Interestingly enough, Boaz’s point isn’t just hypothetical. 19th century libertarians often did in fact describe themselves as both free marketeers and as “socialists”—Benjamin Tucker and his circle at Liberty in particular were fond of characterizing their political-economic position as voluntary socialism, in contrast with both to state-privileged capitalism and to state socialism.

Since the rise of monster state socialism in the 20th century, libertarians have often found themselves, whether willingly or unwillingly, driven into alliances with statist conservatives, and so have tended to identify themselves as first and foremost anti-socialist, where they used to identify themselves as a kind of socialist. They have gained a better understanding of some issues (e.g. interest) in the process, but I think there’s a good argument to be made that they’ve also lost a lot and tended to become apologists for the very crony capitalists (and other traditional elites, for what it’s worth) who so often have strengthened the coercive power of the State. Hence the work that Roderick Long and I have been trying to do through the Molinari Institute to reclaim the 19th century radical libertarian vision for 21st century libertarians.

Thanks, Fred, for the support and the discussion.

You’re right that the current search results for “abortion” aren’t all that objectionable at the moment. When I wrote down the targets for the bombing, the deceptive abortionfacts-dot-com was the #1 result, above the evenhanded religioustolerance.org discussion. I’m actually not sure why the reversal came about—it isn’t because of the GoogleBombing; I suggested GynPages as the target for “abortion.”

In any case, even though there has been this welcome change, I’d still like to encourage people to GoogleBomb abortion with GynPages. Roughly, the reason why is this: religioustolerance.org isn’t an offensive result the way that abortiontv-dot-com or abortionfacts-dot-com is, but I do think that (1) since the relative positioning between #1 and #2 is fragile, we should see what we can do to boost alternatives to the deceptive anti-abortion sites; and (2) GynPages provides something very important that religioustolerance doesn’t: it’s a direct link to objective information on where to find abortion services. That’s one reason that people may be searching on “abortion” in the first place, and if it is it’s important that they be able to find it. As it stands, though, it’s crowded out by a bunch of political advocacy at the top of the search results—both even-handed and anti-tilted, and a few times pro-choice-tilted. That’s something that I wouldn’t mind seeing changed at all, and I hope that others agree with me.

Could you explain, maybe, how using the old Crusader slogan to describe the attitude behind the obliteration of Fallujah—a town of about half a million inhabitants—and the decision to treat all military-age males in the city as potential military targets is “spinning events in favor of the zealots”? It’s true that there are radical Islamists out there who believe that the Iraq war is a modern Crusade (although, for the record, the quote was actually not uttered in the context of a Crusade against Muslims). But so what? Many radical Islamists also believe that the world is round, but stating that it is is not “spinning events in favor of the zealots.” These are questions to be decided on their own merits, not by appealing to what good or bad people believe on the matter.

Is the quote applicable to the U.S. military’s assault on Fallujah—in which all “military-aged males” had to either turn themselves over to military custody or else be attacked—or isn’t it? If it isn’t, why isn’t it? If it is, then what’s wrong with pointing it out?

In light of the link that you apparently endorse below, is there any policy in Iraq short of genocide that you would take to be a rational response to the actions of some Arab or Muslim terrorists?

FP: “Does it not allow women to evade responsibility as well? Or is the pill a natural function now?”

A heart attack is a “natural function”. A defribillator is an artificial intervention that prevents cardiac arrest from taking its normal course, i.e., death. It doesn’t follow from this that you are evading your responsibility to die.

Broadly speaking, “natural” is not a term with any intrinsic normative content whatsoever. Certainly not for human beings, anyway: invention is a part—perhaps the most distinctive part—of our nature.

I got hit with a similar flood of trackback spams earlier today. Unfortunately one of the reasons that I am still sticking with stupid old MovableType (spam control tools) didn’t come through as well with the pings as it has with past waves of comment spam. (Basically because there is no concept of “moderating” TrackBack pings in MovableType, so one of the layers of interdiction between your front page and the spammer is removed. The only filters that go through are the ones that are set up to block—e.g., known spammer URIs that have already been posted somewhere.)

Do you know what’s available for Drupal in the way of spam-quashing utilities? If this hasn’t been a matter of module development I should hope that people will get working on it soon…

The essay is also just strangely edited with regard to the “bad men” who are discussed. Where is Ted Hughes, who for all morally relevant purposes, can be counted as having killed Sylvia Plath? Where is Charles Bukowski, who is not just unpleasant or disturbed but actively abusive? (The “we don’t mean that he was a shotgun-toting, baby-kicking monster” bit particularly gets me, since I don’t know whether Bukowski’s ever kicked a baby, but I have seen a documentary in which he stops in the middle of an interview to scream abuse at his wife and then kicks her twice before she escapes off-camera. I felt sick and left the room shortly after that episode; and I’ve never had any desire to read a damn thing by Charles Bukowski since.)

Ghertner:

… I have no doubt that the consequences would have been the same if not worse if communism in practice had incorporated elements of Christian socialism.

Actually, I’m not sure that this last is true. Christian socialism, in Russia (e.g., Tolstoy) and elsewhere has traditionally been either (a) some mild form of social democracy, or (b) utopian, anarchistic, and pacifist. There are plenty of reasons to think that widespread adoption of a Christian socialist programme would have caused plenty of problems, but little reason to think that it would have collapsed into the sort of bloodbath that centralist and bloodlusting Marxist-Leninism did.

Of course, this isn’t any kind of argument against atheism, or any kind of argument that the Bolsheviks slaughtered as many as they did because they were doctrinaire atheists.

P.S.: the word is a-t-h-e-i-s-m, folks. As in the opposite of theism, derived from the(os) + ism.

Amp,

It’s true that the payoff to Maggie Gallagher are unlikely to be a substantial influence on her stated views. But I don’t think that’s really the issue. The issue is the use of taxpayer funds to subsidize useful journalists and columnists—whether or not the money are going to change their views substantially, they do funnel taxpayer money to people solely on the basis of their agreement with the administration on controversial political topics. (If the Bush administration decided to send $100 from the DoD budget to everyone who publicly supported the Iraq war in print prior in March 2003, this would be deeply objectionable—even though it couldn’t possibly change the views that have already been expressed.)

Yeah, I know that Gallagher was doing a “job” for the federal government in return for the pay. Ho ho ho. In reality it seems pretty transparently a sinecure granted to her in return for her views.

“This thread over at No Treason has been giving me a few chuckles. Apparently, this site is dedicated to showing that anarchists and libertarians are foul-mouthed tribalists incapable of using logical argument.”

Not to put too fine a point on it, Patrick, but a logical argument was made, at length in Lopez’s original post at http://www.no-treason.com/archives/2005/01/25/is-george-bush-a-traitor/ and more briefly in the first half of the first paragraph of Sabotta’s follow-up, on the subject of “treason trials” for wicked politicians and why the notion is absurd from an individualist standpoint. That is the subject from which this post takes it title, and yet nowhere here or in the comments of either article have I seen any argument in response to the case against the notion of treason. Instead there seems to be a lot of kvetching over whether or not John Sabotta was right to point out that Johnson seems to have a problem with Da Jooz and whether or not he was a bit rude in using the phrase “contemptible shit.”

So who seems to be playing the part of the tribalist incapable of logical argument so far?

Über-rationalist Yancey:

Basically, his only criteria are that no submission may advocate voting, government, or the Constitution. Good standards, in my book.

Ahem. How, exactly, does someone advocate a trial for treason—a federal crime defined, in the U.S., in the Constitution—without advocating either government or the Constitution? What else would it be treason against?