Comments Elsewhere

Well, you could always say what the maker of the ad closes by saying: “Here’s to the Greatest American Ever!”

Chairman Ron is the Red sun of our hearts!

Less Antman: “Question: would you have lied to the judge when asked the standard voir dire question about whether you would follow the law as instructed by the judge? I’ve wrestled with this question since the first time I got dismissed for an honest answer, and would like to know the opinion of others.”

Yes. I’d also lie to the Gestapo if they asked me whether there were any Jews in my attic.

If what’s at stake is someone going to federal prison for ten years on a drug rap, I’d say that the difference between the one case and the other is only one of degree. And a smaller difference of degree than many people believe.

“You are missing the entire point whether your arguments are right or wrong does not matter the problem is that you are making them in the first place.” – Keith Halderman

The only warrant for the judiciary to strike down state laws on any subject is if they attempt to exercise a power that the federal Constitution has removed from the states or if they exercise a power they would generally possess in a manner that’s illegitimate because it infringes on constiutionally-guaranteed rights ….

What if the state law is unjust?

Do you think that judges have a duty to collaborate in the enforcement of unjust laws? If so, why? If not, wouldn’t it follow that they can rightfully set them aside, whatever the United States Constitution may or may not say on the matter?

Lopez: Aren’t you saying that a good percentage of movement libertarians are as unreasonable as white supremacists?

Sure, on at least some issues, many if not most movement libertarians are at least as unreasonable as white supremacists are on issues of race.

For what it’s worth, I’d advise keeping minarchists, just to take one example, at arm’s length to much the same extent that I’d advise keeping paleocreep white supremacists at arm’s length. Even if white supremacist in question were professedly an anarchist, I prefer not to rely on the virtue or intelligence of people who demonstrate obviously stupid and evil ideas in other domains. And even if the minarchist were right-on on just about everything except for minimal statism, I prefer not rely on people whose political program will sooner or later involve shooting me.

Libertarian outreach by whom? By me in particular or by libertarians in general?

If the former, then I would find libertarian outreach to leftists much more palatable for me to do than libertarian outreach to white supremacists, because I know how to talk to state leftists in a way that some small number of them will find convincing, whereas I don’t really know how to talk to white supremacists in general, let alone statist white supremacists in particular, and I think it would be extremely unpleasant to learn.

If the latter, then I have much weaker preferences, because I think generally if people are going to do outreach they should specialize in what they are best at. But I would suggest that outreach to state leftists may be more likely to succeed in the long term than outreach to state white supremacists, because both of them tend to share the common cognitive or moral vices of statists (majoritarianism, legalism, constitutionalism, contempt for private property rights), but the state white supremacists tend to add some peculiar vices of their own on top of that (e.g. violent racism or xenophobia). Turning state leftists in an anti-state direction tends to produce anarchists, whereas turning statist white supremacists in an anti-state direction tends to produce paleocons at best.

In either case, I’m not sure what this has to do with the question of whether racism or majoritarianism is (1) more offensive, or (2) more dangerous. I’d rather have dinner with a polite absolute-monarchist than with a very rude individualist anarchist. Not because I think that rudeness is worse than absolute monarchy, but rather because other factors enter into my decisions about who I should dine with. Similarly, decisions about who you should reach out to in your propaganda are not necessarily decided solely based on whose deviations from your position you consider to be the least dangerous or destructive.

Constant: the emancipation of the slaves by a decree from a victorious Washington DC was still very right.

Yes, I agree, and this in spite of my belief that the Southern states should have been left alone to secede in peace. Forcing white Southerners back into the Union at bayonet-point and achieving power over them through conquest and occupation was a moral crime, but using that position of power, once achieved, to declare Southern slaves emancipated, is no crime; kidnappers and robbers have no right to go on kidnapping and robbing, so there’s no victim in that particular case. And it’s a very foolish form of libertarianism that would object on “federalist” grounds. I think, actually, that most libertarians would agree, in the case of emancipation, and that “federalist” objections to Roe v. Wade really have much more to do with ambivalence about abortion than they do with a consistent decentralism.

Constant: And similarly, we might say, Roe v. Wade was handed down by Washington DC, and thus Rad Geek was really twisting the facts with his summary of what happened, but it was still a great thing for Washington DC to do.

Well, my claim wasn’t that Roe specifically didn’t originate in D.C. Obviously it did. I was making a causal claim, to the effect that something other than the good graces of the Nine made it inevitable that either Roe, or some similarly sweeping victory, would eventually be won. So the facts that I cite as an explanation are those that I think best support the relevant counterfactuals. If the Nine hadn’t handed down a (mostly) pro-choice ruling in Roe, then (I would argue) the abortion law repeal movement would have won through a different proximate cause, such as state-level legislative repeal, and/or through a growing network for safe and affordable illegal abortions. On the other hand, if not for the repeal movement, I doubt that Roe ever would have been handed down. Hence the claim that the movement is a better explanation for the eventual repeal than the Supreme Court is.

Kennedy,

In that is it any more offensive or dangerous than a reverence for majoritarian democracy?

Maybe more offensive; probably not more dangerous. How offensive a particular view is, on the whole, depends on a lot of factors, not merely how dangerous it is to individual rights. Vices aren’t crimes, but they are vices, and sometimes a vicious attitude merits taking offense.

Nobody gets atwitter about advocacy of democracy, so why should racism be any more alarming?

I don’t know what counts as getting “atwitter” or what domain you’re quantifying over when you say “nobody.” Most libertarian writers that I know are fairly contemptuous of majoritarian democracy. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least three libertarians whose criticism of Ron Paul (Micha Ghertner’s, Wendy McElroy’s, and Brad Spangler’s) has specifically revolved around how the campaign promotes the myth that freedom can come about through majoritarian democracy.

As for Long, as far as I know, his position is not that racism is somehow worse or more alarming than political majoritarianism. The claim is just that racism is objectionable from a libertarian standpoint, not that it’s more objectionable than something else.

Kennedy,

Here’s the article from the Ron Paul Political Report. The passage about the Rodney King beating in particular starts about a third of the way down: Los Angeles Racial Terrorism.

Along the way the Mystery Writer also tries to poison the well by mentioning that a couple months later the cops caught Rodney King picking up a prostitute (so what?) and that when he tried to get away, he allegedly came close to running down one of the poor ol’ vice cops who so righteously “intervened.”

One of my favorite parts of the article, along the way, is when we’re referred to the testimony of “expert Burt Blumert” as to the role of commie splinter sects in the rioting. Not an “expert” on anything in particular, mind you; just an “expert,” ’cause he’s Burt Blumert. Goes to show that, in some ways, the LRC writing style hasn’t changed much in lo these many years.

The Thirteenth Amendment wasn’t a victory against government; it was a triumph of govt. It made a law universal by decree of a rump Congress and several states coerced into passing it while under military occupation. It spawned Jim Crow. If a rump Congress could force every American everywhere to live by a particular interpretation of such a morally divisive issue without any local input, it’s no wonder that the people on the losing side decided to change their methods and goals to that of using the same power to enact their own version of white supremacy upon everyone else.