I find it amusing that Kim DuToit can notice the fact that the US government can’t wrangle elk properly but naively accepts that the government is competent to secure 5000 miles of borders.

The reason for this is easy enough to explain: DuToit isn’t a philosopher and so has no inherent stake in making a correct analysis of the situation. His credulous faith in the nonexistent abilities of the Federal government to keep Mexicans out of the US doesn’t do him much good, but more importantly it doesn’t do him much harm either: however much or how little thought he puts into this, he’ll get the same amount of Mexicans. Likewise with elk.

A majoritarian democratic government might as well be a cargo cult for all the good that rational thought does you: think this, blog that, vote the other, and out pops a result. If you like the result, do the same thing next year. If you don’t, change a few things and try again. A cargo cult doesn’t operate any better if you think real hard about it.

This is a capsule example of why rational evangelism doesn’t work. There’s no penalty for holding contradictory political ideas, there’s no apparent benefit from adopting a more consistent worldview. The goofiest bumpkin notion is equal to the finest philisophical idea, when they’re committed to ballots.

All of that seems to speak against logical argumentation in general: why bother if it isn’t going to get anyone anywhere? Why think about things if the most likely outcome of the matter at hand is that everyone maintains their state of rational ignorance?

The best possible outcome of the great Wetback Prevention and Elk Encouragement debate isn’t that it’s going to end up producing you any different amounts of elk or wetbacks, the best possible outcome is that you gain something by participating.

Contra John T. Kennedy’s rebuke of Patri Friedman, I present a concrete example that should set the discussion to rest.

The situation is simple: we have an illegal immigrant from an indisputably “hostile to freedom” culture who is residing in the United States. American immigration deports him.

What’s wrong with that, Kennedy? Isn’t it at least worth considering the future liberty you might gain?

A picture of this illegal immigrant is reproduced below:

Above: Illegal immigrant from hostile-to-freedom culture being deported by American law enforcement.

Patri,

You write on immigration:

If you believe (as Russell claims to) that in a country like the US, an influx of people hostile to freedom will reduce the freedom of people in that country, one is led inexorably to an uncomfortable conclusion. Namely, that the impact on freedom is the combination of gains from the increased freedom of the immigrants and losses from the decreased freedom of the residents. We can let in the coercers and be coerced, or we can coercively keep them out.I

Now, there is plenty of room for debate about the resulting net impact. But if immigrants truly are anti-freedom, then the real question is how to evaluate this tough tradeoff. Not whether libertarians can have their immigration and a small government too.

Do you really propose to trade the lives and liberty of some people against those of others? Anyone who endorses such a tradeoff as a matter of policy ought in principle to be willing to implement that tradeoff himself. Anyone endorsing a closed border ought in principle be willing to personally employ deadly force to keep people from crossing the border.

Eventually the moment of truth comes: You have a Mexican in your sights and nothing but your bullet can stop him from crossing into the United States. Now you get to make your “tradeoff”. Are you willing to trade his life for the marginal liberty you could retain for America by killing him? Could you conceivably defend such a tradeoff here and now as libertarian?

If you’re not willing in principle to shoot the Mexican then it should be clear that you ought not hire others to do it for you or endorse such as a matter of policy. And if you are not prepared in principle to do such a thing then what precisely are you proposing to trade? Preferring one outcome to another is no tradeoff in and of itself, your preferences don’t cost anyone anything. Only your actions can impose costs and produce benefits.

The life and liberty of others are not yours to trade. I think you would understand this perfectly well if you were face to face with the individuals in question but when you consider them collectively in the abstract you are seduced through a weakness for wonkery into imagining that men have no choice but to trade in such values.

Fred Reed:

An intelligent enemy knows that America cannot be beaten at industrial war. So he thinks, “What then are America’s weaknesses?” The first and crucial one is that the American government enters into distant wars in which the public has no stake. Do you want your son to die for—get this—democracy in Iraq? You diapered him, got him through school-yard fist fights, his first prom, graduation from boot camp, and he comes home in a box—for democracy in Iraq?

Warren Jeffs has joined Usama Bi Laden on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List. Everyone knows Bin Laden is considered responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks but what exactly is Warren Jeffs accused of? Stories about Jeffs are all over the news but the details of the charges are hard to come by. The FBI notice says:

WARREN STEED JEFFS, THE LEADER OF A POLYGAMOUS SECT, IS WANTED FOR THE ALLEGED SEXUAL ASSAULT ON A MINOR IN 2002. HE IS ALSO WANTED FOR ONE COUNT OF CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT SEXUAL CONDUCT WITH A MINOR IN 2002. THE ALLEGED OFFENSES TOOK PLACE IN THE VICINITY OF COLORADO CITY, ARIZONA. ADDITIONALLY, JEFFS IS WANTED FOR RAPE AS AN ACCOMPLICE IN UTAH.

Jeffs may be a child molester as his nephew Brent Jeffs claims. But I find the criminal charges against Warren Jeffs to be very suspicious.

He’s charged with conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor and conspiracy to rape. This story is all over the news networks and print media but you have to look surprisingly hard to discover the substance of these charges. You’ll hear that he married an underage girl to an older man, but it sounds a lot less dramatic when you learn we’re talking about marrying a 16 year old woman to a 28 year old man:

In a chilling account laid out in court papers released Thursday, a woman identified as “Jane Doe” said Jeffs demanded she marry and have “husband-wife” relations with an older man despite her protests and pleas that she be released from the union.

Jane said she followed the instructions because she considered Jeffs, president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, to be a prophet of God.

Utah authorities praised Jane’s courage in sharing her account with Washington County Sheriff’s Deputy Shauna Jones earlier this year and said they hope it will lead other victims to come forward.

As for Jeffs, he is “not exempt from the law despite his position or beliefs,” said Washington County Attorney Brock Belnap. “To those who may be considering coming forward with information but fear repercussions, to yourself or your family, I want you to know that we will do all in our power to respect your concerns, preserve your privacy and provide assistance.” Jeffs, 50, is a federal fugitive wanted on Arizona charges of facilitating sexual conduct with a minor. He has not been seen publicly in more than a year. Brock had asked a 5th District judge to issue a no-bail warrant, but the judge set a cash-only bail of $500,000.

Belnap would not divulge the woman’s age but said she was between ages 14 and 18 and the events occurred within the past four years. Jane’s account is backed up by photos documenting her marriage and other events she said took place.

Utah law allows a person who facilitates a rape to be charged as an accomplice, with a possible penalty of life in prison. Jeffs did not commit any sexual act with the victim and was not present when it occurred, Belnap said.

“This case is about a violation of the law by someone in a position of power and authority over a vulnerable, young girl,” Belnap said.

According to an affidavit, Jane said she met with Jeffs, who told her God had revealed she was to be joined in a “spiritual marriage” to a man identified as “John Doe.” Jane, who grew up in Hildale, told Jeffs she felt she was too young to marry. Jeffs’ reply: It was her spiritual duty to submit to the arrangement, which was “from God.” Jane said she and John were then taken to Nevada, where Jeffs performed a marriage ceremony and told them to “multiply and replenish the earth and raise children in the priesthood.” They returned to Utah and a month later John approached Jane and reminded her of Jeffs’ instructions, telling her “now was the time.” He then forced Jane to have sexual intercourse, she said.

Once again, Jane went to Jeffs and told him she did not want to stay in the marriage because she hated having “husband-wife” relations with John.

During that conversation, neither she nor Jeffs used the words “sex” or “sexual intercourse,” Jane said, because such language is not culturally permitted. But, Jane said, there was no question Jeffs understood what they were talking about.

Jeffs told her to stay in the marriage, Jane said, and do whatever John demanded because he was her priesthood leader.

“Go back and repent,” Jane said Jeffs told her. “You go give yourself mind, body and soul to your husband like you’re supposed to. He will take you into the heavenly kingdom. Go back and do what he tells you to do.” Jane said she did as instructed by Jeffs and continued to have sexual relations with John despite her objections. In a later meeting, Jeffs told Jane that in time she would grow to love John and that having a baby by him would change everything.

In another meeting, Jeffs told Jane that, “No matter what happens you cannot fight with the priesthood because if you do you’ll lose your salvation.” Those remarks frightened her enough that she stayed in the marriage, Jane said.

Her decision to speak out against the crime now brought praise from Utah officials.

“The great thing is that this young woman has demonstrated she is going to trust government,” said Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff. “I hope she is an example to others, who will follow suit.” Jane’s story parallels that of woman who testified before a Mohave County grand jury last summer about her own forced marriage. The woman said she was 16 when Jeffs assigned her as a plural wife to Randolph Barlow, then 28, in 2002.

Like Jane, she was taken to a motel in Caliente, Nev., where Jeffs performed their marriage ceremony. He also gave the girl and Barlow instructions to “multiply and replenish the earth.” She protested that she was too young to have children; despite that, the girl said Barlow forced her to have sexual intercourse.

Barlow now faces two assault charges and a June trial.

In Washington County on Thursday, Belnap said he has not yet decided whether to file rape charges against John. “I’m not ruling anything in or out,” Belnap said. “It is still under investigation.” Arizona has charged Jeffs with sexual conduct with a minor and conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor for his role in arranging the Barlow marriage. Last June, the FBI issued a warrant for Jeffs’ arrest for fleeing prosecution on those charges. There is a $60,000 reward for information leading to his capture.

It appears that it is the Barlow case in which Jeffs is chared with rape. Oddly enough the alleged rapist does not appear to be charged with rape. So what did Jeffs actually do? He married a 16 year old to a 28 year old. That may be illegal in some states but it’s hardly a shocking event in the historical context of marriage in America. There are states in which to this day a 16 year old woman can marry entirely at her own discretion. And Jeffs also preached to the woman. And this amounts to conspiracy to rape? This appears to be a novel and imaginative charge. But it sure sounds a lot worse if you omit all details.

I suspect that the other criminal charges facing Jeffs all involve marriages of fertile young women who are legally underage, but who would have been accepted to be of marriageable age though much of U.S. history. I don’t think it’s at all fair to characterize Jeffs as a child abuser on the basis of such acts. In fact I don’t see that the criminal charges relate to moral crimes at all.

His followers better watch out though, because the talking heads are speculating that they may be involved in the next Waco or Jonestown.

The Seattle public school system denounces as racist any characterization of “future time orientation” as normal:

Definition of Cultural Racism: Those aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label people of color as “other”, different, less than, or render them invisible. Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and identifying only Whites as great writers or composers.

Apparently planning for the future is all white and stuff. Likewise all that nonsense about individual rights.

As predicted Bush just opened the door for national biometric ID:

Third, we need to hold employers to account for the workers they hire. It is against the law to hire someone who is in this country illegally. Yet businesses often cannot verify the legal status of their employees, because of the widespread problem of document fraud. Therefore, comprehensive immigration reform must include a better system for verifying documents and work eligibility. A key part of that system should be a new identification card for every legal foreign worker. This card should use biometric technology, such as digital fingerprints, to make it tamper-proof. A tamper-proof card would help us enforce the law and leave employers with no excuse for violating it. And by making it harder for illegal immigrants to find work in our country, we would discourage people from crossing the border illegally in the first place.

Of course the fraudulent documents currently being used often represent the immigrant as a legal citizen, so Bush’s proposed card won’t do much at all until all citizens are required to have them.

Publicola:

Bush & the current crop of republicans are in love with the idea of power. They also seem to think that bigger government is okay when they’re in control. The “who else are they gonna vote for?” attitude seems to be alleviating any fears of repercussions for their actions.

That’s a fair observation, but:

Who else are you gonna vote for?

Let’s see:
Democrats? No, too evil.
Libertarians? No, too crazy and too loser-y.
Other third parties? No, see “Libertarians” above.

Well.

Looks like you-all will be reluctantly going to the polls in November ‘08 and making your marks beside whoever (and note that it doesn’t really matter who) has a big “R” beside his or her name, and the reason is that whoever it is won’t be quite as bad as whoever has the “D” by their name.

Not quite.

But don’t go thinking that they’ll be “good”, any more than George Bush has been “good”. All that they’ll be is not a Democrat. And for the vast majority of you, that’ll be good enough.

For the few of you who think otherwise though, you might want to consider a different course of action.

Bizzarely lionized at the anti-state/anti-war lewrockwell.com, statist warrior Robert E. Lee was in fact the prime mover behind the first federal conscription in American history:

Seeing no way of preventing the disorganization of the army except by conscription, Lee made himself an opportunity, even during the crisis that followed the landing at Old Point on March 23, to review the subject fully with the new lawyer-member of his staff, Major Charles Marshall of Baltimore. Lee maintained, said Marshall, “that every other consideration should be subordinated to the great end of public safety, and that since the whole duty of the nation would be war until independence should be secured, the whole nation should for the time be converted into an army, the producers to feed and the soldiers to fight” — a principle that in 1917 America wisely adopted.

Marshall was directed by Lee to draw up the heads of a bill providing for the conscription of all white males between eighteen and forty-five years of age. The finished paper Lee took to the President, who approved its principles and had it put into shape by Mr. Benjamin. Introduced in Congress, the bill was amended and mangled. Provision was made for the election of officers in re-enlisted commands, and most of the other useless paraphernalia of the bounty and furlough act were loaded on it. The upper age-limit was reduced from forty-five to thirty-five years, and a bill allowing liberal exemption was soon adopted. The press had applause for the object of the bill and sharp words on its weaknesses. In the army, those who had intended not to re-enlist on the expiration of their terms grumbled and charged bad faith on the part of the government,18 but those who were determined to carry on the war to ruin or independence rejoiced that those who had stayed at home were at last to smell gunpowder. In the well-disciplined commands, men who went home at the expiration of their twelve months and returned as conscripts soon settled down to army routine. The election of new officers resulted in the defeat of many good soldiers and in the choice of “good fellows” in their places, but, on the whole, the elections wrought less evil than could reasonably have been expected.20 For his part Lee realized the danger involved in reorganizing the army to the accompaniment of Federal bullets, but he read in the law a promise that recruits would ere long fill the regiments which passed down Main Street that day, and for that promise he must have been grateful. It probably never occurred to him that chief credit for the conscript act was his own.

Although many soldiers despised the way they were treated in the army, they took heart in the fact that they were volunteers, freely giving themselves to their country. In 1862 the Confederate government threatened their volunteer status by turning them into long service soldiers. By late 1861 volunteering dried up as a source of new troops. With many units’ enlistments about to expire in the spring and summer of 1862, the Davis administration scrambled to hold the armies together. On April 16, 1862, Congress passed the first conscription act in American history by a surprising two-to-one margin. The act enabled the government to replenish the ranks by drafting all able-bodied men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five. Those already mustered into Confederate service had their terms extended an additional three years. The act granted established regiments the privilege of reorganizing and reelecting their officers. A thirty-day grace period before the draft took effect allowed men to volunteer and avoid the stigma of being conscripted.

Volunteers applauded that part of the bill that put rifles in the hands of reluctant southerners, but they railed against the provisions that kept them in the army beyond their original terms of service. Many people angrily condemned the government for breaking a contract with its soldiers. J. W. Reid spoke for many when he surmised that “the bill will pass, for Jeff Davis recommended it, and it seems that he is a dictator…. If [C]ongress can constitutionally … force the balance to remain three years they may just as easily keep them ten years. What is the difference?” If this “infernal bill…. passes all patriotism is dead, and the Confederacy will be dead sooner or later,” predicted Reid. Another soldier believed “the bill will prove very unpopular with the army. When we hear men comparing the despotism of the Confederacy with that of the Lincoln government — something must be wrong.” The soldiers’ fears were correct. In 1864 their enlistments were extended for the duration of the war. Soldiering began to look like involuntary servitude to the state. Only a crippling wound or death released soldiers from their commitment to the army.

Substitution and exemption, the corollaries of conscription, generated their own controversies. Substitution allowed men to avoid service by hiring a replacement, as long as the stand-in was not eligible to be drafted. Since the price for substitutes typically ranged from $1,500-3,000, it provided an escape hatch only for the wealthy. The exemption act caused an even greater controversy. The bill exempted overseers on plantations with twenty or more slaves. Nonslaveholding soldiers and their families perceived the bill as class legislation and derisively dubbed it the “twenty-nigger” law.

If you think I’m unfairly picking on one old piece on Lee at LRC there are plenty more for you to peruse. If your search LRC for articles which mention both Lee and conscription you’ll find conscription deplored, Lee treated reverently, and no connection noted between the two. Rockwell has even encouraged voters to consider casting their ballot for Lee: “It could be the proudest vote you ever cast!”.

This morning I saw Fox & Friends cheering on Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio as he actually implements Kim Du Toit’s vision. Arpaio is rounding up innocent people and throwing them in tented prison camps, while Fox and much of America applauds.

He that would seriously set upon the search of truth ought in the first place to prepare his mind with a love of it. For he that loves it not will not take much pains to get it; nor be much concerned when he misses it. There is nobody in the commonwealth of learning who does not profess himself a lover of truth: and there is not a rational creature that would not take it amiss to be thought otherwise of. And yet, for all this, one may truly say, that there are very few lovers of truth, for truth’s sake, even amongst those who persuade themselves that they are so. How a man may know whether he be so in earnest, is worth inquiry: and I think there is one unerring mark of it, viz. The not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant. Whoever goes beyond this measure of assent, it is plain, receives not the truth in the love of it; loves not truth for truth’s sake, but for some other bye-end. For the evidence that any proposition is true (except such as are self-evident) lying only in the proofs a man has of it, whatsoever degrees of assent he affords it beyond the degrees of that evidence, it is plain that all the surplusage of assurance is owing to some other affection, and not to the love of truth…

- Locke

Via Caplan.

I just noticed that Diana Mertz Hsieh announced in January of this year that the suit against her had been settled about nine months earlier:

I’m pleased to report that the lawsuit against me originally filed on behalf of Dr. Ignatius Piazza and Front Sight Firearms Training Institute over this web site was settled just before the case was scheduled to go to trial in April 2005. Although the details of the settlement are confidential, I can say that I’m reasonably happy with it. The lawsuit was a long and unpleasant ordeal, so I’m glad that it’s behind me.

As for the web site, it will remain where it is for the foreseeable future.

From the fact that she has not resumed her crusade to get Piazza to publicly renounce Scientology I infer that as part of the settlement she has probably agreed to discontinue that campaign.

I also note again that bloggers did a lot of posturing for a few days and then went dead silent on the matter for the last three and a half years.

Glenn Reynolds wrote:

It’s obvious that Front Sight’s lawsuit has so far bought it far more bad publicity than Diana Hsieh’s blogging ever did.

In retrospect the lawsuit stopped the crusade against Piazza and Front Sight in it’s tracks.

Hsieh keeps busy though. And it seems now every couple of years she discovers that, as at Front Sight, there’s something deeply troubling about the people she’s been hanging with. In 2004 she she broke with The Objectivist Center, reminiscent of her break with the Objectivist Study Group a decade earlier (also exhaustively documented on usenet). This year she’s outing her longtime friend Chris Sciabarra as dishonest and manipulative. I recommend her post on Sciabarra primarily as a fascinating window into the world of Objectivist back-channel communication.