Thursday, October 20, 2016

Sheriff David Clarke: The Warlord of Milwaukee County





Now that Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona’s Maricopa County faces a possible federal felony conviction that would dislodge him from office, the floor is open for nominations to replace him as the preening figurehead for the Punitive Populist constituency. Milwaukee County, Wisconsin Sheriff David Clarke, who has been auditioning for that role over the past several years, is the prohibitive favorite for that position. 

Like Arpaio, Clarke is a part-time sheriff and full-time media whore, tirelessly seeking opportunities to favor Fox News viewers with a visage set in a sullen pout that he mistakes for an expression of Churchillian pugnacity. Where Arpaio advertised himself as the “World’s Toughest Sheriff,” Clarke has become the most visible exponent of the view that law enforcement officers should be provided with an institutional “safe space” befitting members of a specially protected class.

Perhaps the most remarkable facet of Clarke’s public persona is his studied rejection of the idea that sheriffs and other police officials should be peace officers. He espouses the view that law enforcement is a tribe that is at war not only with criminal offenders, but with its law-abiding critics. 

Clarke, an FBI-indoctrinated prohibitionist fanatic who was awarded a Master’s Degree in “Security Studies” through the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense and Security in Monterey, California, has issued an explicit demand for the suppression – and, if necessary, the “eradication” --  of Black Lives Matter activists and others giving voice to what he calls “anti-cop rhetoric.” Such people, he maintains, are “vulgar, vile, [and] vicious … slime” who should be characterized as “domestic terrorists.”

Following a prominent speaking role at the investiture of God-Emperor (in waiting) Donald Trump, Clarke published an essay urging the public and the political class to mobilize for a literal war of extermination – and insisting that citizens must rally to the defense and protection of the police officers whose advertised role is to protect them.

“It’s time to come to the aid of our police, our front-line soldiers, by calling this war, and not terrorism,” exhorted Clarke in an essay for The Hill. “Avoiding the truth through wordsmithing – the false narrative of the lone-wolf – is contemptible as more innocent officers perish while our politicians hem and haw. We as a people need to declare that we stand with the rule of law, and not with the false tales of the revolutionary Marxist forces, who most recently have rebranded themselves from Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter.”

A poseur on horseback.
Those who refuse to enlist in that war are “accomplices” in league with “an enemy within our borders [and] without our borders,” Clarke insists.

“This slime needs to be eradicated from American society and American culture,” Clark insisted during an August 29, 2015 interview with Fox News host Jeanne Piro. While professing to “love the First Amendment” and “freedom of speech,” Clarke maintained that the right is “not absolute.” You can’t say anything you want in the United States. You cannot threaten people’s lives…. This is not First Amendment-protected.”

As he explained in the same interview, Clarke believes that the spectrum of impermissible speech may end with overt death threats, but it begins with the “disparagement” of police in social media.

It should be noted that as a Law-and-Order Leninist, Clarke does not object to insurrectionist speech or activism in principle: It’s all a question of who does what to whom. As Donald Trump’s presidential prospects have dimmed, Clarke’s ardor for order has waned, and his appetite for retaliatory violence has waxed. 

“It’s incredible that our institutions of gov[ernment], W[hite] H[ouse], Congress, DOJ, and big media are corrupt & all we do is bitch,” wrote Clark in an October 15 post on Twitter. “Pitchforks and torches time.” 

After successfully baiting media critics into condemning his hypocrisy, Clarke published an essay commending himself for emulating the courage of the Founding Fathers. Those men, Clarke apparently forgets, were disreputable radicals who opened fire on law enforcement officers in the performance of their duties on the morning of April 19, 1775, and whose revolutionary exemplars included a black felon named Crispus Attucks (he “stole” himself by escaping the custody of a man with a “lawful” claim to own him) who was killed while assaulting a law enforcement officer and trying to seize his firearm. 


Patriot martyr Crispus Attucks acted in self-defense, but his actions were an obvious threat to “officer safety.” If cornered and compelled to contemplate the matter at adequate length, Clarke might well dissolve into a puddle of cognitive dissonance. 

Yes, the sheriff professes to revere the colonial-era patriots, but he also subscribes to the “officer safety uber alles” dogma, under which the use of hostile language toward officers by a Mundane can justify the use of lethal force by the former. This was made clear in Clarke’s interview with Megyn Kelly in which he discussed the arrest and subsequent death in detention of Chicago activist Sandra Bland.

When Bland refused to put out the cigarette, Encina (who had previously been warned about “unprofessional” behavior) needlessly escalated the encounter, ordering her from the car, bellowing the incantation “I am giving you a lawful order,” then pulling a Taser and threatening to “light you up.” 

Bland’s violent arrest led to a three-day incarceration in the Waller County Jail that ended with a death that has been described as a suicide, despite a number of documented irregularities and derelictions on the part of the guards.
Asked by Kelly if he considered Trooper Encinia’s actions to be appropriate, Clarke said that he “wholeheartedly” supported the officer. This encounter, he continued, was a “classic case of a citizen who did not comply with an officer’s lawful commands.”

Although she was armed only with a lit cigarette – an object some exceptionally inventive police apologists describe as a dangerous weapon – and her own sense of self-ownership, Clarke described Bland as “loaded for bear from the time she was pulled over.”

“I expect an officer to go into arrest mode” in dealing with a citizen exhibiting such impudent self-possession in the presence of a uniformed overseer, Clarke told Kelly. “And once you go into arrest mode, you get to move up on the force continuum – it’s no longer verbal commands, you can use intermediate weapons. He chose a Taser.”


While the violence employed by Trooper Encinia was entirely appropriate, Clarke opined, “I was more appalled with the language [Bland] was using with an authority figure…. She did some things that caused an officer to move up in terms of his response to keep her safe and to keep himself safe.” (Emphasis added.)

Disdainful language hurled at “an authority figure” is to be treated as a “threat,” from Sheriff Clarke’s perspective – and a violent assault with a reliably lethal weapon by an officer on an unarmed woman suspected of a trivial traffic violation is merely a responsible exercise of that “authority.”

Trooper Encina was subsequently fired and charged with perjury for lying in the official report describing his assault on Bland. This would not change Clarke’s opinion of the ex-trooper and his conduct, given that the sheriff consistently condemns – on the basis of purely tribal considerations -- legal action against abusive law enforcement officers.

“I’m tired of qualifying these statements [by talking] about `bad apples’ within the law enforcement profession,” complained Clark in another Fox News appearance after a Texas prosecutor offered a fleeting acknowledgement that corrupt police officers exist. Clarke perceives law enforcement as an undifferentiated mass of heroic virtue – or at least he insists that the public should embrace that official fiction. 

It has been said that no honest cop ever struck it rich, and no wealthy cop could possibly be honest. (For the purposes of discussion, I will stipulate to the possibility that the words "honest" and "cop" can be used in proximity without violently annihilating themselves as if they were matter and anti-matter.) Clarke is a stranger to the penury that frequently is virtue’s unwelcome companion.
 

The Sheriff was given more than $9,000 in travel reimbursements to attend the annual Herb Allen & Company conference, a four-day gathering of moguls and media figures in Sun Valley, Idaho. In November, he was paid a $5,000 honorarium to offer a 48-minute presentation at the annual Restoration Weekend, a neocon assembly in Charleston, South Carolina. During that visit he was given nearly $3,000 in travel reimbursements, $1,212 for lodging, and almost $800 for meals. 


Clarke told the Journal-Sentinel that “I reported everything that I was required to report.” Milwaukee attorney Jeremy Levinson, who focuses on campaign finance and ethics issues, argues that “It looks like Clarke’s banking money he shouldn’t or is a part-time sheriff with a side job.” 

However, continued Levinson, the latter possibility “would require one to believe he’d get those lucrative speaking gigs and travel even if he weren’t an elected official.” 

Sheriff Clarke has been warmly embraced by a segment of the population that looks upon all government agencies and officials – except for the police and the military – with incurable suspicion and no small amount of hostility. This includes some people who really should know better:  Clarke was named 2013 “Sheriff of the Year” by the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, a group that opposes federalization of law enforcement.
That honor is a dubious fit for someone who clearly sees himself as a warlord, rather than a peace officer.


                                        Introducing The Libertarian Institute

Some people I greatly respect and admire -- Scott Horton, Sheldon Richman, and Jared Labell -- have invited me to participate in the newly created Libertarian Institute as managing editor. They have done me a tremendous honor, and I am deeply grateful. Scott's radio program is a national treasure, Sheldon is a man of deep and expansive learning and wisdom, and Jared has been aptly described as a "force of nature in the freedom movement."

My essays and podcasts will be available at The Libertarian Institute's website, and will continue to appear here, as well. That site will also host a blog featuring the insights offered by dozens of the most perspicuous and principled people in the individualist movement.

Once again, I am honored to be part of this undertaking, and thankful to those who have found my work worthwhile. God bless you all.


This week's Freedom Zealot Podcast:







Dum spiro, pugno!

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

If he's being tooted by Fox News, than he's a negitive issue to freemen. No question about it, Fox News has shown itself to be the same as the rest of the MSM but they do it sneaker to not blow their cover. In fact Bill O just last night was saying that Trump was way behind in the polls because he would not say that he would step asside if the election was clearly a fraud and throw his hat in. The fact is, Trump is a head in the two most reliable polls. So clearly Bill O, lied as they pretty much all do at Fox News.
The point is, this guy/Clarke is operating on an agenda that is all about making the American people servants to the establishment. He may try and throw in some sound bites that by design are there to confuse people about who he is and what he stands for. But the honest fact remains, he is very likely a person that can not do as well in life in the private sector as he does in the tax feeder sector.
Never forget the golden lie, "Hi we are here from the government and we are here to help you".

Anonymous said...

From what I understand this wack-job recently fought with a young black man on an airplane. He is also shacked up with a Caucasian female with a very sordid sexual past. It is a pattern that these "super cops" tend to have in common - violence and female groupies.

Anonymous said...

The solution to the horror stories wrought by socialist/government run security which you document so well is security provisioned by consumers 'on the market' such as Threat Management Center which you've written about before. Now keep in mind Donald Trump is a great ally in the movement toward free market security. I dare say Trump has a great and positive experience with private security which safeguard his vast property holdings as well as his own person. As well Trump views the military as a security service existing to safeguard American person and property, not at all a force to be used by the political class to rule the world. I would encourage you to read Walter Block's excellent articles making the the libertarian case for supporting Donald Trump.

William N. Grigg said...

That Donald Trump has benefited from private security services is obvious - but where has he ever said or done anything to suggest that he is "a great ally in the movement toward free market security"?

This is the same candidate who has won the endorsement of police unions because of his unqualified support for the state's "security" monopoly, chiefly because of his promise to issue an executive order mandating the death penalty for any citizen who "kills" -- not murders, mind you, but "kills," presumably even in legitimate self-defense -- a police officer.

Trump extols himself as the "law and order" candidate, posing with armed state functionaries at every campaign stop and condemning their critics. He has also endorsed targeted civilian disarmament through "stop-and-frisk," thereby becoming the first presidential candidate to make literal gun-grabbing a campaign promise.

I appreciate your kind words about my work, and have great respect for Dr. Block, whose writings I have read with interest and appreciation. His case for Trump, to my eyes, reads like an insistent and thoroughly unpersuasive embrace of lesser-evilism: In choosing between slave-masters, select the one who will wield the lighter whip. This case might appeal to people of a pragmatic cast of mind, but there is nothing even remotely "libertarian" about it.

Anonymous said...

What did people think would happen when police got military training and left over military equipment?
Anything on Fox in the henhouse news is to be avoided.
The Fox owners are all open borders globalists who will vote for The Whore of Babylon aka Hillary.
I wouldn't watch three seconds of Fox even if there was some payment involved.
Forward Comrades. Forward to the glorious one party rule utopia with each according to his need and the workers of the world united!

James Redford said...

Hi, Mr. William N. Grigg.

The reason I provisionally support Donald Trump is because he does not appear to be a Bilderberg Group candidate, whereas Hillary Clinton is. That is, Hillary is simply a completely owned tool working for the installment of the globalist oligarchy's self-termed New World Order world government and mandatory world religion, accompanying massive worldwide population reduction via world war, pathogens, death-camps, and other means. Both the Republican and Democratic political establishment act like they hate Trump's guts, and the US government-owned corporate media are blatantly aligned against him.

Further, Hillary Clinton is a mass-murderer due to her invasion operations of Libya and Syria, backing radical Muslims against secular governments, and leaving those countries in ruin. Whereas Trump has so far not murdered anyone, and is far less a warmonger than Hillary (although Hillary is more than a mere warmonger, she is also a warlord). And Hillary is attempting to to gin-up war with Russia, which is demented as Russia hasn't done anything to the US and unlike the other countries that the US decimates, Russia has hydrogen bombs that can be delivered to the US via intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Hillary is very deliberately working to collapse Western civilization, a.k.a. Christendom--a term which here is more to the point--including especially the United States. She is collapsing secular Arab governments and installing radical Muslims in order to cause humanitarian crises and their resulting mass-immigration of Muslims into Europe. US President Barack Hussein Obama II has also been mass-importing Muslims into the US--but not Christians, even though they are the ones who are being slaughtered and persecuted the most by the radical Muslims that Obama and Hillary install.

Whereas Trump does not appear to want to actually destroy the United States, nor Europe. I disagree with some of Trump's proposals, but Trump appears to be motivated out of a desire to uplift the common people. Whereas Hillary is motivated out of an elitist and misanthropic desire to inflict extreme pain, suffering and death upon the common people--as she has already so amply done.

More deeply, Trump appears to motivated by a belief that Jesus Christ is his Savior and that he will be judged upon his death. Whereas Hillary was a Communist who obviously still holds Christians in disdain.

Since it's either going to be Trump or Hillary who become US president this election, I would rather have a president who is not actively and consciously seeking to hurt the commonality, rather than one who very deliberately wishes to do so (and very much has already done so) and who is working with an anti-Christian globalist-elite criminal organization to bring mass-death upon the planet.

Now, perhaps Trump is not what he appears to be. Perhaps he is a deep-insider ringer for the establishment. But the way the political establishment is reacting to Trump is as if he is holding a lit blowtorch under their feet. Further, Trump is actually exposing serious crimes by the Clintons and their cohorts. So I say, give me more of that.

For those who would like a deeper examination of our present globalist plutocracy spoken of above, see Sec. 8.2.1, pp. 87-98 of my following article:

* James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network, orig. pub. Dec. 19, 2011, doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708, https://archive.org/download/ThePhysicsOfGodAndTheQuantumGravityTheoryOfEverything/Redford-Physics-of-God.pdf .

This article concerns physicist and mathematician Prof. Frank J. Tipler's Omega Point cosmology and the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything. However, it also analyzes the societal implications of said, particularly the implications of the exponential advancement of technology and hence also the coming radical life-extension technologies (i.e., transhumanism) in light of a world dominated by a callous oligarchy.

William N. Grigg said...

Donald Trump has not had a career of evil (to borrow a song title from a favorite band) to compare with that of Hillary Clinton, someone I have actively despised for a full quarter-century. I am cynical enough, especially in light of recent WikiLeaks disclosures regarding the Clinton Machine's "Pied Piper" media strategy, to believe that the Trump candidacy is (to change metaphors in mid-stream) a briar patch into which the Globalist Establishment is happy to be thrown.

Trump himself provided evidence of this in his January 2013 op-ed for CNN (yes, the same CNN that "sucks," as Trump rally-goers are now encouraged to chant) extolling the European Union and invoking the ideal of a borderless global economy. That piece was published to coincide with the annual elitist gathering in Davos:

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/01/22/business/opinion-donald-trump-europe/

"What has been made clear by current events and financial upheavals since 2008 is that the global economy has become truly that -- global.... We are now closer to having an economic community in the best sense of the term -- we work with each other for the benefit of all.

I think we've all become aware of the fact that our cultures and economics are intertwined. It's a complex mosaic that cannot be approached with a simple formula for the correct pattern to emerge. In many ways, we are in unchartered waters.

The good news, in one respect, is that what is done affects us all. There won't be any winners or losers as this is not a competition. It's a time for working together for the best of all involved. Never before has the phrase `we're all in this together' had more resonance or relevance.My concern is that the negligence of a few will adversely affect the majority. I've long been a believer in the `look at the solution, not the problem' theory. In this case, the solution is clear. We will have to leave borders behind and go for global unity when it comes to financial stability."

I grant that Trump neither speaks nor writes that way. Somebody else wrote those words and placed them on his desk, and Trump agreed to place his name on them, most likely after finding the proper formula of flattery to convince him that by doing so he would appear wise and insightful. As president he would behave in exactly the same fashion.

The case for Trump as a globalist stooge is thin, I grant. The case that he is "motivated by a belief that Jesus Christ is his Savior" is non-existent.Rather than investing hopes in electing the "right" president, or the least harmful of the available options, we should be exerting ourselves to interdict, interpose, and nullify the Regime's edicts by any morally legitimate means.

On that point it's interesting to me that Trump's candidacy, and the fashion in which he has conducted his campaign, is likely to inflict devastating down-ballot losses on the GOP that would give Scarlet Hillary the gift of a Democratic Congress. Again, this fact does not nail down the case that Trump is a pied piper, but if he were that's precisely what he would do.

Anonymous said...

Trump is a businessman. His cause has been the cause of serving real estate customers by paying careful attention to what they want and building it. That is, Trump has pursued the Nietzschean 'Will to Power', characteristic of all human beings btw, by free market as opposed to political means. Trump has been careful to stay out of politics until the very twilight of his life. Now America itself has been successful to the extent that it has been able to channel its people's Will to Power through free market as opposed to political pursuits. What I think Trump both understands and symbolizes to his supporters is the terrible truth that political control in the US has eclipsed, has displaced the free market free society underpinnings which once 'made America great'. But the situation is much more desperate than that. The neocon and neoliberal political rulers of the US have allied with each other to wage a third world war by which to impose US hegemony on all which can only go nuclear and quickly, likely ending life on earth [ notwithstanding the possibility that Dr Strangeloves posh underground playrooms for the political elite are for real]. Trump is a bulwark, the ONLY bulwark, against that terrible prospect at the same time he, if you prefer, is merely a hesitant first step toward returning America to its Jeffersonian and libertarian beginnings.

William N. Grigg said...

The free market works because people seek mutual advantage, rather than the exercise of power over others. Trump doesn't understand this because he is, and always has been, a crony capitalist -- what Adam Smith called the "man of system," a species of businessman who profits through political liaisons, rather than through free market competition. He has never held elective or appointed office, but he has been deeply immersed in politics ever since his father staked him with a portion of his own subsidy-enriched empire, and a list of his own political connections.

Just as it is impossible to cast out Beelzebub by his own power, we cannot restore America's Jeffersonian system by employing hyper-Hamiltonian methods. Trump presents himself as a uniquely gifted man whose brilliance cannot be restrained by the terms of a Constitution he has obviously never read - he "alone" can fix the system, and as his ads insist, he is "the only one" who can protect us.

That the Trotskyites are willing to risk war with Russia is apparent. It is hardly clear that giving unaccountable executive power to a bellicose authoritarian narcissist who - for the nonce - is more reasonable than the neo-cons with respect to Russia would improve our situation. I cannot subscribe to the idea that there are no serious flaws in Trump's character that access to nuclear launch codes wouldn't cure, especially in light of the fact that he has, until the last year or so, been entirely comfortable in the company of the globalist elite (see his CNN piece on globalism from January 2013, as mentioned above).

I believe in deathbed repentance, but that is a far different proposition from trusting in the assurances of a power-hungry man that he has revised the convictions and moral habits of a lifetime at the end of his seventh decade -- just in time for him to achieve total power.

Robert H said...

Please give Sherrif Clarke a break as he for many years has been a big advocate fighting for the 2nd Amendment and the right to carry

James Redford said...

Hi, Mr. William N. Grigg.

There is no downside to provisionally supporting Donald Trump. The worst that can happen is if Trump turns out to be as evil as Hillary Clinton, as she is as evil as anyone comes. One already knows with certitude that one is getting a mass-murdering maniac with Hillary. At least with Trump there's a chance that he actually does intend well. You seem to account that chance as slim, but regardless, we are left in no worse position personality-wise than what is certain with Hillary.

As I previously said, perhaps Trump is a deep-insider ringer for the establishment. However, Trump is doing many things which are fundamentally damaging to the political establishment, and which cannot be taken back whatever the outcome of the election. Trump has been very congenial with the Truth and Liberty movement, such as appearing on the Alex Jones Show. Jones isn't a perfectly consistent libertarian, but he's far more libertarian than the usual corporate media pundits. Jones also elaborates on many of the crimes of the deep state, including false-flag terrorism. Moreover, Jones interviews numerous people from the Truth and Liberty movement. And Trump himself is exposing many very serious crimes of the Clintons.

If the globalist oligarchy wish to send masses of people to the Truth and Liberty movement, then I do not object to that.

The only reason for the establishment running a campaign such as Trump's is because they actually intentionally want to reveal their own crimes to the public--or rather, the segment of the public which cares about the truth. If that's the case, then that means that they are hoping to incite a mass-revolt, particularly in the form of a violent civil war, which would then allow them to crack-down on the public at large. If the US experiences such a collapse, then one can imagine that UN forces could be called in to help put down such an uprising and to merge the US into a global governmental body.

However, the biggest names on our movement's side consistently warn against such violence, as we understand that it empowers the state. And we should continue to do so.

I can't control what society does, but what I can do is help convey truth to people. Really what our side is doing, whether everyone on our side knows it or not, is helping to save people's souls (i.e., the computer program of people's minds, currently operating on the wet-computer of people's brains). In that vein, I recommend everyone read my above-cited article "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything".

Anonymous said...

Though you have apparently managed to convince yourself that Walter Block's philosophy is reducible to a preference for he who will be the more benign slave master, I think it will prove difficult for you to pull out from Blocks vast discourse words which justify such conclusion. All Block is saying with regard to Trump is that the present election presents a fundamental choice: Nuclear war or NOT. In fact he spells it all out in an essay:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/06/walter-e-block/hillary-bernie-donald-gary/
Blocks idea is that political candidates are best categorized along three fundamental axis:
'There are three broad arenas to which these libertarian principles can apply: foreign policy, economics, and personal liberties. But the first is by far the most important. It probably outweighs the other two, even put together, by a wide margin. This is because, as Murray Rothbard and Robert Higgs have emphasized, this area determines what occurs in the other two. There are of course some feedback effects in all directions, but the causation is mainly a one-way street. For example, if the country is at war, the central banking system is typically strengthened, as taxes and borrowing become unable to finance the gargantuan appetites of the imperialist intervention abroad. And, too, the military draft is more likely to be implemented, reducing not only economic liberties but personal ones as well.'

Block then proceeds to deduce a strategy of voting most likely to best reduce the probability of nuclear war. Thats it. I must confess I am rather surprised to hear
you [on the Oct 29 podcast], one of the greats of the libertarian movement, haul out the heavy artillery of St Augustine and Hobbes to join forces with the shrill chorus of Trump denunciation. Now the problem for Hobbes was actually how to preserve the Monarchy. All the gaudy drawings and language of Leviathan was but a florid attempt rework the poltical theory of the king to try to convince the people that the king was both the literal and symbolic embodiment of the will of the people. This is the origin of the poltical fiction of the 'Will of the People' a motivated category intended to legitimize political rule. Hobbes was the CNN of the day. The outcome of 1776 was merely to transfer investiture of this political construct from the monarch to the institution of government itself.

1776s lofty proposition of the free society was largely stillborn. I would put it to you that the phenomenon of Trump should be understood as the the great reawakening of those lofty libertarian principles, not at all merely a wish to return to the embryonic form of state democracy which followed 1776. Think of this election as that first cup of coffee following a long night of heavy debauchery at the bar of socialism, Progressivism, democracy [ the god that failed ]. We are at the point in the Wizard of Oz where the curtain has just been pulled back and the hideous fraud of political power laid bare. This election has been like a tug of war on the curtain where Trump, wikileaks, the MSM, and the Clinton machine have given their all to open and close it. The more Trump managed to get the curtain open the more the people crowded around, amazed and aghast to finally see the extent to which they'd been duped. The more they realized they'd been duped the more the chanted for the curtain to be pulled back. Both Trump himself and his supporters have arrived at a much different understanding of their situation compared to when the election began. And while that point may be merely the first shaky step toward the establishment of a libertarian philosophy, it is nevertheless a distinguishable departure from all political rule that has preceded it.

William N. Grigg said...

Though you have apparently managed to convince yourself that Walter Block's philosophy is reducible to a preference for he who will be the more benign slave master. I think it will prove difficult for you to pull out from Blocks vast discourse words which justify such conclusion.

I am grateful for the kind words that are included in your detailed and thought-provoking critique of my podcast.

Dr. Block's philosophy is much deeper and more complicated than this. His defense of Donald Trump is not:

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/03/walter-e-block/libertarians-trump/

Suppose we were all slaves, and the master said we could have a democratic election; we could vote for overseer Baddie, who would whip us unmercifully once per day, or overseer Goodie, who would do exactly the same thing, but only once per month. We all voted for the latter. Is this incompatible with libertarianism? Would this make us worse libertarians?

This is a fallacy unworthy of a scholar as accomplished as Dr. Block, but I can't be blamed for quoting him accurately and explaining how using the franchise to elect a supposedly benign slave overseer is irreconcilable with the core tenets of libertarianism.

I would put it to you that the phenomenon of Trump should be understood as the the great reawakening of those lofty libertarian principles, not at all merely a wish to return to the embryonic form of state democracy which followed 1776.

The Trump Phenomenon is a collectivist leader-cult. His movement seeks to control the instrumentality of coercion, and strengthen it for use against their enemies (including, I would assume, the "traitors" on the Right and in the liberty movement), rather than abolishing it, or even reducing its footprint. Trump has promised to strengthen NATO, expand the use of drone strikes and torture, to "stand fast with Israel," and to wage trade wars that --as Dr. Paul has pointed out -- consistently lead to shooting wars.

That Hillary Clinton is a bloodthirsty fiend is clear from her record. That Donald Trump would be any better requires a great deal of supposition, and a determined effort to ignore the pervasive evidence of his authoritarian and vindictive impulses.

Ron Paul consistently said that he was an imperfect messenger, but that his message -- self-ownerhip, property rights, peace -- was not to be judged by his flaws.

Trump seeks power on the assumption that he is uniquely able to wield it competently. He is his message.

"I alone can fix it!" Trump proclaimed at the GOP Convention.

"Yes, you will!" bleated his followers.

"I alone can protect you!" insist his ads.

"Yes, you will!" responds the collectivist chorus.

I will allow myself a satisfied chuckle if Hillary is defeated on November 8. I've despised her for more than a quarter-century and helped impeach her husband. If this happens -- mark this down, and re-read it at the appropriate time -- the same people who are presently complaining about Trump's critics during the campaign will display precisely the same attitude once he is exercising power as the president. His every predictable betrayal of their expectations will be blamed on the scorners and unbelievers who have refused to clap for Tinker-Trump.

James Redford said...

Hi, Mr. William N. Grigg.

I have to disagree with you in your above October 29, 2016 comments.

You are presenting the situation as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as both being self-owners who are representing their own worldview and interests.

But that is not actually the case. Hillary is a representative, a front-person, for a ruling-elite agenda that has been in operation for well over a century. What this agenda ultimately entails is the literal extermination of mankind, as this is the *magnum opus* of alchemy, the desire of so many rulers throughout history: immortality.

It's coming fast upon us, with the exponential advancement of technology. But they--the highest members of the ruling elite--do not intend that the common masses be partakers of it. For the fuller details on this, I will here refer you to my above-cited article "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything".

Now, maybe Trump is a deep-insider ringer for this same globalist oligarchy. In which case we are disadvantageously coitioned both ways.

But if Trump is not a puppet of this globalist oligarchy, then whatever Trump's flaws might be, mankind is in a much better position. For then he is not part of a century-and-longer operation by the top ruling elites on this planet to warp mankind into their demented New World Order world government and mandatory world religion agenda.

Moreover, Trump is actually doing good in the here and now (!), not when he does or does not eventually take office. Trump is actually sending people to our side, and in droves!

Whereas Hillary is openly hostile to our side.

So if Trump is actually a tool of the globalist elite, then I do not object to them sending masses of people to us.

The war is not with society. The war is not with the globe. The war is internal. My real goal is to help save people's souls.

William N. Grigg said...

Trump is actually doing good in the here and now (!), not when he does or does not eventually take office. Trump is actually sending people to our side, and in droves!

What "good" is Trump doing by catalyzing a personality cult in which he makes promises he cannot keep that depend on exercising powers no man should have?

At present, he is stoking within his adherents an appetite to punish their enemies -- rather than motivating them to seek to free themselves. These are people who would happily live under the heel of an undisguised executive dictatorship, as long as Hillary is in prison and the government cracks down on people they see as the enemy.

The contending "sides" to which you refer are struggling over control of a dictatorial apparatus -- Lenin's who/whom dichotomy, divested of any pretense of a civic culture in which coexistence is possible.

Abraham, the father of the faithful, didn't choose sides when those ruling the cities of the plain went to war. He tended to the welfare of his household, and "the souls they had gotten in Haran" (Gen. 12:5). He eschewed politics and trusted in God, and this was credited to him as righteousness.

Anonymous said...

In his recent debate with Nick Gillespie, Walter Block emphasised the preeminent position held by foreign policy in considering how to vote. Block's point was that the present foreign policy of the US political elite, a policy of pure belligerence, necessarily conditions everything else. For instance the Fed pumps up the money supply to fund US military invasions and occupations leading to debasement of the currency. In fact such currency debasement is what has made globalisation, insofar as it has increased free trade, appear to have depressed wages. Currency debasement has fueled the present second real estate bubble, contributing to people's sense of becoming poorer. And btw Trump has denounced the Fed, the tool of the crony capitalists and neocon warmongers.
There are many other such indicators militating against the proposition that Trump is a crony capitalist and crypto sponsor of state fascism but let us set them aside and suppose that Trump is a mere fascist nationalist. Nevertheless fundamental to such putative fascism is a very real isolationism. In his debate with Gillespie Block brought up a number of Trumps statements congruent with John Quincy Adams admonition to the young republic that 'American does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy'.
Now people like Noam Chomsky and William Blum have spent much of their life painstakingly documenting the endless cases of murderous aggression waged by the US political class against foreign countries. Whatever one makes of their flawed anarcho-syndicalist economic ideas, they are absolutely right about American foreign policy. Blum even goes so far as to characterize US foreign policy as intended to destroy hope. What he means is that the one thing the US political class will not tolerate is independence, is free societies free of US domination. Countries must either submit to US domination or face sanctions, coups, or invasions. Now whatever case can be made that Trump is a crypto fascist, he is first and foremost a neo isolationist. Where Hillary is part and parcel of the neocon/US political class cabal to rule the world by force, Trump wants none of it. What this means is this: Even assuming your assessment of Trump as a fascist is correct, unlike historical fascists like Mussolini, Trump is adamant NOT to export such fascism. Even if as you suggest Trump does not herald the reactivation of libertarian philosophy as so many in America hope, Trumps isolationism permits for the possibility for such libertarian philosophy to at least emerge elsewhere in ways the US political elite have heretofore abjectly prevented.

Anonymous said...

There is a story which just appeared on Lew Rockwell indicating Trump has called for the PRIVATIZING of US Infrastructure specifically highways and bridges. He would make them for profit privately funded and privately administered operations. Now with privately owned and privately operated roads comes the same private security as found in private gated communities and privately owned shopping malls. Think what this means for the driving public: No more belligerent aggressive unionized government 'security' worker shakedown operations like Desert Snow the horrors of which you document so well. Now while Trump may not be a straight line to libertarianism, nevertheless his instincts are toward privatization and away from government control. This is what is so monumental, singular, and so encouraging.

William N. Grigg said...

If the alarmist headline chosen by the comrades at Slate described the proposal accurately, I would share your optimism. For that publication's editorial collective, anything short of literal enactment of Marx's ten planks savors of unacceptable "privatization."

Dr. Wilbur Ross, one of the architects of the Trump infrastructure proposal, grants that it is actually more of a public-private partnership (i.e. a form of fascism).

Wilbur concedes as well that the plan is "Keynesian in one sense that it’s more spending into the economy, but unlike [Clinton's] thing, it’s spending without a tax increase. It creates its own tax flow. Now, that is going to be a wildly controversial concept, because people never think about, well, if I build infrastructure, I will get tax revenue from it … but it’s a fact. It does take workmen to build infrastructure, they will pay tax.”

(I think it's appropriate to point out that Ross's investment firm just paid a very steep fine for deceptively overcharging its clients by about $10.4 million in management fees during the last investment bubble, an observation I offer under the heading "caveat emptor.")

The plan likewise anticipates that "Companies paying the ten percent tax on the repatriation of overseas retained earnings could use the tax credit on infrastructure equity investment to offset their tax liability on bringing the money back." This is an application of the principle described by New York Fed Chairman Beardsley Ruml seventy years ago: The Regime uses the tax system for the purpose of engineering behavior, which in this case would be done in the service of economic nationalism.

Economic nationalism might be less aggressively malignant than the internationalist version of collectivism that Hillary embodies, but if we pursue that direction the only way we arrive at a libertarian outcome is to take a U turn.

Anonymous said...

Christian my ass. Grigg... you are nothing but an anarchist piece of shit; no better than those idiots in Portland breaking all the windows... you just do it with your barbed and hateful comments.

William N. Grigg said...

I'm sorry to have disturbed the tranquility of your safe space, oh bold and brave Mr. Anonymous. :-)