No Treason (No. VI): The Constitution of No Authority (1870)

No Treason (No. VI): The Constitution of No Authority by Lysander Spooner (Volume I of the Lysander Spooner Audio Library) Read by Morgan A. Brown (The Culture & Anarchy Podcast) Produced by The Culture & Anarchy Studios (www.culture-anarchy.com) LIBERTY | LOGIC | LITERATURE In this series of readings, we will study the most audacious work of political philosophy by the natural rights lawyer and radical abolitionist, Lysander Spooner. No Treason argues that the United States Constitution is of no legal authority, for it is not a contract binding upon anybody. Nor, even in theory, could it ever bind an individual to its mandates and its governmental associations. Spooner, a native of Massachusetts in 1800s America, a confederate of the controversial revolutionary, John Brown, and a free-market anarchist, was an amazing thinker and entrepreneur. Outraged by the USPS monopoly on postage, with its arbitrary price hikes, and confident that he could provide postage and delivery at a lower rate than the USPS prices, Spooner began The American Letter Mail Company in order to compete with the state monopoly's prices. He actually managed to undercut the United States government and spread his company throughout much of the country, prompting the government to sue his company into non-existence because the USPS could not compete (being an inefficient monopoly). Spooner's entrepreneurial success proved that the United States was 1) morally bankrupt, for it claimed to provide invaluable services that could be provided cheaper in the marketplace, and 2) that state monopolies are unable to compete with services in the free-market. Later, he was a confederate of John Brown and an apologist for the raid on Harper's Ferry. Brown, the radical abolitionist who attacked slave plantations and killed slave owners in a coordinated pilot to violently overthrow the monstrous regiment of chattel slavery in the United States, was a controversial figure; and one who polarized the political and abolitionist thinkers of Boston in a radical way, from William Lloyd Garrison to Ralph Waldo Emerson and his Transcendentalists. In No Treason, Spooner argues that the Federal Government (and not some vague and ahistorical euphemism like, "The North") abrogated its Constitutional powers when it invaded the southern states in its quest to punish seceding states. Because the Federal Government had overstepped its constitutional mandate, the Constitution was thus null and void. Utilizing his training as a lawyer and as a natural law theorist, Spooner argues that nobody has any duty to obey the Constitution, and that the "social contract" theory of the federalists (or, the nationalists) could not be binding upon any generation after the Founding Fathers any more than a marriage contract arranged in the 1700s could bind any individual alive today. Featuring the Music of Camille Saint-Saens, from The Carnival of Animals. Piano arrangement played by Markus Staab, courtesy of Musopen.org (https://musopen.org/music/1454-the-carnival-of-the-animals/). These recordings are protected by a Creative Commons License 3.0 and are in the Public Domain. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/culture-anarchy/support

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The Culture & Anarchy Podcast brings you the best in freethinking criticism on contemporary issues, libertarianism, Austrian Economics, anarchocapitalism, socialism, religion, atheism, and literature. No issue is off limits. No topic is too profane. Prepare yourself for perfection: "The best that has been thought and said." Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/culture-anarchy/support