Comments Elsewhere

Roderick, regarding alcohol-prohibitionist abolitionists:

would the fact that the person in question was un-libertarian on the alcohol issue be a reason not to quote him or learn from him on the slavery issue? I can’t see why.

Aeon:

Because it’s cherry-picking at best, and misleading at worst. If the underlying reasons for the person’s saying something that, on the surface, you agree with, are wrong, then it’s IMO not much use to quote that person.

I don’t get it. Does having anti-libertarian reasons to favor one position preclude having libertarian reasons to favor another? Are we supposed to treat any analysis written by someone who held a non-libertarian position as fruit of a poisoned vine?

Are you willing to apply the same standards to the author of this “cherry-picked” quote?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. —That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

After all, he not only endorsed but personally practiced, on a large scale, crimes against liberty far worse than anything Andrea Dworkin has ever countenanced (and made the protection of those crimes a significant part of his later political career).