Tom Woods

I keep getting emails from something called the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies. They are written by Amitai Etzioni. Communitarianism is supposed to represent a radical break from the current political spectrum.

Sure.

Here are a few communitarian precepts, as I understand them:

(1) Rights do not exist in the absence of government. Therefore, when government expropriates you and transfers your property to someone else, you have no grounds for complaint. Had there been no government, you would have no rights at all. Be happy with what you are permitted to keep.

(2) In many areas of life, public-private partnerships are desirable.

(3) Communitarians believe in “community,” but by this they do not mean your town, your local civic group, or any of the local, flesh-and-blood institutions people associate with community. At least as articulated by Etzioni, the only “community” to which communitarianism makes reference in practice is the nonexistent “national community,” a soulless abstraction. In the name of this “community,” we ought to treat individuals’ property as if it is entirely at the disposal of the political class, so that we may promote the “common good.”

What brave pioneers these communitarians are! Take a moment to catch your breath, now that you’ve seen just how radical a departure this all is from conventional thought.

Although Etzioni flatters himself as being beyond the left-right spectrum, he is not quite correct: he is exactly in the middle. He is a “vital center” liberal of the Truman/Schlesinger variety. That means he is wrong on everything, both domestic and foreign.

Thus his most recent piece is on why impeachment of the president should be more difficult. More difficult! We’ve had a grand total of two impeachments in over 220 years, and this is just too darn many!

(I will spare you his other recent articles, by the way. One is called “Soft Syria Response Worse Than Inaction,” which has nothing to do with preserving localism and community health, as one ought to expect from someone calling himself a communitarian. Another is “Everything Libertarians and Liberals Get Wrong About Drones,” which are “the most effective counter-terrorism tool the United States has found thus far.” Again, I hope the radical originality of Etzioni’s effusions will not lead any of my readers into cardiac arrest.)

Etzioni fears that impeachment drama will “eat up much of whatever little political capital exists in Washington for bipartisan deals and constructive action.” So he’s a communitarian, but he looks to one city, in a country of 310 million people, to direct the resources and energies of all American communities? Of what use is this ridiculous label?

“Bipartisan deals and constructive action.” Yes, that sounds like our nation’s capital. The $222 trillion in unfunded liabilities for the major transfer programs is the result of decades of bipartisanship. The fiasco of a foreign policy the U.S. government has is the result of nearly 70 years of bipartisanship. Thanks to bipartisanship, lots of real-life communities in Iraq were reduced to rubble, and 2-4 million people were displaced from their communities. If impeachment talk may disrupt all this, a genuine believer in community should be delighted.

If one were a genuine communitarian — in the sense of caring about actual communities that involve not some phony “national community” conjured out of thin air but real, face-to-face relationships between actual human beings — he should want to see impeachment after impeachment. He should want to place as many obstructions as possible before the community-destroying circus of sociopaths who rule over us. Etzioni conceives of our Washington overlords as Platonic guardians. Not from him will we uncover the more prosaic reality: we are governed by self-centered cronies who rig rules and regulations in favor of the powerful and who never saw a war or a bailout they didn’t like.

We are not as pathetic and helpless as Etzioni appears to think. He should have a little more confidence in community.

My wife sent me this. All hate mail should be directed her way.

Here’s a campaign against them, with lots of reasons to oppose them.

Visit the forums at Liberty HQ.

They hired a young handicapped woman to help get them to the front of the lines. (Thanks to Josh Hoffstatter.)

Before I divulge the secret to having fun, let me note that I have been unable to post much in recent days because I’ve been traveling, and because I’ve been really busy. I have more travel coming up next week, but I’ll do my best with the blog. I am preparing 180 video lessons (36 weeks times five lessons a week) for each of the homeschool courses I’m teaching for Ron Paul, so that’s pretty time-consuming.

Anyway, the secret to fun is….

Seeing Bob Murphy and me in New York City in our Zombie Returns variety show, June 8.  Take $5 off tickets with discount code Krugman. (No, that’s not a joke.) Come to our VIP luncheon and get five signed books by Bob and me.

Here’s Bob’s video pitch. (And by the way, if you are missing the zombie reference, here is the explanation.)

I’m hosting the Peter Schiff Show today. The show runs from 10am-12pm Eastern; you can listen free (no subscription necessary) at SchiffRadio.com during showtime. Tune in!

Mike Church and Brion McClanahan have produced what looks to be an excellent new edition of Albert Taylor Bledsoe’s 19th-century work Is Davis a Traitor? or Was Secession a Constitutional Right Previous to the War of 1861? Having read the book myself years ago, I can tell you it is indeed an excellent work, full of information no one encounters in school, but which helps you break out of the establishment’s suffocating box.

You can download a free chapter here.

The brain dead establishment’s contribution to this discussion is to shout “neo-Confederate!” or express outrage that we peons would even raise what our betters have told us is a closed question. But the arguments for the constitutionality of secession are very strong, and are not refuted by calling secession backward, out of date, stupid, not-progressive, etc. — especially after the experience of the 20th century, for heaven’s sake — or pretending that anyone who favors decentralization secretly supports or is indifferent to slavery. The massive slave states of the 20th-century world could have used rather more decentralization, wouldn’t you say? William Lloyd Garrison favored the secession of the North; presumably even the thought controllers would balk at calling Garrison a “neo-Confederate.”

Thanks to Mike and Brion. I am proud to say that Brion McClanahan teaches U.S. history with me at my LibertyClassroom.com.

Check this out. This appeared around the time of Margaret Thatcher’s funeral.

This is in response to Thatcher’s statement that “there’s no such thing as society.” So these progressives are going to show her!

Naturally, they interpret her perfectly defensible statement in the most inane and uncharitable way possible. Why, we’ll show her there really is society by helping our fellow man!

But that was exactly her point. There is no such thing as an abstract, disembodied blob called “society.” All that exists are individuals, and it is up to those individuals — not “society” — to perform the great works of charity and civilization.

Her actual words: “There is no such thing as society. There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate.”

Now go back and read the juvenile statement in that box above. Every one of those statements is a reflection of what Thatcher actually said, yet the progressives who drafted it seriously think they are letting her have it. Not even an effort to understand the people they oppose. They actually seem to think she meant, “It’s every man 4 himself!! Don’t help anyone!!! KEEP ALL UR STUFF FOR URSELF!!!!”

Just beneath the surface here, and the source of much “progressive” confusion, is the failure to distinguish between society (a shorthand term for the individuals of whom the polity is composed) and the state. No, we don’t think people should be exploited by guys with guns, even if 10% of the exploitation is laughingly portrayed as helping the poor. That doesn’t mean we’re “atomistic individuals” who despise mankind. The state’s thuggish behavior is at odds with society.

(Thanks to this post for the inspiration.)

And it still would be, if we were on the gold standard, says Mark Thornton.