Is Britain being overrun by Jihadis posing as refugees?

You may recall that when the Eastern European states joined the EU that the press widely reported that, unlike for non-EU residents, the UK had no powers to stop the free movement of goods and people. The UK has NO OBLIGATION to admit non-EU residents and has strict policies on admitting economic migrants with each case being examined individually on its merits.

There are special processes for dealing with refugees under international law. Refugees are required to apply individually for refugee status and are sometimes held in special detention centres while their claims are being investigated with those whose claims are rejected being deported. Most refugees are from countries that the UK is not actively bombing, or supporting bombing, yet this is how they are treated. How, logically, would we treat refugees from a country we ARE actively bombing, or supporting bombing, when we have the legislation in place to detain them?

Ask any policeman how consistent witness statements are for any incident. Stories about incidents are all over the place with witnesses reporting different numbers of perps, different clothes, height, hair colour, weapons etc. In short, if every witness is telling the same story the police are usually suspicious and suspect collusion. Similarly, any normal event, such as a speech, policy proposal, or change in the law, or benefits etc. is reported wildly differently in the media yet, as far as I can tell, all the media are telling THE SAME STORY about the 'refugee crisis'.

Question. If Poles and Lithuanians came to Britain for a better life without being bombed, would not some innocent Syrians choose a better life in Britain after they had been bombed out of their own country? Where are the media stories about them? They must exist. 

Also, much is made of men of fighting age forming a proportion of the migrants. In conflict zones, young men of fighting age are conscripted against their will to fight for one side or the other (Google 'Ukraine conscription'). I might leave my country if it was being bombed and I would certainly pack my son off pretty sharpish to a safer environment if there was a danger of him being forced to die for someone else's cause, especially ISIS's. So, invasion by Jihadis is not the only possible explanation for the presence of young men in the migrant numbers. Has the media presented any other explanation?

After 7/7 the UK government used peoples' understandable fears to enact legislation such as The Terrorism Act and RIPA to take away our liberties and increase government powers. After all, as they say, "No good disaster should go unexploited". The UK government, who have no obligation to do so whatsoever, are apparently letting in foreign persons from a war zone we are participating in without checks, then, their tame media mouthpieces all trumpet the dire warnings of impending doom. Nothing to see here... right?

The UK has no grounds to attack Syria or to support such an attack and such an attack has little popular support. If the UK population perceive themselves as in danger because they are told that they are being flooded by dangerous Jihadis, any plan to invade Syria and create 'safe zones' where the migrants could be deported safely to WOULD receive popular support. How convenient that these scare stories could change popular opinion in favour of the government's already expressed policy.

Am I the only one who finds all this a little odd?

The EPA Legally Controls All Water, Food Production and Private Property

Source: beforeitsnews





The EPA Legally Controls All Water, Food Production and Private Property

Mike and Chantel Sacket, from Priest Lake, Idaho, were preparing an 0.63 acre plot of land for the construction of their new home when an order by the EPA was issued to remove piles of fill material and replant the vegetation that they had removed from their property. The couple paid $23,000 for their property.

The order from the EPA was issued after the couple had gone through the process of acquiring all of the necessary permits to begin construction. Failure to comply with the EPA order would have resulted in a daily fine of up to $37,500.

The Idaho couple sued, in an attempt to prove that their land did not meet the criteria for being declared a wetland by the EPA, however, the lower court refused to hear the case. Fortunately, the Supreme Court sided with Mike and Chantel as well as several other property owners who had been the victims of EPA tyranny. The details of the case are provided here.

What seemed like a victory for property owners against the EPA may prove to be short-lived. The EPA is back and they are back with a renewed vengeance. Under the Clean Water Restoration Act, the EPA is in control of all “navigable waters.” On the surface, the term “navigable waters” would seem to provide some measure of protection to the public from invasive EPA enforcement by placing some reasonable limitations on the EPA’s regulatory power. Alas, that is proving not to be the case.

The Clean Water Restoration Act goes far beyond the original intent of the law which was the protection of waterfowl and the conservation of wetlands. The proverbial fly in the ointment has its roots in the recent removal of the term “navigable waters”.

Under the new guidelines, if you use well water, the EPA has jurisdiction over your property and can even forcibly evict you and your family. If it rained overnight, or you have runoff from a recent snowfall, and there is any resulting puddles on your property, this can result in the loss of the free use of your property. You are also subject to eviction from your land if your property resides above an underground water aquifer.
A Thinly Veiled Excuse

Illegal to conserve. What ever happened to Agenda 21’s conservation movement?

In reality, this law has nothing to with preserving water and is simply a thinly veiled excuse to separate as many Americans from their land as possible. This strategy is straight out of the Agenda 21 playbook and it is being used to attack private property rights throughout the West. This strategy dovetails nicely with something I recently wrote about with regard to the fact that many state governments in the West are prohibiting the trapping and use of rainwater and the reuse of farm irrigation water. The last thing the Federal government wants is to allow Americans the right to fully control their property and to experience any kind of water independence.

The underlying intent of these policies is to attack America by lashing out at the food producers of America. The Wetlands legislation is being used to force the food producers of this country off of their land as the EPA begins to assess farmers $37,500 dollar, per day, fines for having any kind of standing water on their properties. The EPA is all to happy to provide relief for farmers and ranchers and acquire their land to help these victims of federal tyranny to get out from underneath their fines.

Most rural communities understand what is happening to them, but these events are receiving almost no attention except for the exceptional news blurb. The most dramatic reporting on this event occurred in the past week on FOX News in which Judge Andrew Napolitano appeared on FOX and recounted many of the claims which I have identified here.

A number of other water issues have been the subject of recent Congressional oversight and subsequent legislation. Some legislators have been highly critical of recent regulatory initiatives which have abused the personal property rights of individual farmers, ranchers and homeowners. As of this date, despite some scant interest in EPA abuses, Congress has failed to act against the EPA for Fifth Amendment violations of property rights.
The True Intentions of the EPA

There is one person who has almost more water than God, but he is not and he never will be regulated by the EPA and his name is T. Boon Pickens.

Pickens could be found guilty of diverting rainwater to a house of prostitution and he will never run afoul of the EPA and its enforcement army from the Army Corps of Engineers, because Pickens is part of the plot to hand off the nation’s water supply to private corporate interests which will be beyond the reach of the EPA.

America is the victim of a three pronged attack which is designed to control all water: (1) Through the Clean Water Act, the EPA controls all water; (2) As a result of controlling all water, the EPA will come to naturally control all food production; (3) Since all property has some degree of water on it, the EPA is, in effect, the draconian landlord over everyone’s property.
Rules for Thee but Not for Me

That one person which is not impacted by EPA regulations and that person controls as much water as he wants. That infamous corporate raider and robber baron of the oil industry, T. Boone Pickens, is leading the charge to unscrupulously enrich himself as he leads the global depopulation efforts to create a series of artificially contrived water shortages. Pickens was one of the first to rush to capitalize on the impending water shortage by his insidious acquisition of the largest underground aquifer in the US, the Ogallala Aquifer, containing a quadrillion gallons of water, This massive underground reservoir extends from Texas to South Dakota.

In Roberts County, TX., Pickens has purchased nearly 70,000 acres, as well as the water rights to personally remove up to half of the Ogallala Aquifer of which he plans to sell back to nearby residents in order to enrich himself. Much of this aquifer extends into prime farm land located in America’s bread basket. One man, T. Boone Pickens, is acquiring the ability to turn the American heartland into a dust bowl. Pickens will soon have the political power to charge so much for water, that farmers will be forced to abandon their farms and ranches in a Hunger Games rendition in which government sponsored interests will eventually become the sole purveyor of the nation’s food and water supply as the anti-humanist, Pickens, makes more money from water than he ever did with oil.

In order to acquire the water and expand his control over the Ogallala Aquifer, Pickens needed more political power. In 2006, Pickens bought off the Texas State Legislature for $1.2 billion. This purchase of water-related law making power has allowed Pickens the ability to do accomplish four goals: (1) He created an eight-acre town and an accompanying local government, and subsequently made his tiny municipality into a powerful Water Supply District; (2) As such, Pickens automatically acquired the right to issue tax-free bonds and thereby, giving himself the lucrative benefit of borrowing at a tremendous discount; (3) Now operating as a public entity, Pickens is armed with the power of eminent domain which will allow him to expand his water acquisition potential in which he bullies local residents, along the aquifer, to sell their properties for pennies on the dollar; (4) Pickens used his 1.2 billion dollar bribe money to get the Texas legislature to pay for a 250 foot wide water pipeline corridor all the way to Dallas where Pickens will make an estimated yearly profit of $165 million at taxpayer expense. Pickens has become the poster child for the phrase “crony capitalism.”

According to Business Week, Pickens is now the number one owner of water in the United States. He will soon possess the ability to create a water less wasteland through the heartland of America and who is going to stop him, Obama or the corrupt Texas State Legislature?

Pickens isn’t content with his new found power over Texas water supplies. Pickens is in the process of greatly expanding his control over water as he petitioned congress and the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to expand his private/public water district’s power of eminent domain and right-of-way, so that he can operate across state lines as well. If this is fully granted, Pickens will control all water between Texas and South Dakota. Pickens is also in the process of doubling down as he has added his previous wind projects to the water district by proposing a vast $12-billion wind farm, to sit on the same land he is acquiring for his water pipeline. The cost of the water pipeline is estimated at $1.5 billion, which is being financed at taxpayers’ expense through bonds and low interest loans.

Pickens told Business Week that he is only planning on selling surplus water, but according to the United Nations research and scientific studies report, nearly two-thirds of the entire population inhabiting the planet will face severe, life-threatening water shortages by the year 2025. So, Mr. Pickens, what surplus could you be talking about? And you only thought you had to worry about Obama collapsing the economy through his socialist policies.

Every bit of the Pickens plan violates the both the spirit and the letter of the law with regard to the EPA’s claimed right regulate all water. Pickens is not, and will not meet any EPA resistance.
Pickens Is Not Alone

The former CEO of Nestle, Peter Brabeck, does not believe that the common man has an inherent right to water. Brabeck stated in an interview for a documentaryWe Feed The World, that he believes water should only be something only the wealthy have access to. This is the same Nestle and Peter Brabeck which Jesse Ventura Conspiracy Theory episode “Blue Gold” featured in Ventura’s show about this rogue corporation. In the Ventura program, he exposed Nestle for bribing public officials in order to be able to take out massive amounts of water from the Great Lakes and sell it to countries such as China.

Of course it has been well-chronicled that the Bush family is moving to acquire massive amounts of water in South America including the continent’s larger underground water aquifer. The Bush family has built an expansive ranch on 100,000+ acres with the labor provided by the Army Corps of Engineers in another example of crony capitalism.
Conclusion

It is quite clear that while the EPA is moving towards the control of water, food and property rights, thus paving the way for globalist crony capitalists to obtain control over the nations water, and food supply as well as usher in a society which has no private property rights.

It is also becoming increasingly clear that the globalists are buying up our water rights and are planning to sell it back to us at exorbitant rates. In this Hunger Games scenario, the elite will one day control all water, food and property rights and can therefore, hold humanity hostage in servitude to the whims of the global elite.

5 Times “Obeying the Law” in America Was a Terrible Idea

Source: thedailysheeple.com

In the midst of outrage against police brutality, cop apologists argue that to avoid police brutality, people should simply be obeying the law. This justification, however, reveals itself as unwise at best (and flat out stupid at worst) when applied to previous laws in American history.

1. The Fugitive Slave Act- In times of slavery, the federal government attempted to pacify slave owners by passing the Fugitive Slave Act. The 1850 law mandated that even though slavery was banned in the North, if a Northern citizen (or government employee) happened upon escaped slaves from the South, they had to help return them to their owners. Escaped slaves were also denied a jury trial.

This law was challenged by abolitionists and decent human beings and many slaves escaped to Canada. But if all Americans had simply “followed the law,” further injustice (than was already enforced with the whole “owning” other human beings policy) would have been committed. The law was later repealed.

2. Pornography Prohibition- For as long as humans have existed, they have been interested in sex. In 1873, the federal government decided it could alter human instinct. Under the puritanical Comstock laws, pornography, sex toys, contraception, and information about contraception became illegal to send in the mail, as well as to sell, give away, or own. There is no evidence that the law stopped the human sex drive, even with the threat of up to five years in prison with hard labor and a fine up to $2,000. It eventually ceased to be enforced and was undermined by Roe v. Wade, but for years, engaging in these activities meant violators “deserved” the punishment they received.

3. Alcohol Prohibition- The prohibition of alcohol was an unpopular and unsuccessful constitutional amendment enacted in 1918. It attempted to stop people from drinking by banning liquor. It unwittingly encouraged the formation of gangs, who sold bootleg drinks while underground speakeasies flourished.

This, by the logic of cop defenders, should have been brutally punished-because those heathens were breaking the sanctity of the law! (It was repealed three years later.) No matter how nonsensical or ineffective the law, dogma to and obedience of it pervades the logic of authority worshipers. It applies today with the failed war on drugs, which like alcohol prohibition, has failed to curtail usage and created waste and black markets, as well as an excess of police violence and prison populations.

4. Sedition Acts-Shortly after the creation of the United States, in 1798 President James Madison signed the Sedition Act-intended to ban criticism of the government. It was sparked by the government’s fear of Democratic-Republican rebellion and dissent against the Federalists and accompanied other laws that persecuted immigrants.

Right out of the gate of the American revolution, the federal government was doing exactly what the Constitution was intended to prevent: running away with power. A similar law, also titled The Sedition Act, was passed in 1918 to silence dissent against World War I. It was an extension of the Espionage Act of 1917, which Obama has used to prosecute whistleblowers (the other acts were repealed). The 1918 incarnation made it illegal to

“willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of the Government of the United States.“

In both the 18th and 20th centuries, the state was attempting to crush free speech, so anyone who had an opinion (legally guaranteed by the first amendment and philosophically by natural human rights) should have just learned to shut up to avoid a beating and prison. Right?

5. Modern Day America- It can be amusing to examine old laws and point out their absurdity and injustice (this is only a small sampling that doesn’t cover Plessy v. Ferguson, the banning of Native Americans from Boston, or bans on interracial marriage, for example). But the reality is that many unjust laws are on the books today.

The National Defense Authorization Act allows the government to indefinitely detain anyone it deems a terrorist threat or having ties to terrorists. That judgment is entirely up to the state, but if those it deems dangerous try to resist, they will be violating “the law.” Is this fair? At what point do political dissidents and activists become threats to the state when the Pentagon has already stated that protesters are “low level terrorists?”

One of the major problems in American society and politics is the belief that the law is infallible, such as the cigarette law that led to Eric Garner’s murder. In spite of so many examples to the contrary, people still believe that the law is sacrosanct and to violate it is to be an immoral, bad person who deserves whatever the government does to them. This is directly contradicted by the fact that most of the laws listed in this article were eventually repealed.

Rather than glorifying “the law,” Americans should revere the morals government claims underpin them. As long as individuals view government decrees as the gold standard of ethics, however, the government will continue to destroy humanity. Perhaps it’s time to stop making excuses for police officers and politicians and instead, judge them by how they treat their fellow humans.

Psychiatrists Now Say Non-Conformity is a Mental Illness: Only the Sheeple are 'Sane'

Source: lewrockwell.com

By Jonathan Benson
Natural News

January 7, 2015

(NaturalNews) Modern psychiatry has become a hotbed of corruption, particularly the kind that seeks to demonize and declare mentally ill anyone who deviates from what is regarded as the norm. This is abundantly evident in the latest installment of the industry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, which dubs people who do not conform to what those in charge declare to be normal as mentally insane.

The so-called “condition” for why a person might choose to resist conformity has been labeled by the psychiatric profession as “oppositional defiant disorder,” or ODD. The new DSM defines this made-up disease as an “ongoing pattern of disobedient, hostile and defiant behavior,” and also lumps it in alongside attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, another made-up condition whose creator, Dr. Leon Eisenberg, admitted it to be phony on his death bed.

As you might suspect from this type of open-ended description, almost any personal behavior perceived by someone else to be undesirable or strange might be categorized as symptomatic of ODD. Children who throw temper tantrums or fight with their siblings, for instance, might be declared to have this supposed mental illness, as might children who express disagreement with their parents or teachers.

Disobedience and defiance are common behaviors among young children, and parents have long dealt with such behaviors by exercising proper discipline. At the same time, not all forms of disobedience and defiance are wrong, depending on the authority involved and the action petitioned. A child who is told by his teacher to keep his unpopular opinions to himself, for instance, and who resists this order might simply be exercising his freedom to express disagreement.

But that’s the problem with categorizing conditions like ODD so loosely, as virtually any uncommon behavior can be declared to be oppositional or defiant simply because it bucks the status quo. Famous minds of the past like Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, for instance, whose unconventional ideas might have seemed crazy in their day, are the types of folks who today might be declared to have ODD or some other type of mental disease.

An even greater danger to using this subjective approach in the diagnosis of mental illness is that it threatens to curtail freedom of speech and political dissent. The federal government has already tried to declare those who oppose its tyrannical policies, or who simply question them, as having “political paranoia,” a type of mental illness.

Characterizing non-conformity as ‘mental illness’ a hallmark of totalitarian government

Such outlandish abuse of the medical system for controlling popular thought is nothing new. Many authoritarian governments, including the former USSR, implemented similar mental health programs that categorized dissenters as having chemical imbalances in need of a remedy. Today, that remedy is often mind-altering, psychotropic drugs with devastating side effects.

“Psychiatric incarceration of mentally healthy people is uniformly understood to be a particularly pernicious form of repression, because it uses the powerful modalities of medicine as tools of punishment, and it compounds a deep affront to human rights with deception and fraud,” explains a 2002 analysis and commentary on the abuse of psychiatry in both the Soviet Union and China that was published in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.

“Doctors who allow themselves to be used in this way… betray the trust of society and breach their most basic ethical obligations as professionals.”

You can view this study, which has powerful implications for what the psychiatric profession is becoming today, here: http://jaapl.org.

Putin's Russia is Not the Utopia Some Bloggers Paint it

Source: blacklistednews

Intel Turns Off Russian Forums, Blogs & Comments In Response To Russian Blogging Law

SOURCE: TECH DIRT

Back in April of last year, we were among the first to report on a very dangerous new law in Russia targeting bloggers, requiring any blogger or social media user with more than 3,000 "visitors" a day to register their real name with the government. The idea, obviously, is to put a massive chill on free speech among popular bloggers and social media users -- making it clear that the government is tracking everything they do. Just recently we noted how various social media platforms were responding to Russian demands that they censor or take down accounts related to opposition politician Alexei Navalny, or other critics of the government. 

But the blogger/social media law has now gone into effect, and it's having an impact in all sorts of places. For example, chip giant Intel has now announced that it is basically turning off all ways to contribute to its Russian Intel Developer Zone in order to comply with the law.

In order to be compliant with the Russian Internet Bloggers Law the following changes will be implemented in the Russian Intel® Developer Zone community as of January 1st 2015:

• Blog post contributions will be disabled
• Forum contributions will be disabled
• All commenting will be turned off for Russian content

While it's unlikely that those in power in Russia today think this is a very big deal, recognize that taking Russians out of forums and discussions concerning key technological developments could certainly come back to haunt Russian technology development. This also comes about a month after Google closed down its Russian engineering office, in response to a different regulatory shift: a "data handling law" that would require all information from Russian users be kept in Russia (making it more easily accessible by Russian officials and the intelligence community). 

All of these moves may be designed to shore up the existing leadership's political power, but it seems like a fairly short-term strategy, given that the end result is likely to hold back technological expertise and talent at a time when staying on top of technology is so important.

What Facebook has done

Source: beforeitsnews.com

Facebook & the government doing what they do best:

Being shady as hell!

In the event you have not seen or read Facebook’s new 2015 SHADY PRIVACY AGREEMENT, it is worth noticing that in 2015, to use Facebook you must adhere to their privacy agreement. Within that agreement it states: Sometimes we GET DATA FROM OUR AFFILIATES or our advertising partners, customers and “OTHER THIRD PARTIES” that HELPS US (OR THEM) deliver ads, understand online activity, and GENERALLY make Facebook better.

IF YOU DON’T THINK “OTHER PARTIES” INCLUDES THE CIA, FBI, & NSA, KEEP READING!

IT’S NOT ON THE FIRST PAGE OF PRIVACY TERMS, YOU HAVE TO DIG FOR IT:

Other information we receive about you

We also receive other types of information about you:

We receive data about you whenever you use or are running Facebook, such as when you look at another person’s timeline, send or receive a message, search for a friend or a Page, click on, view or otherwise interact with things, use a Facebook mobile app, or make purchases through Facebook.

When you post things like photos or videos on Facebook, we may receive additional related data (or metadata), such as the time, date, and place you took the photo or video.

We receive data from or about the COMPUTER, MOBILE PHONE, or OTHER DEVICES you use to install Facebook apps or to access Facebook, including when multiple users log in from the same device.

This may include NETWORK and communication information, such as your IP ADDRESS or mobile PHONE NUMBER, and other information about things like your INTERNET SERVICE, OPERATING SYSTEM, LOCATION, the type (including identifiers) of the device or browser you use, or the pages you visit. 

For example, we may get your GPS or other location information so we can tell you if any of your friends are nearby, or we could request device information to improve how our apps work on your device.

The State’s Greatest Trick Exposed: Hoppe on Democracy, Progress, and the State

Source: lewrockwell.com

By David Gordon

Mises.org

December 29, 2014

[This is David Gordon’s introductory essay to Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s new book From Aristocracy to Monarchy to Democracy.]

Hans-Hermann Hoppe is a master of theoretical history. He tells us that

It is not my purpose here to engage in standard history, i.e., history as it is written by historians, but to offer a logical or sociological reconstruction of history, informed by actual historical events, but motivated more fundamentally by theoretical — philosophical and economic — concerns.

The work of Carl Menger and Ludwig von Mises on the commodity origin of money is a prime example of what Hoppe has in mind.

In carrying out his illuminating project, Hoppe finds himself in opposition to the dominant way of looking at the evolution of government. According to this perspective, government has over the centuries become ever more democratic. Rule by the people is the final form of government; once it has been reached, history, at least as far as government is concerned, has ended. This historical movement, further, is a “good thing.” It is the triumph of freedom. History is the story of progress.

Hoppe is not a complete pessimist like the “Gloomy Dean” W.R. Inge, who, in his famous Romanes Lecture of 1920, denounced “the superstition of progress.” To the contrary, Hoppe thinks that in economic life, the Industrial Revolution enabled mankind to achieve an unprecedented level of prosperity.

In government, though, matters are entirely different, and here Hoppe is a firm opponent of progressive orthodoxy. For him, rather, history in this area is a tale of a fall — not from the Garden of Eden, but rather from a reasonable way of settling disputes.

How would real, rational, peace-seeking people have solved the problem of social conflict? … What people would most likely accept as a solution, then, is this: Everyone is, first off or prima facie, presumed to be owner — endowed with the right of exclusive control — of all those goods he already, in fact, and so far undisputed, controls and possesses. This is the starting point. As their possessor, he has, prima facie, a better claim to the things in question than anyone else who does not possess these goods — and consequently, if someone else interferes with the possessor’s control of such goods, then this person is prima facie in the wrong and the burden of proof, that is to show otherwise, is on him. However, as the last qualification already shows, present possession is not sufficient to be in the right.

Hoppe assumes that everyone agrees on the appropriate principles for settling property disputes:

The criteria, the principles, employed in deciding between a present controller and possessor of something and the claims of another person are clear then, and it can be safely assumed that universal agreement among real people will be reached regarding them.

To reiterate, Hoppe sees property as antecedent to the state; people in a “state of nature” will rationally agree on the appropriate principles.

The fact that people agree in this way does not solve all problems. Principles must still be applied to concrete issues; and here arises the likelihood of disputes. If people dispute property titles, what is to be done? Hoppe suggests that people would gravitate toward certain “natural leaders” deemed trustworthy to decide cases in an unbiased way:

In order to settle their conflicts and to have the settlement lastingly recognized and respected by others, they will turn to natural authorities, to members of the natural aristocracy, to nobles and kings. What I mean… is simply this: In every society of some minimal degree of complexity, a few individuals acquire the status of a natural elite. Due to superior achievements of wealth, wisdom, bravery, or a combination thereof, some individuals come to possess more authority than others and their opinion and judgment commands widespread respect.

Hoppe here shows himself to be a true Jeffersonian. In a letter to John Adams, written on October 28, 1813, Jefferson said:

I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents. … The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature, for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And indeed, it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society.

Is the process Hoppe has set forward more than just speculation? Hoppe looks to feudal Europe for confirmation of his line of thought.

Feudal lords could only “tax” with the consent of the taxed, and on his own land, every free man was as much of a sovereign, i.e., the ultimate decision maker, as the feudal king was on his. … The king was below and subordinate to the law. … This law was considered ancient and eternal. “New” laws were routinely rejected as not laws at all. The sole function of the medieval king was that of applying and protecting “good old law.”

An obvious objection is likely to occur to readers, but Hoppe is ready for it: What Hoppe has described is a Utopia “that never was, on sea or land.” The Middle Ages were in fact a period of large scale oppression. Hoppe replies,

I only claim that this [feudal] order approached a natural order through (a) the supremacy of and the subordination of everyone under one law, (b) the absence of any law-making power, and (c) the lack of any legal monopoly of judgeship and conflict arbitration. And I would claim that this system could have been perfected and retained virtually unchanged through the inclusion of serfs into the system.

Unfortunately, matters did not develop in this happy way. Instead, kings seized more and more power. They claimed to have final authority, rejecting appeals to competing authority within the territories they controlled. Hoppe finds it easy to understand why kings might endeavor to arrogate such power to themselves, but another question is at first puzzling. How were the kings able to succeed in their grasp for absolute power? Why did not the partisans of the old aristocratic order thwart them?

Hoppe offers a two-part answer to this mystery. First, the king allied with the people against the aristocracy.

He appealed to the always and everywhere popular sentiment of envy among the “underprivileged” against their own “betters” and “superiors,” their lords. He offered to free them of their contractual obligations vis-à-vis their lords, to make them owners rather than tenants of their holdings, for instance, or to “forgive” their debts to their creditors, and could so corrupt the public sense of justice sufficiently to render the aristocratic resistance against his coup futile.

In this grasp for power, the king had the aid of the “court intellectuals.” They propagandized on behalf of the king, supporting the thesis that the king represented the people.

The demand for intellectual services is typically low, and intellectuals, almost congenitally, suffer from a greatly inflated self-image and hence are always prone to and become easily avid promoters of envy. The king offered them a secure position as court intellectuals and they returned the favor and produced the necessary ideological support for the king’s position as absolute ruler.

How did the court intellectuals carry out their malign mission? They did so by promoting a twofold myth. Society began in a war of all against all. To escape this condition, people voluntarily contracted with an absolute ruler. In that way, they could escape chaotic disorder.

Hoppe firmly rejects both parts of this story, as should by now be abundantly evident. Society begins, not in a Hobbesian state of nature, but rather with people’s mutual recognition of rights; and there was no contract giving power to the king.

With the help of the court intellectuals, monarchs in Europe gained the absolute power they sought; but the appeal to the people eventually proved their undoing. The myth of the contract helped to transform the absolute monarchy into a constitutional one; and this transition Hoppe by no means regards as progress. Constitutions “formalized and codified” the king’s right to legislate and to tax.

Constitutional monarchy eventually ceased to satisfy the intellectuals.

Ironically, the very forces that elevated the feudal king first to the position of absolute and then of constitutional king: the appeal to egalitarian sentiments and the envy of the common man against his betters… also helped bring about the king’s own downfall and paved the way to another, even greater folly; the transition from monarchy to democracy.

When the king’s promises of better and cheaper justice turned out to be empty and the intellectuals were still dissatisfied with their social rank and position, as was to be predicted, the intellectuals turned the same egalitarian sentiments that the king had previously courted in his battle against his aristocratic competitors against the monarchical ruler himself.

With the help of the intellectuals, rule by the people came to replace monarchy; and, Hoppe famously argues, this transition is by no means to be celebrated.

To the contrary. Rather than being restricted to princes and nobles, under democracy, privileges come into the reach of everyone: everyone can participate in theft and live off stolen loot, if only he becomes a public official.

Democracy then does not end the depredations of absolute monarchy, but in fact increases them.

Yet a king, because he “owns” the monopoly and may sell and bequeath his realm to a successor of his choosing, his heir, will care about the repercussions of his actions on capital values.

Here it is necessary to avert a misunderstanding. Hoppe is not a defender of absolute monarchy — far from it. He argues only that democracy as it is today understood is worse than monarchy. But, as is never to be forgotten, monarchy ranks far below the best system, one of private property rights in which respected members of the elite settle disputes.

This essay, thus, is a veritable tour de force. It accepts the standard account of the evolution of government from feudal aristocracy, to monarchy, to democracy, but precisely reverses the standard valorization of this process.

If Hoppe is no exponent of progress here, though, he does not leave us with a counsel of despair. The democratic State’s frenzied finance cannot continue indefinitely; and he finds grounds for hope in a movement toward smaller, decentralized governments.

Economic crisis hits, and an impending meltdown will stimulate decentralizing tendencies, separatist and secessionist movements, and lead to the breakup of empire.

In this way the growth toward Leviathan may be reversed.

This essay provides an ideal introduction to Hans Hoppe’s extended account of his political thought in his great work Democracy: The God That Failed. Hoppe is one of the most original and important social theorists of our time, and readers will gain a clear understanding of the essence of his ideas about the growth of government.

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

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