006/07. 

This occurred as the TEA Party coalition came together and gave the (G)OP control of Congress; since then, a majority has always wanted a third major choice. Considering the cost of launching another third major party, I urged the formation of Liberty Electoral Alliances among the existing third parties…

But first, back to Ron Paul and the top unreported political action of 2008. I wrote then:

“In a significant breakthrough for the American political system, what Dr. Ron Paul has called the "principled third parties" have challenged the US "two party" oligopoly, calling for a restoration of the constitutional republic and rejecting the US empire.

The statement was jointly written by Dr. Paul and the four third party campaigns for President … [Libertarian, Green, Constitutional, Independent]. The Statement challenges the "two" tax-supported party system which has dominated US politics in recent decades and rejects the joint policies of the Democrats and Republicans that, in this blogger's opinion, have contributed so centrally to the crisis facing the nation.”

That is why I thought the next logical step was the alliance model, and so in 2013 I wrote,

“When the (G)OP changed its rules after the Primaries to marginalize the TEA Party, by not even allowing Ron Paul's name to be put in nomination, it sealed its fate. Hundreds of thousands of "new blood" activists left that party. Three million less people voted for that party in '12 as in '08. The (G)OP lost a presidential race it should have easily won because it rejected the TEA Party activists and has new rules to make sure "we" never wrest control of that tax-eater party from its tax-eating establishment.

So we are left with several "Third Parties" that represent views "on the right' from Conservative to Libertarian.

I suspect, due to monopolistic political funding laws and regulations that erect "barriers against entry," it will not be possible to construct yet another new "major" (read: "tax-supported") party to challenge the (G)OP, so we need to consider how the existing political groupings can best move toward an electoral alliance.

I propose, not a new party, but rather an Independent Electoral Alliance. The Conservative and the Libertarian Parties have different strengths in different parts of the country. It should be possible to bring these parties together with joint candidates in some areas, leading to a joint presidential race in the future.”

 And now we come to the election year of 2016.

The third party trend has continued. In September 2015, Gallop noted, “Arguably, the U.S. political climate has been ripe for the emergence of a major third party for some time, but that hasn't yet happened.” [3] “Why?” one might ask.

That was before the Trump Election Reality Show and the perhaps not surprising disruptions of a “major party” political rally by protesters a couple days ago… in Chicago… for the first time since 1968. I do not know if Mr. Trump will succeed in his hostile take-over of the (G)OP, against the wishes of its management. 

I strongly suspect that only an indictment could stop Mrs. Clinton from gaining the Demos nomination. She will probably be the next president, despite being unliked, untrusted, and suspected of corruption. She is, however, a big-government, big-spending, Big Pharma, Federal Reserve-protecting supporter of nearly every foreign intervention and every bailout, so quite acceptable to the political establishment. But, then again, so, to a significant extent are Senator Sanders, Senators Cruz and Rubio, and Mr. Trump. And he has shown willingness to use government force, under the evil Kelo Decision, for personal gain. Maybe he is not as anti-establishment as he appears on the Trump Election Reality Show. Though I do salute him for his principled stand against vaccine mandates, a strong anti-establishment position [http://tinyurl.com/InformedConsentPetition].

It appears every billionaire from Bloomberg to McAfee and beyond are threatening to run third party campaigns. It is rumored that billionaires Soros and the Kochs are each searching for suitable suits to be their front man or woman. They all smell an opportunity to extend their brands, with the stench of decay pervading the still-warm corpse of the (G)OP.

However, it won’t be that easy to translate their mega bucks into pollster inclusion, ballot position or national debate access. The restrictions built into the “controlled democracy” that America has become (from the limited, federal republic it was) make it very difficult to challenge the “two” tax-eater party political duopoly.

For example, the way the (G)OP rules were changed in 2012 will make it impossible for any “dark horse” candidate to be considered by the convention. Currently a candidate must have a majority (not just a plurality) of the votes in eight states to be eligible to have his name placed in nomination. And if not in nomination on the first ballot, there is no existing rule provision for new candidates to be included. That likely means a deadlocked (G)OP convention, with one side or the other walking out.

And not a moment too soon.

I thought, back in ’74, President Nixon’s abuse of power had finally kicked the corpse of the (G)OP the last time and that tax-eater party was going to go the way of the Whigs. Alas, not yet. The (G)OP had a couple more wars left in it after all… in cooperation with the Demos… and a couple more booms and their consequent busts (each getting bigger and bigger…).

The corruption of the “two party” political oligarchy has become so clear: the inability of the DC elite to deal with the Federal Debt and resulting collapse of the Dollar; the tragic failure to learn the lesson of endless foreign intervention (the lesson the that Founders’ policy of non-intervention is the only foreign policy consistent with a free republic) together are dooming the elite. 

They know they face the abyss… and the “unwashed masses” they fear are the best armed civilians on the planet. Will DC send in the marines, or the heavily armed alphabet agency secret police forces? We suspect we know where the federalized police forces will stand. But where will the professional soldiers stand? Keeping their Oaths or against our liberties?

IMHO, the only way to save America from another civil war is to do exactly the opposite of what the elite did in 1860. DC must let go. DC must learn humility and humanity. Return the western lands to the states. Withdraw from the hundreds of unsustainable military bases around the world. Stop manipulating the money supply and interest rates. Stop spying on patriotic Americans. The elite must give up their false enterprise of empire.

It’s been a good empire for them. For the first time in American history the highest paid population communities are no longer the upper middle class suburbs around the main city market centers; rather, they are the counties directly surrounding DC, filled with its minions. The rest of the country is being hollowed-out; left to dry-up; allowed to decay.

For the first time in centuries the cohort of middle-aged white men (presumed to be the privileged) are not living longer than their fathers [4]. Consider that the USSR collapsed when Russian men in their prime were dying younger and younger.

“What is to be done?” Lenin famously asked. His answer, terror and dictatorship, is always the grasp of a failing elite. Nonetheless, his empire ate several generations of Russians and others victims before its final collapse. The American empire is in the midst of the beginning of a similar gluttony. But America, with so much more market-generated wealth than any of the socialist states, has a much greater way to fall.

What is to be done? We the people must turn our backs on the elite. Trust none of them. We can no longer “Vote for the Lesser of the Two Evils.” We can no longer sanction their misrule by voting for any of them. We must demand third choices. We must demand the right to govern ourselves again. 

We must assert our expressive association rights: to communicate, to associate and to petition freely; we must assert our personal sovereignty rights: to informed consent [5], to hold property, to trade freely, and to keep and bear arms.

How is that to be done? There is only one political organization in America capable of standing toe-to-toe with the two party duopoly. The Libertarian Party, after 45 years laboring in the political vineyard, will be the only “other party” on the national ballot. The other “third parties” are well-meaning but really merely political clubs without significant ballot access that ought to rally around the libertarian candidate as the one hope to break the political deadlock.

The Libertarian Party [6] is the only logical choice, as it is the only uncorrupted party that will be on all fifty state ballots. 

Former New Mexico governor, and private economy entrepreneur, Gary Johnson is its likely candidate. [7] Whether climbing Mr. Everest (he’s climbed the highest mountain on each continent) or building successful businesses, Gary is a different kind of American politician. Kind, respectful, intelligent. Proven tax and spending cutter. Strong voice for non-intervention and peace. Civil libertarian. Supports the end of the "drug war" and supports equal rights for LGBTs. He was known as “Gov. No” for his national record in vetoing spending, regulating and taxing bills.

When Senator Rand Paul, the only (now former) candidate who had any understanding of the real threats facing America sought to protect the Federal Debt Limit last October, to protect us from inevitable fiscal chaos by stopping the borrow-spend-tax-borrow juggernaut, all the other candidates, (G)OPers and Demos alike, including Cruz, Rubio and Sanders, voted to suspend the Federal Debt Limit until after the 2016 election, thereby voting for unlimited Federal Debt. They are the problem; they are not any solution.

The 2016 election may be the last best chance for the people of America to take back their government -- to restore the republic. Going forward, as more and more people come to depend on a failing government, the chance for change toward liberty becomes more remote; the inevitability of violent conflict unavoidable.

Unless the two party duopoly is broken, America cannot be fixed.

-----------

[1] http://vitaminlawyerhealthfreedom.blogspot.com/2013/01/toward-liberty-independent-electoral.html

[2] http://vitaminlawyerhealthfreedom.blogspot.com/2008/09/political-breakthrough-third-party.html

[3] http://www.gallup.com/poll/185891/majority-maintain-need-third-major-party.aspx

[4] http://drrimatruthreports.com/general-bert-white-men-dying-in-america/

[5] http://drrimatruthreports.com/advancevaccinedirective/

[6] http://lp.org

[7] https://garyjohnson2016.com/