The rules on the Mises blog warn that if you violate the rules “you risk being black listed, not only by Mises.org but by the general blog blacklist used by millions of other blogs.”

Can anyone tell me anything about this general blog blacklist? I would think I’d have heard of it by now.

(Sabotta has never heard of it either. Try explaining that away.)

Update: Stedman explained that away when he passed me this link. Okay, so it’s just for comment spam. But even so, millions of blogs are using it?

The police are who protect you from criminals and absolve you from the responsibility of doing it for yourself, right? Well, how many more Officer Kris Smith’s are out there? And who will protect you from them?

“It’s alleged he knocked a motorcyclist off his motorcycle, causing him to fall off and almost be run over,” Columbus Police spokesperson Sherri Mercurio said.

You might object that the system works, as demonstrated that Officer Smith is now in custody and has actually been charged with the appropriate crime: felonious assault. Read the whole article again, more carefully. Here’s the important bit:

The Pickaway County Sheriff says Smith recently tried to stop another man in [sic] near I-670 and I-71, but that man turned out to be an undercover police officer. A report was taken, but no charges were ever filed.

Say what? It should have been obvious to anyone that this guy wasn’t just accidentally a bit outside his jurisdiction. Neither I-670 or I-71 pass through the town he polices, and although the article doesn’t indicate that he was actually on the interstate, that intersection is miles from the small town he patrols, and well into downtown Columbus. He was clearly up to no good. This is likely a case of the undercover officer utilizing extremely poor judgment and extending “professional courtesy” to a fellow officer–the same way that they let each other out of speeding tickets. Also:

There’s yet another incident that dates back to September of 2000, when Smith was working as a Valleyview police officer. The Columbus Dispatch reported Smith was charged with assault, accused of pointing a gun at another motorist while he was off duty. The following May, the newspaper reported prosecutors reduced the charge to criminal mischief. Valleyview Police fired Smith.

At least there were some consequences for that one, although one has to wonder how he got another job as a police officer after that incident. Jeffrey “Hunter” Jordan received far harsher treatment for carrying a gun in his car through Ohio, and he never even pointed it at anyone.

So, next time you see the flashing lights in your rear view mirrors, is it prudent to assume that you’re being pulled over “for your own good” by Officer Friendly, or is it Kris Smith, or perhaps Stanley Street, Robert Smith, Ervin Myers, Billy Ray White, or maybe even Frank Wright?

If you call 911 and one of them shows up, are you any better off than if you had tried to handle the situation yourself?

Kinsella thinks a guy should be banned from breeding for failure to pay child support. (*) Kinsella gets it wrong, but there are parts of his argument that I’m sympathetic with:

If you pass by a drowning man in a lake you have no enforceable (legal) obligation to try to rescue him, nor should you; but if you push someone in a lake you have a positive obligation to try to rescue them. If you don’t you could be liable for homicide. Likewise, if your voluntary actions bring into being a baby with natural needs for shelter, food, care, it’s akin to throwing someone into a lake. In both cases you create a situation where another human is in dire need of help and without he will die. By creating this situation you incur an obligation to provide for those needs.

By this argument Kinsella and I would probably agree that abortion is morally indefensible. But I hold that full responsibility for the child must be recognized where nature bestows the child. Consent to sex is not a contract to raise children together. Consent to sex neither commits a man to providing for a woman’s child nor commits the woman to allowing that man in her child’s life.

As Lynette has written:

Children are born as the consequence of a series of deliberate and cognitive decisions that only their mothers make, such as 1) Will I have sex? 2) Will I use birth control? 3) Will I carry this child to term? 4) Will I elect to keep this child rather than to adopt it out?

Those are each questions that take considerable thought and deliberate action to implement over the course of time. However, if potential mothers would face up to just one question, it would solve almost all custody and support issues existing today. It’s a question which has been so far relegated into the background that it’s hardly ever featured in these sorts of discussions, but it’s what women need to put the most emphasis on.

Is this man worthy of fathering my children?

It’s only in recent times that the above question of utmost importance has been driven into obscurity by the perversity of a statist system that inevitably awards the most irresponsible behaviors. Throughout the ages, women have realized the importance of being selective about the men with whom they breed and have recognized that they are ultimately responsible for the care and upbringing of their children, but the burgeoning nanny state vigorously selects for numb-cunted felon factories who siphon the public dole, it encourages good for nothing ex-wife princesses to use their crotchfuit as an excuse to soak their ex-husbands for a 20 year meal ticket and it has muddled the heads of the masses into thinking that some external force must always ride to the rescue of any bedraggled madonna who ends up in the cold with her sprog because of dismally poor choices on her own part.

It’s clear to me that women are, by nature, 100% responsible for the children they bear. If the prospect of having children is such a burden to them, if they cannot shoulder that responsibility on their own, it’s imperative that they use special care and caution in the selection of a mate and/or get a signed contract addressing the duties of each parent toward their children and each other if needs be.

By imposing legal consequences on this man Kinsella would actually be shielding women from the costs of their own bad judgment, which of course will never encourage them to employ better judgment. In a free society individuals bear the costs of their own decisions. It’s a biological fact that the natural consequences and costs of reproduction are not symmetrical for men and women. Any attempt to shift those costs is misguided social engineering.

Even though I hold mothers morally responsible for providing for their children I would never invite the state to regulate reproduction, as Kinsella has. If Kinsella individually wants to protect a child from its unfit mother then perhaps he may morally do so, but collectivist regulation of reproduction is a nightmare scenario.

(*) - Here I had written: ” (By the way Stephan, it would be polite to link to us when you refer to us directly as chattering punks, or at least to your earlier chattering punk piece. Now I wouldn’t be surprised if someone at LRC has had a few words with you about linking to NT, but I assume you could still do it on your own blog.)”

I stand corrected; Kinsella has informed me that no one discouraged him from linking to No Treason. He has now linked his reference to No Treason, which I appreciate and for which I thank him.

Because unlike John Walker Lindh, the man who did this…

Five and a half years ago, you pointed a high-powered, scoped rifle through a window and calmly (by your own description) pulled the trigger. The .308 bullet plunged through Vicki Weaver’s right cheek, pulverized her teeth, severed her tongue, and exited through the left side of her neck, ripping out her carotid artery, leaving a three-inch exit wound, and just missing the tiny skull of 10-month old Elisheba Weaver. Bullet and skull fragments bore into Kevin Harris, causing lifelong pain and disability.

… is still walking free.

Time Magazine has reported that Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the minority leader in the House, has exposed a CIA plan to pitch the forthcoming Iraqi elections. Apparently, the Iranian government and the United States have been running covert projects to put their favoured thieves in Iraqi office.

“Let ‘em vote for whoever they like, ’s’long as I get to pick the candidates.” - Boss Tweed

Heads up: Liberty and Power

There are certainly writers I like and respect at LRC and the Mises Institute and some of them may be questioning whether my song parody Lew Rockwell’s Army is fair. I’ll explain why I think it is.

My basic point is that preventing free immigration requires targeting peaceful individuals with deadly force. There is no other way to prevent what they oppose.

Those advocating such immigration control ought to be willing, in principle, to go down and patrol the Mexican border themselves and employ deadly force against a peaceful individual who wants to come mow my lawn.

So here’s the challenge, will you affirm this?

Yes, in principle I would be willing to personally shoot and kill that peaceful immigrant if that’s what it took to keep him from coming here to mow your lawn.

It takes deadly force to secure the borders. Remove that force and the borders are wide open. And if you advocate closed borders but you’re not willing in principle to employ that force yourself then clearly you are a chickenhawk on immigration.

My parody Lew Rockwell’s Army assumes that you’re not chickenhawks, since chickenhawks are despised at LRC.

So what’s not fair?

So far I have not seen Rockwell, Hoppe, Kinsella or any member of the LRA affirm that they would in principle personally be willing to do what it takes to prevent open immigration.

So who wants to be first out of the chickenhawk coop?

[To the tune of Oliver’s Army by Elvis Costello]

Don’t start Lew talking;
he could talk all night.
His mind goes sleepwalking
while he’s setting the borders right.
Call Lew up for information
and he’ll tell you his preoccupation:

Lew Rockwell’s Army is here to stay
Lew Rockwell’s Army are on their way
and you had better cross anywhere else but here today.

There was a Checkpoint Hoppe
he didn’t crack a smile
but it’s no laughing party
when you’ve been on the murder mile
only takes one itchy trigger
one less immigrant wetback nigger.

Lew Rockwell’s Army is here to stay
Lew Rockwell’s Army are on their way
and you had better cross anywhere else but here today.

Mexifornia needs a gate!
Wetbacks won’t assimilate!
We’ll be there in the Rio Grande
overrun by the Mexicans
with the boys from ol’ VDARE and American Ren…

It’s not aggression,
our social order must cohere,
and it could be arranged
with just a word in Pat Buchanan’s ear.
If you’re out of luck or out of work
blame it on some border crossing jerk.

Lew Rockwell’s Army is here to stay
Lew Rockwell’s Army are on their way
and you had better cross anywhere else but here today.

Lew Rockwell’s Army
securing free markets and individual rights.

In Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s latest anti-immigrant diatribe*, he makes note of the cost of the prospective immigrant to taxpayers:

Unfortunately, welfare states are not operated like factory towns or even Swiss communities. Under welfare-statist condition the immigrant employer must pay only a small fraction of the full costs associated with the immigrant’s presence. He is permitted to socialize (externalize) a substantial part of such costs onto other property owners. Equipped with a work permit, the immigrant is allowed to make free use of every public facility: roads, parks, hospitals, schools, and no landlord, businessman, or private association is permitted to discriminate against him as regards housing, employment, accommodation, and association. That is, the immigrant comes invited with a substantial fringe benefits package paid for not (or only partially) by the immigrant employer (who allegedly has extended the invitation), but by other domestic proprietors as taxpayers who had no say in the invitation whatsoever. This is not an “invitation,” as commonly understood. This is an imposition.

But what Hoppe doesn’t address is the fact that he wants to keep out immigrants via the means of the State.

Unlike Mexicans picking vegetables, government border guards are paid exclusively via taxes. The property owners in the United States don’t bear just a “substantial” part of the costs imposed by government employees, they bear 100% of those costs. Thus by Hoppe’s own logic, the very people that he wants to use to keep out immigrants are far worse parasites than any illegal immigrant could ever hope to become.

If Hoppe is truly concerned about the tax burden that any given individual puts on the taxpayers, why doesn’t he turn his focus to the INS, rather than the immigrants they are trying to keep out?

* As you’ll note from the link, Hoppe’s original piece has been replaced by a redirect to a different file on the Mises.org site. This isn’t the first time that embarassing material has disappeared from Lewrockwell.com: two columns by crypto-Nazi Jared Taylor suffered similar fates, as documented here.

** Update: Now, the following appears at the URL formerly holding the Hoppe column:

Publishing Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s footnote 23 from Natural Order, the State, and the Immigration Problem caused a lot of comment. Please see also his Secession, the State, and the Immigration Problem and On Free Immigration and Forced Integration. There is also his LRC archive and his personal website.

I judge that Hoppe’s column has now been pulled from Lewrockwell.com.

*** Update: LRC’s own Stephan Kinsella points out in comments that the Hoppe piece hasn’t been pulled: one of the links there is to a Hoppe paper, of which the original column was a footnote. Kinsella notes that this bizarre obfuscation is so that we “can easily see the whole article and the note in context.” Context has indeed been provided: instead of the isolated piece of stupid hatefulness that this first appeared to be, one can now easily see that it’s merely one small particle of stupid hatefulness embedded in a giant matrix of hateful stupidity.

Thanks, Kinsella!

Hoppe on immigration policy:

What should one hope for and advocate as the relatively correct immigration policy, however, as long as the democratic central state is still in place and successfully arrogates the power to determine a uniform national immigration policy? The best one may hope for, even if it goes against the “nature” of a democracy and thus is not very likely to happen, is that the democratic rulers act as if they were the personal owners of the country and as if they had to decide who to include and who to exclude from their own personal property (into their very own houses).

I certainly see the economic point in this. Holding a nations property in common leads to the Tragedy of the Commons. A monarchy avoids this because the nation’s property is effectively the private property of an individual. It seems plausible on it’s face that we might prefer that this democracy behaved more like a monarchy than a democracy, at least in some respects.

Hoppe continues:

This means following a policy of utmost discrimination: of strict discrimination in favor of the human qualities of skill, character, and cultural compatibility.

Well. Let’s think about this.

I think that’s fine for an individual. But should this personal practice be translated into public policy? What is benign in private life quickly turns malignant in the public sphere.

What would what Hoppe is hoping for look like? Andy Duncan quotes Hoppe:

There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society. Likewise, in a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin, there can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal. They – the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centred lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism – will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order.

It would be harmless for Hoppe to so discriminate as in individual in a free market, but can one doubt that this is precisely what he’d like to see enacted in public policy? As collective public policy this is monstrous.

Do Hoppe’s associates at Lew Rockwell’s sites want to defend this? Will any take public issue with it?

For the record, I do think that opening the borders fully and completely immediately wouldn’t produce very good results. The rush would overwhelm public and private services in most of the border states; they simply wouldn’t have time to adjust. There would be serious overcrowding, a drastic shortage of lodging, and probably serious violence coming from communal upheaval and contest for increasingly scarce resources. As Mises, Rothbard, and Hoppe all correctly point out, time is a factor in all production.

I think, though, that I can also say that the poor results that immediate opening would produce is a result of immigration restrictions. Many Mexicans, for instance, don’t want to come to live in America full-time. They want to work in America and live in Mexico, or they want to work in America during seasonal periods of demand (harvests and planting, especially) and return to Mexico when the labour crush is over. Immigration policies seriously botch what would otherwise be a very normal, regular, seasonal migration back and forth between Mexico and America. Immigration restrictions actually encourage people to come and stay who really don’t want to do so.

Immigration policy has further problems. Whenever the state tries to restrict peaceful travel and commerce, black markets pop up to supply that demand. However proper the commerce might be, most of the people involved in black markets are lousy human beings, many are exploitative, and a serious portion are outright criminals. The black markets in narcotics are a case in point: narcotics trafficking is not, in and of itself, a crime, but most of the people involved in the trade are criminals (and the rest are unsavoury, to be charitable). No openness, no transparency, no appeal to legal remedies: it’s no wonder that immigrants are dying off left and right.

Immigration policy, itself, has created the unfortunate but likely on-rush that would follow an abrupt end to immigration restrictions. Whether out of respect for the law, out of fear of the immigration enforcers, or out of fear of the unsavoury characters (coyotes) involved in immigrant smuggling, a number of people who have long-desired to come to this country have not. They are waiting, wherever they are, hoping for an opportunity to do so but afraid of the costs. Had the borders been open forever, these people would have come whenever they could have afforded bus fare to get here. But since the immigration policies kept them out, they’ve been bottled up, waiting and hoping.

This, in part, answers some of the utilitarian objections made about open borders. Yes, if Switzerland opened her borders completely tomorrow, very likely it would suffer a rush of people who have been dying to get in. Ditto most wealthy countries. However, if their borders had always been open, people would have streamed in over many years. When people come in a steady stream, they are more easily integrated into the new society than would a large group of people who show up roughly simultaneously. In a free society, a steady stream of people who arrive come to be socialised and to understand why their new country is so much better than their old one. It’s true that, if they opened the borders tomorrow, a rush of new immigrants would show up that would never and probably could never be socialised. However, if those people had been able to come all along, the socialisation process could have easily kept up.

As with anything else, state interference in the free movement of people across borders creates many more problems than it solves.

(My father’s family came to this country to escape the wars for Irish independence in the early 20th century. My mother’s family came to this country to escape English persecution of Methodists and Brownians in the 17th century. I love this country for giving them an opportunity to escape, build their lives, and thrive.)

Poland seems like a fun place! I know all about Poland because I watched a movie called THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT (Rekopis znaleziony w Saragossie)

Poland is full of cute girls who don’t wear very much and Kabalists and ghosts! I want to immigrate to Poland now!

www.saveyourself.com