Friday, February 1, 2013

There comes a time to put away childish things.

Via NC Renegade

 https://thebsreport.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/sobran.jpg

Joseph Sobran is no longer with us, but was a wonderful writer for Southern Partisan as well as many other sources. He is truly missed and may you rest in peace, Sir.

Quotes below from NamSouth

 "Several of Africa's proudest empires were built on the sale of slaves. For centuries Africa's chief export was human beings... So, it's rather comical for American blacks to sentimentalize Africa and stress that they are 'African Americans' while cursing the Confederate flag as a symbol of slavery. Africa has a much better claim to be such a symbol. Slavery still exists there, in Sudan and Mauritania and probably elsewhere."
-- Joe Sobran, "Slavery in Perspective," May 31, 2001 


 "Altering the Constitution has become the daily business of the Federal Government which the document is supposed to guide and limit. Both Congress and the judiciary assume, and exercise, countless powers they aren't entitled to."
-- Joseph Sobran


 "Since the Constitution doesn’t forbid the states to secede, the North found it necessary to violate the Constitution in order to suppress Southern independence. Lincoln was forced to usurp legislative powers by raising troops and money and by suspending the writ of habeas corpus; when Chief Justice Roger Taney ruled such acts unconstitutional, Lincoln wrote an order for Taney’s arrest! He never followed through on that, but he did illegally arrest 31 antiwar members of the Maryland legislature and install a puppet government. He went on to crush freedom of speech and press throughout the North. Such was Lincoln’s idea of 'preserving the Constitution' and 'government of the people, by the people, for the people.'"
-- Joseph Sobran 


"If you want the government to intervene domestically you’re a liberal, if you want the government to intervene abroad you’re a conservative, if you want the government to intervene both domestically and abroad you’re a moderate, and if you don’t want the government to intervene either domestically or abroad you’re an extremist."
--Joe Sobran 


 ==========================================

 The Reluctant Anarchist

 My arrival (very recently) at philosophical anarchism has disturbed some of my conservative and Christian friends. In fact, it surprises me, going as it does against my own inclinations.

As a child I acquired a deep respect for authority and a horror of chaos. In my case the two things were blended by the uncertainty of my existence after my parents divorced and I bounced from one home to another for several years, often living with strangers. A stable authority was something I yearned for.

Meanwhile, my public-school education imbued me with the sort of patriotism encouraged in all children in those days. I grew up feeling that if there was one thing I could trust and rely on, it was my government. I knew it was strong and benign, even if I didn’t know much else about it. The idea that some people — Communists, for example — might want to overthrow the government filled me with horror.

G.K. Chesterton, with his usual gentle audacity, once criticized Rudyard Kipling for his “lack of patriotism.” Since Kipling was renowned for glorifying the British Empire, this might have seemed one of Chesterton’s “paradoxes”; but it was no such thing, except in the sense that it denied what most readers thought was obvious and incontrovertible.

Chesterton, himself a “Little Englander” and opponent of empire, explained what was wrong with Kipling’s view: “He admires England, but he does not love her; for we admire things with reasons, but love them without reason. He admires England because she is strong, not because she is English.” Which implies there would be nothing to love her for if she were weak.

Of course Chesterton was right. You love your country as you love your mother — simply because it is yours, not because of its superiority to others, particularly superiority of power.

This seems axiomatic to me now, but it startled me when I first read it. After all, I was an American, and American patriotism typically expresses itself in superlatives. America is the freest, the mightiest, the richest, in short the greatest country in the world, with the greatest form of government — the most democratic. Maybe the poor Finns or Peruvians love their countries too, but heaven knows why — they have so little to be proud of, so few “reasons.” America is also the most envied country in the world. Don’t all people secretly wish they were Americans?

That was the kind of patriotism instilled in me as a boy, and I was quite typical in this respect. It was the patriotism of supremacy. For one thing, America had never lost a war — I was even proud that America had created the atomic bomb (providentially, it seemed, just in time to crush the Japs) — and this is why the Vietnam war was so bitterly frustrating. Not the dead, but the defeat! The end of history’s great winning streak!

As I grew up, my patriotism began to take another form, which it took me a long time to realize was in tension with the patriotism of power. I became a philosophical conservative, with a strong libertarian streak. I believed in government, but it had to be “limited” government — confined to a few legitimate purposes, such as defense abroad and policing at home. These functions, and hardly any others, I accepted, under the influence of writers like Ayn Rand and Henry Hazlitt, whose books I read in my college years.
More @ Sobran's

17 comments:

  1. That's a heckuva essay. Thank you very much.

    ca
    wrsa

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  2. "The measure of the state's success is that the word anarchy frightens people while the word state does not."

    I am equally frightened of State and Anarchy, guess I'm screwed.

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  3. A brilliant essay, which I personally regret never having posted on my own blog in the author's lifetime. Joe Soban's evolution from conservative acolyte to philosophical anarchist was a truly amazing thing to behold.

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    Replies
    1. Yes, I was surprised he died at 64 as I thought he would be with us much longer.

      Delete
  4. The concluding question within the essay:
    "But what would you replace the state with?"

    can be answered with another question:

    When a cancer is removed, what do you replace it with?

    itor

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The answer is a healthy cell. You can't have a void.

      Delete
    2. When a cancer is removed, what do you replace it with?

      Good one.
      ========
      healthy cell

      Maybe the Articles of Confederation.
      http://freenorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2013/01/is-restoring-articles-of-confederation.html

      Delete
  5. Yes, Sobran is a good one. Along with Revilo Oliver, he broke with the Nat Review precisely when Buckley sold out to Podhoretz and the warmongering Jewish ("ex"-Trotskyite) neo-conz: nothing grows gubmint like War. Esp. a bogus, Orwellian "War on Terror" Cf. DHS, TSA, NDAA, etc. etc. Which reminds me, did we have the Islamic Jihad to contend with BEFORE a certain domestic ethnopower wrapped Israel around America's neck? Answer: No. Conclusion: neo-conz are the same gang of Trotskyites they always were.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. nothing grows gubmint like War.

      For sure and you've got a great site.

      Delete
  6. While the essay seems well-informed, I can't say that I was convinced that complete anarchy is the logical conclusion. On the other hand, I think that withdrawing our consent to BE governed is the smaller and more justifiable dose of anarchy.

    That is, North Carolina should re-emphasize individual sovereignty, as well as its relative "state sovereignty" by withdrawing its consent from the federal leviathan.

    I do not concur that the Constitution represented a coup d'etat in that Philadelphia Convention. I'm not satisfied that "1865 mortally wounded" it, either. Secession was the right thing to do, then. And it's the right thing to do now, even more so.

    The essay read like Sobran was well convinced, but he failed to convince me. That is not to say that he is wrong, just that I'll require a more pursuasive argument.

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    Replies
    1. Anarchy = no ruler
      Anarchy <>chaos
      Most people are bound not by what they can get away with, but by the moral compass instilled by GOD
      The fiction is that government exists to protect us from those who are not following a moral compass.
      6000 years of experience hath shewn the truth and practice to be otherwise.

      More persuasion found here:

      Anti federalist papers
      No Treason - Lysander Spooner
      Our Enemy, the State - Albert Nock
      The Law - Bastiat
      Hologram of Liberty - Boston T Party

      those will do for a start.

      itor

      Delete
    2. I think that withdrawing our consent to BE governed is the smaller and more justifiable dose of anarchy.

      @ better chance of success.
      ==========
      That is, North Carolina should re-emphasize individual sovereignty, as well as its relative "state sovereignty" by withdrawing its consent from the federal leviathan.

      Agreed.
      =====
      I do not concur that the Constitution represented a coup d'etat in that Philadelphia Convention.

      Is Restoring the Articles of Confederation America...
      http://freenorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2013/01/is-restoring-articles-of-confederation.html
      =======
      Secession was the right thing to do, then....... And it's the right thing to do now, even more so.

      Indeed. Livermush?:) I grew up on Scrapple for some reason.

      Delete
    3. The Law - Bastiat

      & there is no excuse for not reading such as it is given in the 7th grade of our homeschool course. He was a great thinker and I can't of anything I disagreed with him upon.

      Delete
  7. Livermush is good for you. Overmountain Men have been fueling up on livermush since well before ole Bloody Ban Tarleton got his rude comeuppance at King's Mountain.

    Hope you appreciate my amending my blogroll to include FNC.

    Warm regards, sir,

    ReplyDelete