Out With the Old, In With the New

Out With the Old, In With the New.

Friends, subscribers, fellow bloggers! I would like to cordially invite you all over to the new website. If you’ve been wondering why I haven’t been blogging of late, it’s because I’ve had another project I’ve been working hard on (soon to be six months in the works). The first day of the new year is as good a time as any to announce it. No, better. It’s far from being fully operational, but it is functional and (I hope) user-friendly. The main thing I’m not too sure about is the navigation menu. But improvements are being made daily, and I welcome any input.

You’re probably wondering why I chose to do this, and what is going to happen to the old site.

As to the first, I have many reasons. With the new platform (a self-hosted site using WordPress software), I am able to customize site features on a whole new level, among other things.

And as far as this site (the old one) goes, I’ll probably just keep it around indefinitely, or at least as long as it takes to transfer as much good content and as many subscribers as I can to the new site. I will likely even keep blogging here just as one more medium for getting my thoughts out there.

More info to trickle in soon, so stay tuned.

Thanks for reading and Happy New Year!

Henry Moore

What I’ve Been Working on the Last Two Weeks

What I’ve Been Working on the Last Two Weeks.

Hey all, go check out my latest! Sorry, it’s not the first installment of the much-promised series on the standing army in the United States. I am stalling on those still. No, it’s for the Thorpe-Freeman Blog Contest, and who knows, if they like it I may walk away with $250 (to be put to good use, I assure you), some subscribers for NOL, and a little name recognition.

Something like this is relatively hard for me to write because 1) there’s an actual deadline, 2) it’s got to be under 1000 words, 3) I have to riff off of a piece already in The Freeman, and 4) ideally, it should be better than standard fare. I gave it my best. Be sure to let me know what you think either here or at the article itself.

So, because it has to be under 1000 words, I couldn’t say all that I wanted to say unless I either dumbed it down or limited myself to just the more savory tidbits, leaving the readers to fill in the gaps on the rest, if they have any interest. In the piece I managed to drop enough names and ideas and book titles to where readers hopefully won’t be at a loss as to what to do. Most regular visitors to NOL and FEE likely wouldn’t need much direction anyways. Perhaps they would simply get some enjoyment out of the piece. After all, my little essay is a modest paean to the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), the great Leonard Read.

An FYI for my Christian readers: Read, who died thirty years ago last week, was a dedicated member of the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles (don’t be so shocked at its current state, it’s in California after all!) and along with his pastor, the Rev. James W. Fifield, an opponent of the New Deal and the Social Gospel. Fifield was the founder of Spiritual Mobilization, Inc., which published Faith and Freedom. This monthly journal went on to have a profound impact on a young man called R. J. Rushdoony, the first Christian Reconstructionist. Just some food for thought.

One of Those Embarrassing Gary North Quotes

One of Those Embarrassing Gary North Quotes.

First, Gary North’s Quote:

“Everyone talks about religious liberty, but no one believes it. So let us be blunt about it: we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political, and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.”

A Conservative

A Conservative.

WHY I AM ONE

The bizarre bohemian bilge that plagues conventionally left-wing schools of thought, whether from Marx or Rawls or Chomsky, is just not for me. For the most part anyways. Since I’ve become more (this is an understatement; I have gone much farther than, say, Glenn Beck) of a libertarian (a classical liberal while socialists are usually just reverse reactionaries), I’ve learned to make some exceptions. This has tended to be more on the level of semi-reluctant tolerance than on that of open-armed embrace.

Comments Related to Tucker/Wenzel Feud (Hint: ©)

Comments Related to Tucker/Wenzel Feud (Hint: ©).

The feud has to do with their respective stances on intellectual property, but seems to have spilled over into very petty nitpickery of late. Tucker criticizes IP as monopolistic. Wenzel defends it as no different than private property. I think that economics* and Natural Law Theory are on Tucker’s side and that Wenzel, like most anyone on at least one issue, has his blinders on. In a related debate between Kinsella and Wenzel, I see the same thing going on. My comments touch on this a little, but also briefly on the distinctions between Anti-IP Natural Law anarchists (Tucker, Kinsella, Hoppe), Pro-IP Natural Law anarchists (Rothbard and Wenzel), and certain minarcists (in this specific case, the Theonomist, Gary North, but for other minarchists that support IP, look to the Objectivist school of Ayn Rand, and for minarchists that despise IP, start with this wonderful article), as well as the similarity between Rothbard’s “Pro-IP” views and certain later Rothbardians’ “Anti-IP” views. This similarity resides in their agreement that the human will trumps contracts. So, technically, even Rothbard was Anti-IP where enforcement of copyrights as contracts amounted to “voluntary slavery.”

One Year Later at PTPOL

One Year Later at PTPOL.

Well, this blog has been registered at WordPress.com for one year now. It took a while to get it off the ground, but it hit the ground running. (How’s that for a mixed – and contradictory – metaphor, by the way?) Click here to learn more about the blog, and here to learn a little bit about it’s author.

140 posts, 6,602 views, 482 comments, 200 WordPress likes, 192 Facebook likes, 54 followers on WordPress, 1150 followers on Twitter.

Not bad for an amateur one-man team, right? Well, its the readers that are more to thank. Without them there really is no point in writing.