the MYTH of NATURAL RIGHTS RIGHTS the MYTH of NATURAL ISBN: 978-0-615-19298-7 $13.00 the No, it won’t stop bullets. It won’t keep people from ripping off your prop- erty. It won’t even stop the government from putting you in a concentration MYTH camp, or executing you. About the only thing a “natural right” will stop is of enlightened thinking on the ethics of liberty. Once you’ve read e Myth of Natural Rights and Other Essays, you’ll be able to put those imaginary NATURAL protectors of freedom back in the museums where they belong. RIGHTS Libertarian scholars have had a difficult time being taken seriously in and intellectual circles. ere’s a good reason for this. While they have gained recognition and acclaim for their staunch defense of the free market, OTHER ESSAYS compelling advocacy of civil liberties and devastating condemnation of interventionism, their stubborn reliance on the ancient myth of natural N rights leaves them in philosophical disrepute. e doctrine of natural rights L. A. R O L L I N S is a freelance writer has persisted among libertarians, because there has never been a systematic whose work has appeared in Grump, and thorough critique of all it implies. Until now. L.A. Rollins Playboy, e Personalist, Book News, Books for Libertarians, Reason, e Journal of In one compact work, L.A. Rollins shatters the myth of natural rights, while and exposing the “bleeding-heart libertarians” that promote it. With careful Historical Review, New Libertarian, ESSAYS OTHER Critique, e Spotlight, Prima Facie, research and ample documentation, he shows that Arrival, Boing Boing, Slugfest, and Revisionist thinkers like Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, Tibor History. At one time he published and Machan and Samuel Konkin not only violate edited the journal, Invictus: A Journal of reason and logic in their defense of natural Individualist ought. He is the author rights, but also violate the standards they set of Lucifer’s Lexicon, which is currently for themselves. out-of-print. He has also worked as a Back in print for the first time in years, this dishwasher, chef’s helper, carpenter’s newly revised edition features an insightful helper, security monitor, convenience store introduction by the Stirnerite-libertarian clerk, paste-up artist, and for the past L.A. Rollins upstart,TGGP, along with a new afterword by the couple of decades as a copy editor and author. Bonus material includes an updated selection proofreader. Mr. Rollins is a bachelor. His of sardonic jeu de mots from the underground classic, N hobbies include sucking his thumb and Lucifer’s Lexicon, as well as Rollins’ never-before- thumbing his nose, but not at the same published writings on poetic insurrection, the L.A. Rollins is an aphorist, or rather, an time. He lives in the Pacific Northwest againstist. He is of the fraternity of those Holy Qur’an and Holocaust revisionism. region of the United States of America. who deny both sides of every question, the refusniks who are always untimely. Other than that, his private life is none of For him, there isn't a department of your business. ere is a Fifth Amendment, human experience that won't sell you a after all. bill of goods. Nine-Banded Books “A scathing, all-out attack.” www.ninebandedbooks.com – Bob Black, Beneath the Underground 9BB – George H. Smith, New Libertarian PRAISE FOR THE MY T H OF NA T URAL RIGH T S Rollins has made hash of the logical connections in Rothbard’s argument. — Robert Anton Wilson, Natural Law An important book, which every reader interested in libertarian theory should acquire. — Jeff Riggenbach, New Libertarian Rollins does a fabulous job of making fools out of many a libertarian’s philosophical heroes. — Justin Weinberg, Guillotine An argument could be made that a book like this is potentially pretty damn dangerous. — Pat Hartman, Salon: A Journal of Aesthetics Rollins’ brief work is packed with enough analytical insight to send proponents of natural-law theory into hiding. — Jorge Amador, The Pragmatist The MYTH of NATURAL RIGHTS and OTHER ESSAYS L.A. Rollins NI N E -BA N DED BOOKS CHARLESTO N , WEST VIRGI N IA U.S.A. MMVIII The Myth of Natural Rights and Other Essays Copyright © 2008 L.A. Rollins Introduction © 2008 Conor Hartin All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author. ISBN-10: 061519298X ISBN-13: 978-0-615-19298-7 Cover Design by Joseph Clagg Nine-Banded Books Charleston, WV www.ninebandedbooks.com This book is dedicated to the two I love. CONTENTS Publisher’s Preface 9 PART 1: THE MYTH OF NAT U RAL RIGHTS Introduction, by TGGP 19 The Myth of Natural Rights 31 A Reply to My Reviewers 100 Instead of an Afterword 114 PART 2: NOTHI N G SA C RED : ROLLI N S O N THE HOLO C A U ST The Holocaust as Sacred Cow 125 Revising Holocaust Revisionism 155 Deifying Dogma 203 PART 3: Luc IFER ’S LEXI C O N Lucifer’s Lexicon: An Updated Abridgment 227 PART 4: THE EN D IS NEAR An Open Letter to Allah 291 Ode to Emperor Bush 297 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 301 PUBLISHER ’S PREFACE It was the summer of 1988 and I had just flunked out of high school. With few prospects and no clue as to what I would do with “my future,” I signed on for back-to- back summer classes. The idea was to belatedly collect my diploma, then buy some time by enrolling at a low-rung state college. I don’t remember much about summer school, except that it was grim. I kept a low profile. I took the work seriously enough to secure the requisite marks. There was a lot of down time. So I read. Two books are nestled up with my recollection of this time. The first was a dog-eared paperback edition of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. I remember it was set in miniscule typeface on age-oxidized high-acid paper. I would read a few pages and my eyes would itch from the strain. But having recently made my first acquaintance with the wily world of libertarianism, I was determined. I was seeking out the usual rites with the usual sense of pixilated teenage loner- nerd self-importance. Galt’s Gulch was an unavoidable stop on that well-trod path. So I dutifully plowed through Rand’s beloved magnum opus. And found myself hating it. The characters were humorless cartoons. The plot was straight-up silly. Even the ideas — the ostensible attraction — were presented with such inelegant, overwrought, didactic insistence as to induce a fugue. Somehow, I couldn’t get past that heavyhanded prose, either. I still recall Rand’s cloying, tic-like overuse of the term “inexplicable.” Irritating. When the eyestrain got the better of me, or when I had grown tired of being lectured — with all those “inexplicables” — about the self-evident virtues of Rachmaninoff and chain smoking and objectivist epistemology, I would turn to the second book in my summerschool satchel, a bright red Loompanics curio that I borrowed from a friend. That book was Lucifer’s Lexicon, by L.A. Rollins. Ayn Rand would have hated it. Styled after Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary, Rollins’ book was a strange bird. Where Bierce’s acidic wordplay sought to expose the folly of humanity, Rollins’ 10 11 THE MY T H OF NA T URAL RIGH T S A N D OT HER ESSAYS PUBLISHER ’S PREFACE aphoristic spleen just as often pricked at the reality- challenged pretenses of libertarianism in its various flavors and guises. Real inside stuff. The “libertarian movement” was defined as “a herd of individualists stampeding toward freedom.” A “Randian” was a “Galt-ridden individual.” “Egoism – the only ‘ism’ for me.” I might have chuckled at that last one. But there was something else about the book. Interlaced with the inside puns and one-liners, there were these di- gressive currents centering on the vicissitudes of Holocaust revisionism (that’s the term they used back then). At the time, I didn’t know a damn thing about that intellectual powder-keg. All I knew was that a TV miniseries had scared the shit out of me when I was a kid. Yet there it was. It seemed at times as though Rollins was in the revisionist camp himself. At other times, he seemed to hold revision- ists out for wicked ridicule. I don’t know if it occurred to me that this might not signal a contradiction. I just couldn’t get a fix on it. I knew it was a huge subject. I knew what I was supposed to think. I let it go. Anyways. After I said good riddance to Rand and shelved the Lexicon, I sent off a 7-11 money order and soon received 10 11 THE MY T H OF NA T URAL RIGH T S A N D OT HER ESSAYS PUBLISHER ’S PREFACE a copy of Rollins’ earlier book, The Myth of Natural Rights. There I discovered a somewhat different voice — that of a working-class scholar. An accidental iconoclast. Rollins’ bristling wit was on display, but restrained in the service of a more focused argument. I read The Myth, right on the heels of Rand and Rothbard, and I never really looked back. At least not through the same lens. In the wake of Rollins’ shrewd work, those Aristotelian circularities tasted like stale beer.