Trego's Mountain Ear

As I have watched the events lead up toward Presidential Election 2024, a few things are becoming clear.  One is that right wing or left wing doesn’t make a lot of difference when both wings are attached to a buzzard.

Both parties are corporations.  If you don’t own stock in a corporation, the corporation doesn’t have to pay attention to you – even if you vote straight party line and consider yourself a proud democrat or republican.  Bernie Sanders supporters discovered that back in 2020 –DNC to Court: We Are a Private Corporation With No Obligation to Follow Our Rules | Independent Voter News

“A federal judge dismissed the DNC lawsuit on August 28. The court recognized that the DNC treated voters unfairly, but ruled that the DNC is a private corporation; therefore, voters cannot protect their rights by turning to the courts:

“To the extent Plaintiffs wish to air their general grievances with the DNC or its candidate selection process, their redress is through the ballot box, the DNC’s internal workings, or their right of free speech — not through the judiciary.”

So as I look at the upcoming election, I am remembering that both wings are attached to the same bird.  Biden’s like 81 years old.  Trump is 77.  Nothing personal, but both of them are too old – entirely too old.  At my age, I want my nation’s leaders (and my whisky) to be younger than I am.

Albert Jay Nock wrote Our Enemy the State in 1935 – when I was younger, it was hard to find a copy.  Now, with the net, it’s only a click away: Our Enemy, The State .

“There are two methods, or means, and only two, whereby man’s needs and desires can be satisfied. One is the production and exchange of wealth; this is the economic means. The other is the uncompensated appropriation of wealth produced by others; this is the political means.”

“Uncompensated appropriation of wealth produced by others: this is the political means.”  Albert Jay Nock would have had no problem recognizing the bird of state as a vulture – and yet the vulture preys only on the dead.  The bird of state preys on the living.

Nock stresses the change from the church-state of 1500 to the modern, sectarian state. 

 “Another strange notion pervading whole peoples is that the State has money of its own; and nowhere is this absurdity more firmly fixed than in America. The State has no money. It produces nothing. It existence is purely parasitic, maintained by taxation; that is to say, by forced levies on the production of others. ‘Government money,’ of which one hears so much nowadays, does not exist; there is no such thing.”

Another concept – there is no ‘Government money’ – the State is parasitic, maintained by forced levies.

“The idea that the State originated to serve any kind of social purpose is completely unhistorical. It originated in conquest and confiscation – that is to say, in crime. It originated for the purpose of maintaining the division of society into an owning-and-exploiting class and a propertyless dependent class – that is, for a criminal purpose.”

Nock definitely was prescient – seeing the State as set up for a criminal purpose.  That view seems to be supported by today’s news.

“When politicians say “I’m in politics,” it may or may not be possible to trust them, but when they say, “I’m in public service,” you know you should flee.”

“The State always moves slowly and grudgingly towards any purpose that accrues to society’s advantage, but moves rapidly and with alacrity towards one that accrues to its own advantage; nor does it ever move towards social purposes on its own initiative, but only under heavy pressure, while its motion towards anti-social purposes is self-sprung.”

“It is interesting to observe that in the year 1935 the average individual’s incurious attitude towards the phenomenon of the State is precisely what his attitude was toward the phenomenon of the Church in the year, say, 1500. It does not appear to have occurred to the Church-citizen of that day, any more than it occurs to the State-citizen of the present, to ask what sort of institution it was that claimed his allegiance.”

“Driving jobholders out of office is like the old discredited policy of driving prostitutes out of town. Their places are immediately taken by others who are precisely like them.”

“The State did not originate in any form of social agreement, or with any disinterested view of promoting order and justice. Far otherwise. The State originated in conquest and confiscation, as a device for maintaining the stratification of society permanently into two classes-an owning and exploiting class, relatively small, and a propertyless dependent class. . . . No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose than to enable the continuous economic exploitation of one class by another.”

“Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those of a professional-criminal class.”

Now, it’s time to quit reading these Nock quotes and to click the link and read his book.