Transformation of the American Right - Murray N. Rothbard - Mises Institute

All too often, the lines of "right" and "left" are condensed to talking points. Politics has been annulled of all philosophy, principles, and reason. There are still pockets of intellectual resistance, and other such hold-out institutions. I think this should be required of both the left and the right to put things into proper context and proper ideological bounds. I might add, the Left-Right paradigm is a false paradigm. We should all be using the Nolan Chart, but again it isn't as easy to digest and easy to put into talking points.

I'm interested to hear critiques from this crowd, of mainly Statists. Let's have a fresh dialogue.

One of the more articulate parts of the article:

The state is an antisocial organization, originating in conquest and concerned only with confiscating production.… There are two ways of making a living, Nock explained. One is the economic means, the other the political means. The first consists of the application of human effort to raw materials so as to bring into being things that people want; the second is the confiscation of the rightful property of others.…

The state is that group of people, who having got hold of the machinery of compulsion, legally or otherwise, use it to better their circumstances; that is the political means.

Nock would hasten to explain that the state consists not only of politicians, but also those who make use of the politicians for their own ends; that would include those we call pressure groups, lobbyists, and all who wrangle special privileges out of the politicians. All the injustices that plague "advanced" societies, he maintained, are traceable to the workings of the state organizations that attach themselves to these societies.