Comments Elsewhere

Anyone here have contacts with radical or independent community bookstores in Texas — especially in San Antonio, Houston, or the D/FW metroplex — which might be interested in hosting a book event for Markets Not Capitalism during the first couple weeks of February? Anyone interested in helping us get the book event set up?

If so, let me know! I am going to be driving out that way with a trunk full of anarchist agitprop and would be happy to stop off at as many places as possible along the way . . . .

is enjoying the Christmas gift of new solar charger for cell phones / Kindles / MP3 players / etc. Currently trying to figure out a good place to actually charge it during the day.

Joshua House: I am afraid that the type of individualistic non-labeling advocated
here, though useful in philosophical circles, will impede any kind of
political movement. . . .  Whatever the reasons for it, hipster libertarianism is detrimental to
any kind of political movement. Successful political movements will
require a big-tent approach. . . . Insofar as political movements go, this kind of hipster individualism
needs to be stopped if libertarians, like Gary Johnson or Ron Paul, are
going to win any kind of election.

O.K. So then maybe we won't have a "political movement." And maybe Gary Johnson or Ron Paul might not win any elections, either. Maybe we will just have philosophical circles. Is this a big loss? If it seems like one, then that may have something to do with the theory you hold about how people ought to talk and interact with each other. I am pretty much fine with saying that if the cost of a movement or a party is oversimplifying, lumping, papering over real differences or swallowing our debates in the name of political expediency, then that movement or that party sucks, and necessarily has very little to do with the sort of society that I should like to live in -- because the sort of society I should like to live in is one which, inter alia, supremely values honest debate, serious inquiry, intellectual experimentation, individuality and principled and creative dissent over conformity, political palavering and partisan rhetoric. I am not sure that that really need be the cost of a movement, but if it isn't, then they can pretty well cope with some idiosyncrasies and philosophical debates about self-labeling or the lack thereof, even if it complicates the "messaging" or some similarly cheap bit of psychosocial manipulation.

I agree with almost none of the stances that Will takes in the above post (aside from being at least as hesitant as he is to see my views conflated with Ron Paul's). But if the argument against those stances is supposed to be that he ought to get over his qualms and take one for the party if "we" are ever going to win elections, then slap me silly and call me "liberaltarian." I sure didn't sign on to this gig in order to make it easier for Republican politicians to win elections.

As long as we're getting a libertarian club together here's my laundry list of things I want fixed...

I don't know where "clubs" come into this; nothing in Matt's article or in mine has anything in particular to do with things like movement strategy.  It has to do with the logical relationship between a philosophical commitment to libertarianism and a philosophical commitment to other social or philosophical beliefs. The best way to pursue these beliefs -- if you want to pursue them at all -- is a separate question.

That said, the "laundry list" approach that you criticize here is specifically discussed and rejected (or put over to the margin) in the discussion of "entailment thickness" and "conjunction thickness." (The "laundry list" approach being an instance of "conjunction thickness," which is not really a thick conception of libertarianism in any particularly interesting sense.)

But the point of the article is specifically that there are ways in which a "social preference" might be meaningfully connected with a commitment to libertarianism, even though it is neither identical with the libertarian commitment, nor something which is just tacked on alongside libertarianism. There are at least four other broad ways in which the commitment and the preference might be logically connected with each other (I discuss them as thickness for application, thickness from grounds, strategic thickness, and thickness from consequences; Matt's discussion in this post is mainly drawing on what I called "thickness from grounds"). Maybe you think that these sorts of reasons are illegitimate, inadequate, irrelevant, or just a bit silly; but if you, you haven't yet given an argument for that view.

The Confederate flag has different meanings to different people however.

Sure. But I'd have to hear what the "meaning" is supposed to be and why it is so closely attached to the military colors of a long-dead slave empire. Certainly the historical reasons why the flag is a live and potent symbol for some of my fellow Southern whites (I was raised in eastern Alabama and live there now) seem to me to have a lot more to do with the legacy of white supremacy than not. When white people tell me that they are flying that flag because they want to invoke some kind of "Southern heritage" or "Southern identity," it seems to me that they have a pretty curiously selective picture of just what they are inheriting and identifying with. (It doesn't seem to have much to do with the legacies of Southerners like Harriet Tubman, or Ida Wells, or Rosa Parks. Which I guess is not surprising, since none of them would be much interested in having the Battle Flag as the symbol of their legacy....)

Meaning in any case is not just a purely private affair -- whatever the "intent" behind the flag, it does also matter how other people will take what you do.

The semiotic intent of painting the stars and bars on the Gen. Lee--
that famous car from the 70's hit tv show The Dukes of Hazard-- surely
was not to celebrate a slave empire?

I dunno; I expect that the idea was to celebrate "the South." But the idea of "the South" that is defined by the Battle Flag and by the hero-worship of a statist slaving warrior like Robert E. Lee is not an entirely separate thing from the celebration of the Lost Cause. Certainly whatever meaning was intended, it doesn't seem to be a meaning that leaves very much room for the lives or heritage of many Southerners, most notably those who happen to be a bit blacker than the Dukes are.

I don't think Sergio said anything about how awful America is as a country, compared to other countries. Why do you keep trying to make this into some kind of race to see who is the "best" or the "worst"?

His point was that the standards you endorse with regard to killing Koreans for the crimes of "their" government abroad would also seem to justify killing Americans for the crimes of "their" government abroad.  This has nothing to do with comparative judgments of better or worse; it has to do with applying the same standards for guilt and punishment across the board. Sergio's point is that regardless of how comparatively awesome or awful a
government may be, when you line it up next to the other governments, the question is whether the people of the various countries that have to endure any of those governments are, or are not, the people who ought to be punished or killed for the evil or aggression of the governments that dominate them. And if you don't like what your stated standards for answering that question would recommend with regard to American civilians, then perhaps you also ought to reconsider applying them to Korean civilians, too.

You say it is "an appalling travesty of conscience" to take millions of
N. Korean lives if necessary to prevent the missile launch in my
scenario, but it is not apparently "an appaling travesty of conscience"
to do nothing and let millions of innocent American die. I don't see the
logic of this.

Because I don't think that "millions of people are going to die either way" is a good reason to conclude "So I may as well pull the trigger myself; at least that way I get to choose the ones to die." If you think that (1) being forced to watch millions of innocent people die, and (2) actually going out and killing millions of innocent people yourself are exactly the same from the standpoint of conscience, then I'm not sure I know what to say to that.

But of course in any case I didn't say that you should "do nothing." I said that the things you do need to be limited to things you can do without massacreing millions of innocent people. Perhaps you think that this leaves nothing at all to do, but I don't. (*) Even if it did, though, see above.

If put to this choice, I believe the inherent right of self-defense applies.

I agree with you that people have a right to self-defense and that it applies in a situation like this. But I don't agree that its application encompasses killing unrelated third parties who aren't threatening you. You can defend yourself by killing a person who threatens your life. Not by killing his neighbors until he stops threatening you.

It is similar in my view to the defense of "necessity" under the
criminal law. If a person puts a gun to your head and says he will kill
you if you don't kill another innocent person, if you pull the trigger
the defense doesn't work. Even if you are an innocent victim, you got
yourself into the situation and can't kill someone else to get yourself
out.

O.K. But it seems to me that that position bolsters my case more than it bolsters yours. I'm not the one trying to defend pulling the trigger on innocent bystanders here; you are. My statements about Korean victims of the North Korean government had nothing to do with a "necessity" defense -- there's no defense to be made because the millions of Korean civilians that would be killed didn't shoot or bomb anybody in the first place. They need no necessity defense because they didn't do the deed to begin with. Whereas when you propose having the U.S. government pull the trigger on millions of innocent Koreans, your justification is -- as far as I can tell; correct me if I'm wrong -- that they had to do this because somebody else -- to wit, the North Korean government -- is holding a bomb over the heads of innocent Americans, and the only way they or we can get out of that is to kill someone else. Well, maybe so. But you just denied that anyone has a right to save their own skin at the cost of innocent third parties' lives.

If those living under extreme despots know that they will not suffer
the consequences of aggression by their leaders because they are
innocent bystanders, they don't have much incentive to rebel, do they?

Seriously? Suppose that someone (let's name him "Osama bin Laden," after no-one in particular) were trying to justify massacres of American civilians as retaliation for U.S. foreign policy, and he made an argument like this:  "If those living under the American government know that they won't suffer the consequences of aggression by their leaders, they don't have much incentive to rebel, do they?" Well, actually the U.S. government gives Americans plenty of reasons of their own to rebel, and the North Korean government gives Koreans even more. (They haven't succeeded at that yet, but that's because a rebellion against an entrenched regime is a hard thing to pull off, not because people aren't sufficiently motivated.) But even if they had no reasons at all to rebel, that's not a justification for massacreing civilians until they have been properly "incentivized."

The reason is that those civilians' lives are not geopolitical bargaining chips to be bet and lost. Their lives are their own. They are not yours to sacrifice for a desired political outcome, or to bargain or to trade off for the well-being or even the lives of people that you know and like better.

(*) If you had -- ex hypothesi -- certain knowledge of a pending attack, you
might start by sharing this knowledge with others, so that people in the
line of fire might have some chance of getting away from known or likely targets.

is back in Alabama

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.