About blogging is, on good days, you don't even have to do your own homework! I'd been thinking about linking writing from Robert LeFevre since I first started discussing "anarchism" (which term turns out to be so dark and variable a mirror as to beggar comprehension), and Kevin's done it already!
One way in which my philosophy differs from LeFevre's is that he was a thoroughgoing pacifist. Me, not so much. I hold with Col. Cooper's observation, "One bleeding-heart type asked me in a recent interview if I did not agree that 'violence begets violence.' I told him that it is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would like very much to ensure — and in some cases I have — that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy."* While there may, indeed, be no changing of a man's essential nature, the certainty of a negative outcome is likely to affect the manner in which he expresses it. --And if stopping bad guys one at a time is no more than a short-term solution, it's still better than the alternative and it buys more time to figure out what to do next.
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* Jeff Cooper, "Cooper vs. Terrorism", Guns & Ammo Annual, 1975
"One way in which my philosophy differs from LeFevre's is that he was a thoroughgoing pacifist."
ReplyDeleteYes. Same here. I explained to Kevin in e-mail that LeFevre was my first ethical insight to the nature of government. I still have the copy of "This Bread Is Mine" that he autographed to my father at a University of Hawaii seminar in 1969. They corresponded for years.
LeFevre and I go way back in my studies. My father was a lot more impressed with LeFerve's pacifism than I was, and I concluded that some of it was just plainly irrational. The crucial thing, however, is that it's no political problem to me. Someone like LeFevre can be as pacifist as he wants to, but nothing in his political principles prohibits an outlook like Cooper's, for instance.
I think that's my favorite Cooper quote.
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