In light of last week’s debate on property, when I quoted Proudhon’s quip “Property is theft!”, I’d like to also recommend this point of view:

“Property is proper to man,” insisted Dorothy Day, though she and the Distributists–and much of the old American right–meant by property something rather more substantial than paper shares in a Rockefellerian octopus. “Ownership and control are property,” declared Allen Tate, the Southern agrarian, making a distinction between a family farm–or family firm–and a joint-stock corporation, the artificial spawn of the state.

So do Proudhon and Day differ? In other words, do the libertarian socialists and the distributists differ? I think there is actually quite an affinity between these anarchists. What needs to be discussed is how we define “property.” Any thoughts?

“For the answer, you need look no farther than the farm bill. This resolutely unglamorous and head-hurtingly complicated piece of legislation, which comes around roughly every five years and is about to do so again, sets the rules for the American food system — indeed, to a considerable extent, for the world’s food system. Among other things, it determines which crops will be subsidized and which will not, and in the case of the carrot and the Twinkie, the farm bill as currently written offers a lot more support to the cake than to the root. Like most processed foods, the Twinkie is basically a clever arrangement of carbohydrates and fats teased out of corn, soybeans and wheat — three of the five commodity crops that the farm bill supports, to the tune of some $25 billion a year. (Rice and cotton are the others.) For the last several decades — indeed, for about as long as the American waistline has been ballooning — U.S. agricultural policy has been designed in such a way as to promote the overproduction of these five commodities, especially corn and soy.

That’s because the current farm bill helps commodity farmers by cutting them a check based on how many bushels they can grow, rather than, say, by supporting prices and limiting production, as farm bills once did. The result? A food system awash in added sugars (derived from corn) and added fats (derived mainly from soy), as well as dirt-cheap meat and milk (derived from both). By comparison, the farm bill does almost nothing to support farmers growing fresh produce. A result of these policy choices is on stark display in your supermarket, where the real price of fruits and vegetables between 1985 and 2000 increased by nearly 40 percent while the real price of soft drinks (a k a liquid corn) declined by 23 percent. The reason the least healthful calories in the supermarket are the cheapest is that those are the ones the farm bill encourages farmers to grow.”

Taken from here.

http://www.wikihow.com/Get-out-of-a-Car-That%27s-Hanging-over-a-Cliff

 

I was shocked to find these words in the work of one of the philosophical founders of the Libertarian movement and Austrian school of economics. These are the words of Marx and communism, not libertarianism.

“Private property is a human device. It is not sacred. It came into
existence in early ages of history, when people with their own power
and by their own authority appropriated to themselves what had
previously not been anybody’s property. Again and again proprietors
were robbed of their property by expropriation. The history of private
property can be traced back to a point at which it originated out of
acts which were certainly not legal. Virtually every owner is the
direct or indirect legal successor of people who acquired ownership
either by arbitrary appropriation of ownerless things or by violent
spoilation of their predecessor.”
–Ludwig von Mises
–Human Action, 1949

von Mises continues on to build an argument FOR private property based on his idea that it is “the best of all possible alternatives”.

Of course I and many others disagree with him there, but it’s nice to see that he recognizes the immoral foundation of most landed property rights.

Went and saw Andrew Bird with some friends last Tuesday. The concert was good, but not great. I was most impressed with the opening act, Cortney Tidwell, who I had never heard of before. Think of a more palatable and rocking Joanna Newsome that includes sporadic grooves and climatic endings so loud and powerful they nearly deconstruct themselves. Cortney was great live. I hope her recorded work does her music justice.

The greatest thing about Andrew Bird was 1) his amazing drummer who reminds me of a nerd with really great rhythm, infectious rhythm, and 2) Andrew’s personal story of living in a barn out near the Mississippi river for the past year (more?). Crazy guy. Unfortunately I was disappointed in his live performance. The man has talent, which is clear in his recorded work, but I think he was having a bad night/week. In any case, it was still very much worth the price of admission.

So we’re having a show at Biola in a few days.

Denison Witmer and Rosie Thomas are headlining.  I get in free, because I’m press, and I get to interview them. 

Do you guys have any ideas for poignant questions for Rosie or Witmer?  I know Witmer’s music, but I’ve only heard the latest Thomas album. I know, I know, pitiful.

But, help a sister out.

P.S.  I know I don’t sound excited, but I am.  It’s just going to be a dreadfully long weekend.  I have a huge media conference that I’m required to attend on Saturday and I’m really awful at networking.  There’s going to be a lot of big names there and it’ll be interesting.

This just in from Pax Christi:

The Japanese Catholic Bishops’ Council for Justice and Peace (which affiliated last year w/Pax Christi International) has asked Pax Christi USA for our support of their efforts to preserve Article 9 (the “peace clause”) of the Japanese Constitution. Article 9 asserts that “the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation.” This rare example of a political commitment to nonviolence is under threat of being dismantled, in large part due to U.S. plans to engage Japan as a key military partner in the U.S. “war on terror,” which would have grave consequences for destabilizing the Asia-Pacific region and fueling a new arms race in the region.

Later this month, the Japanese Prime Minister is due to visit the U.S. The Japanese Bishops’ Catholic Council for Justice and Peace is growing alarmed at their government’s efforts to prohibit dissent in-country over the next several weeks prior to the Japanese government’s move to call for a national referendum to change the constitution.  

 Sign a petition on this sight and leave a comment if you wish (http://www.article-9.org/en/index). I wrote: Japan’s commitment to nonviolence is one that should be emulated the world wide, not altered by Western pressure. I have no doubt that the U.S.’s heavy involvement with Japan in business will be a pressure point used to try and manipulate this currently peaceful country into joining the phony “war on terror.”

Anybody else see Grindhouse?  I really liked it, but a great deal of that is the historical tie-ins.

For the past month and for the next month, the oldest revivalist art house theatre here in L.A., the New Beverley (which is this amazing place that has double features.  One day, it’s double scorcese, the next, two cassavetes, the next, two rock documentaries, you never know what might pop up next.)  is hosting a minature grindhouse, showcasing the personal collection of Quentin Tarantino.  Granted, the man has enough ego to power the hostile takeover of a small third-world country, but he knows his film history.  The theatre is showing the original prints of many films that are incredible rare, and of course, they’re B-movie fare at best, and what many would call “pornography” at worst.  I’m not going to see any of them, but I really respect the genre, and I love the revivalist spirit that Rodriguez and Tarantino have brought to film-making.

The attention to detail is impressive, right down to the scratches and burns, and the missing reels, cut frames, etc. is what makes Grindhouse worth seeing.  Also, the films are fabulous, for what they are.  Gruesome zombie movie, and rip-roaring chase film.

Anyway, last night as I was leaving a screening of ‘Wild Tigers I have Known’ at midnight, I saw Tarantino walk out of the same theatre.  He stopped to talk to two fans who recognized him, and seemed quite nice.

I love L.A.

I read recently that Gandhi said, “Today, I rebel against orthodox Christianity, as I am convinced it has distorted the message of Jesus. He was an Asiatic whose message was delivered through many media, and when it had the backing of a Roman emperor, it became an imperialist faith as it remains to this day.”

What do you guys make of this?