Stacy Herbert: Was Mises a stoner?

GOP social policy is dictated by their selective reading of the Bible, says Andrew Sullivan; and now its economic policy is dictated by the Tea Party wing that certainly demands those Biblical social policies but then demands Austrian School (or so they say) and Objectivism as economic policy.  The two are so irreconciliable (as both Rand and Mises said) that somewhere somehow someone is lying.

Ayn Rand on libertarian/religionists:

“The trouble with the world today is philosophical: only the right philosophy can save us. But this party [Libertarian] plagiarizes some of my ideas, mixes them with the exact opposite — with religionists, anarchists and every intellectual misfit and scum they can find—and call themselves libertarians and run for office.”

Ayn Rand on abortion:

Abortion is a moral right—which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her own body?

and:

Never mind the vicious nonsense of claiming that an embryo has a “right to life.” A piece of protoplasm has no rights—and no life in the human sense of the term. One may argue about the later stages of a pregnancy, but the essential issue concerns only the first three months. To equate a potential with an actual, is vicious; to advocate the sacrifice of the latter to the former, is unspeakable. . . . Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living: the right of young people to set the course of their own lives. The task of raising a child is a tremendous, lifelong responsibility, which no one should undertake unwittingly or unwillingly. Procreation is not a duty: human beings are not stock-farm animals. For conscientious persons, an unwanted pregnancy is a disaster; to oppose its termination is to advocate sacrifice, not for the sake of anyone’s benefit, but for the sake of misery qua misery, for the sake of forbidding happiness and fulfillment to living human beings.

Ludwig von Mises on Jesus and Christianity:

[Jesus] rejects everything that exists without offering anything to replace it. . . . The clearest modern parallel to the attitude of complete negation of primitive Christianity is Bolshevism. (Socialism, p. 413)

and

Jesus’s words are full of resentment against the rich, and the Apostles are no meeker in this respect. The Rich Man is condemned because he is rich, the Beggar praised because he is poor…. In God’s Kingdom the poor shall be rich, but the rich shall be made to suffer. Later revisers have tried to soften the words of Christ against the rich … but there is quite enough left to support those who incite the world to hatred of the rich, revenge, murder and arson…. This is a case in which the Redeemer’s words bore evil seed. More harm has been done, and more blood shed, on account of them than by the persecution of heretics and the burning of witches. They have always rendered the Church defenceless against all movements which aim at destroying human society.” (Socialism, p. 420)

and this:

Christianity “cannot, it seems, exist side by side with Capitalism. Just as in the case of Eastern religions, Christianity must either overcome Capitalism or go under.”

And note that Mises also said that one cannot have the free markets the Tea Party claims to want without totally free borders across which humans (black, brown and white), labor and capital must be free to travel if free markets and liberty should exist at all. And yet a major element of their platform is far more militarization of the border; which means by definition they cannot be Austrian School as defined by Mises.

Many of those who came to our site over the past few days from Mises.org were hee-hawing about the great Gary North; oh this great Austrian economist, who claims Mises as his economic inspiration and whose writings can be found often on Mises.org.

If you want to know what the future looks like when blending biblical social policies with their warped interpretation of Mises look no further:

According to Gary North (who is the son in law of Rushdooney), women who have abortions should be publicly executed, “along with those who advised them to abort their children.” Rushdoony concludes: “God’s government prevails, and His alternatives are clear-cut: either men and nations obey His laws, or God invokes the death penalty against them.” Reconstructionists insist that “the death penalty is the maximum, not necessarily the mandatory penalty.” . . .
The Biblically approved methods of execution include burning (at the stake for example), stoning, hanging, and “the sword.” Gary North, the self-described economist of Reconstructionism, prefers stoning because, among other things, stones are cheap, plentiful, and convenient. Punishments for non-capital crimes generally involve whipping, restitution in the form of indentured servitude, or slavery. Prisons would likely be only temporary holding tanks, prior to imposition of the actual sentence.

So – you can pretend that insulting these men is insulting Mises, but I will continue to read the man’s works without requiring Mullah Omar to interpret it for me. And we will continue to ask questions about what sort of ‘freedom’ these self-professed disciples of von Mises want to bring you. And you can continue to shriek all you want claiming we are ‘statists’ and don’t understand ‘natural law’ (ignoring the fact, of course, that Christian Reconstructionists like Gary North oppose natural law theory as a basis for civil law order) for our being concerned about a Mises quoting Taliban in America; but hey, I’d like to know if Mises was a stoner.

- Stacy Herbert

***UPDATE**: Theocratic Libertarianism: Quotes from Gary North, Ludwig von Mises Institute Scholar

So let us be blunt about it: we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy constructing a Bible-based social, political, and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God. Murder, abortion, and pornography will be illegal. God’s law will be enforced. It will take time. A minority religion cannot do this. Theocracy must flow from the heart of a majority of citizens, just as compulsory education came only after most people had their children in schools of some sort. [p.25]

AND:

We have to face up to the choice that must be made between God’s law or man’s law. We have to acknowledge the inescapable decision: God’s covenant or natural law? [pp. 37 -38]

And yet, now go back to the earlier thread where all the LVMI devout followers dropped the phrase ‘natural law’ over and over and over again, not one mentioned ‘God’s covenant’ which is what they are really pushing. And when confronted with this, they shriek, ‘natural law,’ ‘natural law,’ ‘statist’ . . . these are the words the cult programmed me to say over and over and over again, so that I might sound like a liberty loving libertarian, help me I can’t stop!

 

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