The odious authoritarian Peter Thiel said in a speech, “If it’s forbidden to be spoken about, it’s likely true.”

This is irrational to the core. People like Thiel talk endlessly about the things they claim are “forbidden to be spoken about.” If it’s forbidden why do they keep getting away with it? And, is he actually implying anything that is allowed to be spoken is thus false?

Now, in Thiel’s imaginary universe it’s anyone he hates, who is guilty of this censorship, just not Trump. Yet Trump is going after universities that didn’t shut down campus protests about the Gaza genocide. In Thiel’s fantasy only conservatives are “censored” and only liberals do the censoring.

His own actions prove his theory a lie. When Gawker accurately reported Thiel was a closeted gay man he funded a lawsuit by his front man, Hulk Hogan, to bankrupt Gawker. He tried to keep secret his funding of this revenge attack on free speech but was exposed. When called out for his utter hypocrisy he said, “I refuse to believe that journalism means massive privacy violations. I think much more highly of journalists than that. It’s precisely because I respect journalists that I do not believe they are endangered by fighting back against Gawker.” He tried to claim his attack on speech he didn’t like—but which was accurate—was an example of his great philanthropy.

Thiel is another Musk, a parasite seeking massive contracts with the Trump regime. He gave Trump’s campaign $1.5m and got a lot of your tax money in return on his investment. His Palantir company netted $113 million in government contracts in just the last few months. Business Insider noted Thiel’s deceptive practice of secretly funding legal harassment could be used by any billionaire to shut down news outlets they oppose: “Thiel has shown them how to go thermonuclear: bankroll other lawsuits, as many as it takes, and bankrupt the news organization that way. Very few companies have the legal wherewithal to withstand such a barrage.”

This is precisely what Trump is doing now to any university that hasn’t obeyed his unconstitutional edicts. Except, in Trump tradition, the president is using “other people’s money.” In his case you are funding the harassment he has government agencies use. And it’s not just academia but media networks, such as CBS which caved to legal harassment.

Thiel also took $30m to build technology for ICE to make it easier to track people. Yes, ramp up government spying on the population, just call it “libertarian.” While Thiel routinely claims he’s libertarian his actions prove the opposite.

Thiel claims “political correctness” is “soft totalitarianism” but apparently helping government spy on people is not. He works particularly close with spy agencies and the military, major components if you want a police state. He whines he is the victim of totalitarianism while working to impose it on you.

Thiel describes himself a “conservative libertarian” which is like being dry water or a principled Republican. For Thiel he’s “libertarian” about your benefits but “conservative” about his own — happy to grab all he can.

Australian academic Luke Munn noted all this as well. He wrote:

“Thiel is a walking paradox. He bemoans cancel culture and political correctness, while waging a highly expensive and clearly personal war to bankrupt a media outlet that offended him. (After Gawker printed the “open secret” of Thiel’s gay status in 2007, Thiel funded lawsuits against them until they were shut down.)

He calls himself a libertarian, but has founded a company that derives millions in contracts from the bloated budgets of the many military agencies (the National Security Agency, the FBI, the US Army) that now comprise the sprawling state.

He celebrates capitalism and the free hand of the market, but always stresses that the path to business success rests on establishing monopolies with no real competition. He is a German-born immigrant who actively supports technologies (Palantir) and candidates (Trump) that establish xenophobic environments and seek to deport those deemed “other”. And, most personally, he is both a conservative Republican and an openly gay man.”

Thiel has learned well the lessons of today’s conservatives: say one thing while doing the opposite. Historian Anne Applebaum—someone with impeccable conservative credentials in the pro-freedom sense—said of the far right authoritarians that they are hucksters and “con artists who seek to profit” from the political system.

There are two primary forms of economic systems. Either a market is politicized or depoliticized. In the former the “hucksters” use political power to manipulate markets in their own favor. While often claiming to be “free market” advocates they use political “central planning” to rig the system and make competition—a key component of genuine markets—obsolete, at least for themselves. Instead of competition they buy political influence, and it doesn’t matter if the central planning elite are politicians or billionaires. Nor does it matter if they call it fascism, socialism, communism or even “libertarianism.” It’s all a variation on the same theme.

They do not make money in genuine markets, they make it by taking taxpayer’s funds to enrich themselves, while pushing policies that promote the very things they pretend to oppose. Like Trump and Musk, Thiel is a stellar Republican—meaning a hypocritical parasite lining his pockets with tax monies, while approving cutting benefits for the poor or elderly.

For the Record: I met Thiel once and not of my own doing. Thiel came over to me at a conference and introduced himself. He then asked me to introduce him to my friend, Dr. Nathaniel Branden. Nathaniel’s health was up and down at that time and I honestly don’t remember if Thiel met him or not. I just know I felt uncomfortable by his request knowing his “culture war” history at Stanford

The Thiel Hypocrisy and Fake Liberty was originally published in The Radical Center on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

G.K. Chesterton • 1871–1936
“The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.”

Bertrand Russell • 1872–1970
“Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power. Consequently those who live under the dominion of Puritanism become exceedingly desirous of power.”

Harry S Truman • 1884–1972
“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”

William Gladstone • 1809–1898
“I am a lover of liberty; and that liberty which I value for myself, I value for every human being.”

Call the Midwife • S5E12
“When people have no love to live for, it’s so very easy to fill that void with hate.”

John Stuart Mill • 1806–1873
“People understand their own business and their own interests better, and care for them more, than the government does or can be expected to do.”

Voltairine de Cleyre • 1866—1912
“Speak, speak, speak, and remember that whenever anyone’s liberty to speak is denied, your liberty is denied also.”

𝐄𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐫 𝐑𝐨𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐭 • 𝟏𝟖𝟖𝟒–𝟏𝟗𝟔𝟐
“True patriotism springs from a belief in the dignity of the individual, freedom and equality not only for Americans but for all people on earth, universal brotherhood and good will, and a constant and earnest striving toward the principles and ideals on which this country was founded.”

Barbara Branden • 1929–2013
“Individualism holds that a human life is an end in itself. Col­lectivism holds that man’s life is a means to an end to be desig­nated by society. Individualism holds that man possesses, by his nature, the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Col­lectivism holds that man possesses, by his nature, the duty to sacrifice his life, his liberty and his happi­ness whenever and wherever the collective may demand it.”

Ernst Toller • 1883—1939
“The basis of fascism is blind belief and a contempt for reason. Fascism exploits the fear of reason which lives secretly in the conscious and subconscious minds of many people. Reason means facing life and facts.”

Pippa Norris & Ronald Inglehart, Cultural Backlash • 2019
“To enforce orthodoxy, authoritarians tend to be intolerant of out-groups, rejecting minorities seen as challenging conventional norms, whether the groups are defined in terms of race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, sexuality, or ideology.”

Ludwig Mises • 1881–1973
“Once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of the government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments.”

𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐬 𝐉𝐞𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧 • 𝟏𝟕𝟒𝟑–𝟏𝟖𝟐𝟔
“When all government, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the Center of all Power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.”

Carl Sagan • 1934—1996
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

Billy Joel • 1949 — 
I don’t need you to worry for me ’cause I’m alright
I don’t want you to tell me it’s time to come home
I don’t care what you say anymore, this is my life
Go ahead with your own life, leave me alone.

Gore Vidal • 1925—2012
“As for civil liberties, any one who is not vigilant may one day find himself living, if not in a police state, at least in a police city.”

Angelina Grimke • 1805—1879
“The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism, and ought to have no place among Republicans and Christians.”

Michael Chertoff • New York Times, 2016
“I can’t even begin to picture how we would deport 11 million people in a few years where we don’t have a police state, where the police can’t break down your door at will and take you away without a warrant… Unless you suspend the Constitution and instruct the police to behave as if we live in North Korea, it ain’t happening.”

Ed Davey, MP • 1965—
“We believe that the problems in our country — and around the world — come not from individuals having too much control over their lives, but too little. That’s why the core of our mission as liberals is to put more power in people’s hands”

Rick Wilson • 1963—
“Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and others who raced to the microphones at the slightest hint of Obama overstepping the lines were damn quiet as Trump wildly colored outside the lines of any rational version of executive power.”

Rep. Liz Cheney • 1966—
“I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”

U.S. Constitution • 10th Amendment
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Alexander Hamilton • 1757–1789
“The State governments possess inherent advantages, which will ever give them an influence and ascendancy over the National Government, and will for ever preclude the possibility of federal encroachments. That their liberties, indeed, can be subverted by the federal head, is repugnant to every rule of political calculation.”

Speaking Freely #56 was originally published in The Radical Center on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The problem with equality is it can mean anything and sometimes does.

To say something is equal you still have to clarify to what it is equal.

Most of us like to say we believe in equality in regards to humans. But even that needs clarification. I don’t think it means all people are equally talented. I sure know I’m not equally as athletic as most, especially at my age. I promise the last place you’d want to see me in action is a football field.

What we liberals mean by ‘equality’ is quite concise; all people have equal rights before the law and thus enjoy equal liberty.

Unfortunately some people assume it ought to mean other things — such as equality of wealth. But imagine a community where on Monday every citizen’s bank account was magically made equal to $50,000. Those with less savings on Sunday see it go up and those with accounts that were higher saw their savings diminished.

It would be complete economic equality for a least the next few minutes. Almost instantly we would see inequality arise yet again.

Some would take their windfall and invest it wisely earning more income as time goes by while others wouldn’t be able to spend it fast enough. Some would head off to the casino and gamble away their fortune while others might decide to buy a round at the local tavern or buy luxuries they previously couldn’t afford.

The philosopher David Hume noted this was the case back in 1748 when he warned, “Render possessions ever so equal, men’s different degrees of art, care, and industry, will immediately break that equality.” So this observation is not new.

If you think about it this means two different concepts of equality are automatically at war with one another. In the wealth windfall example, the individuals were free to choose what they would do with their newfound resources. In my examples what ultimately led to their inequality of results was the free choices they made. Each was free to invest it or buy a round at the tavern but they used this equal freedom differently.

Nobel prize winning economist F.A. Hayek warned, “Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time.”

Historian Will Durant was even more forceful in his observation: “Freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies. Leave men free, and their natural inequalities will multiply almost geometrically, as in England and America in the nineteenth century under laissez-faire. To check the growth of inequality, liberty must be sacrificed, as in Russia after 1917.”

Certainly many attempted to achieve equal results by stamping out equal liberty. Mao tried it in China, Pol Pot tried in Cambodia and even Hitler targeted Jews by saying their general prosperity was a form of theft — a position Marx took as well in his anti-Semitic diatribe On the Jewish Question. Hitler confiscated Jewish wealth and used it to finance his redistributionist policies for rank and file Germans.

But Hitler discovered there was only so much wealth he could confiscate and redistribute. He resorted to confiscating wealth from other nations he attacked. But even that ended badly. In every such instance, where equality of results was put ahead of equality of liberty, the result has been to destroy wealth. They succeeded in tearing the top down but did not raise the bottom up.

One problem is people only want equal wealth with those economically better off. The 19th century French writer Henry Becque observed, “The defect of equality is that we desire it only with our superiors.”

In addition they all were forced to resort to the most authoritarian and violent means of stamping out individual freedom they could find. In order to achieve equality of results the would-be planner has to strip away equality of liberty, but there is a second kind of equality. He strips you of control over your own life while he takes control over it instead.

He must plan your choices, not you. He would have to determine how you use your resources — if you are allowed any. This equality of results can only exist when mandated and mandates to work must be enforced and enforcement requires violence or the threat of violence. This is not done through unanimous consent as such consent is impossible, it is only achieved by the inequality of power.

Over the years various nations have sought this equality of results, but the results were always in the direction of great equal poverty now wealth. Winston Church told the British House of Commons: “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

The Problem With Equality was originally published in The Radical Center on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Aristotle • 384BC — 322BC
“A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious.”

Mark Twain • 1835–1910
“It is easier to convince a person of a lie than to convince a person that they have been lied to.”

Eleanor Roosevelt • 1884—1962
“If we study our own history, we find that we have always been ready to receive the unfortunate from other countries, and though this may seem a generous gesture on our part, we have profited a thousand fold by what they have brought us.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. • 1929–1968
“It may well be that the greatest tragedy of this period of social change is not the glaring noisiness of the so-called bad people, but the silence of the so-called good people.”

Thomas Jefferson • 1743—1826
“Law is often the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.”

Outrageous • S1E5
“Any attack on humanity is an attack on all of us.”

Abraham Lincoln • 1809–1865
“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.”

Mahatma Gandhi • 1869—1948
“You assist an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil system never deserves such allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil. A good person will resist an evil system with his or her whole soul.”

Albert Einstein • 1879–1955
“The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”

Carl Schurz • 1829–1906
“I confidently trust that the American people will prove themselves … too wise not to detect the false pride or the dangerous ambitions or the selfish schemes which so often hide themselves under that deceptive cry of mock patriotism: “Our country, right or wrong!” They will not fail to recognize that our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: “Our country — when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.”

Waiting for God • S2 E4
“We live in a stupid and ignorant society …no one is capable of moral decisions so they have to make laws that preclude the necessity of thinking for themselves.”

John Dean • 1938 — 
“Social conservatism and neoconservatism have revived authoritarian conservatism, and not for the better of conservatism or American democracy. True conservatism is cautious and prudent. Authoritarianism is rash and radical.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr • 1841—1935
“Whatever disagreement there may be as to the scope of the phrase “due process of law” there can be no doubt that it embraces the fundamental conception of a fair trial, with opportunity to be heard.”

Steven Horwitz • 1964–2021
“There are just a whole lot of Very Bad Things that are really happening right now. You can create all the balance sheets you want, but if you don’t understand that some things are far more important than others, you are not blind like the impartial scale of justice, but blind instead to the future of liberalism that hangs in that balance.”

George W Bush Institute • Benefits of Immigration Outweigh the Costs
“Immigration fuels the economy. When immigrants enter the labor force, they increase the productive capacity of the economy and raise GDP. Their incomes rise, but so do those of natives.”

Frances Wright • 1795–1852
“Equality is the soul of liberty; there is, in fact, no liberty without it.”

Stanley Milgram • 1933—1984
“The most common adjustment of thought in the obedient subject is for him to see himself as not responsible for his own actions.”

Bertrand Russell • 1872—1970
“Certified lunatics are shut up because of their proneness to violence when their pretensions are questioned; the uncertified variety are given the control of powerful armies, and can inflict death and disaster upon all sane men within their reach.”

Edward Kennedy • 1932–2009
“Immigrant families have integrated themselves into our communities, establishing deep roots. Whenever they have settled, they have made lasting contributions to the economic vitality and diversity of our communities and our nation. Our economy depends on these hard-working, taxpaying workers.”

Henry Brooks Adams • 1838–1918
“Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.”

Arthur Miller • 1915–2005
“Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the State has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable.”

Mahatma Gandhi • 1869–1948
“Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state becomes lawless or corrupt.”

Eugene O’Neill • 1888–1953
“Censorship of anything, at any time, in any place, on whatever pretense, has always been and will always be the last resort of the boob and the bigot.”

Speaking Freely #55 was originally published in The Radical Center on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The last century was a century where authoritarianism prevailed. The Marxist belief in state power dominated much of the century and as a direct result Communist regimes have been indicted for the wholesale slaughter of over 100 million people. To put that in perspective that is the equivalent of one execution every 30 seconds, every hour, every day, every year for one full century.

Authoritarian fascist governments controlled Europe under Hitler and Mussolini and the result was the eradication of individual liberty and ultimately the destruction of Europe with untold suffering and the further deaths of many millions. Freedom was in retreat during much of the last century.

State interventionism beyond the protection of basic rights never lead to prosperity. The more it was tried the less prosperous the nation that tried it. Marxist central planning lead to economic collapse in the old Soviet Union. Even worse it destroyed the foundation of free markets and the concept of political freedom. The idea of profit seeking, property rights, and free trade had been vanquished so when communism finally did collapse the people had lost all sense of what was required to regain prosperity and now live under a murderous dictator.

In China Marxist leaders tried central planning and controls to guarantee economic prosperity. This resulted in a state-created famine lasting four years during which an estimated 30 million people starved to death while warehouses were filled with food. The Chinese eventually started on a path of some economic liberalization. Property rights were recognized and private ownership was promoted. Profit seeking entrepreneurs were encouraged and the state slowly started leaving behind the idea of state ownership. The result has been economic growth in China and reductions in poverty.

In nation after nation the idea that prosperity can be created by state interventionism died. It died because it had been tried and did not succeed. Studies of dozens of nations over decades prove liberal policies of economic and social freedom, lead directly to wealth creation. The more liberal a nation the more prosperous the people.

A liberal society, by granting freedom to the people, is a society where prosperity is possible. It liberates individuals to realize as much of their own potential as is possible for them in degree to the effort they make.

We do not only benefit from the freedom we are given. We also benefit from the freedom others have. The poor man may not see immediate benefits from the freedom afforded the wealthy businessman. But if we look around we see we have consistently benefited by the freedom of others. In the United States the inventor Henry Ford was free to create his own automobile factory. The innovations he created turned automobiles from a luxury item for the wealthy to something hundreds of millions of poor people worldwide enjoy. The freedom of the researcher brings about new medicines that combat disease. FA Hayek noted: “The benefits I derive from freedom are thus largely the result of the uses of freedom by others, and mostly of those uses of freedom that I could never avail myself of.” Hayek argues that while our own freedom brings us benefits we accrue more benefit from the freedom of others.

A free society leads to empowerment and prosperity because it affords freedom to everyone. As Hayek wrote: “The successful combination of knowledge and aptitude is not selected by common deliberation, by people seeking a solution to their problems through a joint effort; it is the product of individuals imitating those who have been more successful…” Freedom works because men are not all-knowing, “if we could know not only all that affects the attainment of our present wishes but also our future wants and desires, there would be little case for liberty.” “Liberty is essential in order to leave room for the unforeseeable and unpredictable; we want it because we have learned to expect from it the opportunity of realizing many of our aims. It is because every individual knows so little and, in particular, because we rarely know which of us knows best that we trust the independent and competitive efforts of many to induce the emergence of what we shall want when we see it.”

Freedom unleashes the creative powers of everyone. As such it can’t be planned or rationally regulated. The benefits which no one anticipated are the most important. Creativity requires freedom and when others are creative I benefit regardless of how creative I am myself. By liberating human potential a liberal society leads to greater and greater levels of prosperity and history bears this out. Some freedoms may only be exercised by the exceptional individual and are thus useless to the majority. But as Hayek points out: “The freedom that will be used by only one man in a million may be more important to society and more beneficial to the majority than any freedom that we all use.”

The Virtue of Economic Liberalism was originally published in The Radical Center on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This originally appeared at Huffington Post on 4/5/11

It is widely claimed by the Religious Right that marriage is a “religious institution,” not a civil matter. The facts, unfortunately, are not so simple. State control of marriage is much older than people think and Christianity never spoke with one voice regarding marriage.

The fourth century Christian emperor Theodosius, as part of what historian John Boswell called a campaign of “greater and greater totalitarian control over personal aspects of Romans’ lives,” decreed that only Christianity would be allowed to exist. He also banned gay marriage. Boswell wrote: “The increasingly theocratic despotism of the later Empire often led to intervention in matters such as personal religious convictions or private sexual expression which would have been considered entirely individual under the earlier emperors.”

The Church got involved only after this intervention on its behalf. Christian law professor Daniel Crane wrote, “as the power of the church grew, it gradually sought to establish control over marriage directly.” But it was only in 1546 that the Roman Catholic Church declared a marriage was only valid if performed by a priest, with two witnesses. Even this was more a slap at the Reformationists and a means of “wedding” believers to the Roman Church. The idea that marriage was a “sacrament” had more to do with the politics of the day than it did with theology.

The Protestants denied marriage as a sacrament entirely. Crane wrote Reformationists saw the state, not the church, as the prime custodian “of matrimony as a civil institution.” The authoritarian John Calvin passed the “Marriage Ordinance of Geneva” requiring a state permit to marry.

The other leading Protestant of the day, Martin Luther, wrote: “[S]ince marriage has existed from the beginning of the world and is still found among unbelievers, there is no reason why it should be called a sacrament of the New Law and of the church alone.” Within a few decades, most of Christian Europe had laws regulating marriage as a state institution. Contrary to the claims of the religious right, the State did not take marriage away from the Church.

This cozy relationship between church and state remained undisturbed until the rise of classical liberalism, with its libertarian sentiments about individual rights. Evangelical author John Witte argues this began with John Locke’s Two Treatises on Government (1698) where Locke “suggested that a natural and contractual perspective could be defended without necessary reference to spiritual or social perspectives on marriage. He had hypothesized that a law of marriage based on contract could be valid even if God were not viewed as the founder of the marriage contract, nor His Church engaged as an agent in its governance.”

Classical liberalism became a major influence in Western culture, leading to the abolition of slavery, the rise in the status of women, demonopolizing of agriculture from landed elites, free trade and to the emergence of capitalism itself. It also brought new ideas about marriage into the legal system. Prof. Witte argues the liberal reforms embedded two conflicting views of marriage into law, “one rooted in Christianity, a second in the Enlightenment. Each of these traditions has contributed a variety of familiar legal ideas and institutions — some overlapping, some conflicting.”

Catholics saw marriage as a church sacrament. Protestants said it was a relationship between a couple and the wider community, and thus more a political concern than a religious one. Witte wrote, “Enlightenment exponents emphasize[d] the contractual (or private) perspective.”

Marriage laws, he said, changed drastically as a result:

Exponents of the Enlightenment advocated the abolition of much that was considered sound and sacred in the Western legal tradition of marriage. They urged the abolition of the requirements of parental consent, church consecration, and formal witnesses for marriage. They questioned the exalted status of heterosexual monogamy, suggesting that such matters be left to private negotiation. They called for the absolute equality of husband and wife to receive, hold, and alienate property, to enter into contracts and commerce, to participate on equal terms in the workplace and public square. They castigated the state for leaving annulment practice to the church, and urged that the laws of annulment and divorce be both merged and expanded under exclusive state jurisdiction.

The rise of classical liberalism, with its companion, capitalism, meant that income was no longer a function of the family as whole. Sociologist Barry Adams, in Christopher Street, observed: “Capitalism laid the groundwork for voluntary relationships based on personal preference, the precondition for ‘romantic love.’ Capitalism did not cause romantic love, it allowed it to flourish.” Historians John D’Emilio and Estelle Freedman (Intimate Matters) wrote that these changes meant that marriages could be chosen “with less attention to property and family considerations” and that “some young people even disregarded parental opinion altogether. Operating within a political climate that decried tyranny and exulted the rights of the individual some children married over parental objections while others failed to inform their parents at all.”

Of course, these shifts in the economic structure, and the emergence of a culture of individual rights, had dramatic impact on gay and lesbian people. Prof. Steve Horwitz wrote: “This created both the ‘singles culture’ of the 20th century but also enabled homosexuals to adopt the full identity of being gay or lesbian, as opposed to just engaging in homosexual acts. It’s no surprise that gay/lesbian culture thrived early on in urbanized environments (industrial jobs and anonymity were the keys). Having made modern gay identity possible and having caused marriage and family to be focused on love and consumption, rather than child-making and child-raising complementarities, is it any surprise that gays and lesbians would want ‘in’ to the institution of marriage?”

Oddly, modern conservatives see themselves as the heirs of the classical liberal/capitalist tradition. Yet that tradition is responsible for the evolution of marriage over the last few centuries. What modern conservatives are witnessing in the gay marriage revolution is just another logical step toward implementing the values of classical liberalism, with its emphasis on private contract and individual rights. Like it or not, it is the premises they claim they share with classical liberals that brought us to where we are today. I for one think that a good thing, even if conservatives don’t.

The Gay Marriage Revolution Started Centuries Ago was originally published in The Radical Center on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

𝑻𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒐𝒓𝒈𝒊𝒏𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒚 𝒑𝒖𝒃𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒉𝒆𝒅 𝒐𝒏 𝑯𝒖𝒇𝒇𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒕𝒐𝒏 𝑷𝒐𝒔𝒕 𝒐𝒏 𝑨𝒖𝒈𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝟕, 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟏.

Glenn Beck told his audience that Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom was the “best thing you can read.” The book shot up the Amazon bestseller list instantly as Beck’s cult-like followers rushed out to buy it.

Beck was unaware that Hayek’s friend, and sometimes sparing partner, John Maynard Keynes, also called it a “grand book” and said he found himself “in agreement with virtually the whole of it; and not only in agreement with it, but in deeply moved agreement.” The New York Times said this book, by the Nobel Prize winning economist, is one of the staples of the conservative Tea Party movement.

The Tea Party and Glenn Beck would do well to educate themselves as to Hayek’s actual view in his essay, “Why I Am Not a Conservative.”

Conservatives concentrate on Hayek’s opposition to state socialism, but have little understanding of his radical classical liberal ideas and ignore his opposition to conservatism.

Hayek saw himself as a liberal, in the classical sense of the word. And, while Keynes differed greatly from Hayek’s views on economics, Keynes saw himself in the same ideological camp as his friend.

Hayek was “not averse to evolution and change” and said that when “spontaneous change has been smothered by government control, it [liberalism] wants a great deal of change.” This, he argued, was in conflict with the “conservative attitude” which was a “fear of change, a timid distrust of the new as such.” Hayek said his position “is based on courage and confidence, on a preparedness to let change run its course even if we cannot predict where it will lead.”

Conservatives focus on Hayek’s distrust of centrally imposed, top-down change. Meagan McArdle, for instance, invoked Hayekian theory to claim, “changing the explicitly gendered nature of marriage… might be accidentally cutting away something that turns out to be a crucial underpinning.” This confuses Hayek’s opposition to imposed change with opposition to all change. Hayek’s view was that for a new social order, or social rules, “To become legitimized… [they] have to obtain the approval of society at large — not by a formal vote, but by gradually spreading acceptance,” much the way that same-sex marriage has gained support. This is particularly true when the change recognizes a “conflict between a given rule and the rest of our moral beliefs.” Then we “can justify our rejection of an established rule.” For example, when denying same-sex couples the right to marry conflicts with our acceptance of equality of rights before the law, we can justify changing the laws on marriage according to Hayek’s insights.

Hayek warned that conservatives, however, “are inclined to use the powers of government to prevent change or to limit its rates to whatever appeals to the more timid mind.”

Another difference between Hayek and conservatives is he saw order emerging from voluntary interactions of people, while “Order appears to the conservative as the result of the continuous attention to authority.” The conservative, he said “feels safe and content only if he is assured that some higher wisdom watches and supervises change, only if he knows that some authority is charged with keeping the change ‘orderly.’”

Hayek believed in the rule of law, with government powers strictly limited to general rules of social order. Contrast this with a conservative who “does not object to coercion or arbitrary power so long as it is used for what he regards as the right purposes. He believes that if government is in the hands of decent men, it ought not be too much restricted by rigid rules.” Hayek warned that the conservative is “less concerned with the problem of how the powers of government should be limited than with that of who wields them” and said “he regards himself as entitled to force the value he holds on other people.”

Hayek saw conservatives as lacking principles but not “moral conviction.” He wrote, “The conservative is indeed usually a man of very strong moral convictions,” but “has no political principles which enable him to work with people whose moral values differ from his own for a political order in which both can obey their convictions.” Hayek’s liberal social order allows people of differing convictions the freedom to pursue their own values. The joking response to conservatives, “If you don’t like gay marriage, don’t get gay married,” actually encapsulates Hayek’s view of a liberal society, which allows people of different views the freedom to pursue their own values. Those who oppose erotica are free to NOT buy it, those who oppose abortion are free to shun abortions, those who oppose gay marriage don’t have to get gay married!

It is here that Hayek’s liberalism is most clearly in opposition to both conservatism and socialism. “I sometimes feel that the most conspicuous attribute of liberalism that distinguishes it as much from conservatism as from socialism is the view that moral beliefs concerning matters of conduct which do not directly interfere with the protected sphere of other persons do not justify coercion.”

Conservatives invoke supernatural claims to justify intransigent opposition to change, not so with Hayekian liberals.

“The liberal differs from the conservative in his willingness to face [human] ignorance and to admit how little we know, without claiming the authority of supernatural forces of knowledge where his reason fails him. It has to be admitted that in some respects the liberal is fundamentally a skeptic — but it seems to require a certain degree of diffidence to let others seek their happiness in their own fashion and to adhere consistently to that tolerance which is an essential characteristic of liberalism.”

Hayek’s wrote, “What distinguishes the liberal from the conservative here is that, however profound his own spiritual beliefs, he will never regard himself as entitled to impose them on others and that for him the spiritual and the temporal are different spheres which ought not to be confused.”

Hayek never feared evolutionary change in society, nor believed religious values sufficient reason for using power of the state to prevent change. Hayek, the intransigent opponent of socialism that Beck and conservatives admire, also saw himself equally opposed to their conservative agenda, something conservatives ignore at their peril. More confusing for these so-called admirers of Hayek would be the fact that Hayek opposed their conservative agenda for precisely the same reasons he opposed socialism. But that, I suspect, is a brew too strong for the so-called Tea Party.

Hayek Against the Conservatives was originally published in The Radical Center on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Albert Camus • 1913–1960
“Fascism is an act of contempt, in fact. Inversely, every form of contempt, if it intervenes in politics, prepares the way for, or establishes, Fascism. It must be added that Fascism cannot be anything else but an expression of contempt without denying itself.”

E.M. Forster • 1879–1970
“There is fascism, leading only into the blackness which it has chosen as its symbol, into smartness and yapping out of orders, and self-righteous brutality, into social as well as international war.”

Rep. Hank Johnson • 1954—
“The military is a machine of war. Not a law enforcement agency.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom • 1967—
“If some of us can be snatched off the streets without a warrant, based only on suspicion or skin color, then none of us are safe. Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there.”

𝐒𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐅. 𝐊𝐞𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐝𝐲 • 1925—1968
“Our attitude towards immigration reflects our faith in the American ideal. We have always believed it possible for men and women who start at the bottom to rise as far as the talent and energy allow. Neither race nor place of birth should affect their chances.”

George W. Bush • 1946—
“It says something about our country that people around the world are willing to leave their homes and leave their families and risk everything to come to America. Their talent and hard work and love of freedom have helped make America the leader of the world.”

Horace • 65BC—8BC
“Kings play the fool, and the people suffer for it.”

John Stuart Mill • 1806–1873
“There are many who consider as an injury to themselves any conduct which they have a distaste for, and resent it as an outrage to their feelings; as a religious bigot, when charged with disregarding the religious feelings of others, has been known to retort that they disregard his feelings, by persisting in their abominable worship or creed. But there is no parity between the feeling of a person for his own opinion, and the feeling of another who is offended at his holding it; no more than between the desire of a thief to take a purse, and the desire of the right owner to keep it.”

Lord John Acton • 1834–1902
“I cannot accept, your canon that we are to judge pope and king unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they do no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way against holders of power.”

Henry David Thoreau • 1817–1862
“If…the machine of government…is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.”

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn • 1909—1999
“Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic.”

James Madison • 1751—1836
“I own myself the friend to a very free system of commerce, and hold it as a truth, that commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive and impolitic — it is also a truth, that if industry and labour are left to take their own course, they will generally be directed to those objects which are the most productive, and this in a more certain and direct manner than the wisdom of the most enlightened legislature could point out.”

John Adams • 1735—1826
“Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards.”

Benjamin Franklin • 1706—1790
“Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty, without freedom of speech.”

Angela Merkel • 1954—
“Neither the chains of dictatorship nor the fetters of oppression can keep down the forces of freedom for long.”

Ludwig Mises • 1881–1973
“What strengthens the cause of the persecuted faction is not the martyrdom of its adherents, but the fact that they are being attacked by force, and not by intellectual weapons. Repression by brute force is always a confession of the inability to make use of the better weapons of the intellect — better because they alone give promise of final success.”

Harry S Truman • 1884–1972
“There isn’t any difference in totalitarian states. I don’t care what you call them, Nazi, Communist or Fascist…”

Umberto Eco • 1932—2016
“Fascism became an all-purpose term because one can eliminate from a fascist regime one or more features, and it will still be recognizable as fascist.”

Ayn Rand • 1905–1982
“Fascism and communism are not two opposites, but two rival gangs fighting over the same territory — both are variants of statism, based on the collectivist principle that man is the rightless slave of the state.”

Midsomer Murders • S7 E6
“The witch hunt is not concluded. Witch hunts never are. You burn one you have to find another.”

Thomas Jefferson • 1743–1826
“It is not only vain, but wicked, in a legislator to frame laws in opposition to the laws of nature, and to arm them with the terrors of death. This is truly creating crimes in order to punish them.”

Matt Ridley • 1958 — 
“The message from history is so blatantly obvious — that free trade causes mutual prosperity while protectionism causes poverty — that it seems incredible that anybody ever thinks otherwise. There is not a single example of a country opening its borders to trade and ending up poorer.”

Frank Zappa • 1940—1993
“The biggest threat to America today is not communism. It’s moving America toward a fascist theocracy.”

Milton Friedman • 1912–2006
“The great danger to the consumer is the monopoly — whether private or governmental. His most effective protection is free competition at home and free trade throughout the world.”

Speaking Freely #54 was originally published in The Radical Center on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As I listened to Governor Newsom speak about the attack on Constitutional government by the criminal Trump regime I was saddened it was necessary to issue this warning and thrilled that a prominent political figure did so. There was a time Republicans called for deregulation and smaller government but they never held principles and almost overnight switched to a hard core authoritarian position. A third surprise from Newsom’s speech was it is the most libertarian speech from any political figure of note in a very long time. The only revision I would make is I would name it: “The War on Democracy.” We passed the crossroads already, freedom and constitutional government is now under a full-fledged attack so excuse my inserted title below. You can read the speech or listen to it.

THE WAR ON DEMOCRACY

I want to say a few words about the events of the last few days.

This past weekend, federal agents conducted large-scale workplace raids in and around Los Angeles.

Those raids continue as I speak.

California is no stranger to immigration enforcement.

But instead of focusing on undocumented immigrants with serious criminal records and people with final deportation orders — a strategy both parties have long supported — this administration is pushing mass deportations.

Indiscriminately targeting hardworking immigrant families, regardless of their roots or risk.

What’s happening right now is very different than anything we’ve seen before.

On Saturday morning, when federal agents jumped out of an unmarked van near a Home Depot parking lot, they began grabbing people.

A deliberate targeting of a heavily Latino suburb.

A similar scene also played out when a clothing company was raided downtown.

In other actions: a US citizen, 9 months pregnant — arrested. A four-year-old girl — taken.

Families separated. Friends disappearing.

In response, everyday Angelinos came out to exercise their Constitutional right to free speech and assembly

To protest their government’s actions.

In turn, the State of California and the City and County of Los Angeles sent our police officers to help keep the peace, and with some exceptions, they were successful.

Like many states, California is no stranger to this sort of civil unrest. We manage it regularly … and with our own law enforcement.

But this, again, was different.

What then ensued was the use of tear gas. Flash-bang grenades. Rubber bullets.

Federal agents, detaining people and undermining their due process rights.

Donald Trump, without consulting with California’s law enforcement leaders, commandeered 2,000 of our state’s National Guard members to deploy on our streets.

Illegally, and for no reason.

This brazen abuse of power by a sitting President inflamed a combustible situation … putting our people, our officers, and the National Guard at risk.

That’s when the downward spiral began. He doubled down on his dangerous National Guard deployment by fanning the flames even harder.

And the President did it on purpose.

As the news spread throughout LA, anxiety for family and friends ramped up. Protests started again.

By night, several dozen lawbreakers became violent and destructive. They vandalized property. They tried to assault police officers.

Many of you have seen video clips of cars burning on cable news.

If you incite violence or destroy our communities, you are going to be held accountable.

That kind of criminal behavior will not be tolerated. Full stop.

Already, more than 370 people have been arrested. And we’re reviewing tapes to build additional cases, and people will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Again, thanks to our law enforcement officers and the majority of Angelenos who protested peacefully, this situation was winding down and was concentrated in just a few square blocks downtown.

But that’s not what Donald Trump wanted.

He again chose escalation; he chose more force.

He chose theatrics over public safety — he federalized another 2,000 Guard members.

He deployed more than 700 active U.S. Marines.

These are men and women trained in foreign combat, not domestic law enforcement.

We honor their service. We honor their bravery. But we do not want our streets militarized by our own Armed Forces. Not in L.A. Not in California. Not anywhere.

We’re seeing unmarked cars in school parking lots. Kids, afraid to attend their own graduation.

Trump is pulling a military dragnet across LA, well beyond his stated intent to just go after violent and serious criminals.

His agents are arresting dishwashers, gardeners, day laborers and seamstresses — That’s just weakness. Weakness, masquerading as strength.

Donald Trump’s government isn’t protecting our communities — they are traumatizing our communities. And that seems to be the point.

California will keep fighting on behalf of our people — all of our people — including in the courts.

Yesterday, we filed a legal challenge to President Trump’s reckless deployment of American troops to a major American city.

Today, we sought an emergency court order to stop the use of the American military to engage in law enforcement activities across Los Angeles.

If some of us can be snatched off the streets without a warrant, based only on suspicion or skin color, then none of us are safe.

Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there.

Trump and his loyalists thrive on division because it allows them to take more power and exert even more control.

By the way, Trump — he’s not opposed to lawlessness and violence, as long as it serves HIM.

What more evidence do we need than January 6th?

I ask everyone to take the time to reflect on this perilous moment.

A president who wants to be bound by no law or constitution.

Perpetrating a unified assault on American traditions.

This is a President who, in just over 140 days, has fired government watchdogs that could hold him accountable for corruption and fraud.

He’s declared a war on culture, on history, on science — on knowledge itself. Databases, quite literally vanishing.

He’s delegitimizing news organizations and assaulting the First Amendment.

At the threat of defunding them, he’s dictating what universities can teach.

Targeting law firms and the judicial branch that are the foundation of an orderly, civil society.

Calling for a sitting Governor to be arrested for no other reason than — to use his words — “for getting elected.”

And we all know, this Saturday, he’s ordering our American heroes — the United States military — forcing them to put on a vulgar display to celebrate his birthday, just as other failed dictators have done in the past.

Look, this isn’t just about protests in LA.

When Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard, he made that order apply to every state in this nation.

This is about all of us. This is about you.

California may be first — but it clearly won’t end here. Other states are next.

Democracy is next.

Democracy is under assault right before our eyes — the moment we’ve feared has arrived.

He’s taking a wrecking ball to our founding fathers’ historic project.

Three independent, coequal branches of government.

There are no longer any checks and balances. Congress is nowhere to be found. Speaker Johnson has completely abdicated that responsibility.

The rule of law has increasingly given way to the rule of Don.

The founding fathers did not live and die to see this moment.

It’s time for all of us to stand up.

Justice Brandeis said it best: in a democracy, the most important office is not president, it’s certainly not governor. The most important office is office of citizen.

At this moment, we must all stand up and be held to a higher level of accountability.

If you exercise your First Amendment rights, please do so peacefully.

I know many of you are feeling deep anxiety, stress, and fear.

But I want you to know that YOU are the antidote to that fear and anxiety.

What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty. Your silence. To be complicit in this moment.

Do NOT give in to him.

Here are some quotes on immigration. Not part of the speech.

“More than any other country, our strength comes from our own immigrant heritage and our capacity to welcome those from other lands.” Ronald Reagan

“Immigration is not just a link to America’s past; it’s also a bridge to America’s future.” George H.W. Bush

“Every aspect of the American economy has profited from the contributions of immigrants.” John F. Kennedy

“If we do not provide the same opportunities for future immigrants that were provided for our forefathers, it is an affront to our national ideals.” John McCain

“The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respected Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges…” George Washington

Democracy at the Crossroads was originally published in The Radical Center on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Thomas Jefferson • 1743–1826
“No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority.”

𝐄𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐀𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐧 • 𝟏𝟕𝟑𝟖 — 𝟏𝟕𝟖9
“While we are under the tyranny of Priests, it will ever be their interest, to invalidate the law of nature and reason, in order to establish systems incompatible therewith.”

Plato • 429–347 B.C.
“The measure of a man is what he does with power.”

Justice Louis Brandeis • 1856–1941
“At the foundation of our civil liberty lies the principle which denies to government officials an exceptional position before the law and which subjects them to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen.”

𝐁𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫 𝐆𝐚𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐚 • 𝟐𝟎𝟎5
“There’s a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.”

Eric Hoffer • 1898–1983
“Every device employed to bolster individual freedom must have as its chief purpose the impairment of the absoluteness of power.”

Margaret Thatcher • 1925—2013
“Being democratic is not enough, a majority cannot turn what is wrong into right. In order to be considered truly free, countries must also have a deep love of liberty and an abiding respect for the rule of law.”

Carl Schurz • 1829–1906
“We have come to a point where it is loyalty to resist, and treason toHen submit.”

Henry Grady Weaver • 1889—1949
“The harm done by ordinary criminals, murderers, gangsters, and thieves is negligible in comparison with the agony inflicted upon human beings by the professional do-gooders, who attempt to set themselves up as gods on earth and who would ruthlessly force their views on all others — with the abiding assurance that the end justifies the means.”

Gustave Le Bon • 1841–1931
“The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.”

Herbert Hoover • 1874—1964
“Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of ‘emergency’. It was the tactic of Lenin, Hitler, and Mussolini.”

Angela Merkel • 1954 — 
“Freedom is the very essence of our economy and society. Without freedom the human mind is prevented from unleashing its creative force.”

Stanley Milgram • 1933–1984
“The essence of obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person’s wishes, and he therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions.”

Henry Ward Beecher • 1813—1887
“Liberty is the soul’s right to breathe and, when it cannot take a long breath, laws are girdled too tight.”

Alan Barth • 1906—1979
“Majorities, of course, are often mistaken. This is why the silencing of minorities is necessarily dangerous. Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions.”

Hannah Arendt • 1906–1975
“Totalitarianism begins in contempt for what you have. The second step is the notion: “Things must change — no matter how, Anything is better than what we have.” Totalitarian rulers organize this kind of mass sentiment, and by organizing it articulate it, and by articulating it make the people somehow love it. They were told before, thou shalt not kill; and they didn’t kill. Now they are told, thou shalt kill; and although they think it’s very difficult to kill, they do it because it’s now part of the code of behavior. They learn whom to kill and how to kill and how to do it together. This is the much talked about Gleichschaltung — the coordination process. You are coordinated not with the powers that be, but with your neighbor — coordinated with the majority. But instead of communicating with the other you are now glued to him. And you feel of course marvelous. Totalitarianism appeals to the very dangerous emotional needs of people who live in complete isolation and in fear of one another.”

Ronald Reagan • 1904—2011
“Homosexuality is not a contagious disease like the measles. Prevailing scientific opinion is that an individual’s sexuality is determined at a very early age and that a child’s teachers do not really influence this.”

Winston Churchill • 1874–1965
“If you make 10,000 regulations you destroy all respect for the law.”

John McCain • 1936—2018
“If we do not provide the same opportunities for future immigrants that were provided for our forefathers, it is an affront to our national ideals.”

George H.W. Bush • 1924—2018
“Nearly all Americans have ancestors who braved the oceans — liberty-loving risk takers in search of an ideal — the largest voluntary migrations in recorded history… Immigration is not just a link to America’s past; it’s also a bridge to America’s future.”

Pope Francis • 1936–1925
“We the people of this continent are not afraid of foreigners because many of us were once foreigners.”

Tea and Sympathy (film) • 1956
“This boy is different, doesn’t conform to your ideas… This whole thing is judgment by prejudice, and I resent it. He’s not like me; therefore, he is capable of all possible crimes. He’s not one of us, a member of the tribe, so the tribe has to find a scapegoat.”

John F. Kennedy • 1917–1963
“Every aspect of the American economy has profited from the contributions of immigrants.”

Rachel Maddow • 1973—
“Fascism is not just a word. It`s not just a way to insult someone with whom you disagree. It is a specific thing. It is a specific form of far right politics that involves a sort of narcissistic cult of superman action around the leader of the party.”

Speaking Freely #53 was originally published in The Radical Center on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.