Who Were the Sea Peoples?

Libertarians often make the mistake of confusing authority with rule. The referee of a basketball game is not the ruler of the game. But he does have the authority to decide when someone has committed a foul and when they should be thrown out of the game. Furthermore, what makes the referee an authority is not some "magical" power he possesses that allows him special insight into the sport of basketball, or some sterling virtues that make him a better person than the players. No, he is an authority because he has been designated as one in an authorized procedure: the league has appointed him. And if some referee abuses his authority and attempts to act like a ruler, that does not discredit the office of referee, but only the person of this referee. And note: the fact that he makes mistakes in these calls does not diminish his authority. Players and coaches may not remove him even if both teams believe he has made a series of bad calls. For an authority to be remove...

I just read the above claim in a paper. It is false, not based on "my ideology" as opposed to "your ideology," but demonstrably false on a scientific basis. (By science here I mean "rational enquiry into some realm of reality.") To understand why this is so, let us consider someone who says "the essence of private property is the open use of coercion." "Whoa," you may think, "how can anyone claim this? Private property is about my legitimate authority to control what is mine!'' But what about someone who disagrees with me about my legitimate authority over some property? For instance, I presently own ten acres in the Poconos. But suppose some Lenape Indians show up and say, "This was our ancestors' land: we are going to establish a village here." And they then begin constructing a village on "my" land. Well, I now have two choices: I can abandon my property claim, or I can use coercion to forc...

Is really rather straightforward. Unless something is done about them, a society will be plagued by coordination problems. Therefore, something should be done about them. In a hunter-gatherer society, what is done about them is tradition. There is a certain way that the ancestors have always done things, that way is preserved first and foremost by the elders of the tribe, and everyone should continue doing things that way. (So, for instance, if hunter-gatherers had roads and traffic problems, they would settle the question of which side of the street to drive on by asking which side of the street their ancestors had driven on.) But as a society begins to innovate, for instance, by settling down and starting to farm, tradition loses some of its effectiveness in solving these problems: new problems are arising (who is allowed to plant in this field?) that tradition cannot hold the answer to, because they are new. Therefore, new institutions evolve to solve coordination problems ...

In English political thought, from Thomas More to the American Revolution That's the working title of my next book. The theme explored is the historical development of what constitutes legitimate political authority, and when existing authority can be overthrown. Since this is a period that began with a dynasty put on the throne in a coup, and saw a civil war and two revolutions, these questions were often at the forefront of men's minds, and they were given serious attention. At present, my list of thinkers to address includes (updated to include recommendations from the comments): Thomas More William Shakespeare Richard Hooker George Buchanan Charles I John Milton Oliver Cromwell John Lilburne Thomas Hobbes Robert Filmer Algernon Sydney John Locke George Berkeley David Hume Thomas Jefferson Thomas Paine Edmund Burke Who have I left off the list?

(At this point, I am collecting material, not endorsing a view!) Bates makes the case for active obedience, as opposed, say, to Berkeley's case for passive obedience: KING HENRY V: I dare say you love him not so ill, to wish him here alone, howsoever you speak this to feel other men's minds: methinks I could not die any where so contented as in the king's company; his cause being just and his quarrel honourable. WILLIAMS: That's more than we know. BATES: Ay, or more than we should seek after; for we know enough, if we know we are the kings subjects: if his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us. (UPDATE: Whoa, sorry about the crappy formatting before! When one edited in HTML mode, Blogger used to respect your newlines and so forth: now, in an "improvement," it shows you the newlines on the editing screen, but then wipes them out when you publish!)

This is a theme I am start to look at seriously, to see the development of these ideas. Here's round one: 'If Locke had said what he meant–that the feeling of oppression in an individual’s mind justifies resistance against authority–he would not have found support from classical sources. Socrates, most prominently, participated willingly in his own execution when it was ordered by a decision he believed to be unjust though lawfully rendered by the civil authorities. Plato insisted in The Republic that "faction is a wicked thing and members of neither side are lovers of their city. " 'Aquinas, too, suggests that the long term communal stability of a society is better defended by tolerating small or occasional bouts of tyranny: "it is more expedient to tolerate milder tyranny for a while than, by acting against the tyrant, to become involved in many perils more grievous than the tyranny itself."' -- Scott Robinson