As an economic system, fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer. The word derives from fasces, the Roman symbol of collectivism and power: a tied bundle of rods with a protruding ax. In its day (the 1920s and 1930s), fascism was seen as the happy medium between boom-and-bust-prone liberal capitalism, with its alleged class conflict, wasteful competition, and profit-oriented egoism, and revolutionary Marxism, with its violent and socially divisive persecution of the bourgeoisie. Fascism substituted the particularity of nationalism and racialism—“blood and soil”—for the internationalism of both classical liberalism and Marxism.
Tag: government
Kids Learn Naturally: Why Compulsory Schooling is Unneccessary and Even Harmful, A Case Study
Life is learning. Language has a definite purpose for us, and utility. In short, learning the language our mommy and daddy use to communicate has meaning. We need to get that milk! We need our blessed diaper changed! This language stuff gets shit done! Without meaning, “education” is a breathtakingly inane and pathetic waste of an individual’s time.
Episode 068 – Branden’s Journey, and Freemasonry (1h31m)
Episode 068 welcomes Branden Espinoza to the podcast. Branden talks about his transition from hardcore conservative to voluntaryist. Topics include his individualism-based scouting experience, exposing government pollution as a youngster, his transition to adulthood while lifeguarding and attending Cornell University, his church mission, and finishing school at BYU, and his involvement with freemasonry and what its meant to his journey to voluntaryism.
Why the Schism?
The debates and arguments continue. Both sides can’t understand why their opponents can’t see their own point of view. The battles between Progressives/Liberals and Libertarian/Conservatives are the most vociferous. Why does such contentiousness exist? Here is my analysis. It boils down to some specific realizations.
Supporting Government “Services”
If I am attacking the theft and coercion behind some things, don’t take it as an attack on you for using those things–unless you start being nasty in defense of the status quo and making it about some tangent that buzzes your bonnet.
Walter, Walter, Walter… Sigh
Sometimes a person’s blind hypocrisy pains me. Walter Williams could be a genius… if he could just unfetter his mind from those bits of statism of which he approves.
The Tangled Web of Anti-immigration Argumentation
So, which is it, anti-immigrationist: is the government too incompetent to exclude ineligible recipients from getting benefits, or is it too incompetent to keep illegal immigrants out the the country—or is it both?
Why Free Immigration Is the Moderate, Common-Sense Position
Far from being utopian, saying “Immigration is a human right” is just the moderate, common-sense position that when natives and foreigners voluntarily interact, strangers are morally obliged to leave them alone unless the overall consequences are clearly awful. Even if the stranger happens to be the government – and the government happens to be popular.
Stories Told to Scare Children
When I was a kid, my parents told me several times about kids my age who met with tragedy–while doing whatever it was they didn’t want me to do. What a coincidence!
Government “Solutions” Aren’t Based on Principle
There are no “government” solutions that are based on principles. Ever. Whether it’s about drugs, or crime, or education, or immigration, or disease, or poverty, or anything else, authoritarian solutions always come from fear-based, unprincipled, arbitrary emotional reactionary crap.