The Armed Libertarian Revolution in Mexico (Part 1)

Part 1: A revolution of libertarian and anarchist grievances

The Mexican Revolution is likely the most important chain of events in the history of Mexico, perhaps more so than Mexico’s war of independence.  Its crowning achievement is the 1917 Constitution, still in effect today.  One of the leading attributes of the Mexican Revolution is the rise of citizen armies, what U.S. legal tradition recognizes as the ‘unorganized militia’ of able-bodied armed men organizing into military units.  Though the grievances, politics, motives, and goals of the different revolutionary factions and leaders differed, there’s much about the Revolution to be seen from a libertarian point of view.

One of the central themes of libertarian political theory is that government is at best inefficient and incapable of adequately governing and providing for the people, and at worst a predatory criminal organization.  This is why the minarchist libertarians believe in a very limited ‘night watchman’ government under a strict interpretation of the Constitution that favors the liberty of the people, and why anarchist libertarians prefer no government at all and all power to the individual.  The minarchist grievance against the thirty-five-year Porfirio Diaz regime is the lack of free elections, repression of dissident press, and crony capitalist policies favoring well-connected big businesses over independent honest businesses. 

The anarchist libertarian scholar Murray Rothbard breaks down the state to its most basic components in Anatomy of the State.  The example he gives is the bandit gang that occasionally robs an unarmed village population, which then decides they would profit more if they lived among the conquered people as rulers and collected regular payments.  The bandit chief declares himself king, his bandit leaders are the lawful nobility of the realm, and a new state is born.  This is what Columbus was to the Arawak people, what Cortez was to the Mexican Indians, and what the Mexican state was to the peasants and the Indians.

While Americans debate over the issue of women in combat, the Mexican Revolution sorted out that issue over a century ago with the ‘soldaderas’, the women soldiers of the revolutionary armies.  The soldaderas served as rear-guard militia, nurses, couriers, spies, sentries, regimental cooks, and frontline light infantry.  Without the participation of women in logistical and combat roles, the revolutionary armies wouldn’t have been able to mount prolonged resistance against the federal government and later, against the corrupt revolutionary state.  The prevalence of revolutionary wives and sweethearts, especially Francisco “Pancho” Villa’s Northern Division, is likely the reason why desertion was so low in revolutionary armies.  Women’s participation made them equal stakeholders in the Revolution, and evidence that gun rights and the natural right to self-defense aren’t restricted to one country, gender, or one special class of people.

The anarchist grievances of the Mexican Revolution include the rampant state using eminent domain to steal land from its rightful owners, federal military conscription as kidnapping, taxes as institutionalized theft, and the constant imprisonment and murder of dissidents.  One faction of outright anarchists rose up in 1911.  The Magonistas were a battalion-sized volunteer army of anarchist Mexicans and Anglo-Americans who conquered several cities and towns independently of the Maderista’s war against the Diaz regime.  Although they were anarcho-communist, their attempts to establish a micro-state in northern Baja California represent the libertarian ideals of secession and political decentralization.  Moreover, the wary and apolitical general population were likely to receive better representation and public services under the Magonistas' micro-state than under the Mexican government.

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Continued tomorrow in Part 2. 

This article was originally published in one piece by the Libertarian Party of Nevada.

'From the Dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz to the Revolution' painting by David Alfaro Siquieros

'Las Soldaderas' (1938) painting by Antonio Gomez.

[Mini-podcast] TrumpCareis Proof the GOP is Socialist

Repeal TrumpCare! This ObamaCare Lite bill is all the evidence conservatives should need that the GOP is socialist and the GOP's leaders and elected officials are betraying America AGAIN. Also, libertarians who support the Trump administration in its growing government faster than marijuana grows in Humboldt need to seriously rethink their worldview.

#RepealTrumpCare

Stream or download at Soundcloud

[Mini-podcast] National Capitalism (Nazism 2.0) is Carp on a Stick

The Nat-Cs are coming to physically remove you in the night! The same people who identify with "national capitalism" are usually the same people who say "It's the Roman salute, not the Nazi salute!" The Helicopter Libertarians strike again, and they want to trick you into growing the Trump state.

National Capitalism is simply Nazism 2.0--and this National Capitalism fairy tale is either the domain of racists and fascists with slightly better economics than the NSDAP, or racists and fascists too spineless to be true to themselves and admit they're Nazi sympathizers.

Stream or download at Soundcloud

What You Need to Know About Las Vegas and Marijuana

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas... unless there's a police record! Here's what you need to know about 420 in Sin City.

Many leading successful entrepreneurs--the multi-millionaires whose books and seminars people pay a ton of money for--all say you should get paid to do what you enjoy so your money works for you instead of you working for money.  In this spirit, I work a great side gig as a nightclub party host on the Las Vegas Strip.  

I have guests asking me random drug questions all the time.  I also see the occasional stoner on the Strip get taken away in handcuffs.  To avoid a ruined vacation and a string of legal problems, here's what you need to know about marijuana laws in Las Vegas and the State of Nevada. I answer the following questions: 

Is marijuana legal in Las Vegas?

Can people smoke weed on the Strip?

Where can people buy weed in Las Vegas?

Can I reek of weed in the club?

Find the answers to these questions at Potent.media

So You Want To Do Physical Removal...

The alt-right and sellout-anarchists are either naive or intentionally lying about their creed.

British police at Croydon Airport send Jewish refugees back to occupied Poland

The alt-right and their bosom buddies, the Cantwellian Helicopter Libertarians, want to throw people out of helicopters like Pinochet's regime did to dissidents. Those that aren’t excited to commit mass murder in the name of 'liberty' or capitalism still favor a more sterilized, softer form of “physical removal” in the form of deportations or imprisonment.

I say to them: Fine. Physically remove people. But those calling for physical removal better be man enough to do it themselves! History is filled with mass murders that were tolerated by people who chose to remain silent and not get their hands dirty. In 1945, vanquished Germans cried "We didn't know!" to the Allies.  No more of that. If people want physical removal, they need to lead by example and actually start ripping people from their families, not do what the socialist Republicans do and blissfully outsource that violence to the State.

The alt-right conservatives and their expendable auxiliaries, the Helicopter Libertarians, would argue that the federal and state governments exist whether libertarian anarchists want it or not. Therefore, they say, the best chance that ‘freedom’ has in America is for libertarians to use these entities to remove people who are threats to liberty.  That's cute.

What the alt-right ignores is...  (Read more at the Swamp)

Forbes and Celebrity Talk Show Host cover Libertarians in Cuban Gulag

Manuel Velazquez (left) and Ubaldo Herrera (right) before their arrest

The campaign to raise awareness of two Cuban libertarian activists thrown in the Gulag just took a turn for the better.  The world is hearing the cries of the victims' families!  Mises Cuba and the incarcerated Cuban libertarian activists were mentioned recently in a Forbes article.  The issue was also explored in greater detail by celebrity talk show host and libertarian activist Gloria Alvarez.  This follows multiple U.S. Libertarian state parties being joined by the Libertarian Party of Spain and the Libertarian Party of Russia in condemning the incarceration of Ubaldo Herrera Hernandez and Manuel Velazquez Visea, and calling for their immediate release.

Two days ago, Alejandro Chafuen wrote a Forbes article about free market think tanks and political entrepreneurs.  He mentions 25 independent Mises Institutes in the world that he's aware of, each modeled after the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn.  Chafuen writes, "To my knowledge, the last Mises Institute to pop up was Mises Cuba. Early in February, two of their members were detained and later sent to the Melena II jail, a maximum security prison for political dissidents."  (Read this for more details on their arrest and incarceration.)

Mises Cuba's Community Organizer also personally informed me that Mises Cuba founding member and lawyer Nelson Rodriguez Chartrand was just interviewed by celebrity activist and talk show host Gloria Alvarez.  Alvarez is a talk show host of Libertopolis (102.1 FM), a Guatemalan news and political station that broadcasts on the air and online.  Gloria Alvarez is also the author of the Spanish-language books 'El engaño populista' (The Populist Deception) and 'La Rebelión de los Mansos' (Rebellion of the Meek).  Alvarez and Libertopolis have a combined audience of millions, and Alvarez alone has half a million social media subscribers.  The interview of Nelson Rodriguez Chartrand about Herrera and Velazquez's incarceration in the Gulag, and the Cuban government's repression of Mises Cuba, is scheduled to air on March 31 at 6 PM Guatemalan local time.

Another bit of good news is that the Libertarian Party of Colorado's Executive Committee voted to join the cause.  LP Colorado condemns the incarceration of Ubaldo Herrera Hernandez and Manuel Velazquez Visea and calls for their immediate release.  LP Colorado has yet to publish anything on the vote or proclamation, but the resolution's unanimous passage was confirmed by Communications Director Caryn Ann Harlos.  The U.S. Libertarian National Committee votes on a similar resolution tomorrow.  If passed, the whole U.S. Libertarian Party will condemn the incarceration and call for the release of Herrera and Velazquez. So far, the Libertarian state parties who have taken initiative are Nevada, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Indiana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Florida, Colorado, plus LP Chicago.  This movement is joined by the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn and the fully independent Mises Institutes of multiple Latin American countries.

LP Nevada warmly thanks Gloria Alvarez and Alejandro Chafuen for significantly raising awareness of this issue.  As is the case of international celebrity whistle blower Edward Snowden, who's still a refugee abroad, there is little we can actually do to physically remove Herrera and Velazquez from the labor prison Melena II.  However, we can still make sure the whole world knows what happened to Ubaldo Herrea Hernandez and Manuel Velazquez Visea.  We can make sure the whole world knows what Raul Castro's regime continues to do to peaceful dissidents who live by the non-aggression principle.  The greater the awareness each caring person helps spread, the greater the embarrassment to the quasi-Stalinist regime in Cuba, and the greater the chance the Interior Ministry will let them go. 

#TodosSomosMisesCuba

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Originally published March 18 by the Libertarian Party of Nevada.

Is the Left Really More Evil Than the Right?

The question needs asking: is the Left really more evil than the Right?

Anyone who's slightly right-of-center has likely watched black-clad anarchists with hammer and sickle flags smashing up store fronts, starting bonfires in the streets, and brawling with the cops.  It's probably sent a chill down their spines.  I see an increasing ideological problem arising in libertarian circles: conservatives and libertarians are buying into the us-versus-them mentality to vilify the left, at the expense of giving conservatives a free pass on violent hypocrisy.  

People on the Right are rightfully concerned about violent neo-Communists, but they're ignoring the neo-Nazis.  Revolutionary and institutional fascism alike are equally willing to end lives and expropriate private property for the sake of the state, and always has, no matter how vehemently conservatives, the alt-right, and the far-right libertarian wannabes (anyone who does the "Roman" salute).  Soviet Socialism was certainly a plague on humanity, especially in the developing world, but so were the CIA and DEA. Remember, when Mises and Hayek fled Europe, it wasn't Communism they were fleeing for their lives.  So concern over militant leftism but not militant rightism is willful blindness.

Besides, the Right will always be the real evil, in my honest opinion. Liberals are all about high taxes and abortion. The radical leftists will take to the streets and break things when they don't get their way.  It was the same in Berkeley in 1968, and it was the same in Petrograd in 1917 and 1905. What else is new?  Republicans seem to have amnesia over the excessive force that was applied to Ron Paul supporters in 2012.

The police colluded with the GOP to assault and arrest Ron Paul supporters after they won the majority of delegates at the Louisiana GOP Convention.  Fingers were broken.

The police were in cahoots with the GOP to arrest Ron Paul supporters at the Missouri GOP Caucus.  When Ron Paul was winning the delegate race, the Missouri GOP revoked their credentials and had them physically removed.

Republicans in Orlando stomped on the feet of a Ron Paul supporter wearing flip flops for the high crime of holding a Ron Paul sign outside the National Convention.  

Ron Paul delegates in Orlando had their credentials stripped in mass.  I also met and spoke with a delegate who was kidnapped on Orlando's infamous Bus to Nowhere that unfortunately didn't arrive at the Convention Center in time for the Paul delegates to vote.  In addition, I've met others who claim marijuana was planted in their hotel rooms--this was back in 2012 when possession in the South was more than a slap on the wrist.

So while the Left breaks windows and blocks on-ramps, and every once in a while beats up a Donald Trump supporter, Republicans and a few libertarians with GOP Stockholm Syndrome play into the partisan game.  Libertarians and Republicans seem to find some common ground in denigrating the Left together, but all the libertarians in this situation do is buy into the statists' us-versus-them game.  

In their growing hatred of the Left, the embers of resentment fanned by hatemongers like Chris "I say cuck way too damn much" Cantwell and wackos like Alex "Cocaine tantrums" Jones.  There is no outcry from these people over the vandalized mosques and synagogues, the statistical increase in attacks against immigrants and minorities in this country,

But conservatives are the ones who were supposed to lower taxes, reign in federal spending, protect unborn life, maintain a humble foreign policy, preserve the rights of states from federal overreach according to the Bill of Rights. And what have we gotten? Boots on the ground in Syria, TrumpCare with the individual mandate intact, an Attorney General who has said on more than one occasion that he plans to prosecute legal recreational marijuana (because, according to Spicer and Sessions, when the Trump campaign said 'states rights', they only meant medical marijuana), and abortion still happens on the daily in Trump's America.

The leaders of the Right betrayed America, and most ordinary conservatives supported them the whole way.  Republicans are still making excuses to support Donald Trump, even though he's doing variations of the same crap the Obama Administration did.  This goes to show that a majority of Trump's supporters aren't really as married to their principles as they think they are.  They're not really as dedicated to the practice of conservative values as they think they are, or else they'd already have tarred and feathered 90% of the Republicans in Washington D.C. (both in the Legislative and Executive Branches).

We know the Left is "bad."  They're too wishy-washy on civil liberties and plain awful on property rights, and that leaves room for huge problems down the road. That's always been obvious.  But the Right are the snakes in the grass, who will talk in your face about 'principles over party' while they raise your taxes, fund abortion clinics, and drop more bombs on brown people (because WWJD don't matter to the "Christian" Right anymore).

So yes. The Right is evil. Perhaps the true evil, more so than the Left.  The Left is at least honest about their big government SJW utopian drivel. I can easily point to 3 books: Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto, Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, and Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States, and feel comfortable saying these 3 books pretty accurately summarize the Left.  We know exactly what the different Left factions believe and what they want to accomplish.

But the Right... we get volumes of propaganda from the Right about their moral superiority to liberals, even though conservatives are at this very moment giving America more of the same that we already had under Obama.they are the snakes.  The Right is the greater evil.  They're still lying to America.  Mexico's going to pay for that wall, not the American taxpayer, right?!

Yeah yeah yeah, the Left is "bad."  The Right is "worse."  Let's just break the Left-Right paradigm and focus on minimum versus maximum state presence, and maximum versus minimum individual liberty.

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Images courtesy of Old American Century.