The Shotgun Blog
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Congressman Ron Paul on The Daily Show
Posted by Kalim Kassam on September 30, 2009 in Economic freedom, Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (1)
Saturday, September 19, 2009
The Canadian Tradition
I'm currently part way through Brian Lee Crowley's latest book: Fearful Symmetry: The Fall and Rise of Canada's Founding Values. So far so good. I hope to have a review up later in the week. The basic thesis is that Canada was founded as a classically liberal society, and then lost its way through a combination of changing intellectual trends and Quebec nationalism. It is the later that Crowley cites as vital in explaining Canada's higher than average level of statism compared to other English speaking nations. The Quiet Revolution, and its aftermath, sparked a bidding war for the loyalty--if that's the word--of the Quebecois. The thesis is not original, but Crowley brings a considerable weight of scholarship to bear on the issue. He also breaks the taboo among the Canadian intelligentsia of stating the obvious: In the main the Quebecois are not loyal to Canada. The book is endorsed by a dazzling array of Canadian conservatives: Conrad Black, Michael Bliss, William Gairdner, Barbara Kay, Tom Flanagan and David Frum. If we can speak of Canadian conservative establishment, the above is a Who's Who. From the National Post:
The state had been expanding on both sides of the border for years. When Stephen Leacock warned of the impending arrival of socialism in Canada in 1924, the state in Canada was spending 11% of GDP. By 1960, we were spending over 28%. Again, however, there was nothing in that that distinguished Canada; government was carving out a bigger role for itself everywhere. No one denies that the zeitgeist was there, no one denies that government in general and the social service state in particular were growing. What has to be explained is not the direction of change, but rather its speed and scope and timing.
And here the parallel social and economic developments of Canada and the United States over the previous century must be given their due weight. We were two societies with a similar intellectual, philosophical and institutional endowment. We Canadians thought of ourselves as the truer guardians of the British traditions of liberty and limited government, but the Americans fought a revolution in order to vindicate what they thought of as the rights and liberties of Englishmen. The spirit of the great liberal individualist John Locke presided over America's founding debates in the eighteenth century, just as he did over the Confederation debates of the nineteenth.
Posted by PUBLIUS on September 19, 2009 in Canadian History, Canadian libertarian politics, Canadian Politics, Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (1)
Friday, September 04, 2009
Anarchism & Education
In February 2007 I published a small magazine of current affairs opinion pieces, mostly for the experience as well as getting my ideas out to those I could reach. Although I forget the number now, I would estimate about 50 copies were made. Most of those copies were given to family, friends, and the Civitas conference that happened to be in Halifax in May 2007.
I have published a couple articles from this magazine and the LPC newsletter already, but here are a couple scans I thought were still at least decent. The rest is unfortunately anti-conservative at times, but hey, you have to start somewhere! It must be said that the second article is not written by me, however I agree with the overall message that the whole public school system is so rigid that creativity, intellect, and intelligence is no longer rewarded. Sometimes, it’s even punishable behavior. Hooray for progressivism!
The first article is essentially a rant about the comparison of anarchism and libertarianism. Someday I will write about the fact that anarchism is essentially more left-wing than even communism, but in the meantime I would love to hear hear my fellow conservatives’ opinion on both of these (old) articles.
[Cross-posted at The Right Coast]
Posted by Dane Richard on September 4, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (12)
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Free Talk Live: Liberty Radio
If you value liberty and you aren't familiar with Free Talk Live, then you're missing out. FTL is radio show and podcast hosted by Mark Edge, a self-described Minarchist; and Ian Freeman, a voluntaryist/anarcho-capatalist. They have frequent co-hosts that range from small-government libertarians to anarchists and speak honestly and frankly about the failings of the government paradigm.
The content of Free Talk Live is largely responsible for showing my the logic of liberty, and real-life solutions that are found through personal and economic freedom. They are members of the Free State Project, a movement of 20 thousand liberty loving people to New Hampshire to get active in promoting liberty.
You can listen on line for free at their website; they are live 7-10 Eastern Time, Monday to Saturday.
Posted by Freedom Manitoba on July 29, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (1)
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Liberty Summer Seminar: Jan Narveson and Travis Smith
The Liberty Summer Seminar, hosted by the Institute for Liberal Studies, is an annual libertarian gathering in Orono, Ontario, an hour and a half east of Toronto.
Set on a beautiful 40-acre property, the event, now in its ninth year, is the premier libertarian event in Canada, drawing 100 attendees and some of the finest libertarian speakers from across North America. This year's event is this upcoming weekend, July 25, 26.
Dr. Jan Narveson, who is president of the Institute for Liberal Studies, will give his trademark overview speech on the philosophy of liberty (libertarianism), this time entitled "The Courage to do Nothing." After all, that is, to some extent, what libertarians are busy insisting the government should do -- a whole lot of nothing. This does take a certain amount of courage, especially in the face of all the various special interest groups, and non-libertarians who are screaming at the government to always be doing something, even if that something is going to do more harm than good (because, shucks, what matters is that you had good intentions, and you meant well, never mind the ruin you left in your wake).
Dr. Travis Smith, meanwhile, will round out Narveson's more abstract presentation with some meat in his talk entitled "The Politics of Liberty and Early Modern Thought." Smith specializes in the writings of Thomas Hobbes and Francis Bacon and is primarily interested in the intersection of religion, politics, and science. He teaches political science at Concordia University.
Narveson has attended every single Liberty Summer Seminar, since its founding in 2001. He is an emeritus professor of philosophy from the University of Waterloo, is either the most or second-most published Canadian philosopher, is author of several books, including the seminal The Libertarian Idea. He was made an Officer in the Order of Canada in 2004.
There are still a few spots open for this year's event, and you can register by following the link here. Meanwhile, you can see all of this year's speakers and topics by following this link.
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on July 21, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (2)
Monday, July 20, 2009
Liberty Summer Seminar: MP Scott Reid to discuss original intent and the Canadian Constitution
The Liberty Summer Seminar, hosted by the Institute for Liberal Studies, is an annual libertarian gathering in Orono, Ontario, an hour and a half east of Toronto.
Set on a beautiful 40-acre property, the event, now in its ninth year, is the premier libertarian event in Canada, drawing 100 attendees and some of the finest libertarian speakers from across North America. This year's event is this upcoming weekend, July 25, 26.
Scott Reid, Member of Parliament for Lanark, Frontenac, Lennox & Addington, will speak this year on the topic of "Original Intent and the Canadian Constitution." Canada's Supreme Court has adopted what it likes to call a "living tree doctrine" when it comes to the interpretation of our Constitution, including the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Reid will argue that this is a mistake, and that the court should be more partial to following an original intent doctrine, where the original intentions of the writers and ratifiers of the constitution are given significant weight.
Reid has attended several Liberty Summer Seminars. Also from the riding of Lanark, Frontenac, Lennox & Addington, Reid's provincial counterpart, MPP Randy Hillier, who ran for the leadership of the Ontario PC Party recently on a pro-free speech, pro-private property, and pro-individual liberty platform, will also be in attendance to listen to the speakers. Both Reid and Hillier will be available to speak informally with attendees.
There are still a few spots open for this year's event, and you can register by following the link here. Meanwhile, you can see all of this year's speakers and topics by following this link.
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on July 20, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (8)
The Philosophy of Liberty
Understand personal liberty, economic liberty and property rights in 8 minutes.
Posted by Freedom Manitoba on July 20, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (30)
Sunday, July 05, 2009
The Idea of America by Pierre Lemieux
Yesterday marked American Independence Day. Last year, the Western Standard published an exclusive monograph by our columnist Pierre Lemieux entitled "The Idea of America" (PDF). Here's how we described the monograph:
What were the revolutionaries -- the signers of the Declaration, the men and women who abandoned their old ties to call America home -- doing all of this for? What was that glorious idea?
Pierre Lemieux, our firebrand libertarian columnist, has produced a monograph entitled "The Idea of America," (PDF) published by the Western Standard, to answer this and related questions. His analysis is, in my judgment, accurate and cutting. Once upon a time, Americans (and Canadians) wouldn't even think of the government when presented with a problem.
Once upon a time, no American worth her salt would ever stand for identification papers, gun control, nanny state regulations, and so on. What happened to those Americans? Maybe they lost their grip on the idea of America, and were coddled and pacified by unparalleled wealth and prosperity. Or maybe they were flummoxed by the snake-oil salesman cum politician, insisting that they could get something for nothing, or frightening them with tales of bogeymen under every bed.
"...consider the first decade of the 20th century," writes Lemieux, "[i]n general, anybody could start a business, find investors, and sell his product without any government license and oversight. There was no SEC, no IRS, no FCC, no FDA, no OSHA, no USCIS (formerly INS), no EPA. The absence of regulation did not prevent the development of vibrant capital markets, and New York City was on its way to becoming the top financial place in the world. The right to keep and bear arms, so typically American in the 20th century, had survived relatively unscathed. There was no witch-hunt and, in a legal fight between an individual and the government, it is the latter that felt handicapped. Writing in 1910, Lord Acton could confidently say that the American people are “more free than any other the world has seen.” In her celebration of American liberty in the early 20th century, Rose Wilder Lane could exclaim: “That is what Europeans meant when, after a few days in this country, they exclaimed, ‘You are so free here!’.”
Once, maybe, there was America. But what happened to that idea?
"Americans are now caught in the “network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform” that [Alexis de] Tocqueville forecasted. Virtually all activities -- even those protected by the Bill of Rights -- are regulated in some way, and most often in many ways. Just at the federal level, there are probably 4,000 statutes, although it’s hard to tell the exact number, notes a Wall Street Journal reporter, “because the statutes aren’t listed in one place.” And this does not include the regulations. “We continue to claim that nobody is supposed to ignore the law,” wrote French legal theorist Georges Ripert in 1949, “but those who know it are certainly to be commended.” In 2001, federal prosecutors brought more than 80,000 cases. To this must be added the laws, regulations and prosecutions at the State and local levels. It is stimated that 15 per cent of all Americans have an arrest record. France has come to America."
Read the monograph (for a second time, if you've read it already). Pass it on. It's the 4th of July weekend, and the idea of America is still worth fighting for.
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on July 5, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (3)
Sunday, June 14, 2009
The existence of evil: the real divide between libertarians and social conservatives
Hopefully, this post won't offend anyone, libertarian or conservative. My intent is not to assess the truth of either of these views, but merely to determine the degree to which they are compatible.
While I'd like to offer definitions of both positions -- both libertarian and social conservative -- doing so would immediately embroil this post in debates I would like it to avoid. In any event, I don't have an exhaustive definition of either term, and descriptions of social conservatism, like this one are worse than useless. Rather, I would like to suggest one point, only one, on which libertarians and social conservatives differ. They may differ in other respects, but this one difference can explain much or all of the variance between the two positions.
There is a common view, and it used to be more common, that politics is a matter of applied morality. Relatively speaking, the idea that "you can't legislate morality" is of recent vintage, and even the people who now declare their allegiance to it probably don't believe what they are saying. Not really; but it is a fashionable thing to say, and so the fashionable left says it. Repeatedly. Until it becomes nauseating.
There can be no complete separation between politics and morality. To take a trivial example, murder laws track the moral prohibition on killing. The distinction between murder and manslaughter depends on our suspicion that malicious intent adds to one's moral responsibility.
The question, therefore, is not whether morality should drive politics, but the degree to which it should do so. On one end of the scale, law prohibits every immoral act, and political institutions are used to ensure that people make good choices for their lives and the lives of others. On the other end, politics is completely detached from morality, or even opposed to it, so that citizens are commanded to act immorally.
We want to find a principled basis for stopping somewhere between these two extremes. The libertarian has one, or thinks he does: law is violence, and so it is fitting that it be used only to prohibit violence. Violent actions are particularly immoral -- or immoral in a special way -- and this is why the line must be drawn at this point and no other. The libertarian claims that only part of morality should drive politics, the part that prohibits violence, but that otherwise government and morality ought to be kept at arms' length.
Thus, while the libertarian may recognize that there are better and worse ways to live, he will only make use of the law when it is necessary to protect people from the violent actions of others. He may believe, and be right to believe, that non-violent drug users tend to live poorly from a moral point of view. Their lives may be shallow and empty, but as long as they refrain from inflicting violence on others, the law will not intervene. So says the libertarian.
The social conservative has a different perspective. Despite what some may think, I have quite a bit of sympathy for that perspective, and hopefully that will prevent me from drawing a caricature. First, the social conservative recognizes that those who live poorly often encourage others to live poorly. The very presence of the non-violent drug user can lead others to live worse lives than they would otherwise. Moreover, a culture of irresponsible and intemperate drug-abusers will be unable to sustain a commitment to important values and principles, including ones the libertarian hopes to rely on. The law can prevent this, and should prevent it.
The libertarian has a response to this way of thinking. Rational persuasion, social stigma and economic forces will keep people in line, the response goes. The invisible hand will ensure that society does not sink into a miasma of cannabis smoke. Violence is unnecessary.
There are reasons to reject this response. Some are rooted in history (China's experience with opium is an oft-cited example.) But grander than history, tradition and theology teach another lesson: evil exists, and that's the way most people like it. Running counter to the magnetism of rationality or the pull of the invisible hand, there is evil. Indeed, evil, reason, and economics sometimes work together, reinforcing each other, birthing new, more efficient kinds of perversions and devastation.
"Of course evil exists," the libertarian declares. "Violence is evil, isn't it?" Of course, that's not what the existence of evil means to the conservative, or not only.
What does it mean for evil to exist? I think one of Dostoevsky's characters, the narrator of Notes From Underground, had it about right: humans really like to do what they know they ought not do. If a person realizes he is living poorly, this may be precisely the motivation he needs to encourage others to live the same way. If another recognizes that it would be better, all things considered, if he did X, he is just as likely to spurn X in favor of Y. This is not the banal evil of Hannah Arendt, but the primal evil, the first evil, the evil of Milton's Lucifer, who once declared, "Evil, be thou my good!"
If humans are enmeshed in this kind of evil, born into it, then rationality and economic forces will be insufficient to curtail the destructive impulses of the masses. Evil, by this standard, becomes rational: absent the violence of the state, it is rational for the drug addict to create other drug addicts, and for the corrupt to corrupt others. For the "supply" of evil to be curtailed by diminishing "demand" -- there must be diminishing demand for evil, not an ever-increasing appetite for it.
The libertarian draws the line. The conservative says, "That's not good enough. It permits too much evil to flourish. And evil will eventually wipe away that line, too, and the result will be more violence than you ever thought possible."
At this point, the libertarian has a response: "You are right that limiting the role of government permits evil to flourish. You have to accept that. The alternative is a more powerful government, one that can use its power to create more evil. Limiting government, keeping evil on an individual scale -- that's the better bet." I've come to think that this response is a dodge.
I call it a dodge. Why? Because it's not necessarily the better bet. There is no evidence that allowing individuals to spawn as much evil as they please (except violence) results in less evil. There is no evidence that governments, given the constitutionally-limited power to quash evil, will all turn into versions of Nazi Germany. In addition, the conservative can agree with the libertarian that governments given an unlimited mandate to quash evil will themselves become evil. But that is not what the conservative wants; what he wants is not unlimited power but some power; not the ability to crush evil no matter the cost, but the ability to nibble at evil, around the edges, and to keep it on a leash.
Outside prohibiting violence, the libertarian thinks government ought to leave evil alone. The conservative thinks government ought to engage it -- defeat it -- sometimes. The choice is not that of liberty or fascism, but that of freeing evil from political control, trusting other forms of social control to fully contain it, or giving government a role in doing so.
It should be noted that the liberal and the libertarian do not necessarily clash in this way. The liberal -- and here I mean the modern, "progressive" variety -- does not believe in evil the way the conservative does, as John Kekes has pointed out. To the liberal, evil does not exist, or at least does not exist as a natural force. For example, the non-violent drug addict is not evil, but sick. Terrorists who kill children are not evil, but the product of corrupt institutions and U.S. foreign policy. Naturally, people are good, or at least decent; if they don't act that way, it's because other, un-natural forces are at work (like religion, with its scrupulous, stifling moral codes, etc.) It is not freedom but that lack of it that causes people to behave in an evil fashion, or so says the progressive.
While this way of thinking can be traced at least as far back as Rousseau, it's unfair to put all the blame on him. If people have a natural inclination towards evil, then we should expect people to be drawn to ideas that glamorize that inclination and denigrate the institutional forces that, in the past, kept it in check. In this respect, Rousseau is just a scapegoat, and we might as well blame Satan.
But, in some sense, the liberal and the libertarian agree that more individual freedom is the answer to the problem of evil. Leave people alone, let them make decisions for themselves, and they'll end up seeking the good and shunning the bad. This is why I said there is no real clash between the liberal position and the libertarian one, at least as far as evil is concerned.
If I'm right, then the root of the conflict between libertarians and social conservatives is an old one. This is not to say that libertarians can't believe in evil as thoroughly as conservatives do. However, I'm not sure they can believe in it in precisely the same way.
Let's consider the example of violence. Often, violence is an evil. But almost no one (except maybe the progressive liberal) thinks that violence can't be put to good use. If a small amount of violence can prevent a great amount of evil, then that might be reason enough to support the use of violence. Fortunately (here, libertarians will disagree, and I will disagree with them), modern government has gotten quite good at being economical in its use of violence. The barest threat -- the frown of the police officer; the possibility of an tax audit -- is enough to get most people to comply.
Thus, the very efficiency of the modern state, its ability to use small amounts of violence for very great effect, makes it difficult to sensibly reject unleashing the state against the threat of evil. If you believe in evil, of course. The libertarian who both believes in evil and believes that the state should not be unleashed to combat it has the burden of explaining why. In what follows, I'll call the libertarian who believes in evil (beyond the infliction of violence) a conservative-libertarian, and attempt to meet the burden he bears.
Here is one explanation: violence is evil to such a degree that its use can never be sanctioned, not even against (by implication) lesser evils. The drug user lives poorly and encourages others to do the same, but we do even worse if we bring violence against him.
This has to be the comparison the conservative-libertarian has in mind: using violence against people who live evil lives is worse than allowing them to continue and spread their evil. But if this is the idea, then, frankly, it sounds silly. A tiny amount of violence, directed at a few, evil people, to prevent them from spreading their evil further. And still, that's too much? On every occasion? But why? What makes a small amount of violence -- neutered, and under the control of legions of bureaucrats -- so bad that it can never be used in this way?
What the libertarian needs to say, I think, is that it is an injustice to use violence just to get people to make good choices. That it is wrong to force people to live good lives. That we cannot use the smallest amount of violence to make the world a better place. But this sounds absurd, and must sound absurd to social conservatives.
Thus, I submit that the libertarian, to avoid this absurdity, cannot believe in evil the way the social conservative believes in evil. He must believe in evil the way liberals believe in evil: that it is unnatural, and that more freedom will, over time, lead to less of it. This is not to say the libertarian can't believe the drug addict is living poorly, that his life would be better if he made different choices. But he must believe that, given sufficient freedom, the vast majority of people will not choose to follow the drug addict into perdition. Evil is always the exception and never the rule.
Posted by Terrence Watson on June 14, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (64)
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Motor Home Diaries: A road trip in search of freedom in America
Leave it to my dear fellow libertarians to envision the Motor Home Diaries<, a story of three friends who took to the road in April 2009 to search for freedom in America. According to their website....
Along the way the friends — Jason, Pete and Tom — interact with individuals and groups from diverse backgrounds and viewpoints at college campuses, homes, businesses and organizations that are united by one thing: increasing individual freedom and responsibility and decreasing the scope of government.
Their story takes place in a 30 foot used motorhome affectionately dubbed M.A.R.V. (Mobile Authority Response Vehicle). Driving from the urban jungles to picturesque small towns and everywhere in-between, they connect with those who reject government violence in favor of a voluntary society. Through the stories of the individuals they interview they explore the historic shift in power from individuals to the government and the growing movement of those who are fighting back to reclaim their liberties. They consider their project to be a near-real time documentary since they will post quickly edited videos online so their trip can be viewed on MotorHomeDiaries.com. There, you can read their frequently posted blog and tweets. Videos, photos and media will be posted rapid fire.
Tomorrow night, these three gentle liberty-lovers will be honored at my humble home. I look forward to sharing more details about their trip and the unfortunate sally with law enforcement.
There are rumors of the Motorhomers venturing into Leonard-Cohen-land, and I am sure they would love to do so given a little financial assistance (i.e. funding). Currently, they are being funded by the Atlas Foundation, Bureaucrash, Free State Project, and Free Talk Live. Any Canadian non-profits interested in bringing the Motorhome Diaries up north should send a friendly email to mail@motorhomediaries.com.
Posted by Alina on May 17, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBack
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
US Congressman Ron Paul talks libertarianism with Pete Eyre
Last week on Western Standard Radio's flagship show The Hot Room, Pete Eyre, Jason Talley and Adam Mueller joined hosts Mike Brock, Jay Currie and Peter Jaworski from the road to talk about their Motorhome Diaries project where they're documenting their trip across the US (with a couple jaunts into Canada) in search of liberty and those who defend it. Among the topics discussed were the merits of US Republican Congressman Ron Paul's approach to constitutional government and libertarianism and specifically his approach to immigration.
Today, in an interview with the country doctor-turned-political superstar at his home in Lake Jackson, Texas, Pete Eyre had a chance to ask Paul more about his views on immigration and also to talk to him about monetary policy, civil disobedience, anarchist supporters of voluntaryism, and how to make the case for and build towards a freer society.
Posted by Kalim Kassam on May 12, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (1)
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
Motorhome Diaries interview U.S. Libertarian Party founder David Nolan, and chat with Canadian libertarian Sean Morley
My good friends Jason Talley and Pete Eyre (both former Bureaucrash.com crashers-in-chief) are on the road spreading the message of liberty in a motorhome. With Adam Mueller, who they picked up along the way, they are in the midst of a trip across North America (including Mexico and, in the next few months, Canada). Their trip is being chronicled on MotorHomeDiaries.com.
They've been on the road for some time now, meeting with prominent libertarians, video camera always at-the-ready.
This past week, Jason, Pete, and Adam met up with Sean Morley (of World Wrestling Entertainment fame) in Arizona. Sean, a Canadian, moved from Ontario to Arizona after he'd had his fill of paying high taxes. Way back in my undergrad days, I found out that Sean was a libertarian and arranged an interview with him for my campus newspaper, The Queen's Journal (it was titled "The Val Venis School of Libertarianism"). Here's Jason chatting with Sean about liberty:
More recently, the crew of the Motorhome Diaries took an opportunity to talk with David Nolan, founder of the U.S. Libertarian Party. In the following interview, Nolan expresses some disappointment with the current direction of the Libertarian Party under former Congressman Bob Barr. The conversation is interesting and worth watching in full:
David Nolan was not only the founder of the Libertarian Party, but also the man behind what has come to be called the "Nolan chart." The Nolan chart is a two-dimensional test to see whether you're a libertarian, an authoritarian, a conservative, a liberal, or a centrist. You can take the test yourself, and see whether or not your political philosophy squares with how you describe yourself (apologies for the America-centric questions, I can't find one for Canadians). After taking the quiz, why not pop back here and tell us where you fall on the chart? I'm decidedly a libertarian.
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on May 6, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (1)
Bioethics in a godless world
I'll leave abortion at the door today, and look at the second-biggest bioethical issue: embryonic stem cell research.
Recently, Michael J. Fox appeared on Oprah and was presented with a new line of bio-research that promises to be even more promising than embryonic stem cell research; the technique involves using adult skin tissue to culture cells that can repair the damage of Parkinson's Disease.
This predictably has Christian's and other religions preoccupied with this issue jumping for joy, believing this somehow closes the debate. Except it doesn't.
What particularly bothers me about the bio-ethical questions surrounding stem cell research as it pertains to it's religious opponents, is they're completely dishonest in regular discourse about what they're really trying to say.
What they're really trying to say is: stem cell research is wrong, because god says it's wrong.
Even if you really believe this, I have to tell you that it's not terribly convincing reasoning for someone who doesn't believe in god. Would you be terribly impressed if I told you that eating spaghetti was immoral because the flying spaghetti monster says it isn't? Of course not.
Most religious people just give up on the god justification, and go after arguments of efficacy, claiming that embryonic stem cell research has no benefits over adult stem cell research--which are patently bad reasoning, considering only research on embryonic stem cells will reveal whether or not they have benefits or not.
The truth of the matter is, the vast majority of scientists are not religious. A famous US Academy of Sciences survey of it's members found that nearly 90% of scientists within the life sciences are atheists, about 5% agnostic, and only about 5% professing to having a belief in a god. So it's safe to say, that the scientists engaging in embryonic stem cell research have no religious reservations about the practice.
This all leads up to a question: what--if any role--would the state play in determining these bioethical questions in a libertarian framework? Clearly, an atheist libertarian like myself or the 95% of scientists that are not religious do not believe we are acting immorally by engaging in such research. Would some libertarians be willing to accept any such limits--in the name of a specific God--and if so, why?
Posted by Mike Brock on May 6, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (52)
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
The Church of Property: Part II
This is a continuation of a series that was started here, which begins to ask a question: are absolute property rights ultimately compatible with libertarianism? This article will continue to expand on that question.
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I am a software engineer. And when I say that, I don’t mean that I’m just a computer programmer. Rather, I work for a fairly large company, where I work on parsers, compilers and optimizers.
My job is logic-intensive; it requires a firm grasp on the concept of mathematical truth, in that a lot of the work I do when dealing with logic optimization, is creating programs that accept logical instructions as input, and output optimized (or simplified) logical instructions on output. It goes without saying that compiler optimization is one of the most sophisticated and erudite practices within the broader software engineering field.
I mention this not to qualify myself, but rather to provide an insight onto the type of thought process I am accustomed to. I am and always have been, fairly predisposed to pedantic analytical thinking.
In software engineering--as in the broader field of mathematics--we employ a process called regression analysis as a method of predicting future behaviour of a logical system. In software engineering, that’s really a very technical way of saying: we look for bugs.
But regression analysis is something that all logical thinkers do--in general. It is essentially what a philosopher is doing when they perform thought experiments. They are testing the behaviour of a logical system by asserting a test case against that system to determine how that system behaves when presented with a particular set of variables.
It might come as no surprise then, that a great number of software engineers--at least ones in my kind of work--tend to have at least a passing interest in philosophy. Software engineering, is after all, an extension of a form of philosophy; computer science is a subset of mathematics and therefore, the philosophy of science. Software engineering explores--in quite a direct way--the practice of exploring and employing mathematical truths as means of describing systems, which is an entire school of philosophy in and of itself. Which is why it’s quite correct to suggest--as many philosophers do and should--that you ultimately owe all of your modern creature comforts to the schools of philosophy in one way or another.
The reason for this preamble will become clear as we move on into the core points of this article.
Libertarianism is a term that describes a set of philosophies (plural) that seek to maximize personal liberty. To be clear: libertarianism is not one, single, philosophy. There is much diversity and disagreement within the libertarian set of philosophies about the role of the state, the exceptions to liberty, and as this article explores, the limits of property rights.
Maximizing liberty is to imply that a libertarian accepts--implicitly--that maximum liberty is unattainable or rather, undesirable. Some of these limits are self-evident in libertarian philosophy; I cannot punch you in the face just because I want to. In a declarative logic system we might say:
LET ANY [PERSON] HAVE [LIFE]
This is a beautiful logical expression. And it’s self consistent. It doesn’t fully describe the libertarian ideal, but it does immediately create a logical system that makes clear that murder must be wrong, since this is declarative logic. Any scenario which would result in any person not having life, violates the logical assertion. The logic has no way of regressing, either. No set of input variables results in a scenario in which the person cannot have life. It is a perfectly self-consistent, closed, logical system.
In yesterday’s article--in the comments--Terrence Watson and myself provided three regression tests as it pertains to the absolute right to property.
Terrence provided the following regression test:
You buy all the land around Sally's house, which - to take the metaphor - means now there is a moral force field around her house. But let's make it a literal bubble: You put up walls of plastic stretching into the sky, all around Sally's house.
Given the right to exclude, Sally is obligated not to try to break through those walls. It would be morally wrong for her to cross over your land in an attempt to get food or water.
But of course you haven't coerced Sally, haven't done anything unjust to her from a libertarian point of view. At the same time, your actions have effectively crippled her autonomy.
So the question: suppose we accept that there is no divide between self-ownership and stuff-ownership. It's one force field and it applies to both you and to the stuff you've labored on (or something like that.) This means that when Sally cuts through the plastic, she's done violence to you. This means -- I'm assuming -- that you would be fully justified in shooting her in the head as she tries to make her escape. After all, she just tried to break into your property with a blow torch!
Intuitively, was it permissible to shoot her?
Now assume that there is a divide between self-ownership and stuff-ownership, one that works out in this way: self-ownership is absolute. No one can use your kidneys without your consent. But stuff-ownership is not absolute. Every once in a while, when it's necessary to give someone any shot at all of living an autonomous life, the stuff force field can be bent, manipulated a little.
In this case, if you refuse to ease your force field to accomplish some moral goal or protect certain values, Sally does nothing wrong when she ignores the field, and you are not justified in shooting her. Rather, you've committed murder, because you used violence in a way that, under the circumstances, was not permissible.
And I provided the example where-as, a private individual buys a plot of land, and establishes a private town to the exclusion of homosexuals. The second example I provided was an example where-as a private individual establishes monopoly ownership over all effective public spaces (roads, sidewalks).
I should note that: as of this writing, no libertarians have attempted to address these two regressions. The only responses that have been offered have been philosophical statements about non-aggression, that I do not believe provide a satisfactory response to Terrence’s wall-dilemma or my private community dilemma.
I assert that these are particularly bad regressions in the libertarian philosophy of absolute property rights. They are bad because they result in property rights, ultimately taking precedence over other people’s ability to be autonomous agents; Sally can no longer leave her house, and will likely starve to death, because the person who built a wall around her house has property rights that supersedes her need to leave in order to have a livelihood.
This is an extreme example. But it’s an example that is perfectly compatible with libertarian principles. Which leads two one of two conclusions about most property absolutist libertarians. a) either they think it’s sufficiently unlikely it will not happen (the security through obscurity argument); or b) they simply don’t care if this type of thing happens (they worship at the Church of Property).
I assert that if the answer is “a”, then I’m highly suspicious of your faith in market and humanity. If your answer is “b”, then I assert you cannot be a libertarian--you’re an egoist that is principally concerned with your property, up to and including the demise of Sally.
I received an e-mail response to my article, that set up what I think is a ridiculously false dichotomy. If you don’t believe in absolute property rights: you’re a socialist. And some of the comments in the previous article seemed to sing a similar tune if not outright coming out and saying it.
Absolute property rights is asserted as being a sacred, untouchable, non-negotiable element of many libertarian's core philosophies. And the more and more I think about it, the more I think that such libertarians are not motivated by the maximization of liberty, but rather the maximization of wealth potential; I think these are two completely different things, and the difference is exemplified by Terrence’s wall example, and my monopoly over public space example.
If I can own all the roads in the country--including the roads on which your home's driveway is connected--I can arbitrarily forbid you have driving on, or crossing the road. I can, without building a physical wall--as Terrence’s example does--build an invisible wall around you.
I can demand that only white people drive on the roads that I own. I bought them, I maintain them, and I charge for their use. It’s my property. Anybody who enters my property who has been expressly forbidden from crossing onto my property, will be interpreted in a libertarian framework, as committing an act of violence against me; Jimmy--who’s a black man--just wants to go to the supermarket and buy some food. But if he steps on my property, given that I’ve made it clear that black men are not allowed, I will have one of my road security people shoot him. It’s nothing personal. I’m just defending my property in accordance with my free association rights.
I assert, as Terrence does, that this type of scenario effectively places property above individual liberty itself--to it’s absolute and demonstrable detriment. In this sense, absolute property rights libertarians have a glaring regression test failure starting them in the eyes, as their philosophy cannot rectify this problem outside of simply damning Sally and Jimmy to death--or boycotting RoadCo Inc.--oh wait, never mind.
The argument used against this, is that publicly administered roads have the same potential. That, the government can be racist, and engage in the same sort of exclusionary behaviour.
I don’t think this is a good argument. Firstly because a liberal constitutional democracy, codifies in law, that the application of public property must not be discriminatory. Also, Sally and Jimmy have political representation in the body that administers the public property. Where-as, it is not likely they will have any representation in WallCo Inc. or RoadCo Inc. The public, democratic model has a system of redress, and the private model may or may not. That’s up to the whim of the private property owner.
It is also a particularly bad argument in the sense that it concedes that private authority can be just as evil and even more evil than public authority. In fact, it doesn’t deal with the problem that private authority can, through monopoly, effectively become the supreme authority. Which in my view, is the ultimate failed regression; liberty dies in practice, on the mantle of private property.
Posted by Mike Brock on May 5, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (97)
Happy 110th birthday Friedrich Hayek
UPDATE: Steve Horwitz has corrected folks that Hayek's birthday is, in fact, on the 8th of May, not on the 5th. I blame my trust in Ilya Somin. We'll celebrate Hayek's birthday twice this week!
Today marks the 110th birthday of Friedrich A. Hayek, libertarian, Nobel-prize winning economist.
The Volokh conspiracy has a short birthday post up by Ilya Somin. He's focusing on two articles by Hayek that, in his mind, are continuing to be relevant today. The first is "The Use of Knowledge in Society". The second is Hayek's explanation for why he does not consider himself a conservative.
CafeHayek is a bit slow to wish their namesake a happy birthday today, but Russel Roberts does have a wonderful post up that helps explain one of Hayek's key insights:
Civic order in the classical liberal vision is a bottom up emergent order that takes advantage of knowledge that the top down engineering approach misses. This is true in pecuniary activity such as buying and selling but it's also true in non-pecuniary activity--who I want to associate with religiously or in my hobbies or how much time I have for my children or my parents. Freedom doesn't just mean the right to be selfish. It's the right to associate with whom I choose. The classical liberal prescription for the good life isn't about making as much money as possible. It's about the freedom to choose. It's about voluntary rather than coercive solutions, decentralized rather than centralized solutions, bottom-up emergent solutions that are the result of many actions and actors rather than top-down solutions by experts.
In 1974, Hayek received the Nobel Prize in Economics, the first free market economist to receive it. Shortly thereafter in 1975, he met Margaret Thatcher thanks to the Institute of Economic Affairs. After meeting Hayek, Thatcher became a fan. Here's my favourite Thatcher anecdote, as explained by Wikipedia:
During Thatcher's only visit to the Conservative Research Department in the summer of 1975, a speaker had prepared a paper on why the "middle way" was the pragmatic path the Conservative Party should take, avoiding the extremes of left and right. Before he had finished, Thatcher "reached into her briefcase and took out a book. It was Friedrich von Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty. Interrupting our pragmatist, she held the book up for all of us to see. ‘This’, she said sternly, ‘is what we believe’, and banged Hayek down on the table".
Can you picture Brian Mulroney, George W. Bush, or Stephen Harper doing the same? No? Me neither...
Hayek is perhaps best known for his book The Road to Serfdom
Hayek is probably my favourite "economist." I put "economist" in scare quotes for one simple reason -- in my mind, Hayek was first and foremost a philosopher, not an economist. His economic insights are the result of his comprehensive familiarity with the philosophy of science, political philosophy, and philosophy of law (Hayek completed two doctorates, one in law the other in political science. He never received a doctorate in economics). But receiving a Nobel Prize in economics sort of has a way of making everyone think that that's what you are. Still, he's a philosopher in my mind, and it is a great shame that philosophy departments do not spend as much time as they should on Hayek's explicit philosophy of mind, epistemological works, and his political philosophy.
While celebrating Hayek's birthday, why not help boost sales of his books. Glenn Reynolds is picking up on the fact that Obama's presidency is creating a surge in Amazon sales for people like Ayn Rand and Friedrich Hayek. Let's help out a bit, shall we?:
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on May 5, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (2)
Monday, May 04, 2009
The Church of Property
These thoughts are a culmination of a process that began months ago when I started examining the libertarian street’s position on various issues. The most notable of those examinations was looking at the relationship of libertarianism and social conservatism: a topic that this article will expand on.
Libertarianism is undergoing a renaissance of sorts. Its ideas are starting to permeate into the mainstream. Which is good. What is not good, is the flag-bearers of libertarianism. That is, its opinion leaders and the nature of the movement.
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I believe in property rights. They are to me -- like most libertarians -- an extremely important facet of my philosophy. But unlike most libertarians, my faith in property as the solution to all social discord is, well, less than firm.
From the Libertarian Church of Property (LCP), comes the notion of private authority; a curious beast that serves as the basis for the libertarian alignment with social conservatism.
I say it’s a curious beast, because private authority seems to imply a sort of trump card for justifying all sorts of unjustifiable things like racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.
I brought my wife to the Manning Centre Networking Conference where she engaged with a thoughtful libertarian, and asked about women’s rights in the context of a libertarian society; as someone who has felt victimized by sexism, the explanation emanating from the LCP was less than enduring for her. It went something like this: “if people unreasonably exclude a member of society simply on the basis of an immutable trait like gender or race, it will lead to a market opportunity that will be exploited by others.”
Now, I know that many libertarians honestly believe this -- in fact, I do to an extent. But I have yet to run into a single person who views themselves as an oppressed group that has done anything but laugh off this economic-technocratic response. And why wouldn’t they? It’s asking someone for patience where they have no reason to have any; I’m sorry you suffer from social exclusion for the colour of your skin, but my libertarian free market ideology will sort it out in the end!
This is essentially the argument libertarians make. That’s it. It’s all there. Move along. Nothing else to see here. You might as well say: suck it up and deal with it, dumb bitch! -- in the end, the response will be much the same.
To make matters worse, socially liberal libertarians bend themselves into pretzels trying to find common ground with the exact people who are so threatening to people like my wife.
It makes my life quite hard, and has turned me into nothing more than an apologist for libertarianism. And it makes me ask, why should I be?
There are socially liberal libertarians here at the Western Standard who lean over backwards to welcome social conservatives into their movement by effectively saying: hey social conservative, be a libertarian, and you can have your own homophobic private community, where the gays will be cast out, banned from “private community” and demonized within the community and to its children and future generations. This is a the vision of the libertarian utopia according to some.
It’s perfectly understandable to me, why my wife will never truck with libertarianism as long as this is the line of reasoning, and it’s plainly clear to me that libertarianism is well on it’s way to becoming the de facto social conservative apologist movement with glaring mascots like Ron Paul.
I reject the definition of libertarianism that is compartmentalized to a political framework. I reject it because it’s an incomplete thought, that fails to account for the cultural forces that enable a political disposition in the first place. I reject the social conservative who calls themselves a libertarian while asserting that gays and lesbians are immoral human beings. Why? Because I reject the idea that any human being acting in their own self-interest, in a voluntary relationship, which harms no one, is an immoral act.
Social conservative libertarians believe they can take that principle and then add a series of special pleadings that are only defensible insofar as some piece of religious scripture validates them.
Socially liberal libertarians on the other hand, also seem to place an irrationally low level of suspicion on the propensity of these social movements to seek political legitimacy in the long run. There’s absolutely no reason to believe they won’t. For this reason, there’s no reason to believe that liberty will be of any enduring quality in a movement that embraces abject bigotry -- or in the case of libertarians, turns a blind eye to it and places it in the capable hands of "market forces".
So I say this to you my social liberal libertarian socon apologizers: good luck with that. I’ll be busy over here promoting liberty through a humanist lens, so I can actually sleep at night and have a wife who can relate to me.
Posted by Mike Brock on May 4, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (62)
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
The fear factor: Political philosophy based on what you're most afraid of
Maybe I'm suffering from confirmation bias, but I can't help but feel as though fear-mongering is the best way to grow the size and scope of government. I'm also completely convinced that both conservatives and liberals engage in the same thing, without sufficient self-awareness. See if this story doesn't fit:
If you think the world is coming to an end because of the super dangerous threat of ice glaciers melting, the sun blowing up, hurricanes, tidal waves and all the assorted outcomes of climate change in general, you might be a liberal. You might think that all of these disastrous outcomes are likely. And you might think that there is just one solution -- (much) bigger government.
I was listening to Rush Limbaugh the other day (as I do on many, many days), and he poked fun at this sort of fear-mongering. He said that liberals want you to be very scared, because they want to grow the government. Rush was on to something. If you're really terrified of climate change, you might be willing to either ignore or downgrade the importance of individual liberty. In the face of such a calamity, where our survival as a species hangs in the balance, how can you not ratchet up the state apparatus, and ratchet down our liberties?
Driving along, I thought it was wonderful to listen to someone put a pin to the fear balloon. There is all sorts of exaggeration going on. And people are feeding off of our fears, building them up with scary tales of a disastrous future, all the while pushing for greater encroachments on liberty by the government. Even if the fears turn out to be a pile of rubbish, the departments, ministries, and other government agencies will continue anyways. As Milton Friedman said, nothing is as permanent as a temporary government program.
A few days later, I was listening to the same Rush Limbaugh. With his baritone voice, he was beginning to make me feel a little nervous. He was telling me about the Islamist threat facing western civilization. These folks, he assured me, don't want to reason with us, they want to destroy us. They don't want accommodation, they are aiming for complete annihilation. Given this super-dangerous and super-urgent threat, he said, it is unconscionable that U.S. president Barack Obama doesn't want to spend more on the military, warfare apparatus of the state.
If you think modern civilization is going to come to an end because of Sharia law, women in burqas, suicide bombers, and radicals who really, really hate cartoon depictions of their holy people, you might be a conservative. You might think that this disastrous outcome is likely. And you might think that there is just one solution -- (much) bigger government.
Are there really Muslims with bombs waiting at all of our airports? Is the danger from terrorism really so pressing? I got online and found some pins to poke at this fear balloon. Is civilization coming to an end? Hardly. Should we be busy torturing people, spying on our neighbours, and ignoring protections against the encroachment of the state into our private lives? I don't think so. I'm more worried about a car crash than I am terrorism. Some good folks in New Zealand got my back on this issue.
If I were less charitable, I would think that conservatives are just doing what the liberals do -- using fear as an excuse to ratchet up their preferred part of government, and to either ignore or downgrade the importance of individual liberty.
For a while, I felt pleased with myself. I am, after all, a libertarian. I think economic liberties are important, and don't feel inclined to give up my liberties for the sake of a Kyoto Accord that probably isn't going to work anyways. I think civil liberties are important, and don't feel inclined to give up my liberties for the sake of security measures that probably aren't going to work anyways. And I'm just as unafraid of the possible climate change calamity as I am of the possible terrorist threat treachery.
So I thought, "libertarians are the most level-headed sorts of people. They don't go in for fear-mongering. They don't go in for the exaggerations of the left or the right. There are scary things out there, to be sure, but you can always count on the optimism, the rationality, and coolness of calculation from the liberty-lovers in Canada and the U.S." Then I looked up Ron Paul, and the TEA parties...
If you think we are on the brink of enslavement, are subject to a conspiracy of the wealthy elites (especially the bankers!), think there's a government camera on every corner, and think bureaucrats are monitoring your emails and digging through your garbage, you might be a libertarian. You might think that this is a disastrous calamity and the worst form of treachery. And you might think that there is just one solution -- (much) smaller government.
And there you have it. A psychological explanation of your political philosophy through seeing what you are most afraid of. Fear environmental havoc? You're probably a liberal. Fear a looming terrorist onslaught? You're probably a conservative. Fear the state itself? You're probably a libertarian.
Call this awareness-raising. No political philosophy is immune from fear mongering, and all of them have their Chicken Littles with placards declaring that we're witness to the end times. And the sky still hasn't fallen.
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on April 28, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (13)
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Sunday philosophy of liberty: Is foreign interventionism consistent with libertarianism?
Internal emails between some Western Standard contributors and editorial staff have picked up of late, with an interesting discussion between those who think non-interventionism is the right policy, versus those who see no conflict between libertarianism and foreign interventionism, at least in principle.
This particular debate within libertarian circles has raged ever since the surprisingly spirited leadership campaign of Republican congressman Ron Paul. Paul's version of libertarianism (paleo-conservatism may be more fitting) leaves no room for an aggressive foreign policy.
One important distinction is this. All libertarians believe in self-defense, and believe that a proper function of government is to defend citizens from foreign threats. That is not the issue here. The question is not whether or not a government should defend citizens, it should. And it is not about whether or not the War in Iraq, for example, counts as an instance of foreign intervention for the sake of self-defense (this is an empirical question). The question is whether or not non-self-defense foreign intervention is ever justified according to libertarianism. (h/t Alain in the comments).
One argument in favour of non-interventionism on the part of the U.S. government is this. The Constitution does not explicitly specify that it is a function of the federal government to intervene abroad. The Constitution goes hand-in-hand with libertarianism (not because they are both grounded in the same reasons but, rather, like the overlapping bits in a Venn diagram). Libertarians, therefore, should not endorse adventures abroad.
A better argument is this:
The state has a territorial monopoly on force, and in exchange for the "right" to collect tribute they offer citizens security against outside invaders and domestic criminals. The state in this respect is like an insurance policy you never asked for and can't get rid of, but whose services you have to access given your lack of options.
Under this arrangement, I would be very unhappy to see my insurance provider pay-out on claims coming from non-policy holders or incur costs at my expense to provide these non-policy holders with "security" that they have never paid for. If my security is threatened, that would change things, but you are arguing for intervention to help someone else without the caveat that national security must be at risk.
This argument makes the case that intervention is in principle anti-libertarian.
Non-interventionist libertarians include Ron Paul and his supporters, the Austrian economists at the Mises Institute and the Lew Rockwell blog (Anthony Gregory, a Lew Rockwell contributor, has a nice archive of articles against what he calls "Liberventionism" here), the policy wonks at the Cato Institute, and the cosmotarians or liberaltarians at Reason magazine, amongst others.
Several libertarians, however, have tried to make the case that, at least in some circumstances, it would be right for a Canadian or American government to intervene abroad for the sake of greater individual liberty.
One argument is this. Each of us, regardless of where we were born, have individual rights to life, liberty and property. Sometimes, a government of another country violates these rights to such an extent that anyone is justified in doing what they can to help those whose rights are being violated. "Anyone" includes governments. Since we're lucky to have relatively liberal and free states like Canada and the U.S., it would be good for these countries to use their military to ensure at least a basic minimum amount of respect for these rights.
Another argument goes like this:
According to Locke, [apart from your right to self-defense] you also have a right to come to the defense of someone else who is being or has been victimized, on the grounds that a crime is a violation of the public peace, not simply a tort against the individual.
Applied at the international level: If a rogue State or Tyrant is oppressing and killing innocent people, then you -- or a higher-level organization of which you are a member -- has the right to step in and stop the crime, as long as doing so does not cause even more harm. It is an extremely complex question in most cases whether it is prudent or effective for one country to intervene to stop the crimes of another; but as a matter of libertarian principle, it is certainly prima facie permitted.
Libertarians who think that intervention is not in principle anti-libertarian include legal scholar Randy Barnett, our own Grant Brown, amongst others (I will update this list just as soon as a few others are brought to my attention).
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on April 26, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (20)
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Are Republicans becoming more libertarian?
Nate Silver, over on FiveThirtyEight, has tried to make the case that Republicans are beginning to embrace libertarianism:
Maybe you see a pattern there and maybe you don't. But of the roughly four different pathways the Republicans could take in the post-Obama universe -- toward Ron Paulesque libertarianism, toward Sarah Palinesque cultural populism, toward Mike Huckabeesque big-government conservatism, or toward Olympia Snowesque moderation/ good-governmentism -- the libertarian side would seem to have had the best go of things in the First 100 Days.
His case is merely suggestive and piecemeal, rather than thorough and comprehensive. His examples include a Gallup poll of American voters by affiliation and their views on what the real problem is (Big Business, Big Government, or Big Labour); the surprising silence from Republicans after Iowa's Supreme Court decision on gay marriage; the TEA party movement that was started by the Chicago Libertarian Party, and given a big boost by Nick Santelli on the floor of the Chicago stock exchange; and the Republican alternative budget which should be seen as red meat for libertarians.
Are Republicans becoming more libertarian? I'm not so sure, but I do see signs of it here and there. Silver may have included sales of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, and the flattering attention Ayn Rand is getting from Republicans and conservative pundits and commentators. Glenn Beck's popularity may have something to do with his libertarianism, and his piggybacking off of the success of Ron Paul's movement. Speaking of Paul, his Campaign for Liberty continues afoot, and is drawing more and more students to Austrian economics, as witnessed by attendance figures and interest shown to the Mises Institute (I haven't asked anyone at George Mason University whether or not they've seen an increase in interest for their economics program, which is primarily Austrian).
So there is good news in the U.S. And at least part of the reason for the good news is the fact that the Republicans are out of office. Here in Canada, we would probably see more of a libertarian move amongst card-carrying Conservatives if Harper weren't in office.
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on April 23, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (9)
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Boston Tea Party chair speaks out on passing of Marilyn Chambers
Yesterday, the Western Standard reported on the sad news of the passing of corporate spokesmodel, porn star and libertarian activist Marilyn Chambers.
In an exclusive Western Standard interview today, Douglass Gaking, chair of the libertarian-oriented Boston Tea Party, a party Marilyn Chambers ran for and supported, shared his personal thoughts about Chambers' libertarianism and the importance of individual liberty in her life.
Here's what Gaking had to say:
To Marilyn Chambers, liberty was about a lot more than politics. She did everything with a revolutionary, libertarian attitude. (I am sure the fans of her films would emphasize that word 'everything.')
She exemplifies a complete libertarian, and she will be missed by many in our party and the international libertarian movement.
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on April 14, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (17)
U.S. Libertarian Party: Prosperity plan would abolish income tax, corporate welfare, and bailouts
The Libertarian Party seeks to abolish the income tax, enact a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution and eradicate corporate welfare under an ambitious three-point legislative plan unveiled by America’s third largest party Tuesday.
“Tens of millions of Americans are angry, fed up and demand real reform,” said William Redpath, Libertarian National Committee Chair. “The Libertarian Party is the only party that agrees with those tens of millions of Americans that government should stay out of both their pocketbook and their personal decisions.”
The “Libertarian Prosperity Plan” seeks to repeal the income tax and abolish the IRS, enact a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced federal budget without tax increases and repeal all corporate welfare programs and bailouts.
“The ‘Libertarian Prosperity Plan’ is rooted in the Libertarian Party platform and bedrock libertarian principles. Unlike the other parties, we don’t promise tax cuts to just grab enough votes to win and then do nothing. Elected Libertarians enact tax and spending cuts because it is what we believe in,” said Redpath.
The Libertarian Prosperity Plan can be read and downloaded here and here as a PDF. The Plan would:
1) Repeal the income tax: Adopt legislation repealing the income tax and abolishing the Internal Revenue Service. Until the income tax is repealed, adopt legislation preserving the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts and enacting across-the-board income tax cuts.
2) Adopt the Balanced Budget Amendment: Adopt a constitutional amendment requiring the federal budget be balanced, and balanced exclusively by cutting expenditures, not by raising taxes.
3) Abolish corporate welfare and bailouts: Adopt federal legislation prohibiting any federal spending program that provides payments or unique benefits and advantages to specific companies or industries, terminating programs that provide direct grants to businesses, eliminating programs that provide research and other services for industries and ending programs that provide subsidized loans or insurance to businesses.
The Libertarian Party is America's third-largest political party, founded in 1971 as an alternative to the two main political parties. You can find more information on the Libertarian Party by visiting http://www.LP.org. The Libertarian Party proudly stands for smaller government, lower taxes and more freedom.
[Ed's note: Man, that's a prosperity plan I can really get behind.]
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on April 14, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (2)
Friday, April 10, 2009
The Motorhome Diaries: RV-ing for liberty
My good friends Jason Talley and Pete Eyre, both former crashers-in-chief of Bureaucrash, decided they were going to hit the road in support of liberty a few months back. They bought a motorhome and embarked on a journey that will take them through around 48 states and two or three provinces.
We'll be following their adventure, so expect updates (for as-it-happens updates, check out their motorhome diaries website here).
In the meantime, check out this interview with Pete and Jason on Free Talk Live, and watch the following videos from reason and the Young Americans for Liberty:
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on April 10, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (1)
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Freedom movement news: The Moderate Separatist, The Fraser Institute, Tibor Machan, Pierre Lemieux, and the Canadian Constitution Foundation kick statist butt today
In freedom movement news today, Leigh Patrick Sullivan over at The Moderate Separatist is doing his part for free speech by promoting Ezra Levant’s new book Shakedown: How Our Government is Undermining Democracy in the Name of Human Rights. Sullivan is calling the book a “must read” and writes:
In Shakedown, Levant goes into disturbing detail about his 900 day battle with the Alberta Human Rights Commission over his decision to print those dastardly infamous Muslim-themed Danish political cartoons in his Western Standard magazine.
Nice work, Sullivan – but why so moderate about Alberta secession?
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The Fraser Institute is taking their fundraising machine south of the border. In a job posting, the Institute announced today that it is looking for a Director of Philanthropy, America, someone to squeeze cash from rich American donors.
The Fraser Institute is the best financed free market think tank in Canada, but the U.S. is where the serious cash is found for fiscal conservative and libertarian organizations. The Institute is adhering closely to rule #18 of The Laws of the Public Policy Process: “You can't save the world if you can't pay the rent.”
I only hope Fraser Institute bagmen get to their greenbacks before the Fed, the silent monster of hyper-inflation hiding behind every ruinous "stimulus" scheme.
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Libertarian author and philosopher Tibor R. Machan will be speaking tonight in Jacksonville, North Carolina at Hilda's Restaurant in Northwoods Shopping Center.
Cool. I wish I could be there.
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Former Western Standard columnist and gun rights advocate Pierre Lemieux will be challenging the Canadian gun control laws in defence of his right to self-defence. He will be in court in Mont-Laurier on May 26 and 27.
When renewing his firearms licence, Pierre refused to answer a question about his love life. Question 6(d) asks, "During the past two (2) years, have you experienced a divorce, a separation, a breakdown of a significant relationship, job loss or bankruptcy?" As an answer, he wrote, "My love affairs are none of your business."
For his defiance, on December 1, 2007, Pierre received a registered letter from the Québec provincial police, which administers the federal gun control laws in cooperation with the RCMP, notifying him that the "registration certificates" of his legally registered guns had been revoked.
You can join me in supporting Lemieux’s legal fight here.
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Finally, former Western Standard columnist and lawyer Karen Selick has joined the Canadian Constitution Foundation as Litigation Director. The CCF is a great organization and the libertarian Selick is a wonderful addition.
I’m going to send the CCF a donation today using this link. That’s just the kind of guy I am.
Posted by Matthew Johnston
Posted by Western Standard on April 7, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (7)
Monday, April 06, 2009
The deficit trials of 2017
A classic 1986 video by Ridley Scott, done in protest of deficit spending under Reagan.
In the Canadian version, who would we have up there in the dock?
Posted by Robert Jago on April 6, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (2)
Monday, March 30, 2009
Burton S. Blumert, 1929-2009
Eric Garris, the webmaster for LewRockwell.com and Antiwar.com reports some sad news about Burt Blumert, proprietor of Camino Coins, publisher of LewRockwell.com, and a giant of the freedom movement:
A dear friend died this morning.
Burt Blumert was not only an old and close personal friend, he was an important friend to Antiwar.com.
In 1999, when Antiwar.com started really taking off, Burt took us under his wing by making us a part of the nonprofit Center for Libertarian Studies, giving us the ability to substantially expand. I don’t think we would be even a shadow of what we are today without Burt.
I met Burt in 1975, during my early involvement with the Libertarian Party. Burt was well-known as a successful businessman and and a very successful fund-raiser for libertarian causes. He was a good friend and early promoter of Murray Rothbard, forming the Center for Libertarian Studies to publish his works. He was a good friend and advisor to Congressman Ron Paul, and served as Ron’s national finance chair in his 1988 run for the White House. Burt was also a very close friend of Lew Rockwell, and was the publisher of LewRockwell.com. Burt was a radical, antiwar and anti-state to the core.
Over the next 34 years, Burt was always there, helping me with both my political endeavors and my personal problems. He always had great advice, just the right connections, and a loose wallet to help with seed money. And Justin Raimondo told me he doesn’t think he’d be alive without Burt’s help. [...]
Burt recently retired from his successful coin dealership, Camino Coins. Only months after he retired, Burt was diagnosed with cancer. He spent the next year battling the cancer while still keeping active to the end. Just last month, Burt cooked me a delicious feast. The way he waited on me, you would have thought I was the sick one. Burt turned 80 a few weeks ago.
In a review of Burt's recent book, a collection of essays, written in his characteristic comedic style called Bagels, Barry Bonds, and Rotten Politicians, Doug French wrote:
Burt Blumert has been fighting that good fight for decades, all the while poking fun at the government thugs, societal decay, political correctness, the medical-industrial complex, the persecution of Barry Bonds, and anything else that has slid under his skin. Burt's the kind of guy who seems like he was born wise. Thus, it's no surprise that, as David Gordon writes, "He knew almost everyone important in the libertarian movement, as well as in the hard money community of which he was a leading member." Up until Lew Rockwell persuaded Burt to put his views of the world on LewRockwell.com, only Burt's friends and customers benefited from his keen and funny insights.
Our thoughts today are with Burt's family, friends and community in Burlingame, California. Like them, his customers and the larger freedom movement have suffered a great loss; a man of immovable principle, incredible wit and generous spirit is no longer with us.
UPDATE 3: Brian Doherty, the documenter of the American libertarian movement adds:
Like many involved in the movement who were more backers than active contributors to writing and activism, he downplayed his own accomplishments and importance. But such sponsorship and patronage of intellectual movements are of course vital to the survival and spread of ideas.
UPDATE 2: From Mises.org, a life in pictures (and one reason why Ron Paul should be impeached):
UPDATE: Lew Rockwell has a beautiful tribute to Burt, excerpts below the fold.
[Picture: Burt Blumert with his close friend Texas Congressman Ron Paul]
In every age, the idea of liberty needs benefactors, far-seeing people willing to make personal sacrifices so that each new generation is taught not to take freedom for granted, but rather to fight for it in every field of life. That is necessary because the idea of liberty isn't really a product that can be provided either by private enterprise or, of course, its enemy the state. It must be provided as a gift to civilization.
These are points taught to me by the life and work of Burton Samuel Blumert, one of liberty's great benefactors. He died at age 80 on the morning of March 30, 2009, after a long battle with cancer. He would deny it, but his name deserves to go down in history as a person who served as a champion of freedom during his long life. [...]
He saw politicians as predictable in their scammery and racketeering. He saw the state as no more than a massive drain on society, something we could do well without. War he regarded as a massive and destructive diversion of social resources. Welfare he saw as a perverse system for rewarding bad behavior and punishing virtue. Regulations on business he saw as interventions that benefited the well-connected at the expense of the true heroes of society who were pursuing enterprise with an eye to independence and profitability.
His main enemy was the inflationary state, and one reason he got into the business of precious metals was to battle paper money. As a lifetime observer of the business cycle, he knew that paper money and artificial credit creation lead to illusions that would eventually dissipate. So it was no surprise that he saw that the latest bust coming early on. As a resident of the Bay Area in Northern California, he was surrounded by illusions, but his knowledge of Austrian business cycle theory permitted him to see through the fog. [...]
So in his death, let us say what is true about him, simply because he would never let anyone say it about him in life. Through his daily life and good works, his loyalty and indefatigability, he showed us a path forward, the very model of how a successful businessman can achieve greatness in a lifetime. His legacy can be found in many of the books you read and in the massive growth of libertarianism in our times. Signs of his works are all around us. These were his gift to the world. And for those of us who knew him, Burt's wonderful life and outlook are gifts to us of inestimable value.
We will miss him every day, but no day will ever pass when we are not inspired by his example. May his great soul rest in peace.
Read the rest.
Posted by Kalim Kassam on March 30, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (5)
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Freedom Watch, today on Fox News streaming
Freedom Watch is a great show hosted by Judge Andrew Napolitano, available online-only at the moment, showcasing some of the freedom movement's brightest stars. Here's the lineup for today's show, which will stream live at 2 p.m. EST (direct link here, indirect link here):
2:00-2:10 Glenn Beck and Shepard Smith start the show.
2:10 - 2:30 Peter Schiff (in studio) with Lew Rockwell (phone) including a special 10 minute segment from Schiff entitled “Protecting Your Assets, what you need to know about your money and investments.”
2:30 - 3:00 Ron Paul (from DC), Peter Schiff, and David Boaz (live from CATO)
Possibly other last minute guests as well.
The topics for the week will be: U.S. power to seize firms, possible 15 year depression, discussion of Austrian School of Economics, preview of Campaign for Liberty, St. Louis conference and much, much more.
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on March 25, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (2)
Friday, March 20, 2009
Stephen Harper vs. libertarians, the continuing saga
Mike Brock, Janet Neilson, and Gerry Nicholls all commented on Stephen Harper's recent speech at the Manning Centre conservative get-together. They are, like most libertarians, upset with Harper for calling out libertarians, insisting that Harper-style conservatism is significantly different from libertarianism, and then getting a whole bunch of stuff wrong about the libertarian view of the relationship between personal responsibility and liberty.
I might add a few other complaints.
For one, it's surprising that Harper would categorize his conservatism as an amalgam of three fundamental "pillars" -- Freedom, Faith, and Family. It's surprising because it's not clear exactly what Harper means by these three pillars. Are they intended to be sources of influence for public policy? If so, it's hard to see how Harper's Conservatives have kept in line with those three pillars. Just what policies have the Harper Tories pushed that promote any of those three?
Are they specifically political pillars, or is Harper mixing political principles with cultural principles? If they're intended as a mixture, then I just don't see what his beef is with libertarians. Libertarianism is not a cultural view, it's a specifically political philosophy. It does not tell us what sort of culture we ought to have beyond a culture of freedom. What it tells us is that the government ought to be small, and its functions severely limited. It does not tell us whether or not we ought to have large or small families, prefer Mozart to Beethoven, or be Catholic or Protestant.
Broader cultural views are captured not by a political philosophy, but by a social philosophy. It may turn out to be the case that conservatism, as Harper understands it, is simultaneously a view about culture and a view about political institutions, but there is no conflict between a libertarian who endorses Harper's social planks, while insisting that the best way to accomplish those cultural goals -- the goals of encouraging and promoting faith and family -- is through a libertarian government, a government restricted to protecting our lives, liberties, and property.
I've met a sizable group of people who endorse libertarian institutions because they believe that those institutions will bolster faith and family. And small wonder. The seeming job of governments has been, in the West, and over the last 30 or 40 years, to get busy with social engineering. More often than not, churches and families have had to fight governments and government policies. Private religious schools have all sorts of problems, as do churches or religious organizations who do not want to have to rent out their property to groups they disagree with. And if you want to express a religiously-informed point of view, keep one eye on the Human Rights Commissions.
In short, there are those who realize that government is no friend to the religious, that it is no friend to families, that it is no friend to the goals of social conservatism. Matthew Johnston, our publisher, is a perfect example of a libertarian who endorses strong families, tight-knit communities, and public decency. Shotgun blogger Isaac Morehouse is another example of a socially conservative libertarian.
Indeed, the Acton Institute is a perfect example of a U.S.-based libertarian public policy think tank that focuses on faith and family. Its full name is the Acton Institute for the study of religion and liberty. Take a look at their core principles here, especially these three:
Social Nature of the Person - Although persons find ultimate fulfillment only in communion with God, one essential aspect of the development of persons is our social nature and capacity to act for disinterested ends. The person is fulfilled by interacting with other persons and by participating in moral goods. There are voluntary relations of exchange, such as market transactions that realize economic value. These transactions may give rise to moral value as well. There are also voluntary relations of mutual dependence, such as promises, friendships, marriages, and the family, which are moral goods. These, too, may have other sorts of value, such as religious, economic, aesthetic, and so on.
Sin: Although human beings in their created nature are good, in their current state, they are fallen and corrupted by sin. The reality of sin makes the state necessary to restrain evil. The ubiquity of sin, however, requires that the state be limited in its power and jurisdiction. The persistent reality of sin requires that we be skeptical of all utopian "solutions" to social ills such as poverty and injustice.
Priority of Culture - Liberty flourishes in a society supported by a moral culture that embraces the truth about the transcendent origin and destiny of the human person. This moral culture leads to harmony and to the proper ordering of society. While the various institutions within the political, economic, and other spheres are important, the family is the primary inculcator of the moral culture in a society.
Which just goes to show you that Harper is terribly confused, muddled, and, well, just plain wrong. Is Harper under the impression that individual liberty will lead to a mass abandonment of churches, a mass disintegration of society, the end of the nuclear family? Does he believe that we need government programs to ensure warm bodies in pews, the continuation of two parent families and so on? What does it say about certain institutions if they can't make it without government support? And what does it tell us about Harper's support for "Faith" and "Family"?
Libertarians are angry with Harper because he hasn't made the government smaller, hasn't cut taxes aggressively enough, and has seen fit to spend a boatload of money on a "stimulus" package that conservatives in the U.S. are decrying. Libertarians have been angry with Harper for the same reasons that fiscal conservatives have been angry with Harper. Why single out the libertarians? Why not just say, "the modern Conservative Party does not have room for fiscal conservatives who prefer Hayek and Friedman to John Maynard Keynes"?
It's true that libertarians would also like the government to stop the useless, wasteful, and socialist war on drugs. But this has never been the primary complaint of libertarians. The primary complaint has been economic, not social. And it has more to do with insisting that Harper live up to what he used to say he believed (he told me at a National Citizens Coalition dinner honouring him with the Colin M. Brown Medal of Freedom that he considered himself a "classical liberal," which is just a synonym for libertarian).
Andrew Coyne was right. We have very good reason to despise politics, and to hate what it does to people who become politicians. Stephen Harper used to be a libertarian. But, without explanation, he's decided he isn't one any longer, and he's decided to pick a fight with libertarians. So be it, I guess. But, at the very least, we can ask Harper to get libertarianism right, rather than attack the strawman he's set up for himself.
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on March 20, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (9)
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Dennis Lennox, drain commissioner, gets fired
Dennis Lennox, who is currently running for State Representative in Michigan, got fired yesterday from his position as drain commissioner in Cheboygan County, Michigan.
Here's Lennox on Fox. The video explains his mission and plan better than I could:
And here's an update after Lennox managed to get himself canned:
We'll be following Lennox and updating you on his chances and progress.
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on February 12, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (5)
Sunday, February 08, 2009
A transformational conversation
Charles Burris shares a fascinating story at the LRC blog:
Several years ago I went to downtown Tulsa's Central Library for their Saturday morning book sale. This was where the Library sold its out-of-date materials. I had gotten in the habit of buying many of these surplus items -- hardbacks 25 cents, paperbacks a dime -- for students to use in my classroom. As I was paying for a couple of books (one being Rose and Milton Friedman's Free To Choose) the elderly gentleman behind the cash register desk commented on the book, expressing his approval. I agreed but said I preferred economists Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard to Milton Friedman. He then proceeded to tell me the following anecdote: In 1962 he was travelling from Tulsa to Denver via a train (trains, you remember trains, don't you?). The trip was in the nighttime and early morning hours. Most passengers were asleep. But this gentleman was kept awake by a nearby conversation of four men. They were discussing socialism. Since this gentleman considered himself a socialist, he paid particularly close attention to what was being discussed. After a while he got up, gently interrupted the men, and remarked how fascinating he thought this conversation he overheard had been. The men asked him to join them. The conversation continued. When he reached Denver he was no longer a socialist. The four men were Ludwig von Mises (the 20th century's most brilliant economist), Henry Hazlitt (the journalistic champion of Mises), Lawrence Fertig (the businessman who raised the money for Mises's NYU professorship, and Leonard Read (president of the Foundation of Economic Education). Imagine this chance encounter with those particular four libertarian giants! The elderly gentleman had gone through a "Saul of Tarsus" conversion from socialism to individualism and the free market. He soon headed up Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign in the Sooner State, which at that time was a gathering for proto-libertarians and anti-collectivists. I shook his hand and told him how honored I was to have met him.
Posted by Kalim Kassam on February 8, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (2)
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Stimulis: Because all economies have performance issues
The good folks at reason.tv have put together a hilarious satire of the economic "Stimulis" packages being pushed by President Barack Obama in the U.S., Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Canada, and plenty of other national leaders around the world. Watch and enjoy:
Here's a very similar ad, originally from the Drug Policy Alliance, altered for Canadians by Western Standard columnist, publisher of Cannabis Culture, and libertarian Marc Emery:
Is it just me, or do libertarians make the best satirists?
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on February 5, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (11)
reason.tv: Interview with ABC's John Stossel
reason.tv has a great interview with libertarian anchor of ABC's 20/20, John Stossel. It's worth listening to Stossel, who is consistently one of the most persuasive and best communicators of individual liberty anywhere in the media.
Part 1/2:
Part 2/2:
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on February 5, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (4)
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Andrew Sargus on HuffPo: Put a libertarian in the New York Times op-ed page
Bill Kristol got canned from his gig at the New York Times writing entirely forgettable and uninteresting columns. The Times has to replace him. Andrew Sargus, writing in the Huffington Post, has a great suggestion -- Instead of a conservative or a neo-conservative, put a libertarian on the op-ed page:
Where’s the tipping point between civil liberties and, to put it glibly, the government looking out for you? This question was running through my head for the length of the discussion, and I saw in the libertarianism espoused by Welch and Gillespie an ideology at ease with itself. I haven’t turned in my liberal card, but conservatives and liberals alike could use a few voices as clear as Gillespie and Welch’s.
And it is with confidence that I nominate both men as possible candidates to replace Bill Kristol as The New York Times’ new op-ed columnist. Kristol, who cold not find it in himself to utter anything of worth for an entire year, left a legacy of boilerplate drivel and a hard-to-conceal erection for Sarah Palin. Good riddance.[...]
And while most of us are not libertarians, Gillespie and Welch have the presence of mind to keep the debate fresh and lively. It’d be hard to pick one, but my gut is leaning toward Gillespie, mostly because he rocks a great leather jacket.
The New York Times needs a dynamic voice on its page; its columnists, with the occasional exceptions of Paul Krugman, Frank Rich and David Brooks, are stale and overplayed. A Gillespie or a Welch is exactly what that paper needs—and what public debate needs.
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on February 3, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (1)
"I told you so, but you still think I'm bats"
"It feels bad," is the simple answer provided by Associate Professor John Hasnas of Georgetown University in his short piece "What It Feels Like To Be A Libertarian." "Imagine what the internal life of Cassandra must have been and you will have a pretty good idea," he explains, "imagine spending two decades warning that government policy is leading to a major economic collapse, and then, when the collapse comes, watching the world conclude that markets do not work."
Libertarians haven't been scorned by Apollo, they have no hotline to the Fates, but they tend to make accurate predictions "because [those predictions] are derived from Hayek’s insights into the limitations of human knowledge, from the recognition that the people who comprise the government respond to incentives just like anyone else and are not magically transformed to selfless agents of the good merely by accepting government employment, from the awareness that for government to provide a benefit to some, it must first take it from others, and from the knowledge that politicians cannot repeal the laws of economics."
I don't feel all that bad, or all that lonely; but scorned, derided, and frustrated I can understand and even relate to. Hasnas has spent some time in the trenches collecting battle scars, he was a libertarian before anyone knew what a libertarian was. I suppose this young optimist can grant him his curmudgeonry.
(h/t SK)
Posted by Kalim Kassam on February 3, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (3)
Friday, January 30, 2009
Glenn Beck the new libertarian says: The U.S. is about to devalue the currency like crazy
Glenn Beck got a show on Fox News, and announced that he's dropping the "conservative" label, and calling himself a "libertarian instead. Given the economic crisis, I'm not surprised by his sudden aversion for all things government, and libertarians are the staunchest defenders of individual liberty against the state out there. Whether it's big government conservatism, or big government liberalism, the common problem is the same: the big government part.
With the massive U.S. bailout and the gargantuan Canadian bailout, we're looking at an unparalleled expansion in the size of government. And the unparalleled spending might lead to a currency crisis in the U.S. Watch Beck:
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on January 30, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (11)
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Freedom Politics
Brian Doherty over at reason's Hit & Run points to a brand-new, libertarian news/blog site called Freedom Politics. Doherty writes:
A nifty new resource for followers of liberty-oriented news and commentary has launched from the fine folks at Freedom Communications, publishers of the Orange County Register and a chain of other papers with a consistently libertarian editorial and opinion policy. It's called Freedom Politics, filled with both links and fresh content related to the causes of free markets, liberty, and peace.
I've taken a quick peek, and I've gone ahead and bookmarked the site. It promises to be an excellent daily read. For example, the "Ask a libertarian" section gets the right answer to the question "Why do libertarians love Wal-Mart?" (we don't)
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on January 21, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (2)
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Happy (belated) birthday, Lysander Spooner
Since I'm trying to make up for things I forgot about on the day they were relevant, I may as well also point out that it was Lysander Spooner's birthday yesterday, the same day as Martin Luther Kind Day in the U.S.
I'm reminded courtesy of Pete Eyre over at Bureaucrash, who got a hat tip from Randy Barnett on the Volokh Conspiracy.
Here's Eyre on Spooner:
On this day 201 years ago Lysander Spooner was born on in central Massachusetts. Like de Molinari a century before, Spooner’s ideas were extreme. And though “extreme” usually has negative connotations, recall what Barry Goldwater’s speechwriter, Karl Hess, penned almost 50 years ago: “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.”
Spooner, one of the most outspoken abolitionists of his day, advocated for the immediate end to slavery and wrote that the U.S. Constitution was no different than any other contract and thus binding only to those who signed it. A lawyer by training, he ignored related occupational licensing laws and later directly challenged the postal monopoly. Without question he remains a source of inspiration for freedom-fighters today - whether their medium be academia or activism.
Barnett quotes Eyre and adds:
Spooner's influential book, The Unconstitutionality of Slavery, changed Frederick Douglass's mind about the constitutionality of slavery. In this regard, it is a nice coincidence that this year Spooner's birthday falls on Martin Luther King Day.
Frederick Douglass, abolitionist libertarian, was one of the leading orators of his day. His work is worth taking a long, hard look at. Here's Damon Root on Douglass in reason.
So happy belated 201st, Spooner.
You can read Spooner's argument against the constitutionality of slavery in "The Unconstitutionality of Slavery." Meanwhile, if you'd like to read Spooner's argument against the authority of the Constitution, check out "No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority."
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on January 20, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (1)
Monday, January 19, 2009
Pay my taxes? What do I get out of it?
Here's a lovely excerpt from a Frank Capra/Jimmy Stewart movie, captured by Talley from Fr33 Agents:
You don't see very many tax-avoiding curmudgeons in movies anymore. It's a bit of a shame.
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on January 19, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (0)
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Reason TV: Crispin Sartwell, Against the State
Here's a Reason TV video interview of philosopher Crispin Sartwell about his book, entitled Against the State: An Introduction to Anarchist Political Theory
Crispin Sartwell is a philosophical anarchist. Lots of people get confused about the meaning of "anarchism." There are, after all, a few different strains of anarchism, including communist anarchism (the variety that mixed martial artist Jeff Monson subscribes to), and individualist anarchism or anarcho-capitalism, amongst others. Sartwell is an individualist anarchist.
At least part of the confusion is this: Lots of people are under the mistaken impression that anarchy means opposition to rules or structure. But that's not the case at all. Anarchy should be contrasted with imposed hierarchy. So, for example, politicians get to tell peaceable adults what to do, even if those adults don't want to do it. And you might wonder what, if anything, justifies this authority. To be a philosophical anarchist is to think that nothing justifies the state with its particular imposed structure of authority.
But asking about the justification of the state, as a whole, is one thing, asking about the justification of particular policies, taken one-by-one, another. Anarchists can consistently believe that the state is unjustified, but that this-or-that rule issued by the state is justified. So they might do what state representatives tell them to, for the reason that the edict is justified, even while their right to issue the edict is not.
Justification is one thing, legitimacy is a separate, related, concept. A. John Simmons marks this fine-grained distinction in one of the more brilliant papers I've read, which you can read here. It's useful to think of anarchy in those terms.
Here's Simmons on justification:
Justifying an act, a strategy, a practice, an arrangement, or an institution typically involves showing it to be prudentially rational, morally acceptable, or both (depending on the kind of justification at issue).
And here's Simmons on legitimacy:
A state’s (or government’s) legitimacy is the complex moral right it possesses to be the exclusive imposer of binding duties on its subjects, to have its subjects comply with these duties, and to use coercion to enforce the duties. Accordingly, state legitimacy is the logical correlate of various obligations, including subjects’ political obligations.
I won't bore you much longer, but suffice it to say that the distinction allows for us to say something like the following: It is enough for you to count as an anarchist if you think every particular government within a state is illegitimate. It is also enough for you to count as an anarchist if you think every particular government within a state is unjustified. But you might still think that certain edicts are justified, even if issued by an illegitimate and unjustified authority. And you might think that a system of rules (like the law) is justified (providing us with reason to do what the rules tell us to), even if it is issued by an unjustified and illegitimate authority. So anarchism does not commit anyone to breaking the law. And it definitely does not commit anyone to the use of violence, especially since the high standards for legitimacy and justification are going to cut against their use of violence against others.
(For an interesting take on how anarchists might ground legitimate authority -- which is distinctive because we do what the authority tells us to because of their authority, and not because the edict they issue is something we have independent reason to do -- take a read through this paper).
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on January 18, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (8)
Thursday, January 15, 2009
I am not a number, I am a free man!
UPDATE: Watch the entire 1960s TV series The Prisoner here. (h/t Fact Check)
Western Standard publisher Matthew Johnston has posted news about the passing of Patrick Joseph McGoohan, the man responsible for the libertarian-themed TV series The Prisoner.
Here are two great videos from The Prisoner that, from the little that I know of the series, capture the deeply individualistic theme of the series.
"I am not a number"
"You must conform"
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on January 15, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (4)
Monday, January 05, 2009
(Video) Cato Institute: Eliminate the Department of Agriculture
There are days when I am proud -- damn proud -- to have had the privilege of working at the Cato Institute in Washington D.C. (even if it was merely as a lowly intern). Today is one of those days. Take a look at Cato's excellent video making the case that the Department of Agriculture -- the whole thing -- needs to be axed. Dumped. Trashed. Relegated to the trash heap of history.
Here's the video, which I spotted via this great post by my buddy Tom Pearson (who also worked at Cato when I was an intern there) over on Fr33Agents.com:
Good work, Cato. Stay radical. (For more Cato prescriptions on agriculture, take a peek here).
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on January 5, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (6)
The U.S. Libertarian Party on the current Middle East conflict
U.S. Libertarian Party email from Andrew Davies, Director of Communications at the Libertarian Party:
Since its creation as a Jewish state in the late 1940s, Israel has been one of the main sources of tension and unrest in the Middle East. Now, more than 50 years later, Israel once again finds itself at odds with its Palestinian neighbors, forcing the hand of the United States to show where it stands on one of the most polarizing issues in modern history.
The tension between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East goes back thousands of years, and there is no easy solution to the issues in the Israeli/Palestinian dispute. Many U.S. presidential administrations have tried to act as brokers of power or arbiters of peace without any success.
Libertarians aren't foolish enough to think we have the answer to solve the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. However, we do realize that steps can be taken by the United States to remove itself from injury in the conflict, and perhaps begin the process of long-term stability in the region.
The biggest of these steps is to eliminate all economic and military aid to Israel and all other foreign countries.
It's the general opinion of Libertarians that as far as the U.S. government should be involved, Israel should look out for its interests so long as its actions are not subsidized by the American taxpayer and Israel does not look to the U.S. for assistance. However, because Israel is the top recipient of foreign aid (aside from Iraq), it is reasonable to assume that some of the money given to it by the United States in foreign aid is used to either directly or indirectly support Israeli military operations.
Therein lies the problem.
There are several complications with U.S. foreign aid going to Israel. One, it makes the United States culpable for the actions of Israel that many times come with international condemnation. Secondly, it opens up the United States to cries of extreme bias in favor of Israel—a main catalyst for terrorism against U.S. interests at home and abroad.
Critics of removing foreign aid from Israel cite that this is the United States turning its back on a staunch ally. However, this couldn't be further from the truth. The United States is not "giving up" on Israel by removing foreign aid as much as it is adhering to a principle of non-intervention—in Israel and across the world as well. Israel will still be a trading partner with the United States, and will benefit greatly from this trade. Additionally, Israel has a strong and effective military along with nuclear arms to deter aggression.
The United States' top priority needs to be the United States, and our billions of dollars of foreign aid to Israel have hurt our national security and international standing. "Contrary to the warnings of the do-something buffs, U.S. interventions in the Middle East have likely unleashed more anti-American terrorism and more pressure on energy markets than they have prevented," says Leon Hadar, a research fellow in foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute.
In essence, the interests of Israel are not always those of the United States.
However, it is not an analysis of what we have gotten in return from our relationship with Israel as it is an adherence to the principle of non-intervention. There is great wisdom in remaining disconnected from the problems facing other nations, especially when these problems are complicated and have negative consequences for getting involved.
At issue for Libertarians in the current situation with Israel and Palestine is not so much who is right or wrong, but whether the United States should continue to support other countries with foreign aid. Libertarians may all feel differently on whether Israel is "justified" in invading Gaza, but Libertarians all agree that taxpayer-subsidized foreign aid to other countries is bad for business and bad for peace.
Treating Israel like any other country is not abandoning an ally, but freeing the United States from a cumbersome relationship of the likes George Washington, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson all warned against hundreds of years ago.
In the words of Jefferson, "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none."
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on January 5, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (10)
Just released: The Stanford Liberty
The Stanford Liberty is a brand-new, student-run, Stanford University-based, libertarian publication. Today (or yesterday, I can't tell), they released their very first issue via PDF (you can access the PDF by clicking here). I haven't yet had a chance to thoroughly read it, but I'm very excited about the magazine, and its future.
In particular, I'm hopeful that libertarians on Canadian campuses get involved, and make the Stanford Liberty the equivalent of the Dartmouth Review -- a truly pan-university monthly journal that happens to be located on the campus of Dartmouth University (and edited by Dartmouth students).
According to their About section:
The Stanford Liberty is a new libertarian, classically liberal, freethinking individualist magazine.
The mission of The Stanford Liberty is to serve as a forum for the free exchange of libertarian ideas, arguments, and research. Open to all interested contributors, we publish articles and opinion pieces from a variety of ideological and political perspectives, with the common thread being a vehement advocacy of individual rights, freedom of movement, association, and trade. The Liberty aims to break the tired monotony of the mainstream statist left-right debate and interject a sense of intellectual honesty and classically liberal activism into both the academic community and the world beyond.
As an official student group under the Stanford Office of Student activities, we maintain a rotating core of student editors and contributors. Nevertheless, recognizing that anyone interested in liberty is a student in the true sense of the term, we regularly reach out to the non-Stanford affiliated in order to ensure a robust authorship and foster positive libertarian community ‘outside the bubble’.
Boy, that sounds just about perfect to me. Here's hoping they manage to make it a big success.
(And here are two gentle suggestions for the editors: 1. The layout is a bit difficult to look at. Space it out more. 2. Get a radio show going on your campus to coincide with the release of your mag. Interview the people who wrote for it, and talk about liberty. We'd be thrilled to add it to the WS Radio network, so long as you promise to include some Canadian content. Deal?)
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on January 5, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (3)
Marc Emery and the Liberty 100
The Liberty 100 is the Western Standard's list of the 100 Canadian friends of liberty who have made significant contributions to individual liberty (both personal and economic) in 2008 (Top 10, Top 25, Top 50, Top 75, Top 100). The list was selected by our publisher, Matthew Johnston, who has intimate and wide-ranging knowledge of, and familiarity with, the Canadian liberty movement.
Given that this is the first installation of an annual list, Matthew decided to also include those liberty activists whose lifetime contribution to the liberty movement deserved recognition and credit, regardless of their activities in 2008 alone.
The most controversial selection on the list appears to be that of Cannabis Culture publisher and Western Standard columnist Marc Emery. In the comment sections of the list (here and here), several people complained that Emery shouldn't be on the list. Kathy Shaidle (65 on the list) expressed, uhm, grumpiness at the selection. And in emails that both Matthew and I have received, people were unhappy at the inclusion of Emery.
Maybe these responses are a result of some confusion. The list is reserved for those who are struggling for individual liberty, in a political context. Since this is the goal, it is hardly surprising that the list features libertarians more than it features conservatives, liberals, or adherents of other political philosophies.
Libertarianism, after all, is synonymous with the struggle for greater individual liberty in personal and economic matters against the intrusive power of the state.
Conservatives, generally and according to the stereotype, want to increase economic liberty, while maintaining government control over personal matters. That is, conservatives are pro-liberty when it comes to economic matters, but anti-liberty when it comes to personal, cultural, or social matters.
The reverse, meanwhile, is true, generally and according to the stereotype, of liberals -- more personal, social, and cultural liberty, and opposition to economic liberty.
For this reason, some call libertarianism an amalgam of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism. But the standard really should be liberty, and we should call fiscal conservatives economic libertarians, and social liberals something like civil libertarians. It's political liberty that is at stake when it comes to these labels, so why not make liberty the noun to be modified?
So given that the list is a liberty list, I'm having trouble identifying why anyone would be opposed to the inclusion of Marc Emery who, without any doubt, is the most significant advocate of individual liberty when it comes to marijuana. It is a violation of individual liberty to have the state dictate to us what we can and cannot put into our own bodies, just as surely as it is a violation of individual liberty to have the state dictate to us what we can and cannot read or say.
We might not want people to read or say certain things, and we might not want people to smoke, eat, or inject something or other, but it really is a violation of their individual liberty for us to make use of the coercive power of the state to enact our vision of how people should live their lives. Ensuring that people are nice, kind, decent and virtuous, that they not harm themselves, that they exercise regularly, that they read Shakespeare and avoid Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five or the writings of Oscar Wilde, that they eat their vegetables and not munch on hash brownies (or pot brownies, or whatever they're called -- I mean brownies with a bunch of marijuana in them), and so on, is, according to the individual liberty, or libertarian, perspective, the proper function of parents (in properly rearing their children), in civil, voluntary institutions like the church (in instilling certain virtues, and providing a community for fellowship and fellow aid), in voluntary market responses (like boycotts and public relations campaigns to make less profitable those businesses we disapprove of), and so on. It is decidedly not consistent with individual liberty to have agents of the state show up to shut up those people whose writings we don't like, to impose a daily eating and exercise regimen, or to imprison those adults who decide to smoke pot or sell it to consenting others.
If you think Emery should be imprisoned for selling marijuana seeds, if you think people who smoke pot should be jailed, then you are an opponent of individual liberty when it comes to marijuana. That's too bad, as far as I'm concerned, but so be it. Just don't call yourself an advocate of liberty when it comes to pot. Call yourself what you are -- an advocate of the state dictating to adults what they can and cannot smoke.
Some of the more clever advocates of state intrusion insist that they want the state to intrude for the sake of greater autonomy. The more nuanced advocates of jailing pot smokers claim that greater autonomy in this sense means greater liberty. After all, doing drugs alters your mood, your appetite, and alters your preferences and desires not through rational deliberation and rational endorsement, but through chemical means. And, at least when it comes to illicit drugs, many think this undermines our ability to create and act on plans and projects of our own choosing. Put differently, we might no longer identify with our plans and projects because of our use of certain drugs.
Of course, I don't believe that marijuana is fairly lumped in with heroin or cocaine when it comes to this position. Empirical literature and studies appear to demonstrate that marijuana does not have the effects that opponents claim it does, that it is not a gateway drug, that it does not diminish autonomy to anything like the levels that would warrant state action if we thought that undermining our own autonomy was both something to be opposed and something that it is right for the state to interfere with. (That both are necessary is crucial and often overlooked. I call it the "ought-state gap." We need to be clear that advocates of state action need to show not only that something is bad and ought to be opposed, they also have the burden of demonstrating that the state is the right kind of institution to effectively oppose whatever we don't like. Everyone agrees that, say, you breaking a promise to come see a movie with me on Tuesday for no good reason is wrong, but we hardly think that I should therefore call my local police department. We also agree that adultery is wrong, but very few think this warrants state action.)
More to the point, the diminution of autonomy through drug use is, while worrisome, not a matter of specifically political liberty. Political liberty is the freedom we have as against the state. It is the room we have to mind our own affairs without the intrusion of state actors. It is not the freedom we have simpliciter, or the effective autonomy we have in our daily lives.
There are, obviously, nuances that I'm not covering. I'm not, for example, explaining why children should be treated differently from adults, or giving an account of "harm to others" that explains the difference between the kinds of harms (theft, violence, etc.) that warrant state interference consistent with political liberty, and the kinds of harms (you making me unhappy and sad at your use of heroin, which most certainly counts as a "harm") that do not. So there is still much left to be said.
Nevertheless, it should at least be, I hope, clear why Emery deserves to be on this list, and why he deserves to be near the top of it. No one has done more for individual liberty when it comes to marijuana. No one. And not just in Canada, but in the world. Marc Emery just is the world's most prominent, most tireless, and most significant activist in defense of the freedom of adults to enjoy marijuana as they'd like, without the state crashing through their doors, destroying their lives, tearing apart their families, and otherwise doing what really is utterly despicable and revolting.
While we might not want people to do drugs, the state-run war on drugs is, really, a war on individual liberty. Since Emery is vociferous in his opposition to it, he is a defender of individual liberty. That's why he's made the Western Standard's Liberty 100 list this year in such a prominent position. And that's why he'll probably continue to be on it year after year after year. And a good thing too.
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on January 5, 2009 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (65)
Saturday, December 27, 2008
The problem with big government is Big Government
Speaking of Steve Horwitz and how much he gets it, here's yet another dead-on post by him in The Austrian Economists blog:
Bob [Higgs] points out that the real problem with big government is Big Government. What he means by that is that it's one thing for government to grow in scale, but when government grows in scope is when the real trouble starts. The key to Bob's ratchet effect argument is that crises lead not just to government "scaling up" but to it acquiring powers that it didn't have before, i.e., a change in the scope of its powers. The other part of the ratchet effect argument is that when the crisis passes, the government might reduce its exercise of these new powers, but not all the way back to the pre-crisis level. What people often miss is that this also means that those new powers lay dormant waiting for the next feasible situation in which they can quickly be activated. The long-run damage comes from the acquisition of those powers in the first place, not just their exercise in the specific crisis in which they are acquired.
And speaking of Robert Higgs, who is also, obviously, a member of the Sound and Solid Thinkers Club (we need a new moniker, that one is a bit clunky, don't you think?), here he is eviscerating some of the "fair weather" free market thinkers on the Liberty and Power group blog (via reason's Damon W. Root on Hit & Run):
It’s hardly a news flash that many people who are widely regarded as lions of the pro-market side have gone over to the dark side in recent months. I am not going to name any names; if you are one of the guilty parties, you know who you are; and the rest of us know, too, owing to your public expressions of anti-market sentiment in newspapers and on the World Wide Web. Why have so many notable economists and others jumped ship? [...]
It now appears, I am saddened to report, that these free-market experts were not so expert after all. Indeed, many of them seem to have failed to understand how markets work and how government actions can hobble or kill those workings. Many have talked as if they actually believe in vulgar Keynesianism or other crackpot ideas — about “systemic risk” where none exists or about “missing markets” for poor-quality assets that only a fool would try to sell privately when the alternative of a munificent government buyout shimmers on the horizon.
Despite the evidence of how counterproductive all of these frantic government actions have been, of how they have served above all to produce “regime uncertainty”about what the rules will be tomorrow or the next day, and thereby to paralyze private arrangements, the market’s fair weather friends are now clamoring for various species of government “stimulus” as soon as the Obama regime takes power. Of course, the Obamistas’ motives are purely political, as befits a pack of office holders and their lackeys, so it is pointless to indict them — a rattlesnake is not to be blamed if it strikes, because its nature impels it to do so. But why are well-known free-market economists going along with this nonsense?
Read the rest to get the message. And please notice the apt "rattlesnake" metaphor for politicians. Just notice it. Re-read it if you have to. And don't get confused about the meaning: It's not fundamentally about the pre-institutional character of people who pursue higher office, it's the built-in incentives and pressures of political office, and the recognition of what kind of character you have to have to get political office, that sharpen and bring out the worst in us. In short: It's the institutions, stupid!
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on December 27, 2008 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (1)
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism
Jeremy Lott reviews the brand-new Encyclopedia of Libertarianism in the American Spectator here.
The upshot?:
This book will appeal to libertarians of all stripes, of course, and intellectual history buffs, as well as to anyone who has ever wondered, “I wonder what libertarians would think about X,” or even “Why would libertarians think that?” Though if you have, my friends, let me just warn you: it’s a slippery slope.
You can get the Encyclopedia of Libertarianism here.
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on December 24, 2008 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (0)
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Ron Paul interview on Huffington Post
Over at the Huffington Post, Michael Bendetson has conducted and posted an interview with Ron Paul, Republican congressman from Texas. The interview is wide-ranging, lengthy, and packed with goodness. I've chosen a few excerpts, but the whole thing is worth reading (try to ignore the spelling and grammar. I guess they were in a hurry, and couldn't get a copy editor to fix it up...):
MB: In October of 2002, you were one of the of 6 out of 224 Republican congressmen to vote against the Iraq War Resolution. Please elaborate about why you were so adamant in your dissent towards the bill six years ago and continue to oppose our involvement in Iraq today.
RP: We went to war based on lies. Lies, bad intelligence, and the interests of special interest groups were pushing our foreign policy. Also, [the Iraq War] had nothing to do with our national defense. Further, if the country goes to war, we [Congress] need to declare war. There were so many reasons: moral reasons, economic reasons, constitutional reasons, and practical reasons. I thought it was a complete waste and a violation against everything America stands for. As a result, I strongly opposed going in and I think if you make that bad of a mistake, you ought to get out as soon as possible. [...]
MB: You have remained consistent in your disapproval of federal bailouts of both the financial institutions and auto industries. Why are you against federal intervention and what alternative solution would you propose?
RP: First, there is no authority in our constitution that we [Congress] should use taxpayer money to go and bailout companies that have not done well. That alone, should be enough to stop [the bailouts]. Second, it is morally wrong, because you have to take money from somebody who may be productive and reward people who have been non-productive. Third, the economics of [the bailout] are atrocious. Why should we subsidize mistakes? We have been doing that in the past. Our Federal Reserve System has created all the financial bubbles, and now we are suffering the consequences as these financial bubbles collapse. Propping up the mistakes made during the boom phase of the cycle is exactly the wrong thing to do. It prevents the correction [of the economy] and delays the inevitable. In order to get back to economic growth, you have to liquidate the excessive debts and bad investments. The only way you can do that is to just get out of the way. You cannot buy up all the bad debt, but that is what we are doing. This is exactly what we did in the Great Depression. So we are working real hard in the US Congress and with the Federal Reserve to recreate another Great Depression. It makes no sense, what so ever. [...]
MB: On the issue of healthcare, you have rejected the notion of universal healthcare based on a fear of socialized medicine. Instead you have chose to promote a serious of measures based on free market healthcare, such as tax credits for individuals. Why are you confident that solution for this crisis is found in the private sector of society?
RP: Socialized anything does not work. Socialized medicine has failed throughout history. It did not work in the radical socialized systems such as that in the Soviet Union. Today, you can see around the world that in areas where [medicine] is socialized, there are long lines. It may be cheap so to speak when you see the doctor, but there is often no doctor their and you have to wait months for routine surgeries. With a market-oriented system, things are far more efficient. It is not difficult for me to see from both a political and medical viewpoint to see which is best. The problem today is about half the money goes to the middleman: management companies, drug companies, and insurance companies. This drains the money from the care of the patient and the doctor. As a result the system becomes very expensive and the quality of care goes down.
MB: Despite the fact that the federal income tax accounts for around 42 percent of the federal budget, you have proposed eliminating both the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the income tax. What are the reasons for your plans mentioned in the above?
RP: We lived a good while without the income tax, from the founding of the country up until 1913. We paid all of our bills, but we did not pretend to be the policemen of the world. We did not need to have a huge standing army. Also, we did not have a welfare state before 1913. Once the government gained the ability to tax welfare and warfare and once they were able to debase and inflate the currency, the federal government started to grow exponentially. This is where we are today. So if we are a country that cares more about freedom than the government taking care of us, we do need not need an income tax. If we got rid of the income tax we would still maintain 60 percent of federal revenue. That 60 percent is what we had has a federal budget 10 years ago and at that time government was plenty big enough. We [Federal Government] need to cut back and only do things authorized in the Constitution. Under those conditions, we do not need an income tax. If you want to talk about a boost for the economy, just stop the income tax and bring our troops home.
Okay, enough. You can read the rest over here.
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on December 17, 2008 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Time person of the year nominations: Ron Paul suggests Ludwig von Mises
Time magazine is asking some heavy-hitters for their nominations for Time magazine's Person of the year.
Texas Congressman Ron Paul makes the following recommendation:
Amid a horrific financial crisis, all we hear are calls for more of the money-printing, spending and subsidies that created this mess. So I choose my great teacher, Ludwig von Mises, champion of the Austrian School of economics, who taught us how a central bank like the Fed causes booms and busts and how to build prosperity through sound money and economic freedom.
Ludwig von Mises as person of the year? I'm all in favour.
On his Christmas reading list, a figure more closely associated with John McCain than Ron Paul -- Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher, recommended Ludwig von Mises' The Theory of Money and Credit, as "important reading for these troubled times."
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on December 11, 2008 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBack
Monday, December 08, 2008
Question Period: Noam Chomsky on being censored, CHRC censorship, Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick and libertarianism
Yesterday was Noam Chomsky's 80th birthday.
While Chomsky is an internationally recognized intellectual, he is surprisingly accessible and generous with his time.
In fact, I've had several exchanges with Chomsky over the years. Mostly, they were questions about the philosophy of language, Chomsky's primary academic discipline. But Chomsky's career has gone from that of a quiet academic working out the origins of language in children, to one of the world's most recognized public intellectuals. And his status isn't a result of his linguistics -- instead, Chomsky is recognized for his views on U.S. foreign policy.
The Western Standard has published Chomsky's thoughts on the recent U.S. election here. We also ran with an excerpt from the following longer conversation on Canada's Human Rights Commission and section 13(1) of the Human Rights Act. Chomsky, like us, thinks the CHRC is a disastrous form of censorship.
The following email conversation started in late October, and has continued on since. I'm still curious to hear his more philosophical objections to libertarianism. The ones he offers below are more objections to the particular persons who endorsed the philosophy, rather than the philosophy itself. I suppose it might be important whether or not some political philosopher or economist is a decent person, but it really doesn't shed light on whether or not we should endorse or reject an argument of theirs. Even indecent and despicable people say things that are true, and make arguments that are sound or plausible.
At any rate, and for what it's worth, here is the conversation between myself and Chomsky (some of my questions have been edited for clarity, and to cut out irrelevant bits about prior conversations):
Peter Jaworski: Have you seen this?
Here's an excerpt:
South Korea's Defence Ministry, which maintains a force of about 670,000 troops to fend off an invasion from the communist North, also feels threatened by the likes of American linguist Noam Chomsky.
The ministry said Friday it may punish some officers for harming "the military's mental power" by trying to bring books it considers too leftist onto its bases.
The ministry earlier this year banned 23 books from the country's military facilities include two volumes by Chomsky and the best seller "Bad Samaritans" by a Korean professor at Cambridge University, Chang Ha-joon.
What do you think of the military banning your books like this?
How often do your books get banned?
Noam Chomsky: I was rather pleased to be in the company of Ha-Joon Chang, a fine economic historian.
I don't expect much of the military, anywhere. Though I was pleased when I gave a talk at West Point a couple of years ago, and cadets and officers came up afterwards to have books of mine signed, which they'd picked up at the post bookstore, including one that had just come out. Very good experience all around. More thoughtful and open-minded than most academic departments.
The most extreme banning of a book I've ever experienced -- or for that matter heard of -- was in the US. The first book that Edward Herman (economist at the U Penn business school, Wharton) and I wrote together was published in the early 70s by a small but flourishing textbook publisher. It was called Counterrevolutionary Violence. They printed 20,000 copies, and started publishing ads. One of the ads was seen by an executive at the conglomerate that owned the publisher, Warner publications, now part of Time-Warner-AOL. He didn't like it, asked to see the book, and when he saw it, went berserk. He ordered the publisher to withdraw it, and when they refused, he closed the publisher down, destroying all their stock.
I brought the matter to the attention of civil libertarians, but they didn't see any problem. Ideological fanaticism in the US considers only government interference with freedom of speech to be illegitimate. Private tyrannies can do what they want. Warner also tried to prevent us from publishing it elsewhere, claiming copyright, etc. It was a bit of a legal hassle, but their claim was so absurd that we finally just went ahead and published a much extended version (Political Economy of Human Rights).
In the West, books are rarely banned outright, but they are commonly under an informal ban by the intellectual establishment, which is highly effective. And in Europe, there are severe restrictions on what you can write. If a book or article is published in England, it has to be vetted by lawyers to make sure that no problem is posed by England's utterly disgraceful libel laws, which are a severe infringement of freedom of speech. France is much worse. French intellectuals hardly even have a concept of freedom of speech, and material is often banned. I know of a case in Sweden where a book was withdrawn by the one major left publisher because it challenged doctrines of fundamentalist religion among European intellectuals about their nobility in bombing Serbia. In the third world there are plenty of cases of books banned, or material expunged in translations. If I'm asked (I'm often not), I refuse to allow the translation in that case, though I understand and often sympathize with the publishers.
PJ: Speaking of censorship, what do make of the Canadian Human Rights Commission and section 13(1) in particular? Here's that section:
13. (1) It is a discriminatory practice for a person or a group of persons acting in concert to communicate telephonically or to cause to be so communicated, repeatedly, in whole or in part by means of the facilities of a telecommunication undertaking within the legislative authority of Parliament, any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt by reason of the fact that person or those persons are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.
I wonder if you have any thoughts on this particular section.
NC: I think it's outrageous, like the comparable European laws. It's also pure hypocrisy. If it were applied the media and journals would be shut down. They don't expose current enemies of the state to hatred or contempt?
PJ: About Canada's human rights act, you wrote: "I think it's outrageous, like the comparable European laws. It's also pure hypocrisy. If it were applied the media and journals would be shut down. They don't expose current enemies of the state to hatred or contempt?"
That last part may not be applicable in this case.
The law is specific about what groups cannot be exposed to hatred or contempt. Under the CHRA, you can't expose a person to hatred or contempt on the basis of their race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, family status, physical or mental disability, pardoned criminal conviction (http://www.chrc-ccdp.ca/
Maybe you could offer a bit of clarification about what you mean by "They don't expose current enemies of the state to hatred or contempt?"
NC: The provision of law that you sent me referred to "persons," not just a person. Hence groups. I think that was the legal basis for barring Rushdie's Satanic Verses briefly, until it was overturned. There are also other mechanisms, like the devious argument used to ban Zundel on grounds of incitement of race hatred that made him a security threat.
The media and journals are constantly exposing Arabs to hatred and contempt. And that's been consistent practice for years with regard to enemies of the state.
I'll look up the NP story when I have a moment. I'm more familiar with Britain, where the primary technique for silencing unwanted opinion, even putting a small newspaper out of business, is the disgraceful libel laws. If a book or article appears in the US, and then is going to be republished in England, it's necessary to get a battery of lawyers to review it to see if anything might be actionable. Some of the things they demand be removed are remarkable. I recall being asked to cut out a sentence saying that Henry Kissinger is guilty of war crimes, which is about as controversial as saying that grass is green.
PJ: Pushing aside the Canadian Human Rights discussion for a moment, I was curious why you call yourself a "libertarian"?
I call myself that, too. Except when I use it, I mean to say that I believe in private property rights, in a free and open market, and in ridiculously small government (sometimes I like to think that getting rid of the state entirely would do all of us a lot of good).
But I don't ever get the sense that you have sympathy for Friedrich Hayek, Robert Nozick, Milton Friedman or Ayn Rand.
There's two parts to this question. For one, I'm curious just what you mean when you call yourself a libertarian and, for two, I'm curious why you continue to use the label, even though most people now associate it with the Nozick/Rand/Hayek type of political philosophy? (I don't call myself a "liberal," although I would prefer to, because it doesn't mean what it used to in Canada and the U.S.)
NC: Actually I don't think I've ever called myself a "libertarian," because the term is too ambiguous. I do often call myself a "libertarian socialist," however.
The term "libertarian" has an idiosyncratic usage in the US and Canada, reflecting, I suppose, the unusual power of business in these societies. In the European tradition, "libertarian socialism" ("socialisme libertaire") was the anti-state branch of the socialist movement: anarchism (in the European, not the US sense).
I use the term in the traditional sense, not the US sense.
I strongly dislike the figures you mention. Rand in my view is one of the most evil figures of modern intellectual history. Friedman was an important economist. I'll leave it at that.
Nozick, who I knew, was a clever philosopher. He did call himself a libertarian but it was fraud. He was a Stalinist-style supporter of Israeli power and violence. People who knew him used to joke that he believed in a two-state solution: Israel, and the US government because it had to support Israeli actions.
Hayek was the kind of "libertarian" who was quite tolerant of such free societies as Pinochet's Chile, one of the most grotesque of the National Security States instituted with US backing or direct initiative during the hideous plague of terror and violence that spread over the hemisphere from the 60s through the 80s. He even sank to the level of arranging a meeting of his Mont Pelerin society there during the most vicious days of the dictatorship.
Quite apart from practice, I don't suggest that they understood it, but in their "libertarian" writings these figures were in fact supporting some of the worst kinds of tyranny that can be imagined: namely private tyranny, in principle out of public control. Traditional European libertarian socialism addressed this issue. I often found myself agreeing with US-style libertarians -- not those you mention, but many in the Cato Institute, for example; in fact I could only publish in a journal of theirs for years. But we had fundamental differences, specifically, about the nature of freedom.
I'm not trying to convince you. Merely to respond to your question, and explain why I'm comfortable with the terms I use, "libertarian socialism" -- which to US (and I suppose many Canadian) ears sounds like an oxymoron.
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on December 8, 2008 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (30) | TrackBack
Friday, December 05, 2008
(Video) Bureaucrash: Toasting repeal day through the 21st amendment
As we continue to celebrate the repeal of alcohol prohibition through the 21st amendment to the Constitution in the U.S. (I'll be celebrating repeal day "properly" tonight, and so should you), we should not forget that governments everywhere are keen on prohibiting anything and everything.
That message wasn't lost on our good friends at Bureaucrash, those young, liberty-loving radicals that prove that pro-capitalist and pro-liberty protests can be much more fun and positive than those anti-liberty, pro-intervention, and pro-state protests the left likes to engage in. They put together the following video last year:
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on December 5, 2008 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Pope Benedict XVI: Classical liberalism is the heart of Europe
"Murray Rothbard, though not a Catholic, held that we owe the very ideas of freedom and individualism to the Church" says Lew Rockwell, as he introduces an article about a letter from Pope Benedict XVI in which "[he] says that classical liberalism is the heart of Europe, criticizes multiculturalism, and warns that liberals go wrong when their reject their religious foundations."
That reminds me of a story about Rothbard, who reportedly told Father Robert Sirico "I don't believe in God, but I believe that Mary was His mother."
VATICAN CITY, DEC. 2, 2008 - At the heart of liberalism is the Christian image of God, and rediscovering that is the key to overcoming the current crisis of ethics in Europe and the world, says Benedict XVI. The Pope wrote this in a letter sent in September to Italian philosopher and senator Marcello Pera, in response to the latter's latest book titled "Perche dobbiamo dirci cristiani. Il liberalismo, l'Europa, l'etica" (Why We Must Call Ourselves Christians: Liberalism, Europe, and Ethics"). Published by Mondadori, the Italian-language book will be presented Thursday in Rome. The letter appears as a foreward in the text. Marcello Pera, 65, president of the Italian Senate during the last legislature, dedicated his academic research to his friend Karl Popper, Austrian philosopher of the "open society."
In his letter, Benedict XVI acknowledged the text to be "a fascinating read," and he applauded Pera's analysis of liberalism. "With an exceptional knowledge of the foundations, and with convincing logic, you analyze the essence of liberalism from its principles, showing that rooted in the heart of liberalism is the Christian image of God."
"With irreproachable logic, you show how liberalism loses its base and destroys itself if it abandons this foundation," he added.
The Pope also expressed his admiration for Pera's analysis of liberty, and the concept of multiculturalism, in which he "shows the internal contradiction of this concept and, therefore, its political and cultural impossibility."... The Holy Father said he believed Pera's proposals are necessary to overcome "the contemporary crisis of ethics."
"You show that liberalism, without failing to be liberalism -- rather, to be faithful to itself -- can refer to a doctrine of the good, in particular the Christian, which is familiar to it, thus truly offering a contribution to overcome the crisis," he continued.
Read the rest.
(h/t the young fogey at A Conservative Blog for ☮)
Posted by Kalim Kassam on December 4, 2008 in Libertarianism | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack