Last Updated: June 25, 2006
Wolf DeVoon is an interesting character even by anarcho-libertarian standards. He is equal parts scholar and activist. Wolf is also a free man in both theory and in practice, which is very rare.
He has at different times graduated college, attended law school, produced articles, books, and films, been personally ostracized by Ayn Rand and received critical praise for his insightful work and writing in the field of natural law and moral philosophy. He is also very funny, sarcastic, and a pleasure to read. Unlike many scholars of the anarcho-libertarian movement, he has eschewed a safe and easy sinecure at a webzine, think-tank, or a position on a university faculty.
Instead Wolf has written, experienced, succeeded and failed at trying to move the concept and practice of individual liberty from the treatises and novels and into the actual world. For all his efforts, I am personally very grateful. Most of Wolf's writing has been on the web, and so given the Internets' s ephemeral nature, has been scattered about. My goal here is to round it all up in one place on the web so it will be available to scholars, activists, and the intellectually curious. It is not all-inclusive so if you know of an article, forum or blog posts by or about Wolf, or anything else of note, please send it to me and I will include it here if possible.
Please send e-mail here.
Page 1 Ali Massoud's introduction to DeVoon's life, work, and some biographical details. Also his latest articles.
Page 2 Here you will find DeVoon's drama, fiction, filmography, and a list of every job he has ever had.
Page 3 DeVoon's Laissez Faire City Times Articles published from 1997-2001.
Deeds, Not Words
Get out of America now. While
you can. Really.
"I'm an adjuring devil of sorts. I
warned you to flee six years ago, three years ago, and finally a
few months ago. I pleaded that you should think of and for
yourself; to cash out and scram with your libertarian loved ones;
to find a quiet rural homestead as far as possible from the
United Snakes and its crowded, snarling, crime-ridden cities.
There is no joy in guessing the horror that awaits you in Los
Angeles or Detroit when the crash comes, as it must, a day or an
hour after the first mushroom cloud rises from the Persian
mainland or perhaps the Potomac."
Help Wanted
A short exposition on what
"help" a person actually needs and why.
"Even my worst decisions turned out
well in the long run. I sleep the sleep of the just -- about
three hours or so with nightmares of prison, vicious
ex-girlfriends, hallways and elevators that go nowhere, guns that
jam, thugs who win, always pursued and outnumbered, doomed to
failure. I wake and listen to the radio or watch TV, count the
days remaining and symptoms of declining health, then drift off
again. On a good night, I harvest two or three tumultuous
escapades."
The Architecture of Liberal Democracy
"Perhaps my understanding of liberal democracy seems odd,
since there no longer exists an example of free and equal society
under law. The United States betrayed its legacy of liberty.
Corporate graft, political horse trading, reckless military
adventures, and paternal regulation of private conduct voided the
U.S. Constitution repeatedly. All that remains today is democracy
without liberty, without common law, without recourse to equity
or fixed principles of justice. Our courts no longer examine the
merits of a case. They strictly apply statutes and precedents.
Public officials and legislatures are deemed irresponsibly,
unchallengeably sovereign. Individual Americans are no longer
free and equal as a matter of right. Money talks, but nothing
trumps pork barrel deficit spending and hand on heart bipartisan
flag-waving." (pdf)
The Meaning of Liberty
"No one has a right to your happiness except you. Emotional
hostages do not grow, transcend, build, nurture, or make fresh
discoveries. They are imprisoned in the past. If there is any
plausible merit in Jefferson's right of revolution and life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness, surely it's an inalienable
individual right to judge what constitutes one's joy and to
shamelessly seek it. That's the core purpose of Jeffersonian
separation of church and state. If you put clerics in power, the
pursuit of individual happiness is kaput.."
Lawyers, Guns, and Money
"Living free has its awkwardnesses. It offers almost zero
leverage to project power and influence. No power to raise an
army. Insufficient influence to force a billion Catholics to
utter slightly different magic words."
NAP This!
"Big surprise, admirers of non-aggression end up endorsing
coercive government. Their agenda is peace through
institutionalized repression, no different than Hobbes or Hitler.
The NAPsters comprise an impressive majority, spanning Islam,
Christianity, Anglo-American democracy, and Austrian economics.
What's wrong with this picture?"
The Freeman's Constitution
"Lasting political change is possible, and that we can
create new institutions, in particular a public legal system
without a state, comprised of private law courts whose
organization is left mainly in the hands of practicing lawyers. I
know that doesn't sound fair, because it treats law as the
privileged domain of those skilled in the art. But if you banned
the practice of medicine because doctors dominated its science, I
don't think you'd be very pleased with the result."
The Rule of Law
"The rule of law has nothing to do with a sovereign state,
except in the narrow sense that such states exist and when they
comply with the rule of law they are viewed as 'legal persons'
(litigants)possessed of competent legal standing to sue or be
sued with the presumption of innocence, no greater or lesser in
legal character than a single infant child. States are checked by
asserting your personal right to freedom and justice -- i.e.,
constitutional legal rights that no state may lawfully
abridge."
Human Rights
"We distinguish human rights as a set of natural liberties
belonging in justice to mankind, and only to mankind, because the
human understanding is a function of individual effort and a long
series of self-determined choices in the conduct of one's
life."
The All-Purpose Illustrated Guide to Female Women
.. Is sexist, politically incorrect, ribald, risque, scandalous
and even pornographic. Or so say some bluenose types. Anyhow,
after much soul-searching and trial and error the DeVoon Archive
is now making it available to the public again as a pdf document.
It is a monumental work coming in at just under 130 standard
print pages so be patient whilst waiting for it to download and
open, okay? This especially applies to you folks with dial-up
connections. From the APIGFW:(pdf)
"… MDFs will forgive an amazing amount of stupidity if
you do two things fairly consistently: (1) Never fake reality;
and (2) Never 'toy' with her. Reality is real, and the only way
you can function successfully in life is to make a good-faith
effort to grasp and act on what's real. If you love her, tell her
so. If you don't, say so. If you're bored, be bored. Her love and
respect depend on your willingness to be absolutely candid.
Believe me, this is the only way to get what you want (which is
primarily to jump her bones on your terms). It is not necessary
to be in love with her, or to make a ton of money, or to be
exceptionally polite. Women don't fall in love with 'nice guys';
they want a Real Man."
The Hardest Part of Making "Nice Girl"
DeVoon tells us everything he knows about love, sex, and movies.
Everything he knew in 1987, anyhow.
"In fact, women are more inclined to smile at the ugliest
and most morally incompetent speicmens of makind -- at the
former, because their hearts automatically go out to them in
sympathy, and the latter because everyone loves a rogue. Being
neither, I learned early in life that I do not inspire female
approval. I get a vacant glance occasionally, and that's about
it."
When to Speak About Religion, in Public or
Private?
Here's the bottom line. Voltaire was deemed a heretic and forced
into exile for publishing a paper in which he observed that the
London Exchange had among its members Jews, Catholics, Anglicans,
Muslims, Protestants, and unbelievers who were bitter religious
'enemies' but traded with one another every day, all day long,
because they never discussed or took notice of each other's
religion. Commercial markets work best with a wide margin of
toleration. At every high tech company in Silicon Valley, you'll
find Chinese, Hindus, Christians, and Brights working side by
side as colleagues. Religion is not an issue in the workplace
(not even in Hollywood).
How to Be A Bum
"Being a bum is difficult and dangerous work. This is why
the whole world urges you to be comfortable and prosperous,
instead of being a bum. Family, friends, government agencies,
neighbors -- everybody wants you to be something other than a
bum. They help you to go to school, meet important people, find a
job, continue your education, pay your bills on time, and acquire
as much stuff as possible (houses, cars, straight teeth, mutual
funds, trips to Mexico and a new computer)." Living on your
own terms will not make you very popular with friends or family.
10 Nice Things About Directing
An essay from Wolf DeVoon on the creative process.
"Although it would appear that cash, resumes and nice
clothes would give an advantage, it is my experience that the
world automatically distrusts any film promoter wearing $500
suits, and automatically respects a scruffy-looking Artist. The
key to success is the story vehicle and production package you
are proposing. They want to know what's in your heart, not your
wallet, and how you intend to shoot it, not the list of names you
can drop. You will be judged as an artist and a technician, not
as a showpiece of social grooming."
Walking to Ayrshire
Wolf shares his insight and his bile while hoofing it to the
nearest airport in order to flee a untenable situation.
"I don't care any more about justice. I'm satisfied that
justice cannot go out of existence. It's manufactured by
consequence, implicit in every word and deed. It's deaf to our
dissembling lies, except as a bullshit detector. Motives are
nothing. There are five billion people in the world, with five
billion dead and five more on the way. If you feel entitled to
take hostages, try taking somebody else. I don't want to play. My
loyalty is to myself from now on. If you force the issue, I'm
prepared to fight for freedom and I have no inclination to fight
fair in defense of liberty. Consider yourself warned."
The 95 Targets-A Modest Proposal to Trim World
Population by One Percent
DeVoon decides to usher humanity into the Age of Reason no matter
what it takes. (And yes it's a satire.)
"If our program seems terrifying, you do not understand
history. Tens of millions died in World War I and World War II.
Millions die each year from disease and poverty, inflicted on
them by corrupt government and evil madmen. Since my basic
proposal is to trim world population by only one percent (the
evil one percent in government), it is no worse than the horrors
perpetrated by Adolph Hitler and FDR, Pol Pot and Richard Nixon,
Sani Abacha and Oliver North, who used the same stupid rationale
every time. They killed tens of millions of peasants and
condemned hundreds of millions to slavery. By comparison, I'm
giving every peasant ample warning in advance. It is not
necessary for anyone to die or starve to death. All we want are
your tabernacles. The Age of Religion, source of human misery, is
over."
The Power of Creativity
"In terms of pure creativity, an ignorant savage is better
equipped to face the black Unknown than a trained scientist.
Where a scholar would see recurring patterns and well-known
phenomena, at least an idiot devoid of knowledge has an even
chance of creation. Ignorance may never be blissful, but it
certainly multiplies the probability of creation. When you
consider that all religion, fable, mythology, art and romance
arose from human creativity, in the absence of or in
contradiction to known fact, the Unknown seems indifferent, at
best, to wisdom. The fastest way to stop someone from playing
with matches is to cite 'conventional wisdom.' "
Flag, Faith, and Family Values
"Legendary tough guys like Winston Churchill saw the wisdom
of guarding and nurturing little ones: "There is no more
far-seeing investment for a nation than to put milk, food and
education into young children. If you add to that respect for
law, knowledge of the traditions of the country and love of
freedom, you have at any rate the foundations of national
survival," he told the Carlton Club in 1939, just two months
before war was declared and Britain's national survi val was
sorely tested."
Dear Moira
A letter to a friend.(pdf)
Mouth-to-Mouse Resusitation
"Let's say that infants and animals need help because I
loathe suffering, and I advocate capitalism because it is the
most humane social system. If it were the law of the land to save
drowning mice, no doubt I would be campaigning for a Deluge to
thwart law-enforcement. I privately chose to save one mouse on
one occasion in my own kitchen. As goofy as it is, that's the
moral meaning of capitalism and private liberty. You do as you
please with your own mice."
(pdf)
Public Relations
"...at home there is no imam to supervise your piety, no
gang of thugs at your back, no faceless victim to clean up your
spilled milk or to berate with newly imagined grievances. In
private, you are intimately and exclusively confronted by the
only person you have a right to obey or resent: yourself. Privacy
is the situational source of all growth, improvement, education
and morality. It is the fountainhead of art. It is the workshop
of philosophy."(pdf)
The Case for Anarchy
" It does not connote social chaos or general lawlessness.
It does not imply ownership in common. The crucial, defining
characteristic of anarchy is the abolition of one particular
institution -- an allegedly "sovereign" government that
claims a legal right to impose its will upon private
citizens."
What Right to Exist?
"My own take on this is that the State of Israel has clearly
forefeited whatever claim it once had to lawfully exist. No state
can be allowed to assert "undefined borders," and no
state validates itself by waging war on a subjugated and
disenfranchised ethnic enclave. I cannot condemn people who blow
themselves up -- an act of final, irrational despair against an
unbeatable foe." (pdf)
A Writer's Temple
"I did very little to achieve possession of a writer's
temple. You can set one up for about 30 cents, and it's
completely portable. I've carried this particular temple around
the planet with me for the better part of two decades. It fits
with any decor (although a bare room is best). Here are the
specs:" (pdf)
A Public Person
"There's nothing worse than being the center of attention,
nonstop 10-12 hours every day, three days a week, week after
week, welcoming a stream of admirers who traveled five or ten
thousand miles to meet me." (pdf)
Individualism
"But I'm certain of two things. I am not female. And I love
music." (pdf)
Tree Wars
Life is complicated sometimes. (pdf)
New Games
"I'm not thinking of the meek, who never rise to the
challenge, who end up in the back row with their heads bowed,
subsisting on crumbs and begging for forgiveness. I'm thinking of
you and me --- average guys in the middle of the pack, joining a
footrace already in progress, with Al Gore and Ted Turner way out
in front. This is the situation most people are in. You have two
arms, two legs, a second-class brain and a burning desire to
succeed. If you were born in America, the struggle for survival
is a solved problem. If you were born in Western Europe, the
struggle for survival has been temporarily postponed by a feat of
public finance prestidigitation. Five or six years from now, who
knows? --- but it's a cinch you won't have to face the horrors of
homelessness in Sao Paulo or medical care in Kinshasa. The fact
that you're surfing the Web speaks volumes. Your physical
survival is not in jeopardy, sonny. You're in the running, and
the question is purely an issue of greed." (pdf)
The Practical Problems of Happiness
"Although it's tempting to say that happiness is produced in
concert -- i.e., a glow of romance or social intercourse -- I
think the root of it taps a personal quest. For the man who wants
nothing in particular is never satisfied, and the man who wants a
preposterously selfish result is never satisfied with anything
less. I have been both. I suspect that the arc of life implies
both, because we begin as ignorant children, and it takes time to
discern which pinnacle is personally mine to renounce as an
impossible dream. Happiness, of course, is getting that which was
forbidden forever and then suddenly, incredibly mine!"