Category Archives: Libertarianism

There are two major obstacles to achieving a genuinely free society in our lifetime: one, a lack of understanding of the genuine principles of freedom, and two, a lack of faith in freedom.

The first obstacle involves principally nonlibertarians. The second obstacle involves everyone, including libertarians.

If someone were to conduct a survey among the American people today in which people were asked if they felt they lived in a free society, I would bet that the vast majority of Americans would respond yes. Sure, Americans complain about how the federal government operates, about the large amount of federal spending and debt, about regulatory mishaps, about the adverse results of various foreign interventions and wars, and about various other aspects of the welfare-warfare state system under which Americans live. But I believe that most Americans would willingly agree with singer Lee Greenwalds refrain, Im proud to be an American where at least I know Im free.

My favorite quote is by the German thinker Johann Goethe: None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. That quote perfectly characterizes the plight of the American people. Americans honestly believe they are free, but it just aint so.

The first thing we need to do is to define what a genuinely free society is. A free society is one in which everyone is free to engage in any activity he wants so long as he is not violating the rights of everyone else to do the same thing that is, as long as he isnt initiating force or fraud against others.

A free society entails the exercise of such rights as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of association. It also entails the right to keep and bear arms. These three rights and others are enshrined in the Bill of Rights.

It also entails what is known as economic liberty. Freedom entails the right to engage in any economic enterprise without permission of the state. It entails the right to enter into economic exchanges with anyone in the world, without first securing permission of the government. It entails the right to accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth and the right to decide what to do with it: save, invest, spend, donate, hoard, or squander it.

We do not live in a society that protects the exercise of economic liberty. We live in what is called a welfare state and a government-managed economy in which the state forces people to send their money to the government so that the government can give it to others. The government also regulates economic activity, such as with minimum-wage laws, and tightly controls trade with people in foreign countries. It also manages the monetary system, choosing paper money as a medium of exchange, whose value it has debased since its inception in the 1930s.

We also live under what is called a national-security state, one in which the national-security branch of the government wields omnipotent powers, such as assassination, torture, coups, and foreign interventions and wars. It is a system that is contrary to the limited-government system on which our nation was founded.

Libertarians hold that all of these aspects of Americas welfare-warfare state system violate the genuine principles of a free society. Nonlibertarians are falsely convinced that the welfare-warfare-state way of life has instead brought them freedom.

The first obstacle in achieving a free society is the lack of understanding among the American people as to what a genuinely free society entails. Now, granted, if Americans were to see what a free society entails, they might still conclude that they dont really want to be free. They might want to continuing living under a welfare-warfare-state form of governmental system. But at least then they would be making a conscious decision rather than one based on a false reality.

Since libertarians have an understanding of the importance of economic liberty, social liberty, and a limited-government republic, it is only libertarians who can lead America to freedom. But they can only do this by standing squarely for freedom and steadfastly making the case for freedom.

Many libertarians have given up on freedom and resigned themselves to making the case for welfare-warfare-state reform. Whats wrong with reform? Nothing, if all that one is looking for is an improved form of serfdom. Freedom entails identifying infringements on liberty and removing them. Reform entails leaving infringements on liberty in place and reforming or improving them.

Making the case for reform doesnt cause people to think about the principles of freedom. Instead, it focuses peoples attention on how to reform the serfdom under which they live. In the process, the lack of freedom continues.

The only way to achieve a genuinely free society is by arriving at a critical mass of people who understand what freedom is and who are passionately committed to attaining it. In order to find the people who fall within that category, it is necessary to make the case for genuine freedom. Making the case for reform doesnt do that.

Why have so many libertarians thrown in the towel and resigned themselves to making the case for reform rather than the case for liberty? The answer to that question leads us to the second principal obstacle for achieving freedom the lack of faith that so many libertarians (and nonlibertarians) have in freedom.

Why is faith in freedom important for libertarians? Given that libertarians have achieved the breakthrough that enables them to see that we are not free, obviously it is only libertarians who can lead America to freedom. But if libertarians lack a faith in freedom, how can they possibly lead anyone to freedom? Why would nonlibertarians be attracted to a philosophy that its proponents have little or no faith in?

Lets examine some real-life examples of this phenomenon.

Social Security and Medicare are the crown jewels of American socialism. These two welfare-state programs are based on the socialist principle of using the coercive force of government to take money from those who own it and give it to those who, the government claims, need it more. The system, proponents say, shows that Americans are good and caring.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Care and compassion come from the willing heart of the individual, not the coercive apparatus of the state. A free society entails everyone having the right to decide what to do with his own money.

Thus, freedom necessarily entails the immediate eradication of Social Security, Medicare, and all other socialist programs.

Many libertarians say that the system needs to be reformed, not abolished. Or they say that it must be gradually reduced over the next several years, perhaps even a generation. Or they call for opt out plans that entail letting young people opt out of the system but continue paying the taxes to fund Social Security and Medicare for those who choose to remain in the system. Or they propose a fascist type of plan that entails forcing people to invest in government-approved retirement accounts.

Why dont these libertarians favor simply repealing these socialist programs? Because they have convinced themselves that freedom wont work. They are convinced that freedom would mean that thousands of people would be dying in the streets.

America lived without Social Security, Medicare, and other socialist programs for more than a century. In fact, Americas system of economic liberty led not only to the greatest surge of economic prosperity but also to the greatest outpouring of voluntary charity that mankind has ever seen.

There is no doubt that if Social Security, Medicare, and other socialist programs were to be suddenly repealed today, everyone would be fine. The wealthy dont need the help. Those in the middle would have to adjust, perhaps by returning to work or reducing expenditures. For those truly in need, there would be more than sufficient help from children, grandchildren, church groups, charitable foundations, friends, relatives, physicians, hospitals, and neighborhood groups.

Permit me one example from personal experience. I grew up in Laredo, Texas, one of the poorest cities in the United States. There was no Medicare or Medicaid. Every day, doctors offices were filled with people, many of whom could not pay. Nonetheless, there was never an instance where a doctor refused to treat a patient based on inability to pay. They did it out of a sense of moral obligation. Thats what happens in a free society.

Lets take another example immigration. For our entire lives, we have lived under a socialist immigration system, one based on the core socialist principle of central planning. Under central planning, the government determines the total number of immigrants that will be permitted into the country, the number of immigrants allocated to each country, the qualifications necessary for entry, the number permitted to work (i.e. green cards), and other such things.

It simply cannot be done, at least not without what the famous free-market economist Ludwig von Mises called planned chaos. What better term to describe the situation on the U.S.-Mexico border for the last 80 years, at least? Immigration central planning is the cause of Americas decades-old, never-ending, ongoing immigration crisis.

The system comes with a massive police state along the border in order ensure that foreigners do not enter the country illegally or without an invitation. This system entails warrantless searches of farms and ranches within 100 miles of the border, highway checkpoints, roving Border Patrol checkpoints, boarding of Greyhound buses to check for peoples papers, and the criminalization of hiring, harboring, helping, or transporting immigrants who are here illegally. It is also a system that comes with death, suffering, humiliation, and abuse.

The solution is to eradicate the socialist cause of the problem. In the area of immigration, that means the immediate dismantling of the Border Patrol, the immigration service (ICE), and all restrictions on the freedom of goods, services, and people to cross political borders.

Economic liberty is the solution to the perpetual crisis, death, suffering, and police state that comes with socialism. I repeat what I have been saying for more than 30 years: Economic freedom is the only solution to the immigration morass caused by socialism.

Too many libertarians have lost faith in freedom. They have convinced themselves that freedom simply will not work, at least not in the area of immigration. What they fail to recognize is that the free market and the price system are the best and most efficient regulators of human activity. Think about the United States. It has the biggest open border area in history open borders between the states. In the past few years, countless Californians have flooded into Austin, Texas. Do you see any chaos there? Oh, sure, people have had to adjust to the massive influx of people. But as more people have moved into Austin, the prices have risen, which has induced other people to live further away or even in another part of the country. What you dont see is thousands of Californians at the Texas border clamoring to get into the state, like we see on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Another example: Every day, hundreds of thousands of people cross back and forth between Maryland and my state of Virginia. There are no border guards regulating the flow. No one is checking for terrorists, criminals, or people with Covid or other illnesses.

Libertarian proponents of immigration controls also point to the migrant crisis in American cities. What they forget is that the government prevents migrants from working without a green card. Thus, the state then feels the need to take care of the people they wont permit to work. In a free market, everyone would be free to work, and the state wouldnt need to be taking care of anyone.

A third example: education. The genuinely free society is based on the separation of school and state that is, the end of all government involvement in education, just as our ancestors did with religion. Thus, freedom necessarily means making the case for educational liberty.

All too many libertarians have thrown in the towel on this area of statism as well. They have convinced themselves that educational liberty simply will not work that children would simply not be educated if the state did not maintain its coercive apparatus of mandatory schooling.

Thus, many libertarians have chosen to go down the road to reform with the advocacy of school vouchers, a reform program that leaves the public-school system intact but uses the coercive apparatus of the state to take money from people to whom it belongs in order to fund the education of children from other families.

Making the case for vouchers is totally different from making the case for educational liberty. Vouchers leaves the socialist educational system intact and purports to make it better through choice and competition. Educational liberty entails making the much more difficult case of ending all governmental involvement in education.

A fourth example of this phenomenon involves the drug war. The government punishes people for ingesting substances that the government disapproves of. Genuine freedom entails the immediate repeal of all drug laws that is, it involves the right of people to ingest whatever they want, no matter how harmful or destructive.

All too many libertarians have given up in this area as well and have settled for calling for reform, such as the repeal or reform of mandatory-minimum sentences or asset-forfeiture laws or the legalization of only marijuana and not the so-called hard drugs. They have convinced themselves that if drugs were legalized, most everyone in society would become drug addicts. Since many addicts would undoubtedly go on Medicaid to seek treatment for their addiction, some libertarians undoubtedly have concluded that we cant end drug laws until weve ended Medicaid. Thus, like with Social Security, Medicare, immigration, and education, they continue supporting a program that brings with it perpetual crisis, chaos, death, suffering, and police-state coercion.

Libertarians are the only ones who can lead America to freedom because libertarians have a firm grip on reality when it comes to freedom. But leading America to freedom requires a faith in freedom. If libertarians are to lead America to freedom in our lifetime, it is necessary for libertarians to restore a faith in freedom in themselves.

This article was originally published in the March 2024 issue of Future of Freedom.

Link:
Understanding Freedom and Faith in Freedom The Future of Freedom Foundation - The Future of Freedom Foundation

Multiple Arizona voters say their signatures were forged in Libertarian Michelle Martins paperwork to run in Arizonas 1st Congressional District.

Four people told the Arizona Republic that they had not signed the petition that their signatures were on. In order to appear on the ballot in Arizona, candidates must gain a number of signatures proportional to the number of registered voters in their district.

That is definitely not me. Not even close to my signature. Thats very upsetting, Stephen Riordan, a Phoenix resident whose name and signature were listed on Martins paperwork, said.

Martin submitted 1,200 signatures, which is more than the required at least one-half of one percent of registered voters in the district needed to get on the ballot.

Im disappointed, Shannon Speagle, another resident whose signature was allegedly forged, said. It completely delegitimizes this candidacy. She said her signature was bogus. Speagle said she asked three additional neighbors to verify their signatures on the petition. They say their signatures were also bogus.

Martin did not respond to the Arizona Republic for comment. Several signature gatherers also did not respond for comment.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Arizonas newly redrawn 1st District is now labeled a toss-up going into the 2024 general election.

Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ) has represented the district for more than a decade and will have to defend his seat in an area that has voted increasingly blue in recent years. In 2022, Schweikert kept his seat in the House by a narrow margin of 3,000 votes.

Go here to see the original:
Arizona voters question petition for Libertarian candidate: Not even close to my signature - Washington Examiner

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Nicole Shanahan, a 38-year-old attorney and philanthropist, as his running mate last week. Outside of Silicon Valley, Shanahan is a relative political unknown, though as the ex-wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, she brings considerable financial assets to the ticket.

Reaction to the pick has been mixed, however especially among a constituency RFK Jr has courted: libertarians. In a recent interview, Libertarian Party Chair Angela McArdle expressed concern about the ticket, saying that Shanahan doesnt necessarily fit into alignment with any of our views. RFK Jr.s new veep was a supporter of Hillary Clintons 2016 campaign, and has donated to Democratic and Left-leaning causes in the past. In 2020, she donated to Marianne Williamson, Peter Buttigieg and Joe Biden.

RFK Jr. is himself a former Democrat, of course and a progressive one, at that. He has a long history of energy and climate activism completely contrary to the limited government ethos of libertarianism. He previously called the National Rifle Association a terrorist group, although he does support the second amendment. He said the Koch brothers should be prosecuted for treason on environmentalist grounds. He also supports student loan debt forgiveness and affirmative action, both liberal stances.

Nevertheless, after RFK Jr. formally left the Democratic Party in October 2023 opting to face-off against President Joe Biden in the general election rather than the primaries widespread speculation ensued that he might seek the Libertarian Partys nomination. Last summer, he attended FreedomFest, an annual gathering of libertarians, and emphasised his involvement in issues that matter to us: most notably, the federal governments efforts to suppress dissenting speech on social media, particularly relating to Covid-19.

Indeed, RFK Jr.s contrarian views on Covid-19 policies like mandates, lockdowns, and the vaccines themselves have made him a target of social media censors, who were often pressured by government agents to take down provocative speech. (The Supreme Court is currently weighing whether these actions violated the First Amendment in Murthy v. Missouri.) Many of the underlying views are themselves attractive to libertarians; one need not agree with everything RFK Jr. has said about vaccines to nevertheless admire his opposition to making them compulsory.

It was RFK Jr.s opposition to mandates and lockdowns that first drew the attention of some libertarians. When I spoke with her in June 2023, McArdle was optimistic that his views on the pandemic had stirred an awakening within him, causing him to reconsider many of his other political stances.

Following the 7 October attack by Hamas on Israel, RFK Jr. expressed unqualified support for the US continuing to send aid to Israel, a stance that alienated many libertarians, who do not believe American taxpayers should be required to fund foreign wars. Support for RFK Jr. among rank-and-file LP members now appears lukewarm at best; at a California Libertarian Party convention in February, Kennedy garnered just one vote in the straw poll.

When asked about running for the LP nomination, RFK Jr. has remained evasive and declined to rule it out. As such, the speculation continues. But it seems unlikely he will go for it, and if he did, he would face deep-rooted scepticism, if not outright hostility, from many within the party. In 2016, libertarians booed former Gov. Gary Johnson who sought and obtained the partys presidential nomination for supporting drivers licences. RFK Jr.s heresies loom somewhat larger.

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Why libertarians don't trust RFK Jr. - UnHerd

My Republican and Democratic friends could learn a lot from my Libertarian friends.

No, I'm not talking about the general libertarian philosophy of less intrusive government, more personal responsibility and individual liberty and freedom. Now, my Republican friends will say they believe in all those things, but let's be honest. These days, instead of governing as social conservatives, they seem more like conservative socialists, but I digress.

No, what Im talking about is how Libertarians choose their candidates for public office, as opposed to Republicans and Democrats who have taxpayers foot the bill.

Not long ago in Fishers, Libertarians from across the state of Indiana got together and held their annual convention where they chose candidates for the U.S. senate, governor, lieutenant governor and several other offices.

And they did it on their own dime. No taxpayers had to foot the bill for what is basically a private, political function.

Now juxtapose that to the latest antics in the Republican and Democrat world.

In the D and R world, you cant run in a Republican or Democrat primary unless you voted in two of those respective primaries or you get a letter from your county chairperson saying its okay to do so.

If you think this is easy to do, just ask John Rust, who is trying/or tried to get on the ballot to challenge Jim Banks. All the legal back and forth in this matter has made my head spin like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. And when it was done all I wanted to do was throw up pea soup.

I have no problem with political parties picking their candidates; however, I do have a problem with an exclusionary process when it's the taxpayers who are footing the bill. If the taxpayers are going to foot the bill for political parties to pick their candidates, then the process should be more open, and as long as you meet the constitutional qualifications for the office, you should be allowed to run.

If thats not what my Republican and Democratic friends want to do, then they should pay for their own selection process. They should hold a convention, a caucus, or whatever, and pick their candidates and present them to the voters. Heck, they already do it now. It happens at their statewide conventions. The delegates get together and choose who they want to represent the party at the ballot box.

This year, Republicans and Democrats will choose candidates for lieutenant governor and attorney general and with the exception of lieutenant governor on the Democratic side, there are competitive races on both sides.

Why should Republicans have to pay for Democrats to choose their candidates, and why should Republicans have to pay for Democrats to choose their candidates?

Heres a thought: everyone pays for their own selection process.

Now, if we are going to keep the current primary system, it should be an open one. In the open system, I recommend that the candidates show up on the ballot: Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, anarchist and the voters pick the candidate. The top vote-getter (50 to 60%) is declared the winner of the general election. If no one gets 50 percent, then the top two vote-getters face each other in a runoff.

And heres another added benefit.

Part of the reason our politics is so polarized is because a lot of districts are so gerrymandered that the only way to win is in a primary. And since only more diehard Ds and Rs participate, the only way to win is usually to run further to the right or to the left than where the general electorate is and therefore, we get a much more polarized legislative body. And on top of that, more bills are introduced to cater to the far right or far left and the folks in the middle (which is most of the electorate) are left with no place to go.

So, we can either switch to a nomination process for candidate selection or a more open primary system. Either one is much better than the system we have now.

Which why I said at the start of this column my Republican and Democratic friends can learn a lot from my Libertarian buddies.

Abdul-Hakim Shabazzis the editor and publisher ofIndy Politics. He is also a licensed attorney in both Indiana and Illinois.

See more here:
Learn from Libertarians | Commentary | thestatehousefile.com - The Statehouse File

Season five of showrunner Noah Hawley's TV version ofFargotells a violence-filled story exploring domestic abuse, PTSD, the concept of debt (on multiple levels), and the purpose and efficacy of the institutions of marriageandpolice.

Its villain is designed to cause discomfort for libertarians: Sheriff Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm), who self-identifies as a libertarian and a constitutionalist, and does seem to adhere to a certain peculiar right-wing belief in the county sheriff as the main source of authority. The only libertarianish qualities he evinces are a contempt for the FBI and the ability to recite a few silly, pointless laws. But the writers seem to want his stated ideology to add spice to the audience's dislike of him for being an abusing, murdering, and corrupt bully laundering his own rage and sin through a twisted vision of God.

In one scene, Tillman says he'd rather see orphans fight each other for sport than help them, and another character accuses him of being like a babycrying for freedom with no responsibility. The whole thing is reminiscent of when on old college pal thinks he istotally crushinglibertarianism with a masterful Facebook post.

If Tillman becomes smart quality TV fans' go-to image of libertarians, replacing the weirdly obsessed but well-meaning Ron Swanson of Parks and Recreation, it will be a shame. But hopefully a smart viewer will know, when Tillman calls on the spirit of western resisters of federal power such as Ammon Bundy and LaVoy Finicum, that it's no part of any proven public record that either man ever did anything a hundredth as evil as Tillman does in pretty much every episode.

View original post here:
Review: Sheriff in 'Fargo' Gives Libertarians a Bad Name - Reason

Donald Rainwater was the Libertarian Party of Indiana's nominee for governor in 2020, earning the highest vote total for a Libertarian candidate in state history.

The Indiana Libertarian Party chose its 2024 nominees for governor, lieutenant governor and U.S. Senate this weekend and the ticket includes some familiar names.

Donald Rainwater will lead Indianas Libertarian Party ticket, making a second consecutive run for governor. In 2020, Rainwater a software engineer garnered the highest vote total by a Libertarian candidate in state history, earning more than 11 percent in the gubernatorial race.

His running mate is Tonya Hudson, a southern Indiana real estate broker who previously ran as a Libertarian for Congress in 2020 and 2022.

And the Libertarian Partys nominee for U.S. Senate this year is perennial candidate Andrew Horning. Horning has run for Senate once before, in 2012. Hes also been the partys nominee for governor twice and run for Congress as a Libertarian five times.

Join the conversation and sign up for the Indiana Two-Way. Text "Indiana" to 765-275-1120. Your comments and questions in response to our weekly text help us find the answers you need on statewide issues, including our project Civically, Indiana.

Ballot access in Indiana is determined by the number of votes earned in the race for secretary of state.

While Libertarians have automatic ballot access, they have not garnered enough votes to have primary elections. The partys nominees are chosen at a state convention.

Brandon is our Statehouse bureau chief. Contact him atbsmith@ipbs.org or follow him on Twitter at @brandonjsmith5.

More here:
Donald Rainwater to lead Indiana Libertarian ticket as party chooses its 2024 nominees - WFYI

Look, I'm not a hateful person or anythingI believe we should all live and let live. But lately, I've been having a real problem with these homosexuals. You see, just about wherever I go these days, one of them approaches me and starts sucking my cock.

Take last Sunday, for instance, when I casually struck up a conversation with this guy in the health-club locker room. Nothing fruity, just a couple of fellas talking about their workout routines while enjoying a nice hot shower. The guy looked like a real man's man, toobig biceps, meaty thighs, thick neck. He didn't seem the least bit gay. At least not until he started sucking my cock, that is.

Where does this queer get the nerve to suck my cock? Did I look gay to him? Was I wearing a pink feather boa without realizing it? I don't recall the phrase, "Suck my cock" entering the conversation, and I don't have a sign around my neck that reads, "Please, You Homosexuals, Suck My Cock."

I've got nothing against homosexuals. Let them be free to do their gay thing in peace, I say. But when they start sucking my cock, then I've got a real problem.

Then there was the time I was hiking through the woods and came across a rugged-looking, blond-haired man in his early 30s. He seemed straight enough to me while we were bathing in that mountain stream, but, before you know it, he's sucking my cock!

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What is it with these homos? Can't they control their sexual urges? Aren't there enough gay cocks out there for them to suck on without them having to target normal people like me?

Believe me, I have no interest in getting my cock sucked by some queer. But try telling that to the guy at the beach club. Or the one at the video store. Or the one who catered my wedding. Or any of the countless other homos who've come on to me recently. All of them sucked my cock, and there was nothing I could do to stop them.

I tell you, when a homosexual is sucking your cock, a lot of strange thoughts go through your head: How the hell did this happen? Where did this fairy ever get the idea that I was gay? And where did he get those fantastic boots?

It screws with your head at other times, too. Every time a man passes me on the street, I'm afraid he's going to grab me and drag me off to some bathroom to suck my cock. I've even started to visualize these repulsive cock-sucking episodes during the healthy, heterosexual marital relations I enjoy with my wifeeven some that haven't actually happened, like the sweaty, post-game locker-room tryst with Vancouver Canucks forward Mark Messier that I can't seem to stop thinking about.

Things could be worse, I suppose. It could be women trying to suck my cock, which would be adultery and would make me feel tremendously guilty. As it is, I'm just angry and sickened. But believe me, that's enough. I don't know what makes these homosexuals mistake me for a guy who wants his cock sucked, and, frankly, I don't want to know. I just wish there were some way to get them to stop.

I've tried all sorts of things to get them to stop, but it has all been to no avail. A few months back, I started wearing an intimidating-looking black leather thong with menacing metal studs in the hopes that it would frighten those faggots off, but it didn't work. In fact, it only seemed to encourage them. Then, I really started getting rough, slapping them around whenever they were sucking my cock, but that failed, too. Even pulling out of their mouths just before ejaculation and shooting sperm all over their face, neck, chest and hair seemed to have no effect. What do I have to do to get the message across to these swishes?

I swear, if these homosexuals don't take a hint and quit sucking my cock all the time, I'm going to have to resort to drastic measureslike maybe pinning them down to the cement floor of the loading dock with my powerful forearms and working my cock all the way up their butt so they understand loud and clear just how much I disapprove of their unwelcome advances. I mean, you can't get much more direct than that.

Here is the original post:
Why Do All These Homosexuals Keep Sucking My Cock? - The Onion

American political theorist and writer (19181994)

Russell Amos Kirk (October 19, 1918 April 29, 1994)[1] was an American political theorist, moralist, historian, social critic, and literary critic, known for his influence on 20th-century American conservatism. His 1953 book The Conservative Mind gave shape to the postwar conservative movement in the U.S. It traced the development of conservative thought in the Anglo-American tradition, giving special importance to the ideas of Edmund Burke. Kirk was considered the chief proponent of traditionalist conservatism. He was also an accomplished author of Gothic and ghost story fiction.

Russell Kirk was born in Plymouth, Michigan. He was the son of Russell Andrew Kirk, a railroad engineer, and Marjorie Pierce Kirk. Kirk obtained his B.A. at Michigan State University and a M.A. at Duke University. During World War II, he served in the American armed forces and corresponded with a libertarian writer, Isabel Paterson, who helped to shape his early political thought. After reading Albert Jay Nock's book, Our Enemy, the State, he engaged in a similar correspondence with him. After the war, he attended the University of St Andrews in Scotland. In 1953, he became the only American to be awarded the degree of Doctor of Letters by that university.[2]

Kirk "laid out a post-World War II program for conservatives by warning them, 'A handful of individuals, some of them quite unused to moral responsibilities on such a scale, made it their business to extirpate the populations of Nagasaki and Hiroshima; we must make it our business to curtail the possibility of such snap decisions.'"[3]

Upon completing his studies, Kirk took up an academic position at his alma mater, Michigan State. He resigned in 1959, after having become disenchanted with the rapid growth in student number and emphasis on intercollegiate athletics and technical training at the expense of the traditional liberal arts. Thereafter he referred to Michigan State as "Cow College" or "Behemoth University." He later wrote that academic political scientists and sociologists were "as a breeddull dogs".[4] Late in life, he taught one semester a year at Hillsdale College, where he was distinguished visiting professor of humanities.[5]

Kirk frequently published in two American conservative journals he helped found, National Review in 1955 and Modern Age in 1957. He was the founding editor of the latter, 195759. Later he was made a Distinguished Fellow of the Heritage Foundation, where he gave a number of lectures.[6]

After leaving Michigan State, Kirk returned to his ancestral home in Mecosta, Michigan, where he wrote the many books, academic articles, lectures, and the syndicated newspaper column (which ran for 13 years) by which he exerted his influence on American politics and intellectual life. In 1963, Kirk converted to Catholicism and married Annette Courtemanche;[7] they had four daughters. She and Kirk became known for their hospitality, welcoming many political, philosophical, and literary figures in their Mecosta house (known as "Piety Hill"), and giving shelter to political refugees, hoboes, and others.[8] Their home became the site of a sort of seminar on conservative thought for university students. Piety Hill now houses the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal. After his conversion to Catholicism Kirk was a founding board member of Una Voce America.[9]

Kirk declined to drive, calling cars "mechanical Jacobins",[10] and would have nothing to do with television and what he called "electronic computers".[11]

Kirk did not always maintain a stereotypically "conservative" voting record. "Faced with the non-choice between Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Thomas Dewey in 1944, Kirk said no to empire and voted for Norman Thomas, the Socialist Party candidate."[12] In the 1976 presidential election, he voted for Eugene McCarthy.[13] In 1992 he supported Pat Buchanan's primary challenge to incumbent George H. W. Bush, serving as state chair of the Buchanan campaign in Michigan.[14]

Kirk was a contributor to Chronicles. In 1989, he was presented with the Presidential Citizens Medal by President Ronald Reagan.[15]

The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot,[16] the published version of Kirk's doctoral dissertation, contributed materially to the 20th century Burke revival. It also drew attention to:

The Portable Conservative Reader (1982), which Kirk edited, contains sample writings by most of the above.

Biographer Bradley J. Birzer argues that for all his importance in inspiring the modern conservative movement, not many of his followers agreed with his unusual approach to the history of conservatism. As summarized by reviewer Drew Maciag:

Harry Jaffa (a student of Leo Strauss) wrote: "Kirk was a poor Burke scholar. Burke's attack on metaphysical reasoning related only to modern philosophy's attempt to eliminate skeptical doubt from its premises and hence from its conclusions."[18]

Russello (2004) argues that Kirk adapted what 19th-century American Catholic thinker Orestes Brownson called "territorial democracy" to articulate a version of federalism that was based on premises that differ in part from those of the founders and other conservatives. Kirk further believed that territorial democracy could reconcile the tension between treating the states as mere provinces of the central government, and as autonomous political units independent of Washington. Finally, territorial democracy allowed Kirk to set out a theory of individual rights grounded in the particular historical circumstances of the United States, while rejecting a universal conception of such rights.

In addition to bringing public attention to Anglo-American conservative principles, Kirk described his perception of liberal ideals in the first chapter. Kirk identified these ideals as the perfectibility of man, hostility towards tradition, rapid change in economic and political systems, and the secularization of government.[19]

Kirk developed six "canons" of conservatism, which Russello (2004) described as follows:

Kirk said that Christianity and Western Civilization are "unimaginable apart from one another"[20] and that "all culture arises out of religion. When religious faith decays, culture must decline, though often seeming to flourish for a space after the religion which has nourished it has sunk into disbelief."[21][failed verification]

Kirk grounded his Burkean conservatism in tradition, political philosophy, belles lettres, and the strong religious faith of his later years, rather than libertarianism and free market economic reasoning. The Conservative Mind hardly mentions economics at all.

In a polemic, Kirk, quoting T. S. Eliot's expression, called libertarians "chirping sectaries," adding that conservatives and libertarians share opposition to "collectivism," "the totalist state," and "bureaucracy," but otherwise have "nothing" in common. He called the libertarian movement "an ideological clique forever splitting into sects still smaller and odder, but rarely conjugating." He said a line of division exists between believers in "some sort of transcendent moral order" and "utilitarians admitting no transcendent sanctions for conduct." He included libertarians in the latter category.[22] Kirk, therefore, questioned the "fusionism" between libertarians and traditional conservatives that marked much of post-World War II conservatism in the United States.[23] Kirk also argued that libertarians "bear no authority, temporal or spiritual" and do not "venerate ancient beliefs and customs, or the natural world, or [their] country, or the immortal spark in [their] fellow men."[24]

However, Kirk's view of classical liberals is positive. He agrees with them on "ordered liberty" as they make "common cause with regular conservatives against the menace of democratic despotism and economic collectivism."[25]

Tibor R. Machan defended libertarianism in response to Kirk's original Heritage Lecture. Machan argued that the right of individual sovereignty is perhaps most worthy of conserving from the American political heritage, and that when conservatives themselves talk about preserving some tradition, they cannot at the same time claim a disrespectful distrust of the individual human mind, of rationalism itself.[26]

Jacob G. Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation also responded to Kirk.[27]

In a column in The National Review on 9 March 1965 entitled "'One Man, One Vote' in South Africa," Kirk wrote that the U.S. Supreme Court's jurisprudence on voting "will work mischiefmuch injuring, rather than fulfilling, the responsible democracy for which Tocqueville hoped," but in the case of South Africa "this degradation of the democratic dogma, if applied, would bring anarchy and the collapse of civilization."[28] Kirk wrote that "the 'European' element [makes] South Africa the only 'modern' and prosperous African country." He added that "Bantu political domination [of South Africa] would be domination by witch doctors (still numerous and powerful) and reckless demagogues" and that "Bantu and Coloreds and Indians must feel that they have some political voice in the South African commonwealth."

Late in life, Kirk grew disenchanted with American neoconservatives as well.[29] As Chronicles editor Scott Richert describes it:

[One line] helped define the emerging struggle between neoconservatives and paleoconservatives. "Not seldom has it seemed," Kirk declared, "as if some eminent Neoconservatives mistook Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States." A few years later, in another Heritage Foundation speech, Kirk repeated that line verbatim. In the wake of the Gulf War, which he had opposed, he clearly understood that those words carried even greater meaning.[30]

He also commented the neoconservatives were "often clever, never wise."[citation needed]

Midge Decter, Jewish director of the Committee for the Free World, called Kirk's remark "a bloody outrage, a piece of anti-Semitism by Kirk that impugns the loyalty of neoconservatives."[31] She told The New Republic, "It's this notion of a Christian civilization. You have to be part of it or you're not really fit to conserve anything. That's an old line and it's very ignorant."[32]

Samuel T. Francis called Kirk's "Tel Aviv" remark "a wisecrack about the slavishly pro-Israel sympathies among neoconservatives."[32] He described Decter's response as untrue, "reckless" and "vitriolic." Furthermore, he argued that such a denunciation "always plays into the hands of the left, which is then able to repeat the charges and claim conservative endorsement of them.[32]

Toward the end of his life, Russell Kirk was highly critical of Republican militarism. President Bush, Kirk said, had embarked upon "a radical course of intervention in the region of the Persian Gulf".[33][34]

Excerpts from Russell Kirk's lectures at the Heritage Foundation (1992):[35]

Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson were enthusiasts for American domination of the world. Now George Bush appears to be emulating those eminent Democrats. When the Republicans, once upon a time, nominated for the presidency a "One World" candidate, Wendell Willkie, they were sadly trounced. In general, Republicans throughout the twentieth century have been advocates of prudence and restraint in the conduct of foreign affairs.[36]

Unless the Bush Administration abruptly reverses its fiscal and military course, I suggest, the Republican Party must lose its former good repute for frugality, and become the party of profligate expenditure, "butter and guns." And public opinion would not long abide that. Nor would America's world influence and America's remaining prosperity.[36]

Yet presidents of the United States must not be encouraged to make Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, nor to fancy that they can establish a New World Order through eliminating dissenters. In the second century before Christ, the Romans generously liberated the Greek city-states from the yoke of Macedonia. But it was not long before the Romans felt it necessary to impose upon those quarrelsome Greeks a domination more stifling to Hellenic freedom and culture than ever Macedon had been. It is a duty of the Congress of the United States to see that great American Caesars do not act likewise.[36]

Kirk's other important books include Eliot and his Age: T. S. Eliot's Moral Imagination in the Twentieth Century (1972), The Roots of American Order (1974), and the autobiographical Sword of the Imagination: Memoirs of a Half Century of Literary Conflict (1995). As was the case with his hero Edmund Burke, Kirk became renowned for the prose style of his intellectual and polemical writings.[37]

Beyond his scholarly achievements, Kirk was talented both as an oral storyteller and as an author of genre fiction, most notably in his telling of consummate ghost stories in the classic tradition of Sheridan Le Fanu, M. R. James, Oliver Onions, and H. Russell Wakefield. He also wrote other admired and much-anthologized works that are variously classified as horror, fantasy, science fiction, and political satire. These earned him plaudits from fellow creative writers as varied and distinguished as T. S. Eliot, Robert Aickman, Madeleine L'Engle, and Ray Bradbury.

Though modest in quantityit encompasses three novels and 22 short storiesKirk's body of fiction was written amid a busy career as prolific nonfiction writer, editor, and speaker. As with such other speculative fiction authors as G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, and J. R. R. Tolkien (all of whom likewise wrote only nonfiction for their "day jobs"), there are conservative undercurrentssocial, cultural, religious, and politicalto Kirk's fiction. Kirk stated in 1984 that the purpose of his stories as:

"The political ferocity of our age is sufficiently dismaying: men of letters need not conjure up horrors worse than those suffered during the past decade by the Cambodians and Ugandans, Afghans and Ethiopians. What I have attempted, rather, are experiments in the moral imagination. Readers will encounter elements of parable and fable...some clear premise is about the character of human existence...a healthy concept of the character of evil..."

His first novel, Old House of Fear (1961, 1965), as with so many of his short stories, was written in a self-consciously Gothic vein. Here the plot is concerned with an American assigned by his employer to a bleak locale in rural Scotlandthe same country where Kirk had attended graduate school. This was Kirk's most commercially successful and critically acclaimed fictional work, doing much to sustain him financially in subsequent years. Old House of Fear was inspired by the novels of John Buchan and Kirk's own Scottish heritage. The story of Old House of Fear concerns an young American, Hugh Logan, a World War II veteran who is both brave and sensitive, sent to buy Carnglass, a remote island in the Hebrides. Upon reaching the island, he discovers that the island's owner, Lady MacAskival and her beautiful adopted daughter Mary are being held hostage by foreign spies, who are presumably working for the Soviet Union, out to sabotage a nearby NATO base. The leader of the spies is Dr. Jackman, an evil genius and nihilist intent upon wrecking a world that failed to acknowledge his greatness and whom reviewers noted was a much more vividly drawn character than the hero Logan. Dr. Jackman appears to be a prototype of Kirk's best known character, Mandred Arcane, with the only difference being the former has no values while the latter does.

Later novels were A Creature of the Twilight (1966), a dark comedy satirizing postcolonial African politics; and Lord of the Hollow Dark (1979, 1989), set in Scotland, which explores the great evil inhabiting a haunted house. A Creature of the Twilight concerns the adventures in Africa of a reactionary, romantic mercenary Mandred Arcane, a self-proclaimed mixture of Machiavelli and Sir Lancelot, who is an anachronistic survival of the Victorian Age who does not belong in the modern world and yet defiantly still exists, making him the "creature of the twilight". Kirk has Arcane write his pseudo-memoir in a consciously Victorian style to underline that he does not belong in the 1960s. Arcane is both a dapper intellectual and a hardened man of action, an elderly man full of an unnatural vigor, who is hired by the son of the assassinated Sultan to put down a Communist rebellion in the fictional African nation of Hamnegri, which he does despite overwhelming odds. In 1967, Kirk published a short story "Belgrummo's Hell" about a clever art thief who unwisely tries to rob the estate of the ancient Scottish warlock, Lord Belgrummo, who is later revealed to be Arcane's father. In another short story published in the same collection, "The Peculiar Demesne of Archvicar Gerontion" concerned a wizard, Archvicar Gerontion, who tries to kill Arcane by casting deadly spells.

The Lord of the Hollow Dark is set at the same Belgrummo estate first encountered in "Belgrummo's Hell" where an evil cult led by the Aleister Crowley-like character Apollinax have assembled to secure for themselves the "Timeless Moment" of eternal sexual pleasure by sacrificing two innocents, an young woman named Marina and her infant daughter in an ancient warren called the Weem under the Belgrummo Estate. Assisting Apollinax is Archvicar Gerontion, who is really Arcane in disguise. Inspired by the novels of H.P. Lovecraft, Kirk in the Lord of the Hollow Dark has Arcane survive a "horrid chthonian pilgrimage" as he faces dark supernatural forces, confront his own family's history of evil, and refuse the appeal of a "seductive, hubristic immorality". The novel concludes with Arcane's own definition of a true "Timeless Moment" which he states: "it comes from faith, from hope, from charity; from having your work in the world; from the happiness of the people you love; or simply as a gift of grace". During his lifetime, Kirk also oversaw the publication of three collections which together encompassed all his short stories. (Three more such collections have been published posthumously, but those only reprint stories found in the earlier volumes. One such posthumous collection, Ancestral Shadows: An Anthology of Ghostly Tales, was edited by his student, friend, and collaborator Vigen Guroian, and includes both an essay by Kirk on 'ghostly tales' and Guroian's own analysis of the stories as well as Kirk's motives in writing them.) Many of Kirk's short stories, especially the ghost stories, were set in either Scotland or in the rural parts of his home state of Michigan.

Among his novels and stories, certain characters tend to recur, enriching the already considerable unity and resonance of his fictional canon. Thoughthrough their themes and prose-styleKirk's fiction and nonfiction works are complementary, many readers of the one have not known of his work in the other.

Having begun to write fiction fairly early in his career, Kirk appears to have stopped after the early 1980s, while continuing his nonfiction writing and research through his last year of life. For a comprehensive bibliography of his fiction, see the fiction section of his bibliography.

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Russell Kirk - Wikipedia

Today's episode is guest-hosted by my Reason TV colleague Zach Weissmueller. Zach went to Philadelphia to talk with Maj Toure, who runs the Solutionary Center in North Philadelphia. It's a place for locals to learn firearms skills and safety, how to avoid and de-escalate conflicts, and to pick up other life skills ranging from first aid to yoga to phlebotomy. "We hear a lot of people say, 'If these communities would just pull themselves up by the bootstraps,'" says Maj. "Okay, this is the bootstraps."

The Philly native is a hardcore libertarian, founder of the gun rights group Black Guns Matter, and a supporter of the Mises Caucus that recently took control of the Libertarian Party. He tells Reason that libertarians can improve their outreach in urban America by getting behind leaders and organizers who have an intuitive understanding of the needs and concerns of the residents who live there.

Here is the Reason interview with Maj Toure.

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Maj Toure: Why Black Gunsand LibertarianismMatter

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Georgia's 'blank ballot' voters | Who are they? And why did they do it? - 11Alive.com WXIA