Liberty & Power: Group Blog
Entries by Anthony Gregory
Monday, November 16, 2009
Rewriting the Success of Iraq
In 2004 and 2005, I recall a broad agreement among establishment voices that the Afghanistan war had been a grand, quick success, and the occupation of that country was going well, compared to Iraq. Now, post-"surge," a common narrative is emerging that Iraq is the setting of true success, something to aspire to in Afghanistan. Since Obama has long conceded the effectiveness of the "surge," the idea that Iraq is a better model for U.S. nation-building than Afghanistan has been -- and remember, the Democrats have for years said Bush "neglected" Afghanistan -- I wonder what the common view of Iraq will be years from now. Will the hopeless quagmire in Afghanistan, which I always believed was an even more Sisyphean ordeal than Iraq, make Americans nostalgic for Iraq in comparison? Is Afghanistan a new foil for the neocons' project in Mesopotamia? Will Obama's principal foreign policy accomplishment succeed in vindicating Bush's most conspicuous foreign policy effort? So far, by making Bush's "surge" seem wise, prudent and effective relative to his own troubles in Afghanistan, Obama risks salvaging the Bush administration in future public opinion.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Bill O'Reilly Makes a Good Point
Those who oppose torture but support bombing civilian centers that will inevitably kill innocent children are in a bind. O'Reilly's conclusion is that it must mean both torture and bombings are okay. And this is a consistent position.
But I believe the correct position is that of course torture is uncivilized, and even worse is killing innocent civilians. All wars in the modern era are "criminal." Practically all bombings are war crimes. They are acts of mass murder, and if one has a conditional defense of knowingly killing non-aggressors, then surely there must be an equally valid conditional defense for abusing captive criminals.
O'Reilly is accused of finding a defense of torture. He responds that those who favor war (including him) have found a defense of killing innocent women and children. I contend that once you can find a way to defend war crimes like the nuking of Hiroshima or even lesser acts of mass killing of civilians, you can find a way to defend anything using identical logic.
Here are my earlier thoughts on Stewart's shameful flip-flop on Truman, and see the insightful Justin Raimondo and this article by Dennis Perrin at the Huffington Post.
Friday, May 1, 2009
An Introduction to Revisionism
Jeff Riggenbach's new book, Why American History Is Not What They Say: An Introduction to Revisionism, has just been published by the Mises Institute. It looks great and is likely of interest to many people here.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Is Obama Dismissive of the Official Narrative of US History?
I have heard multiple conservatives on multiple occasions accuse Obama of being insufficiently proud of American history -- most specifically, the history of the US warfare state as the great liberator on earth.
In actuality, the mainstream conservatives and mainstream liberals tend to have a very similar view of American history: The history of progress, largely carried out by the central state. Lincoln and FDR, the New Deal and the World Wars, the Civil Rights era and even Cold War and proudly championed by both the center left and center right.
In his inaugural address, for example, Obama talked up the soldiers who "fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn." While it is true that he says "that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions," he seems to believe those missiles and tanks are important, which would explain why he's increasing "defense" spending and expanding the war.
Obama is proud of the statist version of American history, as are most conservatives and mainstream liberals. The antidote is in thoughtful revisionism. A good introduction to looking at American history differently is Ivan Eland's new book, Recarving Rushmore.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Stinnett Responds to NSA's Pearl Harbor Claims
I wrote Robert Stinnett, author of Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor, and asked "about the new story [1,2] that the NSA has debunked the Pearl Harbor foreknowledge narrative." His response is as follows:
Memo for Anthony Gregory:
I received your email which I believe you refer to the "Winds Code" story which I read in the New York Times on Sunday, December 7, 2008, based on a news release of the National Security Agency written by NSA "court historians."
The story is NOT news. The "Winds Code" was introduced in the Congressional Investigation of 1945-46 in an attempt by Congress to divert attention from American success in solving the Japanese naval codes prior to Pearl Harbor. American newspapers and radio networks carried the story in November 1945.
The "winds code" was issued by the Japanese Foreign Office, not the Imperial Japanese Navy. The Foreign Office, certain the Allied nations would cut off communications, planned to use hidden word phrases in their world-wide news broadcasts aimed at Japanese Embassies and Consulates world-wide. Example "East wind Rain" in the weather report during the short wave news broadcast meant war with America; East wind North meant war with Russia. Ralph T. Briggs, a U.S. Naval intercept operator at Station "M", Cheltenham, Maryland, intercepted the "Winds Code" broadcast on December 4, 1941, numbered the report and sent it to headquarters in Washington, D.C. The numbered report of Briggs is missing from U.S. Navy files.
While the Foreign Office report certainly revealed Japanese war intentions, the Japanese Navy also used a hidden war phrase: Niitaka Yama Nobore 1208, which translated meant "Climb Mt. Niitaka on December 8, 1941" (Tokyo time). This radio message originated by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander in Chief of the Imperial Navy and was intercepted by Station "H" in Hawaii. Yamamoto transmitted the Niitaka message on December 2, 1941, in the hidden word phrase, according to testimony during the Congressional Investigation 1945-46. RADM Edwin Layton, who was Admiral Kimmel's intelligence officer said the message was received in Hawaii in the hidden word system.
The Imperial Japanese Army also had a hidden word phrase. I have not seen the message, but it reportedly was "The Black Kite will fly on December 8, 1941."
Best regards, Bob Stinnett.
See here for more on Pearl Harbor revisionism.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Americans United in Civic Ignorance, Politicians Worse
Every once in a while a report comes out about how ignorant Americans are in civics, politics, American history and economics. This one seems to indicate that American ignorance cuts across all demographics:
"'Young Americans failed, but so did the elderly,' said Bunting. "'Men and women, rich and poor, liberals and conservatives, Republican and Democratic, white, black, yellow and brown – all were united in their inability to master the basic features of America's constitutional form of government.'"
But this surprised even me:
"Seventy-nine (79) percent of elected officeholders did not know that the Bill of Rights expressly forbids the government establishment of an official religion."
It's a good thing we have a democratic system, where ignorant voters can vote for even more ignorant officials.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Good News for a Change, But the Unchained Fed Inflates Onward
The House defeats the bailout bill. Let's hope it's the death of it. Let's hope, against all odds, the feds manage to be restrained by gridlock from such massive interventions for another year or so. Then we can recover and learn the lessons the less hard way, for a change.
Writes Manuel Lora: "Ah, but there's also this; they won't give up: 'The Federal Reserve will pump an additional $630 billion into the global financial system, flooding banks with cash to alleviate the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression. The Fed increased its existing currency swaps with foreign central banks by $330 billion to $620 billion to make more dollars available worldwide. The Term Auction Facility, the Fed's emergency loan program, will expand by $300 billion to $450 billion. The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan are among the participating authorities.'"
Monday, September 22, 2008
The Independent Institute on the Bailout
In addition to Higgs's posts on this blog, David Theroux's take is here.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Barr Campaign Digs Its Hole Deeper
In a statement today, the Barr campaign manages to attack Ron Paul yet again (while somehow finding an excuse to praise President Bush for his "leadership" on 9/11). They say that Ron Paul's meeting yesterday was all about promoting himself, and yet it was also supposedly about "scatter[ing] the votes for the liberty agenda to the four winds." Bah. Barr would be very lucky to get 1/4 of Paul's supporters to vote for him. The Barr campaign release also attacks non-voters.
The LP's Wishy-Washy Sectarianism
The LP now says that there is a risk in third parties getting together when they have such strong ideological differences. Fair enough.
But it's funny to argue that "Libertarians may agree with Greens on the need for a foreign policy based on nonaggression, but it is for very different reasons." I never understood this argument. There are a THOUSAND good reasons to oppose war. Libertarians should embrace every single one. Indeed, contra this LP rhetoric, the LP has long been focusing on too narrow a reason to oppose war: because it is unconstitutional, or because it's a waste of money. The biggest reason for a libertarian to support "a foreign policy based on nonaggression" is because, under libertarianism, aggression is per se evil. And on this issue, many Greens are at least as good as many libertarians. In fact, the LP has long tried to be somewhat neutral on war, since it's been seen as a debatable issue among libertarians. Well, if we libertarians can disagree with each other over mass murder, I don't see what a little domestic socialism is between friends.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
The Oil Pricing Squeeze
David Theroux points to the warmongers and environmentalists.
Friday, July 18, 2008
My Article on the Forthcoming War on Recession
My unsolicited advice to the politicians: Get out of the way. The piece draws some parallels between Bush and Hoover, and what that might mean, assuming history repeats itself.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Private Taxis in Cuba
David Theroux on another small move toward freedom there since Fidel has stepped down.
Friday, July 11, 2008
The Bipartisan Surveillance State
Here's an Op-Ed I wrote on the FISA bill and the longtime war on the Fourth Amendment by leaders of both parties.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Obama Betrays the 4th Amendment (Hillary Gets it Right[!])
Barack Obama voted for cloture on the bill to give Bush all he wants on illegal warrantless surveillance. And then he voted for the bill. Hillary Clinton voted against cloture, then voted against the bill. All it took for Obama to become less civil libertarian than Hillary was getting the nomination. What will he do as president?
Here's Glenn Greenwald on Obama's wholesale reversal on his campaign promise to oppose the FISA bill (so long as it had telecom immunity):
Obama's vote in favor of cloture, in particular, cemented the complete betrayal of the commitment he made back in October when seeking the Democratic nomination. Back then, Obama's spokesman -- in response to demands for a clear statement of Obama's views on the spying controversy after he had previously given a vague and noncommittal statement -- issued this emphatic vow: "To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies."
But the bill today does include retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies. Nonetheless, Obama voted for cloture on the bill -- the exact opposition of supporting a filibuster -- and then voted for the bill itself. A more complete abandonment of an unambiguous campaign promise is difficult of imagine.
For more on the Democrats and FISA, see my recent Op-Ed, "The Democrats Betray the Fourth Amendment," and my piece two years ago predicting this betrayal, "Will the Democrats Save our Civil Liberties?"
In "FISA and the PATRIOT Act Are the Abuse," I criticized the very notion that the statutory law that Bush found necessary to circumvent is itself enough to protect our privacy. I discussed how such surveillance programs have been directed against benign political and partisan enemies of the state in "FBI, Please Protect Us from Terrorists and the ACLU."
Saturday, June 14, 2008
My Take on the Supremes' Gitmo Habeas Corpus Ruling
Here's my op-ed on the recent decision regarding habeas corpus and Guantanamo, and what the debate means.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Ode to the Death Peddler
Thanks to mudshark for making this awesome music video for my song about the war pushers and profiteers.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Yes, I Have More to Say
I have been asked by readers for more analysis of what happened at the Denver Libertarian Convention. I have some more to say, but I need a few days to formulate my ideas (and I am busy with other things). For now, I will say that I am neither thrilled with the LP's direction nor as crestfallen as many of my ideologically radical brethren. While we all must make our own choices about how to promote liberty, the struggle for liberty transcends party and faction, and we will also never agree on all the choices made by others. May we diplomatically and seriously offer constructive, principled criticism to our fellow travelers, may those of us who understand the centrality of principle never concede an inch to the state, may we reach out to the public as we also strengthen the remnant, may we resist the traps of both self-defeating sectarianism and impractical pragmatism, may we be civil and keep our eye on the real prize and the true enemy, and may we let a hundred flowers bloom for the cause of liberty. Our work for freedom is the cause of civilization, life, law and human flourishing. Whether people of good conscience see a given event as a setback or a breakthrough, let us remember that our struggle began many centuries ago upon the discovery of individual rights as an idea, our struggle continues in every small and large battle of the day, and our struggle shall not end until state oppression is abolished and all humanity is set free.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Collectivism and Immigration Controls
Butler Shaffer has a piece at LRC on the basic principles involved. A choice excerpt:
As with government control generally, the power of the state to prevent or regulate immigration is grounded in the doctrine of collectivism. When governments build walls or fences around politically-defined boundaries, they are doing what all other property owners do: staking out their claims to everything contained within. It’s just an extension of the earlier ritual of explorers planting flags on the shores of newly-discovered lands and claiming them for one monarch or another. From China’s "great wall," to Hadrian’s wall, to the Berlin wall, to current efforts to install a fence across the Mexican-American border, governments have built barriers that restrain both their own people and those seeking entry. The principle that allows this to occur is that the state enjoys some collective ownership interest that differs from – and is in conflict with – individual property claims. The state, through no other principle than the coercive force that defines it, is able to transform itself from an agency of protection into a principal interest to be protected!
Monday, April 14, 2008
Raimondo to Barr and Garris to Raimondo
Justin Raimondo has a column criticizing Barr on US foreign policy in Latin America here.
Eric Garris adds a critical clarification here, regarding Justin's article, Barr and the war on drugs.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
New Independent Institute Beacon Blog
Robert Higgs has a wonderful new entry, "Health of the State, Sickness of the Economy," in which he describes the Fed-generated real estate bubble as just one more domestic ill to come from big government at home, which he points out is a predictable consequence, even in areas non-defense related, "when people let down their guard because they 'support the troops.'"
Read the rest, and come check out the new Independent Institute blog, the Beacon, featuring bloggers Bob Higgs, Jonathan Bean, David Beito, Peter Klein, David Theroux, me and others.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Libertarianism and Deviation
Allan Walstad wrote, "It would be nice to see such issues argued on their merits without some libertarians seeking to pin a scarlet "deviations" tag on their fellow travelers."
To which Roderick Long responded, "Hey, I'm the moderate here! Other people have been arguing that those who endorse serious deviations from libertarian purity no longer count as libertarians at all, and I've been arguing against that view.
"If you don't like 'deviation,' what term would you prefer as shorthand for 'view put forward as libertarian but actually (in the opinion of the speaker) inconsistent with libertarian principle'? (Because we need such a term, I think.)"
I agree, and I want to take this opportunity to clarify something: When I say someone can't be a prowar anarchist or libertarian, I am not saying that person cannot have a basically libertarian philosophy overall, or that that person has nothing to teach or offer (of course, that would be absurd – without learning from statists, we could learn practically nothing!), or that there isn't some sense in which it's useful to call such people libertarians or even anarchists. I consider them in error, to the point that calling someone a "pro-war libertarian" strikes me as oxymoronic, and yet I see some use in the label. But I do think it is a deviation.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Pacifism and War
Aeon echoed a critique I have often heard of the antiwar libertarian position. I wrote:
"I deny that someone who is pro-war can possibly be an anarchist."
Aeon responded, "Sorry, that's incorrect. Anarchism isn't identical with pacifism. Sometimes it's necessary to use force, which isn't immoral when it's defensive or retaliatory. It's not a matter of what _our_ views are, as long as _other people_ are statist collectivists, they will act accordingly, and that sometimes means warfare."
I don't understand this conflating of being antiwar with being pacifist. I know some people use the word that way, but I take pacifism to mean the opposition to violence across the board. I am not a pacifist. The right to self defense and even retaliation is something I fully accept.
But I also accept the right to give your money to charity, yet I oppose the welfare state. Why? Because, as a libertarian, I understand I have no right to take money from some people and give it to others.
Surely, this must carry over to all areas of life. If a neighbor attacks me, I have a right to fight back. But I can't steal my other neighbor's money to buy weapons to do so. More fundamental, I cannot, under libertarian ethics, bomb the whole street.
To be an anarchist, you have to, I believe, oppose the state. This would espeically include its enforcement arm – the police and military. For without the state's enforcement arm, its territorial monopoly would cease to be. Welfare doesn't bother me so much if its not backed up by guns.
Surely, US militarism is, just in the domestic sphere, at least as unlibertarian as welfare, since it is funded in the exact same, indefensible manner.
But war is of course much worse. In looking at the history of the US government in particular, it is hard to imagine an anarchist supporting it going to war. It is not as though the US government has never murdered anyone, and when the question of war arises, we are debating whether it should embark on some new project with every intention of avoiding the violation of people's rights. Given the actual history of the US government abroad, it seems to me particularly odd that any anarchist or libertarian would trust its actions overseas.
But back to the question of pacifism and war: I brought this to a new post because I think it's worth special contemplation. Who here thinks you have to eschew all violence to oppose all war? And who here believes, as I do, that you can believe in defensive violence, but that the inherent aggression involved in the warfare state, against taxpayers, soldiers who wish to quit their jobs and foreign victims of collateral damage alike, is enough for libertarians and anarchists to oppose government war out of principle?
And if this is not so, on what basis can we anarcho-libertarians oppose more mundane statism like welfare handouts, which are no more coercively financed than the military?
Human Death Toll in Iraq
We have just passed a tragic benchmark – 4,000 Americans killed in Iraq since the war began – including more than 3,500 since the capture of Saddam and more than 3,000 since the handover to Iraqis in mid-2004, which I, at the time, referred to as the "Iraqization Scam," predicting more bloodshed and escalation to follow. Then there are the tens of thousands wounded, whose number some have suggested has been underreported and whose severity has not been confronted by American society.
For all those American troops who wished to quit their jobs, but were forced to keep fighting under Stop Loss or just the plain threat of being tried for "desertion," there is a moral element to their deaths rarely grasped: Under the principles of the American Revolution and Declaration of Independence, the right to liberty is an inalienable right. This was enshrined in the 13th Amendment, which banned not just chattel slavery but involuntary servitude, including indentured servitude. What this means is in America, everyone is supposed to have a right to quit his job, at any time. He cannot sell himself into slavery, even for a term of service. If he violates a contract and quits, he can be held for damages, but he cannot be forced to keep working. Except in the military, where once you sign up, you cannot change jobs, even after your nominal term expires. What this means, in terms of morality, is everyone who is fighting in a war but would rather quit, and is held against his will to keep fighting, is a slave, and should he die while fighting, he is, morally speaking, a victim of murder by his own government. We do not have a fully voluntary military unless people can quit.
However, we can at least say these people, while often manipulated by recruiters, opted to sign up in the first place. But the Iraqis – what did they do to ask for this war? Nothing. This war has been a war of aggression against the Iraqi people, and so we must sympathize with not just Iraqi civilians but also the Iraqi soldiers who were killed in a war of aggression – on top of the possibly more than one million civilians killed as a result of this war, up to three times as many Iraqi soldiers died when compared to American soldiers.
A million civilians? If you think the number sounds too big, cut it in half – or even by 90%. There is something fundamentally dysfunctional about the way Americans tend to view their government's role in world affairs, to think that 100,000 Iraqis, by an extremely, perhaps even irresponsibly low, estimate, have perished in this war – and yet most focus, where there is any focus at all on the human costs of war, is centered on the American deaths.
There never was an excuse for this war, and there certainly is no excuse to stay. Four years ago, we began hearing the argument that if the US were to withdraw, there would be more violence and more death. There have been more violence and more death since – much more. The supposed success of the "surge" has been a return to the horrific levels of violence a few years back, back when the goal was supposedly to plant the roots of democracy and leave Iraq better than the US found it. Now the goal seems to be keeping the death toll to one or two Americans per day, while ignoring completely the mounting Iraqi death toll.
The US empire supported the horrible Saddam Hussein, encouraged his war of aggression against Iran, leaving hundreds of thousands dead, imposed through the United Nations a regime of sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands more, and now has the blood of many, many thousands more on its hands. For nearly three decades, the US has been the greatest enemy of the Iraqi people, for even when we could say it was Saddam, the dictator was being sponsored by the US government. The idea that more American intervention in Iraq is going to bring about peace and stability should seem pathologically absurd on its face by now. It is time to end this atrocity and begin the long process of reconciliation with the Iraqi people. The US government should take this as an opportunity to finally stop being the global policeman.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Murray Rothbard on Slavery and the Civil War
Here's a very good piece by Rothbard -- a concise article on how slavery, shifting political winds and growing regional tensions culminated in the horrible Civil War.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Rockwell on the Hegelian Election
Lew Rockwell has a great new article that discusses the true problems for liberty presented by racism, sexism, religious bigotry and other such illiberal forms of collectivist confusion. While championing liberty itself, including the crucial freedom of association, he explains how a free society does not bring about the results racists and those who believe in class conflict want, and so they resort to statism, which, when coupled with such bigotry, can lead to the greatest of state horrors and oppressions.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Robert Higgs on Immigration
Robert Higgs has a wonderful article on LewRockwell.com, which I recommend to everyone, "The Difference Between an Illegal Immigrant and Me: A Little Memoir and Some Questions It Raises."
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Keep Running, Ron
Here, Eric Garris and I lay out our argument for Ron Paul to ditch the GOP and his campaign's conservative triangulation strategy, seek the Libertarian nomination, and keep on running.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
On Immigration: A Reply to Hoppe
Walter Block and I have this article[pdf] in the Mises Institute's newest edition of the Journal of Libertarian Studies, edited by Roderick Long, in which we address some of Hans-Hermann Hoppe's arguments against having open borders in a highly politicized, state-run society.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Afghan Journalist Sentenced to Death for Internet Printout
Say, I thought we liberated this country.
Of course, the Islamist theocracy that persists in the Middle East is no joke. But it does seem as though many Americans look the other way when a nation we are ostensibly allied with, or helped secure freedom for, engages in such totalitarianism.
Free Trade Between Palestine and Egypt
"Tens of thousands of Palestinians on foot and on donkey carts poured into Egypt from Gaza Wednesday after masked gunmen used land mines to blast down a seven-mile barrier dividing the border town of Rafah."
And they are engaging in glorious commerce, it seems, trading food, livestock, electronics and more. How exciting! Thanks to Lew Rockwell for the link.
Monday, January 21, 2008
The Effects of Mass Deportation
Trevor Bothwell has a great article at LewRockwell.com about what fully enforcing America's immigration laws, through mass deportations, would really entail. A choice excerpt:
To say this would be a messy affair would be an understatement of magnificent proportion. SWAT-style assaults and home invasions would be the order of the day. Today's ruthless, tyrannical drug raids would actually look tame in comparison as government thugs went door to door seeking out suspected illegal aliens. The right to privacy of citizens and non-citizens alike would consequently evaporate as property rights became a thing of the past. Chaos would ensue. Racial tensions would intensify as primarily brown targets would be ensnared by their primarily white captors. Protests and riots would erupt, the merits of which would be hard to dispute.
Children born as American citizens would be seized from their parents, automatically rendered homeless and converted into wards of the state as a result of such totalitarian behavior (Huckabee once seemed to understand the demerits of such atrocious behavior). Human beings who have come to this country to make a better life for themselves and their families would be treated like animals as they were hunted, captured, incarcerated, and eventually deported. And this would merely be the fate of those who complied.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Free Market Hall of Fame Survey
I wrote in Bob Higgs for favorite free-market economist, especially for his outstanding research on the political economy of the warfare state. But there's a lot of tough choices to make on this survey. Perhaps this is a good sign: There's a lot more economic good guys than there were at one time.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
The North American Union, In Historical Perspective
I argue here that the biggest proponents of a North American Union, which U.S. nativists and patriots are all up in arms about, have actually been U.S. nationalists, American politicians, and others who wanted to take over the entire continent under the banner of Old Glory.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Ron Paul on O'Reilly Factor
Ron Paul tries as hard as he can to teach Bill some history.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Would Another 9/11 Be Good for America?
Certainly not. Listen to the heroic (and civil) Scott Horton take on Stu Bykofsky from the Philadelphia Daily News, author of the crazed article “To save America, we need another 9/11” as well as this unsatisfactory retraction, based on the new insight that even another 9/11 wouldn't do the trick.
This is really wonderful radio. I love listening to Scott's great show regularly, but this is particularly grand. He really corners Bykofsky, dismisses the warmongering nationalism, and makes a great concise case against Bush's war on terror, Clinton's foreign policy, the bipartisan extraConstitutional surveillance state, and American warmongering nationalism in general. Bykofsky tries to make Scott look like a leftie hypocrite. Of course it doesn't work against this intimidatingly well informed Rothbardian dove. "Whichever administration is working against my liberty, they are the target of my criticism," Scott says, as he educates his guest.
It's a powerful 18 minutes. Give it a listen.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Libertarianism Is Antiwar
I make the argument at LewRockwell.com.
I address the effects of war on liberty, the futility of intervention and other matters. But here I take on the nationalist ethics implicit in pro-war libertarians, thereby circumventing the charge that we peaceniks are "sovereigntarians" who believe in the sovereignty of foreign governments. All governments, and this certainly includes the US government, have no rights. It's my concern for individual rights, first and foremost, that leads me to oppose war:
Most of the killing is just part of the policy. Bombing Baghdad or Belgrade has what legal theorists might call a "substantial certainty" of killing innocent people. Modern war is in fact in practically every case an example of mass murder. It must be opposed by the libertarian first and foremost for this reason. For not just Americans have individual rights to life, liberty and property; so too do all foreign non-aggressors, and so killing them, which is a predictable outcome of today’s typical military tactics, is gravely immoral according to libertarian ethics.
Some argue that when the fight is against a truly ghastly foreign regime, any innocents killed by the supposedly "good" government of the U.S. are "collateral damage." The true aggressor, according to this argument, is the enemy regime, not the U.S. government, which is acting in supposed defense of Americans.
One response is that historically, in most of its wars, the U.S. government has invaded or attacked a country that never attacked or credibly threatened to attack Americans on U.S. soil. Even by a collectivist analysis, whereby we look at nations, rather than individuals, when assigning guilt, the U.S. has more often than not been an aggressor.
However, to the libertarian, this is all of secondary importance. Libertarianism concerns individual rights and individual actions. States, nations, communities and so forth are abstractions and social constructs which do not act independently of the individuals they comprise. Only individuals act and only individuals have ethics or rights, and so it is a violation of an innocent person’s rights to bomb him, even if the government he lives under is aggressive and tyrannical. Certainly, the U.S. government was itself quite aggressive in the Middle East before 9/11, yet that in no way legitimized the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which killed innocent Americans for the crimes of their government. So, too, is it immoral to bomb a country with the substantial certainty that it will kill innocent foreigners, even if their government is aggressive.
Read the rest.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Homer vs. EPA
I write here about the federal war on Springfield, and how The Simpsons has helped move pop culture from the nationalist collectivism so endemic in earlier cartoons.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
The Real Nuclear Threat
I argue here that it's not Iran.
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Speaking of Libertarians in Counterpunch
Jacob Hornberger has a good piece in there.
Friday, June 22, 2007
Augusto Giuliani
Michael I. Niman on Rudy: "Giuliani’s disdain for freedom of speech is best exemplified by the case of Robert Lederman, an artist who specializes in drawing caricatures of Giuliani as a dictator and depicting his policies as transforming New York into a police state. Lederman was arrested 40 times during Giuliani’s reign for displaying his art at political demonstrations and on the streets of New York. Lederman was never convicted of a crime. . . .
"Under [Rudy's Zero Tolerance] policy, New Yorkers were handcuffed and dragged off to jail for drinking beer on their front stoops —the New York City equivalent of hanging out on the porch. Marijuana possession arrests increased by well over 4,000 percent. Eventually almost 70,000 people sued the city for police abuses such as strip-searching suspected jaywalkers. In 1999, James Savage, the president of the New York City police union, referred to Giuliani’s zero tolerance policy as a “blueprint for a police state and tyranny.' . . .
"Fashion-wise, [Rudy's Street Crimes Unit] had more resemblance to Guatemala’s notorious military death squads, wearing 'We Own the Night' t-shirts, and shirts citing Ernest Hemingway’s 'There is no hunting like the hunting of man” quote—quite a variation from standard issue uniforms.
"This is the police unit that became notorious for shooting African immigrant Amadou Diallo 40 times as he reached for his wallet after being ordered to show identification. When New Yorkers took to the streets to protest the shooting, Giuliani told the press that people were protesting due to 'their own personal inadequacies.'
"Eventually the Giuliani-sanctioned machismo infected other units in the police department. When undercover officers asked a man on the street to sell them marijuana, the man, Patrick Dorismond, took offense to being called a drug-dealer and got into a scuffle with the unidentified officers, who shot him dead. Giuliani issued a knee-jerk defense of the killers, telling the press that Dorismond was 'no altar boy.' Salon.com pointed out that, in fact, he was an altar boy."
Thanks to Scott Horton.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
5th Sentence Meme
From BK Marcus:
Grab the nearest book.
1. Open it to page 161.
2. Find the fifth full sentence.
3. Post the text of the sentence along with these instructions.
Don't search around looking for the coolest book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.
My nearest book was Thomas Szasz's The Lexicon of Lunacy: Metaphoric Malady, Moral Responsibility, and Psychiatry. The sentence is:
"The policy of commitment, or involuntary mental hospitalization -- based on the principle of parens patriae -- is then invoked to deal with the threat to the patient's health and life, and with the havoc his behavior is likely to create in the family or among the people who are forced to witness his behavior."
Monday, May 21, 2007
Iran Has A Drug War! Bomb Them!
In an apparent attempt to drum up support for war with Iran, neocon bulwark Michael Ledeen points readers to pictures of an Iranian drug bust, and comments:Terrifying pictures, to be sure. For me, the most revealing thing about them is that the police feel obliged to wear masks while conducting a drug bust in the capital. tells you something about the relationship between the people and the state.
Oh, where to begin. Perhaps here. Or here. Or here. Or here. Or here. Or here
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
California's Postpartisan Agenda
In a recent op-ed, I argue that "Having Republicans approve all the big government programs in the Democratic agenda and the Democrats approve all the law-and-order crackdowns and new prisons in the Republican agenda is not a reason to celebrate."
Thursday, April 26, 2007
The Bush/Cheney Regime and Martial Law
In addition to Scott's interview with David Beito, I also recommend Scott's interview with Jim Bovard on the new frightening (and overlooked) changes to the Insurrection Act.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Libertarian Theory and Real World Politics
I gave this talk at the LP of California Convention on Sunday. It is concerned largely with the role of liberal ideology in American history, and how everything from slavery and Lincolnianism to the New Deal and War on Drugs has largely been a result of not enough radical libertarians and too much compromise —- too much gradualism in theory.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
April 19
Here's my thoughts on the Warsaw Ghetto and LSD.
Here's my thoughts on Waco, OKC, and the other mid-April massacres at Columbine and VA Tech.
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Depression, War and Cold War
My review of Robert Higgs's book can be seen here or in two parts, here and here.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Why Libertarians Should Favor Decentralism
Roderick Long has made one of the strongest set of arguments I've ever seen.
Friday, November 10, 2006
The Green Party
The Greens strike me as a very loose alliance of populists of all sorts. There is a decentralist, libertarian streak in some of them. There are socialists, as well. But I remember seeing a poll that said that 2/3 of Nader voters favored war after 9/11, compared to smaller portions of Buchanan and Libertarian voters. I've found in Berkeley a few Greens who defended the first Gulf War, even.
This is to say that the Greens believe all sorts of things, with anti-conservatism being their main, unifying purpose. The ten core principles appeal to a wide variety of people precisely because they are so vague and even self-contradictory. You get more anarchist-leaning Greens as well as ambitious central planners, and, because of the culture war and obfuscatory left-right divide in American politics, they all get along relatively well with not much more of a common belief than that the Republicans are the root of all evil and the Democrats are not much better.
Some Greens will be open to libertarian arguments and are potential converts. Others are a lost cause.
Wednesday, November 1, 2006
The Elections
I'm not voting, of course. But I want to see the Republicans lose, and yet I doubt it will do any good. Likely, things will continue to get worse, and I think the libertarian benefits of gridlock are overstated. There are downsides, too, in fact.
See more on my take here, as well as in this addendum.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Dave Barry's Anti-Federalism of "no obvious academic import"
See BK Marcus on the latest dismal instance of academic non-freedom in higher education, where a professor's funny but true libertarian Dave Barry quote was censored.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Selective Prosecution of War Crimes
In Saddam Hussein’s war crimes trial for the 1988 Iraqi “Anfal” campaign that gassed Kurdish villages, his defense lawyers have argued that Iraqi forces were really attempting to strike Iranian forces and the Iraqi Kurdish pesh merga militias that were in and supported by the hamlets. In other words, the lawyers are asserting that the innocent Kurds who were killed were collateral damage in an effort by the Iraqi government to rid its territory of Iranian fighters and their Kurdish allies during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. Curiously, this defense sounds similar to Israel’s defense of killing more than one thousand Lebanese and perpetrating widespread destruction of Shi’ite neighborhoods, apartment houses, water services, electrical power stations, ports, factories, roads, and bridges in Lebanon in its efforts to punish Hezbollah. Yet Saddam Hussein is on trial for war crimes and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is still in office.
Read the rest of Ivan Eland's newest op-ed.
Monday, August 14, 2006
LvMI in the WSJ
Congratulations to the Mises Institute for this great write-up in the Wall Street Journal! An excerpt:
The Mises Institute counts free-marketers from more than 30 states and at least 23 countries among its faculty. Its students' homes are equally far-flung: Poland, Peru, Argentina, Canada, France and China this summer alone. "Every one of them is an idealist in a very courageous way," Mr. Tucker said. "A lot of people think it's silly to be an idealist these days. But Mises always taught that ideas are the only weapons we have against despotism."
Tuesday, May 2, 2006
The Immigration Solution
Bill Walker over at LewRockwell.com nails it, as he takes on the economic, cultural and other arguments for leviathan to "do something" about illegal immigration:
Libertarians should have learned by now to be a little suspicious when politicians offer to solve our problems with the use of minefields and secret police. Especially when it’s the same politicians who created the problems in the first place.I highly recommend that everyone read the whole thing.
We laugh at the stupidity of our ancestors, who sincerely believed that Irish were all lazy drunks, Jews had low IQs, Chinese could not be doctors, etc. We now know that Irish are very productive drunks, Jews have inherently high IQs (the fact that their mothers make them study hard can’t have anything to do with it, of course), and only Chinese or Indians can be doctors or scientists (math courses are too much work for white students). However, as with any other area of life, these things are more accurately discovered by market processes rather than by a large secret police bureaucracy.
There are two legitimate worries about immigration. One is that the Mexican culture will produce millions who will vote for more government. This is a little funny, because it wasn’t illegal immigrants who voted us into socialism; it was our own English-speaking great-grandfathers who voted for FDR. Mexicans don’t even control their OWN country’s policies; Mexican (or any Third World nation’s) politics is always dominated by the faction that gets the most US foreign aid.
Friday, April 28, 2006
Ron Paul on the Academic Bill of Rights
Given that this has been a topic here lately, I thought I'd post a link to Ron Paul's statement on the Congressional floor about the so-called "Academic Bill of Rights." It's short, and ends with this bang:
Instead of fostering open dialogue and wide-raging intellectual inquiry, the main effect of the "Academic Bill of Rights" will be to further stifle debate about controversial topics. This is because many administrators will order their professors not to discuss contentious and divisive subjects, in order to avoid a possible confrontation with the federal government. Those who doubt this should remember that many TV and radio stations minimized political programming in the 1960s and 1970s in order to avoid running afoul of the federal "fairness doctrine."
I am convinced some promoters of the "Academic Bill of Rights" would be perfectly happy if, instead of fostering greater debate, this bill silences discussion of certain topics. Scan the websites of some of the organizations promoting the "Academic Bill of Rights" and you will find calls for silencing critics of the Iraq war and other aspects of American foreign policy.
Mr. Speaker, HR 609 expands federal control over higher education; in particular through an "Academic Bill of Rights" which could further stifle debate and inquiry on America's college campus. Therefore, I urge my colleagues to reject this bill.
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
The Bipartisan Police State
Keith Halderman has recently pointed out the partisan nature of criticism of government abuses. I discuss this issue in my new LRC article, in memory of the Waco disaster 13 years ago and in reflection of the bipartisanship of American tyranny.
Friday, April 14, 2006
Exploiting the Workers
I discuss tax day here, mainly focusing on taxes as an assault on the workers to benefit the corporate state, and why liberals should come to recognize that once again.
I briefly mention in passing one little bit of history that a lot of Americans, including educated libertarians, seem not to know, despite its not being that obscure or esoteric: that the Income Tax Amendment was the dirty work of Republican William Howard Taft. I've often been challenged on this by libertarians who say it was Democrat Woodrow Wilson, but Taft backed the Amendment from 1909 to 1913 until it was finally ratifed by the states, years after the House and Senate approved it with overwhelming bipartisan support, a month before Taft left office. Why is it that people seem to think the Income Tax was Wilson's doing? Could it be because it was under Wilson that the tax really began to take a bite, and especially, at tyrannical rates, during World War I? Or is it just because Wilson was a Progressive Democrat and there seems to be a bizarre misconception, on both the left and right, that the trustbuster Taft was some sort of laissez faire politician, a throwback to the horse-and-buggy days?
Friday, March 31, 2006
Feed Anyone Suspicious Lately?
I have a piece on immigration reform over at LRC.
Wednesday, March 1, 2006
On Being Anti-State, Anti-War, and Anti-Bush
I have a new article about why it's important to be all three, and where the left and right go wrong. I discuss the unfortunate tendency of the left to attack Bush even on the incredibly rare occasions that he's right. A sample:
The left, for its part, still fails to understand the other side of the coin. On the front is the image of the president, on the back is the institution of the state. If Bush is ever immortalized on coin, his denomination will almost surely follow the pattern of all presidential tyrants numismatically eternalized before him. Turning over his image will reveal that of a government building or memorial, made permanent in the metallic disc and representing the state’s impersonal, cold inhumanity whose obfuscation is the role of the chief executive engraved on the flipside.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Left and Right and the Prospects for Hypocrisy
Throughout the libertarian blogosphere I have seen a bunch of talk recently of left vs. right, and who is more libertarian. It seems that many libertarians take the position that the left is only better right now because it's out of power, that Ted Kennedy and Al Gore and others are only championing the Bill of Rights and opposing the imperial executive because they do not hold the reins to it.
There is absolutely much truth to this. But before getting into the million definitions of left and right, I want to consider the general thrust of the organized left and right during Republican and Democratic administrations, and ponder what, from a libertarian perspective, we should root for (or root the less against) in national politics.
I'm speaking in terrible generalization here, but I think a few issues are important:
—Who is worse, the left or right, when its side holds power?
—Is the left more critical of Democratic administrations, or is the right more critical of Republican ones? Whose criticism of their own party is more libertarian?
—Is the left more critical of Republican administrations, or is the right more critical of Democratic ones? Whose criticism of the other party is more libertarian?
—Which side is more hypocritical?
—How much does all this go out the window in times of war and crisis?
I think the answer to the last question is: A whole lot. On the matter of war and other crises, I have noticed a tendency for the party in power to be terrible and the opposition side to be better. See my article "Waco, Oklahoma City, and the Post-9/11 Left-Right Dynamic"
However, I do suspect that the better radical leftist critiques of warfare and police statism are more in play during Democratic administrations than are conservative critiques of despotism during Republican ones. Leftists opposed Johnson's war. Some even critiqued Clinton's handling of Waco and Kosovo.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
More on Cory Maye
The Agitator has an update, with some corrections and clarifications to what has already been said and circulated on the blogosphere, on the Cory Maye case. Also see his archive of posts on it.
I do feel horrible about the loss of life of agents carrying out the terroristic policies of the state. But if this guy hangs for shooting an intruder in his home in the middle of the night, I will lose yet another bit of faith in America's criminal "justice system." At this point I don't have much faith to begin with, but it appears I am always capable of being further disgusted and disappointed by atrocity.
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Celebrate Christmas, Or Else!
Lew Rockwell has a great article about the supposed War on Christmas. It has some interesting insights on politics and there's some really cool historical stuff in there, too. It begins:
The evangelical movement in America—the one that put Bush in the White House and continues to constitute his most dependable base of support—has been whipped into a frothing frenzy over the idea, promoted by the newshounds with too much air time to kill at Fox, that someone, somewhere is waging a War on Christmas.
What? Is the government, some government anywhere, actively preventing Christians from celebrating Christmas, as in the Soviet Union, Cuba, China—or, the egregious case of Massachusetts Colony in the 17th century (we’ll get to that)?
No, apparently not. The problem is more subtle, or so they say.
Tuesday, December 6, 2005
Hooded Progressivism
Jesse Walker has a fantastic article at Reason, "Hooded Progressivism: The secret reformist history of the Ku Klux Klan." The article shows that the 1920s KKK were largely progressivist, nativist nationalists, with hotbeds in the Pacific Northwest and Midwest, not exclusively the South, and rather mainstream.
It begins:
It didn't take long for America's first blockbuster feature film to produce its first creepy fan subculture. Right before the Atlanta debut of D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, an epic that glorified the Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan, William Joseph Simmons and 11 others celebrated Thanksgiving by burning a cross atop Stone Mountain and declaring the KKK reborn. A week later, on December 4, 1915, they received a charter from the state of Georgia for their new organization, dubbed The Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Inc.
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Warmongering Is the Health of Statism
At a LewRockwell.com conference I gave a talk on why supporting the war implies accepting the premises of statism. An excerpt:
"No one who favors the warfare state can disown the methods by which it's financed. It is no less economically collectivist to root for war than to root for any other government program. If a socialist told you he wants universal healthcare, but he does not favor the taxation and coercion to fund and implement it, you would quickly point out his naked contradiction. Every warmonger is an inflationist and a taxmonger, whether he knows it or not. To accept war is to accept the warfare state, and to accept the warfare state is to accept all the fundamental premises of statism -- the collectivism, the aggression, the ability of central planning to succeed."
Friday, November 11, 2005
Remembering Armistice Day
Here's an article I wrote last year in memory of Armistice Day. An excerpt:
Well after World War II and at the end of the Korean War, President Eisenhower signed a bill in 1954 that changed the name of the national holiday to Veterans’ Day. There were good intentions: America’s veterans of wars other than World War I deserved some recognition. Interestingly enough, however, the United States had not retracted its military reach after World War II as it now was in a perpetual state of war against Communism. Whereas after World War I, the United States brought its armed forces home, the Cold War guaranteed that the United States would henceforth have little interest in armistice, in truce, in peace.
Thursday, November 3, 2005
Good and Bad Judicial Activisim
Stephan Kinsella has a very interesting post on the LRC blog about good and bad judicial activism, and how conservatives and liberals are all confused in their thinking about this. He adds clarity to the meaning of "judicial activism" for libertarians to use. An excerpt:
Read the rest.From the libertarian point of view, the federal Constitution as written is fairly libertarian, at least compared to the leviathan state into which the original central government has morphed. It is for this reason that we want judges to adhere to the strict text of the Constitution: because it is a way to help hold the federal government to its original, more-limited scheme. "Originalism" then--or opposition to activism--has primarily an instrumental value (as I argued in this Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly review essay--which I wrote, coincidentally enough, after the journal approached me, at Professor Barnett's suggestion). Because our Constitution is relatively libertarian, we want the federal government to abide by the limits the Constitution places on it. In such a context, activism is likely to be a lead to unlibertarian results because it will mean invention of new powers or relaxations on the limits placed on the state. We can hardly be surprised that the judicial branch of the state tends to decide in a pro-state manner; but to the extent judges feel bound by the text of the Constitution, the state's growth will be somewhat impeded (albeit, one disadvantage of such as system is that giving some lip service to the "rule of law" cover or myth helps to legitimize the state's actions).
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
The Inevitability of Private Interests
I explain why trying to use the state to combat the ill influence of "private interests" over the "common good" is nonsensical in theory and bound to cause disaster in practice, in a new article "The Inevitability of Private Interests." Indeed, only the free market can liberate us completely from the private interests we don't want in our lives.
The "Victory" of the Iraqi Constitution
Ivan Eland holds a dissenting view.
Monday, October 3, 2005
Leaders and Crises
Alvaro Vargas Llosa discusses in a new article what allows for reforms in developing countries. In particular, he addresses a new IMF study that
"looked at sixty-five countries that have undergone institutional reform in the last three decades, asking itself what determines institutional change. This is where the study runs into some trouble. To answer this question they conducted econometric exercises mixing the data from the various countries and coming up with certain patterns."However,
"The problem is that econometric exercises don’t really work with factors that have to do with ideas, choices, and historical contexts rather than numbers."Llosa says the real answer lies in leaders and crises.
Monday, September 12, 2005
Where Is Osama?
For the September 11 anniversary, I wrote this article about the failure of the war on terror to catch Osama, and summarizing what the war has instead done. An excerpt:
Four years ago, Americans who found the approaches of perpetual war and a Big Brother surveillance state to be undesirable, unnecessary or counterproductive means of bringing justice to the 9/11 mass murderers were accused of not facing reality. Treating 9/11 as a crime, we were told, would never nab the villains. Only by unleashing the dogs of war, by going on the offensive, and by shifting the "balance" from liberty toward security could America destroy the enemy, neutralize the immediate threat, and ensure our freedom and safety. Well, let us consider what has happened in the last four years.
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
A Modest Proposal for Iran
I reconsider foreign intervention in my new LRC article. An excerpt:
We need a solution that will take care of Iraq, Iran, and their embarrassing new affinity to each other. We need a way to continue the war on terror against Iran without stretching the military too thin or exhausting our capabilities for potential intervention elsewhere. We need to keep the new Iraqi Sharia state in check. Since we live in a democracy, we should find an answer that satisfies everyone and saves America's face in world opinion, all the while maintaining consistency and continuity with America's traditions in foreign policy.
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Will Iraqi Constitution be Irrelevant?
Ivan Eland suggests that the Constitution in Iraq will have little bearing on what happens there.
The media’s focus on whether the Bush administration’s forced timetable is met, rather than on the quality and likely impact of the resulting constitution, serves the administration’s purpose of creating the illusion of progress. . . . And an illusion it is. Earlier this summer, Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, made the astounding admission that the war in Iraq was lost militarily when he said: “[T]his insurgency is not going to be settled, the terrorists and the terrorism in Iraq is not going to be settled, through military options or military operations.” He then pointed his finger to the political process for a solution.
Yet, artificially forcing the Iraqis to reach a definitive agreement on fundamental issues—such as autonomy for Kurdish and Shi’ite areas (federalism), the role of Islam and women in Iraqi society, and the fate of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk—will likely make any Iraqi Constitution as irrelevant as those of neighboring Arab states. On paper, many Arab states have liberal constitutions, but they do not have the political culture or institutions to sustain an open political system. If Iraq doesn’t descend into civil war quickly, perhaps the administration can pull off this façade and exit Iraq with some dignity.
Friday, August 19, 2005
The Administration’s Leaked Mea Culpa on Iraq
Robert Higgs asks, What does it portend?
The Bush administration, [a Washington Post] article explains, no longer expects to produce a model democracy, a well-functioning oil industry, or “a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges” in Iraq. In short, the country is in terrible shape, and the U.S. government cannot solve the Iraqis’ most pressing problems. According to a senior U.S. official, “what we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground. We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we’re in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning.”
To appreciate just how shocking this statement is, one must recall that not so long ago, a Bush staffer was quoted as saying, “We’re an empire now, we make our own reality.” Indeed, since 9/11 the Bush administration’s foreign policy has been everything that foreign-policy realism is not. The government’s faith-based occupation of Iraq, however, has not held up well against the rocket-propelled grenades, improvised explosive devices, small-arms fire, and mortar rounds that continue to batter it with distressing regularity, inflicting casualties of nearly 2,000 dead and some 14,000 wounded among U.S. military forces so far. An administration notable for its arrogance now undertakes to “shed the unreality” that underlay its invasion and occupation.
Thursday, August 4, 2005
FBI, Please Protect Us from Terrorists and the ACLU
I have an op-ed with The Independent Institute on the troubling phenomenon of the FBI spying on non-violent activist organizations, briefly explaining how this goes back quite a while. An excerpt:
About two weeks ago, the FBI admitted in federal court to collecting thousands of documents on non-violent activist groups, including the ACLU, Greenpeace and various antiwar organizations.Read the rest.
The ACLU, suing under the Freedom of Information Act, requested to see its files, but the FBI insists it cannot turn over its 1,173 pages of documentation on the ACLU for another eight or more months, as it needs that time to “process” them. Ironically, this same agency, which can apparently only “process” about five documents a day, is also supposed to protect Americans against terrorism.
Tuesday, August 2, 2005
Kelo Calamity?
In an interesting article, Lew Rockwell argues that the newest developments in proposed state-level reforms in eminent domain law and practice demonstrate the benefits of decentralized governance, without a central state plenarily empowered to override local laws for the betterment of liberty, and makes the compelling point that
If we are to have a serious debate about eminent domain, we need to get beyond this ridiculous distinction between public and private use. Government is a racket that rewards itself through plunder and always in the name of public purpose. The truth is that there is no coherent way to separate public and private purpose when it comes to government. Its roads benefit private contractors and serve private interests. It’s true they are "free," but so are the streets in shopping malls, which are private. As for public schools, the teachers unions and hordes of bureaucrats are private interests too. Indeed, there is no such thing as the "public," there are only individuals.
Eland on Troop Withdrawl
Ivan Eland believes that the administration is thinking troop withdrawl primarily due to domestic political pressures:
In Iraq, like everywhere else, if things don’t add up, it is safe to assume that politics is involved. Although the insurgency in recent months has worsened, Gen. George W. Casey, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, astonishingly claims that security in Iraq has improved and that substantial U.S. troop withdrawals are possible by as early as next spring. What gives? The congressional elections in 2006.
Although Bush administration officials have implied that demands by Democrats for a U.S. troop withdrawal timetable are “unpatriotic” and “aid the enemy,” when electoral politics is involved, the administration is all too willing to predict troop reductions during a specified time period. They know that the Democrats will try to make political hay—probably starting around next spring—from the growing unpopularity here at home of the continued occupation of Iraq. By showing some incremental and token progress toward getting out of the quagmire, the administration hopes to contain the damage Democrats could do on this issue at election time.
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
The Commercialization of Communism
Alvaro Vargas Llosa has a brilliant article getting to the bottom of all this Che Guevara hoopla, titled "The Killing Machine: Che Guevara, from Communist Firebrand to Capitalist Brand."
I first noticed this image on a television commercial for Burlington Coat Factory and recorded my surprise at the LRC blog.
Exit Plans and "Regime Libertarianism"
Lew Rockwell has an interesting piece criticizing the Libertarian Party's recently published Exit Plan for Iraq in particular, and what he calls "regime libertarianism" in general.
On the particular point of the Exit Plan, I've seen other intriguing arguments for and against — or at least, in some defense of and with objection to — the proposal, notably by Chris Claypoole and Tom Knapp, respectably, over at The Libertarian Enterprise.
(I'm still thinking of my precise take on it, though I do generally dislike the gradualism in the plan, especially the idea of moving the troops from Iraq another countries to continue the "war on terror." Certainly, I don't think Iraqis will be much better off unless they're allowed — not forced into by a foreign power — a more decentralized governance, which would likely lead to a partitioned or federated Iraq, as Ivan Eland has suggested.)
On the more general point of gradualism, Rockwell critiques what he considers a counterproductive approach to public policy and the questions of the state, looking at attitude differences and drawing the line not at minarchism vs. anarchism, but on a more subtle and yet possibly more fundamental distinction in how libertarians view the state. As he puts it in his defense of more radical minarchism, "There is a difference between seeing government as a necessary evil, and viewing liberty as the offspring of power."
Monday, July 11, 2005
Why Did Terrorists Attack London?
Ivan Eland says it's because of Britain's cooperation with U.S. foreign policy:
More than likely, the real underlying purpose of the London attacks was similar to that of the Spanish train bombings in March 2004 on the eve of the Spanish elections. Al Qaeda took advantage of the Spanish government’s support of the U.S.-led Iraq invasion and the Spanish public’s intense dislike of that policy to drive home the high costs of being a Bush administration ally. The Spanish public realized that the Spanish government, in the name of national defense, was actually endangering the security of the Spanish people in order to score points with the United States. They promptly voted that government out of office and installed a replacement that withdrew Spanish troops from Iraq.
Al Qaeda is likely looking for a similar outcome in Britain, a country much more vital to the Bush administration’s war effort in Iraq than Spain. In contrast to Spain’s primarily symbolic importance for the U.S. war and occupation, the British have about 8,500 capable troops in Iraq. Britain is the only nation in the world to provide more than symbolic support for the globally unpopular U.S. military adventure in Iraq.
The question remains as to how the British will react in response. On the immediate response, Eric Margolis had this to say (along with other interesting insights in the same article):
London's emergency service functioned brilliantly. There was none of the chaos or jingoism we saw after 9/11 in New York. Britons uniformly exhibited stiff upper lips, coolness, and manners for which they are deservedly respected. I was very proud of them.
The bombings paralyzed London during morning rush hour, but by afternoon the city's trademark red buses were again careening around corners and even subway service partly resumed.
There were no witch hunts against London's Muslims, 10% of that great city's population.
A senior British police official declared there is no reason why the words "Islamic" and "terrorist" should go together, even though Blair had just used them.
The cop is right. The terrorists who struck London on 7/7 may have been Mideast Muslims, but their primary goal was political, not religious.
The Spanish pulled out of Iraq. Will the British? It appears not for now. For now, the British State is at least copying the American State in a few key ways, such as in Blair's rejection of an inquiry into the bombing, requested by the Conservative opposition party.
The Moral Argument Against the Draft
I say it is the most important one in a new FFF article.
Friday, July 8, 2005
The Failed War on Terrorism
My thoughts about the London bombings can be found here. I touched on some of the same points some of the rest of the bloggers here did, including David Beito's point about how the pro-war people want it both ways.
Friday, July 1, 2005
Reconciling Kinsella's Federalism and Disgust with Kelo
I have an article explaining why even a hardcore decentralist, anti-14th Amendment libertarian, who agrees with most of Kinsella's arguments against federal intervention, should be appalled by the Kelo ruling, and on federalist grounds, to boot.
An excerpt:
"Eminent domain is a crime. Even if the central state should not have the power to override this crime, neither should it give the criminals its official sanction. Let us ponder an analogy. Anarchists don’t believe that, in an ideal world, the state should ban common crimes, because, ideally, the state should not exist. Now, given that we have local governments, would anyone, even an anarchist, advocate that a local government sanction murder, theft, or battery? Would we want local government courts to rule in favor of arson? Of course not. And neither should we want the federal court system to specifically rule in favor of aggressive local policy. For the feds to side with our local rulers in stealing our liberty is akin to local governments siding with common criminals to burglarize our homes...."
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
More on Kelo, Eminent Domain, Court Construction
William J. Watkins Jr. has a great piece on one particularly troubling aspect of the Kelo decision. He writes, "Property owners beware. If an owner does not make maximum productive use of his property, government is now empowered to transfer the property to another person. This is the essence of the Supreme Court’s ruling last week...."
N. Stephan Kinsella has a compelling article that discusses issues of the 14th Amendment and federalism, and argues that it would have been bad in the long run for liberty for the Supremes to overturn local eminent domain measures.
Very interesting stuff. I will comment on this soon.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Against Leviathan
Robert Higgs's masterpiece, Crisis and Leviathan, has a wonderful supplement in the recently published Against Leviathan. Both of these books, along with Higgs's numerous articles and scholarly studies over the years, constitute a tremendous body of anti-state scholarship. When I read Crisis in college, often between classes or sitting at a bar, I couldn't believe my eyes to see how in depth and comprehensive was his treatment of all the varying intricacies of political economy during times of crisis-induced nationalization and militarization of American resources, business and labor.
Against Leviathan is a little more polemic and impassioned—not to say less rigorous in its research—and has a slightly greater chance, in my experience, of inciting the reader to share the author’s anger and frustration. After reading it, I was frankly rather upset, especially by the sections on the war on drugs, both in its overt and well-recognized form (the war on illicit recreational substance users) and the less appreciated campaign (the war to deprive the ill from their needed and preferred but non-FDA-approved medicines). Both wars have assaulted individual liberty and have led to thousands of American deaths. And when Higgs writes about it, he discusses statistics and policy options, but the living resentful emotion of living under the tyranny of the therapeutic state resides in each of his virtuosically chosen words. I get the impression that Higgs has had it and he’s not going to take it any more.
But the book is filled with facts, data and information—more than one might believe without thinking about it while reading it, since the author’s prose goes does so easily and is not cluttered with extraneous and arrogant jargon. Here’s my review of the book from a while back on LewRockwell.com, in which I touch on other issues he examines, such as the oppression of conscription, economic egalitarianism as a supposed a priori good (he debunks this one well), and the nasty characters who have ruled this country (such as Richard Nixon, who, truth be told, was no more amiable and tactful in private discussion than he was honest and humble in his public “service”). I’d really like the comments of anyone who’s read the book, or anyone who hasn’t read it. This collection of essays truly is superb.
Monday, May 23, 2005
Star Wars and the U.S. Empire
I have a new article on LRC about the regression of republics into empires, and how empires fall, relating Star Wars to the American experience. See also Scott Horton's piece on the subject at Antiwar.com.
Monday, May 2, 2005
Bush Administration Inspiring Nuclear Proliferation
In his new article, Ivan Eland argues that "The Bush administration spends so much time strutting and flexing before the world gallery that it fails to realize that such behavior accelerates nuclear proliferation." He continues:
Although Iraq, Iran, and North Korea are tyrannical regimes, they may have legitimate security concerns that drive their efforts to acquire so-called weapons of mass destruction (WMD). They may want these weapons to deter neighbors or even a self-righteous superpower from attacking them. One does not have to be an apologist for the abysmal human rights records of those regimes to caution against feeding into their paranoia.
Indeed, this isn't only a problem with the current administration, nor is it merely theoretical, since
dictators in small, relatively poor third world countries don’t have to be paranoid to worry about attack from an interventionist superpower. President Ronald Reagan invaded Grenada; George H.W. Bush launched an assault against Panama and removed Manuel Noriega from power; Bill Clinton bombed Serbia over the Kosovo issue; and George W. Bush invaded and occupied Iraq. And the world saw that all of those non-nuclear states got a lot less respect than the likely nuclear-armed North Korea.
Of course, the U.S. government—the only regime in the world ever to use nuclear weapons on people—could also help the situation by greatly disarming on its own. It does not take a radical anarchist to see the problem with the most powerful, well-armed State on earth, one that has intervened in dozens of countries throughout the planet—one whose current head of state seems ever willing to invade other countries "at the whim of a hat" (to borrow from his own fascinating lexicon)—trying to induce foreign States to disarm, even as it plans to enhance its own arsenal in spectacular ways.
In considering whether it is realistic for smaller States to doubt the U.S. government's dedication to peace, let us remember that it was Bush himself who also said, "See, free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don't attack each other. Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction."
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Eland: U.S. Is Hiding Indications of Its Own Failure
In his new article, "Evidence that the U.S. May Be Losing the Global War on Terror", Ivan Eland discusses how the administration might be hiding evidence of its own failures in the war.
According to Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst and State Department terrorism expert who still has many sources within the intelligence community, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s office is suppressing data showing that the number of major terrorist attacks worldwide exploded from 175 in 2003 to 625 in 2004, the highest number since the Cold War began to wane in 1985. U.S. officials said that when analysts at the National Counterterrorism Center declined the office of the secretary’s invitation to use a methodology that would reduce the number of terrorist attacks, her office terminated publication of the State Department’s annual “Patterns of Global Terrorism” report.
Dr. Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at the Independent Institute:
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Waco, Oklahoma, and the Post-9/11 Left-Right Dynamic
For the ten-year anniversary of the Oklahoma City terrorist bombing, and the twelve-year anniversary of the Waco massace, I have an article here about the events and their parallels with foreign policy and 9/11, all in the context of left-right domestic politics. I also have here a short addendum expounding upon one point a bit more.
Friday, April 15, 2005
Drugs, Liberty, and the Right
Reading Keith Halderman’s insightful post, I can’t seem to get over the fact that so many conservatives these days still believe so much in the drug war, and consider it to be the main weakness of libertarianism.
First of all, the concept of having a free society—without regulations on business, taxation of incomes or sales, protectionist tariffs, gun control laws, government education, government healthcare, subsidies, or violations of basic rights of due process—yet somehow maintaining a “war on drugs” that somehow prevents people from using, manufacturing or distributing certain chemicals to people who want them, is absurd and unimaginable. How can anything close to a libertarian philosophy allow for a State empowered enough to control what people put into their own bodies? It can’t. Conservatives who say libertarianism is fine except the drug issue do not, I believe, truly comprehend the implications of a free society, of individual liberty, of a laissez faire economy. Aside from the ethical and pragmatic problems with drug prohibition, the program is so incompatible with liberty and the free market that they simply could not exist together. There is no such thing as a conservative version of libertarianism that excludes the right to determine what to put in one’s own body. This is why, at the end of the day, most conservatives who say they are libertarians except on the drug issue will reveal all sorts of other qualifications and reservations concerning other areas of civil society, once prodded or questioned enough.
Indeed, as Halderman points out, the Progressives deserve much of the blame for the drug laws. Before the Progressive Era, there were few drug laws and drug problems. There were alcoholics, and the most widely abused drug was probably Laudanum, a beverage of alcohol and opium consumed by middle-class Americans. But even those who drank more than they should have—just like most today who drink more alcohol than they probably should—were still able to function in society and posed no threat to their neighbors, much less "national security."
The first drug laws were on the state level, and pertained mainly to alcohol. In California, Opium became illegal in the late 19th century—mainly as a way to harass Chinese-Americans. It was during the Progressive Era that the federal government passed the first major national drug law, the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914, which forbade heroin and required prescriptions for cocaine and morphine. The culmination of the Progressive Era in domestic policy—the biggest achievement of the Progressives—was probably alcohol prohibition, with the Volstead Act and 18th Amendment. When alcohol prohibition ended, federal bureaucrats like Harry Anslinger were peeved they didn’t have anything to do in the prohibition department, so it wasn’t long before Congress passed the Marihuana Tax Act of 1938—which outlawed the drug by making it a tax issue (to have the drug without a tax stamp was illegal, but the tax stamps weren’t printed)—and Franklin Roosevelt signed it. So the first federal marijuana laws were part of the New Deal. The next major federal interventions on the drug issues, such as the creation of drug scheduling and the ban of LSD and other drugs, came during the Great Society.
It is no coincidence that back when America had a much freer market, no Federal Reserve or persistent income tax, no Departments of Education or Health and Human Services, no national price controls, federal gun laws, and all the other things conservatives often claim they do not like, America also had no drug laws of significance. The freedom to control one’s own body was not seen as a federal issue, just as education and welfare weren’t. For the State to expropriate the means of consumption is socialistic, and burdened with all the same moral and practical problems as the worst socialist economic programs.
Furthermore, the Szasz quote Halderman cites relates to an important point about the use of scare language and its impact on discourse and social thinking on drugs. The word “narcotic” has an actual meaning. Narcotics are analgesics and depressants that bring about a state of narcosis—sleep. Marijuana is not a narcotic. Cocaine is not a narcotic. Just like the liberals who talk about “assault weapons,” usually with little understanding of firearms, distinctions between them and the subtleties of language, conservatives talk about “designer drugs” and “narcotics” without having a clue, most the time, what they’re yapping about.
Yes, drugs can be very harmful. So can automobiles, cigarettes and high-fat diets—all of which kill more Americans every year than all illegal drugs combined. Back in the early 20th century—before the Income Tax, the Federal Reserve, or the regulatory-welfare state—anyone could walk into a drug store and buy cocaine or heroin. “Heroin” itself was a brand name trademarked by the company that produced it, Bayer. If heroin were legal now, it would probably be used in hospitals in many cases instead of morphine, since it has the same analgesic effects but is more potent, and thus has fewer side effects. Indeed, if we had a true free market in drugs, do conservatives really worry that everyone would start doing heroin all the time? Do they worry about crack—a version of cocaine that became popularized because the drug war made it a less risky and expensive method to distribute higher potency cocaine? Do they worry about powder cocaine—which really took off when the feds were somewhat successful in preventing the proliferation of marijuana and banned coca leaves? In a free market in drugs, people will seek drugs as they do now, but such considerations as safety and fewer side effects will become increasingly important. People will be more selective. If they legalized all the drugs, perhaps marijuana use would go up for a short time, but, just like alcohol use after alcohol prohibition, it would probably go back down. The “harder” drugs would probably not become that much more popular, and I would bet that fewer people would huff paint.
And even if drug use went up somewhat, the drug war is still not worth it. The war on politically incorrect molecules and plants must end, and soon, for its costs are far too high and its benefits dubious.
To believe in the drug war is simply to believe that freedom and the free market are dysfunctional, that consumption is an appropriate thing to nationalize, that it is morally permissible to lock people in cages for personal choices. It’s very hard for me to understand how people can be wrong on this issue but right on most others. And, as I said before, most people who are wrong on the drug issue are wrong on many other issues.
Finally, how can conservatives still think the drug war is working, or that it is doing more good than bad? Hundreds of thousands of non-violent people behind bars at the cost of fifty-or-so-thousand dollars each per year, the systematic destruction of the Bill of Rights, the acceleration of violent crime, a perverse foreign policy of spraying Latin Americans’ crops with poison and propping up their “anti-drug” dictators —are these things still considered worth it, just so “we” don’t “send the wrong message” by re-legalizing drugs? And, I know it has been said over and over, but do these people want to outlaw alcohol again? I know some of them actually do.
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Greetings, "Enemy Combatants" and Liberty
Greetings. As a new member of the Liberty and Power group blog, please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Anthony Gregory, and I am a Research Assistant at The Independent Institute, primarily working at its Center on Peace and Liberty as an assistant to Ivan Eland.
I also write regularly for LewRockwell.com (where I am also a frequent blogger), the Future of Freedom Foundation (where I am a Policy Advisor), and Strike-the-Root (where I am a Guest Editor); and have written for such publications as Antiwar.com, The Libertarian Enterprise, Rational Review, Liberty Magazine. I graduated from U.C. Berkeley in May, 2003, with a bachelors degree in history, specifically American history and the history of science. I wrote my undergraduate thesis on the Waco massacre of 1993 and government-media relations surrounding that atrocity. While I was at Berkeley I was active for four years and president for two in the campus student group, the Cal Libertarians. I’ve been a self-described libertarian since I was about fourteen years old, although I only became a full-blown market anarchist in college. I also love movies, fiction, and music (I’m in a rock band, for which I compose music, play bass and sing; and I play keyboards and guitar—however, aside from rock, I also much appreciate classical, romantic, Baroque and jazz music).
I must say I am quite eager and happy to be invited to this wonderful forum, where many modern intellectual heroes of mine share their insights, commentaries and views with the world. I've been a fan of this site for a couple years, and am thrilled to be a part of it.
For my first substantive contribution, I would like to draw attention to Ivan Eland’s last column, ”Three Strikes for Empire,” especially Eland’s mention of one unsettling and recurrent theme in the “War on Terror”:
[A] seemingly unrelated development to the Bush administration's brand of modern day imperialism may have the most consequence: the indefinite detention of a German man, Murat Kurnaz, by a kangaroo U.S. military tribunal on the basis of flimsy secret evidence that he is a member of al Qaeda. Yet that evidence shows that U.S. intelligence and German law enforcement agencies had concluded that Kurnaz had no connections to al Qaeda or any other terrorist organization. So the U.S. government has known for two years that it was incarcerating an innocent man. The Kurnaz case reinforces a U.S. district judge's opinion that the military tribunals are illegal, unconstitutional, and unfairly prejudicial against those being held in prison.
Detaining people indefinitely without a jury trial, and instead using a military tribunal that allows secret evidence and no legal representation for the defendant, may be normal practice in authoritarian regimes (such as Pakistan) but should not be used in the “home of the free and the brave.”
Now, I agree with this, and I wonder: what has become of our country concerning these “enemy combatant” indefinite detentions? There is precedent in American history for this, and nearly every instance I can recollect of such blatant disregard for procedural and habeas corpus rights and civil liberties—from Lincoln’s arrest of war dissenters without trial to Wilson’s incarceration of those who violated the ridiculous Espionage Act—has since been widely discredited and frowned upon. They often teach undergrads about these nightmares as historical aberrations from which we’ve since learned lessons about the frailty of liberty at wartime. In the years since 9/11, however, I’ve noticed an entire new re-revisionism emerge, where pundits and even scholars attempt to look at these past attacks on liberty as positive precedents for today’s war, as opposed to atrocities to be condemned and avoided.
In particular, I have seen many conservatives and “libertarians,” relatively reliable allies against police-state abuses only five years ago, turn into today’s greatest defenders of such grotesque legislation as the PATRIOT Act. I wonder, are there really that many people who believe that the government can’t be trusted to protect the environment and set wage rates, but can—indeed, must—be trusted with the power to detain people indefinitely without trial or due process? It seems to me that a government that has such power is only distinct from totalitarianism in how much its potential abuses fail to manifest themselves into real ones—a difference in degree, not in kind, meaning we are only spared the liberties the state cannot get away with assaulting. And, it also seems to me, the only way to prevent it from getting away with true totalitarian-level violations of our freedom is an outraged public, jealous of its freedom. Ironically, given this, the more people are willing to agree that it “can’t happen here,” the greater the possibility that it will.
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