When the Levy Breaks
May 10, 04 | 10:57 pm by Joshua HolmesGenerally speaking, the War on Terror and the War on Iraq have separated the libertarians who mean it and the libertarians who are faking it. Those who have given unqualified, open-ended support to the Bush administration, or given support with the weak “I hope we watch out for civil liberties!” caveat, have revealed that they can’t divorce morals and country (sadly, it even divided NT). Despite the good that it usually does, The Volokh Conspiracy has cheered the assault on Iraq and the broader war on terror.
Delightfully, at least VC contributor is starting to come around. Professor Jacob Levy of Chicago has put his toe back into the anti-war waters with this post. Prof. Levy has gathered up excerpts from around the blogosphere outlining the massively incompetent invasion of Iraq. Summing them all up, he says, “I still believe things to be not-irreparable in Iraq. The stakes are very high, and the U.S. has got to get this right. But I didn’t think they would ever go so far wrong.”
Professor, we’re libertarians. We expect the state to screw up. Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek explained to us decades ago why the state screws up (information misdirection, basically). That the state bungled up an invasion and occupation shouldn’t surprise any of us but confirm what we already expected. The foolishness is doubled because our next-of-kin British brethren tried the same nonsense less than a century ago and failed wildly. Trebling the foolishness is the White Man’s Burden currently being touted as the reason for being there, a “burden” that was little more than a cover for economic exploitation and untrammelled savagery by supposedly civilised nations 100 years ago, a “burden” which tells us that the state can remake and ought to remake benighted societies through the massive application of force. No one should have to tell us what sort of disaster this entails.
Of course, as a libertarian, you’re still fighting the wrong war if you declare the war to be bad public policy. Even if you win the fight that the war is bad public policy (or was a good idea badly administered), you don’t win the fight against the military-industrial complex, a standing army, or a US ready and willing to invade the world. You don’t touch on the awesome power of the state and its illegitimacy.
Really, what separates we libertarians from market-oriented conservatives is that radical critique of the power of the state. More than empty small government conservative promises, the libertarian critique says the power of the state is so immoral that it must either be drastically limited or completely abolished. Saying, “Boy, I hope the Bushies get their act together in Iraq!” isn’t a critique a libertarian makes. A libertarian goes right to the heart of the problem: the state.
May 11th, 2004 at May 11, 04 | 5:30 am
Trebling the foolishness is the White Man’s Burden currently being touted as the reason for being there, a “burden” that was little more than a cover for economic exploitation and untrammelled savagery by supposedly civilised nations 100 years ago, a “burden” which tells us that the state can remake and ought to remake benighted societies through the massive application of force. No one should have to tell us what sort of disaster this entails.
The opposing view here would argue that not all recent massive applications of force by the State were a disaster. Consider, they would counter, what the State accomplished in Japan. (Tho personally speaking I’m not sure Japan was benighted, per se, at least not in the way we would probably agree the tyrant in Iraq was). To say nothing of the fact that Japan actually attacked us first. But that goes to motivation, not the success one way or another of the massive application of force.
Anyway, I always thought this opposing view was a tough nut to argue against. It hasn’t turned me into an aoplogist for the State, I’m just saying.
May 11th, 2004 at May 11, 04 | 7:26 am
The Japanese had a history of parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy. I think it’s quite possible to view fascist imperial Japan as a democratic monarchy and not an Oriental despotism. So a parliamentary democracy post-WWII was not a brand-new introduction to Japanese society.
Secondly, I should note that massive force didn’t accomplish liberal democracy in Japan. Massive force was used to put down the Japanese threat, but once the Japanese surrendered, they cheerfully submitted themselves to the American reconstruction. Worship of the Mikado made the transition rather simple, because once he authorised the surrender, the Japanese gracefully submitted to us.
May 11th, 2004 at May 11, 04 | 2:11 pm
Thanks for yet another reason I don’t call myself libertarian. For distrusting the state why do you worship it? Why do you whine and whine on how it has betrayed you? Pathetic. Almost pathetic as your presumption that most of the world works on “good vibrations” and not force — and has for all of history. Where then is libertopia? Like the socialists, the problem must not lie with YOUR system, but with evil humans who fail to live up to its high standards.
PS: I mailed back my official libertarian badge a long time ago. So don’t bother trying to shame me back into your little cult or threaten me with excommunication.
May 11th, 2004 at May 11, 04 | 2:22 pm
Fallacy of the No True Scotsman. So much the worse that, by so steadfastly opposing what is inarguably bad, you unleash what is indisputably worse. You reason like a nine-year-old girl.
May 11th, 2004 at May 11, 04 | 3:06 pm
I dumped my support for the war after I came to realize that I shouldn’t demand other people pay for organized violence. If I was going to argue that I shouldn’t have to pay for the welfare of others (and vice versa), I had to extend that to all other areas as well…including defense.
Of course, it’s obvious that this war wasn’t even defensive in nature, thereby removing one of only two impulsive reasons why I might have sympathy towards it. The other being the removal of Saddam’s blunt tyranny.
May 11th, 2004 at May 11, 04 | 3:13 pm
Do you dump support of police stopping a rape of a little girl (through offensive force) because the police are paid in taxes?
May 11th, 2004 at May 11, 04 | 6:04 pm
Secondly, I should note that massive force didn’t accomplish liberal democracy in Japan. Massive force was used to put down the Japanese threat, but once the Japanese surrendered, they cheerfully submitted themselves to the American reconstruction. Worship of the Mikado made the transition rather simple, because once he authorised the surrender, the Japanese gracefully submitted to us.
I’m gonna bet there’s an important difference between “cheerful” and, say, “stubbornly cooperative,” but I don’t want to argue that with you.
Suffice it to say that the cooperation, or whatever you wish to call it, of the Japenese polity was necessarily coerced by dropping not one but two nukes on their country. The massive application of force in this case not only didn’t entail a disaster, it was an indisputable success in forcing Hirohito’s surrender. And the State’s massive application of force, I would say, didn’t end with Fatman, we occupied Japan with substantial military force for quite a long time.
I guess I’m still a little puzzled how the whole of your argument survives the facts of the Japanese experiment. Is your claim — the massive application of force by the state entails disaster — restricted solely to those (”just so”) contexts where the citizenry is benighted, or for whatever reason doesn’t embrace the “enforcers” with tea and roses? Is the exercise of state power not immoral (in the Libertarian view) if the people against whom it’s used welcome the consequence?
May 11th, 2004 at May 11, 04 | 6:05 pm
“So much the worse that, by so steadfastly opposing what is inarguably bad, you unleash what is indisputably worse. You reason like a nine-year-old girl.”
That’s a false dichotomy, one may of course oppose both the inarguably bad and the indisputably worse. In the absence of the inarguably bad would free man be defenseless against the indisputably worse?
May 11th, 2004 at May 11, 04 | 6:20 pm
Rod,
I agree it is not the case that the state must necessarily produce a disaster in a given finite project, even a very large one.
The War on Terror is especially troubling in that it does not appear to be a finite project. I’ve yet to hear a satisfactory explanation as to what what would constitute victory.
May 11th, 2004 at May 11, 04 | 6:30 pm
“I’ve yet to hear a satisfactory explanation as to what what would constitute victory.”
A liberalized Islamic world. But keep your blinders on! Fuck 5,000 years of dialectic about the “best” social interaction. Rothbard said the State is the source of all Evil. He is God. So it must true.
May 11th, 2004 at May 11, 04 | 7:08 pm
I agree it is not the case that the state must necessarily produce a disaster in a given finite project, even a very large one.
The War on Terror is especially troubling in that it does not appear to be a finite project. I’ve yet to hear a satisfactory explanation as to what what would constitute victory.
We’ll have to wait for Joshua to weigh in, but just to be clear, he seemed (I stress seemed) to be saying in the last two paragraphs that libertarians say the massive power of the state is illegitimate. But in his followup to me he seemed (again, seemed) to be excusing the awesome power of the state in the case of Japan because the Japanese weren’t then like the Iraqis now, vis-a-vis the reception our military occupation recieved subsequent to the initial massive application of force. That sounded like consequentialism with regard to state power whereas his original post didn’t.
May 11th, 2004 at May 11, 04 | 7:41 pm
The state is illegitimate, which is not to say it can never do a good thing. I think what a consistent libertarian can’t say is that it was legitimate or just to conscript Americans or to compel them to materially support the war.
May 11th, 2004 at May 11, 04 | 9:24 pm
>> “So much the worse that, by so steadfastly opposing what is inarguably bad, you unleash what is indisputably worse. You reason like a nine-year-old girl.”
> That’s a false dichotomy, one may of course oppose both the inarguably bad and the indisputably worse.
That is not the effect in the instant matter. The pretend-libertarians who have opposed the War on Terror have done so by making common cause with the Communists, themselves in the thrall of the Islamists. I could make an argument that people who are adamantly anti-state, as against being emphatically pro-freedom, are as much nihilists as the Communists: They don’t want to live, they want their fathers to die. In any case, siding with the systemic beheaders, de facto, as a means of condeming the aberrent GlowStick buttfuckers is the expression of a preference, and that preference is for the indisputably worse.
> In the absence of the inarguably bad would free man be defenseless against the indisputably worse?
You posit an imaginary alternative. Henceforth, this will be known as the Friedmaniacal Fallacy.
Holmes is a child, beyond doubt. Are you?
May 11th, 2004 at May 11, 04 | 10:38 pm
Greg,
I don’t see anyone on No Treason reaching out to commies or islamo-fascists, and I think I’ve done a pretty fair job of scorning such alliances.
“I could make an argument that people who are adamantly anti-state, as against being emphatically pro-freedom, are as much nihilists as the Communists: They don’t want to live, they want their fathers to die.”
Such sentiments certainly exist, but I don’t think they’re the ruling passion of anyone here.
“In any case, siding with the systemic beheaders, de facto, as a means of condeming the aberrent GlowStick buttfuckers is the expression of a preference, and that preference is for the indisputably worse. “
So you, on the other hand, would be a de facto statist?
“You posit an imaginary alternative.”
I was speaking of the absence of any particular evil being criticized, not evil itself.
May 12th, 2004 at May 12, 04 | 2:00 am
That’s cute. Swann thinks that government employees abusing folks is aberrant.
May 12th, 2004 at May 12, 04 | 5:00 pm
Do you dump support of police stopping a rape of a little girl (through offensive force) because the police are paid in taxes?
“Truth,” when someone attacks another and there are people around to stop it who are willing to stop the attack, then that’s fine with me. I just wish the police weren’t paid from tax money, that’s all.
May 12th, 2004 at May 12, 04 | 5:29 pm
Truth,
Take a gander at The Liberators, if you have a few minutes.
May 12th, 2004 at May 12, 04 | 5:56 pm
I never thought that piece was a good analogy. If The Liberators is intended to teach a lesson about Iraq then it leaves way too much out. Kuwait, for starters.
May 12th, 2004 at May 12, 04 | 6:05 pm
> Take a gander at The Liberators, if you have a few minutes.
What argument are you making? That pretend-libertarian vigilante assholes are bad guys? I agree. That Batman is insane? I agree. That people can make mistakes? There’s a revelation. Is it your claim that doing nothing in response to Islamism will have happy consequences? That would be incorrect. We are lucky that libertarians on either side of this debate are mere ballast. I would that my position with respect to Western Civilization were better understood by Bush and Blair, et alia, but the contrary strategy, cavil and cower, is absurd on its face. A radical critique of the state is a fine thing, just as much as a radical critique of a restaurant. But we shouldn’t confuse them with freedom or dinner. The libertarian argument will be no less true when our granddaughters are forced to wear burqas. But that is a fate that mere argument will not forestall. Do you have any rational (non-emotional, non-knee-jerk, non-anecdotal) counter-claim to make?
“Truth” hit you (all) with a slam dunk. The War on Terror has been largely successful as a stop-gap measure against Islamism (and hugely successful at its primary, subversive geo-political objectives). In the long run we need to take their children, one mind at a time. In the short run, we need for them to stop trying to kill innocents. How do you propose to achieve this?
(As an aside, all of this is amusing to me, inasmuch as I am the only libertarian I know of who rejects Fanatical Batmanism.)
The Holmsean complaint is stupid. The pretend-libertarian posturing against the War on Terror is stupid. We can see with complete clarity in Nigeria, among other places, what Islamism does unimpeded. The American alliance is without doubt non-ideal as a means of opposing Islamism. With what would you–or Holmes or Lopez–propose to replace it?
May 12th, 2004 at May 12, 04 | 6:59 pm
Greg,
Fundamentally I propose to take care of myself. Do you hold that it is necessary to govern me for the duration of this supposed emergency?
May 12th, 2004 at May 12, 04 | 7:05 pm
Swann: “The libertarian argument will be no less true when our granddaughters are forced to wear burqas. But that is a fate that mere argument will not forestall. Do you have any rational (non-emotional, non-knee-jerk, non-anecdotal) counter-claim to make?”
And “our granddaughters are forced to wear burqas” is not an emotional argument? Do you honestly see this as a likely event?
I’m not an expert on Islam, and I think you mean something different by “Islamism” than simply the Islamic religion, but I simply don’t see it being as much of a threat, short or long-term, as statism. And statism is the one thing that this “War on Terror” is bound to result in more of.
Islam alone is fairly innocuous. I work and eat with followers of it every day, and never has one of them suggested to me that my wife needs a burqa, or that I should change my diet, or pray to Mecca. They are at least as harmless as fundamentalist Christians, who seem far more likely to attempt to push their religion on me.
You and I both know that the State is evil. Islam + the State is also evil, often more so, as is (history tells us) Catholicism + the State. There have even been terribly unpleasant Buddhist States.
How do you propose that the “Islamists” would take over the US government in a country with so many vocal Christians?
Will the situation be better or worse if this happens when the government already has the expanded powers it “needs” to fight the War on Terror?
May 12th, 2004 at May 12, 04 | 7:27 pm
> Do you hold that it is necessary to govern me for the duration of this supposed emergency?
John, were I governing you, you would issue better sense or, best of all, silence.
(Incidentally, you seem to have been claiming over the last few days, that, were it not for the War on Terror, the U.S. government would have evaporated by now. This does not reflect a direct connection to reality.)
Critical distinctions are for active minds. Knee-jerk hyperbole is for everyone else. And everybody’s gotta take a side. Now did you have a point, or were you just counting coup?
Again: “We can see with complete clarity in Nigeria, among other places, what Islamism does unimpeded. The American alliance is without doubt non-ideal as a means of opposing Islamism. With what would you–or Holmes or Lopez–propose to replace it?”
If your true answer is to suck your thumb, then suck away. You’re irrelevant by choice. Toohey’s final argument to Keating is the true story of the West, the story Holmes was fumbling to tell a few weeks ago. In the end the begrudgingly-occidental, oriental-by-preference drag-alongs don’t matter. The West, and the world, if the world is to amount to anything, belongs to those who are willing to make critical distinctions. The rest are just there, that’s all. Big deal.
I said:<blockquote>This is a Just and Libertarian war. It will be led by people who are less than ideal, using means that are less than ideal, achieving ends that are less than ideal. But to oppose this war is to stand in opposition to all that is uniquely human in human life. To oppose this war is to make common cause with the brutal animality that, with but one shining exception in human history, has always usurped, enslaved and murdered the uniquely human life.
This war is Cain versus Abel. If you’re not on the side of civilization, you’re on the side of savagery. And Libertarians don’t get a pass just because they’re politically irrelevant.>/blockquote>;You claim here–and who knows what you actually think, which set of ignorami includes you, I would suppose–to side reflexively with savagery. It doesn’t actually make a difference; you are one more bit of ballast in a vast majority. But it makes a difference to you, to the quality of your thinking, to your ability to make critical distinctions in the future. But: In the absence of any affirmative rational argument from you, it means nothing at all to me.
In the future, I can save us both some time: I will simply assume, in response to anything I might say, that you will have already issued a snide sneer devoid of any intellectual content. It will cut me to the quick, you can be certain.
May 12th, 2004 at May 12, 04 | 7:48 pm
Steadman,
Are there any places on Earth that are now governed by Sharia law that were not 30 years ago? How did this happen? How is it happening right now in Nigeria, among many other places on the planet? Is it your claim that this process will somehow abate unimpeded?
Your candor is refreshing, at least: You don’t know what the hell we’re talking about. You’re alone only in admitting it.
May 12th, 2004 at May 12, 04 | 8:39 pm
Swann: “Are there any places on Earth that are now governed by Sharia law that were not 30 years ago? How did this happen? How is it happening right now in Nigeria, among many other places on the planet? Is it your claim that this process will somehow abate unimpeded?
There are lots of things different in the world than they ware 30 years ago. For instance, I am several feet taller. Not all these things are indications of inevitable trends. You seem to believe in some sort of a “Domino Theory” of Sharia. I don’t believe that I have my head in the sand (who does?) when I say that I am not convinced. I am certainly not convinced enough to support a war which will inevitably result in the deaths of innocents and expansion of the US Government, which I think is a lot more predictable than what you claim to forsee.
Sharia in Nigeria is being imposed mostly from within the existing democracy/republic, although I understand that Afghanistan was different. What percentage of a population is typically Muslim before Sharia is imposed? What percentage of its government leaders? When do you think that the US will hit something near those percentages? Do you think that “African American” Muslims would support such a regime?
Quite frankly, I find it far more likely that this country will be under a fundamentalist Christian or PC-feminazi-socialist State in 20 or 30 years than under an Islamic State. Feel free to tell me what I’m missing, other than “Sharia bad” (I know) and seems to be spreading in societies that are already quite unfree.
May 12th, 2004 at May 12, 04 | 9:56 pm
I expect to see a US city nuked within two years. but I am glad the andy stedmens of the world “care” about the liberty of those incinerated. i am sure he will whine and whine as the US governemnt expands even more, nukes cities in retaliation (what other response is there?) and puts muslims in camps following the utter destruction of houston or denver.
yes boys and girls, those are the stakes. and too bad mere children rather play with their pet “libertarain” theories rather than deal with the seriousness of the issue. they would rather watch those who would kill us grow even more powerful, while also oppressing millions and finally ALLOW them to nuke a city (or perhaps cheer?) - all because a no-talent assclown like rothbard wrote a book full of crackpot theories blaming the “state” for all ills (remember, it is wrong to have a war on a metaphor, unless rothbard is pimping it).
If the West dies, it is because those in it allowed it to happen.
May 12th, 2004 at May 12, 04 | 10:14 pm
I’m not buying your bill of goods, “truth”. You would have me believe that
(1) The Muslims who want to nuke a US city (yes, I believe there are some who would like to, and they may succeed) want do do so because we are so free, not because of the US government’s actions abroad.
(2) The “War on Terror” is materially reducing the probability that they will try to do this, or the probability that they will succeed.
(3) That the “War on Terror” will fail in this goal without my moral support.
Is that about right?
May 12th, 2004 at May 12, 04 | 10:16 pm
John,
“Incidentally, you seem to have been claiming over the last few days, that, were it not for the War on Terror, the U.S. government would have evaporated by now.”
I find it stunning that it could seem so to you.
May 12th, 2004 at May 12, 04 | 10:39 pm
1) who cares at this point. what is done is done. we know they will do it, are trying to do it, and yet you desperately want to find justification for their actions? to find justification for a man about to beat you? the slave morality if I ever saw it.
2) nice quotes around the “war on terror.” you deny this is a war? so typical of your “philsophy.” I believe with good reason the Iraq War will lessen the probablity of a nuked US city based on an understanding of its tactical and strategic goals. you assume it will fail absolutely because of a crack-pot theory (apperently libertarian crack-potism gives one psychic powers). you would propose inaction, or farting into the wind, as increasing liberty. again, the slave morality if I ever saw it.
3) do what you will, slave. but don’t think I will sit silent.
May 13th, 2004 at May 13, 04 | 2:22 am
With what would you–or Holmes or Lopez–propose to replace it?
Me? Private property, Swann, and everything that goes along with it, including leaving folks the hell alone who don’t want to be bothered with The War Against Terror Supporters like yourself. Now, you could go and make the standard statist argument that “problem x” requires that people be forced to surrender their production to your pet cause. You won’t, of course, because you’d rather make wild Biblical references (”Cain and Abel”), worship career politicos (”To Condi with sweetness“), and just plain make shit up (”Bush Doctrine”). Actually speaking the naked truth seems to be something you can’t bring yourself to do. You don’t want to hear about private property, Swann, because the implications of that concept conflict with your prejudices.
May 13th, 2004 at May 13, 04 | 6:59 am
In fact your anger does prove something, Lopez. It proves you can’t defend your positions. While you’re reading me on property (there’s a lot, including ontologies of both derivation and termination, the latter of which drives thoughtless morons like you completely crazy), do keep an eye out for Christian PC FemiNazis with explosives strapped to their flat chests. It turns out they’re everywhere.
May 13th, 2004 at May 13, 04 | 7:26 am
In fact your anger does prove something, Lopez. It proves you can’t defend your positions.
Indisputable proof, right there in those two sentences. Yep-per. Now that you’ve demolished free-market anarchism in fifteen words, I guess you’re all done, here.
On a less sarcastic note, I see that your usual verbosity has gotten the better of you, again. Ya just can’t quite bring yourself to renounce all that free-market stuff, can you?
May 13th, 2004 at May 13, 04 | 7:26 am
Wow, Lopez, you really are thing apart. I read the two pieces you linked to for the first time since I wrote them. Under the circumstances, I find it hard to believe that you did. In any case, do feel free to use any part of my corpus “against” me.
This is from Getting a grip on the war with Iraq: The ‘wrest’ of the story…:
The tragedy of this war is not the war itself. It will probably be all but bloodless on our side, and could well be bloodless on theirs–”A rational army would run away.” The tragedy is that the ‘regime changes’ of the years to come, and there are likely to be more than a few, will result in governments that are called democracies, but will have precious little real freedom. ‘Democracy’ has come to mean the sacred right to vote for your ruthless oppressors.
After World War II, know-it-all American regime-changers gifted Europe, Asia and Africa with the parliament, a machine with two oscillating extremes of tyranny and no center of liberty. The current crop of know-it-alls like to set up Rotarian Kleptocracies just like the one we have back home. If you’re wired with the right clique, some part of the state treasury is yours by right. If not, too bad.
This is a real mistake, one that is actually worthy of protest–thoughtful, reasoned, and, one would hope, clothed. The best state is no-state, but the next-best state is next-to-no-state, and it doesn’t really matter how a next-to-no-state is constructed. It can be a democracy, a monarchy or a monkey-archy, provided it cannot change or grow in power. This is what the United States should be instilling and installing around the globe, if it presumes to change other people’s regimes.
Why? To rid the world of terrorism, of course. The more shriveled the state, the larger the tree of commerce, and the deeper its roots. In a Rotarian Kleptocracy the tax and regulatory burdens upon entrepreneurs are virtually insuperable for the poor and unconnected. In a next-to-no-state, ideally ruled by a benevolent–and naked–monkey, anyone can go into business, and virtually everyone will. Group identity–the true ‘root cause’ of terrorism–prospers where self-interest is restricted. And while psychological-self-interest is paramount, not bodily- or pecuniary-self-interest, it remains that no one can discover the treasures of psychological-self-interest without having first reveled in bodily- and pecuniary-self-interest. Don’t believe me? Ask a seven-year-old. What we should want, if we had brains enough to want wisely, is a world peopled by rationalists, egoists, individualists. A slow but certain way to achieve that is to give the world capitalism, which can be effected simply by dismantling the barriers to it. The world–left unmolested–runs by itself.
And this is from To Condi, with sweetness:
But the single most vital and valuable treasure that a Condoleezza Rice presidency could present to America, and to the world, is this: She could shout down Islam without saying a word.
A President Rice would doubtless enact many important policies. She would continue the execution of the war against the East she is helping to plan. She would direct the efforts to spread the seeds of the West where they have never yet taken root. I have no doubt that she would be a fine president, perhaps one of the best.
But as good as she might be, she will be still better for having been a symbol for everything that is right with the West, and everything that is irredeemably wrong with the East.
Hellenic culture is Oriental, originally. It is of the East, as is all of human civilization. But Hellenic culture, Western culture, is unique among human civilizations because it is self-correcting. In the beginning, we were as sexist as the East. As xenophobic as the East. As rigid and dogmatic and implacable as the East. But we thought better and we learned better and we did better. Our progress was slow and incremental, but still it was progress. Aristotle owned slaves, as did Julius Caesar and Thomas Jefferson. But we have learned better, and we have learned to do better. And we have done better every time we have discovered that we had done badly.
The West can change–the West Greg Swann Says:
May 13th, 2004 at May 13, 04 | 7:41 am
Ahem, you idiot, I wrote the book on “free-market anarchism.” You’re a cheerleader, Lopez. A big dumb emotional jackass supplanting vigor for rigor. You lack any basis for the things you say. They’re just slogans, just sounds you repeat for no reason you can name. In this you are hardly unique. But there is nothing in you–in your life or in your work–that amounts to anything at all. It wouldn’t matter if you were a Bronwshirt or a Taliban; it would still be the same thing, the vigorous and vigilant regurgitation of the undigested. You are thoughtless–without thought–which puts you in a vast company. So what?
May 13th, 2004 at May 13, 04 | 3:23 pm
Truth:
1) who cares at this point. what is done is done. we know they will do it, are trying to do it, and yet you desperately want to find justification for their actions? to find justification for a man about to beat you? the slave morality if I ever saw it.
I’m not looking to justify the actions of terrorists: I don’t think it can be done, and wouldn’t care to do so. I am pointing out cause and effect. If you’ve been hitting a hornet’s nest with a stick, you keep getting stung, and now you’ve decided you need to solve the problem with a baseball bat, I’m not taking sides with the hornets if I point out that a better course of action might be to put down the stick and wander off. Or, get a can of Raid and kill the whole nest. Are you prepared to do that?
2) nice quotes around the “war on terror.” you deny this is a war? so typical of your “philsophy.” I believe with good reason the Iraq War will lessen the probablity of a nuked US city based on an understanding of its tactical and strategic goals.
Perhaps you could elaborate on this understanding. So far it looks like a clusterfuck to me.
you assume it will fail absolutely because of a crack-pot theory (apperently libertarian crack-potism gives one psychic powers). you would propose inaction, or farting into the wind, as increasing liberty. again, the slave morality if I ever saw it.
It’s possible that it will not fail absolutely. I never claimed to have a crystal ball. However, perhaps you could tell me what to look for. How will you know when it has been successful, so that you will no longer feel the need to loot me to solve the problem.
3) do what you will, slave. but don’t think I will sit silent.
So you don’t need my moral support? What are you doing commenting here, then?
May 13th, 2004 at May 13, 04 | 3:26 pm
Swann: …do keep an eye out for Christian PC FemiNazis with explosives strapped to their flat chests. It turns out they’re everywhere.
That’s a straw man, and you’re smart enough to know it. If there is to be a dictatorship in this country, it will be elected. Perhaps it will happen when enough people are convinced that we need to give up all our freedoms in order to remain free.
May 13th, 2004 at May 13, 04 | 3:31 pm
Bloody amazing, Swann, that you can’t do anything except spout ad hominem when I propose that my stuff is, well, mine, and not for your disposal for your pet projects. You obviously don’t agree, yet you can’t bring yourself to say so. So I’ll ask a straight question, in the vain hope of receiving a straight answer: Is my production, my life, rightfully mine, to spend or withhold from The Terror War (or anything else) as I so choose?
May 13th, 2004 at May 13, 04 | 3:41 pm
1) put down the stick and let them put a bullet into your head? will you get on you knees too? a least we know the mentality of those who were willing to be led by their captors into the gulag.
2) why should I bother? you have it all understood. The US govt is bad for taxing you a few thousand bucks, so get on your knees and take your bullet from islamists. never mind that there are aggressors who can use violence against millions and rob them of their liberty (and lives). ps: nobody here is saying you should pay taxes. if the guy who mugged me stops a rape of a little girl, his actions are still moral.
3) i have selfish interest in spreading the truth
May 13th, 2004 at May 13, 04 | 3:56 pm
truth:
“put down the stick and let them put a bullet into your head?”
The stick is not stopping any stings, or bullets for that matter. It is stirring things up.
“you have it all understood. The US govt is bad for taxing you a few thousand bucks, so get on your knees and take your bullet from islamists. never mind that there are aggressors who can use violence against millions and rob them of their liberty (and lives).”
I will defend me and mine when I have to. So will a lot of other folks. I am physically, mentally, armamentally, and logistically prepared to do so.
If I believed, as you seem to, that this is it, and our lives, families, and civilization is forfeit if we don’t act now, I would be wearing a uniform–or doing something even more effective.
May 13th, 2004 at May 13, 04 | 4:23 pm
but the “stick” might stop a nuked US city. and will your cheaply-held beliefs protect you from that?
nope, you will drop down to your kness as so many have in the face of totalitarians.
May 13th, 2004 at May 13, 04 | 5:24 pm
I have as yet to see anyone from the “they hate our freedoms” contingent offer a plausible account of how Islamists are going to impose their rule on America. This doesn’t, to my mind, show that there isn’t a need for some response to Islamic terrorism. But that’s not because the Islamists are going to enslave us, it’s because they want to kill us. That’s plenty bad enough, and is why I supported, with some reservations, the campaign in Afghanistan, but opposed the Iraq adventure from the get-go. So long as the state has a monopoly on the whole national defense thing, I’m willing to support a limited campaign to stomp out al-Qaeda and its ilk, but this doesn’t entail supporting the global crusade to “liberalize” the Middle East. (liberalizing via bombs is an interesting notion, btw) Unfortunately, no one seems to be interested in waging that kind of limited campaign. (ideally this would be accompanied by a wholesale American pullback from the Middle East so as to not offer further provocations resulting in the inevitable blowback)
May 13th, 2004 at May 13, 04 | 5:40 pm
get on your kness and beg for forgiveness (and your life)!
what a novel solution! if I am caught up in a bar fight started by my buddy, to stop the blow-back I get on my kness and offer my face to be punched in. that is called “liberty” by the anarcho-statists.
May 13th, 2004 at May 13, 04 | 5:56 pm
How is taking one’s hand out of a nest of vipers equivalent to begging for forgiveness? Just seems like common sense to me.
May 13th, 2004 at May 13, 04 | 6:16 pm
because you know damn well the vipers will bite you in the ass when you cut and run. and follow you home. and nuke you.
May 13th, 2004 at May 13, 04 | 9:40 pm
It seems a bit inconsistent to me how anti-Islam people can be pro-Iraq war. The result of deposing Hussein has been a large increase in the expression and power of fundamentalist Muslims in Iraq. We deposed a secular dictator, a non-religious tyrant who used brutal force to keep down the religious wackos. The wackos now have free reign to express themselves.
If you believe that a democracy of religious wackos is better than a secular dictatorship, fine. That seems reasonable to me. But to argue that its good because fundamentalist Islam is bad is illogical given that the effect has been, and was obviously going to be, the opposite.
If the worry is fundamentalism, how has this war helped?
May 14th, 2004 at May 14, 04 | 3:27 am
It seems a bit inconsistent to me how anti-Islam people can be pro-Iraq war. The result of deposing Hussein has been a large increase in the expression and power of fundamentalist Muslims in Iraq. We deposed a secular dictator, a non-religious tyrant who used brutal force to keep down the religious wackos. The wackos now have free reign to express themselves.
It’s not difficult for me to understand that people who are anti-Islam are split into (at least) two distinct groups: one which is entirely anti-Islam, and one which is anti-militant-Islam. This latter group, of course, believes what GWB and others have been telling them, which is that there is in fact a distinction between Islam and militant-Islam. Whether or not there actually is doesn’t matter, they believe it. They also believe that it was the militant Moslems who were conspiring, or would conspire, with Hussein to terrorize Americans. On this view, being pro-Iraq war isn’t the least bit inconsistent, because if their premise is correct then getting rid of Hussein foils that nexus of terror.
May 14th, 2004 at May 14, 04 | 7:00 am
Lopez: “Is my production, my life, rightfully mine, to spend or withhold from The Terror War (or anything else) as I so choose?”
Of course. What would ever lead you to think otherwise? Purposive human behavior is always self-motivated, never anything else. This seems tautological to me, but few enough people seem to understand it. No one can make you do anything, John. They can push you here or shove you there or chop off your head on a live web-cast. But every action of yours that is motivated by a purpose is entirely voluntary–internally initiated, invisiby to others, with those others having neither the power to cause nor prevent your purposive actions. You can always choose to do something else–or nothing–instead. I’m truly glad you asked this question, because so much of libertarian debate starts in the middle, with axioms an abstractions plucked out of thin air. This, by contrast, is a short summary of the actual ontology of rational volitionality. It is only by understanding what we really are, as entities, that we can hope to understand how best to realize our identities.
Now to answer your real question, which you didn’t quite have the wits to ask: As an advocate of the War on Terror, am I an advocate of the power to tax? No. I am also an advocate of potable water, but nevertheless not an advocate of the power to tax. Unfortunately, in both cases, the source available to me of values I pursue asserts a power to tax, with no sign that this will change any time soon. I think this tax quibble is stupid, and I think libertarians make themselves look even more than usually stupid by bitching about a tax-supported war but not rebelling against tax-supported water or libraries or roads or skate-parks, but it doesn’t matter much either way. The War on Terror will be fought with tax dollars, and nothing I say about that one way or the other will change anything.
Now go away.
May 14th, 2004 at May 14, 04 | 9:03 pm
(Swann) I think this tax quibble is stupid, and I think libertarians make themselves look even more than usually stupid by bitching about a tax-supported war but not rebelling against tax-supported water or libraries or roads or skate-parks
Libraries, roads, and skate-parks don’t kill people or provoke attrocities.
Do you criticize the anti-war side because they object to this? Or because they object to the military actions themselves, and would do so if they were carried out using voluntary funding?
Only a small group of people are deciding how best to pursue the fight against Islamicists–and using our money to do so. We don’t get to decide whether we would like to spend our money on more intelligent and effective strategies, or simply keep it and spend it on a new SUV, a plane ticket to visit family, or a big pile of crack cocaine. As the rightful owners of the cash the IRS takes, don’t we have a greater right to decide how to use that money?
I agree with you that decisive action must be taken to confront this threat. My gut feeling is that the invasion of Iraq is a gamble which has a slightly better than even chance to result in a net positive. It has the potential to be a disaster, of course. I’m willing to spend my money on at least some of these engagements. But even if I consider the threat of Islamicism to be far more important than the problem of involuntary taxation, I don’t have the right to deicide the same thing for John Lopez because I have no just claim over his money.
(Stedman) Islam alone is fairly innocuous. I work and eat with followers of it every day, and never has one of them suggested to me that my wife needs a burqa, or that I should change my diet, or pray to Mecca. They are at least as harmless as fundamentalist Christians, who seem far more likely to attempt to push their religion on me.
Likewise, I have contact with Muslims, almost always quite friendly. But I don’t harbor any illusions that all of these people have the same attitudes in the privacy of their homes or mosques, much less in their heads. Not one of the Muslim I know has every voiced any criticism of the WTC attacks to me, though a local Pakistani convenience store owner hung an American flag in his window. Were I in their shoes, the first thing I would do is loudly denounce the people who committed attrocities in the name of my faith. I would make clear my thoughts to those around me to avoid mistrust. I used to argue about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a coworker, who kept trying to justified suicide bombings.
I’m sure most Muslims here pose no threat to us
kuffar. But some of them do, whether they are sleep agents, or willing to assist terrorists, or simply complicit in spreading irrational propaganda (i.e., the blood libel against Jews) and inculcating children with hatred. You dismiss such threats at your own peril.
May 15th, 2004 at May 15, 04 | 2:20 am
Fallacy of the No True Scotsman. So much the worse that, by so steadfastly opposing what is inarguably bad, you unleash what is indisputably worse.
Nonsense. There’s nothing in Iraq that was going to be unleashed. The idea that a country with an economy the size of South Carolina with no navy or air force to speak of is somehow going to pose a threat to me, in Cleveland, is completely ludicrous. More ludicrous yet is your notion that Islamic terrorism is so strong, capable, and well-organised that they’re going to march into the West and set up police states. Why, any day now I expect to see al-Qaeda capture the Cuyahoga County Courthouse and hoist the crescent and star.
You reason like a nine-year-old girl.
That would be at least 3 years older than the mental age of any of your godawful “prose.”
May 15th, 2004 at May 15, 04 | 2:23 am
Suffice it to say that the cooperation, or whatever you wish to call it, of the Japenese polity was necessarily coerced by dropping not one but two nukes on their country. The massive application of force in this case not only didn’t entail a disaster, it was an indisputable success in forcing Hirohito’s surrender. And the State’s massive application of force, I would say, didn’t end with Fatman, we occupied Japan with substantial military force for quite a long time.
The massive force put down the Japanese threat but did little to change the culture. The postwar Japanese culture was already there before the war.
May 15th, 2004 at May 15, 04 | 3:02 am
What would ever lead you to think otherwise?
Certainly not the volumes that you’ve written cheerleading The War Against Terror.
Now to answer your real question, which you didn’t quite have the wits to ask: As an advocate of the War on Terror, am I an advocate of the power to tax?
Swann, you know quite well that that question is a subset of what I asked. But you just can’t resist ad hominem, can you? It’s the best tool you’ve got.
Unfortunately, in both cases, the source available to me of values I pursue asserts a power to tax, with no sign that this will change any time soon.
Holy shit! Is Swann embracing utilitarianism? No way.
The War on Terror will be fought with tax dollars, and nothing I say about that one way or the other will change anything.
True enough - no amount of cheerleading’s going to make the State any smarter.
May 15th, 2004 at May 15, 04 | 6:17 am
The massive force put down the Japanese threat but did little to change the culture. The postwar Japanese culture was already there before the war.
Surely that’s arguable by people who know more of the relevant details than I do, so I won’t debate it with you.
But I am left wondering, if not Japan, then what disasters did you have in mind when you concluded this:
…a “burden” which tells us that the state can remake and ought to remake benighted societies through the massive application of force. No one should have to tell us what sort of disaster this entails.
I guess I need to be told.
May 15th, 2004 at May 15, 04 | 7:48 am
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May 15th, 2004 at May 15, 04 | 5:45 pm
……
May 15th, 2004 at May 15, 04 | 8:08 pm
Irreconcilable Differences?
Joshua Holmes at No Treason sure opened the flood gates in a post about how libertarians, normally allied against statism, are quite divided in their positions on The War. …the War on Terror and the War on Iraq have separated the libertarians who mea…
May 17th, 2004 at May 17, 04 | 2:28 pm
Well, Lopez, while you may not know the difference between an insult and an Utilitarianism is. Your ignorance is uncorrupted.
May 18th, 2004 at May 18, 04 | 2:57 am
It’s difficult to tell exactly what your arguments are, Swann, but I’ll take you at your word that you make none here.
May 19th, 2004 at May 19, 04 | 6:52 pm
> It’s difficult to tell exactly what your arguments are
Say what? “I don’t understand you, theregfore you’re wrong.” We’ll call this one the Lopez Fallacy, argumentum ab ignorantia. Alas, only the appellation is new.
November 30th, 2004 at Nov 30, 04 | 4:29 am
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