Jonathan Kozol. Free Schools. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1972).

Matt Hern. Field Day: Getting Society Out of School. (Vancouver: New Star Books, 2003).

During this year’s School Choice Week, this pair of books can bring some perspective exactly because they aren’t brought up by either side of the debate. Neither author writes in the tone of a policy-wonk report: one in white-hot anger, the other in an unpretentious conversational style.

So, what exactly are free schools? Despite a welcome trend of schools reviving the name in the new millennium — one of which has even gotten denounced by Glenn Beck (who seems to think it invented the term “learner-centered”) — the free schools of the 1960s and 1970s have fallen out of public consciousness. Never gaining the name recognition of Montessori, the co-option by the system of kindergarten, or the academic respectability of Rousseau’s Emile, they have been easy to ignore. Briefly, they were schools outside of the public and traditional authoritarian private systems, not only in the technical sense but in being deeply opposed to their aims, and “free” not in the sense of no cost but of student autonomy and social liberation.

Kozol’s book, written right before the original flurry of free schools peaked, makes it clear right off the bat that free schools are unlike public alternatives which,

cannot, for reasons of immediate operation, finance and survival, raise serious doubts about the indoctrinational and custodial function of the public education apparatus.  No matter how sophisticated or how inventive these “alternatives within the system” may contrive to be, they nonetheless must continue to provide, within a single package: custodial functions, indoctrinational functions, credentializing, labeling and grading services, along with more purely educational functions such as skill-training.  [Public alternatives] constantly run skirmishes on the edges of the functions and priorities of domestication; in the long run, however, they cannot undermine them.  The school that flies the flag is, in the long run, no matter what the handsome community leader in the startling Afro likes to say, accountable to that flag and to the power and to the values which it represents.

Indeed, Kozol has been so identified for decades with his subsequently calcified role as the go-to guy for explaining that “The Market is Not The Answer” (in the name of one interview) that it’s startling to realize how vehemently he denounced the public schools. On a single page, he refers to the public school as “that old, hated, but still-standing and still-murderous construction,” “the miserable and monolithic enemy,” and “that old haunted house that flies the U.S. flag.”

This is despite him having more respect for public alternatives working with underprivileged kids, despite their futile attempts to make ultimate change within the system, than for free schools that were accessible only to well-off students and evasive of the time’s social issues. (Add to this a disdain for the counterculture matching any conservative hippie puncher.) Kozol soon came to regret the hotheadedness of the controversial passage, with its casual reference to “a place of physical isolation in the mountains of Vermont” — exactly where some readers were running schools for poor kids — and a comparison to “a sandbox for the children of the SS Guards at Auschwitz.”  But his tough love did get many free schools to successfully address issues of economic and racial privilege.

The bulk of the book deals with the nuts and bolts of running a free school with a hardened assessment of the obstructionism the corporatist system is capable of and a by-any-means-necessary attitude towards strategy. There is a candid discussion of getting money from the large-scale philanthropy that Kozol is under no illusions about being tied into the very system the free schools hope to undermine. One of these means, in fact, is a form of vouchers, leading Marcus A. Winters to note that “So open to new ideas was he at that time that … he even hinted at a solution not much different from the one advocated by choice supporters today.” It’s “different” in the sense that current school choice isn’t initiated by Black Power parents suing the pants off of school districts for criminal negligence of their kids.

And between philanthropy and vouchers, there’s the most interesting proposal: small-scale businesses aimed at local needs of the free schools’ neighborhoods. These would be very deliberately aimed at earning a profit, allowing a source of income to put into running the schools to ease their reliance on philanthropy (with its strings and tendency to dry up) and tuition (with its pressure to raise above the level affordable to poor kids). He bluntly tells those who find such business (including franchising from chains like McDonald’s) unidealistic to get over it. This is very much in parallel to the suggestions for local businesses as a source for neighborhood economic self-sustenance in Neighborhood Power; there’s a forgotten intellectual current of the time that deserves to be revived.

Three decades later, Hern’s book overtly refers to, quotes, and builds on Kozol’s, especially the concern about schools becoming only an option for the privileged (although Hern is more charitable to see this tendency as inadvertent).  But far from being the typical liberal Kozol fan, Hern makes quick work of Kozol’s reformist assumptions:

One could read a book like Savage Inequalities and interpret the stories as a call to government to correct these inequities and, with massive resource infusions, ensure equal institutional opportunity. But when you’re in a hole you should stop digging. Schools and the state are inextricably linked and schools are both reflecting and reinforcing a vision of society. As institutions they reinforce the social disparities around them.

And Hern’s critique of establishment reformism goes beneath the strategy to dissect the underlying assumptions: the Procrustean social control implicit in the very idea of uniform curriculum, the social necessity of warehousing kids. Yet Hern makes his radicalism much harder to dismiss by putting it in the down-to-earth style of Paul Goodman and his muse Colin Ward. Whereas Kozol open his book with line-in-the-sand confrontationalism, Hern asks the reader to just relax and give him a chance if they’re a family member of an unschooler.

(And yes, there is the whole irony that Hern hails from Canada, a country whose nationalization is identified by both admirers and detractors with “socialization.” But Hern has a native decentralist tradition to draw on, from social credit to anarchist history doyen George Woodcock. Hern points out compulsory schooling was only established nationwide during World War II. In fact, it’s surprising that in discussing Canadian public alternatives that allow for substantial student power — sometimes out of desperation to keep funds attached to kids that can homeschool — there’s no mention of the SEED school whose students included an obscure science fiction writer and blogger by the name of Cory Doctorow.)

After an introduction briskly establishing a firm opposition to not only school, but reforms led by either corporations or government, “The Politics of Deschooling” sketches the rise of compulsory schooling (with its roots in the unabashed authoritarianism of Plato, Napoleon, and Fichte ignored) and the anarchist resistance exemplified by William Godwin, Leo Tolstoy and Francisco Ferrer. In a time when anarchism is virtually institutionalized as an extracurricular hobby, it brings home the unique insight of the real tradition. Compulsory schooling is excoriated for its inevitable paternalism and inequality.

In all this, Hern is not afraid to point out the monetary stakes involved, where the scale of subsidy is something there’s a vast vested interest in preserving. Even though the vast majority of funds go to administration, “Asking teachers’ unions about schooling is like asking Enron about energy policy.” Hern is skeptical towards charters and vouchers (unless the system is already decentralized to a far greater extent) because there is a huge pressure for them to simply get on the gravy train. Privatization schemes “always include state and elite direction.” Adding them within the existing framework can easily be a worst-of-both-worlds which “off-loads the responsibility, leaves control in corporate hands, allows for profit-making on the back of social services and refuses to democratize any core power.” As Mary Leue forthrightly puts it: her “Free School never would have been accepted for charter funding. Never.”

In short, “School people are concerned that charter schooling and voucher systems are undermining the essential supports of compulsory schooling, while deschoolers are concerned — and convinced — that they won’t.”

In the middle chapters, “Free to Learn” critiques the assumptions of compulsory school control as “natural” and asks what what free activity is like (with equality between children and adults being merely a special case of how, paraphrasing Gloria Steinem, “equality means treating people differently”). “A Schooled Culture” takes the culture wars to task for arguing over the contents of the canon while not questioning its very existence. (Hern respects conservatives’ honesty about their aims with creating a canon and their appreciation for kids’ ability to pick up facts.  In looking at their lists of stuff to learn by rote, “all the information on it seems like useful stuff for people to know… Hell, I would like it if I knew all that was on those lists, even the third-grader ones.”) In conclusion, “The End of Compulsory Schooling” looks not to any one magic bullet, but the gradual crackup of the system from the pressure of a multitude of alternatives, looking at which existing alternative schools and homeschooling networks could form the model. In between the very conversational chapters are actual conversations with people ranging from public alternative reformers to free-schooling anarchists.

Libertarians can learn much from Kozol and Hern: the necessity of grappling with power inequalities, the importance of community, the limitations of a vulgar consumerism that treats everything in the world as a product, and the crucial importance of specific real, living examples. They can also learn about the dangers of capture of attempts to create markets by the existing state apparatus, despite ironically developing a theory of regulatory capture that understands it.

But on the other hand, left-libertarians can answer Hern’s concerns.

The only one of Hern’s conversation partners to come from a free-market perspective is John Taylor Gatto, who talks past Hern’s qualms that lead him to assert that going “from the nightmare of compulsorized state schooling into the arms of free-market liberty is not to move very far.” But if, “In a society that it deeply inequitable, a free-market system is not really free at all,” it’s not really market either. Hern’s challenge that “Alternatives to school should view themselves as being at the heart of communities, as reflecting and creating the neighbourhoods around them, as permeable, democratic counterinstitutions explicitly about developing local power.” is a letter-perfect description of what all of Karl Hess’s alternatives aimed at when he was coauthoring Neighborhood Power. Or as Michael Strong put it:

When forced to use a label, I would describe myself as a “left-communitarian-libertarian.” My ideal goals for the world – peace, prosperity, happiness, and sustainability for all – are very much the goals of the left. I believe that many of the pathologies that we see in modern society (and I do think that contemporary society is mostly pathological) can only be cured by means of deeper communal attachments. And I think that membership in communities can only be voluntary, not forced (thus the libertarian streak). Forced, geographical “communities,” from zoned public schools to nation-states, are not communities at all. Coercion poisons everything that is beautiful about community.

And American individualists, from Josiah Warren to the single tax colonists to the individualist anarchists and single taxers involved in building Ferrer schools in the United States, have always been community builders extraordinaire.

The era of free schools was also one of forgotten left-libertarian alliances, from Joel Spring working with the libertarian movement (even if he later regretted it due to its later plutocratic takeover), to Ivan Illich being the featured contributor to a new left-oriented magazine by the Cato institute (earning the admiration of John Holt, who also tried to argue them into protectionism), and the Murray Bookchin — whose social ecology formed the basis for many of Hern’s ideas — chilling with Karl Hess at the Libertarian Party convention.

Finally, when Hern understands that “Mass compulsory schooling is always to the detriment of local knowledge, because it relies on a universalizing logic” it should be emphasized that no structure is better attuned to such “local knowledge” than undistorted markets.

With the last decade’s hardening of centrist orthodoxy (Waiting for “Superman” etc.) and center-left retrenchment around public schools, the crumbling of the system Kozol predicted and Hern hoped for hasn’t happened quite yet. (Kozol noting a decade later that “The language of bravado and rebellion that prevails throughout the book appears a bit out of alignment with the stark political realities of the 1980s” has got to be the understatement of the Reagan era.)

The wave of dissident teachers of which Kozol was a part — and who had come to fame by rejecting the system that betrayed them — are either remembered as reformers (like Herbert Kohl, none too happy about Obama’s education czar Arne Duncan’s co-option of his book 36 Children) or simply forgotten (like James Herndon, who had scathing volumes about his experiences in both poor and affluent schools). Eventually Kozol gave up on being charitable to those who had his own former anti-system view (stating he’d “atoned” for it). George McGovern went from carrying around John Holt’s writing on the campaign trail to supporting No Child Left Behind.

But “something has survived” from the original wave of free schools — not just individual schools hanging on in hard times, but a mindset ahead of its time that could break through the stale debates on school choice.

Após anos de subsídios ao consumo de energia elétrica, que curiosamente beneficiam a manufatura com aplicação intensiva de capital, o governo decidiu que em 2015 as contas de energia elétrica no Brasil vão encarecer em 30%. De fato, 30% é a projeção otimista do ministro de Minas e Energia Eduardo Braga. É provável que os reajustes cheguem a 40% em média, mas o ministro, como de praxe na administração dilmista, prefere navegar por bravatas até que a realidade torne a narrativa do governo insustentável.

Já foram feitos novos acréscimos à conta de luz dos brasileiros, na forma das “bandeiras”, que representam os custos extras da geração de energia para cada região. Grandes nacos do território brasileiro estão agora sob a bandeira “vermelha”, que informa que a geração de energia na região é suplementada por termelétricas cujo custo de operação é mais alto.

Além do aumento, os brasileiros também convivem agora com frequentes apagões, rotineiros já em janeiro de 2015. É como se tivéssemos voltado no tempo para 2001, quando por uma hora todos os dias a energia era cortada. Em 2005, Lula afirmava, em mais um de seus discursos megalomaníacos recheados de “nunca antes na história deste país”, que “nunca mais” ocorreriam apagões no Brasil. Ele não teve clarividência suficiente nem para terminar seu governo sem apagões. Em 2007, dois estados ficaram no escuro. Em 2009 quase todo o Brasil ficou sem energia e Lula respondia que as novas faltas de luz só dependiam “de Deus”. Desde então, Deus aparentemente ordenou vários apagões todos os anos no país.

Em 2015, os petistas ainda depositam todas as suas fichas na benevolência divina, que tem que fazer chover para que as hidrelétricas possam gerar energia para o povo. Não é surpreendente para um governo cujo ministro da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação acredita que o aquecimento global é uma ferramenta de controle dos países pobres pelo imperialismo. Para o governo atual, qualquer intervenção do homem na natureza parece ser misteriosa e imprevisível em suas consequências.

À crise de geração de energia se soma também a crise do abastecimento de água. A seca em São Paulo já leva ao racionamento. Outra coisa curiosa é que 70% da água fornecida pelos reservatórios que minguam vai direto para o consumo do altamente subsidiado agronegócio brasileiro. E 22% vai para o altamente subsidiado parque industrial paulista. Os 8% restantes são consumidos pelas residências, sempre forçadas a fazer os maiores cortes em consumo.

Os subsídios ao agronegócio ainda têm efeito indireto sobre o fornecimento de água. O cultivo de áreas do cerrado, que necessitam de uso intensivo de água, e a apropriação de terras na Amazônia, limitando a evapotranspiração das árvores, também influenciam na estiagem paulista. Evidentemente, os petistas, cuja aliança com os ruralistas está selada pela presença de Kátia Abreu no Ministério da Agricultura, não pretendem fazer nada quanto ao problema.

O que mais impressiona no discurso das diversas esferas de governo é que, neles, a natureza parece ser indomável e imprevisível. Qualquer medida que envolva projeções futuras é completamente absurda e inviável para o governo — que, evidentemente, funciona em ciclos de 4 em 4 anos e qualquer medida tomada só é capaz de solucionar os problemas até o fim do mandato. Se falta água para as hidrelétricas, nada se pode fazer a não ser rezar para que as chuvas restaurem os níveis das barragens. Se falta água potável, somente a natureza pode reabastecer os reservatórios. Como uma tribo para quem qualquer influência humana sobre o clima é anátema, a única solução proposta pelo governo é sempre um apelo à sorte e à graça divina.

Os políticos brasileiros devem ter cuidado, porém. A graça divina periodicamente atende os chamados de chuva. E com a dádiva das chuvas, periodicamente as cidades brasileiras são inundadas e centenas de pessoas morrem e ficam desabrigadas. Embora isso ocorra anualmente, sem falta, para o governo as enchentes são imprevisíveis. O jeito, é claro, é rezar por chuvas. Mas não tantas.

If America has any characteristic that does not so much define it as it is, but defines it as it aspires to be, it’s offering upward mobility. Class struggle which gets anyone anywhere could be understood as meritocracy against a permanent oligarchy. Beginning with the rise of the merchant class and ending with the rise of the first true middle class, the globe has undoubtedly shifted against nobility and towards meritocracy. However, replacing a rigid caste system with oversimplified notions of hard work, culture, and bootstraps have veiled the shifts which have not just arrested, but reversed, the expansion of the middle class.

Essentially, there’s a new oligarchy in town. The landed gentry got their asses kicked by the captains of industry. But a new “can of whoop ass” has been opened by the financially literate on the ignorant and struggling.

It’s Been Real, Middle Class

Wealth, throughout history, was never about income from labor. It has, until pretty recently (14th century, give or take) been about income from land. The first challenge to agricultural economic hegemony came from a plucky little upstart called international trade. Goods crossing borders enabled people to build wealth from labor alone for the first time. It created the merchant class.

Then came the Industrial Revolution, which expanded both the number of people who could build wealth from labor, and the scope of the wealth they could build. It gave black-lunged, coal-covered birth to the first real middle class in human history, and completely remade the makeup of the 1%.

This middle class grew and grew, with increased standards of living and a deliciously tumultuous upper crust. Fortunes were won and lost by each generation.

Then, in the 1970’s, the gap between rich and poor in America began to take off. As incomes steadied in the middle, so did the shakeups in who constitutes the richest of the rich. Three-quarters of America’s one-percenters will still be one-percenters next year.

Every year in America, fewer and fewer people can move into a higher class than their parents. Today, there are many other wealthy countries where it’s easier to move up in class.

From the Economist, “America’s meritocracy is… in danger of calcifying into a caste, decorated with a few members from favoured minorities, but cut off from the great mass of the population. The social hierarchy is getting both steeper and harder to climb.”

Oh Hai, New Oligarchy

In 1979, just under 8% of the 1% were rich from finance-related occupations. In 2005, the percentage had grown to 13.9%. Within the 0.1%, the percentage grew from 11% to 18%. And in that time, the top earners went from getting their wealth from wages and bonuses to financial instruments. Interest, dividends, capital gains and rent make up a quarter of income for the average one percenter. These households control nearly half of all stocks and mutual funds and more than 60% of securities.

Here’s Wikipedia: “As of 2002, there were approximately 146,000 (0.1%) households with incomes exceeding $1,500,000, while the top 0.01% or 11,000 households had incomes exceeding $5,500,000. The 400 highest tax payers in the nation had gross annual household incomes exceeding $87,000,000. Household incomes for this group have risen more dramatically than for any other. As a result, the gap between those who make less than one and half million dollars annually (99.9% of households) and those who make more (0.1%) has been steadily increasing, prompting The New York Times to proclaim that the ‘Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind.’”

The Myth that Won’t Die

I’m in Liberty Tavern, eating a tres fancy brunch. There’s caviar on the buffet in the fifth highest income county in the country, in a city least likely to fuck around with the meal that combines breakfast and lunch. One of my two friends says something arresting about herself.

“I make rich people uncomfortable.” She doesn’t mean she’s a threat to the income inequality, though that could be somewhat true, as she does sometimes write about economic justice. What she means is she’s loud and, (not her word) uncouth. Rich people don’t know what to do with her. I want to argue with her and crawl under the table at the same time. Instead, narcissist that I am, I think about how I make rich people feel.

Class is fascinating to me. My parents are both second-generation members of the middle class. Both my grandfathers fought in Vietnam, having escaped poverty via the expansion of officers in the Air Force. I grew up in Alabama, where my mother read me Shakespeare and we had burglar bars on our windows and trailers on 3 sides of our rented house.

Conservative poors confound liberals. They are extremely likely to believe America is a meritocracy, where the wealthy and high-status individuals are that way because they earned it by providing value. You can see it in their opposition to affirmative action and anti-poverty programs and their refusal to accept impediments such as structural racism as material contributors economic inequality.

The assumption that America is a meritocracy means, by extension, that people who are poor are poor because they’ve not put forth enough, or the right kind of, effort. From Bill O’Reilly blaming black fatherlessness for poverty, and not say, decades of housing discrimination, redlining, failing public schools. Or recognizing mass incarceration’s role, particularly for non-violent offenses, in fatherlessness.

The right calls this a culture of accountability. The left calls this victim blaming.

Liberals don’t understand why poor people believe they’re poor in a system which rewards merit. But I get it. For me, aspiring to a lot meant I wanted to graduate from college by 22 and get and keep a full-time job which supported me. It wasn’t until I’d done all that that I realized what low aspirations those were for me. Let’s just say that applying to an Ivy League school literally didn’t occur to me. But once I had a degree and a good job at 22, I realized that if I worked hard, I could be rich. And I assumed I would. And if I could do it, anyone could.

There may be no more effective way to throw someone off the search for a victimizer than to blame victims for their own oppression.

I didn’t realize that no one gets rich from wages.

A Bloomberg National Poll found that more than three-quarters of Americans felt no effect on their financial well-being from the five-year bull market in U.S. stocks. That’s probably because only half of Americans own stocks, and most of those are in retirement accounts.

Confession: I am still not exactly sure what a stock is. Getting rich in America requires two things the poor don’t have: financial literacy and surplus wages. I don’t want to say that poor Americans believe in a meritocracy because they are ignorant of how the rich get rich. But it certainly helps to believe in a meritocracy when you don’t understand how the rich get rich.

Owning land isn’t hard. It doesn’t help anyone else, in and of itself. Building a ship is hard. Sailing to another continent without satellite navigation is hard. Building a factory is hard. These are all activities, and they help the doer by helping other people.

Perhaps in theory thriving financial markets produce wealth across the board. But not ours. A thriving market requires risk and reward be private. America’s financial markets only privatize reward. And the rewards are flowing. The rich are getting richer. And the poor? They’re paying for the failures of the rich. To look at just one recent example, we can examine the sub-prime mortgage lending crisis. Middle class wage stagnation itself belies trickle-down economics. Stagnant wages and rising individual household debt make saving enough to invest impossible. Americans are paying more in taxes to fund golden parachutes for banking executives than they’re saving for stocks and bonds.

Overcoming the obstacles to upward mobility requires acknowledging them. Meritocracy blinds people to the structural barriers to their own success. We’ve built a new oligarchy with financial instruments the average American can’t afford and doesn’t understand.

In late January, the US military-industrial complex reported results for 2014’s fourth quarter and expectations for 2015. Good times! Northrop Grumman knocked down nearly $6 billion in Q4 2014 and expects 2015 sales of around $23.5 billion. Raytheon did about as well last fall and expects a big radar order from the Air Force this year. Meanwhile the Pentagon announced a travel upgrade for the president of the United States — a new “Air Force One.” Base cost for the Boeing 747-8? $368 million, before presidential modifications.

Anyone who doesn’t live under a rock (or whose rock gets bombed periodically) knows that the US government spends more on its military than any other nation-state. A useful way of understanding how MUCH more: If the US “defense” budget was cut by 90%, it would  remain the first or second largest military spender in the world (depending on fluctuations in China’s military expenditures).

That 90% — and then some — is the single largest welfare entitlement program in the US government’s budget, even omitting “emergency supplementals” for the military misadventure of the week and military spending snuck into other budget lines.

In truth, if the US Department of “Defense” consisted of a cramped office in a strip mall somewhere with a couple of old generals sitting next to phones waiting for the word to call out a citizen militia, the chances of a successful military invasion of the United States would fall somewhere in the range separating “slim” from “none.” Unlike China, the US has fairly friendly neighbors and enjoys the protection of very wide moats between itself and most prospective enemies.

So: Why the huge “defense” establishment? If you have to ask why, the answer is usually “money.”

As the US cruised relentlessly toward its fateful entry into World War II, the Great Depression refused to die. The “New Deal” had failed. Unemployment in 1938 remained at levels similar to those of 1933. The ramp-up to war and the years of carnage didn’t change the economic fundamentals. Unemployment statistics went down only because 16 million American men put on uniforms and because American women went to work producing bombs and bullets.

When the war ended, America was set to fall right back into the rut. What to do? The easy answer, and the one that found near unanimous support among Democratic and Republican politicians alike, was to remain on a war footing in perpetuity. Cold War. Hot war. War neither rare nor, usually, well done. As William F. Buckley, Jr. — arguably the ideological founder of the modern American “conservative” movement — put it in 1952, “large armies and air forces, atomic energy, central intelligence, war production boards and the attendant centralization of power in Washington …. we have got to accept Big Government for the duration — for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged … except through the instrumentality of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores.”

The primary function of the US government since World War II has been to regularly and routinely transfer as much wealth as possible from the pockets of those who produce things people actually need to the bank accounts of welfare queens like Northrop Grumman and Raytheon.

The purpose of those welfare transfers is not to sustain a military roughly the size of that at the height of the Civil War, when the US completely mobilized for battle on its own borders, a military more than 50 times as large as the one which conquered and ethnically cleansed the territories to its west with single-shot rifles. The purpose of sustaining that military — and all too frequently putting it to murderous work — is to justify the welfare transfers.

But this massive garrison welfare state has for 70 years continuously lived on borrowed time and borrowed or stolen wealth. We can’t afford the welfare. Nor can we afford the state.

Apesar do que alguns possam pensar, “herói” não é sinônimo de “assassino competente contratado pelo governo”.

Se Sniper Americano, filme recordista de bilheteria de Clint Eastwood, lançar uma discussão pública franca a respeito da guerra e do que significa o heroísmo, o diretor terá feito um trabalho extremamente necessário para os Estados Unidos e para o mundo.

Esta não é uma resenha do filme nem mesmo uma resenha do livro autobiográfico de Chris Kyle em que o filme se baseia. Meu interesse aqui é na percepção popular de Kyle, o francoatirador mais prolífico dos EUA, um título que ele recebeu em suas quatro passagens pelo Iraque.

Lembremos de alguns fatos, que talvez Eastwood pense ser óbvios demais para ser mencionados: Kyle foi parte de uma força de invasão. Os americanos entraram no Iraque. O Iraque não invadiu os EUA nem atacou cidadãos americanos. O ditador Saddam Hussein nem mesmo ameaçou atacar americanos. Ao contrário do que foi sugerido pelo governo George W. Bush, o Iraque nada tinha a ver com os ataques de 11 de setembro de 2001. Antes de os americanos invadirem o Iraque, a al-Qaeda não estava lá. Também não estava na Síria, no Iêmen e nem na Líbia.

O único motivo por que Kyle foi ao Iraque foi devido à guerra de agressão contra o povo iraquiano promovida por Bush, Cheney e companhia. Guerras de agressão, lembremos, são ilegais sob o direito internacional. Os nazistas foram executados em Nuremberg por iniciarem guerras de agressão.

Com esta perspectiva em mente, podemos nos perguntar se Kyle foi um herói.

Defensores de Kyle e da política externa de George Bush diriam: “É claro que ele foi um herói. Ele salvou vidas americanas”.

Mas quais vidas foram essas? Foram vidas de militares americanos que invadiram outro país que não apresentava qualquer ameaça a eles ou aos americanos dentro dos EUA. Se um invasor mata uma pessoa que tenta resistir à invasão, isso não conta como heroica autodefesa. O invasor é o agressor. O invadido é quem se defende. Se há um herói nesta história, é este último.

Em seu livro, Kyle escreveu que lutava contra um “mal selvagem e desprezível” — e que “se divertia” ao fazê-lo. Por que ele pensava isso sobre os iraquianos? Porque os homens — e mulheres, a primeira pessoa que Kyle matou era mulher — resistiam à invasão e à ocupação de que ele fazia parte.

Isso não faz sentido. Como já afirmei, resistir a uma invasão e ocupação — sim, mesmo quando árabes são os resistentes — simplesmente não é maligno. Se os Estados Unidos fossem invadidos pelo Iraque (que tivesse um poder militar maior, isto é), os atiradores americanos que matassem resistentes americanos seriam considerados heróis pelos que idolatram Kyle? Acho que não e não acredito que os americanos achariam. Pelo contrário, os resistentes seriam os heróis.

O filme de Eastwood também mostra um francoatirador iraquiano. Por que ele não é considerado herói por resistir à invasão de seu país, como os americanos em meu exemplo hipotético? (Eastwood deveria fazer um filme sobre a invasão do ponto de vista dos iraquianos, da mesma forma que fez um filme sobre Iwo Jima do ponto de vista dos japoneses para acompanhar seu filme da perspectiva dos americanos.)

Não importa quantas vezes Kyle e seus admiradores se refiram aos iraquianos como “o inimigo”, os fatos não mudam. Eles eram “o inimigo” — isto é, pretendiam causar dano aos americanos — somente por que as forças americanas iniciaram uma guerra não-provocada a eles. Kyle, como outros americanos, nunca teve que temer que um iraquiano o mataria em casa dentro dos EUA. Ele tornou os iraquianos seus inimigos, entrando eu seu país sem convite, armado com um rifle. Nenhum iraquiano pediu para ser morto por Kyle, mas realmente parece que Kyle estava pedindo para ser morto por um iraquiano. (Em vez disso, outro veterano dos EUA fez o trabalho.)

Claro, os admiradores de Kyle discordariam dessa análise. Jeanine Pirro, comentarista da Fox News, afirmou:

Chris Kyle tinha clareza sobre quem eram os inimigos. Eram aqueles que seu governo o enviou para matar.

Impressionante! Kyle foi um herói porque ansiosa e habilidosamente matava quem quer que o governo lhe dissesse para matar? Conservadores, supostos defensores da limitação dos poderes do governo, certamente têm uma noção esquisita sobre o que é o heroísmo.

Desculpe, mas eu tenho dificuldade em ver uma diferença essencial entre o que Kyle fez no Iraque e o que Adam Lanza fez no tiroteio da escola primária de Sandy Hook. Certamente não foi heroísmo.

Traduzido por Erick Vasconcelos.

The life of Laurance Labadie appears very much like his anarchism, a deliberate, often anachronistic struggle against the vogues and prevailing winds of his day, a hopeless attempt to revive an energy faded or extinguished entirely. His thought belonged to a libertarian strain regrettably anchored to those of the previous generation or two, to a time just before the “official” anarchist movement coalesced firmly around communist and syndicalist patterns of thought. Perceiving the inherent stagnancy of such a narrowly circumscribed focus on these ideologies, Ardent Press, along with its distribution partner Little Black Cart, has worked to make egoist, individualist, nihilist, and anti-civilization writings available. For those of us who care about developing a more complete picture of anarchist history and ways of thinking, Ardent Press’s efforts are very much appreciated. Anarcho-Pessimism: The Collected Writings of Laurence [sic] Labadie is just such a vital effort, the most comprehensive compilation of Labadie’s writings ever, and to the author’s knowledge the only Laurance Labadie collection since the historian of anarchism James J. Martin made a selection of Labadie’s essays a part of his Libertarian Broadsides series. The volume features a series of introductory essays by someone called “Chord,” as well as a biographical introduction by historian Mark A. Sullivan[1], and Martin’s “We Never Called Him ‘Larry’: A Reminiscence of Laurance Labadie” (which also appeared in the Libertarian Broadsides collection).

There is a deep despondency hidden even within the most sanguine of anarchisms, for imagining and expecting a freer, fairer world tends unavoidably to throw into sharp relief the long and arduous journey ahead. The anarcho-pessimism typified by Laurance Labadie, however, carries no such promise for the future, expects no paradise, has no faith in the ability or the inclination of human beings to live together and relate to each other in non-authoritarian ways. As Chord observes in the introduction, “the possibility of a happy ending for the human race was simply out of the question to him.” Labadie derided utopians for their utopias, for erecting their systems and prescribing the terms on which human beings must interact. Putting Labadie at odds with the main current of the anarchist movement, his anarchism, successor to that of Benjamin Tucker and his Liberty circle, reviled communism as another castle in the air that “will ever be opposed by thinking people.” Still, he made no common cause with the counterfeit libertarianism of “American ‘free enterprisers’” and saw the confrontation of communism with this conservatism as a no-win situation for “individual liberty.” Indeed, his hatred of the mephitic social environment created by the corporate state led him to an affection — at least to an extent — for the thought of the decentralist, self-sufficiency champion Ralph Borsodi, with whom Labadie had a long and rewarding friendship. Like Borsodi, Labadie saw himself as the defender of a forgotten “third way.”

Chord’s introduction perceptively fits Labadie into a lost tradition within anarchism that deliberately eschews fatuous talk of revolution — at least as the seizure of the state — and economic expropriation. Following Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Benjamin Tucker and others, Chord explains, Labadie’s anarchism advised a slow and measured movement in the direction of freedom, arising from “intellectual and economic” developments and “only superficially political.” Chord’s description of the individualist anarchist predisposition of skepticism toward revolutionary aims and politics tracks closely George Woodcock’s account of the philosophical differences that separated Proudhon from Marx.[2] The latter put the cart before the horse in treating political revolution as a necessary step which must precede the solution of the social and economic problem. The former, in contrast, held that workers’ self-organization, their adoption of free and equitable economic relations amongst themselves, would accomplish the political revolution perforce. Abandon the quest for control of the mechanisms of political power, building your own decentralized, libertarian associations now. This distinction is apparent in all of Labadie’s work, captured in striking completeness by Anarcho-Pessimism. Because he understood the importance of education in the desired anarchistic evolution (rather than revolution), Labadie proposed “the complete abolition of the education system,” which as one of the principal keepers of the status quo retards “the ability to ask significant questions” (boldface in original). Labadie had absolutely no faith that humankind would ever begin to ask those questions and he expressed fathomless annoyance at the “fakers” and “uplifters” he saw everywhere, especially in the political and education establishments. Many an anarchist reader of Labadie’s work will doubtless sympathize.

Labadie’s woebegone libertarianism recalls Bakunin saying, “I feel neither the strength nor, perhaps, the confidence which are required to go on rolling Sisyphus’s stone against the triumphant forces of reaction.” Labadie, though, never gave himself over to the kind of naive, romantic revolutionism that propelled Bakunin’s life. For Labadie, the revolution was culminated when an individual “woke up,” abandoned faith in the state and all systems of authority, joining those few distinguished by their understanding of liberty. And such an appreciation of liberty was, Labadie thought, quite unlikely to result from preaching or proselytizing of the kind he saw among the various political factions of his lifetime. Labadie’s anti-authoritarian posture was, rather than the fruit of some religious conversion or epiphany, a tendency intuitive or instinctive, bound indissolubly to a deep distrust in his fellow humans and their plans. Abstract notions of human solidarity and cooperation — ideas which have been at the center of so much of anarchist theorizing — did not impress or interest Labadie. A withdrawing misanthrope who moved desultorily from job to job, Labadie once told his parents of his “hate of everything,” damning “the whole cosmic process” as “utter hopelessness and futility.” His father, of course, was the great labor activist and anarchist Joseph A. Labadie, for whom the University of Michigan Library’s Labadie Collection is named. Where Joseph (or “Jo”) was well known for his cheerful and obliging comportment, earning him the title the “gentle anarchist,” Laurance didn’t think very much of his fellow man, describing his own probes into “what makes humans tick” as thoroughly “infused with a considerable degree of venom.” As Martin recounted, “Laurance luxuriated in his image of a curmudgeon,” his “joy at being an agent provocateur.” Labadie loved liberty mostly because he was intensely cynical about his neighbors and the meddlesome interferences that they were certainly plotting.

Chord’s introduction to Section 2 of the book, “Evolving Experiments With Anarchist Economics,” spotlights the contradiction inherent in Labadie writings on political economy, which at once denounce all “systems” and endorse a specific program of mutualist money and credit that is nothing if not systematic and definite. In this he followed Tucker, whose work continuously emphasized the emancipatory power of free credit for the working class. Such economic ideas — and Labadie’s left wing individualism more generally — appeared even more quixotic to his twentieth century audience than the same ideas had during a time when radical proposals for monetary reform (e.g., Greenbackism) were far more common in American politics. By the middle of Labadie’s life, individualistic and laissez faire ideas were identified with the conservatism that Labadie hated just as vehemently as he hated communism. Chord is not far from the mark in writing that “Labadie’s economic theories read like theology at times,” that Labadie’s only lapses into a kind of religious fervor come when he’s discussing economics. Such fixation on economic forms and the elimination of privilege distinguishes anarchist individualism of the Benjamin Tucker variety, and Labadie never dispensed with this fundamental aspect of the vanished school for which he served as “keeper of the flame.”

Anarcho-Pessimism will come as an astounding revelation to anyone interested in an anarchism that, rather than offering another recital of workerist bromides, presents a caustic indictment of modern politics and society. With a contempt and audacity all his own, this one of a kind autodidact savaged the status quo like no one before or since, and in doing so gave us what is one of the last links in the chain that is American individualist anarchism. Though it points to the dynamic variousness of anarchism as a whole, the individualist anarchism we find in Anarcho-Pessimism is unlikely to change the present day anarchist movement. Labadie, of course, wouldn’t have given a damn. He wasn’t a joiner, or a revolutionary, or an activist.[3] In his lifetime, only a few lucky acquaintances benefited from his acumen and wit, and it is safe to predict that only a bold and irreverent few will benefit from this collection.

Notes:

[1] See also Sullivan with Mildred J. Loomis, “Laurance Labadie: Keeper of the Flame” in Benjamin R. Tucker and the Champions of Liberty: A Centenary Anthology, a collection Sullivan edited with Michael E. Coughlin and Charles H. Hamilton.

[2] Quoting an 1846 letter from Proudhon to Marx, Woodcock observes that it “clearly opposes the anarchist ideal of economic action to the Marxist emphasis on political action.” Proudhon’s letter had argued, “[W]e have no need of it [revolution] in order to succeed; and that consequently we should not put forward revolutionary action as a means of social reform, because that pretended means would simply be an appeal to force, to arbitrariness, in brief, a contradiction. I myself put the problem in this way: to bring about the return to society, by an economic combination, of the wealth which was withdrawn from society by another economic combination.”

[3] Individualist anarchism always was philosophically and intellectually oriented, rather than action oriented. Indeed, when Tucker left for France, taking Liberty with him, Labadie’s father Jo lamented, “How dead the movement seems now.” See Carlotta Anderson’s All-American Anarchist: Joseph A. Labadie and the Labor Movement.

As Loretta Lynch’s US Senate confirmation hearings for her nomination to the office of Attorney General opened on January 28, Republicans were dying to ask her just how friendly she might be to the class of people government defines as “illegal aliens.” In an exchange with immigration scrooge Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Sessions wondered who Lynch believes has the right to work in America. Specifically, he asked, who has “more right”: A lawful immigrant, a citizen, or a person who entered the country unlawfully? Lynch wisely opted to dodge Sessions’s silly multiple choice question, instead responding that if a person is here unlawfully, she’d prefer it be as a participant in America’s workforce.

Sessions’s line of questioning — and the answer he was fishing for — reveals much about the political class’s warped thinking. The bipartisan immigration-bashing contingent in Washington believes, as Sheldon Richman notes, “permission to work is theirs to bestow.” Unfortunately, that belief is the law of the land. Today, who may work is a question decided largely by Washington bureaucrats and special interests jockeying to buy legal monopolies on their services. While you may think yourself free to pursue work of your choosing, the countless prerequisites and riders imposed by government drastically narrow your choices. If you’re fortunate enough to overcome those obstacles, your ability to remain effective at your craft is often curtailed as you’re forced to wade through a morass of government-mandated compliance.

Politicians rely on this hugely important power to maintain a stranglehold on their subjects. The right to bestow work upon their subjects, and all of the ancillary terms and conditions that come with granting work as privilege, allow the parasitic political class to fill its pockets in the most efficient way possible. If work — whether that of an illegal immigrant or an American black market laborer — is re-routed through unregulated marketplaces, politicians lose the ability to track it and extort tribute. Failure to comply with their tangled web of tax, labor, and administrative law, not to mention licensing schemes laid over entire professions, risks having your livelihood pulled out from under you. The whole complex structure is falsely sold as protecting producers and consumers alike.

Illegal immigration itself is not what scares bureaucrats. Their fear is loss of control over the income streams that result from unregulated immigrant labor. Sessions and his fellow border guards in Congress couch their fear in terms of “us vs. them” rhetoric, a brilliant stage act serving important political purposes. With this sleight of hand, politicians lead you to believe their fears are not for the loss of taxpayer loot, but for “your” jobs, “your” Medicare, and “your” Social Security. Those here legally and working lawfully (and paying taxes), are said to serve a patriotic function. The state’s skimming of their paychecks is not to be abhorred, but welcomed as a vital contribution to everyone else’s well-being. Those who work without permission are the enemy, undoing the noble work of the lawfully employed. “You” are good and “they” are bad. Politically powerless undocumented immigrants make an easy target for Washington, putting a false human face on politicians’ fake hysteria. Madison Avenue couldn’t have designed a better ruse.

It’s also worth recognizing the immigration scare’s target audience: 1) Unemployed and unsecure American workers, and 2) retirees. The “us vs. them” mantra becomes more potent when you’re told something tangible may be taken from you if immigration is not stemmed. Those already secure, successful and relatively independent of the state concern themselves less with others’ work and pay arrangements. Furthermore, older Americans, many themselves immigrants or descendants of immigrants, are generally less tolerant of the new wave of brown-skinned immigrants. This otherization is an easier sell to older Americans who have less experience and interaction with them and are told that their presence leads to the disintegration of American culture.

The real source of worker insecurity, cultural ruin and general predation on honest, hard-working people is the state. Poking holes in the politicians’ immigration story and lifting the veil on their real motives, all while recognizing the humanity of our supposed enemies, is a solid first step on the road to real liberty.

Despite what some people think, hero is not a synonym for competent government-hired killer.

If Clint Eastwood’s record-breaking movie, American Sniper, launches a frank public conversation about war and heroism, the great director will have performed a badly needed service for the country and the world.

This is neither a movie review nor a review of the late Chris Kyle’s autobiographical book on which the movie is based. My interest is in the popular evaluation of Kyle, America’s most prolific sniper, a title he earned through four tours in Iraq.

Let’s recall some facts, which perhaps Eastwood thought were too obvious to need mention: Kyle was part of an invasion force: Americans went to Iraq. Iraq did not invade America or attack Americans. Dictator Saddam Hussein never even threatened to attack Americans. Contrary to what the George W. Bush administration suggested, Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Before Americans invaded Iraq, al-Qaeda was not there. Nor was it in Syria, Yemen, and Libya.

The only reason Kyle went to Iraq was that Bush/Cheney & Co. launched a war of aggression against the Iraqi people. Wars of aggression, let’s remember, are illegal under international law. Nazis were executed at Nuremberg for waging wars of aggression.

With this perspective, we can ask if Kyle was a hero.

Defenders of Kyle and the Bush foreign policy will say, “Of course, he was a hero. He saved American lives.”

What American lives? The lives of American military personnel who invaded other people’s country, one that was no threat to them or their fellow Americans back home. If an invader kills someone who is trying to resist the invasion, that does not count as heroic self-defense. The invader is the aggressor. The “invadee” is the defender. If anyone’s a hero, it’s the latter.

In his book Kyle wrote he was fighting “savage, despicable evil” — and having “fun” doing it. Why did he think that about the Iraqis? Because Iraqi men — and women; his first kill was a woman — resisted the invasion and occupation he took part in.

That makes no sense. As I’ve established, resisting an invasion and occupation — yes, even when Arabs are resisting Americans — is simply not evil. If America had been invaded by Iraq (one with a powerful military, that is) would Iraqi snipers picking off American resisters be considered heroes by all those people who idolize Kyle? I don’t think so, and I don’t believe Americans would think so either. Rather, American resisters would be the heroes.

Eastwood’s movie also features an Iraqi sniper. Why isn’t he regarded as a hero for resisting an invasion of his homeland, like the Americans in my hypothetical example? (Eastwood should make a movie about the invasion from the Iraqis’ point of view, just as he made a movie about Iwo Jima from the Japanese point of view to go with his earlier movie from the American side.)

No matter how often Kyle and his admirers referred to Iraqis as “the enemy,” the basic facts did not change. They were “the enemy” — that is, they meant to do harm to Americans — only because American forces waged an unprovoked war against them. Kyle, like other Americans, never had to fear that an Iraqi sniper would kill him at home in the United States. He made the Iraqis his enemy by entering their country uninvited, armed with a sniper’s rifle. No Iraqi asked to be killed by Kyle, but it sure looks as though Kyle was asking to be killed by an Iraqi. (Instead, another American vet did the job.)

Of course, Kyle’s admirers would disagree with this analysis. Jeanine Pirro, a Fox News commentator, said,

Chris Kyle was clear as to who the enemy was. They were the ones his government sent him to kill.

Appalling! Kyle was a hero because he eagerly and expertly killed whomever the government told him to kill? Conservatives, supposed advocates of limited government, sure have an odd notion of heroism.

Excuse me, but I have trouble seeing an essential difference between what Kyle did in Iraq and what Adam Lanza did at Sandy Hook Elementary School. It certainly was not heroism.

Translations of this article:

• Spanish, El “American Sniper” no era un héroe ni nada por el estilo.

The Obama administration is turning heads by proposing new protections for large portions of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. ANWR is often referred to as the “Last Great Wilderness” because it boasts 19,286,722 pristine acres of truly wild Alaskan land. The U.S. Department of Interior says this may be one of the largest conservation measures “since Congress passed the visionary Wilderness Act over 50 years ago.”

The term “wilderness” brings much imagery to mind, depending on the reader what is to be visioned. Be it twisted crags, meandering streams, bountiful flora and fauna, immeasurable mountains, purple horizons, deep canyons, a liberating, if not eerie, openness or any of nature’s endless bounty. The wild truly inspires the imagination and for good reason — we are, after all, wild beasts ourselves. I don’t know how wilderness is envisioned as anything but natural splendor. However, the maniacal bureaucrats of states and corporations always find a way to perplex me.

To administrators “wilderness” is political terminology — the highest level of protection available for “public” lands. Wilderness, in this context, loses its luster.  The wild becomes envisioned as mounds of paperwork, number crunching, political calculation and resources for capital. And that term “public” is equally perplexing. Last time I looked this administration, as all before it, leased natural lands out to oil, gas and coal companies while “merrily fiddling the taxpayer,” as recently reported by Newsweek. Yes, be sure to enjoy your public lands, just don’t trespass on industry property.

Regarding the ANWR proposal, sit back and watch the depraved political theater unravel before your eyes. This move for conservation depends on congressional Republicans. There is no chance the GOP will approve the wilderness title. Bloomberg notes Alaska Republicans are going ballistic and oil industry officials are up in arms because the move would keep billions of barrels of their black gold buried. Always the political chess player, Obama knows he can pander to his base and simultaneously boast his support of U.S. natural gas production which is curbing the nation’s demand for oil. At the very least he can prevent drilling for two years. Depending on his successor, the measure can either be swept aside or carried forward — we shall see what 2016 holds.

But, even if Obama gets the “wilderness” designation, a future executive could reverse the title if national lust for oil deemed such action worthy. NPR reports Fadel Gheit, oil expert at Oppenheimer & Co., predicts the president’s action will not change the outlook for developing the ANWR reserves significantly, stating: “It will make life more difficult for the industry; it will put another hurdle — but technology will always bring the hurdle down.”

So, there you have it. ANWR is, eventually, doomed.

Or is it? Need the future of wild lands be tied to the state’s definition of wilderness?

The forests, the coasts, the rivers, lakes, across the prairies, down in the canyons and up in the mountains there exists a grandeur that’s irresistible to those who experience it. Civilization needs wilderness. Wilderness displays true liberty, freedom beyond the wildest dreams of human kind. For we cannot know our wildness, until we live it. In doing so we will long to preserve it ever more.

Wilderness need not be tied to the bureaucrat. Authoritarian nature has no choice but to despise and fear the wild. The permissive society, however, open, libertarian and good could never reduce the great poplar, spruce or caribou to data or decades of legislation. We imagine wilderness as it should be: Absent of executives, legislators, generals and commissioners. It’s time we imagined ourselves this way.

Em discurso recente, o governador do estado americano da Louisiana Bobby Jindal anunciou: “viemos para a América para ser americanos. Não indo-americanos, simplesmente americanos. […] Se quiséssemos ser indianos, teríamos continuado na Índia” (The Hindu, 16 de janeiro). Ele também alegava que era perfeitamente razoável que os países discriminassem potenciais imigrantes com base em suas inclinações a “assimilar a nova cultura” ou “estabelecer uma cultura separada dentro do país”.

A ironia é muito óbvia se você se lembrar — ao contrário de Jidal — que o inglês não é a língua nativa da América, mas da Inglaterra. A cultura dominante dos Estados Unidos descende das pessoas que chegaram a este continente e que pretendiam permanecer não como anglo-americanos, mas ingleses. Elas não assimilaram as culturas das Confederações Iroquesa, Powhatan ou das Cinco Tribos Civilizadas e nem mesmo adotaram suas línguas. Elas exterminaram ou fizeram uma limpeza étnica nessas culturas.

O status dominante do inglês foi contestado desde o começo. Além das línguas das Primeiras Nações, Nova York tinha uma população falante do holandês no Vale do Hudson até meados do século 19. O mesmo ocorria com os alemães no oeste da Pensilvânia e os franceses no norte do Maine. Lembre-se também de que a expansão para além das fronteiras americanas de 1783 envolveu a conquista de povos que antes estavam sob domínio francês, espanhol ou mexicano, impondo a língua inglesa sobre eles. Essas grandes fazendas do agronegócio cultivadas por “imigrantes ilegais” na Califórnia originalmente eram haciendas tomadas por magnatas brancos que colonizaram a Califórnia mexicana, substituindo os antigos patronos que dependiam do trabalho de peões.

O “caldeirão cultural” é só outro exemplo do essencialismo étnico e da identidade nacional monolítica forçada pelo estado que se espalhou pela maior parte do mundo desde os tempos napoleônicos. O modelo de direito internacional adotado pela Europa com o Tratado da Westfália em 1648 assumia como norma que todo indivíduo deveria estar sujeito a um único estado-nação soberano.

Com a ascensão do nacionalismo durante as guerras napoleônicas, essa norma foi extendida para incluir o requisito de que todo estado-nação, idealmente, deveria possuir uma única identidade étnica. A França se tornou o estado oficial dos etnicamente franceses, a Alemanhã dos etnicamente alemães, etc. Todos que estivessem dentro das fronteiras do estado-nação deveriam ser assimilados a uma etnia dominante e adotar sua língua. Essa língua, em sua forma mais extrema, era o dialeto oficial (o padrão BBC ou o Network Standard americano para o inglês, o alto-alemão padrão, o francês Île-de-France, o castelhano padrão, etc).

No século 20, a Europa colonial e os Estados Unidos impuseram o estado-nação westfaliano como modelo de direito internacional ao mundo todo. Na África, isso significou que as potências europeias consolidaram centenas de pequenos principados, confederações e sociedades em 47 estados artificiais multiétnicos. O Oriente Médio ainda vive com as consequências dos estados artificiais criados com a vitória aliada no antigo Império Otomano pelo Tratado de Versailles.

O movimento em prol do inglês é especialmente desinformado. Na maiorria dos casos, a necessidade prática é um incentivo muito maior para o aprendizado do inglês do que qualquer outro motivo que possam inventar. E as pessoas geralmente são bastante inteligentes e aprendem quaisquer línguas de que precisem para funcionarem dentro da sociedade. Mesmo quando os filhos de imigrantes hispânicos — que falam inglês fluentemente — falam espanhol uns com os outros, é um espanglês que faria com que suas avós jogassem as mãos para o alto aterrorizadas. Quanto aos imigrantes de primeira geração que têm problemas em aprender inglês, eles não são diferentes dos avós poloneses e italianos que muitos recordam nostalgicamente em Chicago, ou dos noruegueses e alemães em Minnesota. E, psiu — eu ouvi dizer que algumas tropas de ocupação americanas e empregados de corporações que pilham os recursos de outros países também não falam as línguas locais!

Jidal pertence a um grupo que adora dizer que o governo tem que sair das nossas costas e cuidar da própria vida. Eu concordo plenamente. Um dos primeiros itens dessa agenda deveria ser parar de definir nossas identidades étnicas e parar de enfiar o nariz nas línguas que nós escolhemos falar uns com os outros.

Traduzido por Erick Vasconcelos.

One of the biggest challenges to the complete decoupling of the provision of law from the state, with a free market of security and adjudication, is the possibility that these entities would collude against their customers.

Economically, it is noted that consumers would lose some money while the collusion in the supply of goods and services is in effect, since the amount of supplied goods should drop and their price should consequently rise under a cartel. Perhaps that is not a problem, given that in a free market such arrangements would be unstable. Moreover, companies should not have the power over the rights of the parties, but only over the prices and services supplied.

However, that is not true for the non-state supply of law. The collusion among agencies of law could lead to a change in the very structure of individual rights, its effects being more permanent, even after the dissolution of the cartel. The manipulation of the judicial system can generate severe losses for specific victims.

Some argue that a constitutional state could be a solution for that, acting as an anti-trust supervisor. That is the conclusion reached by Robin Hanson (who supports the complete “privatization” of the provision of law) and Gillian K. Hadfield (who supports the “privatization” of commercial law only).

Even though these authors do not go into great detail on how this anti-trust supervision would work, it seems that — beyond the conventional prohibition of anti-competitive practices and the nullification (or outright ban) of cartelization contracts — there would have to exist some sort of constitutional mandate that would specify the limits of what agencies should be able to supply (for instance, it could ban preventive detentions without due process) and forbidding secret arrangements that could lead to the harmful modification of the rights structure of the clients. Thus, constitutional restrictions would protect people’s rights against manipulations of colluding agencies.

That would be a minarchist conclusion. But what about anarchism? How could market anarchism overcome that obstacle?

First, we need to understand what a constitutional restriction means. Under constitutional democracies, these norms intend to prevent that legislative, judicial, or even executive acts have certain contents or that they should be put in effect without the fulfillment of certain procedures. For example, in Brazil, a law that establishes death penalty would be unconstitutional and thus invalid. So constitutional restrictions establish something that would not be accepted as a rule even if it were approved by the instances make the legislation.

In private law, what would be analogous to political constitutions? Associations statutes would. Just like constitutions create the legal order under the state, association statutes govern associations. Just like constitutions set up restrictions over state decisions, statutes restrict what boards of directors and assemblies can do. In the specific case of condominiums in Brazil, the law establishes that owners have to elaborate a condominium convention (a statute) and approve an internal regimen for the building or the building complex.

Market anarchism allows for organizations like these. Even though the better known polycentric legal models are those detailed by Murray Rothbard and David Friedman, where the provision of law is negotiated directly by individuals, Michael Huemer’s model in The Problem of Political Authority predicts that the collective acquisition of legal services through associations or condominiums would be the norm. These associations would contract with security agencies and would be able to stipulate a legal code that arbitrators would apply in the transactions made under their jurisdiction.

This collective purchase by means of associations or condominiums opens up the possibility that in each association’s convention or statute there could minimal rules to be followed when acquiring those services. In other words, it could specify that the association would not hire agencies that did not follow certain standards (for example, the aforementioned ban on preventive detentions without due process) and that had the authorization to make arrangements with other agencies.

This dynamic is interesting because it incites agencies to codify rules that limit or ban secret arrangements. The tendency of the explicit adoption of constitutions in associations would probably influence the adoption of constitutions by law agencies themselves.

It should be noted that legal security is higher when we contract an agency by means of a local association or a condominium: the person would be able to invoke the voidness of an arbitration decision or a procedure in the case it did not match the statute or convention in their association, since contractual clauses between the association and the agency would be invalid and “unconstitutional.”

Obviously, it would not be role of local associations to supervise the general competitiveness of the system, but their distributed statutes would collectively prevent abuses and collusions from happening through a bottom-up rather than top-down system.

Thus, the market anarchist order might not lead to a world without constitutions, but with a great diversity of constitutions — the advantage that the “constitutional choice environment,” as Patri Friedman puts it, would be competitive, decentralized, and open one. In this scenario, the choice for an association guarantees individual freedom and the collective contracting of one or more agencies makes the transactions within the market for law safer.

Translated into English by Erick Vasconcelos.

In a recent speech Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal announced “… we came to America to be Americans. Not Indian-Americans, simply Americans. … If we wanted to be Indians, we would have stayed in India” (The Hindu, January 16). He also argued that it’s entirely reasonable for nations to discriminate between would-be immigrants based on whether they want to “embrace their culture,” or “establish a separate culture within.”

The irony gets pretty thick if you remember — unlike Jindal — that English is the native language not of America, but of England. The dominant culture of America descends from people who came to this continent adamantly set on remaining, not English-Americans, but English. They didn’t assimilate into the Iroquois or Powhatan Confederacies or the Five Civilized Tribes, or adopt their languages. They exterminated or ethnically cleansed those cultures.

And the dominant status of English has been contested since the beginning. Aside from First Nations languages, New York had a Dutch-speaking population in the Hudson valley well into the 19th century. Likewise the Germans in western Pennsylvania and the French in northern Maine. Also bear in mind that expansion outside the US’s 1783 borders involved conquering peoples formerly under French, Spanish or Mexican rule and imposing English on them. Those big agribusiness plantations worked by “illegal immigrants” in California were previously haciendas seized by white magnates who colonized Mexican California, taking over the former patrons’ role of relying on peon labor.

The “melting pot” is just another example of the ethnic essentialism and state-constituted monolithic national identity that has spread throughout most of the world since Napoleonic times. The model of international law Europe adopted with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 assumed as a norm that every individual must be the subject of a single, unitary, sovereign nation-state.

Coupled with the rise of nationalism during the Napoleonic Wars, this norm was extended to include the requirement that every nation-state, ideally, have a single official ethnic identity. France became the official state of the ethnic French, Germany of ethnic Germans, etc. Everyone within the borders of a nation-state was to be assimilated into the dominant ethnicity and adopt its language. And that language, in the most extreme forms, was the official dialect (BBC Standard or American Network Standard English, Standard High German, Ile-de-France French, Standard Castilian, etc.).

In the 20th century, colonial Europe and America imposed the Westphalian nation-state as the official model for international law on a global level. In Africa this meant the European powers consolidated hundreds of minor principalities, confederacies and custom-based societies into 47 artificial multi-ethnic states. The Middle East is still living with the consequences of the artificial states the Allied victors carved the Ottoman Empire up into at Versailles.

The “English only” movement is especially clueless. In most places practical necessity is a far greater incentive to learn English than anything they can come up with. And people are generally pretty smart about learning whatever languages they need to to function in a society. Even when the kids of Hispanic immigrants — who speak fluent English — speak Spanish to each other, it’s a Spanglish that would make their grandmothers throw up their hands in horror. As for older first generation immigrants who have trouble learning English, they’re no different from the Polish and Italian-speaking grandparents many people fondly remember in Chicago, or the Norsk and German speakers Sinclair Lewis portrayed in Minnesota. And, psst — I hear there are some American occupation troops, and corporate personnel extracting other countries’ resources, who don’t learn the local languages either!

Jindal belongs to a party that’s big on telling government to get off our backs and mind its own business. I heartily agree. One of the first items on its agenda should be to stop trying to define our ethnic identities for us, or sticking its nose into which languages we choose to speak to each other.

Jacob G. Hornberger discusses U.S. empire and blowback.

Philip A. Reboli discusses Robert Gates memoir.

Stephen Kinzer discusses the consequences of imperialism in the Middle East.

Benjmain Dangl discusses why the U.S. government is the world’s greatest threat to peace.

Jacob G. Hornberger discusses the film, American Sniper.

Ivan Eland discusses the media coverage of the Paris attacks.

Laurence M. Vance discusses the statism of the GOP.

David Boaz discusses Obama’s recent State of the Union address.

Sheldon Richman discusses two kinds of equality.

Jacob G. Hornberger discusses how the troops are destroying our country.

Wendy McElroy discusses America’s growth industry based on parole and probation.

James Bovard discusses America’s fading love of freedom.

William Blum discusses the murder of journalists.

Lucy Steigerwald discusses the U.S. military.

Ramzy Baroud discusses George W. Bush’s plunders.

Nick Turse discusses American shadow wars.

Murtaza Hussain discusses the recent death of the Saudi king.

Sheldon Richman discusses Nathaniel Branden’s advice to libertarians.

Neve Gordon discusses drone warfare.

Sam Husseini discusses Saudi myths.

John Chuckman discusses the origin of terror and crumbling Western values.

Jeffrey Roger Hummel discusses a new book on Lincoln’s critics.

Durante el mes de enero traduje al español “Escape de la bahía de Guantánamo” de Joel Schlosberg, “En memoria de las víctimas de Charlie Hebdo” de Sheldon Richman, “Solo se le llama censura cuando ellos la implementan” de Erick Vasconcelos y “El FBI es excelente para frustrar (sus propios) ‘complots terroristas’” de Kevin Carson.

Como de constumbre, aprovecho para invitarte a hacer una donación de US $5 para C4SS. Con ella nos ayudarías a seguir con nuestro esfuerzo por reflexionar seriamente sobre la idea de una sociedad organizada en base a la cooperación voluntaria y cómo hacerla realidad.

¡Salud y Libertad!

Spanish Media Coordinator Report, January 2015

During January I translated into Spanish “Escape from Guantanamo Bay” by Joel Schlosberg, “In Memory of the Charlie Hebdo Victims” by Sheldon Richman, “It’s Only Censorship When They Do It” by Erick Vasconcelos, and “The FBI is Great at Disrupting (Its Own) ‘Terror Plots’” by Kevin Carson.

As always, I seize the opportunity to invite you to donate $5 for C4SS: your contribution is what allows us to keep reflecting upon and promoting the idea of a society based on voluntary cooperation. Please donate $5 today!

¡Salud y libertad!

With the execution of Brazilian citizen Marco Archer in Indonesia on 01/17 for cocaine trafficking, one question remains: Will the war on drugs continue to revert the achievements of civilization with cruel and absurd penalties?

It is not only Indonesia that punishes the purchase and sale of banned drugs. According to Harm Reduction International, an organization that pushes for harm reduction policies for drugs, 33 countries and territories punish drug crimes with death — in 13 of them, the sentence is mandatory.

The situation in these countries is an anomaly even for the international standards of the war on drugs, as defined by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. In a 2010 document, the executive director of the office states that drug policy should be limited by human rights as defined by international law: The death penalty, if it exists at all, must be restricted to crimes against life.

International law posits a radical principle: The state cannot be the ultimate arbiter of our rights. However, paradoxically, it recognizes the legitimacy of the state to criminalize drugs and thus ratifies state brutality, both in explicit cases such as Indonesia’s and the more subtle ones we find in the Western World.

A report by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) from 2013 showed that, in the US detention system, more than 3,000 prisoners were serving life sentences without parole for non-violent crimes — from drug crimes to crimes against property.

Cases such as Dale Wayne Green’s are frequent: He was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for his role as middleman in the sale of $20 worth of marijuana. It was his “third strike.”In 2009, incredibly, the average sentence in rape cases was six years while the minimum sentence for possession of certain drugs is 10 years, and can jump to 20 years if the individual has a prior conviction.

In Brazil, the situation is mostly similar. Congress should vote soon on legislation — supported by the opposition candidate in the last presidential election — that lowers the age of majority for so-called “heinous crimes,” among which Brazilian law lists “illicit trafficking of intoxicating substances and similar drugs.”

The tendency to toughen Brazilian drug laws is clear after the 2014 elections of several congresspeople with strident anti-drug platforms. Meanwhile, re-elected president Dilma Rousseff also promised to strengthen “public security” concentrating more power in the federal government — just like what happened during the World Cup, integrating the army and police forces.

The consequences of the drug war in the country are visible: Several Brazilian cities have joined the list of cities with most murders in the planet and the country has a very extensive list of executions linked to drug trafficking — though extra-judicially, obviously.

Drug criminalization creates the cycle of violence in Brazil. We have to minimize criminal law to minimize violence. Marco Archer was not the first nor will he be the last victim of the Brazilian war on drugs.

Indonesia is cruel, but Brazil does not lag far behind. Marco Archer probably would not survive even here.

Translated into English by Erick Vasconcelos.

So, January 25-31 is “National School Choice Week.” Break out the bubbly! The event, put on annually by a coalition of lobbying groups, advertises itself as “an unprecedented opportunity, every January, to shine a positive spotlight on the need for effective education options for all children.” I’m sure most “school choice” advocates firmly and honestly support that goal. Unfortunately, their policy proposals serve a very different outcome.

The purpose of “public” — read “government” — education hasn’t changed much in 150 years. If you don’t believe me on that, believe Horace Mann and other architects and advocates of the existing system. What is that purpose? To produce docile citizens who do as they are told to do by their ruling class masters.

Our masters expect the average “educated” American to, as a matter of course, undertake four or five decades of drudgery at wages, benefits and retirement options largely negotiated not between worker and employer but between employer and state. They expect that “educated” American to unstintingly shell out a portion of his or her income to the state, to shoulder a rifle without complaint in defense of the state or pursuant to its goals when so called upon, and of course to periodically pull a lever in favor of some pre-selected candidates to “represent” him or her in political institutions wholly owned and operated by the ruling class.

Apart from those things, our masters mostly expect “educated” Americans to sit down and shut up (apart from perhaps expressing gratitude for whatever bread and circuses the ruling class might care to bestow upon them to produce a contented state).

That’s the program for most of us. But there are always some who don’t do well in the combination day care centers, minimum security prisons and bureaucratic money sinks sold to us as “schools.” And an increasingly high-tech economy requires new layers of workers with skill sets that require more cultivation than such “public” institutions can provide.

Enter “school choice” programs, through which students (via their parents) can take “their” government funding to institutions other than the one-size-fits-all schools laid out by geographic districts. Government-run “charter schools.” Private schools. Even, possibly, parochial schools.

At first blush, it sounds great. Children freed to “rise to their own level” of academic accomplishment and qualify themselves for more lucrative employment. Schools, including “public” schools, forced to compete for tax dollars instead of raking in the money whether they perform or not. A rising tide lifts all boats and so forth.

But there are problems.

One  is that “public” schools and their advocates don’t WANT to compete for tax money. They’re quite happy carrying out their mission of producing graduates whose options are limited to pressing the button with the picture of a cheeseburger on it at your local fast food emporium or the equivalent and settling in at night for re-runs of Duck Dynasty. No, I’m not putting down “burger flippers” — I’ve been one myself! — but I want to see as many people as possible enter adulthood equipped with skill sets making such work optional rather than limiting them to it (incidentally putting “burger flippers” in better bargaining position for wages and benefits).

Another is that when tax dollars flow out of the existing system and into alternative educational institutions, those tax dollars come with all kinds of restrictions. Schools that look like great alternatives find themselves dragged down into the red tape and “standards” imbroglios associated with “public” schools. What, you thought tax dollars could come without strings attached?

At the end of the day, “school choice” isn’t the solution. It’s yet another way of avoiding the solution. Homeschooling and non-government cooperative community schools are a start; if the goal is real, meaningful education for a free people, the solution is eventual complete separation of school (and everything else!) and state. Anything less is a dodge and a scam.

Via the Association of Libertarian Feminists discussion group (natch) I found this video by up-and-coming YouTube star Cameron Watt (on Facebook anyway), from his channel Libertarian Socialist Rants (LSR).

His title is “My Thoughts on Feminism”, but as my Tweet on it explains, it’s really about why the hierarchy analysis of anarchism necessitates feminism. The embed is below, but first, to more fully introduce him to the C4SS crowd, I reached out to him via his Facebook page to ask a few questions, which he was kind enough to answer.

C4SS: So first question would be (and I do this too and I’m considering not doing it anymore), “why do you say you’re a libertarian when you’re more accurately an anarchist?”

Also, what got you into libertarianism in the first place, then what got you into socialist libertarianism? Or was it the other way around?

LSR: “Libertarian socialist” tends to evoke a bit of curiosity, whereas saying I’m an anarchist usually causes a lot of eye rolling and comments about chaos and whatnot.

In terms of how I came to libertarian socialism, I started off as a right-wing bastard, then became more liberal, then a social democrat, and then the phenomenon of student debt radicalised me into an anarchist.

So I came from the left.

C4SS: Why did you start your show? Why should people subscribe?

LSR: I started my channel ages ago, not for political reasons but just because I was an angry teenager just looking to let off steam (this was when I was a right-wing bastard). After being radicalised I want to commit my channel to promoting social change of various sorts, by giving theoretical analysis, and in the future I’d like to offer practical advice for people.

As for why people should subscribe, I think the arguments are worth listening to and they need to be spread around rather than be obscured and isolated in a corner of the political debate.

Como diria Homer Simpson, a Reason é a única revista com a coragem para dizer a verdade — de que tudo está ótimo. Desta vez, Jim Pagels (“Misleading Inequality Report is Nothing to Fear“, 22/01) garante que a desigualdade não é um grande problema, apesar do “enganador” relatório recente que aponta que o 1% mais rico logo poderá ter mais riqueza do que o resto da sociedade.

Pagels se esforça para encontrar objeções às conclusões do estudo, a começar pelas trivialidades metodológicas que ele menciona. Por exemplo, Pagels é contrário à classificação da riqueza das pessoas com base no patrimônio líquido porque muitos dos casos de patrimônio líquido negativo são pessoas muito endividadas que vivem em países ricos. E daí? Quer dizer que Bill Gates de alguma forma não é mais rico que uma pessoa com um financiamento habitacional a perder de vista e US$ 100.000 em empréstimos estudantis porque ambos moram nos Estados Unidos?

Ele também apela para alguns clichês dos direitistas que fazem apologia à desigualdade. Primeiro, há certa mobilidade entre as parcelas da população — em outras palavras, meritocracia. Porém, não existe nada de autoevidente a respeito da meritocracia. O que importa é qual é a distribuição estrutural de riqueza a qualquer dado momento; se as pessoas no topo da pirâmide obtém sua riqueza injustamente, não faz sentido apontar para o fato de que muitas pessoas deixam de ser exploradas para se tornar exploradoras.

Além disso, Pagels apela para o crescimento econômico como solução para a pobreza. Mas o PIB basicamente inclui tudo aquilo em que dinheiro é gasto — incluido desperdício, gastos com insumos em processos produtivos ineficientes e a monetização de funções que antes ocorriam fora do nexo monetário. Por exemplo, quando camponeses do terceiro mundo são expulsos da terra em que trabalhavam anteriormente em regime de subsistência, sendo forçados a entrar no trabalho assalariado para comprar o alimento que antes produziam, suas rendas nominais vão explodir, mas isso significa que sua situação melhorou?

Contudo, o que é mais desconcertante é Pagels sentir uma necessidade tão forte de desprovar o crescimento da desigualdade. Por que atacar os níveis de desigualdade de nossa economia altamente controlada seria problemático de acordo com princípios libertários?

Não consigo saber se pessoas como Pagels defender realmente os princípios de livre mercado ou as concentrações de riqueza e poder atuais. Acredito que elas também tenham dificuldade em saber, já que continuam a mudar sua retórica a todo momento. Grande parte disso se deve à origem da crítica, se vem da esquerda ou da direita. Não há qualquer problema em apontar que nossa economia difere substancialmente de um livre mercado e tudo está cada vez pior — a não ser que sua crítica envolva a desigualdade econômica ou o poder corporativo, porque aí o sistema atual passa a ser instantaneamente defensável e uma réplica satisfatória do “livre mercado”.

Depois de avançar os argumentos acima, Pagels escorrega e revela a fonte real de suas preocupações: “A maior parte da desigualdade apontada pelo relatório advém da interpretação mais negativa dos dados, criando a narrativa de que a situação econômica mundial está numa espiral distópica rumo ao inferno. As pessoas então usam essa percepção errônea para justifcar amplas políticas redistributivas estatais”.

Para acalmar Pagels, eu acredito que nós temos um aumento da desigualdade e da concentração de renda precisamente por causa das “amplas políticas redistributivas estatais”. O governo redistribui trilhões de dólares para os mais ricos todos os anos através da promoção da escassez artificial e da defesa de direitos de propriedade artificial, que são usados pelos grandes negócios e pelos super-ricos para extrair rendas monopolistas do resto da população. Longe de querer mais intervenção estatal, minha resposta à percepção correta de que a desigualdade cresce é remover as intervenções existentes que permitem que a plutocracia nos roube neste exato momento com preços exorbitantes para a terra, com os juros em empréstimos e lucros monopolísticos.

Os Bill Gates e Sam Waltons, os banqueiros e diretores executivos das corporações não são um bando de John Galts, individualistas independentes que subiram ao topo por sua genialidade empresarial. Eles são casos assistenciais. São ladrões.

Chegou a hora de os libertários honestos começarem a reconhecer a cumplicidade estatal na criação da desigualdade — e lutar para corrigi-la através da abolição do estado — ao invés de trabalhar como apologistas daqueles que mais se beneficiam da intervenção estatal.

Traduzido por Erick Vasconcelos.

I recently poked a stick at a hornet’s nest of self-proclaimed Southern Nationalists on Twitter who truly believed they were celebrating individual liberty by quoting Jefferson Davis. The meme that was posted featured a stately profile picture of Davis accompanied by a quote from a famous Davis speech which said, “All we ask is to be let alone.” My response was, “Isn’t this quote a little watered down coming from him?”

You’d think the Southern Nationalists who went on the attack had no idea who Jefferson Davis was. Regardless of whatever else Jefferson Davis may have said or done throughout the years, he was both a racist and a slave-owner by all accounts. Whether or not he favored gradual emancipation, didn’t think slavery was ultimately sustainable, or advocated a decentralized form of government, he was first and foremost an owner of human beings who believed that blacks were an inferior class. He loudly and repeatedly proclaimed this view throughout the years.

Of course though, I was eventually accused of being ignorant of the South’s history and of Jefferson-Davis-The-Man, and of being a statist, Lincoln-worshipper (even though I despise Abraham Lincoln). To a Southern Nationalist, anyone who deigns to criticize the South during the Civil War period must be a big-government, politically correct, Yankee-liberal. Furthermore, the Southern Nationalists expressed outrage that the Civil War South continues to receive blanket condemnation for an institution that only a “small fraction” of Southerners participated in. I was also accused of ignoring the subjugation of women in Muslim countries and of ignoring human rights abuses in China. Where these accusations came from, I have no idea. To me, they appeared to be nothing more than a predictable diversion by Confederate Flag-toters from the horrid stain that is the slave-owning South. I was offending their ancestors, many of whom had fought in the Civil War, they said.

The exchange highlighted a larger problem within the libertarian movement that’s been written about many times before but bears repeating since it refuses to die — that of so-called libertarians whose utopia died with the Civil War. With so many other historical proponents of freedom and liberty to quote, you have to wonder the motives of someone who uses a slavemaster to espouse individual liberty. The only interesting retort came when I was asked whether I thought we should totally reject studying figures like Jefferson Davis, or Washington or Jefferson or many of the other slave-owning Founding Fathers. Quite the contrary, I think they should be studied in depth and their words and deeds absorbed where appropriate, while at the same time realizing their hypocrisy. Besides, the libertarian movement needs less idols. Too often, libertarians hang their hat on one or another figure, only to have that figure publicly exposed for the skeletons in his closet. In the age of sound bite media, incidents like that are the quickest way for libertarian views to be flushed down the toilet en masse.

Far be it from me to define libertarianism, but I have no desire to ally myself with people who prefer to whitewash the deeds of slaveowners, simply because we both share a hatred of the federal government. Motives matter, and if the libertarian’s long-term goal is to create something approaching a freer world, I don’t believe it’s a positive step in that direction if that new world is inhabited by people who can so easily look past the lowest form of human degradation — slavery. I’ll take a welfare-loving Democrat as my next-door neighbor any day of the week.

To paraphrase Homer Simpson, Reason is the only magazine with the guts to tell it like it is — that everything is just fine. This time Jim Pagels (“Misleading Inequality Report Is Nothing to Fear,” January 22) reassures us that inequality’s nothing to worry about, despite Oxfam’s “misleading” recent report that the 1% may soon have more wealth than the rest of us.

Pagels really has to reach for objections to the study’s findings. He starts out with head-shakingly incoherent methodological quibbles . For example, he has a problem with ranking people’s wealth based on net worth, because many cases of large negative net worth are people deeply in debt who live in rich countries. Yeah, so? Is he saying Bill Gates somehow isn’t richer than someone with an underwater mortgage and $100,000 in student loans because they both live in the United States?

He also appeals to a couple of standard talking points found in most right-wing pro-inequality apologetics. First, there is some mobility between quintiles — in other words, meritocracy. But there’s nothing self-evidently just about meritocracy. What matters is how just the structural distribution of wealth is at any one time; if the people at the top obtain their wealth unjustly, it’s beside the point how many people manage to move from being unjustly exploited to being unjust exploiters.

Second, he appeals to economic growth as the solution to poverty. But GDP metrics basically include everything money gets spent on — including waste, expenditures on inputs to inefficient production processes, and monetizing functions that previously took place outside the cash nexus. For example, when you evict a Third World peasant from land on which he previously supported himself and force him into agricultural wage labor to earn the money to buy the food he used to grow, his nominal income will explode; but is he really better off?

What’s really perplexing, though, is why Pagels feels such a strong need to disprove that inequality is increasing. What is it about attacking the levels of inequality in a heavily state-controlled economy like ours that would be objectionable on libertarian principles?

I keep forgetting whether people like Pagels are defending free market principles, or defending current concentrations of wealth and power. I suspect they have a hard time remembering that themselves, the way they keep shifting rhetorical ground. A lot of it depends on whether criticism of the present system comes from the right or the left. It’s totally fine to point out the extent to which our actually economy differs from a free market and that things are going to hell in a handbasket — unless your criticism involves economic inequality or corporate power, in which the present system suddenly becomes a defensible stand-in for the “free market.”

After making the arguments above, Pagels slips and reveals the real source of his primary concern: “Most income inequality reports focus only on the most negative interpretation of the data, creating a narrative that the world’s economic situation is spiraling toward a dystopian hell. People then use that misperception to justify wide-reaching government redistribution policies.”

To reassure Mr. Pagels, I believe we have soaring inequality and concentration of wealth precisely BECAUSE of “wide-reaching government redistribution policies.” The government redistributes trillions of dollars upward every year by enforcing the artificial scarcities and artificial property rights through which big business and the super rich extract monopoly rents from the rest of us. And far from wanting more government intervention, my response to the all too accurate perception of rising inequality is to remove the existing government interventions that enable the plutocracy to tax us right now in the form of inflated land rent, usury and monopoly profits.

The Gateses and Waltons, the bankers and corporate CEOs aren’t a bunch of John Galts, rugged individualists who climbed to the top through entrepreneurial genius. They’re welfare cases. They’re looters.

It’s time for honest libertarians to start acknowledging the state’s complicity in creating inequality — and fight to correct that inequality by abolishing the state — instead of working as apologists for the main beneficiaries of state intervention.