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.

Taylor:

However, if I remember right, he tried to argue that racism isn’t really congruent with libertarianism because it violates the NAP somehow.

This is certainly not Roderick Long’s position.

His position is that racism is (1) objectionable in its own right (as irrational and collectivist), and also (2) objectionable from a libertarian standpoint. (1) is a good enough reason to criticize racism; something doesn’t have to be criminal for it to be open to criticism as foolish or vicious. But he also argues (2), not because racism per se violates the nonaggression principle, but rather because of tensions between the two on levels other than that of logical entailment.

Specifically, Long thinks that racist collectivism tends to interfere with the correct application of the non-aggression principle, that racist ideology will tend to causally undermine the implementation of libertarianism in the real world, and also that racism is logically incompatible with the broader underlying principles that justify the libertarian theory of justice. So the claim is that a libertarian could be a nonviolent racist without being inconsistent; but she could not do so reasonably, which is something different.

For details, cf. Politics Against Politics, in both the post and in the comments.

Racism per se is not incompatible with libertarian principles, but a police state is. Which is what the Mystery Writer happened to be promoting, at least as far as the Negroes are concerned. More or less all of the nastiest remarks directed against black folks in the late-80s/early-90s race-baiting articles were made in the context of articles directly calling for more aggressive and violent tactics by urban police forces.

If I recall correctly, the article from 1992 that’s attracted so much notoriety (for the crack about welfare checks, and for the estimation that 95% of black men in D.C. can be considered “semi-criminal or entirely criminal,” whatever that means) also included, amongst other things, a charming extended passage defending the police beating the hell out of Rodney King.

In other words, Comrade Halderman, Roderick’s reasons for failing to whole-heartedly support Chairman Ron’s Great Libertarian Electoral Revolution may be subjectively neutral and nuanced, but clearly his position is objectively pro-fascist.

I also hear he’s a member of the international Trotskyist-anarchist conspiracy.

VRB: Why is Lincoln singled out when millions of lives had been ruined under all the presidents until then, even the ones that libertarians honor …

I can’t speak for libertarians as a group, but I am a libertarian and I can’t think of a single President of the United States that I “honor.” I happen to think that all of them were perfectly repulsive, and those who preceded Lincoln deserve special contempt, both for their ongoing use of Federal bayonets to enforce fugitive slave laws and protect Southern slavers from uprisings, and also for their repeated forays into ethnic cleansing and genocide against American Indians. Other libertarians, especially those who are minarchists rather than (like me) anarchists, might be somewhat less sweepingly harsh. On the other hand, they’re also likely to be somewhat less harsh towards Lincoln in particular.

However, the reason that Lincoln’s under discussion at the moment, rather than every other President in U.S. history, is that the post is about secession and the U.S. Civil War. Since Lincoln was President during the U.S.’s largest-scale secession crisis and during the U.S. Civil War, it makes sense to discuss Lincoln, but going on about how I loathe and despise most or all of the other Presidents in U.S. history would have been somewhat off the topic.

Jason,

Just so we’re clear, I certainly didn’t mean to suggest, in setting up my hypothetical, that I was under any delusions as to the motives of Lincoln or the other Federalis in the U.S. Civil War. I’m well aware that the liberation of the slaves was not in the least a war aim, at least at the beginning of the war. Part of the point of the abstractified hypothetical was to make an a fortiori argument: if anything could justify the reconquest and occupation of the South on libertarian grounds, it would be the liberation of Southern slaves. But the liberation of Southern slaves would not in fact justify the reconquest and occupation of the South, even if (contrary to fact) that had been the cause that the Feds went to war for. Thus nothing could justify the reconquest and occupation of the South on libertarian grounds. (There might be a legitimate case for something different — such as the use of armed raids to liberate slaves, when not followed by conquest and occupation — but what it might justify is different from what actually happened in the U.S. Civil War precisely to the extent that it doesn’t involve any attempt to forcibly override white Southerners’ decisions to secede.)

To the extent that the Feds engaged in a brutal war and occupation, killing, maiming, and ruining millions of people in the process, for reasons that had nothing to do with the liberation of Southern slaves, I think that that makes the Feds’ position that much more repulsive, and obviously indefensible.

As for the rest of your discussion, it’s interesting, and deserves a careful reply, but the reply will probably take more space than I have here. Perhaps soon, on my blog.