Libertarian.ie

Historical Political Theory

Commentary

• http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard11.html
  Edmund Burke, Anarchist
  by Murray N. Rothbard
  Published as "A Note on BurkeÕs Vindication of Natural Society" in the Journal of the History of Ideas, 19, 1 (January 1958), pp. 114-118.
  In 1756 Edmund Burke published his first work: Vindication of Natural Society. Curiously enough it has been almost completely ignored in the current Burke revival. This work contrasts sharply with BurkeÕs other writings, for it is hardly in keeping with the current image of the Father of the New Conservatism. A less conservative work could hardly be imagined; in fact, BurkeÕs Vindication was perhaps the first modern expression of rationalistic and individualistic anarchism.
• http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard-arch.html
  Left and Right:
  The Prospects for Liberty
  by MURRAY N. ROTHBARD
  (Left & Right, Spring 1965, pp. 4-22)
  © 2002 The Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama
  ... there developed in Western Europe two great political ideologies, centered around this new revolutionary phenomenon: the one was Liberalism, the party of hope, of radicalism, of liberty, of the Industrial Revolution, of progress, of humanity; the other was Conservatism, the party of reaction, the party that longed to restore the hierarchy, statism, theocracy, serfdom, and class exploitation of the old order. Since liberalism admittedly had reason on its side, the Conservatives darkened the ideological atmosphere with obscurantist calls for romanticism, tradition, theocracy, and irrationalism. Political ideologies were polarized, with Liberalism on the extreme "Left," and Conservatism on the extreme "Right," of the ideological spectrum. That genuine Liberalism was essentially radical and revolutionary was brilliantly perceived, in the twilight of its impact, by the great Lord Acton (one of the few figures in the history of thought who, charmingly, grew more radical as he grew older). Acton wrote that "Liberalism wishes for what ought to be, irrespective of what is." In working out this view, incidentally, it was Acton, not Trotsky, who first arrived at the concept of the "permanent revolution."
• http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard28.html
  The Progressive Era and the Family
  by Murray N. Rothbard
  Very rapidly, the political parties reflected a virtually one-to-one correlation of this ethnoreligious division: the Whig, and later the Republican, party consisting chiefly of the pietists, and the Democratic party encompassing almost all the liturgicals. And for almost a century, on a state and local level, the Whig/Republican pietists tried desperately and determinedly to stamp out liquor and all Sunday activities except church (of course, drinking liquor on Sunday was a heinous double sin). As to the Catholic church, the pietists tried to restrict or abolish immigration, since people coming from Germany and Ireland, liturgicals, were outnumbering people from Britain and Scandinavia. Failing that and despairing of doing anything about adult Catholics poisoned by agents of the Vatican, the evangelical pietists decided to concentrate on saving Catholic and Lutheran youth by trying to eliminate the parochial schools, through which both religious groups transmitted their precious religious and social values to the young. The object, as many pietists put it, was to "Christianize the Catholics," to force Catholic and Lutheran children into public schools, which could then be used as an instrument of pietist Protestantization. Since the Yankees had early taken to the idea of imposing communal civic virtue and obedience through the public schools, they were particularly receptive to this new reason for aggrandizing public education.
• http://www.fee.org/vnews.php?nid=4326
  Tensions in Early American Political Thought
  Published in The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty - May 1999
  by Joseph R. Stromberg
  Joseph Stromberg is a part-time college lecturer in history who has contributed to the Journal of Libertarian Studies, Reason, Independent Review, and other publications. According to the eminent historian of political thought J.G.A. Pocock, republican theory (or Òcivic humanismÓ) was the most significant current of eighteenth-century English and American political philosophy. In the form of Òcountry ideology,Ó republicanism gave ÒleftÓ and ÒrightÓ critics of government policies a framework and believable rhetoric for their arguments. The so-called Òradical WhiggismÓ of the American Revolution was itself, on this reading, merely an extreme and consistent version of the republican ideas of the English opposition.
• http://www.grundskyld.dk/2-Pharaoh.html
  Pharaoh Had A Dream
  by DR. VIGGO STARCKE, M.P.
  Cabinet Minister in the Danish Government
  Henry George says: "Consider what Egypt was. See the grandeur of her monuments; those very monuments-that after the lapse, not of centuries but of millenniums, seem to say to us, as the Egyptian priests said to the boastful Greeks: 'Ye are children! '-testify to the enslavement of the people, are the enduring witnesses of a social organisation that rested on the masses an immovable weight. That narrow Nile valley, the cradle of the arts and sciences, the scene, perhaps, of the greatest triumphs of the human mind, is also the scene of its most abject enslavement. In the long centuries of its splendour, its lord, secure in the possession of irresistible temporal power, and securer still in the awful sanctions of a mystical religion, was as a god on earth, to cover whose poor carcass with a tomb befitting his state, hundreds of thousands toiled away their lives."
  He, who could take the land from the people, owned them and what they produced. Despots arose and cartels who realised this.
• http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2419/leftindx.html
  Workers Solidarity Movement (Ireland)
  Why the left has failed to change the world and how it can succeed.

Source Texts

• http://www.grundskyld.dk/2-agrar.html
  AGRARIAN JUSTICE
  by THOMAS PAINE
  Liberty and Property are words expressing all those of our possessions which are not of an intellectual nature. There are two kinds of property. Firstly, natural property, or that which comes to us from the Creator of the universe,--such as the earth, air, water. Secondly, artificial or acquired property,--the invention of men. In the latter equality is impossible; for to distribute it equally it would be necessary that all should have contributed in the same proportion, which can never be the case; and this being the case, every individual would hold on to his own property, as his right share. Equality of natural property is the subject of this little essay. Every individual in the world is born therein with legitimate claims on a certain kind of property, or its equivalent.
• http://www.iol.ie/~dluby/proclaim.htm
  POBLACHT NA H EIREANN
  THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF THE IRISH REPUBLIC TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND