jueves, diciembre 27, 2007

Conceived in liberty

En la biblioteca online del Instituto Mises está para bajar Conceived in liberty de Murray Rothbard. Es la obra de cuatro volúmenes dedicados a la historia colonial norteamericana, en la que con solidez el economista recorre el largo período desde Colón hasta la guerra de independencia, desde una óptica libertariana.
Antes de adentrarse en la lectura viene bien leer la sinopsis de Robert Klassen, quien adelanta, por ejemplo, el tratamiento dado en el primer volumen a los quáqueros de Pennsylvania.

The truly remarkable and nearly unbelievable thing that occurred in Seventeenth Century America was the settlement of Pennsylvania by the pacifist Quakers. They denounced slavery and they renounced the use of force and, once arrived, they ignored their royal master, paid no taxes, bought their land from the Indians, and worked industriously for their own individual purposes. They enjoyed twenty years of utter anarchy! But they were brought to heel in the end.

Less remarkable, but more significant for future events, was the emergence of Rhode Island as an unauthorized colony in the midst of royal estates. It became a refuge for political and religious dissidents and a defiant harbor of free trade.

Tanto Klassen como David Gordon citan este párrafo de cuarto volumen que no puedo dejar de copiar.

And so the revolutionary United States of America threw off the British yoke and won the first successful war of national liberation against western imperialism. Many factors entered into the victory, but the most important was the firm support for the war by the great majority of the American people. It was that support which harassed, enveloped, and finally destroyed the proud British armies come to conquer and occupy in the name of traditionally legitimate government. It was a revolution fueled by fervent belief in libertarian natural rights ideology and by cumulative reaction to growing British infringement on those rights, political, constitutional, and economic. Its victory was essentially a people’s victory, of guerrilla strategy in its broadest sense: not only of the small, mobile guerrilla bands of the Marions and the Sumters, but also of ephemeral and suddenly appearing militia who largely fought in their own neighborhoods and on their own terrain.

Hagan click derecho y guardar como o equivalente.

Fuente: wiki

2 comentarios:

Claude dijo...

Esto nos lleva a la siguiente cuestión: ¿la legitimidad de los actos de rechazo de un dominio determinado está dada por estándares de época generalmente aceptados o por la misma ilegitimidad del dominio rechazado?

MarcosKtulu dijo...

Unos llevan a un mayor o menor convencimiento de la ilegitimidad presente, pero si basamos la legitimidad en el derecho natural, supongo que es universal y atemporal.
De todos modos, aunque ambos sean ilegítimos, no creo que sea lo mismo ser súbdito británico en Canada o Australia que ser una posta de tráfico de esclavos en África.