Cryptocurrency Definition | Investopedia

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What is a Cryptocurrency

A cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency that uses cryptography for security. A cryptocurrency is difficult to counterfeit because of this security feature. Many cryptocurrencies are decentralized systems based on blockchain technology, a distributed ledger enforced by a disparate network of computers. A defining feature of a cryptocurrency, and arguably its biggest allure, is its organic nature; it is not issued by any central authority, rendering it theoretically immune to government interference or manipulation.

The first blockchain-based cryptocurrency wasBitcoin, which still remains the most popular and most valuable. Today, there are thousands of alternate cryptocurrencies with various functions or specifications. Some of these are clones of Bitcoin while others are forks, or new cryptocurrencies that split off from an already existing one.

Cryptocurrencies are systems that allow for the secure payments of online transactions that are denominated in terms of a virtual "token," representing ledger entriesinternal to the system itself. "Crypto" refers to the fact that various encryption algorithms and cryptographic techniques, such as elliptical curve encryption, public-private key pairs, and hashing functions, are employed.

The first cryptocurrency to capture the public imagination was Bitcoin, which was launched in 2009 by an individual or group known under the pseudonym,Satoshi Nakamoto. As of October 2018, there were over 17.33 million bitcoins in circulation with a total market value of around $115 billion (although the market price of bitcoin can fluctuate quite a bit). Bitcoin's success has spawned a number of competing cryptocurrencies, known as "altcoins" such as Litecoin, Namecoin and Peercoin, as well as Ethereum, EOS, and Cardano. Today, there are literally thousands of cryptocurrencies in existence, with an aggregate market value of over $200 billion (Bitcoin currently represents more than 50% of the total value).

Cryptocurrencies hold the promise of making it easier to transfer funds directly between two parties in a transaction, without the need for a trusted third party such as a bank or credit card company; these transfers are facilitated through the use of public keys and private keys for security purposes. In modern cryptocurrency systems, a user's "wallet," or account address, has the public key, and the private key is used to sign transactions. Fund transfers are done with minimal processing fees, allowing users to avoid the steep fees charged by most banks and financial institutions for wire transfers.

Central to the appeal and function of Bitcoin is the blockchaintechnologyit uses to store an online ledger of all the transactions that have ever been conducted using bitcoins, providing a data structure for this ledger that is exposed to a limited threat from hackers and can be copied across all computers running Bitcoin software. Every new block generated must be verified by the ledgers of each user on the market, making it almost impossible to forge transaction histories. Many experts see this blockchain as having important uses in technologiessuch as online voting and crowdfunding, and major financial institutions such as JPMorgan Chase see potential in cryptocurrencies to lower transaction costs by making payment processing more efficient. However, because cryptocurrencies are virtual and do not have a central repository, a digital cryptocurrency balance can be wiped out by a computer crash if a backup copy of the holdings does not exist, or if somebody simply loses their private keys.

At the same time, there is no central authority, government, or corporation that has access to your funds or your personal information.

The semi-anonymous nature of cryptocurrency transactions makes them well-suited for a host of nefarious activities, such as money laundering and tax evasion. However, cryptocurrencyadvocates often value the anonymity highly. Some cryptocurrencies are more private than others. Bitcoin, for instance, is a relatively poor choice for conducting illegal business online, and forensic analysis of bitcoin transactions has led authorities to arrest and prosecute criminals. More privacy-oriented coins do exist, such as Dash, ZCash, or Monero, which are far more difficult to trace.

Since prices are based on supply and demand, the rate at which a cryptocurrency can be exchanged for another currency can fluctuate widely. However, plenty of research has been undertaken to identify the fundamental price drivers of cryptocurrencies.Bitcoin has indeed experienced some rapid surges and collapses in value, reaching as high as $19,000 per bitcoin in December of 2017 before returning to around $7,000 in the following months. Cryptocurrencies are thus considered by some economists to be a short-lived fad or speculative bubble. There is concern especially that the currency units, such as bitcoins, are not rooted in any material goods. Some research has identified that the cost of producing a bitcoin, which takes an increasingly large amount of energy, is directly related to its market price.

Cryptocurrencies' blockchains are secure, but other aspects of a cryptocurrency ecosystem are not immune to the threat of hacking. In Bitcoin's almost 10-year history, several online exchanges have been the subject of hacking and theft, sometimes with millions of dollars worth of 'coins' stolen. Still, many observers look at cryptocurrencies as hope that a currency can exist that preserves value, facilitates exchange, is more transportable than hard metals, and is outside the influence of central banks and governments.

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Cryptocurrency Definition | Investopedia

The New American Slavery: Invited To The U.S., Foreign …

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MAMOU, Louisiana Travis Manuel and his twin brother, Trey, were shopping at Walmart near this rural town when they met two Mexican women who struck them as sweet. Using a few words of Spanish he had picked up from his Navy days, Travis asked the two women out on a double date.

Around midnight the following Saturday, when they finished their shift at a seafood processing plant, Marisela Valdez and Isy Gonzalez waited for their dates at the remote compound where they lived and worked.

As soon as they got in the Manuel brothers car, the women began saying something about patrn angry, Travis recalled. While he was trying to puzzle out what they meant, his brother, who was driving, interrupted: Dude, Trey said. Theres someone following us.

Trey began to take sudden turns on the country roads threading through the rice paddies that dot the area, trying to lose the pickup truck behind them. Finally, they saw a police car.

I said, were gonna flag down this cop for help, Travis recalled. But the cop pulled us over, lights on, and told us not to get out of the vehicle, Trey added, noting that the pickup pulled up and the driver began conferring with the police.

An officer asked Trey and his brother for ID. From the backseat, their dates began to cry.

Travis tried to reassure them. They werent doing anything wrong, he said, and they were in the United States. I was like, Theres no way they are going to take you away.

He was wrong.

The man in the truck was the womens boss, Craig West, a prominent farmer in the heart of Cajun country. As Sgt. Robert McGee later wrote in a police report, West said that Valdez and Gonzalez were two of his girls, and he asked the cops to haul the women in and scare the girls.

The police brought the women, who were both in their twenties, to the station house. McGee told them they couldnt leave Wests farm without permission, warning that they could wind up dead. To drive home the point, an officer later testified, McGee stood over Valdez and Gonzalez and pantomimed cutting his throat. He also brandished a Taser at them and said they could be deported if they ever left Wests property without his permission.

A little after 2 in the morning, they released the women to West for the 15-minute drive through the steamy night to his compound a place where, the women and the Mexican government say, workers were stripped of their passports and assigned to sleep in a filthy, foul-smelling trailer infested with insects and mice. Valdez and Gonzalez also claimed that they and other women were imprisoned, forced to work for little pay, and frequently harassed by West, who demanded to see their breasts and insisted that having sex with him was their only way out of poverty.

These women were not undocumented immigrants working off the books. They were in the United States legally, as part of a government program that allows employers to import foreign labor for jobs they say Americans wont take but that also allows those companies to control almost every aspect of their employees' lives.

Each year, more than 100,000 people from countries such as Mexico, Guatemala, the Philippines, and South Africa come to America on what is known as an H-2 visa to perform all kinds of menial labor across a wide spectrum of industries: cleaning rooms at luxury resorts and national parks, picking fruit, cutting lawns and manicuring golf courses, setting up carnival rides, trimming and planting trees, herding sheep, or, in the case of Valdez, Gonzalez, and about 20 other Mexican women in 2011, peeling crawfish at L.T. West Inc.

A BuzzFeed News investigation based on government databases and investigative files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, thousands of court documents, as well as more than 80 interviews with workers and employers shows that the program condemns thousands of employees each year to exploitation and mistreatment, often in plain view of government officials charged with protecting them. All across America, H-2 guest workers complain that they have been cheated out of their wages, threatened with guns, beaten, raped, starved, and imprisoned. Some have even died on the job. Yet employers rarely face any significant consequences.

Many of those employers have since been approved to bring in more guest workers. Some have even been rewarded with lucrative government contracts. Almost none have ever been charged with a crime.

In interview after interview, current and former guest workers often on the verge of tears used the same word to describe their experiences: slavery.

We live where we work, and we cant leave, said Olivia Guzman Garfias, who has been coming to Louisiana as a guest worker from her small town in Mexico since 1997. We are tied to the company. Our visas are in the companys name. If the pay and working conditions arent as we wish, who can we complain to? We are like modern-day slaves.

In a statement, the Department of Labor, which is charged with protecting workers and vetting employers seeking visas, said that the H-2 programs are part of a wider immigration system that is widely acknowledged to be broken, contributing to an uneven playing field where employers who exploit vulnerable workers undermine those who do the right thing.

The number of H-2 visas issued has grown by more than 50% over the past five years. Unlike the better-known H-1B visa program, which brings skilled workers such as computer programmers into Americas high-tech industries, the H-2 program is for the economys bottom rung, designed to make it easier for employers to fill temporary, unskilled positions. Proponents argue that it gives foreigners a chance to work here legally, send home much-needed dollars, and return to their families when the job is over.

In March, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce defended the guest worker program before a Senate committee, noting that such "temporary workers are needed in lesser-skilled occupations that are both seasonal and year round," and that aspects of the program are "critical" to "American workers, the local community, and companies that provide goods and services to these seasonal businesses.

Tens of thousands of companies, ranging from family businesses to huge corporations, have participated in the program since it took its modern form in 1986. Employers pledge to pay their workers a set rate, which can range from the federal minimum wage to a higher prevailing wage that varies from state to state and job to job. As for the employees, they can only work for the company that sponsored their visa. They are legally barred from seeking other employment and must leave the country when the job ends.

For some people, such as the hundreds of soccer coaches who youth sports camps bring in every year from the United Kingdom and elsewhere, an H-2 visa offers an opportunity to make some money while spending time in another country. Many companies treat their H-2 employees well, and many guest workers interviewed for this article said they are grateful for the program.

But public records and interviews reveal how easy it is for companies that sponsor H-2 visas to abuse their employees.

Many companies pay their guest workers less than the law mandates. Others pay them for fewer hours than they actually work, or force them to work extremely long hours without overtime. Some, on the other hand, offer them far less work than promised, at times leaving workers without enough money to buy food. Employers also whittle away at wages by imposing an array of prohibited fees starting with bribes to get the jobs in the first place, which can leave workers so deep in debt that they are effectively indentured servants.

Guest workers often toil in conditions that are unsafe, inhumane, or simply exhausting, wielding dangerous machinery beneath a scorching sun or standing for hours on end in sweltering factories. And at the end of their shift, many workers retire to grim, squalid quarters that might be little more than a grimy mattress on the floor of a crowded, vermin-infested trailer. For such housing, some employers charge workers extortionate rent.

Though it is against the law, employers often exert additional control over guest workers by confiscating their passports, without which many foreign workers, fearful of being deported, feel unsafe leaving the worksite. Some employers extend their influence over workers to extremes, screening their mail, preventing them from receiving visitors, banning radios and newspapers, or even coercing them to attend religious services they dont believe in. Some foremen sexually harass female workers, who live in constant fear of losing their jobs and being deported.

The world has become accustomed in recent years to hearing of guest worker abuse in countries such as Qatar or Thailand. But this is happening in the United States. And the problem is not just a few unscrupulous employers. The very structure of the visa program enables widespread abuse and exploitation.

The way H-2 visas shackle workers to a single employer leaves them almost no leverage to demand better treatment. The rules also make it easy to banish a worker to her home country at the bosss whim. And guest workers tend to be so poor and, often, so indebted from the recruitment fees they paid to get the job in the first place that they feel they have no choice but to endure even the worst abuses.

Court documents and interviews revealed numerous cases where workers who tried to speak out said they received threats to their lives. Many others claimed they were blacklisted by employers, losing the opportunity to get jobs that, however miserable, give them more money than they could earn in their own countries.

The government has been warned repeatedly over almost two decades that the guest worker program is deeply troubled, with more than a dozen official reports excoriating it for everything from widespread visa fraud to rampant worker abuse, and even calling for its elimination. Since 2005, Labor Department investigation records show, at least 800 employers have subjected more than 23,000 H-2 guest workers to violations of the federal laws designed to protect them from exploitation, including more than 16,000 instances of H-2 workers being paid less than the promised wage.

Those numbers almost certainly understate the problem, as the federal government doesnt check up on the vast majority of companies that bring guest workers into this country. The Labor Department noted in its statement that it has limited resources, with only about 1,000 investigators to enforce protections for all 135 million workers in the U.S. Still, it said, it recovered more than $2.6 million in back wages owed to roughly 4,500 H-2 workers in the 2014 fiscal year. In that year, the agency said, it found violations in 82% of the H-2 visa cases it investigated.

Kalen Fraser, a former investigator for the Labor Departments Wage and Hour Division who specialized in H-2 visa cases, said that while some companies stumble over complex rules, a substantial portion maliciously violate worker protection laws. Theres a big power imbalance there, and the worst guys get away with everything.

Route 95 between Chataignier and Mamou, Louisiana, winds through endless acres of rice paddies that teem with crawfish after the grain is reaped. The country is dead flat, and stretching to the horizon theres little but lush fields of green, dotted with glassy brown pools beneath a heavy sky. Near a bend in the two-lane highway sits the L.T. West crawfish plant.

It was there that Valdez, Gonzalez, and the other women, tired and stiff from a crowded, 1,500-mile ride up from Mexico, stepped out into the dark, wet heat on the night of April 9, 2011.

Valdez said it was need that had brought her there need and principle. I wanted to work and make money and do it in a legal way, she said in a recent interview, so I didnt have to cross the border illegally or undocumented.

She had left behind her 5-year-old son and her 8-year-old daughter, along with her mother, who was taking care of the children, and her dream at least for a time of finishing her college degree. She was 26. It was her first time away from home.

She landed in one of Americas most distinctive and insular regions. Acadiana stretches from the bayous near the Gulf of Mexico up through Lafayette and into the Cajun Prairie north of Interstate 10. It is a place where Spanish moss drips so thick off trees they can hardly be discerned, French is still many peoples first language, zydeco music blares from the radio, and social life for generations has centered around great feasts of boiled crab, shrimp, and crawfish.

Valdez and Gonzalez claim they were assigned, along with three other of the youngest women, to an isolated trailer that lacked safe drinking water. Valdez was terrified of the dark, of the sounds of animals in the brush, of snakes. The women talked that first night about their goals and what their families would do with the money they earned.

I felt very strange, she said. Being with all these people I didnt know, having to leave behind my life, my family, my things, in a country I had never been in before. I felt very sad. I felt sad, but the truth is the need we had at that moment was so great that we had to do it, we had to be there.

Valdez lay awake, she said, thinking about where I was, how did I get there, why I was in this position. A few hours later, the women were rousted and sent to peel crawfish.

After hatching and maturing in the shallow ponds that spool over the landscape, the crustaceans rusty brown and squirming are plucked from baited traps. The mudbugs are stuffed in mesh sacks, heaved into the back of pickup trucks, then cooked in steel baths until they are bright red.

Then the women go to work. Still steaming, the crawfish are dumped by the basketful onto long metal tables. The workers crowd in, standing shoulder to shoulder or perching on stools. Hour after hour, they pull the heads off and extract the tail meat.

The hot crawfish would hurt your fingers, Valdez said. But the worst thing was the smell. It stung your nostrils, she said. The smell stuck to everything. We carried it home with us.

In its application for H-2 visas, filed in November 2010, L.T. West committed to pay the workers $9.10 an hour, plus overtime. The company also promised the Labor Department it would issue detailed pay statements.

The women soon learned, however, that they would sometimes be paid for each pound of crawfish tails they peeled. Federal law allows guest workers to be paid a piece rate, but only if the employer makes up any difference between that and the promised hourly wage.

L.T. West did not backfill their wages, according to the womens complaint. Some weeks, they said, their piece-rate wages amounted to the equivalent of less than $4 an hour. Sometimes they were given only about 15 hours of work per week.

Craig West denies that he shorted the women. But notes from a Labor Department investigation show that he did not keep proper pay records, making it impossible to verify that assertion.

The women also said West forbade them from leaving his plant and ordered one of his employees to confiscate their passports and visas their only proof, in a region that takes border enforcement seriously, that they were in the U.S. legally. On numerous occasions, they said, West threatened to call police or immigration authorities.

A few days after the disastrous double date, two of the women claimed, West pointed a gun at Valdez, the red beam of his laser scope directly on her face, and told her never to leave the work camp.

West, a solidly built man with a honey drawl, vehemently denied that he mistreated his workers, taking particular umbrage at the allegation involving the gun. He is a hunting instructor and runs the church skeet shoot, he said in an interview outside his home in June, and would never recklessly point a weapon at anyone.

The real story, West said, is that Valdez, Gonzalez, and some of the other women in their trailer were wild, partying and arranging to have cases of beer dropped off at his property. In a sworn deposition, one L.T. West employee said the women went out often and sometimes came back after having been drinking. Another said that West did not get angry if they went out without his permission.

West also denied trying to use the Mamou police to intimidate the women. He called them, he said, because some of the workers had expressed fears that a rapist would sneak onto the property.

Police officers, however, tell a different story. Two testified that when West arrived at the station that night, he was in a state of fury. In a sworn deposition in 2012, Mamou Police Sgt. Lucas Lavergne described Wests behavior this way: He said like looking toward the girls, he said, Mucho fuck you. Mucho kill you.

What happened that night, Travis said, was nuts and wrong. Reflecting on Wests and the polices attitude toward the women, he said, It seemed like we had messed with his property, like we had stolen a horse or did damage to his property.

His brother Trey added, Shortest date ever.

By scouring legal and administrative documents, BuzzFeed News identified more than 800 workers over the last 10 years who complained to authorities that they had their passports confiscated, were held against their will, were physically attacked, or were threatened with harm for trying to leave their housing or job sites. The number who experienced these abuses but did not speak out may be much higher.

In January 2013, a group of Mexican forestry workers said that they had been held at gunpoint in the mountains north of Sacramento and forced to work 13 hours a day and handle chemicals that made them vomit and peeled their skin, according to a search warrant affidavit filed in federal court last year by a Department of Homeland Security investigator.

Their employer, a small forestry contractor out of Idaho called Pure Forest, had also illegally charged the workers about $2,000 apiece for their visas, paid for out of deductions from their paychecks, the workers said. After additional fees were levied for food, they said, they were sometimes left with less than $100 for two weeks of grueling work. In one case, a worker said he was charged $100 for a pair of used shoes held together with nails.

Two of Pure Forests foremen reportedly carried firearms and threatened to shoot workers in the head and leave them in the woods if they did not work harder, the DHS special agent, Eugene Kizenko, wrote. He added that multiple workers heard these threats.

Five workers who escaped sued Pure Forest in federal court last year. They filed the suit, which is ongoing, using pseudonyms; the complaint states that the workers fear retaliation due to threats of bodily injury or death made by defendants.

Pure Forest denied the allegations in court papers and in an interview. Completely false, Owen Wadsworth said by phone. His father, Jeff, owns the company, and Owen was also named in the workers suit. We've had nothing but good working relationships with all our employees, he said. The H-2 program seems more set up to put the company, the owner or the employer, in a bad situation, he added, and whatever allegations or negative that come up, it's treated almost like it's true, and they'll assume that you're the bad guy.

A particularly effective force to keep workers in line is debt.

Interviews and court records reviewed by BuzzFeed News turned up hundreds of workers who claimed they were forced to pay for their visas. Thats illegal; companies are responsible for making sure their labor brokers don't charge bribes. But diplomats from the U.S. and Mexico say such bribes are rampant. In cables released by WikiLeaks, U.S. consular officials in Mexico, Jamaica, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic describe reports of recruiters demanding fees for visas and also committing fraud in order to get visas approved.

Jacob Joseph Kadakkarappally was eager to come from India to the U.S. to work as a welder at the Pascagoula, Mississippi, shipyard of Signal International in late 2006. But he didn't have the approximately $14,500 recruiters demanded for the visa and other fees, so first he pawned the gold bangles his wife wore every day on her wrist. Then he hocked a gold chain that, he later testified, is considered to be holy, a symbol of wedding.

Other Signal workers from India, who had been misled into thinking they would get green cards, went deeply into debt or sold property to pay fees. Once the workers arrived in the U.S., Signal housed them in a labor camp, up to 24 men to a trailer, for which Signal charged them each $1,050 a month.

After Kadakkarappally and others began asking for better working and housing conditions, security guards raided his trailer early one morning and managers told him he was fired.

I almost lost my breath, Kadakkarappally testified. He pleaded with managers, he said, recounting his huge debts and telling them that I would not be able to support my family. A fellow worker slit his wrist in a failed suicide attempt.

Kadakkarappally and four other welders eventually sued Signal, and in February a federal jury in New Orleans awarded them $14 million. This month, the Southern Poverty Law Center announced that Signal had agreed to a $20 million settlement that resolves those claims and those of 200 additional Indian welders in 11 related lawsuits. Signal, which filed for bankruptcy to carry out the settlement, also agreed to apologize to its guest workers. Signal did not respond to requests for comment.

Such a victory is extremely rare. Very few H-2 workers have the resources or support to file a lawsuit. Many workers become prisoners of their debt. The best way to pay it off is with a job in the U.S. and the only job H-2 workers can legally get is the one with the company that sponsors their visas.

In so many cases, these workers end up being abused, said Jennifer Gordon, a law professor at Fordham University and a former MacArthur Fellow who has conducted research into the discrimination against and mistreatment of immigrant workers. In routine ways, all the time, the workers pay fees, they are threatened, their families are threatened. And the employer knows that if you get workers through that program, theyre not going to complain.

That stark power imbalance can be downright dangerous, contributing to on-the-job injuries and even deaths.

Leonardo Espinabarro Telles entered the country on an H-2 visa in April 2011, to work for Crystal Rock Amusements as it moved from Pennsylvania to Vermont and back, staging that most American of pastimes: county fairs. The Mexico native had been on the job about three months, living in a crowded converted horse trailer without a working bathroom, when the crew of 17 guest workers arrived in northern Vermont for the Lamoille County Field Days.

A little before 3 in the afternoon on Tuesday, July 19, Espinabarro went to retrieve electrical connectors from a trailer housing the hulking Caterpillar generator that powered the carnival rides.

Inside, two feet separated the trailer wall from the generators massive spinning fan blades. The protective guard over the blades had either broken or been removed. At ankle level, pulleys and fan belts were also exposed.

Espinabarro was alone, so no one witnessed what happened, but co-workers heard cries for help. One man rushed to the trailer to see Espinabarro standing upright, then watched him collapse and fall out of the trailer. His clothing had gotten tangled in the machinery, and the fan blades had ripped through his body. From neck to waist, his back was carved open, his organs spilling out. He was dead by the time he reached the hospital.

Inspectors from the Vermont Occupational Safety and Health Administration found that Crystal Rock management knew the fan blades were unguarded at the time of the accident but had not told the workers. No one had posted proper warning signs. Nor had they delivered safety training in any language.

Vermont OSHA levied $114,550 in fines. The case is still open, because Crystal Rock has not paid.

Asked whether he had ever trained his guest workers how to be safe around heavy equipment, Crystal Rocks owner, Arthur Gillette, told an inspector: How can you train these guys?" adding, "Do you train someone to eat a hot dog?

Gillette, whose company has been certified for at least 358 visas since 2002, added that Mexican workers were mechanically inclined and would figure things out and that if the investigator had ever been to the country she would understand that. He explained: The streets of Mexico, cars were stolen and disassembled with just the frames left on the street.

The Labor Department conducted its own investigation following the accident, finding that Gillette routinely underpaid workers and owed more than $60,000 in back wages. This month, the Maine state fire marshal criminally charged Gillette with falsifying physical evidence after an accident on a roller coaster injured three children at a carnival in Waterville in June.

Gillette, reached by phone, said the criminal charges in Maine were unjust and denied tampering with evidence.

He said both the Labor Department and Vermont OSHA investigations of Crystal Rock, which is now out of business, were unfair. Ive worked dozens of carnivals and dealt with hundreds of foreign employees, he added. The vast majority of the guys that worked for me said I am more than fair. That I owe them nothing. That we are square.

Guest workers in other industries have died after being run over in grisly accidents, or collapsing for unknown reasons. Theyve had limbs amputated and suffered other catastrophic injuries.

On-the-job injuries happen to all kinds of employees, of course, but employers virtually unchecked sway over H-2 workers as well as some employers attitudes about foreigners can foster a cavalier attitude toward workplace dangers. It can also keep workers from pointing out safety violations or even reporting injuries.

In a 2012 report from the Labor Occupational Health Program at the University of California, Berkeley, researchers surveyed 150 forestry workers in Oregon, about a third of them on H-2 visas, and found that more than 40% had been injured on the job in the previous 12 months. Fifteen of the workers had suffered broken bones, and another 18 had dislocated one or more bones. And yet workers kept quiet about many of their injuries including more than a quarter of the broken bones and nearly half of the dislocated ones.

The report concluded: They were afraid they would be fired, and they were afraid of otherwise getting in trouble.

Topolobampo occupies a peninsula at the mouth of a bay off the Sea of Cortez in violence-ravaged Sinaloa, the home state of the infamous drug lord Joaqun El Chapo Guzmn. The sparkling sea along the malecn belies a deep listlessness, more stifling than the tropical heat, that has settled over the town. The seafood plant along the waterfront closed down years ago. Mangy dogs range along barely maintained streets, while a few tiny restaurants with cement floors have almost nothing on the menu. Decent jobs outside of the drug trade are hard to find.

As much as a third of the population of 6,500 travels to the swamps and prairies of Louisiana every year to catch and process seafood, according to local recruiters. Those who make the trek are colloquially known as Louisianeros. The rewards of their work are easy to see: solidly built houses, clean tile floors, modern appliances, and framed degrees from private schools. Less visible are the costs: children who grow up in someone elses family, because their own parents are working on the other side.

Fernanda Padilla was just 3 when her mother, Guadalupe, started coming to Louisiana for 10 months a year to process shellfish. I couldnt understand, said Padilla. I used to tell her, I dont care. Ill eat rice and beans every day, but be here with me.

But at 17, Padilla dropped out of school and decided to follow in her mothers footsteps to make money. She secured an H-2 visa and arrived at her new job at Bayou Shrimp in April 2009. She was pregnant, but her pay stubs show she worked more than 60 hours some weeks. Forty days after her daughter was born, Padilla was back at work at the plant, leaving her baby with a friend.

Padilla, who has since had a second child, worked in the Louisiana shrimp industry for five seasons before losing her job last year. She said she used to worry that, like her own mother, she was abandoning her children in order to provide for them.

Five years working there seemed like no time had passed at all, and my daughter had already grown up and I didnt even realize it, Padilla said, adding that she is now cobbling together a living with odd jobs.

North of the border, H-2 visas are also important to the economy.

Louisiana is the nations second-largest seafood-producing state, and its crawfish industry used to rely on local labor. But competition from cheap Asian imports, along with the demand by huge retailers such as Wal-Mart for ever lower prices, have squeezed profit margins and put downward pressure on wages below the point, producers say, where people in America will take the jobs on a seasonal basis. In the 1990s, processors including Craig West hoped that machines could be built to take over the repetitive task of extracting the tail meat from the crustaceans. But eventually crawfish farmers discovered that the best and cheapest option is a Mexican on an H-2 visa.

The visa comes in two types: H-2A for agricultural workers and H-2B for nonagricultural unskilled workers, with varying rules and provisions. While many workers say that regulators dont do enough to protect them, their employers generally have the opposite complaint. They say they are burdened by endless bureaucratic hurdles and inspectors who ding them for tiny infractions of incomprehensible rules.

Ben LeGrange, the general manager of Atchafalaya Crawfish Processing, in Henderson, Louisiana, said most crawfish processors treat their workers well, and isolated incidents shouldnt taint the whole industry. He said he tries to treat guest workers as an extension of someone in my family and that without them the whole company, which also employs six American workers, would be in jeopardy.

Standing on his expansive lawn beside a riding mower, West, who co-owns the crawfish producer L.T. West with his brother, said he treats his workers well. My wife got holy water for them, he said, adding that when they were not working he and his wife, Cathy, drove workers to Walmart or church, and sometimes invited them to relax in the shade of a tree that protects his house from the sun.

But seven of his workers, including Valdez and Gonzalez, claim West took a different kind of interest in some of them.

Some of their allegations include that he took to bursting into their trailer unexpectedly, even when they were dressing, and called them his property and his Mexican ladies, according to their complaint. Some of the women recall him saying things such as mucho booby and mexicanas mucho booby, gesturing for them to lift up their shirts. He instructed one of his other workers to tell the women in Spanish that the only way they could get out of poverty was to accept his propositions, which included requests that they come to his house when his wife was away. In the suit, the women did not allege he actually had sex with them.

West, with his wife looking on, flatly denied the allegations, saying the women had made them up.

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The New American Slavery: Invited To The U.S., Foreign ...

Libertarian Feminism: Can This Marriage Be Saved …

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Libertarian Feminism: Can This Marriage Be Saved?: Roderick Long and Charles Johnson (2005)

I ask no favors for my sex. I surrender not ourclaim to equality. All I ask of our brethren is, that they will take their feetfrom off our necks and permit us to stand upright on the ground which Goddesigned us to occupy

Sarah Moore Grimk,Letters on the Equality of the Sexes

There is not a feminist alive who could possibly look to the malelegal system for real protection from the systemized sadism of men. Women fightto reform male law, in the areas of rape and battery for instance, becausesomething is better than nothing. In general, we fight to force the law torecognize us as the victims of the crimes committed against us, but the resultsso far have been paltry and pathetic.

Andrea Dworkin,Letters from a War Zone

Lets start with what this essay will do, and what it will not. We are bothconvinced of, and this essay will take more or less for granted, that thepolitical traditions of libertarianism and feminism are both in the maincorrect, insightful, and of the first importance in any struggle to build ajust, free, and compassionate society. We do not intend to try tojustify the import of either tradition on the others terms, norprove the correctness or insightfulness of the non-aggressionprinciple, the libertarian critique of state coercion, the reality andpervasiveness of male violence and discrimination against women, or the feministcritique of patriarchy. Those are important conversations to have, but we wonthave them here; they are better found in the foundational works that havealready been written within the feminist and libertarian traditions. The aimhere is not to set down doctrine or refute heresy; its to get clear on how toreconcile commitments to both libertarianism andfeminismalthough in reconciling them we may remove some of the reasonsthat people have had for resisting libertarian or feminist conclusions.Libertarianism and feminism, when they have encountered each other, have mostoften taken each other for polar opposites. Many 20th centurylibertarians have dismissed or attacked feminismwhen they have addressedit at allas just another wing of Left-wing statism; many feminists havedismissed or attacked libertarianismwhen they have addressed it atallas either Angry White Male reaction or an extreme faction of theideology of the liberal capitalist state. But we hold that both judgments areunjust; many of the problems in combining libertarianism with feminism turn outto be little more than terminological conflicts that arose from shiftingpolitical alliances in the course of the 20th century; and most ifnot all of the substantive disagreements can be negotiated within positionsalready clearly established within the feminist and libertarian traditions. Whatwe hope to do, then, is not to present the case for libertarianism and forfeminism, but rather to clear the ground a bit so that libertarianism andfeminism can recognize the important insights that each has to offer the other,and can work together on terms that allow each to do their work withoutslighting either.

We are not the first to cover this ground. Contemporary libertarian feministssuch as Joan Kennedy Taylor and Wendy McElroy have written extensively on therelationship between libertarianism and feminism, and they have worked withinthe libertarian movement to encourage appeals to feminist concerns andengagement with feminist efforts. But as valuable as the 20th centurylibertarian feminists scholarship has been, we find many elements of thelibertarian feminism they propose to be both limited and limiting;the conceptual framework behind their synthesis all too often marginalizes orignores large and essential parts of the feminist critique of patriarchy, and asa result they all too often keep really existing feminist efforts at armslength, and counsel indifference or sharply criticize activism on key feministissues. In the marriage that they propose, libertarianism and feminism are one,and that one is libertarianism; we, on the other hand, aver that if counselingcannot help libertarianism form a more respectful union, then we could hardlyblame feminists for dumping it.

But we think that there is a better path forward. McElroy and othershave rightly called attention to a tradition of libertarian feminismthat mostly been forgotten by both libertarians and feminists in the20th century: the 19th century radical individualists,including Voltairine de Cleyre, Angela Heywood, Herbert Spencer, and BenjaminTucker, among others. The individualists endorsed both radical anti-statism andalso radical feminism (as well as, inter alia,allying with abolitionism and the labor movement), because they understood bothstatism and patriarchy as components of an interlocking system ofoppression. An examination of the methods and thought of theseindividualistsand of Second Wave feminism in light of the individualisttraditiondoes show what McElroy and Taylor have argued it doesbutin a way very different from what they might have expected, andwearguewith very different implications for the terms on whichlibertarianism and feminism can work together.

The parallels between libertarian and feminist insights are striking.The state is male in the feminist sense, MacKinnon argues, in thatthe law sees and treats women the way men see and treat women(MacKinnon1989, Chapter 8 11). The libertarian completion of this thought is thatthe state sees and treats everybodythough not in equaldegreethe way men see and treat women. The ideal of a womanswilling surrender to a benevolent male protector both feeds and is fed by theideal of the citizenrys willing surrender to a benevolent governmentalprotector. We are not among wild beasts; from whom, then, does woman needprotection? From her protectors, Ezra Heywood remarked (McElroy 1991, p.227); in the same way, libertarians have often described the state as an entitythat protects people primarily from harms caused or exacerbated by the state inthe first place. Just as, under patriarchy, forced sex is not recognized asreal or fully serious rape unless the perpetrator is a stranger ratherthan ones husband or boyfriend, so, under statism, governmental coercionis not recognized as real or fully serious tyranny unless it happensunder a non-democratic government, a dictatorship. The marriagevow, as a rape license, has its parallel in the electoral ballot, as a tyrannylicense. Those who seek to withhold consent from their countrysgovernmental apparatus altogether get asked the same question that batteredwomen get asked: If you dont like it, why dont youleave? the mans rightful jurisdiction over the home, andthe states over the country, being taken for granted. Its alwaysthe woman, not the abusive man, who needs to vacate the home (to gowhere?); its likewise the citizen, not the abusive state, thatneeds to vacate the territory (to go where?).

Despite these parallels, however, many libertarians libertarianfeminists definitely included seems surprisingly unsympathetic to mostof what feminists have to say. (And vice versa, of course, but the vice versa isnot our present topic.) When feminists say that gender and sexuality aresocially constructed, libertarians often dismiss this as metaphysicalsubjectivism or nihilism. But libertarians do not call their own Friedrich Hayeka subjectivist or nihilist when he says that the objects of economicactivity, such as a commodity or an economicgood, nor food or money, cannot bedefined in objective terms [CRS I. 3], and morebroadly that tools, medicine, weapons, words, sentences, communications,and acts of production, and generally all the objects of humanactivity which constantly occur in the social sciences, are not such invirtue of some objective properties possessed by the things, or which theobserver can find out about them [IEO III. 2], but insteadare defined in terms of human attitudes toward them.[IEO II. 9]

Libertarians are often unimpressed by feminist worries about social normsthat disable anything a woman says from counting as declining consent to sexualaccess, but they are indignant at theories of tacit or hypothetical consent thatdisable anything a citizen says from counting as declining consent togovernmental authority. Libertariansoften conclude that gender roles must not be oppressive since many women acceptthem; but they do not analogously treat the fact that most citizens accept thelegitimacy of governmental compulsion as a reason to question its oppressivecharacter; on the contrary, they see their task as one of consciousness-raisingand demystification, or, in the Marxian phrase, plucking the flowers from thechains to expose their character as chains.

When radical feminists say that male supremacy rests in large part on thefact of rapeas when Susan Brownmiller characterizes rape as aconscious process of intimidation by which all men keep allwomen in a state of fear (Against Our Will, p.15)libertarians often dismiss this on the grounds that not all men areliteral rapists and not all women are literally raped. But when their ownLudwig von Mises says that government interference always means eitherviolent action or the threat of such action, that it rests in thelast resort on the employment of armed men, of policemen,gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen, and that itsessential feature is the enforcement of its decrees bybeating, killing, and imprisoning [HA VI.27.2], libertariansapplaud this as a welcome demystification of the state. Libertarians rightlyrecognize that legally enacted violence is the means by which allrulers keep all citizens in a state of fear, even though not allgovernment functionaries personally beat, kill, or imprison anybody, and eventhough not all citizens are beaten, killed, or imprisoned; the same interpretivecharity towards the radical feminist analysis of rape is not too much toask.

Brownmillers and other feminists insights into the pervasiveness ofbattery, incest, and other forms of male violence against women, present both acrisis and an opportunity for libertarians. Libertarianism professes to be acomprehensive theory of human freedom; what is supposed to be distinctive aboutthe libertarian theory of justice is that we concern ourselves with violentcoercion no matter who is practicing iteven if he has agovernment uniform on. But what feminists have forced into the public eye in thelast 30 years is that, in a society where one out of every four women faces rapeor battery by an intimate partner, andwhere women are threatened or attacked by men who profess to love them, becausethe men who attack them believe that being a man means you have the authority tocontrol women, male violence against women is nominally illegal but neverthelesssystematic, motivated by the desire for control, culturally excused, andhideously ordinary. For libertarians, this should sound eerily familiar;confronting the full reality of male violence means nothing less thanrecognizing the existence of a violent political order working alongside, andindependently of, the violent political order of statism. As radical feministCatharine MacKinnon writes, Unlike the ways in which men systematicallyenslave, violate, dehumanize, and exterminate other men, expressing politicalinequalities among men, mens forms of dominance over women have beenaccomplished socially as well as economically, prior to the operation of thelaw, without express state acts, often in intimate contexts, as everydaylife (1989,p. 161). Male supremacy has its own ideologicalrationalizations, its own propaganda, its own expropriation, and its own violentenforcement; although it is often in league with the male-dominated state, maleviolence is older, more invasive, closer to home, and harder to escape than mostforms of statism. This means that libertarians who are serious about ending allforms of political violence need to fight, at least, a two-front war, againstboth statism and male supremacy; an adequate discussion of what this insightmeans for libertarian politics requires much more time than we have here. But itis important to note how the writings of some libertarians on thefamilyespecially those who identify with thepaleolibertarian political and cultural projecthaveamounted to little more than outright denial of male violence. Hans HermannHoppe, for example, goes so far as to indulge in the conservative fantasy thatthe traditional internal layers and ranks of authority in thefamily are actually bulwarks of resistance vis-a-vis the state (Secession, the State,and the Immigration Problem IV). The ranks of authorityin the family, of course, means the pater familias,and whether father-right is, at a given moment in history, mostly in league withor somewhat at odds with state prerogatives, the fact that it is so widelyenforced by the threat or practice of male violence means that trying to enlistit in the struggle against statism is much like enlisting Stalin in order tofight Hitlerno matter who wins, we all lose.

Some of libertarians sharpest jabs at feminism have been directed againstfeminist criticisms of sexual harassment, misogynist pornography, orsadomasochism. Feminists in particular are targeted as the leading crusaders forpolitical correctness, and characterized as killjoys, censors, orman-haters for criticising speech or consensual sex acts in which women aredenigrated or dominated; it is apparently claimed that since theharassment or the portrayal doesnt (directly) involve violence, therearent any grounds for taking political exception to it. But the popularity inlibertarian circles of Ayn Rands novel The Fountainhead (a deeplyproblematic novel from a feminist standpoint, but instructive on the present point) indicates thatlibertarians know better when it comes to, say, conformity and collectivism.Although its political implications are fairly clear, TheFountainhead pays relatively little attention to governmental oppressionper se; its main focus is on social pressures thatencourage conformity and penalize independence. Rand traces how such pressuresoperate through predominantly non-governmental and (in the libertariansense) non-coercive means, in the business world, the media, andsociety generally. Some of the novels characters give in, swiftly orslowly, and sell their souls for social advancement; others resist but end upmarginalized, impoverished, and psychologically debilitated as a result. Onlythe novels hero succeeds, eventually, in achieving worldly successwithout sacrificing his integrity but only after a painful andsuperhuman struggle. It would be hard to imagine libertariansdescribing fans of The Fountainhead as puritans or censors becauseof their objections to the Ellsworth Tooheys of the worldeven thoughTooheys malign influence is mainly exercised through rhetorical and socialmeans rather than by legal force. An uncharitable reading that the situationunfortunately suggests is that libertarians can recognize non-governmentaloppression in principle, but in practice seem unable to grasp any form ofoppression other than the ones that well-educated white men may have experiencedfor themselves.

A more charitable reading of libertarian attitudes might be this: while thecollectivist boycott of independent minds and stifling of creative excellence inThe Fountainhead is not itself enacted through government means,collectivism clearly is associated with the mass psychology thatsupports statism. So is patriarchy, actually, but it is most closely associatedwith a non-governmental form of oppressionthat is, male supremacy andviolence against women. All this makes it seem, at times, thatlibertariansincluding libertarian feministsare suffering from asort of willful conceptual blindness; perhaps because they are afraid to grantthe existence of serious and systematic forms of political oppression that arenot connected solely or mainly with the state. Its as though, if theygranted any political critique of the outcomes of voluntaryassociation, they would thereby be granting that voluntary association as suchis oppressive, and that government regulation is the solution. But such a phobicreaction only makes sense if you first accept (either tacitly or explicitly) thepremise that all politics is exclusively the domain of thegovernment, and as such (given Misess insights into the nature ofgovernment) all political action is essentially violentaction. This is, as it were, a problem that has no name; but we might call itthe authoritarian theory of politics, since it amounts to thepremise that any political question is a question resolved by violence;many 20th century libertarians simply grant the premise and then,because they hold that no question is worth resolving by (initiatory)violence, they call for the death of politics in human affairs.

At least one libertarian theorist, the late Don Lavoie, makes our point whenhe observes that there is

much more to politics than government. Wherever human beingsengage in direct discourse with one another about their mutual rights andresponsibilities, there is a politics. I mean politics in the sense of thepublic sphere in which discourse over rights and responsibilities is carried on,much in the way Hannah Arendt discusses it. . The force of public opinion,like that of markets, is not best conceived as a concentrated will representingthe public, but as the distributed influence of political discoursesthroughout society. Inside the firm, in business lunches, at street corners,interpersonal discourses are constantly going on in markets. In all those placesthere is a politics going on, a politics that can be more or less democratic. Leaving a service to the forces of supply and demand doesnot remove it from human decision making, since everything will depend onexactly what it is that the suppliers and demanders are trying to achieve. What makes a legal culture, any legal system, work is a sharedsystem of belief in the rules of justice a political culture. Theculture is, in turn, an evolving process, a tradition which is continually beingreappropriated in creative ways in the interpersonal and public discoursesthrough which social individuals communicate. Everything depends hereon what is considered an acceptable social behavior, that is, on the constraintsimposed by a particular political culture. To say we should leaveeverything to be decided by markets does not, as [libertarians]suppose, relieve liberalism of the need to deal with the whole realms ofpolitics. And to severely limit or even abolish government does not necessarilyremove the need for democratic processes in nongovernmental institutions.

Its true that a libertarian could (as Karl Hess, for example, does) simplyinsist on a definition of politics in terms of the authoritariantheory, and stick consistently to the stipulation, while also doing work on asystemic critique of forms of oppression that arent (by their definition)enacted through the political means; they would simply have tohold that a full appreciation of oppressive conditions requires a thoroughunderstanding of what the economic means or action in themarket or civil society can include. But given thecurious misunderstandings that many libertarians seem to have of feministcritiques, it seems likely that the issue here isnt merelyterminologicalit may be that the real nature of typical feminist concernsand activism is rendered incomprehensible by sticking to stipulations about theuse of politics and the market when the ordinary useof those terms wont bear them. You could, if you insisted, look at streetharassment as a matter of psychic costs that women face in theirdaily affairs, and the feminist tactic of womens Ogle-Ins on WallStreet as a means of reducing the supply of male leering bydriving up the psychic costs to the producers (usingshame and awareness of what its like to face harassment). In this sense, theOgle-In resembles, in some salient respects, a picket or aboycott. But no-one actually thinks of an Ogle-In as a marketactivity, even if you can make up some attenuated way of analyzing itunder economic categories; it clearly fails to meet a number of conditions (suchas the voluntary exchange of goods or services between actors) that are part ofour routine, pre-analytic use of terms such as market,producer, and economic. Just as clearly, anOgle-In has something importantly in common with legislation,court proceedings, and even market activities such as boycotts or pickets thatappeals to our pre-analytic use of politicaleven thoughneither the Ogle-In nor the market protests are violent, or in anyway connected with the State: they are all trying to address a question ofsocial coordination through conscious action, and they work bycalling on people to make choices with the intent of addressing thesocial issueas opposed to actions in which the intent is somemore narrowly economic form of satisfaction, and any effects on socialcoordination (for good or for ill) are unintended consequences.

Libertarian temptations to the contrary notwithstanding, it makes no sense toregard the state as the root of all social evil, for there is at leastone social evil that cannot be blamed on the state and that is the stateitself. If no social evil can arise or be sustained except by the state, howdoes the state arise, and how is it sustained? As libertarians from LaBotie to Rothbard have rightly insisted, since rulers are generallyoutnumbered by those they rule, the state itself cannot survive exceptthrough popular acceptance which the state lacks the power to compel; hencestate power is always part of an interlocking system of mutually reinforcingsocial practices and structures, not all of which are violations of thenonaggression axiom. There is nothing un-libertarian, then, in recognizing theexistence of economic and/or cultural forms of oppression which, while they maydraw sustenance from the state (and vice versa), are notreducible to state power. One can see statism and patriarchy asmutually reinforcing systems (thus ruling out both the option of fightingstatism while leaving patriarchy intact, and the option of fighting patriarchyby means of statism) without being thereby committed to seeing either as a mereepiphenomenon of the other (thus ruling out the option of fighting patriarchysolely indirectly by fighting statism).

The relationship between libertarianism and feminism has not always been sochilly. 19th-century libertarians a group which includesclassical liberals in the tradition of Jean-Baptiste Say and Herbert Spencer, aswell as individualist anarchists in the tradition of Josiah Warren generally belonged to what Chris Sciabarra has characterized as theradical or dialectical tradition in libertarianism,in which the political institutions and practices that libertarians condemn asoppressive are seen as part of a larger interlocking system of mutuallyreinforcing political, economic, and cultural structures. Libertarian sociologist Charles Dunoyer, for example,observed:

The first mistake, and to my mind the most serious, is notsufficiently seeing difficulties where they are not recognizing themexcept in governments. Since it is indeed there that the greatest obstaclesordinarily make themselves felt, it is assumed that that is where they exist,and that alone is where one endeavors to attack them. One is unwillingto see that nations are the material from which governments are made; that it isfrom their bosom that governments emerge . One wants to see only thegovernment; it is against the government that all the complaints, all thecensures are directed .

From this point of view, narrowly directing ones efforts towardpurely political reform without addressing the broader social context isunlikely to be effective.

Contrary to their reputation, then, 19th-century libertariansrejected atomistic conceptions of human life. Herbert Spencer, for example,insisted that society is an organism, and that the actions of individualsaccordingly cannot be understood except in relation to the social relations inwhich they participate. Just as, he explained, the process of loading agun is meaningless unless the subsequent actions performed with the gun areknown, and a fragment of a sentence, if not unintelligible, iswrongly interpreted in the absence of its remainder, so any part, ifconceived without any reference to the whole, can be comprehendedonly in a distorted manner. But Spencersaw no conflict between his organismic view of society and his politicalindividualism; in fact Spencer saw the undirected, uncoerced, spontaneous orderof organic processes such as growth and nutrition as strengthening the caseagainst, rather than for, the subordination of its individual membersto the commands of a central authority. In the same way, American libertarian Stephen Pearl Andrewscharacterized the libertarian method as trinismal, meaning that ittranscended the false opposition between unismal collectiveaggregation and duismal fragmented diversity. Even the egoist-anarchist BenjaminTucker insisted that society is a concrete organism irreducible toits aggregated individual members.

While the 19th-century libertarians social holism andattention to broader context have been shared by many 20th-centurylibertarians as well, 19th-century libertarians were far more likelythan their 20th-century counterparts to recognize the subordinationof women as a component in the constellation of interlocking structuresmaintaining and maintained by statism. Dunoyer and Spencer, for example, saw patriarchy as theoriginal form of class oppression, the model for and origin of all subsequentforms of class rule. For Dunoyer,primitive patriarchy constituted a system in which a parasitic governmentallite, the men, made their living primarily by taxing, regulating, andconscripting a productive and industrious laboring class, the women. HerbertSpencer concurred:

The slave-class in a primitive society consists of the women; andthe earliest division of labour is that which arises between them and theirmasters. For a long time no other division of labour exists.

Moreover, Spencer saw an intimate connection between the rise of patriarchyand the rise of militarism:

The primary political differentiation originates from the primaryfamily differentiation. Men and women being by the unlikeness of their functionsin life, exposed to unlike influences, begin from the first to assume unlikepositions in the community as they do in the family: very early theyrespectively form the two political classes of rulers and ruled. [In]ordinary cases the men, solely occupied in war and the chase, have unlimitedauthority, while the women, occupied in gathering miscellaneous small food andcarrying burdens, are abject slaves . [whereas in] those few uncivilizedsocieties which are habitually peaceful in which the occupations are not, orwere not, broadly divided into fighting and working, and severally assigned tothe two sexes along with a comparatively small difference between theactivities of the sexes, there goes, or went, small difference of social status. Where the life is permanently peaceful, definite class-divisions do notexist. [T]he domestic relation between the sexes passes into a politicalrelation, such that men and women become, in militant groups, the ruling classand the subject class .

Accordingly, Spencer likewisesaw the replacement of militarized hierarchical societies by moremarket-oriented societies based on commerce andmutual exchange as closely allied with the decline of patriarchy infavor of increasing sexual equality; changing power relationswithin the family and changing power relations within the broadersociety stood in relations of interdependence:

The domestic despotism which polygyny involves, is congruous withthe political despotism proper to predominant militancy; and the diminishingpolitical coercion which naturally follows development of the industrial type,is congruous with the diminishing domestic coercion which naturally follows theaccompanying development of monogamy.

The truth that among peoples otherwise inferior, the position ofwomen is relatively good where their occupations are nearly the same as those ofmen, seems allied to the wider truth that their position becomes good inproportion as warlike activities are replaced by industrial activities .Where all men are warriors and the work is done entirely by women, militancy isthe greatest. [T]he despotism distinguishing a community organized for war,is essentially connected with despotism in the household; while, conversely, thefreedom which characterizes public life in an industrial community, naturallycharacterizes also the accompanying private life. Habitual antagonism with,and destruction of, foes, sears the sympathies; while daily exchange of productsand services among citizens, puts no obstacle to increase of fellow-feeling.

In Spencers view, the mutual reinforcement between statism,militarism, and patriarchy continued to characterize 19th-centurycapitalist society:

To the same extent that the triumph of might over right is seenin a nations political institutions, it is seen in its domestic ones.Despotism in the state is necessarily associated with despotism in the family. [I]n as far as our laws and customs violate the rights of humanity by givingthe richer classes power over the poorer, in so far do they similarly violatethose rights by giving the stronger sex power over the weaker. To the sameextent that the old leaven of tyranny shows itself in the transactions of thesenate, it will creep out in the doings of the household. If injustice swaysmens public acts, it will inevitably sway their private ones also. Themere fact, therefore, that oppression marks the relationships of out-door life,is ample proof that it exists in the relationships of the fireside.

This analysis of the relation between militarism and patriarchy from thefantastically-maligned but seldom-actually-read radical libertarian HerbertSpencer is strikingly similar to that offered by the fantastically-maligned butseldom-actually-read radical feminist Andrea Dworkin:

I mean that there is a relationship between the way that womenare raped and your socialization to rape and the war machine that grinds you upand spits you out: the war machine that you go through just like that woman wentthrough Larry Flynts meat grinder on the cover of Hustler.You damn well better believe that youre involved in this tragedy and thatits your tragedy too. Because youre turned into little soldierboys from the day that you are born and everything that you learn about how toavoid the humanity of women becomes part of the militarism of the country inwhich you live and the world in which you live. It is also part of the economythat you frequently claim to protest.

And the problem is that you think its out there: and its notout there. Its in you. The pimps and the warmongers speak for you. Rapeand war are not so different. And what the pimps and the warmongers do is thatthey make you so proud of being men who can get it up and give it hard. And theytake that acculturated sexuality and they put you in little uniforms and theysend you out to kill and to die. (I Want aTwenty-Four Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape)

Spencer, for his part, did not confine attention to those forms ofpatriarchal oppression that were literally violent or coercive in the sense ofviolating libertarian rights; he denounced not only the legal provision thata husband may justly take possession of his wifes earnings againsther will or the statute, which permits a man to beat his wife inmoderation and to imprison her in any room in his house, but the entire system of economic andcultural expectations and institutions within which violent forms of oppressionwere embedded. He complained, for example, of a variety of factorsmoreoften cultural than legalthat systematically stunted womens educationand intellectual development, including such facts as that women are notadmissible to the academies and universities in which men get theirtraining, that the kind of life they have to look forward to, doesnot present so great a range of ambitions, that they are rarelyexposed to that most powerful of all stimuli necessity, thatthe education custom dictates for them is one that leaves uncultivatedmany of the higher faculties, and that the prejudice againstblue-stockings, hitherto so prevalent amongst men, has greatly tended to deterwomen from the pursuit of literary honours. In the same way he protested against the obstacles towomens physical health and well-being deriving from patriarchal norms offeminine attractiveness and propriety that promoted in the training of girlsa certain delicacy, a strength not competent to more than a mile ortwos walk, an appetite fastidious and easily satisfied, joined with thattimidity which commonly accompanies feebleness.

The 19th-century libertarians attitude toward (what wascalled) the woman question has much in common with their attitudetoward the (analogously labeled) labor question.19th-century libertarians generally saw the existing capitalist orderas a denial, rather than as an expression, of the free market. For most of thesethinkers, capitalism meant, not economic laissez-faire (which as libertarians they favored), butrather government intervention in the marketplace on behalf of capitalistsat the expense of laborers and consumers, and they condemned it accordinglyas the chief prop of plutocratic class oppression. But rather than simply calling for an end to pro-businesslegislation, they also favored private cooperative action by workers to improvetheir bargaining power vis--vis employers orindeed to transcend the wage system altogether; hence their support for thelabor movement, workers cooperatives, and the like. Similarly, while calling for an end to legislation thatdiscriminated against women, 19th-century libertarians like Spencerdid not confine themselves to that task, but also, as weve seen,addressed the economic and cultural barriers to gender equality,private barriers which they saw as operating in coordination withthe governmental barriers.

Such problems as domestic violence and crimes of jealousy, for example,derive, Stephen Pearl Andrews taught, primarily from the inculcation ofpatriarchal values, which encourage a man to suppose that the womanbelongs, not to herself, but to him. Although the best immediatesolution to this problem may be to knock the man on the head, or tocommit him to Sing-Sing, the superior longterm solution isa public sentiment, based on the recognition of the Sovereignty of theIndividual. The ultimate cure for domestic violence thus lies incultural rather than in legal reform: Let the idea be completelyrepudiated from the mans mind that that woman, or any woman, could, bypossibility, belong to him, or was to be true to him, or owed him anything,farther than as she might choose to bestow herself. (Andrews 1889, p. 70)But Andrews solution was not solely cultural but also economic, stressingthe need for women to achieve financial independence. Andrews criticized thesystem by which the husband and father earns all the money, and doles itout in charitable pittances to wife and daughters, who are kept as helplessdependents, in ignorance of business and the responsibilities of life,and liable at any time to be thrown upon their own resources, with noresources to be thrown upon. (p. 42) One key to womens economicindependence would be to have children reared in Unitary Nurseries(p. 41), i.e., day care (funded ofcourse by voluntarily pooled resources rather than by the State, which Andrewssought to abolish). Andrews looked forward to a future in which with suchprovision for the care of children, Women find it as easy to earn anindependent living as Men, and thus freed by these changes fromthe care of the nursery and the household, Woman is enabled, even while amother, to select whatever calling or profession suits her tastes.

So the individualists libertarianism was not cashed out in ignoringnon-governmental forms of oppression, but in their refusal to endorse governmentintervention as a long-term means of combating them. At first glance,contemporary liberals might find all this puzzling: So the 19th centurylibertarians recognized these problems, but they didnt want to doanything effective about them? But effective politicalaction only means government force if you buy into theauthoritarian theory of politics; and there are good reasonsbothhistorical and theoreticalfor contemporary feminists to reject it.Feminists such as Kate Millett and Catharine MacKinnon have directly criticized conceptions of politics that areexclusively tied to the the exercise of State power, and throughout the late1960s and 1970s, radical feminists continually fought against the patronizingresponse to their program by male Leftists who could not recognize womenspersonal circumstances as a political issue, or theactions and institutions suggested by Womens Liberation as a politicalprogram, precisely because they were outside of the realm of male public debateand government action. And as historians of second-wave feminism such as SusanBrownmiller have shown, many ofradical feminisms most striking achievements were brought about through effortsthat were both clearly political in nature but alsoindependent of State political processessuch asconsciousness-raising groups, ogle-ins and WITCHhexes against street harassment and sexist businesses, and the creation of autonomouswomen-run institutions such as cooperative day-care centers, womens healthcollectives, and the first battered womens shelters and rape crisis centers.

Nineteenth century libertarians would hardly have beensurprised that these efforts have been as effective as they have without thesupport of government coercion; in fact, they might very well argue that it isprecisely because they have avoided the quagmire of the bureaucraticState that they have been so effective. If libertarian social and economic theory is correct, thennon-libertarians typically overestimate the efficacy of governmental solutions,and underestimate the efficacy of non-governmental solutions. The19th-century libertarian feminists opposed state action not onlybecause of their moral objections to state coercion but also because theyunderstood the state what Ezra Heywood called the booted, spurredand whiskered thing called government (in McElroy 1991, p. 226) as itself a patriarchal institution, whose very existence helped toreinforce patriarchy (or what Angela Heywood called he-ism) in theprivate sector; using the state to fight male supremacy would thus be likeattempting to douse a fire with kerosene. As Voltairine de Cleyre put it:

Today you go to arepresentative of that power which has robbed you of the earth, of the right offree contract of the means of exchange, taxes you for everything you eat or wear(the meanest form of robbery), you go to him for redress from a thief!It is about as logical as the Christian lady whose husband had beenremoved by Divine Providence, and who thereupon prayed to saidProvidence to comfort the widow and the fatherless. In freedom wewould not institute a wholesale robber to protect us from petty larceny. (Economic Tendency of Freethought 35)

The 19th-century libertarians would thus not have been surprisedto learn that, in our day, anti-pornography law written with feministintentions has been applied by male police and male judges to censor feministpublications, or that sex discrimination law has, in the hands of malelegislators and judges, been used to reverse 19th century feministgains in custody and divorce law.Hand the he-ist state a club, and you can be sure the club will be used in ahe-ist manner.

While adverse power relations in the private sector whether betweenlabor and capital or between men and women were seen as drawing much oftheir strength from the support given to them by corresponding power relationsin the political sector, these thinkers did not conclude that it would besufficient to direct all their energies against the sins of government in thehope that the private forms of oppression would fall as soon as political formsdid. On the contrary, if private oppression drew strength from politicaloppression, the converse was true as well; 19th-centurylibertarians saw themselves as facing an interlocking system of privateand public oppression, and thus recognized that political liberation could notbe achieved except via a thoroughgoing transformation of society as a whole.While such libertarians would have been gratified by the extent to which overtgovernmental discrimination against women has been diminished in present-dayWestern societies, they would not have been willing to treat that sortof discrimination as the sole index of gender-based oppression in society.

Moses Harman, for example, maintained not only that the family waspatriarchal because it was regulated by the patriarchal state, but also that thestate was patriarchal because it was founded on the patriarchal family: Irecognize that the government of the United States is exclusive, jealous,partialistic, narrowly selfish, despotic, invasive, paternalistic, monopolistic,and cruel logically and legitimately so because the unit and basis ofthat government is the family whose chief corner stone is institutionalmarriage. (In McElroy 199, p. 104) Harman saw the non-governmentalsources of patriarchy as analogous to the non-governmental sources of chattelslavery (another social evil against which libertarians were especially activein fighting):

The crystals that hardened and solidified chattel slavery were partly religious; partly economic or industrial, and partlysocietary . And so likewise it is with the enslavement ofwoman. The control of sex, of reproduction, is claimed by the priestand clergy man as pre-eminently their own province. Marriage is also aneconomic institution. Women have an industrial value, a financial value.Orthodox marriage makes man ruler of the house, while the wife is an upper servant without wages. The husband holds thecommon purse and spends the common earnings, as he sees fit. Marriageis a societary institution pre-eminently so. [A woman] must notonly be strictly virtuous, but clearly above suspicion, elsesocial damnation is her life sentence. (In McElroy 1991, pp.113-4)

Hence the fight against patriarchy would likewise require challenging notonly governmental but also religious, economico-industrial, and societaryobstacles (such as the social sanctions against divorce, birth control, andcareers for women, coordinate with the legal sanctions).

While the non-governmental obstacles drew strength from the governmentalones, Victor Yarros stressed that they also had an independent force of theirown. In addition to their burden of economic servitude, whichYarros optimistically opined would not outlive the State and legality fora single day, for it has no other root to depend upon for continuedexistence, women are also subjected to the misery of being theproperty, tool, and plaything of man, and have neither power to protest againstthe use, nor remedies against abuse, of their persons by their malemasters and this form of subjugation, he thought, couldnot be abolished overnight simply by abolishing the state, since it wassanctioned by custom, prejudice, tradition, and prevailing notions ofmorality and purity; its abolition must thus await further economic andintellectual progress.

Among the private power relations sanctioned by custom, prejudice, andtradition, Yarros included those so-called privileges and specialhomage accorded by the bourgeois world to women, which the Marxist writerE. Belfort Bax had denounced as tyranny exercised by women overmen. Anticipating contemporary feminist critiques ofchivalry, Yarros responded:

Not denying that such tyranny exists, I assert thatMr. Bax entirely misunderstands its real nature. Mans condescension hemistakes for submission; marks of womans degradation and slavery hisobliquity of vision transforms into properties of sovereignty. Tchernychewskytakes the correct view upon this matter when he makes Vera Pavlovna say;Men should not kiss womens hands, since that ought to be offensiveto women, for it means that men do not consider them as human beings likethemselves, but believe that they can in no way lower their dignity before awoman, so inferior to them is she, and that no marks of affected respect for hercan lessen their superiority. What to Mr. Bax appears to be servility onthe part of men is really but insult added to injury.

And Voltairine de Cleyres list of libertarian feminist grievancesincludes legal and cultural factors equally:

Let Woman ask herself, Why am I the slave of Man? Why ismy brain said not to be the equal of his brain? Why is my work not paid equallywith his? Why must my body be controlled by my husband? Why may he take my laborin the household, giving me in exchange what he deems fit? Why may he take mychildren from me? Will them away while yet unborn? (Sex Slavery 11)

19th-century libertarians, especially in the English-speakingworld (French libertarians tended to be more socially conservative), were deeplyskeptical of the institution of marriage. Marriage is unjust towoman, Moses Harman declared, depriving her of her right ofownership and control of her person, of her children, her name, her time and herlabor. I oppose marriage because marriage legalized rape. (InMcElroy **, pp100-102) A woman takes the last name first of her father, then ofher husband, just as, traditionally, a slave has taken the last name of hismaster, changing names every time he changed owners. (** p. 112)Some, like Harman and Spencer, thought the solution lay in reconstitutingmarriage as a purely private relation, neither sanctioned nor regulated by theState, and thus involving no legal privileges for the husband. Others wentfarther and rejected marriage in any form, public or private, as a legacy ofpatriarchy; de Cleyre, for example, maintained that the permanentrelation of a man and a woman, sexual and economical, whereby the present homeand family life is maintained, is a dependent relationshipand detrimental to the growth of individual character, regardlessof whether it is blessed by a priest, permitted by a magistrate,contracted publicly or privately, or not contracted at all. (TheyWho Marry Do Ill **) Victor Yarros and Anselme Bellegarrigue neverthelessadvised women to exploit existing gender conventions in order to get themselvessupported by a man; Benjamin Tucker and Sarah Holmes, by contrast, insisted thatevery individual, whether man or woman, shall be self-supporting,and have an independent home of his or her own.

19th-century libertarian feminists are not easily classifiable interms of the contemporary division between (or the stereotypes of)liberal feminists and radical feminists. Wevealready seen that they recognized no conflict between the liberalvalue of individualism and the radical claim that the self issocially constituted. They were also liberal in taking individualsrather than groups as their primary unit of analysis butradical in their contextualizing methodology; they would haveagreed with MacKinnons remark that thoughts and ideas areconstituent participants in conditions more than mere reflections[ la Marxism] but less than unilineral causes [ la liberalism]of life settings. (MacKinnon 1989, p. 46) They were liberalin their stress on negative freedom and their respect for the actual choicespeople make, but they were also radical in their recognition thatoutward acquiescence may not express genuine consent since, inAndrews words, wives have the same motives that slaves have forprofessing contentment, and smile deceitfully while the heart swellsindignantly. (Andrews ***) Unlike some radical feminists (such as MaryDaly), they did not treat patriarchy as the root cause of all otherforms of oppression; for them patriarchy was simply one component (though thechronologically first component) of a larger oppressive system, and to theextent that they recognized one of this systems components as causallyprimary, they were more likely to assign that role to the state. Butlike radical and unlike liberal feminists, they did not treat sexism as aseparable aberration in a basically equitable socio-economic order; they arguedthat male supremacy was a fundamental principle of a social order thatrequired radical changes in society and culture, as well as law and personalattitudes. Thus they would gladly endorse MacKinnons statement thatpowerlessness is a problem but redistribution of power as currentlydefined is not its ultimate solution (MacKinnon 1989, p. 46).19th century libertarian feminists vigorously debated the degree towhich participation in electoral politics was a legitimate means and end forwomens liberation; they also offeredradical critiques of the traditional family, and were willing to issue the kindsof shocking and extreme condemnations for which todays radical feministsare often criticized as when Andrews and de Cleyre described thewhole existing marital system as the house of bondage andthe slaughter-house of the female sex (Andrews 1889, **), a prison whose corridors radiate over all the earth, and with so many cells,that none may count them (de Cleyre, Sex Slavery **), orwhen Bellegarrigue demystified romantic love by noting that [t]he personwhom one loves passes into the state of property and has no right; the more oneloves her, the more one annihilates her; being itself is denied her, for shedoes not act from her own action, nor, moreover, does she think from her ownthought; she does and thinks what is done and thought for her and despiteher, and finally concluded that Love is Hate. As abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison(also a libertarian and a feminist) remarked, in another context, in defense ofwhat some considered his extremist rhetoric: I have need to be all onfire, for I have mountains of ice about me to melt. (**)19th-century libertarian feminism was simultaneously liberal andradical, perhaps because libertarianism precisely is liberalismradicalized.

Since the 19th century, libertarianism and feminism have largelyparted ways perhaps, in part, because libertarians allowed the advanceof state socialism in the early 20th century to drive them into analliance with conservatives, an alliance from which libertarians could not hopeto emerge unmarked. (Few libertarians today even remember that their19th-century predecessors often called their positionvoluntary socialism socialism to contrast it, not with the free market, butwith actually existing capitalism, and voluntary to contrast itboth with state socialism and with anti-market versions of anarchistsocialism.)

Since this parting of ways, feminists have developed increasinglysophisticated analyses and demystifications of patriarchy, but theirunderstanding of statism has grown correspondingly blurred; libertarians havedeveloped increasingly sophisticated analyses and demystifications of statism,but their understanding of patriarchy has grown correspondingly blurred. A19th-century libertarian feminist, if resurrected today, might thushave much to learn from todays libertarians about how statism works, andfrom todays feminists about how patriarchy works; but she or he woulddoubtless also see present-day feminists as, all too often, extraordinarilyinsensitive to the pervasive and inherently destructive effects of statehegemony per se, and present-day libertarians as, alltoo often, extraordinarily insensitive to the pervasive and inherentlydestructive effects of male hegemony per se. Acontemporary marriage, or remarriage, of feminism with libertarianism thus seemsa consummation devoutly to be wished but not if it is now to bea patriarchal marriage, one in which the feminism is subordinated to orabsorbed into or muffled by the libertarianism, a marriage in which one partyretains, while the other renounces, its radical edge. Our concern about thenature of libertarian feminism in its contemporary form is precisely that ittends to represent this sort of unequal union.

Libertarian feminist Joan Kennedy Taylor has written extensively on the needfor a more libertarian feminism and a more feminist libertarianism. While herwork has been admirable in highlighting the importance of synthesizinglibertarian insights with feminist insights, and in her willingness to callfellow libertarians to task when it is needed, we worry that her attempt at asynthesis often recapitulates antifeminist themes, and hobbles her feministprogram in the process.

Many of the most frustrating elements of Taylors attempt at libertarianfeminism are connected with what you might call her dialectical strategy:throughout Taylors work she attempts to position herself, and her libertarianfeminism, mainly by means of oppositionby her insistent efforts toally it with mainstream, liberal feminism and thus to distance it from extreme, radicalfeminism. The positioning strategywhich we might call Radical Menacepoliticscomes uncomfortably close to classical anti-feministdivide-and-conquer politics, in which the feminist world is divided into thereasonable (that is, unthreatening) feminists and the feminists who arehysterical or man-hating (so, presumably, not worthy of rational response).In antifeminist hands the strategy comes uncomfortably close to abarely-intellectualized repetition of old antifeminist standbys such as thehairy-legged man-hater or the hysterical lesbian. Unfortunately, feministsaiming in good faith at the success of the movement have also responded toradical-baiting by falling into the trap of defining themselves primarily byopposition to the extreme positions of other feminists. In both cases, the specter of That Kind ofFeminist is invoked to give feminists the Hobsons Choice between beingmarginalized and ignored, or being bullied into dulling the feminist edge oftheir politics wherever it is threatening enough to offend the mainstream.

While Taylors work shows a great deal more understanding of, and sympathywith, classical feminist concerns than antifeminist radical-baiters, hertreatment of issues pioneered by radical feministssuch as sexual harassment inthe workplacedo seem to combine the authoritarian theory of politics withRadical Menace rhetoric in ways that leave it limited and frustrating. Her bookon sexual harassment, oxymoronicallysubtitled A Non-Adversarial Approach to Sexual Harassment, much of what womenexperience as harassment in the workplace is simply a misunderstanding betweenthe male and female subcultures, a misperception by women of such practicesamong men in traditionally all-male environments as hazing newcomers or tellingsexist jokes. For Taylor, male behavior that may seem directed at women in ahostile way may just be treating them as women often say they wish to be treated like men. (p. 7) Because women are the ones who are seeking to enter maleworkplaces that are permeated by male culture, Taylor concludes that it shouldbe the woman, and not the man, whose behavior is modified. (p. 200)

But why, then, doesnt it equally follow that libertarians living in apredominantly statist culture should stop complaining about governmentalcoercion and instead adapt themselves to the statusquo? After all, statists dont just tax and regulate libertarians;they tax and regulate each other. This is how statists have, for centuries,behaved toward one another in traditionally all-statist environments, and, onemight argue, theyre just innocently treating libertarians the same way.If Taylor and other libertarians are nevertheless unwilling take such statistbehavior for granted, why should women follow her advice to take the analogousmale behavior for granted? As Elizabeth Brake writes:

But why is part of mens culture to tell dirty andanti-female jokes, as Taylor claims? She writes that women should shrugoff such joking . Would the workplace situation that Taylor describesseem as harmless if she wrote, Whites tell dirty and anti-black jokesamong themselves? Would she still counsel that the targets of such jokesshould toughen up, rather than advocating a behavioral change on the part of thejokers? It is staggering that Taylor forgets to ask why thesejokes target women. And why does the hazing or teasing of women take a sexualform? I take it that men do not grope each other as part of their hazingrituals.

To this we may add: and why are these still traditionally all-maleor mostly-male environments, long after most purely legislativebarriers to workplace equality have fallen? Is the behavior Taylor describesmerely an effect, and not also in part a sustaining cause, of such workplaceinequality?

Taylor has much to say about the harmful effects of power relations in thepolitical sphere, but she seems oddly blind to harmful power relations in theprivate sphere; and much of her advice strikes us as counselingwomen to adapt themselves docilely to existing patriarchal power structures solong as those structures are not literally coercive in the strict libertariansense. This sort of advice draws its entire force from the authoritarian theoryof politicsin assuming that state violence is the only politicallyeffective means for combating patriarchy. Taylor effectively renounces combatingpatriarchy; in so doing she not only undermines feminism, but also reinforcesthe very idea that drives some contemporary feminists towards a statistprogram.

We have similar concerns about many of the writings of Wendy McElroy, anotherof todays foremost libertarian feminists. We greatly admire much that shehas to say, including her radical analyses of state power; and her historicalresearch uncovering the neglected radical individualist tradition of the19th century is invaluable. But, as with Taylor, we find hertreatment of present-day feminism problematic. Perhaps even more so than Taylor,McElroys efforts at forging a libertarian feminism are limited by her tendencytowards Radical Menace politicsa tendency which seems to haveintensified over the course of her career. In some of her earlier writingsMcElroy treats libertarian feminism and socialist feminism as two branches ofradical feminism, and contrasts both with mainstreamfeminism. Thus in a 1982 article she writes:

Throughout most of its history, American mainstream feminismconsidered equality to mean equal treatment under existing laws and equalrepresentation within existing institutions. The focus was not to change thestatus quo in a basic sense, but rather to be included within it. The moreradical feminists protested that the existing laws and institutions were thesource of injustice and, thus, could not be reformed. These feminists sawsomething fundamentally wrong with society beyond discrimination against women,and their concepts of equality reflected this. To the individualist, equalitywas a political term referring to the protection of individual rights; that is,protection of the moral jurisdiction every human being has over his or her ownbody. To socialist-feminists, it was a socioeconomic term. Women could be equalonly after private property and the family relationships it encouraged wereeliminated. (McElroy 1991, p. 3)

On this understanding,mainstream feminists seek equality in the weak sense ofinclusion in whatever the existing power structure is. If there aremale rulers, there should be female rulers; if there are male slaves,there should be female slaves. Radical feminists seeka more radical form of equality socioeconomic for thesocialist form of radicalism, and political for the libertarian orindividualist form of radicalism. By political equality McElroy doesnot mean equal access to the franchise; indeed, as a voluntaryistanarchist she regards voting as a fundamentally immoral andcounterproductive form of political activity. Rather, she means theabsence of any and all political subordination of one person toanother, where political is understood explicitlyin terms of the authoritarian theory of politics:

Society is divided into two classes: those who use the politicalmeans, which is force, to acquire wealth or power and those who use the economicmeans, which requires voluntary interaction. The former is the ruling classwhich lives off the labor and wealth of the latter. (McElroy 1991, p.23)

For McElroy, then, the sort of gender inequality that feminism needs toaddress is simply a specific instance of the broader kind of inequality thatlibertarianism per se addresses thesubordination of some people to others by means of political force:

The libertarian theory of justice applies to all human beingsregardless of secondary characteristics such as sex and color. To theextent that laws infringe upon self-ownership, they are unjust. To the extentthat such violation is based upon sex, there is room for a libertarian feministmovement. (p. 22)

Notice how restrictive this recommendation is. The basis for a libertarianfeminist movement is the existence of laws that (a) infringeupon self-ownership, and (b) do so based upon sex.Libertarian feminism is thus conceived as narrowly political in scope, andpolitics is conceived of exclusively in terms of the authoritarian theory. Buton what grounds? Why is there no room in McElroys classification for aversion of feminism that seeks to combat both legal and socioeconomicinequality, say? And why wouldnt the concerns of this feminism have a perfectlygood claim to the adjective political? McElroys answer isthat [a]lthough most women have experienced the uncomfortable and oftenpainful discrimination that is a part of our culture, this is not a politicalmatter. Peaceful discrimination is not a violation of rights. (p. 23)Hence such discrimination is not a subject that libertarianism as apolitical philosophy addresses except to state that all remedies for it must bepeaceful. (p. 23)

Now it is certainly true that no libertarian feminist can consistentlyadvocate the use of political force to combat forms of discrimination that dontinvolve the use of violence. But how should we classify a feminist who seeks toalter not only political institutions but also pervasive private forms ofdiscrimination but combats the latter through non-violent means only?What sort of feminist would she be? Suppose, moreover, that libertarian socialtheory tells us, as it arguably does, that governmental injustice is likely toreflect and draw sustenance from the prevailing economic and culturalconditions. Wont it follow that libertarianism does havesomething to say, qua libertarian politicaltheory, about those conditions?

McElroy is certainly not blind to the existence of pervasive butnon-governmental discrimination against women; she writes that ourculture heavily influences sex-based behavior and even so intimatea matter as how we view ourselves as individuals.

Many of the societal cues aimed at women carry messages that, iftaken to heart, naturally produce feelings of intellectual insecurity andinadequacy. The list is long. Women should not compete with men. Women becomeirrational when menstruating. Women do not argue fairly. Women not men must balance career and family. A wife should relocate to accommodateher husbands job transfer. A clean house is the womansresponsibility: a good living is the mans. A wife who earnsmore than her husband is looking for trouble. Women are bad at math. Girls takehome economics while boys take car repair. If a man sexually strays, itsbecause his wife is no longer savvy enough to keep him satisfied. Women gossip;men discuss. Whenever they stand up for themselves, women risk beinglabeled everything from cute to a bitch. Almost every woman I know feels some degree of intellectual inadequacy.

So isnt this sort of thing a problem that feminists need to combat?McElroys answer is puzzling here. She writes: Althoughdiscrimination may always occur on an individual level, it is only through thepolitical means that such discrimination can be institutionalized and maintainedby force. (p. 23) This statement can be read as saying that sexualdiscrimination becomes a systematic problem, rather than an occasionalnuisance, only as a result of state action. Yet she does not, strictly speaking,say that only through state action can discrimination be institutionalized(though the phrase on an individual level certainly invites thatinterpretation). What she says is that only through the political meanscan discrimination be institutionalized by force. Since, on theauthoritarian theory that McElroy employs, the political meansjust is force, the statement is a tautology. But it leaves unansweredthe questions: (a) can discrimination be institutionalized and maintained bymeans other than force? and (b) can discrimination be institutionalized andmaintained by force but not by the state? Systematic non-governmental maleviolence would be an instance of institutionalizing patriarchy through meansthat are political, in McElroys sense, but not governmental; variousnon-violent forms of social pressure would be a means of institutionalizingpatriarchy through non-political means. McElroy is right to say that, forlibertarians, discrimination that does not violate rights cannot be apolitical issue (in her sense of political); but itdoes not follow that feminism must be no more than a response to thelegal discrimination women have suffered from the state.

In her more recent writings, McElroy seems to have grown more committed andmore wide-reaching in her use of Radical Menace politics. Rather thancategorizing libertarian feminism as a tendency within radical feminism (albeitone in opposition to what is usually called radical feminism), shenow typically treats radical feminists per se as theenemy, adopting Christina Hoff Sommers terminology of genderfeminism for her analytical purposes. But while Sommers opposesequity feminism to gender feminism, and has beenunderstood as aligning the latter with radical feminism, McElroy now clearlylumps liberal and radical feminists together as gender feminists,and opposes libertarian feminism (individualist feminism, ifeminism) to thisaggregation. At least she seems to treat liberal feminism as a form of genderfeminism when she writes:

While libertarians focus on legal restrictions, liberals (thosefractious, left-of-center feminists) are apt to focus additionally onrestrictive social and cultural norms), which an individual woman is deemedhelpless to combat. If the left-of-center feminists (sometimes calledgender feminists) are correct in their view that cultural biases against womenare stronger than the formal rights extended equally to both sexes, then justicefor women depends on collective, not individual action, and on a regulatedmarketplace. (McElroy 2002, pp. ix-x.)

Apart from the non sequitur in this last, noticethat liberal feminism, left-of-center feminism, andgender feminism are all apparently being treated as equivalent. Onthe other hand, in her book Sexual Correctness: The Gender-Feminist Attackon Women (a frustrating mix oflegitimate and illegitimate criticisms of non-libertarian feminism), McElroydistinguishes the two. Gender feminism views women as separate andantagonistic classes and holds that men oppress womenthrough the twin evils of the patriarchal state and the free-marketsystem. The goal is not equality but gender (class)justice for women. Liberal feminism is instead defined as anideology in transition from a watered-down version of individualistfeminism to a watered-down version of gender feminism. (McElroy 1996, p. ix) Sopresumably gender feminism here becomes roughly equivalent toradical feminism. But McElroys definitions seem to leave noroom for any version of feminism that agrees that women are oppressed by men notonly through the state but through non-political means, but is also pro-market.Yet why isnt McElroy herself precisely that sort of feminist?

The implicit suggestion is that to regard something as a legitimate object offeminist concern is ipso facto to regard it as anappropriate object of legislation. On this view, those feminists who see lots ofissues as meriting feminist attention will naturally favour lots of legislation,while those feminists who prefer minimal legislation will be led to suppose thatrelatively few issues merit feminist attention. But without the conceptualconfusions that all too often accompany the authoritarian theory of politics,its hard to see any reason for accepting the shared premise. CertainlyMcElroys 19th-century libertarian feminist predecessors didnot accept it.

It may seem odd to hold up 19th-century libertarian feminism as amodel against which to criticize McElroy. For no one has done more than McElroyto popularize and defend 19th-century libertarian feminism,particularly in its American version. McElroys career has been a steadystream of books and articles documenting, and urging a return to, the ideas ofthe 19th-century libertarian feminists. Yet we know and it islargely owing to McElroys own efforts that we know that if thereare any gender feminists lurking out there, the 19thcentury individualists, while libertarian, would certainly be found among theirranks.

As weve seen, McElroy contrasts the libertarian version of classanalysis, that assigns individuals to classes based on their access to politicalpower, with both the Marxist version (based on access to the means ofproduction) and the radical feminist (based, as she thinks, on biology).

Classes within ifeminist analysis are fluid. This is not true ofradical feminist analysis that is based on biology. To radical feminism, biologyis the factor that fixes an individual into a class. To ifeminism, the use offorce is the salient factor and an individual can cross class lines at anypoint.

There is a double confusion here. First, radical feminist analysis isnot based on biology. On the contrary, a central theme ofradical feminism has been precisely that gender differences are sociallyconstructed, and that women are constituted as a politically relevant class bysocial institutions, practices, and imputed meanings, not by pre-socialbiological facts beyond anyones control. MacKinnon, for example, notesthat while those actions on the part of women that serve the function ofmaintaining and constantly reaffirming the structure of male supremacy attheir expense are not freely willed, they areactions nonetheless, and once it is seen that these relationsrequire daily acquiescence, acting on different principles seems notquite so impossible (MacKinnon 1989, pp. 101-2). Second, libertarian analysis traditionally understands theruling class not just as those who make use of the political means(i.e., force) is a muggerthereby a member of the ruling class? but as those who control thestate, the hegemonic and institutionalized organization of thepolitical means. The membership of that ruling class may not bestrictly fixed at birth, but one cannot exactly move into it at will either.Hence McElroys description simultaneously overstates the rigidity ofclass as radical feminists see it and understates the rigidity of class aslibertarians see it.

In her hostility to the so-called gender feminist version ofclass analysis, McElroy is momentarily led into a rejection of class analysisper se, forgetting that she herself accepts a versionof class analysis: Self-ownership is the foundation ofindividualism, she writes; it is the death knell of classanalysis. This is because self-ownership reduces all social struggle to thelevel of individual rights, where every woman claims autonomy and choice, not asthe member of an oppressed subclass, but as a full and free member of the humanrace. (p. 147) As McElroy remembers perfectly well in other contexts,there is nothing incongruous in upholding a doctrine of individual autonomy andat the same time pointing to the existing class structure of society to helpexplain why that autonomy is being systematically undermined. PerhapsMcElroys attachment to the authoritarian theory of politics makes hersuspect that a state solution must be in the offing as soon as a politicalconcept like class is introduced.

This hypothesis gains support from McElroys discussion of the problemof domestic violence. McElroy distinguishes between liberalfeminist and gender feminist responses to the problem.According to McElroy, liberal feminists favour a sociocultural approachthat examines the reasons why aggression against women is tolerated by oursociety, as well as a psychological approach that examines theemotional reasons why men are abusive and why women accept it. Genderfeminists, by contrast, are said to take an entirely politicalview in favouring a class analysis approach, by which men are saidto beat women to retain their place in the patriarchal power structure[Sexual Correctness, p. 110]. But this false dichotomy is puzzling;surely those who favour the political approach are not offering itas an alternative to psychological andsociocultural approaches. Does McElroy assume that anypolitical problem must have a governmental solution?

McElroys discussion of prostitution [Sexual Correctness,chs. 9-10] is likewise frustrating. On the one hand, she makes a good case forthe claims that (a) many feminists have been condescendingly dismissive of thevoices of prostitutes themselves, and (b) legal restrictions on prostitution domore harm than benefit for the women they are allegedly designed to help. ButMcElroy neglects the degree to which critiques of prostitution by radicalfeminists such as Diana Russell and Andrea Dworkin (who prostituted herself tosurvive early in her adulthood) have drawn on the (negative) testimony of womenin prostitution; she often seems unwilling to acceptin spite of what issaid by the very women in prostitution that she citesthat the choices women can make might beconstrained by pervasive economic, sexual, and cultural realities in a waythats worth challenging, even if the outcomes are ultimatelychosen. When McElroy urges that feminist discussions ofprostitution need to take seriously what women in prostitution say about it, sheis making a point that every feminist ought to keep firmly in mind; but her zealto defend the choices of prostitutes, McElroy comes close to claiming thatany critical attention to the authenticity of someone elses choices,or to the cultural or material circumstances that constrain, them is tantamountto treating that person as a child or a mentally incompetentperson (p. 124)a claim that no-one in the world ought to believe,and one that no-one earnestly does.

Catharine MacKinnons discussion of consent in male supremacyoffers a useful counterpoint to McElroys limited discussion ofchoicealbeit from a source that is sure to provoke McElroy and many otherlibertarians. MacKinnons work suggests that consent whether tointercourse specifically or traditional sex roles generally is in largepart a structural fiction to legitimize the real coercion built into thenormal social definitions of heterosexual intercourse, and concludes thatto the extent that this is so, it makes no sense to define rape asdifferent in kind. Liberal andlibertarian feminists have often complained against radical feminists that suchassimilation of social and institutional influence to literal compulsion slightswomen by underestimating their capacity for autonomous choice even under adversecircumstances; from this standpoint, the radical feminist tendency to view allintercourse through rape-colored spectacles is open to some of the sameobjections as the patriarchal tendency to view all intercourse throughconsent-colored spectacles.

But MacKinnon and other radical feminists are best interpreted, not asclaiming a literal equivalence between rape and ordinary intercourse, but onlyas claiming that the two are a good deal less different than they seem objecting not so much to the distinction as to the exaggeration of thedifferences extent and significance. Even this more moderate claim,however, strikes many liberal and libertarian feminists as trivializingrape. This is a fair complaint; but the charge of trivialization is alsoa two-edged sword. If understating the difference between two evils trivializesthe worse one, overstating the differences trivializes the less bad one. (Andeven calling the understating kind of trivializationtrivialization may understandably strike some feminists as aninstance of, or at least an invitation to, the overstating kind oftrivialization.)

Now the distinction between literal compulsion and other forms of externalpressure is absolutely central to libertarianism, and so a libertarian feminist,to be a libertarian, must arguably resist the literal effacing of thesedifferences. But it does not follow that libertarian feminists need to deny thebroader radical feminist points that (a) patriarchal power structures, even whennot coercive in the strict libertarian sense, are relevantly and disturbinglylike literal coercion in certain ways, or that (b) the influence ofsuch patriarchal power structures partly rests on and partly bolsters literallyviolent expressions of male dominance. Libertarians have never had any problemsaying these things about statist ideology; such ideology, libertariansoften complain, is socially pervasive and difficult to resist, it both serves tolegitimate state coercion and receives patronage from state coercion, and itfunctions to render the states exploitative nature invisible and itscritics inaudible. In saying these things, libertarians do not efface thedistinction between coercion and ideological advocacy; hence no libertarianfavors the compulsory suppression of statist ideology.

Why not follow the 19th-century libertarians, who neither deniedthe existence and importance of private discrimination, nor assimilated it tolegal compulsion? There is nothing inconsistent or un-libertarian in holdingthat womens choices under patriarchal social structures can besufficiently voluntary, in the libertarian sense, to be entitledto immunity from coercive legislative interference, while at the same time beingsufficiently involuntary, in a broader sense, to be recognized asmorally problematic and as a legitimate target of social activism. Inferringbroad voluntariness from strict voluntariness, as many libertarians seem temptedto do, is no obvious improvement over inferring strict involuntariness frombroad involuntariness, as many feminists seem tempted to do; and libertariansare ill-placed to accuse feminists of blurring distinctions if they themselvesare blurring the same distinctions, albeit in the opposite direction.

If we dispense with the limitations imposed by Radical Menace rhetoric andthe authoritarian theory of politics, then what sort of a synthesis betweenfeminism and libertarianism might be possible? We do not intend, here, to try toset out a completed picture; we only hope to help with providing the frame. Butwhile it can certainly draw from the insights of 20th centurylibertarian feminists, it will likely be something very different from what aJoan Kennedy Taylor or a Wendy McElroy seems to expect. Taylor, for example,envisions libertarian feminism as a synthesis of libertarian insights with thespirit and concerns of mainstream liberal feminism; but if what we have arguedis correct, then its not at all clear that mainstream liberal feminism is themost natural place for libertarians to look. Liberal feminists have madeinvaluable contributions to the struggle for womens equalitywe dontintend to engage in a reverse Radical Menace rhetoric here. But nevertheless,the 19th century libertarian feminists, and the 21stcentury libertarian feminists that learn from their example, may find themselvesfar closer to Second Wave radical feminism than to liberalism. As wehave argued, radical feminist history and theory offer a welcomechallenge to the authoritarian theory of politics; radical feminists are alsofar more suspicious of the state as an institution, and as a means to sexequality in particular, than liberal feminists. While liberal feminists havebought into to bureaucratic state action through mechanisms such as the EEOCand the proposed Equal Rights Amendment, Catharine MacKinnon has criticized theway in which feminist campaigns for sex equality [have] been caughtbetween giving more power to the state in each attempt to claim it for women andleaving unchecked power in the society to men (MacKinnon 1989, Chapter 8 10),and R. Amy Elman argues in Sexual Subordination and StateIntervention that feminist activism against rape and battery has met withconsiderably more success in the United States than in progressiveSweden because of the (relative) decentralization of politicalauthority in the U.S. These are remarks that would not be out of place in theworks of radical libertarians such as Tom Bell or Murray Rothbard; there is goodreason to think that an explicitly libertarian feminism will have much to sayto, and much to learn from, the radical feminist tradition.

Its true that in spite of their suspicions of the state as a tool of classprivilege, radical feminists are sometimes willing to grant the State powersthat liberal feminists would withholdfor example, to penalizepornographers for the misogynist content of their works. To libertarians thismay seem paradoxical: shouldnt distrusting an institution make oneless willing to augment its powers, rather than more? But this apparentdisconnect is less paradoxical than it seems; if state neutrality is a myth, ifthe state is by nature a tool in the struggle between sexes or classes or both,then it can seem as though the only sensible response is to employ it as justthat, rather than trusting to its faade of juridical impartiality. Tolibertarians, of course, this strategy is as self-defeating as donning the ringof Sauron; but it is certainly understandable. Moreover, if radical feministsare suspicious of the state, they are equally suspicious of society, especiallymarket society, and so are disinclined to view as entitled to immunity fromstate interference. The underlying assumption of judicialneutrality, MacKinnon writes, is that a status quo exists which ispreferable to judicial intervention. (MacKinnon1989, Chapter 8 23) HenceMacKinnons ambivalence about special legal protections for women; suchprotections treat women as marginal and second-class members of theworkforce (Chapter8 20), but since market society does that already, such lawsmay offer women some concrete benefits. Here of course libertarians have reasonto be less suspicious of market society, since on their theoretical andhistorical understanding, most of the evils conventionally attributed to marketsociety are actually the product of state intervention itself. Here, however, itwould be a mistake for libertarians to assume that any persisting social evil,once shown not to be an inherent product of market society per se, must then be either a pure artefact ofstate intervention, or else not importantly bad after all.

Libertarian feminism, then, should seek to shift the radical feministconsensus away from state action as much as possible; but the shift shouldnot be the shift away from radicalism that libertarian feminists suchas McElroy and Taylor have envisioned. In an important sense, putting thelibertarian in libertarian feminism will not beimporting anything new into radical feminism at all; if anything, it ismore a matter of urging feminists to radicalize the insights into malepower and state power that they have already developed, and to expandthe state-free politics that they have already put into practice. Similarly, aradical libertarianism aligned with a radical feminism may confront manyconcerns that are new to 20th century libertarians; but inconfronting them they will only be returning to their 19th centuryroots, and radicalizing the individualist critique of systemicpolitical violence and its cultural preconditions to encompass those forms facedby female individuals as well as male.

Libertarianism and feminism are, then, two traditionsand, at theirbest, two radical traditionswith much in common, and much tooffer one another. We applaud the efforts of those who have sought to bring themback together; but too often, in our judgment, such efforts have proceeded onthe assumption that the libertarian tradition has everything to teach thefeminist tradition and nothing to learn from it. Feminists have no reason toembrace a union on such unequal terms. Happily, they need not. If libertarianfeminists have resisted some of the central insights of the feminist tradition,it is in large part because they have feared that acknowledging those insightswould mean abandoning some of the central insights of the libertarian tradition.But what the example of the 19th century libertarian feminists shouldshow usand should help to illuminate (to both libertarians and feminists)in the history of Second Wave feminismis that the libertarian critique ofstate power and the feminist critique of patriarchy are complementary, notcontradictory. The desire to bring together libertarianism and feminism neednot, and should not, involve calling on either movement to surrender itsidentity for the sake of decorum. This marriage can be saved: as itshould be, a marriage of self-confident, strong-willed, compassionateequals.

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Libertarian Feminism: Can This Marriage Be Saved ...

Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest Ayn Rand Novels

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All fields are required except where indicated.Your InformationAddressCityCountryState/ProvZip/Postal codeUnited StatesCanadaAfghanistanland IslandsAlbaniaAlgeriaAmerican SamoaAndorraAngolaAnguillaAntarcticaAntigua And BarbudaArgentinaArmeniaArubaAustraliaAustriaAzerbaijanBahamasBahrainBangladeshBarbadosBelarusBelgiumBelizeBeninBermudaBhutanBoliviaBosnia And HerzegovinaBotswanaBouvet IslandBrazilBritish Indian Ocean TerritoryBrunei DarussalamBulgariaBurkina FasoBurundiCambodiaCameroonCape VerdeCayman IslandsCentral African RepublicChadChileChinaChristmas IslandCocos (Keeling) IslandsColombiaComorosCongoCongo, The Democratic Republic Of TheCook IslandsCosta RicaCte D'IvoireCroatiaCubaCyprusCzech RepublicDenmarkDjiboutiDominicaDominican RepublicEcuadorEgyptEl SalvadorEquatorial GuineaEritreaEstoniaEthiopiaFalkland Islands (Malvinas)Faroe IslandsFijiFinlandFranceFrench GuianaFrench PolynesiaFrench Southern TerritoriesGabonGambiaGeorgiaGermanyGhanaGibraltarGreeceGreenlandGrenadaGuadeloupeGuamGuatemalaGuernseyGuineaGuinea-BissauGuyanaHaitiHeard Island And Mcdonald IslandsHoly See (Vatican City State)HondurasHong KongHungaryIcelandIndiaIndonesiaIran, Islamic Republic OfIraqIrelandIsle Of ManIsraelItalyJamaicaJapanJerseyJordanKazakhstanKenyaKiribatiKorea, Democratic People's Republic OfKorea, Republic OfKosovoKuwaitKyrgyzstanLao People's Democratic RepublicLatviaLebanonLesothoLiberiaLibyan Arab JamahiriyaLiechtensteinLithuaniaLuxembourgMacaoMacedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic OfMadagascarMalawiMalaysiaMaldivesMaliMaltaMarshall IslandsMartiniqueMauritaniaMauritiusMayotteMexicoMicronesia, Federated States OfMoldovaMonacoMongoliaMontenegroMontserratMoroccoMozambiqueMyanmarNamibiaNauruNepalNetherlandsNetherlands AntillesNew CaledoniaNew ZealandNicaraguaNigerNigeriaNiueNorfolk IslandNorthern Mariana IslandsNorwayOmanPakistanPalauPalestinian Territory, OccupiedPanamaPapua New GuineaParaguayPeruPhilippinesPitcairnPolandPortugalQatarRunionRomaniaRussian FederationRwandaSaint BarthlemySaint HelenaSaint Kitts And NevisSaint LuciaSaint MartinSaint Pierre And MiquelonSaint Vincent And The GrenadinesSamoaSan MarinoSao Tome And PrincipeSaudi ArabiaSenegalSerbiaSeychellesSierra LeoneSingaporeSlovakiaSloveniaSolomon IslandsSomaliaSouth AfricaSouth Georgia And The South Sandwich IslandsSpainSri LankaSudanSurinameSvalbard And Jan MayenSwazilandSwedenSwitzerlandSyrian Arab RepublicTaiwanTajikistanTanzania, United Republic OfThailandTimor-lesteTogoTokelauTongaTrinidad And TobagoTunisiaTurkeyTurkmenistanTurks And Caicos IslandsTuvaluUgandaUkraineUnited Arab EmiratesUnited KingdomUruguayUzbekistanVanuatuVatican City StateVenezuelaViet NamVirgin Islands, BritishVirgin Islands, U.S.Wallis And FutunaWestern SaharaYemenZambiaZimbabwe

This year, the Ayn Rand Institute held a weekly online reading group for Atlas Shrugged called The Atlas Project. Please select your level of familiarity with this program:

How interested are you in learning more about Ayn Rands ideas?

How likely would you be to participate in a video contest on Atlas Shrugged compared to writing an essay?

An important early event in the novel is the destruction of the Phoenix-Durango. What factors make its destruction possible? How does this issue relate to the meaning and theme of Atlas Shrugged? In your answer, consider what Rand has to say in her 1962 essay The Pull Peddlers.

Capitalisms defenders usually appeal to the public good as the moral justification of capitalism. Contrast this approach to defending capitalism with Ayn Rands approach in Atlas Shrugged. In your answer, consider what Rand has to say in her 1965 essay What Is Capitalism?

Francisco dAnconia and his teacher, Hugh Akston, advise more than once: Check your premises, because contradictions do not exist. Identify at least two major apparent contradictions that the heroes of Atlas Shrugged encounter, and explain, with reference to the novel, what premises they need to check and correct in order for them to understand that these contradictions do not exist.

Have you checked to ensure that all personally identifiable informationhas been removed from your essay?

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Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest Ayn Rand Novels

President Obama Jabs At Ayn Rand, Knocks Himself Out

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(Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)

By Wendy Milling

In a recent interview withRolling Stone, President Obama stated,Ayn Rand is one of those things that a lot of us, when we were 17 or 18 and feeling misunderstood, we'd pick up.

Im not trying to mock the President here he is just repeating an old propaganda line that was hatched by Rands opponents but I have to ask the adults who claim they outgrew Rand exactly what earth-shattering insight they have learned against her solution to the problem of universals? Against her solution to the is-ought problem? To her foundation of knowledge in the axiomatic validity of sense perception? To her theory of the locus of free will? How about her theory of aesthetics?

The reason I ask is that some of these issues and questions are more than two thousand years old, and no other philosopher has been able to crack them without ultimately lapsing into self-contradiction. So if anyone fancies that they are going to show up with their cracker barrel wisdom and invalidate her philosophy, even though no professional philosopher in half a century has been able to do so, I have to wonder what special knowledge they think they have. By all means, entertain us.

Perhaps these adults can also explain the part about feeling misunderstood, because it is rather opaque. When most of us feel misunderstood, we just restate our line of thinking until people understand it. In all seriousness, what on earth was that about? Are we to take that as some kind of psychological confession by leftists? What is an individual with such a mentality doing in the highest office in the land?

President Obama goes on to say, Then, as we get older, we realize that a world in which we're only thinking about ourselves and not thinking about anybody else, in which we're considering the entire project of developing ourselves as more important than our relationships to other people and making sure that everybody else has opportunity that that's a pretty narrow vision. It's not one that, I think, describes what's best in America.

This statement is so untethered from reality, it is hard to know where to begin. I will not begin by implicitly endorsing the notion that other people are the first or ultimate consideration in ethics by reassuring anyones crybaby sensibilities that Objectivism too cares about other peoples welfare. The good cops over at the Ayn Rand Institute, Yaron Brook and Don Watkins, have provided more than enough evidence over the years at their Forbes blog that Ayn Rands philosophy is eminently rational.

I am not affiliated with the Institute, so I have no such obligation. My preferred method is to take the billy club of logic to the opposite worldviews kneecaps and then beat it into the ground senseless. Anyone who makes everybody else the primary issue who needs upfront reassurance about the status of other people in a philosophical system isnt worth convincing. If someone is so hysterical about establishing the status of others that they insist on putting it before the question of their own, then they are weak, dependent, irrational, and, by their own admission, irrelevant.

Objectivism is a philosophy for winners, leaders, producers, creators, alpha males and females and those on their way. It is a philosophy for people with self-respect, self-loyalty, self-confidence, self-esteem, and independence. It is for those with a rugged individualist spirit. That is why Ayn Rand has an enormous reservoir of goodwill among the American people. America is a culture of winners. This is an exceptional nation, and Americans are still an exceptional people.

If you are an achiever, if you matter and you know it, why dont you give Ayn Rands nonfiction a serious read? Objectivism has answers. Lots and lots of rich, powerful answers.

The President or one of his fellow adults should also explain why, if it is wrong for us to spend our time how we wish and keep what we have earned, we are supposed to believe that it is right for others to take them. Ayn Rand, via John Galt, elaborates:

Why is it moral to serve the happiness of others, but not your own? If enjoyment is a value, why is it moral when experienced by others, but immoral when experienced by you? If the sensation of eating a cake is a value, why is it an immoral indulgence in your stomach, but a moral goal for you to achieve in the stomach of others? Why is it immoral for you to desire, but moral for others to do so? Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away? And if it is not moral for you to keep a value, why is it moral for others to accept it? If you are selfless and virtuous when you give it, are they not selfish and vicious when they take it? Does virtue consist of serving vice? Is the moral purpose of those who are good, self-immolation for the sake of those who are evil?

In addition, President Obama should explain how his system of mutual self-sacrificing is supposed to work in practice. If everyone is stopping their own self-development to assist others, then who is excelling? Who is advancing to the point that they are creating the opportunities that others are supposed to be given?

Instead of trying to coddle economic losers, our culture had better concern itself with how to produce the next generation of geniuses to drive the wealth-creation process, because the productive geniuses are what keep 300 million people from starvation and exposure, not the government. They are not going to come from the ranks of the non-profit do-gooders who spend their days bleating about income inequality and redistributing wealth to the economically non-productive.

We can set the stage by accepting a proper code of ethics now one that teaches that rational selfishness is good and being productive is virtuous.

Wendy Milling is a contributor toRealClearMarkets.com.

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President Obama Jabs At Ayn Rand, Knocks Himself Out

Tor Browser 8.0.3 Download – TechSpot

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Tor is a network of virtual tunnels that allows people and groups to improve their privacy and security on the Internet. It also enables software developers to create new communication tools with built-in privacy features. Tor provides the foundation for a range of applications that allow organizations and individuals to share information over public networks without compromising their privacy.

Individuals use Tor to keep websites from tracking them and their family members, or to connect to news sites, instant messaging services, or the like when these are blocked by their local Internet providers. Tor's hidden services let users publish web sites and other services without needing to reveal the location of the site. Individuals also use Tor for socially sensitive communication: chat rooms and web forums for rape and abuse survivors, or people with illnesses.

Journalists use Tor to communicate more safely with whistleblowers and dissidents. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) use Tor to allow their workers to connect to their home website while they're in a foreign country, without notifying everybody nearby that they're working with that organization.

Groups such as Indymedia recommend Tor for safeguarding their members' online privacy and security. Activist groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recommend Tor as a mechanism for maintaining civil liberties online. Corporations use Tor as a safe way to conduct competitive analysis, and to protect sensitive procurement patterns from eavesdroppers. They also use it to replace traditional VPNs, which reveal the exact amount and timing of communication. Which locations have employees working late? Which locations have employees consulting job-hunting websites? Which research divisions are communicating with the company's patent lawyers?

A branch of the U.S. Navy uses Tor for open source intelligence gathering, and one of its teams used Tor while deployed in the Middle East recently. Law enforcement uses Tor for visiting or surveilling web sites without leaving government IP addresses in their web logs, and for security during sting operations.

What's New:

Linux

Previous release notes:

The Tor Browser Team is proud to announce the first stable release in the 7.5 series. This release is available from the Tor Browser Project page and also from our distribution directory. This release features important security updates to Firefox.

Apart from the usual Firefox security updates it contains some notable improvements compared to the 7.0 series. Here are the highlights:

We redesigned parts of the Tor Browser user interface. One of the major improvements for our users is our new Tor Launcher experience. This work is based on the findings published at 'A Usability Evaluation of Tor Launcher', a paper done by Linda Lee et al. At our work we iterated on the redesign proposed by the research, improving it even further. Here are the main changes we would like to highlight:

Welcome Screen

Our old screen had way too much information for the users, leading many of them to spend great time confused about what to do. Some users at the paper experiment spent up to 40min confused about what they needed to be doing here. Besides simplifying the screen and the message, to make it easier for the user to know if they need to configure anything or not, we also did a 'brand refresh' bringing our logo to the launcher.

Censorship circumvention configuration

This is one of the most important steps for a user who is trying to connect to Tor while their network is censoring Tor. We also worked really hard to make sure the UI text would make it easy for the user to understand what a bridge is for and how to configure to use one. Another update was a little tip we added at the drop-down menu (as you can see below) for which bridge to use in countries that have very sophisticated censorship methods.

Proxy help information

The proxy settings at our Tor Launcher configuration wizard is an important feature for users who are under a network that demands such configuration. But it can also lead to a lot of confusion if the user has no idea what a proxy is. Since it is a very important feature for users, we decided to keep it in the main configuration screen and introduced a help prompt with an explanation of when someone would need such configuration.

As part of our work with the UX team, we will also be coordinating user testing of this new UI to continue iterating and make sure we are always improving our users' experience. We are also planning a series of improvements not only for the Tor Launcher flow but for the whole browser experience (once you are connected to Tor) including a new user onboarding flow. And last but not least we are streamlining both our mobile and desktop experience: Tor Browser 7.5 adapted the security slider design we did for mobile bringing the improved user experience to the desktop as well.

Other

Previous versions:

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Tor Browser 8.0.3 Download - TechSpot

Overview | Planets Solar System Exploration: NASA Science

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All These Worlds

Nov. 29, 2018: The latest mission to explore Marsthe only planet we know of populated entirely by robotsis safe on the ground and gearing up for two years of groundbreaking science.

NASA's Nov. 26 InSight landing on the Red Planet was supported by the twin MarCO spacecraft, the first interplanetary CubeSats.

More science robots are actively exploring these worlds: Venus, Earth, Earth's Moon, Mars, asteroid Bennu and Jupiter. Several spacecraft are watching the Sun.

NASA's New Horizons is closing in on a Jan. 1, 2019 rendezvous with a small body in the Kuiper Belt about a billion miles beyond Pluto. Meanwhile, ESA's BepiColombo is working its way toward Mercury in the inner solar system.

Explore in 3DEyes on the Solar System

Eyes on the Solar System lets you explore the planets, their moons, asteroids, comets and the spacecraft exploring them from 1950 to 2050. Ride with the Curiosity Rover as it lands on Mars or fly by Pluto with the New Horizons spacecraft all from the comfort of your home computer.

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Overview | Planets Solar System Exploration: NASA Science

APOD: 2018 October 29 – apod.nasa.gov

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Discover the cosmos!Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe isfeatured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2018 October 29

Explanation: How do galaxies grow?To help find out, the Hubble Space Telescope was deployed to image the unusual elliptical galaxy PGC 42871.How this galaxy came to be surrounded by numerous shells of stars may give clues about how it evolved. Embedded in the diffuse shells are massive globular clusters of stars -- stars which analyses show were born during three different epochs. This and other data indicate that PGC 42871 has been in at least two galactic collisions, at least one of which might have been with a former spiral galaxy.The remaining spiral galaxy on the far left is at the same distance as PGC 42871 and may have been involved in some of the collisions. PGC 42871 spans about 20 thousand light years and lies about 270 million light years away toward the constellation of Centaurus.

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APOD: 2018 October 29 - apod.nasa.gov

News | NASA’s Mars InSight Flexes Its Arm

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New images from NASA's Mars InSight lander show itsrobotic arm is ready to do some lifting.

With a reach of nearly 6 feet (2 meters), the arm will beused to pick up science instruments from the lander's deck, gently setting themon the Martian surface at Elysium Planitia, the lava plain where InSight toucheddown on Nov. 26.

But first, the arm will use its Instrument DeploymentCamera, located on its elbow, to take photos of the terrain in front of thelander. These images will help mission team members determine where to setInSight's seismometer and heat flow probe - the only instruments ever to berobotically placed on the surface of another planet.

"Today we can see the first glimpses of our workspace,"said Bruce Banerdt, the mission's principal investigator at NASA's JetPropulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "By early next week, we'llbe imaging it in finer detail and creating a full mosaic."

Another camera, called the Instrument Context Camera, islocated under the lander's deck. It will also offer views of the workspace,though the view won't be as pretty.

"We had a protective cover on the Instrument ContextCamera, but somehow dust still managed to get onto the lens," said TomHoffman of JPL, InSight's project manager. "While this is unfortunate, itwill not affect the role of the camera, which is to take images of the area infront of the lander where our instruments will eventually be placed."

Placement is critical, and the team is proceeding withcaution. Two to three months could go by before the instruments have beensituated and calibrated.

Over the past week and a half, mission engineers have beentesting those instruments and spacecraft systems, ensuring they're in workingorder. A couple instruments are even recording data: a drop in air pressure,possibly caused by a passing dust devil, was detected by the pressure sensor.This, along with a magnetometer and a set of wind and temperature sensors, arepart of a package called the Auxiliary Payload Sensor Subsystem, which willcollect meteorological data.

More images from InSight's arm were scheduled to come downthis past weekend. However, imaging was momentarily interrupted, resuming thefollowing day. During the first few weeks in its new home, InSight has beeninstructed to be extra careful, so anything unexpected will trigger what's calleda fault. Considered routine, it causes the spacecraft to stop what it is doingand ask for help from operators on the ground.

"We did extensive testing on Earth. But we know thateverything is a little different for the lander on Mars, so faults are notunusual," Hoffman said. "They can delay operations, but we're not ina rush. We want to be sure that each operation that we perform on Mars is safe,so we set our safety monitors to be fairly sensitive initially."

Spacecraft engineers had already factored extra time intotheir estimates for instrument deployment to account for likely delays causedby faults. The mission's primary mission is scheduled for two Earth years, orone Mars year - plenty of time to gather data from the Red Planet's surface.

About InSight

JPL manages InSight for NASA'sScience Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program,managed by the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including itscruise stage and lander, and supports spacecraft operations for the mission.

A number of European partners,including France's Centre National d'tudes Spatiales (CNES) and the GermanAerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission. CNES and the Institutde Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP) provided the Seismic Experiment forInterior Structure (SEIS)instrument, with significant contributions from the Max Planck Institute forSolar System Research (MPS) in Germany, the Swiss Institute of Technology (ETH)in Switzerland, Imperial College and Oxford University in the United Kingdom,and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3)instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK)of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain's Centro deAstrobiologa (CAB) supplied the wind sensors.

For more informationabout InSight, visit:

https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/

News Media Contact

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News | NASA's Mars InSight Flexes Its Arm

Fresh Tiger Stripes on Saturn’s Enceladus – apod.nasa.gov

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APOD: 2018 July 1 - Fresh Tiger Stripes on Saturn's Enceladus

Discover the cosmos!Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe isfeatured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2018 July 1

Explanation: Do underground oceans vent through the tiger stripes on Saturn's moon Enceladus? Long features dubbed tiger stripes are known to bespewing ice from the moon's icy interior into space,creating a cloud of fine ice particles over the moon's South Poleand creating Saturn's mysterious E-ring. Evidence for this has come from therobot Cassini spacecraft that orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017. Pictured here,a high resolution image of Enceladus is shown from a close flyby. The unusual surface features dubbedtiger stripes are visible in false-color blue. WhyEnceladus is active remains a mystery, as the neighboring moonMimas,approximately the same size, appearsquite dead.A recent analysis of ejected ice grains has yielded evidence that complex organic molecules exist inside Enceladus.These large carbon-rich molecules bolster -- but do not prove -- that oceans under Enceladus' surface could contain life.

Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff(MTU) &Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)NASA Official: Phillip NewmanSpecific rights apply.NASA WebPrivacy Policy and Important NoticesA service of:ASD atNASA /GSFC& Michigan Tech. U.

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Jordan | history – geography | Britannica.com

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Alternative Titles:Al-Mamlakah al-Urdunyah al-Hshimyah, Al-Urdun, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

Jordan, Arab country of Southwest Asia, in the rocky desert of the northern Arabian Peninsula.

Jordan is a young state that occupies an ancient land, one that bears the traces of many civilizations. Separated from ancient Palestine by the Jordan River, the region played a prominent role in biblical history. The ancient biblical kingdoms of Moab, Gilead, and Edom lie within its borders, as does the famed red stone city of Petra, the capital of the Nabatean kingdom and of the Roman province of Arabia Petraea. British traveler Gertrude Bell said of Petra, It is like a fairy tale city, all pink and wonderful. Part of the Ottoman Empire until 1918 and later a mandate of the United Kingdom, Jordan has been an independent kingdom since 1946. It is among the most politically liberal countries of the Arab world, and, although it shares in the troubles affecting the region, its rulers have expressed a commitment to maintaining peace and stability.

The capital and largest city in the country is Ammannamed for the Ammonites, who made the city their capital in the 13th century bce. Amman was later a great city of Middle Eastern antiquity, Philadelphia, of the Roman Decapolis, and now serves as one of the regions principal commercial and transportation centres as well as one of the Arab worlds major cultural capitals.

Slightly smaller in area than the country of Portugal, Jordan is bounded to the north by Syria, to the east by Iraq, to the southeast and south by Saudi Arabia, and to the west by Israel and the West Bank. The West Bank area (so named because it lies just west of the Jordan River) was under Jordanian rule from 1948 to 1967, but in 1988 Jordan renounced its claims to the area. Jordan has 16 miles (26 km) of coastline on the Gulf of Aqaba in the southwest, where Al-Aqabah, its only port, is located.

Jordan has three major physiographic regions (from east to west): the desert, the uplands east of the Jordan River, and the Jordan Valley (the northwest portion of the great East African Rift System).

The desert region is mostly within the Syrian Desertan extension of the Arabian Desertand occupies the eastern and southern parts of the country, comprising more than four-fifths of its territory. The deserts northern part is composed of volcanic lava and basalt, and its southern part of outcrops of sandstone and granite. The landscape is much eroded, primarily by wind. The uplands east of the Jordan River, an escarpment overlooking the rift valley, have an average elevation of 2,0003,000 feet (600900 metres) and rise to about 5,755 feet (1,754 metres) at Mount Ramm, Jordans highest point, in the south. Outcrops of sandstone, chalk, limestone, and flint extend to the extreme south, where igneous rocks predominate.

The Jordan Valley drops to about 1,410 feet (430 metres) below sea level at the Dead Sea, the lowest natural point on Earths surface.

The Jordan River, approximately 186 miles (300 km) in length, meanders south, draining the waters of Lake Tiberias (better known as the Sea of Galilee), the Yarmk River, and the valley streams of both plateaus into the Dead Sea, which occupies the central area of the valley. The soil of its lower reaches is highly saline, and the shores of the Dead Sea consist of salt marshes that do not support vegetation. To its south, Wadi al-Arabah (also called Wadi al-Jayb), a completely desolate region, is thought to contain mineral resources.

In the northern uplands several valleys containing perennial streams run west; around Al-Karak they flow west, east, and north; south of Al-Karak intermittent valley streams run east toward Al-Jafr Depression.

The countrys best soils are found in the Jordan Valley and in the area southeast of the Dead Sea. The topsoil in both regions consists of alluviumdeposited by the Jordan River and washed from the uplands, respectivelywith the soil in the valley generally being deposited in fans spread over various grades of marl.

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The Neurohacking Association

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Here's another new year; that's another new chanceTo remake our lives, you and me;A world without borders or barriers or bounds

A world some don't want us to see...

Each year I resolve with the strongest intentTo go farther this year than the last.And to look back and see how far last year I went,Though distractions distract me so fast!

I did meditation and lay on my bed,

I just started to feel where its at,

With a wonderful warmth round the top of my head,

Then I looked up and saw its the cat.

I threw out my TV! My girlfriend went too,

But that's a good lesson you see;

It was 50 wide, and I think on the side

She was living with it, not with me.

I went low GI and I've lost lots of weight

And now eating whatever I please,

But last night I dreamed I had antlers and wings,

So I really must lay off the cheese.

My new GSR made an interesting noise,

Which I hoped was my mind rearranging,

Then I read the instructions; my genius it seems

Was just that the batteries need changing.

But with this new year I just know Ill win out,Just watch how I do and youll see!Im not going to head for another blowout;Ill be cool as I know I can be.

Cos when stupid things beckon, and Im not so strong,When I snapback and fall on my ass,Ill be thankful again you folks help me alongAs you have during all the years past.

Im so grateful that youre all here! Happy New Year!

potmouse

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The Neurohacking Association

Blockchain Whispers: The Most Accurate Crypto Signals

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I wanted to write this article yesterday, but then I reminded myself it's 2AM, and time to go to sleep.

So as I was trying to fall asleep, I was thinking about how to present it to you.

There are 4 key levels of accuracy defined by trading style / decision source that limit your trading success.

Level 1: The Least Accurate Crypto Trading Signals - Listening To The Public

The odds of your Bitcoin Signals turning success: 1 in 15

The odds of your Altcoin Signals turning a success: 1 in 8

The public is 90% wrong, and when they are wrong, public cuts losses late and wins early. Remember this.

The public is so inaccurate that CNBC was 'famous' for a while for being a 95% inaccurate, and very good medium for counter-trading. that 95% gives you approximate odds public has versus the pros.

Listening to public forums is worse than...

Level 2: Almost As Bad Crypto Trading Signals - Listening To Your Gut

The odds of your Bitcoin signals turning a success: 1 in 10

The odds of your altcoin signals turning a success: 1 in 4

Yes, there is the sixth sense, and all that, but for the matter of practical discussion, let's admit it - you are not a Yogi, and you are not so fine-tuned with your gut... so basically what you do is gamble. The problem with that is, your odds are not even 50-50, because if you leverage bitcoin, or use any kind of stop loss - very frequently you are caught by a stop hunt, that just triggers your stop and then goes into the right direction - even the one you suspected as right. Thus your odds are not a coin flip 50% up and 50% down. It's way worse.

For non-leveraged alts, the odds are significantly better, still far from beneficial for you.

Level 3: Okay altcoin signals, and still not tradeable Bitcoin signals - Listening to public TA

The odds of your Bitcoin signals turning a success: 1 in 7

The odds of your altcoin signals turning a success: 2 in 5

The major problem with free, public TAs is what we witnessed at Blockchain Whispers when we reached major following, the perfect signal turned the opposite direction. Also, public TA is just a bit more select group of people that have the same public knowledge but just dig a bit deeper... CNBC was 95% inaccurate... public TAs are around 70% inaccurate.

They use the same tools, see the same things, 20 years ago TA was a revolution, an edge... now it's a method to fool masses who still base trades on RSI, FIB and MACD.

Level 4: Professionals

Odds of your bitcoin signals turning a success: 6 in 10, 7 in 10, 8 in 10 (world class) and 9 in 10 (very rare cases).

The odds of your altcoin signals turning a success: 7 in 10, 8 in 10 and 9 in 10 (very frequent in bitcoin favorable times)

Most of the professionals earning a good living trading are at around 7 out of 10 accuracy, and with proper portfolio management, they can work, get hired or even trade for themselves all day long. Of course professional crypto traders are a new breed, and most struggling are coming from stocks, and most accurate that I saw are coming from forex background.

Still, the adjusting even from forex is needed. Crypto is a body within itself.

Now remember this, NO professional trader, can have 10/10 accuracy for a long time. It is impossible. The limitations of historic predictions are around 8 out of 10 and those 9/10 that I mentioned are a stretch... either a good momentum, or a big chunk of luck. 8 out of ten or 8.5/10 is where top pros reside.

At Blockchain Whispers I am looking for 8+ out of 10 traders. I have one that is 9 out of 10 but I still believe it is just a period of statistical anomaly.

Unfortunately, the most accurate bitcoin traders are:

Level 5: The InsidersThe odds of your Bitcoin signals turning a success: 19 in 20The odds of your altcoin signals turning a success: 48 in 50 (volatile btc times) and 49 in 50 (stable btc times)

Owning an exchange, seeing the stops, liquidation points, orders... and in some cases (BitMEX) allowing you to block the trading of others when you see fit (system overload example Bitmex uses often)... beats TA, FA, and pretty much anything else.

Obviously Bitmex has the highest insider edge, and is pushing upwards that 19 out of 20... while other exchanges, whale groups, etc are specialized either for longer timeframes, or concentrated micro moves.

Imagine for example a factor many traders take into account - Bitfinex shorts vs longs... Bitfinex prints tether, they made the whole operation for controling the outcome... why don't you think they can't put their own 'longs' or 'shorts' and fool that figure?

And what happens in rare cases when those insiders fail?

Sometimes, like the recent example, they refuse to lose - so we saw a big discrepancy between Binance price and Bitmex price, with coinbase being one group Bitfinex another...

And now you think you can't win?

Wrong. You can. Because they all need retail investors.And retail investors won't trade if they never win, and if you have an edge over 90% of retail investors, you are in nice profit. But use this article as a big realization, and that is...

The Portfolio Management - Because You Will Never Be Right Forever

Great, great example is Sicario Bitmex Signalsif you managed at the end of the cycle with Sicario to end up in loss, your portfolio management is fomo-terrible.

But cry not, it can be easily fixed.

For starters, use 5% of your total portfolio per call. Always the same amount. Always respecting the leverage, and finally... be willing to miss a trade if you are late and your entry doesn't fulfill.

The time will come when all those institutions will be rekt... Bitmex, Bitfinex, Coinbase... actually Coinbase and Binance latest (if at all) as they play cleaner game, but that time won't come soon. And for the matter of fact, they are NOT your problem. For Bitmex and Bitfinex, as manipulative as they are you have to be grateful because they let you trade... and if you ever have a better choice, you will go there and never look back.

(Maybe Deribit makes some progress!)

Until then... keep on hustling, with higher discipline, because as the greatest investor of all times said: the market is moving money from inpatient to patient.

Be patient, stay believing, Bitcoin to the moon,D

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Blockchain Whispers: The Most Accurate Crypto Signals

Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.

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Bush’s Funeral Wasn’t About Trump. But Of Course It Was …

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The memorial service for George H.W. Bush was a perfectly civil and eminently civilized event, and if one was listening in a literal-minded way it all sounded like a grand exception to life in modern Washingtontwo hours of stories and tributes that were entirely bereft of political tension.

The only way to listen in a literal frame of mind, of course, was through some equivalent of self-lobotomyto be willfully oblivious of context, guileless in a way that certainly does not describe Bush or any of the people he chose to speak at his farewell.

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The service was replete with praise for the 41st president that could, with just the slightest nudge of interpretation, be heard as implied rebuke of the 45th president. But only implied, never explicitthis, unlike almost everything else in American politics today, was not about Donald Trump.

And yet it very much was. Speakers rhapsodized about Bushs natural good cheer and optimism; his willingness to share credit and accept blame; his preference for self-deprecating humor; his gift for personal diplomacy; his loyalty to friends when they were down; his talent at assembling international coalitions; his mistrust of unthinking partisanship; his inaugural address in which he said that Americans must judge our lives by kindness to friends and neighbors rather than the pursuit of a bigger car, a bigger bank account; his commitment to truth and to living up to the obligations of a gentleman.

Who wouldnt admire these traits? Or expect that any president should try to emulate them?

To be political while sounding apolitical is a lost art in contemporary times, and it would be hard for President Trump to claim injury because his name was never mentioned. President George W. Bushwho, like his father, broke with his party in not supporting Trumpswerved skillfully around that by starting his remarks by thanking distinguished guests and then, with seeming emphasis, adding including our presidents and first ladies but mentioning none of them by name.

The four living ex-presidents other than George W. Bush all sat together in the front row and the cameras caught Trump in a pose that, if he were a child, might have gotten him a whispered correction from a parentdont cross your arms in a church service! Thats a pretty minor sinwho among hasnt fidgeted in our seats or snuck a furtive glance at our phones?and hardly detracted from the general mood of Washington on best behavior.

Hillary Clinton likewise deserves some forbearance on body language. When Trump arrived he shook hands with former President Obama, with whom he has not spoken in some two years, and former President Bill Clinton looked over with what seemed to be the slightest nod of recognition while his wife looked straight ahead. Some social media commenters said this was rude. But the rap on Clinton as candidate was that she was supposedly calculating and un-genuine. It was hard not to appreciate the sincerity of her straight-ahead stare, avoiding eye contact with the man who led crowds in chants of lock her up and still assails her regularly on Twitter. Given the heat of everyday political discourse, the coldness of the moment was in its own way more compelling.

Three months ago, the same spacethe Washington National Cathedralhosted another memorial service after the passing of Sen. John McCain. Like Bush, he had the lead time to carefully plan his own service, which became weaponized after a dying McCain made clear that he did not want the man who derided him for having been captured in Vietnam to be present. The Bush family, by contrast, was willing to set aside its disdain for Trumpthe taunts of low-energy Jeb, the relentless criticism of George W.s Iraq war. Whether out of respect for the office or a desire to avoid another politicized Washington funeral, they made it clear that their leader had very much wanted the current president to be there, and in remarks in recent days family members had emphasized that Trump has been very gracious. Assuming that comment to be entirely sincere, it is still a shrewdly effective way to shift the weeks events toward groundpolite, decorous, devoid of controversythat is hardly Trumps natural terrain. One supposes that he was not sorry when the plane that is normally Air Force One lifted off to carry the 41st president back to Texas for burial, allowing Washington to return to normal business for the first time since Friday evening.

The commentariats focus on Bushs contrast with Trump tended to take attention from what might otherwise have been the dominant motif of the memorial service: the contrast, and communion, between generations.

Like many people his age, Bushwho was born in 1924reached adulthood in accelerated fashion, with the onset of war and the self-possession that comes with facing ultimate danger in combat, the sense of perspective from knowing plenty of young people who never came home.

But, also like many people his age, Bush in some ways became an old person in accelerated fashion. By the time he was in early middle age, at age 40, one of the themes of his public career was already taking shapea tension with a younger generation who challenged the establishment values that Bush held dear, who didnt share his faith the old verities.

This generational jostling took place in his own family. George W. Bush, born in 1946, never joined the counterculture but he did dabble in the spirit of rebellion and libertinism that defined the 1960s, and he didnt join in the Bush family tradition of professional overachievement until he was approaching age 40.

And the elder Bush was never comfortable with baby boomer values as they became ascendant in politics. After his victory in the first Persian Gulf War in 1991, Bush boasted, We have finally kicked the Vietnam syndromehis derisive term for people who were skeptical of the efficacy and virtue of American military force. (That notion, of course, proved overly optimistic decades later in the broiling sands of Iraq.)

A year later, Bush was mystified to be beaten by someone his supporters disdained as the personification of flabby baby boomer values: Bill Clinton. During Clintons presidency Bushand, in particular, former first lady Barbara Bushmade plain at key intervals their dim appraisal of Clintons character. It was only later, after Clinton left office, that a genuine friendship between the two men blossomed.

W. cited this post-presidential bond during his remarks, calling Bill Clinton one of several brothers from other mothers.

One advantage of living to 94 is that one gets to witness even people regarded as impertinent youngsters become old men. George W. Bush and Bill Clinton are both now 72 and look it.

And that perhaps was another one of the enduring conclusions of Bushs elegant memorial service: Public figures, including presidents, tend to live awfully long these days. Joining Bush, Clinton and Obama among the living ex-presidents in attendance was Jimmy Carter, age 94, who if he lives into April of next year will surpass George H.W. Bush as the oldest ex-president ever.

Joining George W. Bush and historian Jon Meacham in the eulogies were former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who will turn 80 in March, and former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) who is 87. There were references in remarks to George H.W. Bushs longtime friend, James A. Baker III, age 88, who wept in a reference to his visit to Bushs deathbed in Houston.

This trend toward longevity has been evident for a while. Ronald Reagan died in 2004 at age 93; Gerald Ford died in 2006, also at 93. This recent record may obscure how unusual this is. George H.W. Bush lived more than twice as long as John F. Kennedy, the youngest president to die. And such icons as Theodore Roosevelt, who died at 60, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who died at 63, or Lyndon B. Johnson, at age 64. Even Richard Nixon, who seemed like quite an old man at his death in 1994, made it only to 81.

Perhaps the living presidents in the cathedral Wednesday had the same thought: With a combination of good genes and good luck it is now reasonable to suppose they may, like Bush, live long enough to see the process of historical reappraisal take place in their own lifetimes.

And perhaps, as he folded his arms and listened to the encomiums for his predecessor, that was what Trump was thinking, too.

John F. Harris is editor-in-chief of POLITICOand author of"The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House."

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Bush's Funeral Wasn't About Trump. But Of Course It Was ...

Elevating the Human Condition – Humanity+ What does it …

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What does it mean to be human in a technologically enhanced world? Humanity+ is a 501(c)3 international nonprofit membership organization that advocates the ethical use of technology, such as artificial intelligence, to expand human capacities. In other words, we want people to be better than well. This is the goal of transhumanism.

Humannity+ Advocates for Safe and Ethical Use: Technologies that intervene with human physiology for curing disease and repairing injury have accelerated to a point in which they also can increase human performance outside the realms of what is considered to be normal for humans. These technologies are referred to as emerging and speculative and include artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, nanomedicine, biotechnology, genetic engineering, stem cell cloning, and transgenesis, for example. Other technologies that could extend and expand human capabilities outside physiology include artificial intelligence, artificial general intelligence, robotics, and brain-computer integration, which form the domain of bionics, uploading, and could be used for developing whole body prosthetics. Because these technologies, and their respective sciences and strategic models, such as blockchain, would take the human beyond the normal state of existence, society, including bioethicists and others who advocate the safe use of technology, have shown concern and uncertainties about the downside of these technologies and possible problematic and dangerous outcomes for our species.

CURRENT PROJECTS: Humanity+ @ Beijing Conference; Blockchain Prize; Humanity+ @ The Assemblage New York City; TransVision 2018 Madrid, Spain.

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Elevating the Human Condition - Humanity+ What does it ...

Do it yourself – Wikipedia

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"Do it yourself" ("DIY") is the method of building, modifying, or repairing things without the direct aid of experts or professionals. Academic research describes DIY as behaviors where "individuals engage raw and semi-raw materials and parts to produce, transform, or reconstruct material possessions, including those drawn from the natural environment (e.g., landscaping)".[1] DIY behavior can be triggered by various motivations previously categorized as marketplace motivations (economic benefits, lack of product availability, lack of product quality, need for customization), and identity enhancement (craftsmanship, empowerment, community seeking, uniqueness).[2]

The term "do-it-yourself" has been associated with consumers since at least 1912 primarily in the domain of home improvement and maintenance activities.[3] The phrase "do it yourself" had come into common usage (in standard English) by the 1950s,[4] in reference to the emergence of a trend of people undertaking home improvement and various other small craft and construction projects as both a creative-recreational and cost-saving activity.

Subsequently, the term DIY has taken on a broader meaning that covers a wide range of skill sets. DIY is associated with the international alternative rock, punk rock, and indie rock music scenes; indymedia networks, pirate radio stations, and the zine community. In this context, DIY is related to the Arts and Crafts movement, in that it offers an alternative to modern consumer culture's emphasis on relying on others to satisfy needs. It has also become prevalent in the personal finance. When investing in the stock one can utilize a professional advisor or partake in do-it-yourself investing.

Italian archaeologists unearthed the ruins of a 6th-century BC Greek structure in southern Italy that came with detailed assembly instructions and is being called an "ancient IKEA building". The structure was a temple-like building discovered at Torre Satriano, near the southern city of Potenza, in Basilicata, a region where local people mingled with Greeks who settled along the southern coast known as Magna Graecia and in Sicily from the 8th century BC onwards. Professor Christopher Smith, director of the British School at Rome, said that the discovery was "the clearest example yet found of mason's marks of the time. It looks as if someone was instructing others how to mass-produce components and put them together in this way". Much like the instruction booklets, various sections of the luxury building were inscribed with coded symbols showing how the pieces slotted together. The characteristics of these inscriptions indicate they date back to around the 6th century BC, which tallies with the architectural evidence suggested by the decoration. The building was built by Greek artisans coming from the Spartan colony of Taranto in Apulia.[5][6][7]

In North America, there was a DIY magazine publishing niche in the first half of the twentieth century. Magazines such as Popular Mechanics (founded in 1902) and Mechanix Illustrated (founded in 1928) offered a way for readers to keep current on useful practical skills, techniques, tools, and materials. As many readers lived in rural or semi-rural regions, initially much of the material related to their needs on the farm or in a small town.

The DIY movement is a re-introduction (often to urban and suburban dwellers) of the old pattern of personal involvement and use of skills in the upkeep of a house or apartment, making clothes; maintenance of cars, computers, websites; or any material aspect of living. The philosopher Alan Watts (from the "Houseboat Summit" panel discussion in a 1967 edition of the San Francisco Oracle) reflected a growing sentiment:

Our educational system, in its entirety, does nothing to give us any kind of material competence. In other words, we don't learn how to cook, how to make clothes, how to build houses, how to make love, or to do any of the absolutely fundamental things of life. The whole education that we get for our children in school is entirely in terms of abstractions. It trains you to be an insurance salesman or a bureaucrat, or some kind of cerebral character.[8]

In the 1970s, DIY spread through the North American population of college- and recent-college-graduate age groups. In part, this movement involved the renovation of affordable, rundown older homes. But it also related to various projects expressing the social and environmental vision of the 1960s and early 1970s. The young visionary Stewart Brand, working with friends and family, and initially using the most basic of typesetting and page-layout tools, published the first edition of The Whole Earth Catalog (subtitled Access to Tools) in late 1968.

The first Catalog, and its successors, used a broad definition of the term "tools". There were informational tools, such as books (often technical in nature), professional journals, courses, classes, and the like. There were specialized, designed items, such as carpenters' and masons' tools, garden tools, welding equipment, chainsaws, fiberglass materials and so on; even early personal computers. The designer J. Baldwin acted as editor to include such items, writing many of the reviews. The Catalog's publication both emerged from and spurred the great wave of experimentalism, convention-breaking, and do-it-yourself attitude of the late 1960s. Often copied, the Catalog appealed to a wide cross-section of people in North America and had a broad influence.

DIY home improvement books burgeoned in the 1970s, first created as collections of magazine articles. An early, extensive line of DIY how-to books was created by Sunset Books, based upon previously published articles from their magazine, Sunset, based in California. Time-Life, Better Homes and Gardens, Balcony Garden Web and other publishers soon followed suit.

In the mid-1990s, DIY home-improvement content began to find its way onto the World Wide Web. HouseNet was the earliest bulletin-board style site where users could share information. HomeTips.com, established in early 1995, was among the first Web-based sites to deliver free extensive DIY home-improvement content created by expert authors.[citation needed] Since the late 1990s, DIY has exploded on the Web through thousands of sites.

In the 1970s, when home video (VCRs) came along, DIY instructors quickly grasped its potential for demonstrating processes by audio-visual means. In 1979, the PBS television series This Old House, starring Bob Vila, premiered and this spurred a DIY television revolution. The show was immensely popular, educating people on how to improve their living conditions (and the value of their house) without the expense of paying someone else to do (as much of) the work. In 1994, the HGTV Network cable television channel was launched in the United States and Canada, followed in 1999 by the DIY Network cable television channel. Both were launched to appeal to the growing percentage of North Americans interested in DIY topics, from home improvement to knitting. Such channels have multiple shows showing how to stretch one's budget to achieve professional-looking results (Design Cents, Design on a Dime, etc.) while doing the work yourself. Toolbelt Diva specifically caters to female DIYers.

Beyond magazines and television, the scope of home improvement DIY continues to grow online where most mainstream media outlets now have extensive DIY-focused informational websites such as This Old House, Martha Stewart, Hometalk, and the DIY Network. These are often extensions of their magazine or television brand. The growth of independent online DIY resources is also spiking.[9] The number of homeowners who blog about their experiences continues to grow, along with DIY websites from smaller organizations.

DIY amongst the fashion community is popular, with ideas being shared on social media such as YouTube about clothing, jewellery, makeup and hair styles. Techniques include distressing jeans, bleaching jeans, redesigning an old shirt, and studding denim. This trend is becoming popular.

The terms "DIY" and "do-it-yourself" are also used to describe:

DIY as a subculture could be said to have begun with the punk movement of the 1970s.[13] Instead of traditional means of bands reaching their audiences through large music labels, bands began recording, manufacturing albums and merchandise, booking their own tours, and creating opportunities for smaller bands to get wider recognition and gain cult status through repetitive low-cost DIY touring. The burgeoning zine movement took up coverage of and promotion of the underground punk scenes, and significantly altered the way fans interacted with musicians. Zines quickly branched off from being hand-made music magazines to become more personal; they quickly became one of the youth culture's gateways to DIY culture. This led to tutorial zines showing others how to make their own shirts, posters, zines, books, food, etc.

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Do it yourself - Wikipedia

Gambling | Define Gambling at Dictionary.com

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[gam-bling]

SynonymsExamplesWord Origin

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[gam-buhl]

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Dictionary.com UnabridgedBased on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Random House, Inc. 2018

I was not with him on the 29th when he was gambling and then drove home and actually got the DUI.

She was gambling on a coin toss where somehow heads, you win would have been politically more advantageous than tails, I lose.

Is gambling culture more desirable than gay culture and counterculture?

But the other side of the coin would be, inevitably, the flowering of crime and corruption around the gambling business.

By joining a private equity firm, the former Florida governor and 2016 hopeful is gambling with his reputation.

It's Bill that's spent the money on his cussed booze and gambling.

The gambling houses can do it, and so keep on breaking the law.

My brother should have supported them, but all his money went on the race course, gambling.

This modified form of gambling is especially dangerous to the young.

There was only one passion which he did not concealthe passion for gambling.

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C18: probably variant of game 1

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

1726 (implied in gambling), from a dialectal survival of Middle English gammlen, variant of gamenen "to play, jest, be merry," from Old English gamenian "to play, joke, pun," from gamen (see game). Or possibly gamble is from a derivative of gamel "to play games" (1590s), itself likely a frequentative from game. Originally regarded as a slang word. The intrusive -b- may be from confusion with gambol. Related: Gambled; gambling.

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"risky venture," 1823, from gamble (v.).

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Online Etymology Dictionary, 2010 Douglas Harper

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Gambling | Define Gambling at Dictionary.com

Eugenics – Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Eugenics is a social and political philosophy. It tries to influence the way people choose to mate and raise children, with the aim of improving the human species.

Eugenics rests on some basic ideas. The first is that, in genetics, what is true of animals is also true of man. The characteristics of animals are passed on from one generation to the next in heredity, including mental characteristics. For example, the behaviour and mental characteristics of different breeds of dog differ, and all modern breeds are greatly changed from wolves.[1] The breeding and genetics of farm animals show that if the parents of the next generation are chosen, then that affects what offspring are born.

Negative eugenics aims to cut out traits that lead to suffering, by limiting people with the traits from reproducing. Positive eugenics aims to produce more healthy and intelligent humans, by persuading people with those traits to have more children.[2]p85 In the past, many ways were proposed for doing this, and even today eugenics means different things to different people. The idea of eugenics is controversial, because in the past it was sometimes used to justify discrimination and injustice against people who were thought to be genetically unhealthy or inferior.

Contents

Modern eugenics was first invented in 1865 by Sir Francis Galton, a British scientist who was the cousin of Charles Darwin.[3] Galton believed that intelligence and talent were hereditary and were passed from parent to their children. Based on this, he thought that people could be bred to be smarter, just like animals were bred to be larger or smaller. Galton thought the best way to do this was to learn more about heredity, and also to tell people that they should only marry people who were smart and strong. Galton chose the name "Eugenics" because it was very similar to the Greek for "well born".

Galton developed the idea of eugenics throughout his life. He understood the two types of eugenics, positive and negative eugenics. One problem, which critics brought up, is the difficulty of agreeing on who is a healthy person, genetically speaking, and who is an inferior person. Obviously, opinions differ.

The rediscovery of the scientific work of Gregor Mendel in 1900 led to modern genetics, and an understanding of how heredity worked. Mendel himself experimented on peas, and found that many characteristics of the pea plants, such as their colour or their height, could be turned on and off through heredity like a switch. For example, his peas could be either yellow or green, one or the other.

When applied to humans, people thought this meant that human characteristics, like being smart or not, could be influenced by heredity.

Another line of thought goes like this. During their evolution, humans were subject to natural selection like any other form of life. On average, healthy and intelligent people had a better chance of reproducing. In modern civilisation, however, it often seems that this process does not apply. Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin had discussed this very point, with concern.[2]p70 In countries where statistics were collected, those statistics showed that in many cases the poor had more children than the rich. Also, statistics showed that the total population of some great nations was declining.[2]p73 One startling piece of information was produced by research directed by Karl Pearson, the Galton Professor of Eugenics at University College London, and the founder of the Department of Applied Statistics. The finding was that half of each succeeding generation was produced by no more than a quarter of the previous generation, and that quarter was "disproportionately located amongst the dregs of society".[2]p74

The evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley was also a supporter of eugenics. He used this argument several times:

The American historian of science Garland Allen commented:"The agricultural analogy appears over and over again as it did in the writings of many American eugenicists".[4]

Similarly, the American geneticist Charles Davenport was a lifelong promoter of eugenics, and wrote one of its first textbooks.[2][5][6]Chapter 3 There is no doubt of the support given to eugenics by professional scientists of undoubted repute.

In the United States, eugenics became a very popular idea in the early 20th century. People thought it would cure society of all of its problems at the time, like crime and poverty, because they thought that all aspects of human behavior were probably hereditary. Very important scientists and politicians supported eugenics, and most thought it was a very progressive and scientific philosophy.

But some of those who led the eugenics movement used it to justify racism and prejudice. They used eugenics as an excuse to pass laws which to restrict immigration from countries that they did not like, saying that the people in them were genetically "unfit". They also passed laws which said that people of different races could not get married to one another. Most importantly, they passed laws which said that people who were thought to have mental illness or mental disability could be sterilised against their will. Under these laws over 60,000 people were sterilised in the United States between 1907 and the 1970s.

Today we know that interpreting statistics of this type is a complex business, and that many of the studies published early in the 20th century have serious flaws. Nevertheless, what stopped the eugenics movement was not better science. It was the realization, after World War II, of the effects of Nazi policies on race in Germany and other countries occupied during the war.[7] Such war crimes were not, of course, advocated by any eugenicist. All the same, there was a common theme. This theme was the growing interest in the rights of individuals as against the rights of the state.

With the end of the Second World War, forced sterilisation ended in Germany. It was continued in the United States until 1974. The main targets were at first those that were ill or that had some physical or mental disabilities.

Only in 1985 was a law of the Swiss canton of Vaud abolished. This law allowed for the forced sterilisation of a certain group of people. It was replaced by a law on the national level, that tells under which circumstances people who are unable to consent, may be sterilised.

Though there are few people who openly advocate eugenics today, many people wonder what improvements in genetic technologies will mean in the future.

Genetic counselling exists, where parents can get information about their heredity and even prevent the birth of a child if it has a risk of hereditary illness. Some people do not think the issue is so clear, though, and wonder if genetic screening, genetic counselling, and birth control, are all just another type of eugenics. Some people wonder if it is bad because it infringes human dignity. Some people oppose eugenics and genetic counselling for religious reasons. The idea of eugenics is controversial today for these reasons.

Much of this concern is misplaced. Genetic counselling is not going to change the genetic composition of the human population to any noticeable extent. More relevant is the developing power to identify, and then to change directly, elements of the human genome (genetic engineering). This does have the potential to change the genetic structure of human populations.

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Futurism (Christianity) – Wikipedia

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Futurism is a Christian eschatological view that interprets portions of the Book of Revelation and the Book of Daniel as future events in a literal, physical, apocalyptic, and global context.[1]

By comparison, other Christian eschatological views interpret these passages as past events in a symbolic, historic context (Preterism and Historicism), or as present-day events in a non-literal and spiritual context (Idealism). Futurist beliefs usually have a close association with Premillennialism and Dispensationalism.

Some elements of the futurist interpretation of Revelation and Daniel appeared in the early centuries of the Christian Church. However, the view was not popular. Irenaeus of Lyon (died c. 202), for instance, subscribed to the view that Daniel's 70th week awaited a future fulfillment.[2] During the Middle Ages and before the Protestant Reformation futurist interpretations were virtually non-existent.[citation needed]

Two Catholic Jesuit writers, Manuel Lacunza (1731-1801) and Francisco Ribera (1537-1591), proposed the futurist view. Lacunza wrote under the pen name "Ben-Ezra", and his work was banned by the Catholic Church. It[clarification needed] has grown in popularity in the 19th and 20th centuries, so that today it is probably the most readily recognized.[3][not in citation given][4]

The futurist view assigns all or most of the prophecy to the future, shortly before the Second Coming; especially when interpreted in conjunction with Daniel, Isaiah 2:11-22, 1 Thessalonians 4:155:11, and other eschatological sections of the Bible.[citation needed]

Futurist interpretations generally predict a resurrection of the dead and a rapture of the living, wherein all true Christians are gathered to Christ prior to the time God's kingdom comes on earth. They also believe a tribulation will occur - a seven-year period of time when believers will experience worldwide persecution and martyrdom. Futurists differ on when believers will be raptured, but there are three primary views: 1) before the tribulation; 2) near or at the midpoint of the tribulation; or 3) at the end of the tribulation. There is also a fourth view of multiple raptures throughout the tribulation, but this view does not have a mainstream following.[citation needed]

Pretribulationists believe that all Christians then alive will be taken up to meet Christ before the Tribulation begins. In this manner, Christians are "kept from" the Tribulation, such as Enoch was removed before God judged the antediluvian world, in contrast with Noah who was "kept through" wrath and judgement of God in the flood of Genesis.[citation needed]

Midtribulationists believe that the rapture of the faithful will occur approximately halfway through the Tribulation, after it begins but before the worst part of it occurs. Some midtribulationists, particularly those[who?] holding to a "pre-wrath rapture" of the church, believe that God's wrath is poured out during a "Great Tribulation" that is limited to the last 3 years of the Tribulation, after believers have been caught up to Christ.[citation needed]

Post-tribulationists believe that Christians will be gathered in the clouds with Christ and join him in his return to earth. (Pretribulationist Tim LaHaye admits a post-tribulation rapture is the closest of the three views to that held by the early church.)[citation needed]

All three views hold that Christians will return with Christ at the end of the Tribulation. Proponents of all three views also generally portray Israel as unwittingly signing a seven-year peace treaty with the Antichrist, which initiates the seven-year Tribulation. Many also tend to view the Antichrist as head of a revived Roman Empire, but the geographic location of this empire is unknown. Hal Lindsey suggests that this revived Roman Empire will be centered in western Europe, with Rome as its capital. Tim LaHaye promotes the belief that Babylon will be the capital of a worldwide empire. Joel Richardson and Walid Shoebat have both recently written books proposing a revived eastern Roman Empire, which will fall with the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire. (Istanbul also has seven hills, was a capital of the Roman Empire as Constantinople, known as the Byzantine Empire, and a body of water in the city is known as the Golden Horn - notable given the eschatological references to the "Little Horn"Daniel 7:8,8:9.)[citation needed]

The various views on tribulation are actually a subset of theological interpretations on the Millennium, mentioned in Revelation 20. There are three main interpretations: Premillennialism, Amillennialism, and Postmillennialism.[citation needed]

Premillennialism believes that Christ will return to the earth, bind Satan, and reign for a literal thousand years on earth with Jerusalem as his capital. Thus Christ returns before ("pre-") the thousand years mentioned in chapter 20. There are generally two subclasses of Premillennialism: Dispensational and Historic. Some form of premillennialism is thought to be the oldest millennial view in church history.[5] Papias, believed to be a disciple of the Apostle John, was a premillennialist, according to Eusebius. Also Justin Martyr and Irenaeus expressed belief in premillennialism in their writings.

Amillennialism, the traditional view for Catholicism, believes that the thousand years mentioned are not ("a-") a literal thousand years, but is figurative for what is now the church age, usually, the time between Christ's ascension and second coming. This view is often associated with Augustine of Hippo. Amillennialists differ on the time frame of the millennium. Some say it started with Pentecost, others say it started with the fulfillment of Jesus' prophecy regarding the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem (70), and other starting points have also been proposed. Whether this eschatology is the result of caesaropapism, which may have also been the reason that premillennialism was condemned, is sharply disputed.[citation needed]

Postmillennialism believes that Christ will return after ("post-") a literal/figurative thousand years, in which the world will have essentially become a Christendom. This view was held by Jonathan Edwards.[citation needed]

In the futurist view of Christian eschatology, the Tribulation is a relatively short period of time where anyone who chose not to follow God before the Rapture and was left behind (according to Pre-Tribulation doctrine, not Mid- or Post-Tribulation teaching) will experience worldwide hardships, disasters, famine, war, pain, and suffering, which will wipe out more than 75% of all life on the earth before the Second Coming takes place.[citation needed]

According to some Dispensationalists who hold the futurist view, the Tribulation is thought to occur before the Second Coming of Jesus and during the End Times. Another version holds that it will last seven years in all, being the last of Daniel's prophecy of seventy weeks. This viewpoint was first made popular by John Nelson Darby in the 19th century and was recently popularized by Hal Lindsey in The Late Great Planet Earth. It is theorized that each week represents seven years, with the timetable beginning from Artaxerxes' order to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem (the Second Temple). After seven plus 62 weeks, the prophecy says that the messiah will be "cut off", which is taken to correspond to the death of Christ. This is seen as creating a break of indeterminate length in the timeline, with one week remaining to be fulfilled.[citation needed]

This seven-year week may be further divided into two periods of 3.5 years each, from the two 3.5-year periods in Daniel's prophecy where the last seven years are divided into two 3.5-year periods, (Daniel 9:27) The time period for these beliefs is also based on other passages: in the book of Daniel, "time, times, and half a time", interpreted as "a year, two years, and half a year," and the Book of Revelation, "a thousand two hundred and threescore days" and "forty and two months" (the prophetic month averaging 30 days, hence 1260/30 = 42 months or 3.5 years). The 1290 days of Daniel 12:11, (rather than the 1260 days of Revelation 11:3), is thought to be the result of either a simple intercalary leap month adjustment, or due to further calculations related to the prophecy, or due to an intermediate stage of time that is to prepare the world for the beginning of the millennial reign.[6]

Among futurists there are differing views about what will happen to Christians during the Tribulation:[citation needed]

In pretribulationism and midtribulationism, the Rapture and the Second Coming (or Greek, par[a]ousia) of Christ are separate events, while in post-tribulationism the two events are identical or simultaneous. Another feature of the pre- and mid-tribulation beliefs is the idea that after the Rapture, Christ will return for a third time (when also counting the first coming) to set up his kingdom on the earth.[citation needed]

Some, including many Roman Catholic theologians,[citation needed] do not believe in a "time of trouble" period as usually described by tribulationists, but rather that there will be a near utopian period led by the Antichrist.

According to Futurism, the 70th week of Daniel will occur at some point in the future, culminating in seven years (or 3.5 years depending on denomination) of Tribulation and the appearance of the Antichrist.

Such a thesis is paradigmatic for Dispensational Premillennialism. In contradistinction, Historic Premillennialism may or may not posit Daniel's 70th week as future yet retain the thesis of the future fulfillment of many of the prophecies of Major and Minor Prophets, the teachings of Christ (e.g., Matthew 24) and the book of Revelation.

Dispensationalists typically hold that a 'hiatus', which some refer to as a 'biblical parenthesis', occurred between the 69th and 70th week of the prophecy, into which the "church age" is inserted (also known as the "gap theory" of Daniel 9). The seventieth week of the prophecy is expected to commence after the rapture of the church, which will incorporate the establishment of an economic system using the number '666', the reign of the beast (the Antichrist), the false religious system (the harlot), the Great Tribulation and Armageddon.[8]

Controversy exists regarding the antecedent of he in Daniel 9:27. Many within the ranks of premillennialism do not affirm the "confirmation of the covenant" is made by Jesus Christ (as do many Amillennarians) but that the antecedent of "he" in vs. 27 refers back to vs. 26 ("the prince who is to come"i.e., the Antichrist). Antichrist will make a "treaty" as the Prince of the Covenant (i.e., "the prince who is to come") with Israel's future leadership at the commencement of the seventieth week of Daniel's prophecy; in the midst of the week, the Antichrist will break the treaty and commence persecution against a regathered Israel.[9]All Protestant Reformers used the day year principle of prophetic interpretation. The commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince [Daniel 925] was given by King Artaxerxes in 457 B.C. making it 490 literal years [70X7] to the autumn of 31A.D.see Ezra 7:11-26]. Working back one prophetic week or seven literal years brings us to the baptism of Jesus in 27A.D. In the midst or middle of this last week of the prophecy, Jesus was cut off meaning crucified in 31 A.D.. So this cannot be a future fulfilment of prophecy, but history.The full 490 years brings us to 34 A.D. when Stephen was stoned and persecution began. Because the 70 weeks are a sealed prophecy [see Daniel 9:24], no futurist is authorised to unseal it.

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