If "Joe," a known criminal psychopath who has (as you say) "little or no control over his actions," breaks into my house at 3am with a shotgun, I am going to kill him ...

That's fine. I believe you have a right to do so. The reason you have the right to shoot Joe is because Joe is threatening to shoot you. (If he is really out of his mind, then perhaps he is an innocent threat. But I think you have a right to defend yourself against innocent threats.) On the other hand if your plan were to murder a dozen of Joe's cousins and neighbors on the off chance that it might stop his rampage, I'd say that you don't have any right to do that. You have a right to shoot people who are threatening you. You don't have a right to shoot innocent bystanders whose deaths might slow or stop a completely different person who is threatening you.

I claim that on the same logic, if "we" (the elected U.S. government) ...

Well, I reject the claim that you can apply the logic of individual self-defense to government war in any meaningful way. Individuals who are drawing on their own resources to fight with each other are each of them unitary agents who make the decisions, bear the costs, dish out the violence, and take the risks of loss, injury or death on themselves. But in modern government wars it is governments that make the decisions, nonconsenting taxpayers who bear the costs, soldiers who dish out the violence and mostly nonconsenting civilians who are forced to endure the loss, injury and death. That's not self-defense; it's just conquest and victory through victim-swapping.

 They should try to minimize civilian casualties, but whatever the cost, they should prevent the launch of the N. Korean missiles. You disagree, right? 

Yes, I disagree. They have a right to inflict any "cost" they want to on the North Korean governors who are actually trying to get the missiles launched. And they have the right to take on whatever "costs" of suffering or expense that they choose to take upon themselves. But they have no right to "cost" the lives of a bunch of innocent Koreans who have nothing to do with that. I think the claim that any military objective is worth achieving "whatever the cost," if that "whatever" is really intended literally, is an appalling travesty of conscience.

I describe the N. Korean people have more responsibility for the crisis than do we ("nations have the governments they deserve").

I don't know, it seems a bit silly to me to talk up what horrible tyrants the Kims have been and then turn around and claim that their primary victims are really to blame for the actions of the government that ruthlessly dominates and controls them. But in any case, even if the victims of the North Korean government somehow bear moral responsibility for the crimes of their victimizer, "more responsibility" is not the same thing as being guilty of a hanging crime, as long as they are not the ones giving the orders, I don't see how murdering them can be justified as an act of self-defense.

Mark: 'How do you propose to describe the N. Korean nut job, Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin, etc.--"great, great, tyrants."'

I am not sure why the existence of very very horrible tyrants would be a reason to qualify my blame of merely very horrible tyrants. It is not as if the language is going to run out of emphatic terms. In fact it seems to me rather more important to stress Lincoln's tyranny than it is the others' -- since hardly anyone that I regularly talk to tries to make excuses for the Kims, Pol Pot, Hitler or Stalin, to deny that they were tyrants, or to present their rampaging political violence as a model of "leadership" to emulate. Whereas many people I regularly talk to do all of those things for Lincoln.

Mark: "You must think that the U.S. is a bad, horrible, terribly, nasty county, but are we the moral equivalent of N. Korea."

I find that when people start a sentence with "You must think..." and then follows it with a bunch of superlatives, it hardly ever describes what I do think.

I don't have anything against the country, either in America or in Korea. But I do have something against the governments that dominates us here and there.

I do not think that the U.S. government is the moral equivalent of the North Korean government. The North Korean government is horrible. But the U.S. government has killed far more people.

Mark: "If we knew for certain that N. Korea was preparing a nuclear strike against us, should we forego a pre-emptive attack on the basis that our society is just as evil as theirs?"

I don't know where this "we" is coming from. I don't have any armies or nuclear weapons; do you? These are not the kind of thing that societies have or control; they are the kind of thing that governments have and control. If you personally had a way to strike the North Korean government and -- by hurting or killing only people who are in some meaningful way responsible for the threatened nuclear strike -- put an end to the threat, then by all means you should do so. But I doubt that's what you had in mind.

If on the other hand your question is whether the United States government should engage in a "pre-emptive attack" on the country of North Korea -- I don't know whether you have a first-strike nuclear massacre in mind, or whether you mean a more "conventional" bombing of heavily populated urban centers -- then my answer is no, they should not. Either a nuclear or a "conventional" government war inevitably means massacreing a lot of civilians, and I do not believe that they ought to murder Koreans in order to save the lives of Americans from potential threats posed by a hostile, alien third party (the North Korean government) over whom those Koreans have little or no effective control.

However, note that my conclusion has nothing at all to do with some kind of comparative judgment over who has the most evil society (I don't think that "societies" are or can be "evil") or who suffers under the most evil government. It has to do with my opposition to massacreing innocent people, whatever society they may live in. In any case if the situation were exactly reversed (the U.S. government intends to use atomic bombs against North Korean targets; should the North Korean government launch a preemptive strike?) my answer would be exactly the same.

DavidCheatham: "Result: Black people dying in the street because white-only hospitals would not treat them. (For just one example of very obvious harm.) ... 
The fact that all three home building companies and all seven real estate companies in a specific city will not sell homes to black people, or transgendered people, or whoever, really does matter, no matter how it would infringe their 'rights' for the government to insist they have to. "

I agree with you that these things are horrible, and that they matter, and that people who do them should be stopped from doing them. But the question here is one of means -- whether the means you intend to use to stop them are violent or nonviolent; whether they are governmental means or grassroots means; whether they depend on legal force or social pressure.

DavidCheatham: "At some point, to be taken seriously, Libertarians are going to have to get on board with the idea that, at some point, private action does reach the level of the public sphere."Well, I am not sure that I care very much about being taken seriously in mainstream political discourse. If I did, I wouldn't be an Anarchist. But I don't disagree with you that there are cases where "private action does reach the level of the public sphere." But then the question is whether legal force is the only public means of addressing a public problem. I don't think that it is.

William Swann: "Consider what may have happened in the south if the civil rights movement had followed libertarian lines.  The Jim Crow laws would have to go, certainly, ..."

Not just the written laws. Lynch law too. No libertarian would oppose efforts to forcibly resist and ultimately suppress systematic violence that was committed outside the official policy of the state, but sanctioned by the dominant white culture and practiced through the dominant white civil society.

William Swann: "but there would likely still have been restrictions on the range of activities of blacks based on cultural norms."

Well, that's only likely if it's likely (1) that the cultural norms could sustain themselves without resorting to extralegal terror against dissenters and against random victims; and (2) that there would be no other means to challenge, undermine or change those crappy cultural norms other than legislation banning them. But it's not obvious to me that (1) is true. And what is certain, from the very history of the Freedom Struggle in the South, is that (2) is definitely false -- nonviolent social and economic activism repeatedly won key struggles with no legal sanction to back them up, years before white politicos showed up to pass laws and take the credit for black activists' triumphs.I would argue that without the laws, the social activism still would have made Jim Crow culturally and economically unsustainable and driven it into extinction. (Whereas if the social movement had sat around waiting for the laws rather than pressing ahead with their grassroots activism, they would not only not have gotten the activist victories; they would never have gotten the laws, either; because it was only the former that made the latter politically possible.)

JTK: "It strikes me that Rockwell's paleolibertarian manifesto, which I gather Rothbard was on board with,  is every bit as thick as Johnson's formulation."

Yes, I agree with you about that. In fact I explicitly mention paleolibertarianism more than once in the essay as another thick conception of libertarianism. (As one which is in fact mutually exclusive with the left-libertarian conception which I personally endorse.) "Thick" is a descriptive term for a particular sort of argument; it's not intended as a virtue term for kinds of libertarianism.

JTK: "Both sides indulge in the vice of movement-ism where it's all about who needs outreach and who needs purging."

Maybe. But my point in the essay has nothing at all to do with "outreach" or with joining movements.  As far as I can tell Matt's post here has nothing to do with that either. Maybe he has views about that, but the point he seemed making here -- and certainly the point I was making in my formulation of the distinction -- had to do with the intellectual reasons that people who believe in libertarianism might have to endorse other kinds of social or cultural views. That only has to do with movements if you think that endorsing a view necessarily means joining a political movement trying to get it. But I don't think that.

3cantuna: "Lincoln was a white supremacist that wanted blacks out of the country. Lincoln was not a fan of chattel slavery-- but was willing to maintain it if it kept the Union together.  . . .  Given the long history of mass murder and destruction commited under the US banner, that flag should give pause to a true libertarian."

That much is certainly true. And it's a good reason not to celebrate Lincoln or the United States flag. But it's not a reason to go around flying the Confederate flag, or otherwise celebrating that rampaging slave empire. When governments go to war with each other, the fact that the belligerent government on one side is despicable and tyrannical is not necessarily a reason to celebrate the belligerent government on the other side -- they may well both be despicable and tyrannical. As a matter of fact, that is pretty much always the case. And it's especially so in the case of the American Civil War.

Jacob: "The white racist who tells you that Lincoln was a great tyrant, or who indulges in the nostalgia of the Confederate flag, is not a non-aggressing potential libertarian who just happens to prefer his own kind."

Probably not. But Lincoln was a great tyrant. Pointing this out has no necessary connection with the ugly and racist fetish for the Confederate State or  nostalgia for the bloody banner of its conscripted army.

Nemo: Rad (or may I call you Charles?) …

Sure, of course. (“Rad Geek” is just a signature I use on account of certain other Charles Johnsons who are on the Internet.)

Nemo: There is a parallel there, but they seem to be pointing in opposite directions.

Different directions, for sure; I’m not sure about opposite. And I think that they might really be less different in the end than they seem at first.

Nemo: After a conversation with Socrates, one would say to himself, “I don’t know what t’m talking about! I don’t know what [the thing] really means. I’ve got a problem.”‘ With Wittgenstein, “I know it now! Avoid logical fallacies and speak proper grammar, there is no problem at all.”

Well, I think that the bit after “I know it now!” is for L.W. much easier said than done, but it’s the doing that he’s interested in. The AoTLP seems to have some faith that there is a state you can be in where you will become perfectly adept in the avoiding and in the grammaticalizing — a state that can only be really understood by reaching it, but which will disclose itself to you, irresistibly when and to the extent that you reach it. (In many ways it ends up sounding something like what Socrates is portrayed as teaching Meno about the unforgetting of true knowledge in the second third of the dialogue.) Now, as I understand the later L.W., that faith in the End of Analysis is one of the things that really does change and come under the later L.W.’s criticism. In some ways this makes his project seem less Socratic (or Platonic, whichever), since it means a much less idealized picture of what logical understanding amounts to; in other ways, it makes it seem more Socratic, since it means that there is no end of philosophy to aim at — it’s not a matter of reaching some perfected state of clarity, only an ongoing process of recognizing confusion and clarifying. . . . (In PI, Wittgenstein says that the real discovery is the one that allows you to stop doing philosophy when you want to — but of course stopping it is rather different from finishing it.)

In both cases, though, it also seems important to me that the kind of clarity that you’re supposed to come to — either the silence at the end of TLP, or the scratched itch of later L.W. — is not supposed to be a purely cognitive, intellectual or linguistic achievement. Philosophical clarification isn’t just a matter of understanding something that you hadn’t understood before, it’s a matter of doing things you hadn’t been able to do and going on with your life in a different way that you hadn’t previously been able to live. The outcome really is supposed to issue not only in knowledge but in something that’s at least a little like the kind of seriousness and earnestness about thought and life that Socrates characterizes as the outcome of pursuing philosophy — not just a feat of technical cleverness. I mean, Russell could do that.

Well, you know, if you thought the point of the slogan was to tell you that you secretly really wanted whatever it is the market tends to provide (as the purpose of “We are the government” is to tell you that you secretly really wanted whatever it is that a democratic government does to you), then I suppose they would seem pretty similar. But that is actually just about exactly the opposite of the point of the slogan.

It was not made in ignorance of marginal analysis; it was made to stress the difference between two different ways to look at the marginal case. You can look at it as an already-decided fact and relate to it as a consumer; or you can look at as an outcome of an open-ended process of choice and discovery, and relate to it as an entrepreneur. There is nothing in any “marginal utility theory” worthy of taking notice of that would rule out the second kind of attitude. Nor is there anything that would require the attitude to be taken only with regard to monetary returns, or only within the institutional context of a formal business relationship.

In any case, (1) the “We” in “We are market forces” is “We” rather than “I” for a reason (the reason has to do with the fact that the slogan is used to talk about consciously organized activist campaigns carried on among many people interacting consensually within a market context *).

(2) And the slogan also says “We are market forces,” not “We are the market,” for a reason. Because the point is that you can shift equilibrium points from where they are through entrepreneurial action; not that you can just pick them up and place them wherever you would like them to be. (**)

(*) Which is rather different from the “We” in “We are the government,” since that “We” is of course not a group of people who are assembled consensually, but rather literally everyone within the corral of a democratic government, relating to each other through a political system that they were forced into and have been blocked from exiting.

(**) Which is rather different from claiming that “We are the government,” tout court. One slogan is making a much more sweeping claim about the individual’s relationship to collective efficacy than the other slogan is. If the political slogan were not “We are the government,” but simply that, in a democracy, “We are political forces,” then it seems to me that it would be a lot harder to complain about that. But then the more modest slogan wouldn’t do the justificatory work that “We are the government” is supposed to do. (Since “We are market forces” is not intended to justify outcomes in the first place, it labors under no such burden.)

Nemo: Before Wittgenstein’s therapy, the person was dumb, after the therapy, he became mute. I think I’ll stay with the Greeks a little longer . . .

M: “. . . I used to be told, before I knew you, that you were always doubting yourself and making others doubt; and now you are casting your spells over me, and I am simply getting bewitched and enchanted, and am at my wits’ end. And if I may venture to make a jest upon you, you seem to me both in your appearance and in your power over others to be very like the flat torpedo fish, who paralyzes those who come near him and touch him, as you have now paralyzed me, I think. For my soul and my tongue are really numbed, and I do not know how to answer you; and though I have been delivered of an infinite variety of speeches about virtue before now, and to many persons-and very good ones they were, as I thought-at this moment I cannot even say what virtue is. And I think that. you are very wise in not voyaging and going away from home, for if you did in other places as do in Athens, you would be cast into prison as a sorcerer. . . .”

S: “. . . As to my being a torpedo, if the torpedo is paralyzed as well as the cause of paralysis in others, then indeed I am a torpedo, but not otherwise; for I perplex others, not because I am clear, but because I am utterly perplexed myself. And now I know not what virtue is, and you seem to be in the same case, although you did once perhaps know before you touched me. ”

– a couple of Greek guys flirting with each other about the effects of philosophy