Good essay, Taki.  I remember standing next to a Rumanian, a refugee from Communism, during a demonstration against Clinton’s attack on Yugoslavia.  He said to me, “Kirt, I never thought I’d be saying this, but if the Soviet Union still existed, the United States would not dare to do what it is doing now.” I don’t mourn the passing of Communism, but until the US melts down or suffers a catastrophe, some power is needed to hold in check the world’s only ideologically driven rogue nation which is armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons and eager to use them.  Maybe Putin’s Russia can provide the deterent.

Heaven forbid Russia from defending itself against being surrounded by NATO bases and puppet regimes set up in colour-coded “revolutions”!  The gall!

Russia has a great new bomb:

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL1155952320070912

I like Putin too. If America had a leader that
cared about our national sovereignty, and the moral
and economic security of it’s people, we’d be a lot
better off. We did at one time---we call them the
Founding Fathers! And that used to be the platform
of the Conservative movement I grew up with---inspired
by Barry Goldwater.

Instead we have quislings in both parties, pimps for
Wall Street Bankers, whose put the interest of
multi-national corporations above the interests of
their own people, in the name of “diversity” and
“multi-culturalism"---which is a code word for
giving those who have the most, a little more,
and making sure the public is so distracted by
divisions in race, religion and gender, that they
don’t even realize that their economic security is
being sold to the highest bidder.

“Liassez Faire”? Humbug. It doesn’t exist, will
never exist, any more then perfect “communism” can exist.
Libertarianism is the false profit, the rot in the
Conservative movement, the utopianism of the Right.

Ojojoj… This article included a very surprising and very socialist statement to come from the usually admirable Taki. That “Russia’s raw material belongs to Russians” is a very absurd and lofty claim and such philosophy, I guess, goes hand in hand with the views that Chalets in Switzerland for the Swiss, or flats in London for the English ( which I doubt Taki would agree to). Private property is private property whether its is assets in form of raw material, paper money, real estate and its owner should be respected located in Russia and elsewhere. Putin is in many ways a great leader and Russia needs a tsar, but it also needs private enterprise owned and run by entrepreneurs, local and / or international ( including MNCs). Expropriating private assets from is rightfully owners by the Kremlin is wrong and will harm that great country.

It is good that Putin has done something about the banditry going on over the country’s natural resourses. It is the only asset they have asside from talent and ingenuity within their own population. I do hope that something actualy comes of this and we hear about the trend of migration out of Russia reversing and living standards rising. Putin used to look too to me and I feel for a long time he has felt somehow like the oligarchs owned him and he couldn’t do anything about confronting them.

I am no fan of those trying to start a new Cold war with Russia, but I don’t see that as a reason to kiss the ass of Putin. What Putin’s gang has done in Chechnya is almost as criminal as what Bush II has done in Iraq. And all Putin has done with the economy has built up a new elite, replacing the old oligarchs with his old KGB buddies. I don’t see any merit in pushing rich westerners about when western countries let rich Russians go about their business (London is full of them for example). Again though, I see no reason to try to actively agitate Russia or start another Cold War. Playing power politics just invalidates any moral superiority we had. Russia isn’t going to become a superpower again. Its birth rates are dreadful (except for those of the Muslims and the Asians), the life expectancy is getting worse, all this military spending is just wasteful, and Russia could feel a squeeze if oil/gas prices collapse. No need to get particularly worried about them, and there is no need for alarmistic rhetoric or giving the National Endowment for Democracy more money to keep making an ass of America.

I agree with Taki’s statement of appreciation for Putin’s efforts
to protect Russian national interest but I think there is a
world of ideological difference between Putin’s patriotism
and the plans for European control being applied by the American
government. Our leaders do not want the “Western democratic
allies” to show any nationalist tendencies, which our state
department wonks, foreign policy magazine editors and neocon
overlords associate with “fascism” and anti-Semitism. The perfect
European ally is Chancellor Merkel of the German satellite
Republic, who is begging the EU to take away her country’s
sovereignty and who apologizes nonstop for every war that her
country presumably started since 1870. Self-assertive
European powers are clearly not what the leaders of our
global democratic imperium hope to see. Putin rattles these
leaders because he is an unabashed Russian nationalist; and as
far as I can see, he has not interest in turning Russia into
a “propositional nation” based on “human rights” ideology.

@Charlemagne

How does one own a “natural resource”?

In order for something to be legitamately “property”, it must
be bought from the producer of that material at some point in
the past.

Since God has created the world’s natural resources, when have
those natural resources been bought from God?  Where’s the deed?

You see, property in those things created by God are to be held
in common.  Anything else is theft.

‘Since God has created the world’s natural resources’

Scoff. Scoff. Scoff.

Frankly, and despite his KGB pedigree, I much prefer Putin to George
Bush. A strong, Orthodox Russia, recognizing its traditions (mostly
those prior to 1918!), could be a counterweight to the decadent
“p.c."-corrupted Europe. Putin and Benedict XVI are about the
only two leaders I really respect these days...with Pinochet no
longer around.

Would that our leaders protect the USA the way Putin is protecting Russia.

Bush has shredded the constitutional protections (except for the penumbras and eminations that protect abortions, apparently the shadow stays even though the object casting it is long gone), so we already have turned the FBI into the KGB, but they are working for our version of the oligarchs.

But the key thing is Putin is encouraging Russia to have children.  The US core is dying out, but Russia was worse.  At least Putin has properly diagnosed the problem and is acting to counter it.

@Boyd Cathey

Indeed, whatever misgivings one might have about Putin,,
he is a sane man, facing reality.

This, unfortunately cannot be said of the Dunce in Chief.

(Sure, it is not his fault but of the neocons advicing
him, but part of his job as President is to recognize
good advice and reject bad, and he consistely chose
bad advice… As T.H. White says that no matter how
persuasive they might be, no one has convinced men to
walk on their hands).

I bet that my previous comment will convince Kirt
Higden that I pin after murderous alpha males, as if
he could offer examples of non-murderous leaders who
would not lead us down the primrose path.

‘Sure, it is not his fault but of the neocons advicing him’

Rubbish. Bush has not been merely misled by bad advisers. I would say he and Cheney are more neocon than a lot of the neocon advisers. At least some (if not many) of the neocons have abandoned ship. Bush continues to be as idealistic and starry eyed as ever.

American policy towards Russia has been abominable but Putin is no re-assuring figure. An ex-secret policeman who is nostalgic for the Soviet Empire and is trying to rehabilitate Stalin should not be anyone’s cup of tea!

@Theodore

No one claims that Putin is this knight in white armor,
nor a democrat (I loved his rejoinder to Bush about
democracy in Russia “You want us to be democratic like
Iraq?"). But he is a sensible man who is doing things
that need to be doing.

Unfortunately there is no democratic tradition in
Russia, but a strongly autocratic one. Sure, he is
a former secret policeman, but you do not realize what
this means. That, after the disaster caused by all that
Western advice, the only insitution that could be said
to hold itself together and to function somehow was the
KGB. So, of course, it took over.

“ . . .as if
he could offer examples of non-murderous leaders who
would not lead us down the primrose path.” - Adriana

Clearly I think that Ron Paul is an example of such a leader - pro-life and anti-war.  Otherwise I would not be supporting him.

@Kirt

When Ron Paul gets elected President we’ll talk.

Some people need to buy a dictionary. The issue is how should a nation deal with crooks who have stolen public property.

1. The Great Russian Empire—“The 3rd Rome’, “The New Byzantium”, and largely cemented by Peter the Great— in 1991—much to the sorrow of the Marxist and Lincoln idolater Eric Foner—went the way of the Ottoman, Habsburg, British, Dutch, Belgian, Portugese, Japanese, French, and McKinley-T. Roosevelt’s colonial empires. High Time, and Russia is all the better (and richer) without bossing around other peoples.  Mr. Speaker, I respectfully move that we as well now follow suit and dissolve the nationalist, centralist,
irredentist, and expansionist misdeeds of Ferdinand and Isabella, Richelieu, The Whigs of the Act of Union and the Quebec Act, the Belgians of 1831, Cavour, Bismarck, and Dishonest Abe. 

2. Dr. Gottfried should know that I’m all for an independent Flanders.  It’s just that when either Whig or Brown Nationalists (or even Red like Stalin) are in charge, they love high tariffs and military conquest of their neighbors.  We in Dixie know all about this.  So does Frau Merkel and her fellow Ossies.

3. Russia has always been exclusively autocratic and centralized.  Even Mitteleuropa and Italy had the traditions of the Hansa and the polis to build on. Not Russia.  But then autocratic was most of Europe until the 18th C, and Japan until 1945.  Give Ivan, Boris, Natasha and Ludmilla time.

Taki, “Molodyetz!” I agree with 100 percent of what you wrote.

At the risk of sounding self-promoting - which is not my intention vis a vis this article - I want to corraborate everything Taki wrote here, with another article I published on this blog:

http://www.takimag.com/site/article/how_gatsby_skinned_his_head/

Everything I would like to say in response to this article, was said in the above referenced article I published here a few months ago.

I will only add this anecdote:  When I lived in Russia, one of my dearest friends there, Victor Grigorovich Suitnik, a 60-something year old movie star and stage actor, often invited me to his parties at his apartment, and whenever I was ready to leave his late-night parties, he would always embrace me and say:

“I’m sorry we didn’t fight!"…

...by which he meant, that even IF we HAD fought, we would still be friends.

America still has a lot to learn, from that Russian parable.

Putin has offended the Jews (especially the American) by clipping their wings in Russia. Supplied with American capital they have grabbed practically all the country just as Taki points out.
Just an exemple.
Gusinski, a former taxi driver, has been able to establish control over the practically whole TV media in Russia. Drunken Yeltsin sold him everything dirt cheap for the money Gusinski got from America. When he was about to be arrested on criminal charges, American Jews started crying foul: Putin arrests his political rival. They found natural that an Israeli citizen Gusinski decides what is going to be news in Russia - otherwise withdrawal of democratic credentials.
What is important for Russia is to be strong to make a counterweight to our agressive attitude. This would be also very beneficial to us, to bring us back to senses.A Christian Orthodox Russia can provide that. Democracy is not important. Who would want to addopt our corrupted one, anyhow?

Charlemagne sed: “Private property is private property whether its is assets in form of raw material, paper money, real estate and its owner should be respected located in Russia and elsewhere.”

Oh what a lot of rot. A nation’s national resources belong to the
nation, not to a band of international financers who maintain
dual citizenships with Israel and any old country that they
might have an investment in.

In the case of Russia, their public assets were auctioned off to
a handful of looters whose sole competitive advantage was their
insider connections to the IMF/WorldBank/IMF. 

Hey Charley, I got news for YOU---that’s the US taxpayer. Russia’s
bounty was bought and paid for with public funds. Now how in the
heck can YOU argue that’s “privatization”. It’s absurd. It’s
looting, plain and simple.

And dimwit, you can’t compare a condo in London with Russia’s
entire oil industry....what are you, some kind of nut?

“Libertarians” like you are always making these idiotic blanket
statements, you’re so much like COMMUNISTS I’ve been around in
your ideological “purity” that you make me want to spit. Shees,
you are as dangerous as any commie, in your nonsensical utopianism
about “private property” and the “free” market. What’s free or
private about the looting of the Soviet Union.

The reason we are involved in a quaqmire in the Mideast is Wall
Street and American Oil companies have the same attitude toward
Mideast OIL as you’ve just espoused. That OIL belongs to the
people who live there, and they are fighting us for the same
that our founding fathers fought King George III, who thought
that America’s wealth was for the benefit of HIS nation’s economic
growth!

Scratch a utopian, ideologically rigid “libertarian” and you get
a King George III, every time.

Joe Populist,

It saddens me that you and I ever fought on this forum (it was 51 percent your fault, exacerbated by my hot temper), because I agree with everything you say here.

Joe Populist, you got a lot o’ vodka coming from me to you!

‘. A nation’s national resources belong to the nation.’

Isn’t that basically nationalist socialism?

Martin says: Isn’t that basically nationalist socialism?

So what Martin?
American alternative has been
‘What is mine is mine and what is yours is ours’

Well, if you want to believe in socialism, be my guest. The last person that told me that ‘private property’ was delusional and utopianism was a postmodernist Marxist, so you are in pretty good company I suppose.

@Martin

Quick lesson in economics:

There are three factors of production, not two, as the
neoclassical economists would have you believe.  The three factors
of production are 1)Land; 2)Labor; and 3)Capital.

Of those three factors, both Labor and Capital are appropriately
“private property”, that is, they belong to their legitimate
owners.  Land (that is, natural resources) can not be “owned”, as
they can not be purchased from their original owner, “God”.

The system we call “capitalism” could just have been easily called
“laborism”, as it’s main point is that both Capital and Labor is
to be owned by it’s producers, but that Land can not, nor should
not.  Every “capitalist” recognized the unique situation of
natural resources in the economy, that is why it was it’s own
seperate factor of production.

The anti-capitalist mercantilists and socialists all try to combine
the factors of production.  The mercantilists want to say that
Land and Capital are one and the same, and that Land can and
should be owned privately, and the socialists claim Land, Labor
and Capital should be owned collectively.  Only the true
“Capitalist/Laborist” will see that Land is unique from Labor,
which is unique from Capital.  Labor acts upon Land to produce
Capital, which is then used further by Labor on more Land and other
Capital to produce more Capital, and so on and so forth.

Martin
the National-socialism accepts private property. Germany was national socialist under Hitler, do you want to claim there was no private property there? Or, are you one of those who believe that national-socialism must have concentration camps (like Guantanamo) and wars of agression (like Iraq and Afganistan) in order to function?

Sorry, Andy, but I’ve read Eugen Böhm-Bawerk.  There are only three factors in production: demand, demand, and demand.  And demand is a function of marginal utility and time preference.

Your argument against the ownership of tangibles (to use the correct term, not “Land") is one doubtless dear to the heart of Socialists, Marxists, and assorted Utopians. I wanted to break into a round of the “International” upon reading your words.

What is more, to follow the Japanese thinker Sakaiya, there are periods in history when people consume information more than material.  Such were the Ancient Egyptians, Late Antiquity, Medieval, and the world since October 1973.  In such a period, “Land” is not “natural resources” but a certain intangible, i.e. ideas between the ears, which transfer into information and design—unless you wish to call the electrons that you are looking at on your computer screen “land”.  And not only clothing and shelter, but even food and drink are becoming a matter of design and subjective taste—a taste the imposes a certain identity upon the taster. 

That means also that “labor” isn’t as Locke the Lunatic and Marx the Moron thought, the working of the “Land”, but the development and the transfer of information.

Even the murdering communists could not hold Russia
down for more than 50 years.
I think the world is about to re-discover the white race.

@Blue Flower

Land is of a different type than Capital and Labor.

Labor + Land [+ Capital] = Capital.  Labor produces Capital from working Land,
no matter what you or others try to say.  I’d like for you to
mine gold with no Land or Labor.

As for your tirade concerning Sakaiya and “intangibles”: huh?
What kind of non-sequiter was THAT?

Atta Boy,
Communists held down Russia for seventy five years.

What’s 25 years between friends?

You know, just because Bush is a bad guy, doesn’t mean that we should support anyone who might oppose him.

Putin isn’t trying to keep down the oil companies - he’s trying to control them, and frightened shades of socialism begin to rise up.  You can’t celebrate the end of oligarchy without noticing that Putin became an oligarch himself with that action.  (Of course, there are plenty of powerful Russian oligarchs, but we would call them by a foreign name - the mafia.) Russia is backsliding into autocracy, and whether it’s closer to socialism or absolute monarchy, it won’t be good for the Russian people, even if you think it might be good for us.

Those of you that think that Russia is rediscovering its religion, well, you’re only half right.  Most young people will say they’re Orthodox, because they’ve be reverse-engineered against Communism, but if you go to any church service you’ll find the numbers are tiny, mostly little old ladies who remember Russia pre-revolution or just post-. 

The other reason that the young are apparently Orthodox is that the new popular religion to replace Communism is Russian nationalism.  Different segments of the populace take it to differing extremes, of course, but it’s why foreigners, especially blacks, are attacked, along with all the usual problems that accompany extreme xenophobic nationalism in any country.  And it’s all done in the cause of “eliminating fascism,” even though the only apparent fascists are they.  This is encouraged by government propaganda, including government-controlled news media - and don’t forget all the murdered anti-Putin journalists.

As this is a paleoconservative blog (and I’m one myself), you might also want to look more closely at Putin’s advances on the sovereignty of surrounding states.  Chechnya has already been brought up, but Georgia, Ukraine and others have been affronted as well.

Russia did have an actual democratic government, by the way. 

Go to Russia some time, as I did.  It’s not the worst place in the world by any means, and it’s filled with wonderful people and culture.  But the land of Pushkin is still also the land of Stalin, and Putin has much more in common with the latter, or Alexander III.

thanks for your insight on russia taki....and kudos on your blog website.

I have been tearing my hair out ever since the old Soviet Union fell apart trying to figure out why we have gone out of our way to antagonize the Russians.  Nato should have been disbanded and not pushed right up to their borders.  Does anyone have any light on the reasons behind this lunacy?

Lets get things straight.  I never “argued” that the process of which Russian natural resources got in the hands of some of the current owners after the Soviet collapse was privatization proper.  On the contrary it was obviously closer to looting and extremely corrupt tenders. However I would disagree with only blaming the opportunistic capitalists. Actually the biggest faults were with the corrupt politicians of the apparatus who allowed it to happen and preferred the fast kickbacks from the most cunning marketers i.e the coming so called oligarchs), rather then a healthy strategy of modernization of the industry and carefully auctioning it it according market prices. The ideal scenario would have been that similar to the honest Ukrainian auction of that countries biggest steel mill in 2005. An auction won by Mittal Steel which is Indian owned ( poor Ukrainians they now have an efficient steel industry providing more jobs and benefits).

The worst kind of greed ( as usual ) was with the men of the state and those are the one that really are to blame of how the resources was distributed! In my view whats important the resources has an owner ( and no by that I don’t mean the State, leave that to Stalin and the Norwegians) that efficiently can produce and market and export the products. Gradually industry competition will force the resources to the most righteous ownership which will to the greatest benefits of the Russian people. I appreciate Putin and he has been good for Russia and its people in many ways. But he should not stand in the way and take control of the industry as he currently doing ( and only for personal profits to boot). So don’t mistake his expropriation from companies Yukos, Shell to latest Russneft ( which success was completely legit in my point of view) with “giving it back to the Russian people”. Together with his old KGB/FSB buddies in the “Siloviki” he is nothing but building a family business empire and its vehicles are called Rosneft and Gazprom. This is cleptocracy ala Abrahamovich on grand scale and should be acknowledged as precisely that..

Martin sed: ’. “A nation’s national resources belong to the nation.’
Isn’t that basically nationalist socialism?”

No. That’s a slur, a barely veiled charge of “anti-semitism”, isn’t it?

America was never a pure laissez faire economic system every.
In fact, most all wealth in the United States has been created
by Big Government, and the privatization of public property.
For instance the history of the railroads, which were given
government grants of public land. The entire development of the
Frontier was always the privatization of PUBLIC lands.

In large part, the widespread ownership of land and private residency
are due to the American innovation of Fannie Mae, which allowed
working folks to own their own home.

All of the technological achievements of the “new” economy,
pharmaceticals, telecommuications, internet, computers, aeronautics
practically anything you can think of---are all examples of
privatization of public assets---in this case goverment research.
Unfortunately, most of history’s technical progress comes from
WAR!

In the case of the Soviet Union, “privatization” was financed
by the STATE institutions---foreign to the Russian people---of
the IMF/WorldBank. Privatization was not under the control of the
RUSSIAN people, but by international finance capitalists, with
“insider connections” to the STATE power.

There is nothing wrong with private ownership and development
of natural resources as along as the capitalists that own it
have shared sense of culture and values. That used to be the case
in the United States, until the mid-twentith century, as
Chrisopher Lasch argued most clearly in his book, “Revolt of the
Elites”, and “The Culture of Narcissism”.

I believe in the theory of CLASS, but in the sense of Max Weber,
not Karl Marx. Capitalism cannot exist without WASP culture and
a shared sense of national identity and shared values.

You “libertarians” are as bad as Communists. The only difference is
you believe in absolute “freedom” and “property”, while the Commies
believe in absolute “equality”. In reality, neither are possible
nor even desirable. Libertarianism is as dangerous as Communism.

John Ball sed: “It saddens me that you and I ever fought on this forum (it was 51 percent your fault, exacerbated by my hot temper), because I agree with everything you say here.”

We share more then we disagree on, Mr. Ball. Especially our
admiration for the Russian people, so long under the

My REAL disagreement is with the “libertarians”, who in reality
are apologists for the “New World Order” of international finance
capitalism and World goverment. I’m a populist in the true sense
of the world, I believe in the values of the American working
class: the value of labor, the work ethic, religion and family,
community, and love of country.

If that makes me a “socialist”, then I dont’ care. But I’ve
been inspired by Russell Kirk as well as the values of American
populism, the old People’s Party, described by Lawrence Goodwyn
in his book, “The Populist Moment: The history of Agrarian Revolt
in America”.

TGIF.  Line up three bumps of whiskey for Joe Pop, J Ball, and FoSquare.  Heave ho! mates.  Whoops!  Better line up a fourth.  Taki wants in, too.  What’s this!  Putin too?

Joe Populist says: Libertariarism is as dangerous as Communism.
One is as undesirable as the other, certainly, but dangerous?
Can you imagine organized Libertarian masses opressing the disidents through their Secret Police? I can’t.
Libertarians seem to be some koo-koo intellectuals who imagine themselves as Ayn Rand’s Atlases Shrugged i.e. geniuses, victims of altruism, which can, at most, produce a lively conversation in some gatherings of old ladies.

@PeterRV

Communists were quite a fringe group, among all the
political lunatics of the period until they got an
opening after World War I. There was an incredible
vacuum of power in Russia, and when there is such a
vacuum, the likelihood that it will be filled by any
group audacious enough is very great. All it is
required is daring and resolve to get the prize.

Sanity is strictly optional.

As to whether the Libertarians would resort to
totalitarian means? It might happen more easily than
you think. All you need for acceptance of totalitarian
means is

The belief that there is a simple, obvious solutions
to all the problems.

The belief that implementing it is easy.

The first belief leads to the conviction that the
solution must be implemented at all costs, and that
those who oppose it must be evil.

The second leads to the conviction that any difficulties
in implementing such easy solution is due to the
plotting of those evil opponents.

So, before you know it is “Liberty, how many crimes are
committed in thy name”

(By the way, originally the French Revolution tried to
implement a Libertarian type of regime. It was only
afterwards that the Jacobins came to power.)

Adriana

I see what you mean, your reasoning is, of course,impecable (I may add -as usual). Still, Libertarianism as you admit can only be a transient state following or preceding a vacuum of power.
I am not too strong on this, but didnt French Revolution start with decapitation of Borbons (hardly a Libertarian act) and the proclamation of the ‘Age de Raison’. Could this be called properly speaking, the predecessor of Libertarianism?

Libertarianism is as dangerous as communism?
Totalitarian libertarians?
The problem is enforcement?
Sanity is strictly optional?
Libertarians are apologists for the new world order?
Libertarians are koo-koo?

Is that goofy? Or is it dopey? I know it’s not Snow White.

Slightly modified version of my petit bijou above.

TGIF.  Line up three bumps of whiskey for Joe Pop, J Ball, and FoSquare.  Heave ho, mates!  Whoops!  Better line up a fourth.  Taki wants in, too.  What’s this!  Putin too?  I can see into his soul.  A tot of grog for Vlad.  Bump, bump, bump!  Three cheers, mates!

@PeterRV

The decapitation of Louis XVI did not take place until
1792, under the new Jacobin regime, while the
Libertarian experiment had been going on since 1789.

Let it be known that that experiment was a complete
disaster no matter how many sentimental pictures are
painted of the “good phase” of the Revolution (Burke
was one of those not deceived about that “good phase”,
he started his diatribe in 1790, when everyone was
praising the French Revolution to the skies). The
balance of those early Revolutionaries was thus

They received a country at peace. They got it into
a whole unnecesary war with the resto of Europe (a
crusade to bring democracy to the unhappy subject of
foreign princes - sounds familiar?)

They received a country in which order was kept. They
precipitated disorders and civil war.

They received a rich society, with rising stardards of
living for the whole population. They brought about
economic collapse and looming famine.

It is almost impossible not to feel sympathy for
Robespierre at this point, since he was the one who
inherited that disaster.

Of course, it was not pure Libertarianism, but they
liberalized the trade in grains, saying that the
free market would work its magic. What happened was
that hoarders (and hoarding was a fact of life then),
grabbed hold of the grain and waited for prices to
go up (a prudent form of investment). Of course the
price of bread shot up, and the people revolted and
before you knew it, the Governemtn fell, and the Jacobins
came to power, and they did put a maximum price on
foodstuffs.

The French revolutionaries were mostly proto-socialists, not proto-libertarians.If you want a French proto-libertarian, read Frederic Bastiat. He didn’t have much positive to say about Rousseau or Robespierre.

@Adriana
So, they were sort of Kerenskys of that epoch. Thanks

@PeterRV

I suspect that the history of the French Revolution
should have been told by Dr. Laurence J. Peter. It was
incompetence all the way around.

One thing that should be a tipoff was the composition
of the Committee of Public Salvation, the one in which
Robespierre was a member. It included, Saint-Just, a
very young man whose only antecedents were a riotous
youth and the publication of a pornographic tract,
Billaud-Varenne, who had consistently failed at anything
he attempted, and Collot d’Herbois, an actor who
had great resentments because actors were not considered
respectable in those days.

That people with those antecedents were given such huge
responsibilty shows how the political system had come
apart. All the figures that had prestige or could be
called solid had become irrelevant, and they were scrapping
the bottom of the barrel to get anyone in charge.

The French Revoluiton was a disaster from day one.

@Martin

What did Bastiat said about Mirabeau?

Because Mirabeau was the one who came up with these
ideas

a) since the property of the Church was held by an
institution and not by private persons, it was not
private property and need not be protected, and thus
could be taken over by the National Assembly.

b) because they needed money, they should issue paper
money called assignats backed by such church property.
And pay their creditors with said paper money. And print
more when needed.

Thus was the great economic crisis created.

This was in 1789, when Robespierre was an obscure
deputy that very few cared to listen to.

It is very easy to condemn Robespierre, but how about
the ones whose errors led him into power?

What did Bastiat said about Mirabeau and the men of
1789?

@ Michael (scrolling way up),

“Those of you that think that Russia is rediscovering its religion, well, you’re only half right.  Most young people will say they’re Orthodox, because they’ve be reverse-engineered against Communism, but if you go to any church service you’ll find the numbers are tiny...Go to Russia some time, as I did.... the land of Pushkin is still also the land of Stalin, and Putin has much more in common with the latter, or Alexander III.”

Well, Michael, I did go to Russia, probably for longer than you did, and lived there for almost two years.

There’s a germ of what you say about Christianity in Russia, but the picture is more complex.  I spent Easter of 1999 as a guest of two former Communist Party members - one of whom is a retired Red Army officer - both of whose childhoods coincided with WW II.  That’s why they joined the Party; they were both orphaned in the war, and the Party was their way to some basic personal security and prosperity.  So, neither of them ever had any formal religions training, but they always celebrated Easter in the traditional way, even through so-called “Communist” times.

They woke me up at dawn and asked me, “John, would you like a shot of vodka?”
I said, “Yes, of COURSE I’d like some vodka!  But why right now on Easter Sunday morning?” Well, they already had the table laid out for the traditional Eastern morning breakfast, and it begins with a shot of vodka.  The old Mother of the house raised her glass and said, “Here is to Christ’s resurrection, and may he live forever!” And then her dry-witted husband replied, “Jesus doesn’t need your permission to rise from the dead.” HA!  Now THAT was funny!

Their daughter, born in Krushchev’s time,
was secrety baptised by her grandmother, but had no training in Christianity.  Yet her daughter in turn, born in Brezhnev’s time, was never baptised, but she now considers herself to be a Christian, and she has her own little shrine of Icons.  I know her to be totally sincere about this.  And she can profess her faith in public - quite a big change from Communist times.

That old couple’s granddaughter, born in 2000, was baptised in the Orthodox Church, and her formerly Communist Party grandparents attended the baptism proudly, as they saw it as a renewal of Russia’s Christian heritage of which they were deprived for most of their lives.

As for the small numbers of regular churchgoers, well, isn’t that true of MOST Christian nations?  At least vast numbers of Russians are now professing to be Christians - far more than in, say, France or Germany or England.  Hmmmm.....

And as for your saying Putin is more like Stalin than like Alexander III, no.  He’s more like Alexander the SECOND, or Peter the Great.  (Gloss, FJ Sarto’s choice of that old Russian print of Peter the Great’s time, depicting a beard being shaved off under Tsar Peter’s orders, is perfect for this article!) Yes, under Putin Russia is somewhat autocratic - as it needs to be; Russia could not survive otherwise, and the last thing the world needs is anarchy in the nation holding the second largest nuclear arsenal in the world.  But there is no Gulag Archipelago under Putin, and Russia today is more liberal, more open, more Christian, more decent, and more friendly to the West than it has been since 1917.
Shame on so many Westerners who have done so much to squander Russia’s post-Communist goodwill toward the West.

Oh, and @ FoSquare:  GULP!  Hit me (and Taki and Joe Pop and Putin) again!  NAS’ZDOROVYE!

Shut up sed: “Libertarianism is as dangerous as communism?
Libertarians are apologists for the new world order?
Libertarians are koo-koo Is that goofy? Or is it dopey?”

Well, who really represents “libertarianism”? Alan Greenspan
and Tom Friedman with his “flat earth” theory. Or Dick Armey,
another pimp for the CEO classes. Or may the defender-in-chief
of the Federal Reserve, Milton Friedman.

Let’s not even mention that nutcase, Ayn Rand, and her followers
in the “Cult of Individualism”.

No, “shut up”, the case is clear. “Libertarianism” is not the
utopian fantasy that idiots like you dream about. The “free
market” rhetoric is mostly in defense of the “New World Order” of
International Finance Capitalism and World Government, via the
IMF/WorldBank/Export-ImportBank.  “Free Markets” ---there is actually no
such thing as “free” markets btw---merely leds to classic
Imperialism, and war. Where the investment goes, the soldiers
follow.

Just a fact of life, that may be uncomfortable to YOU, but
true none the less.

Oh my goodness… Taki, honestly. Perhaps this is how Russia seems from your yacht in the Mediterraneanian but the reality is very different.  Maybe you should visit the place yourself one day.

Renationalisation of industries. State-sponsored discrimination against minorities, ethnic, sexual, black and muslim students. Putin youth movements marching with red banners. Skinheads stoning gay clubbers with police looking on. Corruption more widespead than in the Soviet times. KGB taking the reigns at the Kremlin and killing people abroad once again.

I hope your views on Putin’s Russia have nothing to do with the fact that you like to recall nostalgically the period of Nazi occupation of Greece. I agree with you on the point about the oil companies but Russia has to start to take responsibility for its actions some time.

Putin is re-nationalising industries in order to sell them for the second time, just like Rosneft, to another bunch of cronies.  Now, what would your old man say about that?

To get my point on fascism, please read the following quote from your article with “Russia” substituted with “Germany” and “Putin” with “Hitler”. Think circa 1937-38: -

“Instead of helping a prostrate Germany, we cheered while the Germans suffered defeat and humiliation. Now the chickens have come home to roost, and Germany is bent upon the recovery of her assets, her authority and her capacity to intimidate. Instead of whining, Uncle Sam should put himself in Hitler’s place. Most of the German people love what he’s doing. His is the kind of government they understand”.

Peter RV sed: “Libertarians seem to be some koo-koo intellectuals who imagine themselves as Ayn Rand’s Atlases Shrugged i.e. geniuses, victims of altruism, which can, at most, produce a lively conversation in some gatherings
of old ladies.”

Truer words were never spoken, if you’ve ever met the guy down
in Orange County that currently runs what’s left of the Ayn
Rand Organization. A meeting of “Old Ladies” indeed, as gay as
can be.

Are the Ayn Rand bunch “kooky?” You better believe it.

@ Sergei Cristo,

“Oh my goodness… Taki, honestly. Perhaps this is how Russia seems from your yacht in the Mediterraneanian but the reality is very different.  Maybe you should visit the place yourself one day.”

Well, Sir, I did live there for two years.  See my above two comments here, and the article I published on this blog, also linked to above.  And I didn’t see it from a yacht; I saw it from my little two room hovel in Yekaterinburg, while the deadly Siberian winds lashed at my windows at 20-30 degrees below.  And I say Taki is 100 percent correct here.

“Renationalisation of industries.”

Yep, just what Russia needs.  A far sight better than privatising them in the hands of international gangsters like Berezovsky and Khodorkovsky.

“State-sponsored discrimination against minorities, ethnic, sexual, black and muslim students.”

It’s not state-sponsored.  Putin and the FSB/KGB (who are no friends of mine, but still) have been prohibiting those neo-Nazi creeps from demonstrating in public alongside so-called “Human Rights” activists.  I knew one of those so-called “Human Rights” activists personally, one who was feted as some kind of hero by the Western media - one of his admirers showed me a photograph of that “human rights” activist proudly being greeted with smiles by bloody Shamil Basayev, the Chechen terrorist who orchestrated the Beslan massacre.  Don’t you dare tell ME about Russian “human rights” activists - all too many (or most?) of them are just self-promoting opportunists who have conned the Western media.

“Skinheads stoning gay clubbers with police looking on”

See above; most of Russia’s skinheads are enemies of Putin’s government.

“Corruption more widespead than in the Soviet times”

Thanks to Yeltsin and America’s “free-market” cheerleaders.  Putin has been trying to clean up that mess, and done about as good a job as any mortal man can do, and throwing Khodorkovsky into prison was a great start.

@ John Ball
I say THREE cheers for Putin, the man who can just save the U.S.A. by his exemple.

Great article by Taki and even better line of comments. This is why Taki’s blog is the first I go to whenever I have some spare time.

Exactly what Russia needs; and true to its history: Authoritarianism, police / state control of every aspect of private life, inefficiency, corruption and ultimately poverty and human life becoming very cheap are time honoured Russian traditions. Meanwhile little Greece will continue to be an appealing destination for Russian immigrants.

@Yannis Nkolopolous
‘State control of every aspect of private life’, in Russia? ‘life becoming very cheap are time honoured Russian traditions’?
Corruption, inefficiency? things, of course, unheard of in Greece (or the U.S.-now, here is the country without murders, where life isn’t cheap).
Would you be confusing the Country with the (happily) defunct Soviet Union?
‘Ultimately poverty’ seems to betray your wishes for Russia.
You can’t be a Greek.

The problem with libertarianism as I see it in the U.S. is that we do not
have a free market.  Unless you call the market where political influence
is bought by major corporations with loyalties to countries outside the U.S.
a free market. In our current system competition can be limited by buying
the proper politicians to acquire a state sponsored monopoly.  Until this system
is fixed than as Joe P stated libertarianism is a utopian dream.

@Adriana,

I believe that Ron Paul has been elected to somewhere around ten terms in
congress.  This makes him a leader in my book and one worth supporting.
One might argue that a true leader is not electable in our current system.
Before we can ever hope to produce a leader(at the executive level) in this country we must somehow
reform the system to allow an independent leader with the concern of the American
people in mind to be elected. 

I know it may be a dream but it is one worth having.

@Nucci

I may no claim for the future except recall the experience
from the past, and that experience involved the
French Revolution, which was set, at the beginning, to
follow the dictates of “laissez faire, laissez passer”,
and which, led by truly incompetent people, produced
a disaster that brought Robespierre to power.

Since Robespierre wasn’t much more competent that they,
the result was to be expected.

Sergei sed: To get my point on fascism, please read the following quote from your article with “Russia” substituted with “Germany” and “Putin” with “Hitler”. Think circa 1937-38: - “Instead of helping a prostrate Germany, we cheered while the Germans suffered defeat and humiliation. Now the chickens have
come home to roost...”

You are actually answering your own question...if the US government
participated in the looting of Russia by international finance
capitalists (the same thing as gangsters and looters), then the USA
created what you seem so afraid of.

WWI was about stripping Germany of it’s colonial possessions, and
preserving the British Empire. WWII---and Hitler---were an extention
of unresolved issues of WWI.

What’s your solution? More of the same idiocy that created the
problem? Leave Russia, and Putin, alone.

@ Peter RV

If little, corrupt, inefficient Greece can have a per capita GNP 4 times that of great Russia, possessing 50% of the world’s natural resources and inhabited by the highly educated, sensitive, altruistic Russian people, then something is seriously wrong with the world

To hell with all you collectivists,the French Revolution was the precurser of Communism and National Socialism. libertarians were the founders of America who wrote the Declaration of Idependence and the Constitutiuon as well as great English parlimentarians like Burke.Secure private property is the basis of a true free society.

@jack,

The historical record is the historical record.

Collectivists came to power in the French Revolution
only after the “laissez faire, laissez passer” crowd
had tried their wonderful theories and failed. That the
collectivist crowd was equally incompetent is also a
matter of record (I always say that the definitive
history of the French Revolution should have been
written by Dr. Laurence J. Peter).

As for the American Revolution, was Hamilton a Libertarian?
Was John Adams? They were as much Founding Fathers as the
one you wish to claim, and they did contribute quite a
bit.

Now, the one difference between the French and Americans
Revolution, was that the American was carried out by
people with experience in government, who knew what was\
possible and what was not.

Hamilton was a neomonarchist conservative.Adams co authored the Declartion of Independece he was a proponent of liberty despite some flaws when he was president, both were for secure private property rights.Liberty is what america should be about.

The French Revolutionaries also believed in
private property (we are talking pre-1793, you
have to be able to tell changes with time). It
was because of that belief in private property
that they refused to interfere in the trade in
grain, even with evidence of mounting hunger.

Their problem with the Church was that its
property was not private, that is, owned by
private citizens, but it was a corporate,
collective property, and thus illegitimate.
So, they made arrangements to privatize it
(Church and State were rather too close in those
days, what with the State choosing bishops, and
the Chruch running charitable establisments for the
State, and the State punishing blasphemy, so they
might have thought that they were giving back
State property).

They did believe very strongly in the “laissez faire”
school, but I would not blame the following disaster
on this, but on their inexperience and their inability
to adjust their policies to circumstances, as Burke
advices.

As to the commitment of the Founding Fathers to Liberty,
it has to be nuanced. Slavery was a living contradiction
to many of their words, but too many of them were happy
to live with that contradiction because it made their
life more comfortable. So, don’t make gods of those
men who were quite fallible.

There is one way that a person can have an obvious solution to problems and a simple way to implement those without fears of totalitarianism. This is the central libertarian idea (at least of rothbard) that all actions between people must be voluntary. Taken consistently the libs are more likely to find any government illicit unless it is constrained to the above. Far from being communists libertarians have been one of THE most ardent opposers of it and they have no aspirations to government themselves. I hope this can clear them of such a sin against liberty. As for attacks against Ayn Rand one ought not confuser her objectivism with the whole liberty movement, it would almost be like confusing protestantism with all christianity.