#26 Brett Veinotte -The Catastrophe of Conventional Wisdom

Everything that is essential and critical to the well functioning of a real VEN is going to have a coincident overlap with those people who resonate to Brett Veinotte's  interests and message (School Sucks podcasts). The core is volunteerism, and inside that are people who honestly care enough to try and make something work on the ground, only perhaps using the internet for information and messaging, otherwise willing and able to devote their real talents, time and relentless efforts to developing local and regional alliances.

Another conterminous group would be those associated with TragedyandHope.com; with Richard Grove's Peace Revolution podcasts. Other related groups would be those who are emerging within honest philosophical groups in the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan. For all I know the trend back to rationalism is actually spreading so far and wide, especially among the technically skilled, that a trend toward more direct exposure of the crimes of the elites and their thoughtless minions, strictly on the field of ideas, becomes possible. Certainly Wes Bertrand and Stefan Molyneau are standouts.

This series of links presents a talk by Brett Veinotte, host of School Sucks Podcast, at the 2010 New Hampshire Liberty Forum. [For the time being, we will have to accept Veinotte's ignorance of the faulty “gold bug” basis of the Austrian School's monetary position, which among other things regards the relative scarcity of money as a relevant issue, when we do not. Elsewhere on this blog we have attempted to show, based on hard historical evidence, that many of Rothbard's core assumptions were and are, at the very least mistaken, at the very most outright lies. They would be lies if Rothbard knew at the time he penned his works, the facts of history concerning the FORCE applied to those who were would-be rulers of those times into adoption of gold and silver coins into their markets to serve as the basis of trade; it was hardly the result of the free choice of free markets as he assumes.] :

The Catastrophe of Conventional Wisdom(1/5)
The Catastrophe of Conventional Wisdom (2/5)
The Catastrophe of Conventional Wisdom (3/5)
The Catastrophe of Conventional Wisdom (4/5)
The Catastrophe of Conventional Wisdom (5/5)

It's a little unfortunate that all of the questions Brett faced at the end of his talk were cut short, not included or seemingly absent from YouTube. Perhaps someone knows where a complete version exists and can inform me via e-mail.

The core idea presented here is that the conventional wisdom accepted routinely by common people everywhere often prevents them from even imagining a different order of things. They are by what they believe, predisposed to think that civilization, perhaps even life itself couldn't continue without states, government issued money, public schools, etc. Who would maintain the roads, is a common question. By what people have obliged to think, they limit their views of themselves, of what they might accomplish, and are suspicious of the behaviour of others living free. They cannot imagine free people actively conscious of sanity and insanity and aware of the signs of trouble and willing and capable of taking care of themselves and able to take constructive and proactive counsel together for appropriate action; the insane are a danger to us all.

They all want to know what kind of “system” any other would-be “social architects” might suggest. They ask what happens if dangerous people get hold of nuclear weapons, as if some dangerous people don't already have them. They seem paralysed to think and do other than what everyone else is doing. Their questions are irrelevant because we're talking about an entire paradigm shift. Certain ideas, institutions, concepts and yes even some people, have risen, attained all the height they will ever achieve and will fall ... often quite quickly ... when new technologies, new ideas, new perceptions clearly disprove or show up the pretensions of the present order.

Into the mix, we admonish our readers not to jump to the ready made briar patch of the Austrians just because the Keynesians (based on the non-philosophy of pragmatism, beloved of all politicians) is rapidly discredited. These were always two horns of the same dilemma, operated and developed by the same interested people for their own purposes, not yours or mine. They even have the effrontery to claim some degree of ownership over us and what's often rather pathetic about it is that most people perhaps might even feel more secure, in some vague uncertain way, by imagining that someone afar off cares about them. Well, grow up, they don't care about you or anyone but themselves. They aren't your Santa Claus. The present system attracts people to positions of privilege associated with state (and corporate) power, who are not like you or me. These people have the psychological profiles of pathological liars, sociopaths and psychopaths; they are madmen, and a few mad women into the mix, just to make it seem more modern and to the aware, to finally lay to rest once and for all, silly notions like that women have ever held a monopoly on virtue.

Our response has always been “come out of her, my people,” and go to ground, form alliances and start working and socializing together, start figuring out who is good at what and try and find a way to make certain things happen in your neighbourhoods that offer basic values in goods and services close at hand. Imagine a network of such local organizations, just societies of ordinary people like you and me. That's where the VEN begins and we begin to plan to say sayonara to much that has never served our best interests.

David Burton