When I said government is a necessary evil, I wasn’t condoning it but merely stating the Jeffersonian view which I concur with. If collective defense is but an extension of the individual right to self-defense, then when the government organizes a police force, courts and jails, it is carrying out a necessary function, unless you want to go back to a complete system of individual self-defense. Thus, as a minarchist, I feel government is necessary in respect to that police force, and possibly in respect to other aspects of life. Perhaps you are an anarchist/nihilist who is hoping for an end to human civilization. I find nothing criminal in the government, which you call state and equate with organized crime, collectively defending my right to life, liberty, and property through the mechanisms of the police, courts and jails. How does that make the state organized crime when it is preserving individual liberty?
Yes, thanks for bringing up what I feel to be a glaring contradiction in Dr. Paul’s position. How can you be against government imposing unfair taxes as a violation of property rights, and then say that on the local level the people can override the constitution if the override is based on local democratically expressed values, something he condemns elsewhere as majoritarianism. The function of the school is secular education. There is ample time after school and on the weekends for religious instruction, as well as supreme court rulings on prayer during recesses. One is free in America to gain capital, purchase land and establish a church where one can worship according to ones conscience. One can send ones children to parochial or religious schools, or home school them. I see absolutely nothing constraining free religious expression in general (The Native American Church can attest to the constraints in specific). Therefore when the community forces me to pay tax money towards the school which then holds a prayer service using the lights, loud speaker, teachers salaries, etc. to promote a religious end, it is violating the Constitution and Libertarian principles.
The fact that I disagree with Dr. Paul on this issue, doesn’t stop me from strongly supporting him. If he is elected, we will still have a system of checks and balances in America, and the heightened Libertarian sensibilities of the public, in good part due to the good Doctor’s campaign, will serve to help quash any blatantly unconstitutional measures he might attempt. We must confront and question him on these seeming contradictions.
What is of far more moment currently is the preservation of the civil liberties enumerated in the Bill of Rights and Declaration, and the maintainence of the soundness of the currency and the economic system, without which you can kiss American constitutional Republicanism good-bye. No other candidate keeps hammering on these issues like Dr. Paul, —a really Sonny Liston, pulverizing the Floyd Patterson corpus of the State.
Hi Paul, You fall for the idea that the Federal government will somehow get things right that the states get wrong, rather than getting them even more wrong.
I’m opposed to the idea of government sponsored education from the get-go. Whether there is praying in the buildings or not is a side issue. I am a Christian but I don’t think it should be “pick a god today to pray to” each school day, nor force Jews to pray to Jesus. The issue is even relevant because everyone is forced to pay for government schools. Entities fundamentally inimical to freedom (you don’t think state employees are going to be teaching about how to limit the thing which pays them, do you?).
At least if the matter is left up to the states you can move fairly inexpensively (compared to going to England or Brazil or something). This threat of exit is a very effective whip for the states, which is why they want the Federal government to impose decisions over ALL of the states – to avoid competition.
The Constitution is not a libertarian document. It enables the states to be libertarian, or not, along a broad range, according to the desires of those in the states. The resulting competition will show what works best and what people prefer. I’m a minarchist with very strong anarcho-capitalist sympathies, personally. I thought anarchists were insane, but I’ve come to see that the same principles which prove that government beyond a certain level is an unmitigated evil also prove that there is no way to keep a government (assuming one is desirable) actually restrained to that desired level. Therefore, I’m willing to try doing without one. I doubt the chaos would be as bad.
The state has a monopoly on force. In the grocery store individuals can choose between Raisin Bran and Cheerios. Why can’t individuals choose who they want to defend their life, liberty, and property? Choosing who protects your individual sovereignty is more important that choosing the right cereal. More freedom should exist when it comes to choosing the entity that protects you. I prefer anarcho-capitalism. Let the market decide.
States are evil because they use offensive force as opposed to letting individuals make their own voluntary decisions. The state claims that it gets to be the final arbiter of justice. This is what happens when you decide that you don’t like the services provided by the state monopoly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mvHDx8YQk4 (What happens when you exercise your right to speak freely?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G19jkbMvPEY (What happens when you refuse to be a slave?)
Contrary to your argument,the state does not have a monopoly on force, since you are free to choose to own a firearm and use it. So you have a right to use force also. You can also use this individual liberty to use force to oppose the state in insurrection, challenging its authority and its monopoly on force. However, these attempts are both unconstitutional and frequently unsuccessful. I am basing my view on Bastiat’s argument early in “The Law” where he points out that the state/government collective power to defend my property rights is merely an extension of my own right and therefore completely valid. The proliferation of security firms and private body guards would further attest to the freedom of the individual to still maintain his own security arrangements. I admit though that if he doesn’t want to use the state police,courts,prisons, and furnish his own, he is in trouble, and I don’t know what to advise.
Hi Jim. I suppose I was thinking that the Federal Government is the only one with the clout to implement a Supreme Court Ruling, when a state refuses to go along with that ruling and continues to violate the Constitution. But it’s dawning on civil libertarians in states like Oregon and California as they see their very popular assisted-suicide for the terminally ill and medical cannabis laws trashed by Gonzo’s “Justice Dept.”, that States Rights have a big upside —to defend Constitutional laws and the Bill of Rights when the Pres, Congress or the Supreme Court try to impose Unconstitution laws on the States.
However, the idea that one can easily pack-up and move to another state is asking a lot. Why should someone whose family has resided in a local area for a hundred years, contributing to its development, suddenly be forced to move out of state to avoid the tax-theft of unconstitutional local laws passed by the community under Dr. Paul’s defense? If my community suddenly becomes 95% devoutly Muslim, and requires a prayer in school that calls for infidels to have their civil rights violated, should I be forced to pay school taxes or move out of my long-resided in community, just because the State or Fed government now says, “It’s all up to local communities ruled by majoritarianism, now. Leave America if you don’t like it.” — in effect trashing the Constitution and the rule of law?
I’d agree with you on all the problems associated with public education, and would prefer there be no public funding, but flying in the face of this is the virtual necessity for a vigorous, healthy, free-market capitalist society, to insure that the populace can read, figure basic math functions, spell somewhat uniformly, understand the basics of civics and voting, the Constitution and its historical development, and Austrian economics. The experiment of not guaranteeing such a uniformity I fear could be disasterous for the Republic,and capitalism. Don’t you think a great deal of the mercantilist success of 19th century England was due to her adoption of universal schooling so that illiteracy was virtually wiped out?
However, getting rid of the income tax and all the accompanying bookkeeping would probably produce a whole class of tutors, and free-schools, specializing in one area of thorough mental development and providing enough competition to the public schools that maybe they would become obselete, or so cost-ineffective, that their function could be taken over by other means. As with homeschooling now, a simple test at a certain age, certifying that a youngster could read, do the 4 basic math functions, had read the Dec/Const./Bill and understood the basic political structure of the U.S., might be all that was needed one day soon as far as government education, with 95% of individuals getting this knowledge outside of the public school system. Remember though that Jefferson and Madison were very much for books and book learning, and without it American will lag the world.
I don’t see any contradiction. Paul is running for a national office. In that forum, his state and local level views are not the issue. Let’s devolve the feds, then work on the states. It’s the only option available.
Leaving the question of voting for politicians aside for the moment (and no, it is not an efficient way of reducing political power, regaurdless of the question of whether or not its moral):
I’ll admit that Ron Paul got me interested in libertarianism in the first place. But in retrospect he sounds more and more like a paleocon when one reads between the lines. I’ll give him this analysis: he’s a libertarian-paleocon crossbreed. Contemporary American Libertarians have always had a tendency to ally with and vote for paleocons. Yet it always fails, the government grows anyways, some libertarians are persuaded to a more protectionist and nationalist position, and we’re back to square one, pouting in the corner and virtually defenseless against leviathan. This (voting for underdog conservative Republicans) is not a new strategy. It has been tried and failed for decades upon decades now. I have no clue why libertarians would think it will work this time around.
Putting so much faith in one man, a politician, to magically get voted into office and magically shrink the government from the inside, seems mighty strange to me, especially coming from market anarchists (particularly the very ones who, quite correctly, criticize democracy all the time). It takes quite a lot of faith to believe that, granted that he even makes it into office, he can implement reductionist policies in the face of a hostile congress from both parties, not get his vetoes overriden in no time, and so on. It’s not as if, by the mere stroke of the pen, he can manage to abolish the federal reserve and income tax, rid us of entire departments and shut down all military bases. I’m not saying that you are immoral if you support Ron Paul, but I will say that you probably are putting way too much faith in a member of the government. I find it to be naive.
Sure getting Ron Paul elected will not solve the countries problems, but it will at least put a kink in the hose. There is a lot to be said for Presidential veto power. If Washington can’t get anything done for 8 years, then we will be better off for it. Ron Paul is also bringing freedom loving people together. I didn’t realize how many people around me actually care about freedom until I joined a meetup.com group. Ron Paul is also educating people.
As a side note. Your post does not appear to offer actionable solutions. Are you here to throw tomatoes, or do you actually have a plan? If you have solutions please share them because I want to be free.
H.L. Mencken to the rescue: “The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake.”
But if you want a more straight-foreward answer: secession, agorism and going expatriate. I find all three to be better options than voting. I also tend to agree with Stefan Molyneux’s approach in which removing bad relationships from our personal and familial lives is necessary before abolishing (let alone reducing) the state even becomes a possibility. “Personal freedom” is a foreign concept even to many libertarians, since it is admitedly very hard to live one’s values in an unfree world.
On the other hand, the fall of the state is inevitable in an entropic sense, so perhaps it is more important to concentrate on forming an intellectual climate which will prevent the rise of another one. Ultimately, so long as people still hold on to ideas that support coercive authority, people will continue to make the same mistakes with regaurd to the state. Therefore, philosophical and economic education is of the utmost importance (the Mises Institute is a wonderful institution for this, I must say).
Yes, I think that buying a copy of “The Ethics of Liberty” or “Human Action” for a friend or family member, engaging in philosophical debates with people online, starting a blog to write down your thoughts on freedom, engaging in peaceful black markets, disassociating oneself from manipulative and psychologically abusive people, etc., does more for the cause of liberty then voting for Ron Paul ever will. Call it crazy if you want. Call it “doing nothing”. I consider such things, as petty as they may seem at face value, to be much closer to true “action” (living one’s values) than voting.
Another point I’d like to make: there can be no “plan” for freedom, because freedom cannot be “planned”, it just happens or just is. Put another way, on a personal level, noone else can free you for you, only you can free yourself (“personal responsibility”, anyone?). The government cannot give you freedom (including Ron Paul), and neither can any individual member of society. Your freedom is ultimately in your own hands, despite all of the immense barriers that others may put in your way.
Libertarians have failed in their strategy of voting of underdog candidates for decades because the only way to make a Libertarian revolution is to vote only for those candidates who basically hold to the core of your philosophy, while writing in yourself or a friend for those offices where no Libertarian was available. But you must cast your vote for the Libertarian, and not waste it on the lesser of two evils, unless one candidate is a Hitler or Stalin with a good chance of winning. Under such circumstances, situation ethics takes precedent. But barring a Mao candidate, you must carry out a complete ethical act of voting for the Libertarian. Now, in the past the Libertarian candidates were usually unknowns (Harry Browne, Badnarik) or Dr. Paul who was little known, and lost credibility running from a fringe party. As I tell Dem. friends who moan about Bush,“It’s your fault for not voting for Badnarik. If the whole country had voted the way I did, none of this mess would be happening.”
Now that Dr. Paul is running as a Repub., which probably is closer to his actual views, he is doing better; and the financial crisis brewing will be the chief catalyst that will make America realise the seriousness of his cry “We’re going bankrupt.” But Steve Kubby, who was the leading Libertarian candidate for president, threw his support to Dr. Paul and I concurred at the time, saying we were getting 90% of the pie. Now I think its a greater percentage. No one is throwing the truth out there like he is, and in a reasonable, courteous, dialectical manner, with just the right amount of forcefulness. The crisis of the Republic is bringing out the best in the man, who at 73 has more fire and passion than all the members of the plunderbund combined. ET BONUM QUO ANTIQUIUS, EO MELIUS.
I can’t conceive of Dr. Paul being elected President and the Congress not at the same time containing many Libertarians who would sustain his vetoes and support him in the abolition of collectivist measures. As he grows in popularity there will unfortunately be many who add the tag Libertarian to their panoply of self-descriptive adjectives, and run for office on his coattails. As we can see on Mises, there are many who would consider us minarchists as closer to Marxists than true Libertarians, and would describe Dr. Paul as an evil pawn of the state.
These issues will have to be battled out over the next13 months in debate, but there are many out there, especially amongst the youth, who have never even heard or thought over themselves issues like abolishing the IRS, demolishing whole government departments like Education, ending minimum-wage laws, etc., because no politician ever had the moxie to say such things and defy both the other and his own parties carved-in-stone positions. When they think it over they say “Why can’t these things be done? Why couldn’t there be a Libertarian-capitalist revolution in the US?”— which would just be the fulfillment of the original American Revolution before it got mired in factionalism, and which might not have worked in the pre-computer age. Obviously, every one of the candidates of both parties is either immoral or so limited in their understanding of the Constitution that they’re not fit to be President—with the exception of Dr. Paul.
It almost sounds to me as if you are saying that voting (at least for “the right guy”) is an actual positive moral obligation. Surely you’re not suggested that? I would certainly hope not.
I think that voting for party Libertarians has failed as strategy for a number of reasons:
(1) 3rd parties are deliberately excluded and have hefty barriers put in their way. Libertarians are also, partially due to their own fault, typically caricatured as conservatives who like to smoke pot, or liberals who want less taxes.
(2) The Libertarian Party has done a horrible job of spreading the actual philosophy and has concentrated more and more of its efforts on making libertarianism more appealing to liberals and conservatives (I.E. watering down the message) at the expense of genuine education. In short, it’s more about winning votes or members than winning hearts and minds.
(3) Libertarian Party members themselves often switch over to Republican when election time comes. I always found this a bit odd. Is it not a bit strange when the majority or a decent chunk of a political party are actively campaigning for someone of a different political party and encouraging their fellow party members to register as Republicans?
(4) As I stated above, I do not believe that voting for politicians is very effective of a strategy in the first place for reducing political power.
Note: I am technically a registered member of the party. I have not engaged in any activism within it though and I have not voted for any canidates. I may as well cancel the membership at this point. It was “free” though.
He did in fact “water down” his positions somewhat (to appeal more to paleoconservative types) since changing to Republican. I also have a suspicion that he truly is more of a paleoconservative at heart, although he does take some positions on some matters that would make Pat Buchannan’s head explode. Hell, Buchannan makes me want my head to explode.
Do you seriously think that, if he is elected, that Ron Paul could actually manage to get us out of the economic crisis? It seems to me that there is no possibility at this point, we are long past the point of no return. Unfortunately, the public at large doesn’t tend to realize these things until it is far too late. A debt this large has never been paid off in the history of mankind. Part of me wants to take a “feed the beast” approach: let the state go bankrupt, then it will have to eventually dissolve itself anyways. Because the thing is, I don’t want the state to be solvent. Either way, it seems to me that the only way to make the state solvent will inherently require externalization of costs, I.E. further financial raping of the common person.
He has indeed made some very good points on many issues, ranging from foreign policy to economics. He’s also made some bad ones and has openly advocated bad positions on certain issues (like, say, a huge pork-barrel project of a “border fence” payed for with blood money; and literally calling for more federal spending on domestic “security” in the name of fighting illegal immigration). I’m not going to allow his good positions to make me ignore his bad ones. I also don’t trust that he is entirely consistant with “state’s rights” when it comes to certain “social” or cultural issues, since he has introduced and co-sponsored federal legislation defining life as beginning at conception. A closer look at his voting record in congress, as pristine as it may seem to be at first glance, reveals a socially conservative agenda. If it was actually completely confined to voluntaryism, that’d be fine, but it’s not.
To clarify for you: I am not a minarchist (I used to teeter between minarchism and anarchism but I have resolved the cognitive dissonance a while ago), I consider myself a market anarchist (with so-called “left-wing” cultural sympathies, admitedly, since I don’t buy the Hoppean arguement on immigration one bit, am an atheist, despise racism, despise nationalism and advocate voluntary multiculturalism). I am also dissapointed in the majority of my fellow market anarchists for being pro-voting all of a sudden when it comes to Ron Paul. And while I would not necessarily call Dr. Paul an “evil pawn of the state”, he is indeed himself a member of the gang and in some ways I do see him as an enabler rather than as an opponent of the state.
I’ll definitely admit that he has managed to attract an excited “youth movement”. But what exactly are these people being “converted” to? Paleo-conservatism? Libertarianism? Market anarchism? While they might be “converted” to better views then they may have previously held, they are also simultaneously being given faith that a politician (Ron Paul) can solve their problems for them. I believe this is what is meant by the various articles floating around places such as strike-the-root that accuse Ron Paul of restoring people’s faith in the government. Afterall, aren’t all of the Ron Paul supporters essentially making an “if my guy was in charge” arguement? Like I said in my above post, it takes quite a religious-like zeal to believe that a politician would actually be capable of doing some of the things that some Ron Paul supporters seem to think he is capable of pulling off. I’m sorry if I seem like a total pessemist, because I truly am a long-term optimist (as Rothbard suggests us to be), but I don’t find optimism in any politician.
I would rephrase that and say that Ron Paul is indeed the “least bad” out of all of the canidates and the closest in his ideas to what “the founders” envisioned. But I never subscribed to the idea of supporting “lesser evil”. I oppose evil, period. And while “less evil” is better than “more evil”, it nonetheless is illogical and self-contradictary to advocate “limited evil” and to become part of evil in the name of reducing or abolishing it. Simply put, I don’t believe that anyone can handle political power. Not a single individual in the world, no matter how virtuous, can wield and use such power without being corrupted by it in some way. I need not quote Lord Acton.
Of course no one has an obligation to vote. If one is going to vote, one certainly has a moral obligation to use that vote to diminish evil.
I’ve always regarded Paul as a libertarian in conservative clothes. He openly admits the reason he runs as a republican is because third parties are hopeless. He mentions Rothbard, Mises and Spooner on national television.
His few pieces of social conservative legislation are disturbing. I wonder if he introduces these bills in order to pander to republican voters, or if he really wants them to get passed? He certainly knows they won’t get passed, and he’s introduced other bills which even contradicted his stated positions, such as his bill to abolish the Fed (as opposed to simply denationalizing money, which is his stated position). He does need to appear to be a republican to get into the debates. I regard any deception on his part to be completely justified as defense against government aggression.
I see the immigration as being rather tricky. Private property owners would of course be free to exclude Mexicans in a free society. Since we don’t have a free society and much property is not private, is it something the state should do? In a free society, police would be hired voluntarily. But we don’t have a free society, so does that mean the government should not use its monopoly on law enforcement to catch murderers and thugs? One thing is for sure, the state will not give up its monopoly on roads and police. Then of course there is the problem of the financial burden of immigration in some areas due to socialism and welfarism. Paul does say he wouldn’t want a fence is we had a free market without a welfare state. I don’t know what the right answer is, but I don’t think its so clear that government boarder control should be eliminated (at least not before eliminating other things).
Brainpolice — Thanks for the extensive and interesting post-mortem of my comments, and the contribution of your own views.
You say that it sounds like I’m saying that voting is an actual moral obligation, and you hope not. Well, I suppose I am because I feel we are in a crisis situation where you can’t just sit on your hands and do nothing, unless you want the Republic to go down. I certainly don’t, and I don’t want a financial crisis that will destabilize the US, and might well be the worst in history. But we will certainly get it if any other candidate gets elected —as surely with Romney or Thompson as with Clinton or Edwards.
You say: “Part of me wants to take a “feed the beast” approach: let the state go bankrupt, then it will eventually have to dissolve itself, anyways. Because the thing is, I don’t WANT the state to be solvent.” While I can empathise with this feeling, because it IS the only way the general public will wake up to the true price of collectivist security programs going way beyond “cops and soup kitchens”, I would much prefer we don’t have this crisis, which may well hit before Dr. Paul is even inaugurated and could be the worst in world history. Since Dr. Paul’s statement before the House Committee and Bernanke on Sep.20, the Canadian dollar has risen from 96 cents to 1.027 today, about 6% in 22 days. If you think financial chaos in America is preferable to coming back from the brink, which I agree may be an optimist’s illusion, then I’d have to strongly disagree with you. Don’t vote, and then you’ll get Clinton/Edwards with permanent estate taxes, big jumps in income tax, huge new programs, massive inflation, and majoritarianism killing the last vestiges of the capitalist spirit. Vote for Dr. Paul, and you’ll get a stronger dollar, deficit reduction, a huge decrease in the amount of time you have to waste conforming to government regulations, and a huge increase in personal freedom. A lot of the dudgeon that accrues in socialist societies which have little to offer beyond food clothes and shelter(the discontent of Swedish and Danish youth is notorious) would dissolve in America. The national sales tax would start wittling down the deficit. The elimination of the estate tax would bring a huge influx of capital into America and many wealthy foreigners would move here, bringing their capital.
I do think Dr. Paul — and free-market capitalism— could get us out of this financial crisis. (And you never know what might happen —like if China suddenly had a vast need for an exclusively American product and had to run a huge trade deficit with us for years on end.) I don’t think the crisis has gone too far because we could reverse the current entitlement programs, like the Medicare prescription drug bill, and start phasing out the gvt. programs like Soc. Sec. by making them voluntary. If we got rid of the income tax and the estate tax, and had a national sales tax, plus sin taxes on addictive drugs to go towards Medicare-caused deficit reduction(these taxes could be lifted once the deficit was erased), and a commodity-backed currency, probably gold, would once again reign, Capitalism would havenothing to hold it back for the first time in history. I believe the revenue from the national sales tax,excise taxes and a corporate income tax on corps grossing over $5 million, as well as a “voluntary” income tax that would be left up to the taxpayer to pay and which might be directed to a charity carrying out a government welfare function like running homeless shelters, would run huge surpluses for the government when combined with the Paul massive spending cuts,and that would pay off the $9 trillion debt over not too many years. The dollar would strengthen, so our bond rates would fall (probably), and the interest on the deficit would accrue more slowly.
I agree that the Libertarian party has had a nugatory effect on public opinion, because at least one of its positions will usually outrage anyone who is not a Bill of Rights Libertarian, and so drive them back to the shelter of the bi-partisan collectivists, or into the Green party who are so anti-capitalist and unrealistic, their views have little hope of catching on in a still pro-capitalist America. Having unheard of candidates didn’t help much. But remember, Libertarian candidate Tom Cox got 5% in the last Oregon gubernatorial race, and Libertarians only compromise 0.8% of registered voters in the state. That’s quite a statement. Get up to 17% and the Libertarian party will be a major force. This is also a very good reason for you not to cancel your membership in the party, which needs only a comparatively small number of people to register to get it on the ballot in states like Oregon where the Dems. and Reps. have collaborated on blatently undemocratic legislation designed to try to shut the mouth of 3rd parties. Just to stick it to these plunderbund Quislings, you should stay registered in the Libertarian party and encourage others to join.
I also agree that its strange for Libertarians to be supporting the candidate of another party, although I would not go so far as to advocate registering as a Republican to vote for him. This is up to each individual, but given the hatred of the Bill of Rights the Republican party has exhibited over the last 30 years, I would never register in their party. I could never register in a party that supported the death penalty and persecutes cannabis users like Rome persecuted Christians. And it also might be perceived as support for the party as a whole, which is in praxis as thoroughly collectivist as the Dems. I urge Dems. and Reps. who support Dr. Paul to register as Libertarians so the Libertarian party can get on the ballot in states like Oregon, and then the party will almost certainly support Dr. Paul, since its leading candidate (Kubby) has already endorsed him, and since he already ran as the party’s mascot, so it’s not too hard for many Libertarians to vote for him. I suspect too he’s a lot more erudite on Austrian economics and American history than Mr. Kubby, but I have no proof.( I’m really sorry now Aaron Russo never got to run.)
And since voting or not voting could be the sole difference between Clinton and a new 70-year New Deal or Dr. Paul’s brand of Libertarianism, I certainly think voting is a very effective strategy for reducing political power. As a Sartrean/Camus existentialist, I will use any legal, non-violent tool to bring about the society I choose for myself and for all mankind to live within. Not voting is a choice for nihilism. But this implies a social view of things. To a Berkeleyan subjectivist, all that would count would be how voting affected his own private world.
I made myself unclear when I said “us minarchists”. I didn’t mean to imply that you were one, merely that I was one. Sorry to have apparently included you in the collectivist pronoun when I meant to confine it to myself. As far as Dr. Paul’s fudging and compromising his positions (his recent forum statement that he now opposes the Federal death penalty — which could easily be construed by the uncritical as “he’s against the death penalty”), or his attempt to get oil industry perks for his district or taking Federal Aid for his district or dodging controversial issues by saying he’d leave it up to the states— these just tell me he still has the sobriety of a politician trying to win, not the “Dept. of Peace” dreams of a Kucinich, or the bizzarities of a Howard Dean. I don’t want to be voting for an unknown who gets 1% again, when I’m getting someone who agrees 75% with my specific program views, and 100% with my economic and pro- free-market views. I also feel that Dr. Paul is completely sincere in his views on abortion, death penalty, prayer in schools, even if I disagree with those views completely or in part. I don’t have “faith” in that sincerity. I see it, but Russellian scepticism requires me to doubt everything including my own beliefs, even when I am thoroughly convinced, and any speculator/trader with any experience soon learns that he can be convinced over and over again and still be wrong. Capitalism teaches people to be sober in their belief in their own infallibity, and this is very healthy for the free-market, or that vast continuum of praxealogical agitation known as that true non-entity, the collectivist’s favorite,“society”. So, I’ll watch Dr. Paul like a hawk. He’d want us to. And I’ll debate him when I think he’s wrong—after he’s elected.
What the youth is rebelling against is the geriocracy that bleeds them for tax money, sends them to Iraq after they signed up for the National Guard, but won’t let them buy a joint at the store. They smell its foulness and rebel against its injustice. It’s probably just a reaction, not the desire for a true revolution. But recall that Libertarianism is a sort of “via negativa” applied to government. These youths are not being converted to a new program, but to “no program” or as little as is possible. The conditioned political tendency to always be making plans, instead of just maintaining “laissez-faire” and letting people enjoy their own freedom and privacy, is so ingrained in the older and the rising youth that it’s hard to counteract it. But the rising youth can counteract it possibly if they are made aware of it (by educators like Dr. Paul), and if they haven’t already been financially compromised by the system so that it’s in their vested interests to maintain it instead of having a thorough, cleansing, economic revolution, because the youth’s minds are still pliable. What they will be converted to will be as diverse as the eldritch concatenation of groups that is coming together to back Dr. Paul. Once he is elected, these groups will re-factionalise, and it will be a very interesting debate indeed.
The Libertarian party needs people like you with your anarchist and what you term “left” views, although I view them as “Old Liberal” in the tradition of Jefferson and Tom Paine, the Brits who supported the Revolution, and later Lord Bertrand Russell.
Well he has openly labeled himself as the most conservative canidate on the stage, and in an old-school sense this is absolutely true. He has been calling himself a “traditional conservative Republican”. So it seems to me that, for whatever reason, he has indeed been distancing himself a bit from the “libertarian” label and trying to appeal more to old-school conservatives.
I find this kind of akward. Deception of the people is justified as a defense against government aggression? Do the ends justify the means? Or do the ends not justify the means quite simply because the means employed determine the nature of the ends?
I now cannot help but digress into my views on immigration.
Treating the nation-state as if it were the legitimate private property of the government, or the people’s common property (tragedy of the commons, anyone?), opens up a huge can of worms that could imply some highly questionable things if we consistantly applied it. The private property of the government notion can be used to justify practically anything that the government does, and makes everything (and everyone) within the territory subject to be controlled (in other words, it merely reinforces and falsely justifies the territorial monopoly). The common property notion has communalist implications. The state, in either case, clearly is not private property. The state cannot emulate a free market by its very nature, so it makes no sense to me to use the state’s intervention in a particular way on the assumption that this is how private property owners would choose to employ their property.
And while private property owners would indeed be free to exclude Mexicans in a free society, I believe that the incentives in a free market would make racial or cultural separatism suicidal in the long-run for reasons having to do with the economics of discrimination (and what I consider to be the large-scale implications of comparative advantage). At least on the margin, there will be an incentive towards integration; and there will always be willing sellers to some degree. The consequences of free association are a mixed bag and therefore pluralist. This is why I think that free association ultimately pans out in favor of so-called “multiculturalism”, moreso as time passes. Separatists would effectively exile and impoverish themselves.
Another problem with immigration controls and border enforcement is that it inherently requires dictating what citezens do with their own property: it disallows me from inviting someone onto my property, selling someone my property or hiring a willing worker. A lot of the closed borders advocates accuse open borders of violating free association and allowing people to engage in “tresspass” and “invasion” (and this arguement can only be superficially maintained if we treat political borders or unused land as private property or the common property of the tax-payers, which simply is not the case; there is no discernable just owner of the entire country or borders), but they apparently fail to see how their own position egregiously violates free association (forced disassociation is no better than forced association). It’s not just the “illegals” that are effected, it’s domestic citezens who wish to associate with them as well.
I also see the closed border position as interventionism, since the arguement is essentially that in order to solve the problems created by intervention X (the welfare state) we must support intervention Y (a police state, quite frankly). And in order to possibly enforce these “borders” and immigration “laws”, more taxes and spending are inherently required, more planning at the federal level is required and quite a bit of force will be required in order to go through with deportations and whatnot. Also, consider how prohibition theory applies: we have an immigrant black market precisely to the extent that immigration and immigrant labor is illegalized and that the immigration bereaucracy is unable to accomodate people due to all of the red tape. At the end of the day, I do not consider immigration quotas to be any better than affirmative action, nor do I consider immigration controls in general to not be a form of central planning.
Furthermore, I don’t really buy into the common notion that the Mexican immigrants come here with the express purpose of sucking off of the breasts of the welfare state and to vote for socialism. On the contrary, in large part I see them as fleeing socialism and quite rationally persueing better economic conditions and oppurtunities, where they will be paid more than 50 cents an hour. It is not immigrants that are responsible for the welfare state that we already have, the gullable domestic populace already intellectually supports it in large part and they are the majority of the recipients of its bread and circuses. Either way, all such charges that are thrown at immigrants apply equally if not more so to domestic citezens, who vote for socialism and beg for welfare all the time. Are we therefore justified in kicking domestic citezens out of the country for driving on the public roads and sending their children to public schools? Or should we strike at the root, the welfare state itself, rather than using the welfare state as a rationale for violating people’s rights and implementing new or expanded government interventions?
I will grant that Ron Paul’s immigration position is better than Pat Buchannan’s or Tom Tancredo’s, but it still is wrong from both a free market economic and ethical perspective.
I have to disagree. The Declaration clearly states that man has a inalienable Creator-given Right to Life, — no earthly entity can override that. The fact that the states had and still have unconstitutional laws on the books is certainly tragic, but no reflection on their validity. These states also had slavery, or permitted their territories to be used by slaveowners accompanied by their slaves before during and after the Constitution came into effect. Likewise with women’s sufferage (though some paleo-Cons doubtless feel that this is Unconstitutional also). That’s why we have the Supreme Court, to instruct the states when they’re out of line. But I feel it unfortunate that we’re still debating the death penalty and prayer in schools with those who would claim association with Liberty after 230 years. These are such clear violations of the Rights to Life (death penalty) and Pursuit of Happiness (taxation of atheists to promote state-supported religion) that the debate is almost puerile, but it drags on for centuries. That’s the huge difference between what I feel are true Libertarians, and conservative Republicans who obdurately support the violation of these Rights. But I’ll work with them to overthrow what injustice I can, if they see eye to eye with me on that issue. Indeed, I could make a good argument as Devil’s advocate to my own position, by saying that I think the death penalty is an appropriate punishment when it comes to war criminals, although even here I would not carry it out.
The Federal constitution delegates very limited powers to the Federal government. Please show me where the Federal government is given authority to say anything about what goes on within the states other than that they must have a “republican form of government.” The limitations in the Constitution are all on the Federal government. If a state wanted to institute worship of the peanut there would be nothing that the Federal government operating in the bounds of the constitution could do about it.
The states were very protective of their distinctiveness and individual authority and wouldn’t have ratified anything which enabled the SC to swoop in and re-order their society. Spooner makes interesting arguments that slavery was unconstitutional that have some merit, however, I think he is stretching. I think his argument that the constitution has no authority is better.
The Constitution isn’t what we want it to be, it is what it was written as, by those who wrote it, and those who ratified it.
I think what you’re missing is that this would not justify it. Try to think from a purely ethical perspective. I could care less about constitutionality if constitutionality happens to violate ethics. From a deontological perspective, just because the constitution does not permit the federal government to dictate to the states does not justify whatever the states happen to be doing. I must admit, this is a huge hole in the state’s rights doctrine; namely, that the states can try to legitimize practically anything they do by appealing to it. This is why the constitution and states rights is not my benchmark of justice. No level of government can justifiably violate rights, whether that be by forcing someone to fund or practise a particular religion or anything else of the sort. Even the local levels of government must be held to an independant yardstick of justice. Justice and law do not always square with eachother; they often conflict.
“When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.” – Frederic Bastiat
I choose to lose my respect for the law and keep my moral sense.
It isn’t my benchmark for justice either.
You said that capital punishment is unconstitutional. I challenged that.
A libertarian national government over something the size of the US wouldn’t remain libertarian for long. That is (part of) why you get people becoming anarcho-capitalists.
Nobody is arguing that the states would be perfect, merely that the physical boundaries of their mistakes would be limited and they wouldn’t be able to shift their costs to other states through the Federal government. It is essentially the model of Western Europe before the consolidation of power got very bad – lots of small jurisdictions whose power is limited because the citizenry has easy exit and entry. It may not be perfect, but it had the advantage of having worked fairly well up to that point. The mistake was thinking that a piece of paper would restrain flesh and blood people with strong incentives to amass power, and now had a tool to do so.