Burj Dubai opens in a month and will mark the completion of the tallest building in the world.

Dubai is also in the middle of a debt crisis.

The entire state of Dubai, in light of this crisis, has become a self-parody of its absurd dedication to excess. According to Brebiart: The World, an enormous project for artificial islands shaped like the continents, is now no more than a group of sandbanks, and no-one expects Nakheel to go ahead with a one-kilometre tall tower announced a year ago.

Then again, the construction of a building during an economic crisis is less harmful than the continuation of a pointless war during such a crisis.

If you think about some of the things that are being talked about by thoughtful, intelligent scientists, you realize that in 100 years the human race won’t even be recognizable. We may indeed be part machine and we may have computers implanted. It’s more than theoretically possible to implant a chip in the brain that would contain all the information in all the libraries in the world. As people who have talked about this say, it’s just a matter of figuring out the wiring. Now there’s a problem you can take to bed with you at night.

It is truly a wonder that some believe this to be possible, and even more of a wonder that it is looked upon as an inevitability when most people express fears about these types of advances. And with the publicizing of scandals such as “Climategate” it should become increasingly clear to those previously in the dark that scientific advances and their uses are far from apolitical. The uses such a technology would have for the state or conglomerated big business is worrisome, to say the least.

But even if this type of advance was pure and innocent, there are some interesting questions that it raises. How would a human behave that had instant access to all the information in every library? The pursuit of the truth is already complicated so by the collected “knowledge” of man. If the axiom that “the more I learn the more I don’t understand” has any truth to it, would instant access to every piece of information in the world be a step towards collective human insanity?

Despite how difficult these questions are to answer, there is one even tougher, brought to my attention by a close friend: would you volunteer to have the chip implanted if you could?

Thanks for hanging around. See you soon.

Conservative political theorist and literary critic Russell Kirk, writing the introduction to his 1953 classic “The Conservative Mind,” described the state of conservatism then as follows: “By and large, radical thinkers have won the day. For a century and a half, conservatives have yielded ground in a manner which, except for occasionally successful rear-guard actions, must be described as a rout.” Kirk’s work, described by conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. as the primary source of modern conservatism, without which “a dominant conservative movement in America” was inconceivable, tied conservatism to the work of Edmund Burke in Europe and John Adams in the United States. Kirk valued “voluntary community” over “involuntary collectivism,” and cited “the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions” as central to a conservative government. Kirk, who privately suggested that George Bush Sr. be hanged on the front lawn of the White House for America’s first oil war would feel quite out of place in the new (read: neo) conservative movement.

Conservatism has become so distorted that its intellectual fathers would no longer recognize it. Conservatives that claim to adhere to the US Constitution have little to say about the numerous undeclared wars undertaken since World War II. Conservatives that claim to respect our ancestral statesmen bow to globalism and ignore George Washington’s advice to stay out of “the insidious wiles of foreign influence.” Conservatives that believe American world hegemony is essential for world stability–or those that even believe that world stability should be an aim of the American Republic–ignore the words of John Quincy Adams warning America against going “abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.” Abraham Lincoln described conservatism as “adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried,” but those words ring hollow against neoconservatism’s gross expansion of government and its complacency in corporate America’s destruction of small-town America.

Since “The Conservative Mind” was published, the decline of conservatism has accelerated, with the relatively short-lived and overrated Reagan years as the primary exception. Liberalism’s ascent continued through the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s, and eventually infiltrated intellectual conservatism itself with the rise of neoconservatism. Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz were two neoconservative thinkers that abandoned the Left due to its moral relativism and insufficiently interventionist foreign policy and found a new home on the Right.

Despite hundreds of years of American foreign policy tradition, from Eisenhower internationalism to Revolution-era isolationism, men such as Kristol and Podhoretz effectively hijacked the Bush White House in the aftermath of 9/11 and replaced those traditions with go-it-alone militarism. Under this new doctrine, the only way America can ensure its safety is by preemptively destroying or isolating any perceived enemy. It requires the maintenance and continued expansion of a vast imperium of military bases stretching the globe, occupying hundreds of countries and expending billions of dollars. Fiscal conservatism be-damned, the New Right looks to continually hike the military budget and build new bases while attacking bills written by politicians such as Jim Webb of Virginia that propose increases in veterans benefits. How is this conservative?

Still left unaddressed is the three trillion dollar War in Iraq, an effective case study in the faults of modern conservatism. Blood shed for material self-interest, billions of dollars unaccounted for, corruption, and plans to build more bases in Iraq for, as the presumptive “conservative” candidate has stated, “fifty to a hundred years,” are all symptoms of the neoconservative rot on the conservative movement. All this, waged by a “compassionate conservative” president that in 2000 promised a “humble foreign policy.”

What about those conservatives that support a rolling back of the American Empire, the shrinking of the American State, adherence to the American tradition of self-accountability—for both individuals and corporations? They are labeled as selfish, small-minded, ignorant, appeasers of Islamofascism. Indeed the term “islamofascism” itself is indicative of the anti-intellectual nature of the movement. Are Americans really supposed to believe that Palestinian nationalists, Sunni Islamist terrorists, Shi’ite radicals, Ba’athist insurgents, and the government of Iran are all homogenous in the threat they pose to the United States? Yet my friends at the Young Americans Foundation hold their “Islamofascism Awareness Week” every year, meant only to stir the hornets nest of progressive activists on campus.

The GW Patriot is different. At the Patriot one finds an intellectually diverse group of students, from anarcho-libertarians to backwards-traditionalists to Republican party hacks to Forever War supporters. We argue and debate amongst ourselves, but are (almost) always congenial and intellectual. And we hope to offer a forum for non-leftists of any stripe to voice their opinions, no matter how uncouth or taboo they may be. We also hope to offer a unique perspective on campus events. From the SA presidential race to inner-CR politics to race-baiting on campus, the Patriot serves to open minds and stir controversy. The Patriot has done this for almost seven years, and will continue to do so for as long as we are allowed to.

I also met up with Jack Hunter and Dylan Hales for lunch while in Charleston, and although I was about an hour late (sorry guys), I had an excellent time talking to them about the budding alternate Right. I also saw Jack’s cover band, Dante’s Camaro, perform on St. Patrick’s day, and my friends and I had a fantastic time. I will be returning to beautiful Charleston as soon as I can.

A piece on Alan Moore’s rabid anti-state views is coming soon.

Take care.

-PJF-

Patrick is a 4th year student at The George Washington University, studying political science and philosophy. He has worked for The GW Patriot for the past 3 years, and he has been editor-in-chief since June, 2007. He interned at The American Conservative magazine, where he edited, blogged, and worked on a research piece. He is also Deputy Editor of Young American Revolution, the publication of Young Americans for Liberty.

Though Patrick’s political views are hard to pigeon-hole, he considers himself an anarcho-traditionalist, a localist libertarian, and an anti-statist with a strong distaste for libertinism and an increasingly vulgar American culture.

Patrick was born in Philadelphia, PA, and grew up in the Northeast. Side interests include Philadelphia sports (especially the Phillies), the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, New-Urbanism, small-scale hardcore punk music, and living as free of technology as possible.

Edmund Burke as a political theorist has been discovered, adopted, stolen, distorted, readopted, exiled, recovered, and rediscovered time and again by men of all political stripes. But a universally ignored piece authored by Burke suggests that Burke was at heart a radical anti-statist.

Having read and discarded many of these interpretations over time, I scoffed when a friend sent me the great anarcho-capitalist Murray Rothbard’s interpretation of the young Edmund Burke’s political theory. Suffice it to say (I am indeed writing about it, aren’t I?), I found it significantly more fascinating and convincing than those other half-baked interpretations of the brilliant Irishman’s philosophy. Rothbard sets his sights on Burke’s oft-ignored debut, Vindication of Natural Society:

Curiously enough it has been almost completely ignored in the current Burke revival. This work contrasts sharply with Burke’s other writings, for it is hardly in keeping with the current image of the Father of the New Conservatism. A less conservative work could hardly be imagined; in fact, Burke’s Vindication was perhaps the first modern expression of rationalistic and individualistic anarchism.

The hyphenated text that began this post is taken directly from Vindication, and the text speaks for itself:

All Empires have been cemented in Blood; and in those early Periods when the Race of Mankind began first to form themselves into Parties and Combinations, the first Effect of the Combination, and indeed the End for which it seems purposely formed, and best calculated, is their mutual Destruction. All ancient History is dark and uncertain. One thing however is clear. There were Conquerors, and Conquests, in those Days; and consequently, all that Devastation, by which they are formed, and all that Oppression by which they are maintained.

Here is Burke, a man decried by libertarians as a statist, declaring that the history of all States and their relationship with one another is a history of horrible war and oppression. He says that, although there are historical examples of benevolent relations between nation-states, it “does not afford Matter enough to fill ten Pages.” Instead, we are left with the declaration that “[w]ar is the Matter which fills all History, and consequently the only, or almost the only View in which we can see the External of political Society, is in a hostile Shape; and the only Actions, to which we have always seen, and still see all of them intent, are such, as tend to the Destruction of one another.” These are radical words for a man always cited for his prudence.

The common explanation for Burke’s uncharacteristic radicalism is that he wrote it as political satire. He said so himself when it became clear that he was the author (he published it anonymously). But Rothbard questions Burke’s explanation due to its suspicious circumstances and its all too convenient timing:

His own belated explanation was that the Vindication was a satire on the views of rationalist Deists like Lord Bolingbroke, demonstrating that a devotion to reason and an attack on revealed religion can logically eventuate in a subversive attack on the principle of government itself. Burke’s host of biographers and followers have tended to adopt his explanation uncritically. Yet they hurry on and rarely mention his Vindication in their discussions of Burke, and with good reason. For the work is a most embarrassing one. Careful reading reveals hardly a trace of irony or satire. In fact, it is a very sober and earnest treatise, written in his characteristic style. Indeed, Burke’s biographers have commented on the failure of the work as irony, without raising the fundamental question whether it was really meant to be irony at all.

Burke’s own explanation, in fact, is not a very plausible one. He was not given to satire, and rarely attempted such writing in later years. The Vindication was published anonymously when Burke was 27 years old. Nine years later, after his authorship had been discovered, Burke found himself about to embark on his famous Parliamentary career. To admit that he had seriously held such views in earlier years would have been politically disastrous.

Rothbard is spot on. A careful reading of Vindication reveals little use of irony, or the intent to use it. Burke is renowned as a brilliant writer and thinker, yet we are to believe that he wrote a piece of satire where almost no satire is found in the text? Isn’t it possible that he did indeed intend this to be a radical look at the state, and later found it a significant obstacle to holding office in said state? It is possible, but I can only buy this argument on one condition. I, unlike Rothbard, have an appreciation for Burke’s later works. I refuse to believe that Burke could so passionately and convincingly attack the state and later rid himself of those inclinations completely. So it becomes a question of whether Burke the anarchist can be found inside his later, anti-revolutionary writings.

An analysis of Burke’s writings and speeches show that he had an affinity for liberty his entire life and almost always saw the State as the enemy of freedom and of traditional order. In 1775, for instance, Burke appears surprised (some would say he feigns surprise) when studying the existence of a peaceful and orderly anarchy in Massachusetts in his Conciliation with the Colonies speech:

“We were confident that the first feeling, if not the very prospect, of anarchy [in Massachusetts] would instantly enforce a complete submission. The experiment was tried. A new, strange, unexpected face of things appeared. Anarchy is found tolerable. A vast province has now subsisted, and subsisted in a considerable degree of health and vigor, for near a twelvemonth, without governor, without public council, without judges, without executive magistrates. . . “

Indeed Burke admired the Massachusetts colony. Although it was devoid of government interference, morality was governed by custom and tradition. The citizens took care of one another through apparatuses such as volunteer fire department and a local militia, yet there was very little crime. For someone like Burke, citing his love of order and tradition does not act as a counterargument to his apparent disdain for government. On the contrary, he saw it as destructive to custom and culture. Morality is a high priority for any society, but it cannot be pushed by government. “It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, leaving much to free will…” said Burke, “than to attempt to make men machines and instruments of political benevolence.”

Burke was no populist, but throughout his life he extolled the virtues of liberty and free enterprise. “Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing on others, he has a right to do,” said Burke. And he asserted that “true danger” comes when “liberty is nibbled away” by government. These are not the words of a right-wing statist. They are the words of what could not be considered a libertarian traditionalist, a man who saw the state as almost always evil yet would never accept libertinism in society or culture. Political society is always a battle between the individual and the state, said Burke, and he made his opinions known in the following manner:

“I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong. They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other countries and in this. But I do say that in all disputes between them and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favor of the people.”

I previously mentioned Burke’s appreciation for the free market. Burke felt that “The moment that government appears at market, the principles of the market will be subverted,” and “to provide for us in our necessities is not in the power of government.” “Property was not made by government, but government by and for it,” said Burke, and “one is primary and self-existent; the other is secondary and derivative.” This is not simply a discriminant selection of Burke quotes. Throughout his writing on order and tradition there is a deep vein of appreciation for ordered liberty and freedom. Remember, anarchy does not mean the absence of order, but the absence of governors. Very rarely do you find Burke extolling virtue in government action.

This is not just another rethinking of Burke’s thought. He was very clearly a libertarian traditionalist; an Anarcho-Conservative.

In the works:
* A piece on CPAC for the Young American Revolution
* Pieces for NA in the works:

- The Danger of FOX’s “24″
- Burke the Anarcho-Conservative
- Libertarianism’s Rise at CPAC, Welcomes this Traditionalist
- Alan Moore: Enemy of the State

I’m sure you all just can’t contain your excitement. Start commenting again so I know you’re still out there.

A great anti-war song from my favorite songwriter of the underground.

First…

Yes! I had the opportunity to sit down with Ron Paul for about a half-hour on behalf of the great group Young Americans for Liberty. We discussed several things, such as his future plans, advice for liberty-minded college students, and rumors that he is writing a new book(!!). He was gracious and unintimidating, and I was made to feel pretty comfortable, especially considering I knew I was interviewing an American hero.

Second, I recently had an editorial published in GW’s “newspaper of record”, the GW Hatchet. You can find the editorial here.

Third, I was invited to blog for YAL, and intend on dedicating some of my posts to that. I of course will not abandon the NA and am increasingly humbled by the surprisingly nice things that have been said about my writing here.

Fourth and final, a new issue of the GW Patriot is (finally) coming out. I know this blog is read more by folks I know outside of school, but I have an article about the Old Right at GW and my Conservative Case for Nader is going to be added to the Patriot’s web content. Of course, you can read it here right now!

Thanks for staying with me, everyone! I’ll be in touch.