Old Truth Blog

Michael Suede of LibertarianNews.com has some excellent thought experiments on the violence of the state: -Your mother grew illegal vegetable matter and gave it to her sick friend. If found guilty, she faces 1 year in jail and a 1000 dollar fine. – would you convict her? -Your mother is the CEO of her privately owned corporation and she hid corporate income in order to avoid taxation. She used the money she kept to help you pay for your college. If found guilty, she faces 5 years in federal prison and a 100,000 dollar fine. – would you convict her? -Your mother owns a restaurant and she agreed to allow a 15 year old waitress to work overtime during the summer so she could save money up for a car. She is guilty of violating child labor laws. If found guilty, she faces 6 months in federal prison and a $10,000 fine. – would you convict her? -Your mother installed an addition to her home without asking the State permission before doing so. She is guilty of failure to obtain...

Here's something that I just wrote up for an online conversation regarding the Constitution: Derek, let's start from the beginning. For the moment, let's not even consider whether or not God established the Constitution. Let's pretend that we don't know that yet. Is the Constitution a socialist document? Did the Founders establish a socialist government with the Constitution? The answer to both questions is yes. The Constitution is a socialist document and the Founders used it to establish a socialist government. Read Hoppe's " A Theory of Socialism & Capitalism " to better understand what socialism is. He tackles totalitarian, social democractic, conservative, and constitutional socialism in his treatise. Did it establish totalitarian socialism? No. It established limited socialism, but socialism nonetheless. Study socialism from those who understand socialism, and you'll understand why these are true statements. There's a one lin...

Government debt's a big problem in the US and all over Europe (and I'm sure elsewhere). What's to be done? For starters, governments need to cut spending across the board. That'll prevent more debt. As for the existing debt, there's only one libertarian solution. I give you Rothbard via " The Ethics of Liberty ", chapter 24, paragraph 5: Many libertarians fall into confusion on specific relations with the State, even when they concede the general immorality or criminality of State actions or interventions. Thus, there is the question of default, or more widely, repudiation of government debt. Many libertarians assert that the government is morally bound to pay its debts, and that therefore default or repudiation must be avoided. The problem here is that these libertarians are analogizing from the perfectly proper thesis that private persons or institutions should keep their contracts and pay their debts. But government has no money of its own, and paym...

This video is absolutely superb. If you value life and freedom at all, Ron Paul deserves your support.

I'm not sure why I've been fixated on this the last few days, how it entered my mind's eye, but I can't shake it until I get it out. I believe that Ezra Taft Benson, former President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint, and prophet of God, was an anarchist of the voluntaryist/libertarian sort, and that's a good thing. He spoke often about the need to defend and preserve the Constitution of the United States. Now, it is also my belief that constitutional government is a " pure manifestation of Socialism ". How do I reconcile the belief that Ezra Taft Benson was both an anarchist and a Constitutionalist? That's easy, for the same reasons that I'm both an anarchist and a Constitutionalist. One of the most popular essays of Ezra Taft Benson is his " The Proper Role of Government ". He begins this essay with these verses of LDS scripture on the proper role of government: We believe that governments were instituted of God...

Oh boy I wish I read this book sooner. I would have become an anarcho-capitalist a long time ago had I started with this book. Hoppe completely obliterates the argument for socialism in any degree, from a limited nightwatchman state to democratic socialism to full-blown Soviet Union totalitarian socialism. And he does it in under 300 pages. How great is this book? His first 6 chapters look at every degree of Socialism, and using step-by-step logical deduction shows it to be economically inferior to free market, voluntaryist capitalism. Included in this analysis is an attack on empiricism used by mainstream, non-Austrian, economic theory. He then takes Socialism down with a rock solid ethics/moral argument. But he doesn't end there. Hoppe completes his masterpiece with a case against the fear of a monopoly producer in a free market, and for the private production of security. He even takes down the "public goods" argument for the state. This book truly has it all. Fr...

The below video demonstrates rather briefly the consistency in the fight for liberty, sound economics, and a non-interventionist foreign policy that has permeated Ron Paul's congressional career.

My 6-year-old son's always asking me how different things are made. He sometimes has some unusual requests. I can only tell him so much before he just gets confused. Enter the Science Channel's " How It's Made ". I've watched this program in the past, but he was too young to care. I re-discovered it while channel surfing. I quickly got him to watch it with me, and he fell in love with it. We set up our DVR to record the last 2 episodes, so there's always something new for him to watch. What is "How It's Made"? To me, it's Leonard Read's " I, Pencil " on steroids. For those unfamiliar with Read's essay, it's a story of creation from the perspective of an everyday pencil. The essay's thesis is that it's impossible for any single person to make a pencil. The story traces the pencil's coming together after it's parts are found all over the world. It takes thousands of people, all of whom are working to ...

I've been debating with myself on whether or not I should even make this post. My thoughts on what I'm about to say have a dual meaning. First, on just how far-reaching and consistent Ron Paul's libertarian principles are, and Second, how far I believe we've strayed as a society from the Christian principles to love our neighbor as well as our enemies. In theory, everything points to Ron Paul being electable. He can out-left the Left and out-right the Right . But I think that's also his downfall. He has too many enemies, and those enemies have too much power. Just look at this list: The Federal Reserve Wall Street Bankers Military Contractors Federal Drug Warriors Big Labor, Unions Big Agriculture Foreign Recipients of Federal Aid And the list goes on. I see too many special interests with too much on the line (money) to allow a Ron Paul victory. He wants to capsize the boat that is Big Government. And here's the really disturbing part, I even g...

January 2021: I read this essay and added commentary for Episode 459 of the Everything Voluntary podcast . If you've ever criticized taxation in front of an average statist, be them liberal or conservative, you know that it quickly turns awkward. They insist that taxation is necessary for certain services and that they're happy to pay it. They sometimes even assume you're advocating not paying taxes, then the conversation turns towards a discussion on the merits of "obeying the law". We are just supposed to obey the law, people say. My fellow Latter-day Saints are even more insistent on this, throwing out the knee-jerk 12th Article of Faith reaction. We are supposed to support "government" and obey the law. We are supposed to be good little citizens. If we don't like the law, we can write a letter to our congressman, our run for office ourselves, etc. But what about when the law becomes criminal? What, you don't believe the law can be crimin...