The song was written in 1971 by Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, a long-time resident of Slidell, Louisiana.

Live 04/16/83 in Hamburg, Germany: Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown (guitar/vocals), Homer Brown (tenorsax), Bill Samuell (tenorsax), Joe Sunseri (baritonesax), Craig Wroten (piano), Miles Wright (bass), Robert Shipley (drums).

HT Dick Clark for bringing this to my attention.

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Cross-posted at The Libertarian Standard.

In a recent post at The Libertarian Standard, Akiva claimed that people (in general) get the government they deserve. The US is an imperial-warfare state and a growing surveillance-police state, not to mention a nanny-welfare state. Boston Legal’s left-liberal attorney Alan Shore echoes Akiva’s sentiments in a closing argument in defense of, oddly enough, a tax protester (video below). He points out many of the evils of the US governments and their infringements on our liberties and concludes that Americans must be okay with it all.

Maybe it’s because we have the best ‘bread and circuses‘ money can buy and plenty of fiat money with which to buy it. Or maybe it’s because the court intellectuals all sing variations on the same discordant statist song. Or maybe it’s because we all learn the same myths and dogmas and untruths in state indoctrination camps called public schools, if we learn anything at all. Or maybe it’s because most of us lack the moral courage to inconvenience ourselves by standing up for what is right. I think it is some combination of these and other causes. In any event, most Americans seem to be a-okay with the evils of statism — at least so long as their man is in power.

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Cross-posted at The Libertarian Standard.

The Obama Administration insists that “‘Piracy is flat, unadulterated theft,’ and it should be dealt with accordingly.” Nonsense, of course. Only scarce goods can be property and therefore only scarce goods can be stolen. Ideas or information patterns are nonscarce goods. If I take your bicycle, you don’t have it anymore. If I copy your idea, now we both have it. Copying, i.e., piracy, is not theft.

As the Left is wont to do in lieu of sound argument, US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke recently related what is meant to be a heartrending story:

Recently, I’ve had a chance to read letters from award winning writers and artists whose livelihoods have been destroyed by music piracy. One letter that stuck out for me was a guy who said the songwriting royalties he had depended on to ‘be a golden parachute to fund his retirement had turned out to be a lead balloon.’ This just isn’t right.

My first immediate thought was why isn’t it right? Shouldn’t a progressive egalitarian’s own values lead him to be against intellectual property?

“What,” the progressive egalitarian should say, “you do a little work maybe once in your life, work which would be impossible if not for the shared cultural traditions from which it is derived and re-mixed, and get lucky (unearned talent, fortuitously good timing, etc.)…and you think you shouldn’t have to work for society again!?! That’s hardly fair, now is it? To paraphrase Proudhon, intellectual ‘property’ is theft!”

Lest the reader get the wrong impression, I am not as insensitive to the artist’s plight as this hypothetical progressive egalitarian. And I do not share his collectivist values. We come to similar conclusions via different reasons. I do not think that merely having an idea entitles one, legally-speaking, to be monetarily compensated by others or to have the power to prevent others from using their own property as they wish. Ideas are a dime-a-dozen. It is implementing them effectively, and in such a way as to earn a profit, that is hard. Accomplishing this is praiseworthy, but one should not rest on one’s laurels. Life, to say nothing of a flourishing life, requires productive work in order to be maintained and improved. Intellectual property is an attempt to use the coercive power of the state via granted monopoly-privilege to defy this reality as well as economic law and moral principle. The artist Secretary Locke mentioned could have saved (more) for his retirement and/or kept producing art instead of relying upon royalties to see him through his old age.

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Cross-posted at The Libertarian Standard.

I was just watching Crimson Tide on tv and there was a mention of the famous dictum by the Prussian general, military historian, and theorist Carl von Clausewitz: “War is the continuation of politics by other means.”

There is a profound truth in that dictum. It identifies shared characteristics of statist politics and war: anti-social conflict, some imposing their will on others, destruction and redistribution of wealth, etc. When statist political means fail to have the desired result and recourse is made to naked war, the true character of both the aggressors and the statist political process is revealed.

But I think that von Clausewitz got it backwards; the observation would have been more profound and true had he written instead: “Statist politics is the continuation of war by other means.”

Ballots replace bullets within the democratic state but conflict persists with special interest groups vying for the reins of power so that they can use the perceived legitimacy of the state to impose their will on each other. Beneath the sophisms that grant the state legitimacy there lies the same threat or use of initiatory violence that is present in war. Open war is traded for the illusion of peace.

Update 12/11/07: Might this quote from Ronald Reagan touch upon a similar insight? “Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.”

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Update: Revised version at The Libertarian Standard.