Liberty & Power: Group Blog
Entries by Anthony Gregory
Monday, September 29, 2008
Good News for a Change, But the Unchained Fed Inflates Onward
The House defeats the bailout bill. Let's hope it's the death of it. Let's hope, against all odds, the feds manage to be restrained by gridlock from such massive interventions for another year or so. Then we can recover and learn the lessons the less hard way, for a change.
Writes Manuel Lora: "Ah, but there's also this; they won't give up: 'The Federal Reserve will pump an additional $630 billion into the global financial system, flooding banks with cash to alleviate the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression. The Fed increased its existing currency swaps with foreign central banks by $330 billion to $620 billion to make more dollars available worldwide. The Term Auction Facility, the Fed's emergency loan program, will expand by $300 billion to $450 billion. The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan are among the participating authorities.'"
Monday, September 22, 2008
The Independent Institute on the Bailout
In addition to Higgs's posts on this blog, David Theroux's take is here.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Barr Campaign Digs Its Hole Deeper
In a statement today, the Barr campaign manages to attack Ron Paul yet again (while somehow finding an excuse to praise President Bush for his "leadership" on 9/11). They say that Ron Paul's meeting yesterday was all about promoting himself, and yet it was also supposedly about "scatter[ing] the votes for the liberty agenda to the four winds." Bah. Barr would be very lucky to get 1/4 of Paul's supporters to vote for him. The Barr campaign release also attacks non-voters.
The LP's Wishy-Washy Sectarianism
The LP now says that there is a risk in third parties getting together when they have such strong ideological differences. Fair enough.
But it's funny to argue that "Libertarians may agree with Greens on the need for a foreign policy based on nonaggression, but it is for very different reasons." I never understood this argument. There are a THOUSAND good reasons to oppose war. Libertarians should embrace every single one. Indeed, contra this LP rhetoric, the LP has long been focusing on too narrow a reason to oppose war: because it is unconstitutional, or because it's a waste of money. The biggest reason for a libertarian to support "a foreign policy based on nonaggression" is because, under libertarianism, aggression is per se evil. And on this issue, many Greens are at least as good as many libertarians. In fact, the LP has long tried to be somewhat neutral on war, since it's been seen as a debatable issue among libertarians. Well, if we libertarians can disagree with each other over mass murder, I don't see what a little domestic socialism is between friends.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
The Oil Pricing Squeeze
David Theroux points to the warmongers and environmentalists.
Friday, July 18, 2008
My Article on the Forthcoming War on Recession
My unsolicited advice to the politicians: Get out of the way. The piece draws some parallels between Bush and Hoover, and what that might mean, assuming history repeats itself.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Private Taxis in Cuba
David Theroux on another small move toward freedom there since Fidel has stepped down.
Friday, July 11, 2008
The Bipartisan Surveillance State
Here's an Op-Ed I wrote on the FISA bill and the longtime war on the Fourth Amendment by leaders of both parties.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Obama Betrays the 4th Amendment (Hillary Gets it Right[!])
Barack Obama voted for cloture on the bill to give Bush all he wants on illegal warrantless surveillance. And then he voted for the bill. Hillary Clinton voted against cloture, then voted against the bill. All it took for Obama to become less civil libertarian than Hillary was getting the nomination. What will he do as president?
Here's Glenn Greenwald on Obama's wholesale reversal on his campaign promise to oppose the FISA bill (so long as it had telecom immunity):
Obama's vote in favor of cloture, in particular, cemented the complete betrayal of the commitment he made back in October when seeking the Democratic nomination. Back then, Obama's spokesman -- in response to demands for a clear statement of Obama's views on the spying controversy after he had previously given a vague and noncommittal statement -- issued this emphatic vow: "To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies."
But the bill today does include retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies. Nonetheless, Obama voted for cloture on the bill -- the exact opposition of supporting a filibuster -- and then voted for the bill itself. A more complete abandonment of an unambiguous campaign promise is difficult of imagine.
For more on the Democrats and FISA, see my recent Op-Ed, "The Democrats Betray the Fourth Amendment," and my piece two years ago predicting this betrayal, "Will the Democrats Save our Civil Liberties?"
In "FISA and the PATRIOT Act Are the Abuse," I criticized the very notion that the statutory law that Bush found necessary to circumvent is itself enough to protect our privacy. I discussed how such surveillance programs have been directed against benign political and partisan enemies of the state in "FBI, Please Protect Us from Terrorists and the ACLU."
Saturday, June 14, 2008
My Take on the Supremes' Gitmo Habeas Corpus Ruling
Here's my op-ed on the recent decision regarding habeas corpus and Guantanamo, and what the debate means.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Ode to the Death Peddler
Thanks to mudshark for making this awesome music video for my song about the war pushers and profiteers.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Yes, I Have More to Say
I have been asked by readers for more analysis of what happened at the Denver Libertarian Convention. I have some more to say, but I need a few days to formulate my ideas (and I am busy with other things). For now, I will say that I am neither thrilled with the LP's direction nor as crestfallen as many of my ideologically radical brethren. While we all must make our own choices about how to promote liberty, the struggle for liberty transcends party and faction, and we will also never agree on all the choices made by others. May we diplomatically and seriously offer constructive, principled criticism to our fellow travelers, may those of us who understand the centrality of principle never concede an inch to the state, may we reach out to the public as we also strengthen the remnant, may we resist the traps of both self-defeating sectarianism and impractical pragmatism, may we be civil and keep our eye on the real prize and the true enemy, and may we let a hundred flowers bloom for the cause of liberty. Our work for freedom is the cause of civilization, life, law and human flourishing. Whether people of good conscience see a given event as a setback or a breakthrough, let us remember that our struggle began many centuries ago upon the discovery of individual rights as an idea, our struggle continues in every small and large battle of the day, and our struggle shall not end until state oppression is abolished and all humanity is set free.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Collectivism and Immigration Controls
Butler Shaffer has a piece at LRC on the basic principles involved. A choice excerpt:
As with government control generally, the power of the state to prevent or regulate immigration is grounded in the doctrine of collectivism. When governments build walls or fences around politically-defined boundaries, they are doing what all other property owners do: staking out their claims to everything contained within. It’s just an extension of the earlier ritual of explorers planting flags on the shores of newly-discovered lands and claiming them for one monarch or another. From China’s "great wall," to Hadrian’s wall, to the Berlin wall, to current efforts to install a fence across the Mexican-American border, governments have built barriers that restrain both their own people and those seeking entry. The principle that allows this to occur is that the state enjoys some collective ownership interest that differs from – and is in conflict with – individual property claims. The state, through no other principle than the coercive force that defines it, is able to transform itself from an agency of protection into a principal interest to be protected!
Monday, April 14, 2008
Raimondo to Barr and Garris to Raimondo
Justin Raimondo has a column criticizing Barr on US foreign policy in Latin America here.
Eric Garris adds a critical clarification here, regarding Justin's article, Barr and the war on drugs.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
New Independent Institute Beacon Blog
Robert Higgs has a wonderful new entry, "Health of the State, Sickness of the Economy," in which he describes the Fed-generated real estate bubble as just one more domestic ill to come from big government at home, which he points out is a predictable consequence, even in areas non-defense related, "when people let down their guard because they 'support the troops.'"
Read the rest, and come check out the new Independent Institute blog, the Beacon, featuring bloggers Bob Higgs, Jonathan Bean, David Beito, Peter Klein, David Theroux, me and others.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Libertarianism and Deviation
Allan Walstad wrote, "It would be nice to see such issues argued on their merits without some libertarians seeking to pin a scarlet "deviations" tag on their fellow travelers."
To which Roderick Long responded, "Hey, I'm the moderate here! Other people have been arguing that those who endorse serious deviations from libertarian purity no longer count as libertarians at all, and I've been arguing against that view.
"If you don't like 'deviation,' what term would you prefer as shorthand for 'view put forward as libertarian but actually (in the opinion of the speaker) inconsistent with libertarian principle'? (Because we need such a term, I think.)"
I agree, and I want to take this opportunity to clarify something: When I say someone can't be a prowar anarchist or libertarian, I am not saying that person cannot have a basically libertarian philosophy overall, or that that person has nothing to teach or offer (of course, that would be absurd – without learning from statists, we could learn practically nothing!), or that there isn't some sense in which it's useful to call such people libertarians or even anarchists. I consider them in error, to the point that calling someone a "pro-war libertarian" strikes me as oxymoronic, and yet I see some use in the label. But I do think it is a deviation.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Pacifism and War
Aeon echoed a critique I have often heard of the antiwar libertarian position. I wrote:
"I deny that someone who is pro-war can possibly be an anarchist."
Aeon responded, "Sorry, that's incorrect. Anarchism isn't identical with pacifism. Sometimes it's necessary to use force, which isn't immoral when it's defensive or retaliatory. It's not a matter of what _our_ views are, as long as _other people_ are statist collectivists, they will act accordingly, and that sometimes means warfare."
I don't understand this conflating of being antiwar with being pacifist. I know some people use the word that way, but I take pacifism to mean the opposition to violence across the board. I am not a pacifist. The right to self defense and even retaliation is something I fully accept.
But I also accept the right to give your money to charity, yet I oppose the welfare state. Why? Because, as a libertarian, I understand I have no right to take money from some people and give it to others.
Surely, this must carry over to all areas of life. If a neighbor attacks me, I have a right to fight back. But I can't steal my other neighbor's money to buy weapons to do so. More fundamental, I cannot, under libertarian ethics, bomb the whole street.
To be an anarchist, you have to, I believe, oppose the state. This would espeically include its enforcement arm – the police and military. For without the state's enforcement arm, its territorial monopoly would cease to be. Welfare doesn't bother me so much if its not backed up by guns.
Surely, US militarism is, just in the domestic sphere, at least as unlibertarian as welfare, since it is funded in the exact same, indefensible manner.
But war is of course much worse. In looking at the history of the US government in particular, it is hard to imagine an anarchist supporting it going to war. It is not as though the US government has never murdered anyone, and when the question of war arises, we are debating whether it should embark on some new project with every intention of avoiding the violation of people's rights. Given the actual history of the US government abroad, it seems to me particularly odd that any anarchist or libertarian would trust its actions overseas.
But back to the question of pacifism and war: I brought this to a new post because I think it's worth special contemplation. Who here thinks you have to eschew all violence to oppose all war? And who here believes, as I do, that you can believe in defensive violence, but that the inherent aggression involved in the warfare state, against taxpayers, soldiers who wish to quit their jobs and foreign victims of collateral damage alike, is enough for libertarians and anarchists to oppose government war out of principle?
And if this is not so, on what basis can we anarcho-libertarians oppose more mundane statism like welfare handouts, which are no more coercively financed than the military?
Human Death Toll in Iraq
We have just passed a tragic benchmark – 4,000 Americans killed in Iraq since the war began – including more than 3,500 since the capture of Saddam and more than 3,000 since the handover to Iraqis in mid-2004, which I, at the time, referred to as the "Iraqization Scam," predicting more bloodshed and escalation to follow. Then there are the tens of thousands wounded, whose number some have suggested has been underreported and whose severity has not been confronted by American society.
For all those American troops who wished to quit their jobs, but were forced to keep fighting under Stop Loss or just the plain threat of being tried for "desertion," there is a moral element to their deaths rarely grasped: Under the principles of the American Revolution and Declaration of Independence, the right to liberty is an inalienable right. This was enshrined in the 13th Amendment, which banned not just chattel slavery but involuntary servitude, including indentured servitude. What this means is in America, everyone is supposed to have a right to quit his job, at any time. He cannot sell himself into slavery, even for a term of service. If he violates a contract and quits, he can be held for damages, but he cannot be forced to keep working. Except in the military, where once you sign up, you cannot change jobs, even after your nominal term expires. What this means, in terms of morality, is everyone who is fighting in a war but would rather quit, and is held against his will to keep fighting, is a slave, and should he die while fighting, he is, morally speaking, a victim of murder by his own government. We do not have a fully voluntary military unless people can quit.
However, we can at least say these people, while often manipulated by recruiters, opted to sign up in the first place. But the Iraqis – what did they do to ask for this war? Nothing. This war has been a war of aggression against the Iraqi people, and so we must sympathize with not just Iraqi civilians but also the Iraqi soldiers who were killed in a war of aggression – on top of the possibly more than one million civilians killed as a result of this war, up to three times as many Iraqi soldiers died when compared to American soldiers.
A million civilians? If you think the number sounds too big, cut it in half – or even by 90%. There is something fundamentally dysfunctional about the way Americans tend to view their government's role in world affairs, to think that 100,000 Iraqis, by an extremely, perhaps even irresponsibly low, estimate, have perished in this war – and yet most focus, where there is any focus at all on the human costs of war, is centered on the American deaths.
There never was an excuse for this war, and there certainly is no excuse to stay. Four years ago, we began hearing the argument that if the US were to withdraw, there would be more violence and more death. There have been more violence and more death since – much more. The supposed success of the "surge" has been a return to the horrific levels of violence a few years back, back when the goal was supposedly to plant the roots of democracy and leave Iraq better than the US found it. Now the goal seems to be keeping the death toll to one or two Americans per day, while ignoring completely the mounting Iraqi death toll.
The US empire supported the horrible Saddam Hussein, encouraged his war of aggression against Iran, leaving hundreds of thousands dead, imposed through the United Nations a regime of sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands more, and now has the blood of many, many thousands more on its hands. For nearly three decades, the US has been the greatest enemy of the Iraqi people, for even when we could say it was Saddam, the dictator was being sponsored by the US government. The idea that more American intervention in Iraq is going to bring about peace and stability should seem pathologically absurd on its face by now. It is time to end this atrocity and begin the long process of reconciliation with the Iraqi people. The US government should take this as an opportunity to finally stop being the global policeman.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Murray Rothbard on Slavery and the Civil War
Here's a very good piece by Rothbard -- a concise article on how slavery, shifting political winds and growing regional tensions culminated in the horrible Civil War.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Rockwell on the Hegelian Election
Lew Rockwell has a great new article that discusses the true problems for liberty presented by racism, sexism, religious bigotry and other such illiberal forms of collectivist confusion. While championing liberty itself, including the crucial freedom of association, he explains how a free society does not bring about the results racists and those who believe in class conflict want, and so they resort to statism, which, when coupled with such bigotry, can lead to the greatest of state horrors and oppressions.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Robert Higgs on Immigration
Robert Higgs has a wonderful article on LewRockwell.com, which I recommend to everyone, "The Difference Between an Illegal Immigrant and Me: A Little Memoir and Some Questions It Raises."
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Keep Running, Ron
Here, Eric Garris and I lay out our argument for Ron Paul to ditch the GOP and his campaign's conservative triangulation strategy, seek the Libertarian nomination, and keep on running.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
On Immigration: A Reply to Hoppe
Walter Block and I have this article[pdf] in the Mises Institute's newest edition of the Journal of Libertarian Studies, edited by Roderick Long, in which we address some of Hans-Hermann Hoppe's arguments against having open borders in a highly politicized, state-run society.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Afghan Journalist Sentenced to Death for Internet Printout
Say, I thought we liberated this country.
Of course, the Islamist theocracy that persists in the Middle East is no joke. But it does seem as though many Americans look the other way when a nation we are ostensibly allied with, or helped secure freedom for, engages in such totalitarianism.
Free Trade Between Palestine and Egypt
"Tens of thousands of Palestinians on foot and on donkey carts poured into Egypt from Gaza Wednesday after masked gunmen used land mines to blast down a seven-mile barrier dividing the border town of Rafah."
And they are engaging in glorious commerce, it seems, trading food, livestock, electronics and more. How exciting! Thanks to Lew Rockwell for the link.
Monday, January 21, 2008
The Effects of Mass Deportation
Trevor Bothwell has a great article at LewRockwell.com about what fully enforcing America's immigration laws, through mass deportations, would really entail. A choice excerpt:
To say this would be a messy affair would be an understatement of magnificent proportion. SWAT-style assaults and home invasions would be the order of the day. Today's ruthless, tyrannical drug raids would actually look tame in comparison as government thugs went door to door seeking out suspected illegal aliens. The right to privacy of citizens and non-citizens alike would consequently evaporate as property rights became a thing of the past. Chaos would ensue. Racial tensions would intensify as primarily brown targets would be ensnared by their primarily white captors. Protests and riots would erupt, the merits of which would be hard to dispute.
Children born as American citizens would be seized from their parents, automatically rendered homeless and converted into wards of the state as a result of such totalitarian behavior (Huckabee once seemed to understand the demerits of such atrocious behavior). Human beings who have come to this country to make a better life for themselves and their families would be treated like animals as they were hunted, captured, incarcerated, and eventually deported. And this would merely be the fate of those who complied.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Free Market Hall of Fame Survey
I wrote in Bob Higgs for favorite free-market economist, especially for his outstanding research on the political economy of the warfare state. But there's a lot of tough choices to make on this survey. Perhaps this is a good sign: There's a lot more economic good guys than there were at one time.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
The North American Union, In Historical Perspective
I argue here that the biggest proponents of a North American Union, which U.S. nativists and patriots are all up in arms about, have actually been U.S. nationalists, American politicians, and others who wanted to take over the entire continent under the banner of Old Glory.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Ron Paul on O'Reilly Factor
Ron Paul tries as hard as he can to teach Bill some history.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Would Another 9/11 Be Good for America?
Certainly not. Listen to the heroic (and civil) Scott Horton take on Stu Bykofsky from the Philadelphia Daily News, author of the crazed article “To save America, we need another 9/11” as well as this unsatisfactory retraction, based on the new insight that even another 9/11 wouldn't do the trick.
This is really wonderful radio. I love listening to Scott's great show regularly, but this is particularly grand. He really corners Bykofsky, dismisses the warmongering nationalism, and makes a great concise case against Bush's war on terror, Clinton's foreign policy, the bipartisan extraConstitutional surveillance state, and American warmongering nationalism in general. Bykofsky tries to make Scott look like a leftie hypocrite. Of course it doesn't work against this intimidatingly well informed Rothbardian dove. "Whichever administration is working against my liberty, they are the target of my criticism," Scott says, as he educates his guest.
It's a powerful 18 minutes. Give it a listen.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Libertarianism Is Antiwar
I make the argument at LewRockwell.com.
I address the effects of war on liberty, the futility of intervention and other matters. But here I take on the nationalist ethics implicit in pro-war libertarians, thereby circumventing the charge that we peaceniks are "sovereigntarians" who believe in the sovereignty of foreign governments. All governments, and this certainly includes the US government, have no rights. It's my concern for individual rights, first and foremost, that leads me to oppose war:
Most of the killing is just part of the policy. Bombing Baghdad or Belgrade has what legal theorists might call a "substantial certainty" of killing innocent people. Modern war is in fact in practically every case an example of mass murder. It must be opposed by the libertarian first and foremost for this reason. For not just Americans have individual rights to life, liberty and property; so too do all foreign non-aggressors, and so killing them, which is a predictable outcome of today’s typical military tactics, is gravely immoral according to libertarian ethics.
Some argue that when the fight is against a truly ghastly foreign regime, any innocents killed by the supposedly "good" government of the U.S. are "collateral damage." The true aggressor, according to this argument, is the enemy regime, not the U.S. government, which is acting in supposed defense of Americans.
One response is that historically, in most of its wars, the U.S. government has invaded or attacked a country that never attacked or credibly threatened to attack Americans on U.S. soil. Even by a collectivist analysis, whereby we look at nations, rather than individuals, when assigning guilt, the U.S. has more often than not been an aggressor.
However, to the libertarian, this is all of secondary importance. Libertarianism concerns individual rights and individual actions. States, nations, communities and so forth are abstractions and social constructs which do not act independently of the individuals they comprise. Only individuals act and only individuals have ethics or rights, and so it is a violation of an innocent person’s rights to bomb him, even if the government he lives under is aggressive and tyrannical. Certainly, the U.S. government was itself quite aggressive in the Middle East before 9/11, yet that in no way legitimized the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which killed innocent Americans for the crimes of their government. So, too, is it immoral to bomb a country with the substantial certainty that it will kill innocent foreigners, even if their government is aggressive.
Read the rest.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Homer vs. EPA
I write here about the federal war on Springfield, and how The Simpsons has helped move pop culture from the nationalist collectivism so endemic in earlier cartoons.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
The Real Nuclear Threat
I argue here that it's not Iran.
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Speaking of Libertarians in Counterpunch
Jacob Hornberger has a good piece in there.
Friday, June 22, 2007
Augusto Giuliani
Michael I. Niman on Rudy: "Giuliani’s disdain for freedom of speech is best exemplified by the case of Robert Lederman, an artist who specializes in drawing caricatures of Giuliani as a dictator and depicting his policies as transforming New York into a police state. Lederman was arrested 40 times during Giuliani’s reign for displaying his art at political demonstrations and on the streets of New York. Lederman was never convicted of a crime. . . .
"Under [Rudy's Zero Tolerance] policy, New Yorkers were handcuffed and dragged off to jail for drinking beer on their front stoops —the New York City equivalent of hanging out on the porch. Marijuana possession arrests increased by well over 4,000 percent. Eventually almost 70,000 people sued the city for police abuses such as strip-searching suspected jaywalkers. In 1999, James Savage, the president of the New York City police union, referred to Giuliani’s zero tolerance policy as a “blueprint for a police state and tyranny.' . . .
"Fashion-wise, [Rudy's Street Crimes Unit] had more resemblance to Guatemala’s notorious military death squads, wearing 'We Own the Night' t-shirts, and shirts citing Ernest Hemingway’s 'There is no hunting like the hunting of man” quote—quite a variation from standard issue uniforms.
"This is the police unit that became notorious for shooting African immigrant Amadou Diallo 40 times as he reached for his wallet after being ordered to show identification. When New Yorkers took to the streets to protest the shooting, Giuliani told the press that people were protesting due to 'their own personal inadequacies.'
"Eventually the Giuliani-sanctioned machismo infected other units in the police department. When undercover officers asked a man on the street to sell them marijuana, the man, Patrick Dorismond, took offense to being called a drug-dealer and got into a scuffle with the unidentified officers, who shot him dead. Giuliani issued a knee-jerk defense of the killers, telling the press that Dorismond was 'no altar boy.' Salon.com pointed out that, in fact, he was an altar boy."
Thanks to Scott Horton.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
5th Sentence Meme
From BK Marcus:
Grab the nearest book.
1. Open it to page 161.
2. Find the fifth full sentence.
3. Post the text of the sentence along with these instructions.
Don't search around looking for the coolest book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.
My nearest book was Thomas Szasz's The Lexicon of Lunacy: Metaphoric Malady, Moral Responsibility, and Psychiatry. The sentence is:
"The policy of commitment, or involuntary mental hospitalization -- based on the principle of parens patriae -- is then invoked to deal with the threat to the patient's health and life, and with the havoc his behavior is likely to create in the family or among the people who are forced to witness his behavior."
Monday, May 21, 2007
Iran Has A Drug War! Bomb Them!
In an apparent attempt to drum up support for war with Iran, neocon bulwark Michael Ledeen points readers to pictures of an Iranian drug bust, and comments:Terrifying pictures, to be sure. For me, the most revealing thing about them is that the police feel obliged to wear masks while conducting a drug bust in the capital. tells you something about the relationship between the people and the state.
Oh, where to begin. Perhaps here. Or here. Or here. Or here. Or here. Or here
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
California's Postpartisan Agenda
In a recent op-ed, I argue that "Having Republicans approve all the big government programs in the Democratic agenda and the Democrats approve all the law-and-order crackdowns and new prisons in the Republican agenda is not a reason to celebrate."
Thursday, April 26, 2007
The Bush/Cheney Regime and Martial Law
In addition to Scott's interview with David Beito, I also recommend Scott's interview with Jim Bovard on the new frightening (and overlooked) changes to the Insurrection Act.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Libertarian Theory and Real World Politics
I gave this talk at the LP of California Convention on Sunday. It is concerned largely with the role of liberal ideology in American history, and how everything from slavery and Lincolnianism to the New Deal and War on Drugs has largely been a result of not enough radical libertarians and too much compromise —- too much gradualism in theory.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
April 19
Here's my thoughts on the Warsaw Ghetto and LSD.
Here's my thoughts on Waco, OKC, and the other mid-April massacres at Columbine and VA Tech.
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Depression, War and Cold War
My review of Robert Higgs's book can be seen here or in two parts, here and here.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Why Libertarians Should Favor Decentralism
Roderick Long has made one of the strongest set of arguments I've ever seen.
Friday, November 10, 2006
The Green Party
The Greens strike me as a very loose alliance of populists of all sorts. There is a decentralist, libertarian streak in some of them. There are socialists, as well. But I remember seeing a poll that said that 2/3 of Nader voters favored war after 9/11, compared to smaller portions of Buchanan and Libertarian voters. I've found in Berkeley a few Greens who defended the first Gulf War, even.
This is to say that the Greens believe all sorts of things, with anti-conservatism being their main, unifying purpose. The ten core principles appeal to a wide variety of people precisely because they are so vague and even self-contradictory. You get more anarchist-leaning Greens as well as ambitious central planners, and, because of the culture war and obfuscatory left-right divide in American politics, they all get along relatively well with not much more of a common belief than that the Republicans are the root of all evil and the Democrats are not much better.
Some Greens will be open to libertarian arguments and are potential converts. Others are a lost cause.
Wednesday, November 1, 2006
The Elections
I'm not voting, of course. But I want to see the Republicans lose, and yet I doubt it will do any good. Likely, things will continue to get worse, and I think the libertarian benefits of gridlock are overstated. There are downsides, too, in fact.
See more on my take here, as well as in this addendum.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Dave Barry's Anti-Federalism of "no obvious academic import"
See BK Marcus on the latest dismal instance of academic non-freedom in higher education, where a professor's funny but true libertarian Dave Barry quote was censored.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Selective Prosecution of War Crimes
In Saddam Hussein’s war crimes trial for the 1988 Iraqi “Anfal” campaign that gassed Kurdish villages, his defense lawyers have argued that Iraqi forces were really attempting to strike Iranian forces and the Iraqi Kurdish pesh merga militias that were in and supported by the hamlets. In other words, the lawyers are asserting that the innocent Kurds who were killed were collateral damage in an effort by the Iraqi government to rid its territory of Iranian fighters and their Kurdish allies during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. Curiously, this defense sounds similar to Israel’s defense of killing more than one thousand Lebanese and perpetrating widespread destruction of Shi’ite neighborhoods, apartment houses, water services, electrical power stations, ports, factories, roads, and bridges in Lebanon in its efforts to punish Hezbollah. Yet Saddam Hussein is on trial for war crimes and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is still in office.
Read the rest of Ivan Eland's newest op-ed.
Monday, August 14, 2006
LvMI in the WSJ
Congratulations to the Mises Institute for this great write-up in the Wall Street Journal! An excerpt:
The Mises Institute counts free-marketers from more than 30 states and at least 23 countries among its faculty. Its students' homes are equally far-flung: Poland, Peru, Argentina, Canada, France and China this summer alone. "Every one of them is an idealist in a very courageous way," Mr. Tucker said. "A lot of people think it's silly to be an idealist these days. But Mises always taught that ideas are the only weapons we have against despotism."
Tuesday, May 2, 2006
The Immigration Solution
Bill Walker over at LewRockwell.com nails it, as he takes on the economic, cultural and other arguments for leviathan to "do something" about illegal immigration:
Libertarians should have learned by now to be a little suspicious when politicians offer to solve our problems with the use of minefields and secret police. Especially when it’s the same politicians who created the problems in the first place.I highly recommend that everyone read the whole thing.
We laugh at the stupidity of our ancestors, who sincerely believed that Irish were all lazy drunks, Jews had low IQs, Chinese could not be doctors, etc. We now know that Irish are very productive drunks, Jews have inherently high IQs (the fact that their mothers make them study hard can’t have anything to do with it, of course), and only Chinese or Indians can be doctors or scientists (math courses are too much work for white students). However, as with any other area of life, these things are more accurately discovered by market processes rather than by a large secret police bureaucracy.
There are two legitimate worries about immigration. One is that the Mexican culture will produce millions who will vote for more government. This is a little funny, because it wasn’t illegal immigrants who voted us into socialism; it was our own English-speaking great-grandfathers who voted for FDR. Mexicans don’t even control their OWN country’s policies; Mexican (or any Third World nation’s) politics is always dominated by the faction that gets the most US foreign aid.
Friday, April 28, 2006
Ron Paul on the Academic Bill of Rights
Given that this has been a topic here lately, I thought I'd post a link to Ron Paul's statement on the Congressional floor about the so-called "Academic Bill of Rights." It's short, and ends with this bang:
Instead of fostering open dialogue and wide-raging intellectual inquiry, the main effect of the "Academic Bill of Rights" will be to further stifle debate about controversial topics. This is because many administrators will order their professors not to discuss contentious and divisive subjects, in order to avoid a possible confrontation with the federal government. Those who doubt this should remember that many TV and radio stations minimized political programming in the 1960s and 1970s in order to avoid running afoul of the federal "fairness doctrine."
I am convinced some promoters of the "Academic Bill of Rights" would be perfectly happy if, instead of fostering greater debate, this bill silences discussion of certain topics. Scan the websites of some of the organizations promoting the "Academic Bill of Rights" and you will find calls for silencing critics of the Iraq war and other aspects of American foreign policy.
Mr. Speaker, HR 609 expands federal control over higher education; in particular through an "Academic Bill of Rights" which could further stifle debate and inquiry on America's college campus. Therefore, I urge my colleagues to reject this bill.
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
The Bipartisan Police State
Keith Halderman has recently pointed out the partisan nature of criticism of government abuses. I discuss this issue in my new LRC article, in memory of the Waco disaster 13 years ago and in reflection of the bipartisanship of American tyranny.
Friday, April 14, 2006
Exploiting the Workers
I discuss tax day here, mainly focusing on taxes as an assault on the workers to benefit the corporate state, and why liberals should come to recognize that once again.
I briefly mention in passing one little bit of history that a lot of Americans, including educated libertarians, seem not to know, despite its not being that obscure or esoteric: that the Income Tax Amendment was the dirty work of Republican William Howard Taft. I've often been challenged on this by libertarians who say it was Democrat Woodrow Wilson, but Taft backed the Amendment from 1909 to 1913 until it was finally ratifed by the states, years after the House and Senate approved it with overwhelming bipartisan support, a month before Taft left office. Why is it that people seem to think the Income Tax was Wilson's doing? Could it be because it was under Wilson that the tax really began to take a bite, and especially, at tyrannical rates, during World War I? Or is it just because Wilson was a Progressive Democrat and there seems to be a bizarre misconception, on both the left and right, that the trustbuster Taft was some sort of laissez faire politician, a throwback to the horse-and-buggy days?
Friday, March 31, 2006
Feed Anyone Suspicious Lately?
I have a piece on immigration reform over at LRC.
Wednesday, March 1, 2006
On Being Anti-State, Anti-War, and Anti-Bush
I have a new article about why it's important to be all three, and where the left and right go wrong. I discuss the unfortunate tendency of the left to attack Bush even on the incredibly rare occasions that he's right. A sample:
The left, for its part, still fails to understand the other side of the coin. On the front is the image of the president, on the back is the institution of the state. If Bush is ever immortalized on coin, his denomination will almost surely follow the pattern of all presidential tyrants numismatically eternalized before him. Turning over his image will reveal that of a government building or memorial, made permanent in the metallic disc and representing the state’s impersonal, cold inhumanity whose obfuscation is the role of the chief executive engraved on the flipside.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Left and Right and the Prospects for Hypocrisy
Throughout the libertarian blogosphere I have seen a bunch of talk recently of left vs. right, and who is more libertarian. It seems that many libertarians take the position that the left is only better right now because it's out of power, that Ted Kennedy and Al Gore and others are only championing the Bill of Rights and opposing the imperial executive because they do not hold the reins to it.
There is absolutely much truth to this. But before getting into the million definitions of left and right, I want to consider the general thrust of the organized left and right during Republican and Democratic administrations, and ponder what, from a libertarian perspective, we should root for (or root the less against) in national politics.
I'm speaking in terrible generalization here, but I think a few issues are important:
—Who is worse, the left or right, when its side holds power?
—Is the left more critical of Democratic administrations, or is the right more critical of Republican ones? Whose criticism of their own party is more libertarian?
—Is the left more critical of Republican administrations, or is the right more critical of Democratic ones? Whose criticism of the other party is more libertarian?
—Which side is more hypocritical?
—How much does all this go out the window in times of war and crisis?
I think the answer to the last question is: A whole lot. On the matter of war and other crises, I have noticed a tendency for the party in power to be terrible and the opposition side to be better. See my article "Waco, Oklahoma City, and the Post-9/11 Left-Right Dynamic"
However, I do suspect that the better radical leftist critiques of warfare and police statism are more in play during Democratic administrations than are conservative critiques of despotism during Republican ones. Leftists opposed Johnson's war. Some even critiqued Clinton's handling of Waco and Kosovo.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
More on Cory Maye
The Agitator has an update, with some corrections and clarifications to what has already been said and circulated on the blogosphere, on the Cory Maye case. Also see his archive of posts on it.
I do feel horrible about the loss of life of agents carrying out the terroristic policies of the state. But if this guy hangs for shooting an intruder in his home in the middle of the night, I will lose yet another bit of faith in America's criminal "justice system." At this point I don't have much faith to begin with, but it appears I am always capable of being further disgusted and disappointed by atrocity.
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Celebrate Christmas, Or Else!
Lew Rockwell has a great article about the supposed War on Christmas. It has some interesting insights on politics and there's some really cool historical stuff in there, too. It begins:
The evangelical movement in America—the one that put Bush in the White House and continues to constitute his most dependable base of support—has been whipped into a frothing frenzy over the idea, promoted by the newshounds with too much air time to kill at Fox, that someone, somewhere is waging a War on Christmas.
What? Is the government, some government anywhere, actively preventing Christians from celebrating Christmas, as in the Soviet Union, Cuba, China—or, the egregious case of Massachusetts Colony in the 17th century (we’ll get to that)?
No, apparently not. The problem is more subtle, or so they say.
Tuesday, December 6, 2005
Hooded Progressivism
Jesse Walker has a fantastic article at Reason, "Hooded Progressivism: The secret reformist history of the Ku Klux Klan." The article shows that the 1920s KKK were largely progressivist, nativist nationalists, with hotbeds in the Pacific Northwest and Midwest, not exclusively the South, and rather mainstream.
It begins:
It didn't take long for America's first blockbuster feature film to produce its first creepy fan subculture. Right before the Atlanta debut of D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, an epic that glorified the Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan, William Joseph Simmons and 11 others celebrated Thanksgiving by burning a cross atop Stone Mountain and declaring the KKK reborn. A week later, on December 4, 1915, they received a charter from the state of Georgia for their new organization, dubbed The Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Inc.
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Warmongering Is the Health of Statism
At a LewRockwell.com conference I gave a talk on why supporting the war implies accepting the premises of statism. An excerpt:
"No one who favors the warfare state can disown the methods by which it's financed. It is no less economically collectivist to root for war than to root for any other government program. If a socialist told you he wants universal healthcare, but he does not favor the taxation and coercion to fund and implement it, you would quickly point out his naked contradiction. Every warmonger is an inflationist and a taxmonger, whether he knows it or not. To accept war is to accept the warfare state, and to accept the warfare state is to accept all the fundamental premises of statism -- the collectivism, the aggression, the ability of central planning to succeed."
Friday, November 11, 2005
Remembering Armistice Day
Here's an article I wrote last year in memory of Armistice Day. An excerpt:
Well after World War II and at the end of the Korean War, President Eisenhower signed a bill in 1954 that changed the name of the national holiday to Veterans’ Day. There were good intentions: America’s veterans of wars other than World War I deserved some recognition. Interestingly enough, however, the United States had not retracted its military reach after World War II as it now was in a perpetual state of war against Communism. Whereas after World War I, the United States brought its armed forces home, the Cold War guaranteed that the United States would henceforth have little interest in armistice, in truce, in peace.
Thursday, November 3, 2005
Good and Bad Judicial Activisim
Stephan Kinsella has a very interesting post on the LRC blog about good and bad judicial activism, and how conservatives and liberals are all confused in their thinking about this. He adds clarity to the meaning of "judicial activism" for libertarians to use. An excerpt:
Read the rest.From the libertarian point of view, the federal Constitution as written is fairly libertarian, at least compared to the leviathan state into which the original central government has morphed. It is for this reason that we want judges to adhere to the strict text of the Constitution: because it is a way to help hold the federal government to its original, more-limited scheme. "Originalism" then--or opposition to activism--has primarily an instrumental value (as I argued in this Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly review essay--which I wrote, coincidentally enough, after the journal approached me, at Professor Barnett's suggestion). Because our Constitution is relatively libertarian, we want the federal government to abide by the limits the Constitution places on it. In such a context, activism is likely to be a lead to unlibertarian results because it will mean invention of new powers or relaxations on the limits placed on the state. We can hardly be surprised that the judicial branch of the state tends to decide in a pro-state manner; but to the extent judges feel bound by the text of the Constitution, the state's growth will be somewhat impeded (albeit, one disadvantage of such as system is that giving some lip service to the "rule of law" cover or myth helps to legitimize the state's actions).
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
The Inevitability of Private Interests
I explain why trying to use the state to combat the ill influence of "private interests" over the "common good" is nonsensical in theory and bound to cause disaster in practice, in a new article "The Inevitability of Private Interests." Indeed, only the free market can liberate us completely from the private interests we don't want in our lives.
The "Victory" of the Iraqi Constitution
Ivan Eland holds a dissenting view.
Monday, October 3, 2005
Leaders and Crises
Alvaro Vargas Llosa discusses in a new article what allows for reforms in developing countries. In particular, he addresses a new IMF study that
"looked at sixty-five countries that have undergone institutional reform in the last three decades, asking itself what determines institutional change. This is where the study runs into some trouble. To answer this question they conducted econometric exercises mixing the data from the various countries and coming up with certain patterns."However,
"The problem is that econometric exercises don’t really work with factors that have to do with ideas, choices, and historical contexts rather than numbers."Llosa says the real answer lies in leaders and crises.
Monday, September 12, 2005
Where Is Osama?
For the September 11 anniversary, I wrote this article about the failure of the war on terror to catch Osama, and summarizing what the war has instead done. An excerpt:
Four years ago, Americans who found the approaches of perpetual war and a Big Brother surveillance state to be undesirable, unnecessary or counterproductive means of bringing justice to the 9/11 mass murderers were accused of not facing reality. Treating 9/11 as a crime, we were told, would never nab the villains. Only by unleashing the dogs of war, by going on the offensive, and by shifting the "balance" from liberty toward security could America destroy the enemy, neutralize the immediate threat, and ensure our freedom and safety. Well, let us consider what has happened in the last four years.
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
A Modest Proposal for Iran
I reconsider foreign intervention in my new LRC article. An excerpt:
We need a solution that will take care of Iraq, Iran, and their embarrassing new affinity to each other. We need a way to continue the war on terror against Iran without stretching the military too thin or exhausting our capabilities for potential intervention elsewhere. We need to keep the new Iraqi Sharia state in check. Since we live in a democracy, we should find an answer that satisfies everyone and saves America's face in world opinion, all the while maintaining consistency and continuity with America's traditions in foreign policy.
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Will Iraqi Constitution be Irrelevant?
Ivan Eland suggests that the Constitution in Iraq will have little bearing on what happens there.
The media’s focus on whether the Bush administration’s forced timetable is met, rather than on the quality and likely impact of the resulting constitution, serves the administration’s purpose of creating the illusion of progress. . . . And an illusion it is. Earlier this summer, Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, made the astounding admission that the war in Iraq was lost militarily when he said: “[T]his insurgency is not going to be settled, the terrorists and the terrorism in Iraq is not going to be settled, through military options or military operations.” He then pointed his finger to the political process for a solution.
Yet, artificially forcing the Iraqis to reach a definitive agreement on fundamental issues—such as autonomy for Kurdish and Shi’ite areas (federalism), the role of Islam and women in Iraqi society, and the fate of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk—will likely make any Iraqi Constitution as irrelevant as those of neighboring Arab states. On paper, many Arab states have liberal constitutions, but they do not have the political culture or institutions to sustain an open political system. If Iraq doesn’t descend into civil war quickly, perhaps the administration can pull off this façade and exit Iraq with some dignity.
Friday, August 19, 2005
The Administration’s Leaked Mea Culpa on Iraq
Robert Higgs asks, What does it portend?
The Bush administration, [a Washington Post] article explains, no longer expects to produce a model democracy, a well-functioning oil industry, or “a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges” in Iraq. In short, the country is in terrible shape, and the U.S. government cannot solve the Iraqis’ most pressing problems. According to a senior U.S. official, “what we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground. We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we’re in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning.”
To appreciate just how shocking this statement is, one must recall that not so long ago, a Bush staffer was quoted as saying, “We’re an empire now, we make our own reality.” Indeed, since 9/11 the Bush administration’s foreign policy has been everything that foreign-policy realism is not. The government’s faith-based occupation of Iraq, however, has not held up well against the rocket-propelled grenades, improvised explosive devices, small-arms fire, and mortar rounds that continue to batter it with distressing regularity, inflicting casualties of nearly 2,000 dead and some 14,000 wounded among U.S. military forces so far. An administration notable for its arrogance now undertakes to “shed the unreality” that underlay its invasion and occupation.