Kinsella: Geek, what exactly is your position? Are you saying that one criterion of being “one of the greatest libertarian theorists” is that you can’t espouse any nonlibertarian views? I.e., that you can’t be wrong about anything

I think that there are two basic points being made about Calhoun vis-a-vis the tradition of libertarian thought.

1. The absolute point: to describe Calhoun as a great libertarian thinker (or even a principled advocate of secession) when he vigorously defended slavery as a positive good on the floor of the Senate, and did more than perhaps any other single man to preserve and perpetuate Southern race slavery during the middle decades of the 19th century, is problematic, to say the least. (If you found someone who had eloquently and vigorously defended libertarian views, except that he supported the Holocaust on the grounds that Jews have no human rights, would you call him a great libertarian thinker? If you would, Christ, why?)

2. The relative point: you might respond to the absolute point by claiming that, in spite of Calhoun having played a really rotten role in the defense of Southern race slavery, and taking truly despicable positions on it, he was still a leading light in the context of his time, compared to the other folks who were doing political theory at the time. But that, too, is false. Indeed, it’s ridiculous. To go around celebrating slaver Calhoun’s contribution to the thought of his time, when men such as Lysander Spooner and William Lloyd Garrison were writing political theory—often theory diametrically opposed to Calhoun’s, on libertarian grounds—seems to me to be simply ludicrous.

I think the relative point is obvious. As for the absolute point, I think that you can only bypass it by ignoring how despicable American race slavery really was, and passing it off as if it were simply some niggling error on some minor point is just evasion. What Calhoun supported was an institutionalized assault on human liberty and dignity more systematic, more massive, more prolonged, and more awful, than almost anything else in human history, with the exception of atrocities committed with the explicit purpose of genocide. Saying “Oh, well, he’s a great libertarian except for his defense of Southern slavery” seems to me to be an awful lot like saying “Oh, well, he’s a great Catholic theologian, except that he argues in favor of worshipping the Devil.” Oh well, I guess nobody’s perfect.

Dare I return to the subject? Why, yes, I do!

“DiLorenzo’s claim was not simply that Calhoun put forth a few libertarian-sounding arguments, judged independently of his other beliefs. Rather, it was that Calhoun was one of the greatest libertarian philosophers of his time. Now, I could understand this claim if Calhoun lived at a time where everyone else was a rabid statist who supported slavery. Then it might make sense to say that Calhoun was one of the greatest — i.e. greater than others — libertarians of his time. But there were certainly other people who lived at the same time and did not support slavery.”

Indeed. In fact, here’s some quick dates:

John C. Calhoun: lived 1782 – 1850. Vice President 1824-1832. Served in Senate 1830-1850. Defended slavery as “a positive good” on the floor of the Senate in 1837. Spent his last days fighting for the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850.

Lysander Spooner: lived 1808 – 1887. Published [url=http://www.lysanderspooner.org/UnconstitutionalityOfSlaveryContents.htm]The Unconstitutionality of Slavery[/url] in 1845 and [url=http://www.lysanderspooner.org/DefenseOfFugitiveSlaves.htm]A Defence for Fugitive Slaves Against the Acts of Congress[/url] in 1850, in addition to numerous other libertarian writings.

William Lloyd Garrison: lived 1805-1879. Published The Liberator 1831-1865. Defended the Declaration of Independence and denounced the Constitution as “a covenant with death and an agreement with Hell”. Began to argue for peaceful Northern secession by 1844.

To describe Calhoun as one of the greatest libertarian theorists of his time is, quite frankly, a historical obscenity.

“I do, even though I vehemently oppose such a policy in the U.S. The difference being, of course, that there have been no organized attempts by Mexicans to blow themselves up in heavily populated civilian centers. To my knowledge.”

No, but there have been organized attempts by Mexicans to pick fruits and vegetables, mow lawns, take care of children, and do other important work completely under the table and tax-free. Also to encourage some Americans to learn Spanish. Or at least not actively discourage them and fail them for speaking it better than they speak English. Or something.

I gather that in Paleo Bizarro World, these crimes may not be quite as bad as blowing up civilians, but it’s got to be pretty damn close.

“Most Southerners, even ones who felt nationalistic toward the Confederacy, were not slaveowners.”

Of course they weren’t. In some parts of the Deep South, “most Southerners” were Black slaves.

But this misses the point. The question is about who the driving forces behind “the Southern cause” were, what they took the nature of their cause to be, and the reasons they gave for fighting for it.

And when you set out to answer that question, even a cursory glance at the public statements of men such as Jefferson Davis, Alexander “Cornerstone” Stephens, Robert E. Lee, and other members of the slaver aristocracy (who overwhelmingly dominated the secessionist conventions, the state governments, and the Confederate government)—not to mention at the Confederate constitution and other key sources—reveals that the prime motive of the people who were driving the process was the preservation of white supremacy and race slavery.

Certainly some whites who neither owned slaves nor were family members of anyone who did, still went out to fight for the Confederacy. But it’s essential to keep in perspective just how little sway they had in the reasoning or the decision-making that led into the hostilities that they later joined. And also that a lot of non-slaveholders weren’t interested in fighting for the Confederacy at all—which is why they were targeted by the “Twenty-Nigger” draft law, and why they led anti-Confederate uprisings across the large swaths of Virginia, Tennessee, etc. where the slaver population was very low.

Micha: “Uh, oh, Rad, you’re coming dangerously close to defining me back into the libertarian movement. When should I expect my Welcome Back party? ;)”

Hee hee. Well, I was on the “family resemblence” side of the definitional debate with you, so you won’t get any complaints from me here. I don’t think that you have to hold a rigorous natural rights theory of justice to count as a libertarian. You have to hold it to keep from counting as grossly mistaken, but that’s another issue entirely…

Stefan: “On the other hand, maybe Rand is afraid that if we let Micha into the fold of libertarians as a consequentialist …”

Ah, but remember that Rand and the ARIans think that Micha and others are already in the fold of libertarians; that’s much of why they object to “libertarianism” as such. The basic idea (as expressed, e.g., by Peikoff in “Fact and Value”) is that libertarianism involves not only specific claims about political outcomes but also a certain attitude towards those claims (i.e., that your primary political alliances are with anyone and everyone who agree with those claims, regardless of the reason for their agreement), and that the lack of “quality control” involved is pernicious, or unprincipled, or something.

Also, of course, ARIans have very strong disagreements with specific groups of libertarians over issues such as the legitimacy of an enforced monopoly government, legal protections of “intellectual property”, the advisability of annihilating Tehran in a nuclear massacre, etc.

gc suggests the following analogy: “Gould is to evolution … as … Freud is to psychiatry … as … Marx is to economics”

This gives significantly too much in the way of props to mainstream “quantitative” psychiatry and economics. Marx and Freud both have significant advantages over the status quo in psychiatry and economics—which is not a sign of their virtues, but rather of the fields’ vices.

“I don’t think one can ever really have too much quantitative thought in a field.”

What if it’s not a quantitative field?

Quoth John: ‘If a bank robber walks into a bank and points a fake gun at the teller screaming, “Give me the money in the safe within five seconds or I will kill you,” and the teller proceeds to shoot the assailant, it is self-defense because the teller thought her life was in danger.’

But there are three features here which make the situation you posit saliently different from the situation between Iraq and the United States.

1) The bank robber with the (unbeknownst to you) fake gun is making a specific, credible threat.

2) There’s no good way of determining whether the gun is real or not without using force.

3) There’s no good way of stopping the bank robber from using the gun against you if it does turn out to be real.

But (2) and (3) are manifestly not the case for Iraq. Here as elsewhere there’s an obligation to defend yourself by the least aggressive means that can be counted on to work—if the bank teller could have just as safely disarmed the bank robber with a karate chop, or could have discovered a fake gun quickly and without risk, then it would be murder to just shoot the bank robber without first availing herself of these means. And for all the faults of his ideas about foreign policy ideas (and oh, there are many!) Kerry is right about something here in relation to Iraq: if the goal was to ensure that Hussein disarmed himself of NBC weapons, then it’s quite clear that there was a way to achieve that goal without bombing the hell out of Iraq—that is, letting the inspections work. Bush presented no clear case whatsoever that inspections were failing; he just obstructed them and then decided around March that it was time for war.

What about (1)? Even if there were credible reasons to believe that Hussein had or was actively developing NBC weapons (and I find that much more dubious than you seem to, given what we now know about the politically-driven intelligence procedures leading up to the war), was there any specific, credible threat of using them against the United States? I certainly don’t recall that Hussein made any such threats; the administration’s case seemed to be founded on the speculation that he might have given weapons to terrorist groups that have made specific threats against the U.S.—a shaky speculation which we knew by the outbreak of the war to be completely unfounded, and which has only been confirmed as such since then.

As for Jefferson’s foreign policy, it’s certainly the case that he would have despised both Bush’s unrestrained warmongering and Kerry’s longing for as many entangling alliances as possible. His hope for the spread of liberty worldwide (as, for example, in his early support of the French Revolution) makes for some superficial resemblence between him and the “Freedom is on the March” crew, but of course he would have absolutely detested the imperial and militaristic means by which Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al. have gone about it.

Jefferson also would have detested the notion that the United States hs no obligation to make a credible case to honest observers around the world (which is what Kerry protested—rightly or wrongly—that we had not done in the case of Iraq) that taking arms was both legitimate and being used as a last resort. I take this to have been Roderick’s main point (however ineptly put by me).

Phelps: “Justified or not, I intend to win any war we are in, the same that I intend to win any fight I am in, whether I started it or not.”

If you honestly think that a war is unjustified, what possible moral grounds could you have for trying to stick through and win it?

Obviously you do think that war is justified—that’s why you keep fighting to win.

Oh, a more substantive difference that I neglected: orthodox Objectivists hold that libertarianism, as a political movement, is premature. The official line from Rand and from the ARI has been that philosophical and cultural change needs to precede any serious or lasting political shift towards a free society, and that therefore libertarian political organizing amounts to time wasted pushing on a string.

“While we’re on the topic, could someone explain why Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff hate libertarianism? I remember reading an essay by Peikoff on the subject a few years ago, but most of it sounded like objecto-babble.”

The official orthodox reason for refusing to identify with “libertarianism” is, roughly, that “libertarianism” is claimed to involve an uncritical alliance with anyone who happens to share your views about political outcomes, without concern for why they hold those views. I.E., “libertarianism” can encompass not only an Objectivist theory of politics founded on an Objectivist theory of morality founded on Objectivist theories of knowledge, reality, and human nature; but also consequentialists, anarchists, Rothbardians, constitutionalists, pot-smoking hippies, and other ne’er-do-wells that Miss Rand wouldn’t want to be caught dead associating with. Peter Schwartz has a ridiculous essay (“Libertarianism: the perversion of liberty” or somesuch) in which he expounds the theory in much more polemical terms than even Rand ever mustered, which goes on at length about how libertarians broadly, and Murray Rothbard especially, are a bunch of whim-worshipping nihilists held together by nothing but the urge to destroy.

I think the real reasons have more to do with the antagonism between Rand and Rothbard, and with Objectivists’ revulsions at the aforementioned post-smoking hippies.