So, what the heck, I joined the discussion. All that follows is copied from the forum thread, me quoting others indented:

Done that…

Whose is it, then?

A crime? Who are the victims?

“The American worker” is an abstraction. Take “the American worker” into any court as plaintiff and be laughed out for lack of standing.

Which American worker(s)? And what ever happened to the homey American notion that economic competition is good?

Well now that’s exactly not the principle involved in taxation.

To my narrow perspective this suggests either a limited knowledge of history (Nagasaki? Tuskeegee? Guatemala? Abu Ghraib?) or a rather inhuman set of values.

Well that does save your masters the bother of sending heavily-armed enforcers after you. Did you kick in a bit extra, too, with the thought that something good might be done with it?

Of late? What, since, like, Shays’ Rebellion in 1786? The Whiskey Rebellion in 1791?

You are hereby invited to do so, which will save me the bother. If you’d care to provide copies of the correspondence with the SSA, I’d be grateful.

Actually I am sure that it did not happen. Citizenship has no bearing on SS numbering, contribution obligation or benefit entitlement.

Hiya.

My own ancestors “invaded” America just over a hundred years ago, coming from central Europe. Some of them came for economic opportunity, some came to escape religious persecution, some came in order to avoid having their children thrown into the bloody maw of war via conscription into one imperial army or another. Prior to that, other Europeans invaded, killing and robbing millions of the original inhabitants, and relegating the survivors to a second-class existence.

A lot of the frustrations I see vented on this forum are of the form:

“Illegal immigrants/immigration cause problem X”, therefore
“The government should do Y”

However, the vast bulk of these problems could in fact be mitigated by having the government STOP doing certain things, e.g.:

Immigrants are taking American jobs — abolish the minimum wage, abolish ridiculous licensing requirements for low-skilled jobs, stop rewarding idleness through compulsory unemployment “insurance” financed by the robbery that is taxation

Immigrants are filling the public schools — abolish public schooling

Immigrants are bringing in illegal drugs — abolish the drug laws

Immigrants are getting free health care while Americans who can’t afford insurance but don’t qualify for government entitlements suffer — abolish “must treat” legislation, abolish medicare, medicaid and all other socialized medicine, abolish the AMA licensing cartel that makes US medicine so bloody expensive through its guild protectionism, and on and on

Immigrants might be terrorists — abolish the American empire abroad, but expect change in world attitudes toward America to be slow

New World Order globalists are intent on using divide-and-conquer strategies to reduce national sovereignty and institute one-world government — abolish all the taxes and privileges that fund, protect and support those monsters

Pointing to problems demonstrably caused by the American state, and then asking the American state to do more in order to fix them is somehow not consonant with ALIPAC’s support for the “tax day tea parties”.

The list of immigrant “problems” which could be eliminated completely by having government quit doing things it shouldn’t be doing anyway goes on and on and on.

Then there are two remaining issues I see a lot:

Immigrants are poisoning/diluting/changing “our” culture — in the final analysis, tough luck. Adapt. Change. Deal with it. This position amounts to racism, cultural bigotry and American exceptionalism anyway. Evolve, or show the courage of your convictions by going out and threatening peaceful, migrating people with kidnapping, imprisonment and even death yourself, instead of trying to delegate the task to government, and see how that goes for you.

Immigrants ought to get in line and go through the “legal” process — there are many, many moral objections to this idea, but I’ll leave you with this thought: If immigration is morally legitimated today via legal process, how, then, could any of the original settlers and colonists who went to the Americas from Europe achieve any moral claim to their presence on the territory?

As far as my personal history… well, I guess I took the red pill.

Or would you choose not to eat there at all?

For the benefit of which privileged classes would you like to bully strangers today?

Cute, isn’t it, the way propaganda works?

A lot of well-meaning, gentle folks will look at a poster like this and think they’re being presented with a choice among competing priorities: education, agriculture, or technology?

Precious few will look and see the robbery that is taxation. Perhaps fewer still will see the false choice in being able to select from a limited menu of privileged classes: parents of school-aged children, textbook publishers, teachers and others involved in the “education” industry; farmers, agribusiness, pesticide producers and the giant industrial manufacturers of agricultural machinery; or technophiles, those wealthy enough to enjoy the benefits of modern telecommunications and the corporate interests behind the telecoms wallowing already in a century of robbery-subsidized privilege? Maybe only a handful will recognize that government monies are never “invested”, but rather are stolen from taxpayers and bestowed upon politically-connected, privileged classes. Perhaps almost none at all will notice the false choice, the presumption and attempted transference of moral corruption involved in the use of “we” and “our” (the linguistic situation is even worse in the Slovak version, which asks, “Na čo by sa mali použiť naše peniaze?“, placing the question into the passive voice: “For what should our money be used?”).

Few, indeed, will startle, perceiving that freedom is not on the menu.

I call bullshit, horseshit, and dogshit.

If you were never a listener of US daily news radio between, oh, about the 1950s and early 2009, you won’t really understand. Folks of my generation remember Paul Harvey as a voice they began to hear, powerful and distinguished, in their early years.

Paul Harvey, 4 September 1918 – 28 February 2009

Paul Harvey was an institution. He was an icon, in a sense. He was one of the Last Great Upstanding Men of Journalism, trivial though that may seem in today’s world. But his voice and his thoughts were known to tens of millions daily and hundreds of millions by influence. He was part of the underlying infrastructure of American life for more than half a century. No matter what horrors might transpire in the world, Paul Harvey was always there, five days a week, to tell you the rest of the story and bid you good day at the end.

His segments were not always enlightening, yet often were. He was not always the most brilliant commentator, but thoughtful always. He rarely broke news, at least in the years I knew his voice, preferring instead to add perspective to the stories already on the airwaves. Sometimes his segments were rather trivial human interest pieces which, despite their lack of deep philosophical significance managed to captivate the listener’s ear by simple virtue of the man’s talent for delivery. Still, what Paul Harvey did with his voice and with his words was monumental. He reflected a culture — a flawed, broken culture, yes — and aimed to reflect the best of it. He remained a gentleman where gentility had passed out of fashion, and occasionally was a subtle (and, less often, not so subtle) firebrand where those making the news deserved derision in the reporting of it. At his best, he poked sticks in the eyes of the boobs in the highest offices. At his worst, he was a flawed human being just like those around him. And he emerged from the same, now nearly entirely extinct, tradition of quality broadcasting that brought such radio voices as Garrison Keillor and Walter Cronkite to well-deserved fame, defining entire genres of reporting, commentary and humor, while transcending and redefining them in the process.

Thanks, Paul Harvey. You done good.

Good night, Paul Harvey, and good day.

We’re all living in Amerika
Amerika ist wunderbar
We’re all living in Amerika
Amerika
Amerika

Wenn getanzt wird will ich führen
Auch wenn ihr euch alleine dreht
Lasst euch ein wenig kontrollieren
Ich zeige euch wie’s richtig geht

Wir bilden einen lieben Reigen
Die Freiheit spielt auf allen Geigen
Musik kommt aus dem Weißen Haus
Und vor Paris steht Mickey Maus
(We’re all living in Amerika)

We’re all living in Amerika
Amerika ist wunderbar
We’re all living in Amerika
Amerika
Amerika

Ich kenne Schritte die sehr nützen
Und werde euch vor Fehltritt schützen
Und wer nicht tanzen will am Schluss
Weiß noch nicht dass er tanzen muss

Wir bilden einen lieben Reigen
Ich werde euch die Richtung zeigen
Nach Afrika kommt Santa Claus
Und vor Paris steht Mickey Maus

We’re all living in Amerika
Amerika ist wunderbar
We’re all living in Amerika
Amerika
Amerika

We’re all living in Amerika
Coca-Cola, Wonderbra
We’re all living in Amerika
Amerika
Amerika

This is not a love song
This is not a love song
I don’t sing my (mother’s) tongue
No, this is not a love song

We’re all living in Amerika
Amerika ist wunderbar
We’re all living in Amerika
Amerika
Amerika

We’re all living in Amerika
Coca-Cola, sometimes war
We’re all living in Amerika
Amerika
Amerika

From Wikipedia:

Some girl (probably not a samurai) pretends to prepare to do something with a samurai sword during filming of some movie

Tsujigiri (辻斬 tsuji-giri, literally ‘crossroads killing’) is a Japanese term for a practice when someone, after receiving a new katana or developing a new fighting style or weapon, tests its effectiveness by attacking a human opponent. Originally, this practice took the form of traditional duels between bushi, but as the classical ideals of Bushidō were largely forgotten during the Edo Period, the mannerisms of Tsujigiri became increasingly dishonorable. By the 18th Century, it was not uncommon to hear of ronin ambushing unarmed peasants in the dark for simple amusement. A warrior who practiced this often would often be referred to as a Tsujigiri.

Essentially, the question posed by the assignment was this: Imagine that in your society the errant samurai was not sanctioned for ambushing and killing a hapless passerby simply to test his new blade. Does that make it right?

Having recently liberated myself from a fettering moral absolutism, I predictably and foolishly adopted the utterly unfettered relativist position and proclaimed in my essay that even though such a practice might seem barbaric today, it was morally acceptable because it formed an accepted part of the culture which existed in that place and time. It’s been a long while since then, and the essay is lost; perhaps I discussed what little I knew of the samurai code and its origins, imperial Japanese culture and other such matters.

What I certainly did not address in the paper were the passersby themselves. Ooops. I’d thrown away what I considered the stifling values of my upbringing in the name of discovering truth by its own lights. Unfortunately, I’d thrown out a great deal of the good along with the bad, leaving me in a place where, from my diminished principles, it was entirely possible to simply ignore the fact that the passersby were human beings. Definitely not part of the analysis was an examination of the moral standing of each of the actual participants in the tsujigiri exchange — the heavily armed, imperially-costumed samurai and the hapless peasant traveler — or any questioning of how the situation would be different if, instead, both or none were wearing the same costumes, or if the sword was moved from one set of hands to the other. I never asked myself about the samurai’s political status relative to that of the peasant or about what privilege was implied by the samurai’s costume. Certainly I knew nothing of the clown suit argument. I examined the beliefs of the collective in terms of my own belief that there could be no objective morality, and came to the preposterous conclusion that this jolly slaughter at roadside was just fine. The samurai was the samurai, and that was the system.

I’ve started writing a new version of my essay response to this tsujigiri question. I have just completed a first draft:

Tsujigiri

by Michael Gogulski

Down with the samurai! Death to the Emperor!

How do you think it sounds so far? I know I need a lot more words to reach 1,500 and I do need to mention something about moral relativism, but this is kinda what I’d like to say. Any tips?

I used to consider myself a conservative, yet still a hard-core libertarian, and there is one sense in which I still do:

…it was all too easy for the pessimistic radical Nock, even though still basically a libertarian, to accept the conservative label and even come to croak the old platitude that there is an a priori presumption against any social change.

– Rothbard, Left and Right (which I’m still reading, having been prompted to post this when I read the sentence)

Perhaps the reason for this old conservative streak in my political thinking connects to a perception that when practically any social change was proposed, discussed or implemented by government or the parasites I saw swarming about its loathsome carcass, I very often saw the nature of that change and of the likely effects to be horrible. There’s an element of philosophical conservatism which at least stands up saying, “what you are proposing is far more often bad than good, and so we oppose you in general for the sake of erring on the correct side far more often than not.” To sum it up, the essence of this theory is that the government should not be given any new powers. Essentially, that nothing in the political sphere ought to change.

The tragic — and, in hindsight, obvious — flaw in this position, and one which I have seen since turning to anarchism as opposed to libertarianism in its bulk, is that the libertarian philosophy demands essential, widespread, sweeping changes across societies and cultures if a world based on its ideals is ever going to exist. It’s not new government powers that frighten us, it’s all government powers. We cannot both resist any change and simultaneously be desirous of the most dramatic change imaginable.

Throwing away that resistance to change, we can look back and see that it served to support, anchor and buttress not only the gibbering horror that was the state, but the entire Lovecraftian dark-forces-from-beyond-the-rift-in-time nightmare ruling class which uses the state as its tool. Add in the disgusting bigotry dressed up as “cultural conservatism” and you suddenly have a realization akin to discovering that why you’re distrustful of your neighbor is because your neighbor is, in fact, a cannibalistic ghoul.

Dissolution to the state! Restitution from the ruling class!

To the most recent, Francois Tremblay offered both praise and a question of consistency:

I also applaud you, however do you also do the same for corporations? It seems to me that if you refused ALL statist jobs you would be on the street, unless small businesses and coops are much more numerous over there.

Though I have been refusing all manner of government work — both directly employed by governments or by companies that exist only to serve governments — for a very long, I have not really bothered thus far to firmly delineate that which I find acceptable versus unacceptable. I will attempt to do so here.

There are some basic ideas in play here which derive from my own philosophical axioms:

• Government is evil
• One should endeavor to avoid actions which support or strengthen government, thus avoiding evil
• Taxation is theft, and therefore evil, and doubly so since it supports the evil that is government
• Taking money stolen via taxation for oneself at the very least carries the taint of evil, and in very many cases makes one complicit in the original theft and therefore guilty of doing harm

If I may be forgiven for misrepresenting any of Francois’s views, there is an additional critique of the relationship between state and corporation which must be added here, and it consists of things like:

• The corporation is a creature of the state, a privilege granted by evil, and therefore morally questionable at best, condemnable at worst
• Corporations have successfully manipulated state mechanisms everywhere in order to secure greater privileges for themselves and their owners than accrue to ordinary people, and continue to do so
• The legal concept of limited liability is an abomination against natural law, and serves to encourage corporations to act more immorally than fully-accountable individuals might absent it
• The legal tradition of treating a corporation as having status equal to that of a person is also abominable, and leads to additional tendencies toward abuse by those exercising the state-granted corporate privilege

There is much to be added to both of these lists, of course, and others have done a far better job than I ever will of cataloging the immorality of both state and corporation. I believe that I share common ground with Francois in the critique of the corporation as statist creature at the fundamental level, though one as clever as he and one as obstinate as I will no doubt find any number of points to argue over bitterly. I believe I also share the view with him that one should work to minimize the evil they do and the evil they support in every way possible.

As recently as the beginning of this year, I sometimes took on a very narrow subset of government contracts. I was once asked to translate a tender for supply of small-arms ammunition to the Slovak military, and rejected it out of hand. At the same time, when a request came in to translate some text to be used by an agency working to promote tourism in Slovakia, I accepted it. I believe very strongly in the value of casting things into moral absolute categories, but must recognize also that there is a continuum. And, presented with the opportunity to reclaim some of the money stolen from me in tax by the state, I thought that doing the state’s work in one of its least harmful manifestations would be acceptable. Tourism okay, supporting the troops, fuck no. The limit to this would be that one should not accept in compensation for work from the state any more than the value stolen from you previously in tax.

That view of mine has already changed, and led to a new formulation of principle for me: Stealing back what the state has stolen from you is morally acceptable. But working to support the state in exchange for what has been stolen is not acceptable because you are still supporting the state by doing so.

I’ve had more than one client come back to me, after learning my position on working for the state, and offer something along the lines of “Well, you’re not really working for the government; I have this contract already, someone’s going to do it, might as well be you, you’re working for me.” This doesn’t hold up for me one bit. Adding layers of misdirection to hide the original theft of taxation would not change the fact that I commit evil by taking stolen money in support of the state through my work.

I have long rejected working for companies which do a large portion of their business with government. Before I became independent of “bosses” two years ago, I did not apply this principle consistently. But I can recount many telephone discussions with recruiters about job opportunities with companies which are basically state organs in private form (think “defense” contractors in particular, and others), and telling them there was no way morally I could work for such a firm. At the same time, and I will give particulars here, there is much to hate about General Electric. Even so, several years ago I accepted a one-year contract with GE Medical Systems to develop software, network infrastructure and procedures which allow doctors and medical technicians to receive training on the operation of MRI, x-ray, CAT scan and other medical devices via network delivery as opposed to having a trainer physically sent to the hospital/clinic work site. GE happens to be a company which makes death weapons as well as life-saving devices. Gray area? Maybe. I really needed the job in any case. Would I work for GE Medical Systems again today if the opportunity was there and the incentives interesting? I’m not sure (the corporate “culture” there is something which if placed in a Petri dish on a bit of substrate would rapidly spill out into a sickening, purulent mass which would fill all available space and consume everything in the production of its own tumorous growth), but I still wouldn’t object on moral grounds.

There are some questions I ask myself when considering a job which carries the potential taint of the state:

• Who pays? If the answer is taxpayers, I refuse.
• Who owns the company? If it is a state-controlled company, or a branch of the state, I refuse.
• Would this job exist were it not for the state? If no, refuse. This is a tricky point, in that I do accept jobs which violate this from time to time, such as the time I translated a response from an auto manufacturer to the Slovak anti-monopoly office defending itself against a charge of “unfair competition”. I also accept work from recently-privatized utility companies; the ownership of them remains dubious and the notion that a territorial monopoly on the scale even of a country as small as Slovakia is dubious as well, but it would be akin to suicide to refuse cooperation with those who bring clean water, electricity and other services into my home. I do refuse “public” transport companies and the “private” companies which develop the roads, but do so because they fail one or both of the first two criteria above.
• Will my work result in harm to anyone? If yes, refuse. It’s difficult if not impossible to know all of the potential implications of one’s action, of course, but when the answer to this is clear then so is my response.

I would like to live in a world in which the privileges that corporations in all their forms enjoy were abolished. I would like to also educate those who take state privilege as to why there is immorality in their firms’ conception. I would also not like to starve. The vast majority of my clients are incorporated as limited liability corporations or stock corporations, and this is especially true of all the translation agencies that send me work. I would like to stand on principle, but as Francois alludes to, truly standing on such principle in this world will lead one to ruin.

At the same time, even though they enjoy the privileges conferred by the state, not all corporations are necessarily evil simply by virtue of being corporations. There is an easy scale to point to which suggests that their evil (or capacity for evil) increases in proportion to their size, but then we also have counterexamples such as GE developing and selling life-saving medical devices which break the easy formulation. The fact that the statist corporate form exists and offers so many benefits is a problem which in my mind should be attacked in terms of the state itself and the institution of the corporation. I find it very difficult, though, to find fault with the businessman who, having grown his one-man operation to the point where he would like to expand, incorporated in order to gain flexibility and protection. This is rational behavior on his part.

It is also true that given the corporate-statist milieu we have before us, many businesses simply could not operate were it not for the corporate form. I should not wish that every airline disappear, however, nor refuse to patronize them simply because they are creatures of the present system. And I am not going to win any arguments with my clients by suggesting that they forsake limited liability and the other benefits the corporate form provides. They, also, must eat.

You’d think there are limits and ways to break people out of insanity and things they’ve gotten used to being normal because of everything they’ve been through, but if even your own crying child can’t do it, what can?

Unfortunately, when it comes to the evils we’ve been indoctrinated with and inured to — be it by parents, religion, society, culture or states — breaking out of insanity is something that precious few of us manage to do.

From the name Abraham we get the term “Abrahamic religion“, a catch-all for all those faiths which trace their historicity to Abraham. Abrahamic religion is one of the cornerstones of the dominant social and psychological paradigm across great expanses of the globe and among billions of human beings today.

The story of Abraham and Isaac always really bothered me. Let’s take a look at Genesis 22 (yes, all of it, from the New American Bible translation):

Some time after these events, God put Abraham to the test. He called to him, “Abraham!”

“Ready!” he replied.

Then God said: “Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him up as a holocaust on a height that I will point out to you.”

Early the next morning Abraham saddled his donkey, took with him his son Isaac, and two of his servants as well, and with the wood that he had cut for the holocaust, set out for the place of which God had told him. On the third day Abraham got sight of the place from afar. Then he said to his servants: “Both of you stay here with the donkey, while the boy and I go on over yonder. We will worship and then come back to you.” Thereupon Abraham took the wood for the holocaust and laid it on his son Isaac’s shoulders, while he himself carried the fire and the knife.

As the two walked on together, Isaac spoke to his father Abraham. “Father!” he said.

“Yes, son,” he replied.

Isaac continued, “Here are the fire and the wood, but where is the sheep for the holocaust?”

“Son,” Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the sheep for the holocaust.” Then the two continued going forward.

When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. Next he tied up his son Isaac, and put him on top of the wood on the altar. Then he reached out and took the knife to slaughter his son. But the LORD’S messenger called to him from heaven, “Abraham, Abraham!”

“Yes, Lord,” he answered.

“Do not lay your hand on the boy,” said the messenger. “Do not do the least thing to him. I know now how devoted you are to God, since you did not withhold from me your own beloved son.“

As Abraham looked about, he spied a ram caught by its horns in the thicket. So he went and took the ram and offered it up as a holocaust in place of his son. Abraham named the site Yahweh-yireh; hence people now say, “On the mountain the LORD will see.”

Again the LORD’S messenger called to Abraham from heaven and said: “I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you acted as you did in not withholding from me your beloved son, I will bless you abundantly and make your descendants as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore; your descendants shall take possession of the gates of their enemies, and in your descendants all the nations of the earth shall find blessing–all this because you obeyed my command.”

Abraham then returned to his servants, and they set out together for Beer-sheba, where Abraham made his home. Some time afterward, the news came to Abraham: “Milcah too has borne sons, to your brother Nahor: Uz, his first-born, his brother Buz, Kemuel (the father of Aram), Chesed, Hazo, Pildash, Jidlaph, and Bethuel.” Bethuel became the father of Rebekah. These eight Milcah bore to Abraham’s brother Nahor. His concubine, whose name was Reumah, also bore children: Tebah, Gaham, Tahash, and Maacah.

What lessons shall the child absorb and internalize, hearing this story retold in solemn tones by those he trusts, loves or depends on?

Invisible ghost speaks addresses man, and man responds “Ready!” — thou shalt obey the invisible

Invisible ghost commands man to commit atrocity against his own family, to violate not only Isaac’s nature but his own. Does Abraham question? Hardly. Abraham speaks nary a word, but sets out meekly in compliance with his invisible master’s order. — submit

Abraham lies to his servants by allowing the collective pronoun “we” was in “we will come back to you”, nevermind the horrors implicit in the idea that a man shall have servants. — servitude is fine for some

Next, Abraham lies to his trusting child, and points to an invisible ghost as the solution to his questioning. — lying for your invisible ghosts is okay

Next, Isaac submits to being bound by his father and condemned to death. A clearer expression of the horror contained in the commandment “honor thy father and thy mother” would be difficult to find. — ’nuff said

Then the invisible ghost comes along and says: “Just kidding!” Does Abraham object or rebel? Hardly, he waits for the next command. Does Isaac, the sacrificial lamb, say anything? Nary a word. — honor thy masters even when they deceive you

Invisible ghost, now playing good cop, praises Abraham for his blind obedience, and REWARDS him! — the ends justify the means?

Never mind its ahistoricity, anyone of conscience ought to burn their Bible after finishing Genesis 22, and condemn the behavior found therein.

Continuing on some themes I’ve set out before: Damn your holy books, damn your obedience, damn your culture. And fuck Jehovah.

And we haven’t even mentioned how this sick fucker sent his own son to be killed by his own agents to prove a point… maybe we’ll come back to that later.

The American Heritage Dictionary has it this way:

1.

a. The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought.
b. These patterns, traits, and products considered as the expression of a particular period, class, community, or population: Edwardian culture; Japanese culture; the culture of poverty.
c. These patterns, traits, and products considered with respect to a particular category, such as a field, subject, or mode of expression: religious culture in the Middle Ages; musical culture; oral culture.
d. The predominating attitudes and behavior that characterize the functioning of a group or organization.

2. Intellectual and artistic activity and the works produced by it.

I concern myself here not with definition 2. but with definition 1.

Several years ago I found myself arriving at my own definition of culture:

Culture is the excuse we make for our social behavior when we don’t know or don’t understand the reasons for it.

Stefan Molyneux remarks on culture in reference to the first definition, not the second:

All culture that is not based on th[e] simple observable facts of reality is just scar tissue that grows over being lied to as children.

And what is multiculturalism? The American Heritage Dictionary again:

[...] a social or educational theory that encourages interest in many cultures within a society rather than in only a mainstream culture.

I take issue with the use of the word “interest” here. The people most vocally touting multiculturalism do not advocate interest, they advocate acceptance.

And they are not advocating just the acceptance of all those items of culture under the second definition above which are monuments to civilization and true prizes of human achievement. They’re going for the whole ball of wax. In part, the multiculturalists are absolutely right. The world would be worse off were it not for Malaysian cuisine or Peruvian music or Egyptian hieroglyphics or the ǃKung language or some of American cinema, French philosophy, Russian science and Italian opera. These things are rightly celebrated.

At the same time, there is much from that first definition of culture which should be praised, if it is actualized: a culture of liberty, a culture of compassion, a culture of justice, a culture of love, a culture of truth. Even under the cynical definitions that I and Molyneux offer, and even if people don’t always act in full knowledge of what they are doing or why, so long as they uphold these values we can join with the multiculturalists in exalting culture.

What’s wrong with multiculturalism as a guiding philosophy is that there is much in what we call “culture” which is loathsome, which should be shunned, and which should be condemned. We are told to respect, tolerate and accept other cultures. It’s a pity that human language is such an imprecise instrument. Were accepting “culture” to mean respect for those good and valuable things I mentioned above and others while rejecting racism and nationalism and statism and religion and child abuse and fraud and rape and more, I would gladly join the multiculturalists in paeans to “culture”.

But the “culture” spoken of is a collective noun. If we are to accept and respect the good while rejecting the evil, then “culture” must be strapped down to the operating table, anesthetized and vivisected, the poisons and the cancers and the infections removed, and its body then patched back together again as best it can be.

This post was originally going to be a sort of laundry-list jeremiad. Having said enough above, but still loving the value of inflammatory polemic, I will abbreviate.

DAMN YOUR CULTURE

Damn your culture when it teaches children: “Follow me always, and believe my untruth.”

Damn your culture when it hears of a woman brutally raped and says: “She probably had it coming.”

Damn your culture when it places psychopathic gods above human reality.

Damn your culture when it admits “necessary evil” as a course of action.

Damn your culture when it tours ancient temples and palaces, never thinking of the lives enslaved to produce them.

Damn your culture when it says “The majority rules.”

Damn your culture when it wraps murderers in flags and decorates them with medals.

Damn your culture when it cuts off a girl’s clitoris to make her an acceptable mate.

Damn your culture when it tells a child that obedience is more important than truth.

Damn your culture when it produces art celebrating the tyranny of the sword and of the mind.

Damn your culture when it worships greed.

Damn your culture when it puts women “in their place”, “in the kitchen” or behind veils.

Damn your culture when it crushes human individuality and manipulates it as abstract aggregates.

Damn your culture when it sings the praises of collectivism.

Damn your culture when it says: “For me but not for thee.”

Damn your culture when it accepts crime as justice.

Damn your culture when it extols ignorance and brutality.

Damn your culture when it determines that a man harming himself is better off in prison or the grave.

Damn your culture when it nods approvingly at the greatest immorality so long as the actor wears the right uniform.

Damn your culture when it says to accept the culture before accepting the person.

Damn your culture when, asked “why?”, responds: “We’ve always done it that way.”

Damn your culture when it makes a mockery of morality.

Damn your culture when it transmits these things to children.

Damn your culture when it allows all this to happen without screaming.

Damn your culture.

Further damnation is welcome in the comments.

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on culture

• Related Blogs on multiculturalism
• Right Angles » Blog Archive » How crazy can multiculturalism get?

• Related Blogs on Stefan Molyneux
• Anarchism vs. Minarchism: Stefan Molyneux and Jan Helfeld | blog …
• Ten Lost Years — Grabbing the Wheel of a Sinking Ship « Little …
• Stefan Molyneux interviews Jan Helfeld, Libertarian Interviewer of …
• Anarchism v. Minarchism Debate: How Much Government is Necessary (mp3)
• Intersection of Stephen Law and Stefan Molyneux