Comments Elsewhere

Constant,

1. I don’t believe in a “the ideal law of a perfect libertarian minarchy.” I regard that as an internally contradictory description.

2. I don’t know what the comparative virtues or vices of modern liberals and American conservatives have to do with anything in Randall’s remarks, or your response, or my complaint about your response.

Randall didn’t make a comparative claim; he stated that most conservatives are “law and order types” in some objectionable sense. You then complained that “law and order types” “covers too much,” “is too vague,” “has been made flabby,” and covers “a great majority” of American conservatives, but not for any reason that libertarians should find objectionable.

I think that the category you made up to respond to Randall, “genuine law and order types” (as opposed to “cop worshipers”) either (a) is still limited to a set of views that libertarians, as such, ought to find objectionable (and which, by the way, are immediately relevant to the case discussed in the article above); or else (b) has nothing in particular to do with what either Randall meant by identifying most American conservatives as “law and order types,” or what American conservatives usually mean when they identify themselves as “law and order types.” In either case it’s not an adequate response to Randall’s comments.