November 25, 2023
A middle-aged suit was trying to fight his own Israeli-Palestine War with a food vendor on the streets of NYC. I was not surprised to find out that he once held high level positions in the US State Department and the National Security Council, working on Israeli and Palestinian related "peacemaking" for past-Presidents Clinton and Obama.
Stuart Seldowitz's behavior last week in NYC communicated to any normal American that he is either a thug, or a thug-in-training, a low-life, a scoundrel. We find that he was in the current employ of a government-connected lobbying firm profiting from the logistics of war.
What did surprise me was that once the video got out, he was fired from his job, the company wiped him from their website, and he has been charged with "hate" crimes and stalking.
That was quick – and while it is likely, given who he is and where he is, he will get off in his brush with the law scot-free – he won't get his job back. Given the nature of the internet, he also won't be able to wipe his recorded bad behavior from the eyes of the now and future world.
That a leading Democrat bureaucrat will experience being charged with the Democratic Party's most salient contribution to law enforcement is not something we should take pleasure in. In a more civilized world, cowards like Stuart Seldowitz would be fighting his war of choice in Israel in person, not being rude and nasty to people he doesn't know, about issues he knows nothing about, in his hometown.
But it's a thing.
This week, we also saw the amazing election of a vibrant, straight-shooting, former soccer player and current free market economist to the presidency in Argentina. Anarcho-capitalists and libertarians everywhere must be celebrating this achievement, and also celebrating this trend in elections and party evolution in many places around the world. It speaks to the power of simple and honest conversations about money and man, the economy, and the state. It tells us the wisdom of Mises and Rothbard is spreading around the world like a friendly, health-promoting and welcome virus, leaving its hosts empowered, inspired and excited for what comes next. It speaks to a public and national recognition that the ever-expanding corruption and unfettered, galloping growth of the government-bureaucratic-ruling class has become intolerable.
That government thugs, low-lives and scoundrels – the ruling elite this time – is deadly to liberty and prosperity, and that these elites will destroy their countries to maintain control, does not surprise me. That the average Argentinian gets this – and used the state's tool of casting a ballot to make a change – does.
Javier Milei – because of who he is and what he understands about the state – is getting a chance to see what may be possible. We must wish him well. But this confrontation between Milei and the government-bureaucratic-elite would not have happened if the Argentinian state, for generations, had not so publicly, and so thoroughly, ignored civil and moral limits, and had not been arrogant, self-righteous, and greedy.
It's a thing.
I came across an interesting article this week that takes a viewpoint that probably shocks admirers and believers of modern Western government norms and maxims. It is anonymous, and when you read it, perhaps you can see why. The writer looks at lessons that the bloody, long and ultimately successful battle for Algerian independence may have, for Palestinians.
I was not surprised to see a comparison of Palestine's struggle with past struggles between colonized and colonizer, in Algeria, or elsewhere. I could not be surprised that in the various machinations to resolve the French-Algerian conflict over many decades, early examples of solutions and reforms were negotiated "without a single Algerian seated at the negotiating table."
The writer criticizes Camus, the Algerian-French reformist – who late in life, agreed simply to go silent on the matter, after decades of false reforms and one-sided negotiations had satisfied no one, and had led to ever harsher colonial rule, an ever angrier and more paranoid overlord.
I thought of our own Stuart Seldowitz, who rode and whipped the official soothsaying of a two-state solution for decades, revealing in his own life that there was never any there, there. No faith, no intent, no truth. I thought also of the US and German government officials, years after the Minsk Accords of 2014, in their personal retirement or in private, admit that the treaty for self-government and peace in the Donbass was just a calculated method to buy time as the US, Germany and Ukraine prepared for a more substantial and final subjugation of those who refused to obey them.
In "Lessons from Overthrowing the French in Algeria" I was not surprised that the action-reaction dynamic is one that never serves to occupier, the overlord, or the colonizer, no matter the history or the details. The problem is one of self-righteousness, arrogance and greed.
What did surprise me was the statement that "Real freedom is always taken, never granted." It's a phrase I have heard before; I believe it on a macro and philosophical level while I struggle to internalize it in my daily life. The statement is one of arguable fact, but in truly accepting it, we are – we become – changed men and women, powerful men and women, perhaps men and women who change their worlds.
It's a very real thing.
In the midst of a week spent preparing food and catching up with family, feeding animals and watching the weather change, mundane and glorious tasks that I am blessed to be able to do, in this most wonderful week – these three things popped up on my radar. I was not looking for them, I did not expect them, I did not have time for them, and I don't fully understand them.
But these three things prove a thing. We can debate, discuss, and devise how we get justice for years and years, even our whole lives. In the etymology of "justice", we find enforcement of law, conformity to rules, what is proper, and fitting. Justice often seems man-made and demanded by men, sometimes vengeful, often angry – we ask her to be blind, against all evidence that she rarely is. But truth is very different. Clear, not complicated; transformational not reforming; empowering rather than imprisoning; intrinsically bold and naturally brave.
Truth trumps the magical thinking of the state, explodes the conjured fantasies of the elites, powers our markets, minds, and souls. Truth does not start fights, nor wars – but happily and undeniably, she will end them.