One thing that has been virtually absent from the whole Ron Paul Newsletter shitstorm is the simple fact that racism per se is not incompatible with libertarianism. That fact, brought to light when the newsletters were publicized, would have short-circuited weeks of yelling by both sides. So why hasn’t anyone prominent in the debate taken notice of it? The answer is that the public outrage to such a defense would be enormous.

Neither side in the newsletter flap cares to discuss this, because doing so would be very unpopular. Both sides would rather avoid unpopular truth - it’s of no use to them.

The Ron Paul flap basically boils down to two camps of liars, each of whom claims that the other is, well, …lying.

I’m slightly underwhelmed.

Or that government is abusive, you know: whichever.

The latest mini power-grab by the Federal government is a yawnfest. In effect, this government has written itself a note that says that they’ll snoop your mail if they really, really want to. They’re also saying that this note supecedes some other notes that they’ve written that stated they wouldn’t snoop your mail without a permission note. No word yet on what efforts libertarian activists will put forth to get this government to write a note that says that the government won’t really read your mail without a permission note.

Do you see what I mean? The fact that this government wrote a note in the first place giving themselves permission to do a number of things implies that they’ll write themselves a note to allow them to do whatever they want whenever they want to. Any note they write to the contrary can be replaced by yet another note.

And libertarian activists are outraged by all of this? It’s frankly amusing.

Over at Marginal Revolution, Alex Tabarrok writes:

Tyler asks, following philosopher Alastair Norcross, whether it could ever satisfy a cost-benefit test for one person to die a terrible and tortured death in order to alleviate the headaches of billions of others by one second. Tyler begs off with “a mushy mish-mash of philosophic pluralism, quasi-lexical values” and moral conceit. I will have none of this. The answer, is yes.

Frédéric Bastiat presciently commented:

The plans differ; the planners are all alike.

Ditto for “libertarian” planners.

“Is C-SPAN worthwhile?” asked a contributor to Wendy McElroy’s forum?.

Well, it’s not as messy as waterboarding and it doesn’t leave any marks.

And speaking of worthwhile efforts, Brad Spangler is looking for a few good dungeonmasters to help him “stand before the Balrog”. Kennedy, who identified the madness of sanctioning State torture three years ago, has volunteered to help.

Spangler:

I want to get waterboarded. In order to call attention to this heinous practice and make it the subject of broader public condemnation, I believe it needs to be shown to people. I’m volunteering in order for it to be so shown — online, as a video. These are the sort of dark times that demand a Gandalf to stand before the Balrog and shout “You shall not pass!“. That’s not me, but I can take my best shot at it.

Here’s the plan…

I’m asking for the following volunteers:

1) A lawyer to help us put together all of the appropriate waivers and confirm we can do this without government intervention.
2) A psychiatrist or other trained mental health professional to confirm for all interested parties that I am not acting on any self destructive impulse or urge to do myself harm. I’m not. This is a political statement.
3) A doctor or certified paramedic willing to stand by and administer treatment if it looks like things have gone to far.
4) A videographer to document it.
5) At least one trusted friend willing to help me — by torturing me.

Kennedy:

I volunteer for # 5.

Who says we’re not team players? Who says we’re not willing to get down in the trenches and put our shoulders to the wheel for liberty?

Arnold Kling:

I believe that what we need going forward is a policy of disarming Muslims. I believe that we must keep devout Muslims away from weapons, and keep weapons away from devout Muslims. I can work with Muslims, send my children to school with Muslims, and be friends with Muslims. I do not have an issue with their religion, as long as they do not have weapons. However, the combination of weapons and Islam poses unacceptable danger to the rest of us.

Sean Lynch, in response:

Steps to solving the “Muslim question”:

1. Take away their weapons
2. Make them wear labels so we can distinguish them easily (to make sure they don’t get weapons again).
3. Move them all to ghettos
4. Round them all up and stick them in concentration camps.
5. …
6. Profit!

This doesn’t seem that large of a leap to me. If, as Kling opines, armed Muslims pose an “unacceptable danger”, then given the fact that “arms” are impossible to prohibit effectively, something fairly close to Hitler’s final solution is on the table.

The interesting thing, however, isn’t how evil Kling’s argument is but how loudly the implications of it were ignored by the libertarian readers of and contributors to Catallarchy. This is a theme I’ve seen before, most notably in debate with immigration restrictionists. In each case, the piece of public policy as presented requires certain obvious crimes against individuals. In each case, that fact is roundly, almost universally, ignored or evaded.

Does anyone have any guesses as to why?

Over at Catallarchy, debate begins anew about the justice of the Iraq War, sparked by a post about the libertarian split over the war at the Volokh Conspiracy. Fortunately, our esteemed senior editor cleared up this little spat a few years ago in “The Wrong Hill”:

It doesn’t matter if there is a right side in the war, neither side can have any right to require Charlie Anderson to participate in any way. This is the argument libertarians need to make, not that war is evil, but that it can never be moral to force others to participate. It will do no good to win the argument that a war is evil while implicitly accepting that it is legitimately a collective decision; that’s the wrong hill. The right hill is the one where we reject the collectivist premise first.

Pace the argument at Catallarchy, the war may or may not be moral (though I don’t think it is) and it may or may not be utility-maximizing (I think the idea is incoherent in itself), but what matters is that no one has the right to require my money or my body to fight it.

Interestingly enough, at the Volokh post, Rose Friedman says, “And we will!” in response to a quip from Milton Friedman about winning the war. There’s the wrong hill right there.

I’ll have a gin and tonic.

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.

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!”.

Ronald Bailey over at Reason is talking about the need for consumer-driven health care. Well and good. He mentions the problems of the current healthcare - which are legion - and says that a solution is needed. His solution?

My advice to President Bush on how really to jumpstart consumer-driven health care: mandatory private health insurance. Poor Americans would be offered a voucher with which they would buy private health coverage. Such vouchers could be paid for by abolishing Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Programs.

But they won’t be, Ron, and you know it, because you know what underlies all of this: the barrel of a gun. Why you think the solution is to point the gun in everyone’s face is beyond me, but you’re either clearly ignorant or clearly evil about this.

HHH: Welcome to the Dating Game! I’m Hans-Hermann Hoppe and I’ll be your host for Economics Week. My students are always asking me about dating. The way I explain this to my students is using the following example. Sometimes people hiss at it. Most people like it. Imagine a normal person, so to speak, that is in pursuit of a girl. Or vice versa, a girl in pursuit of a man. Then what we do, of course, is take her out to dinner and bring her flowers. We take her out to dinner again. We listen to the conversation. We are very impressed by all the deep thoughts that we hear. We have never heard anything interesting like that before in our lives. Of course, with some expectations. Which are, of course, in the more or less distant future. This is how normal people operate.

Tonight we have three eligible young Catallarchs for our Bachelorette to choose from. Let’s get started!

Bachelor Number One lives in Boston where he’s a resident at Harvard Medical School.

Number One: Hi!

Bachelorette: Mmmm, nice voice. Bachelor Number One, at your apartment I notice you just spent $1000 on a plasma screen TV, but you only spent $50 on our date. What does that reveal about your preferences?

Number One: Aren’t these considerations already taken into account by my actions? If I spend $1000 on a plasma screen TV, instead of favors from my date, then I have demonstrated that at the time of purchase, the marginal utility of the plasma screen TV was greater than the marginal utility of that unit (no pun intended) of sexual favors from my date, the marginal utility of the $1000, and the marginal utility of any other good I could have exchanged for that $1000.

Bachelorette: Well.

HHH: Our second Catallarch is a software engineer from Sunnyvale, California. In his spare time he’s building a utopian community in international waters.

Number Two: Hey baby!

Bachelorette: Bachelor Number Two, can you describe for me what kind of bachelorette you’ve been waiting for?

Number Two: Waiting? That doesn’t sound like a very good strategy. Essentially you’d be assuming that the ideal bachelorette exists and you will find her. Seems to me like this would lead to a lot of people never accepting a candidate, or doing so when they are old, say, too old to reproduce. If you are going to meet 100 bachelorettes a year, then the best out of 1000 seems way better than holding out for the absolute best.

Your strategy is willing to trade any amount of time being single for a minute increase in quality. Such lexicographic orderings are problematic and rarely describe real preferences.

Oh, and I’m not actually a bachelor, by the way, but I am polyamorous and available.

Bachelorette: What the…??

HHH: Polyamorous? Does that mean you are a homosexual?

Number Two: Well, that’s not what polyamory means Hans, although….

HHH: I ask because the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centered 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.

Let’s move on. Bachelor Number Three is studying economics and management and he’s chairman of the College Libertarians at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Number Three: Hello.

Bachelorette: Bachelor Number Three, would you be romantic on our date or is your time preference too high, like some economists?

HHH: Keynes, for instance.

Number Three: Well I don’t think that the benefits of rape are in principle inferior to the benefits of romance, if that’s what you’re asking. But personally I prefer efficiency, so I wouldn’t expect consummation until my benefits exceeded your costs.

Bachelorette: How… thoughtful.

HHH: There you have it! Now it’s time for our Bachelorette to choose - which Catallarch will it be?

Bachelorette: Sigh….

Hans? Your “dinner and flowers” routine is sounding better and better.

I guess I’ll choose the Least Imprudent Predator: You.

HHH: I HAVE NEVER HEARD ANYTHING INTERESTING LIKE THAT IN MY LIFE!!!

[aside to audience, with a wink]

Of course, with some expectations…..

Despite Jane Galt’s fundamental cluelessness about the NYC transit strike, she manages to take her Commie “to each according to his need” rhetoric to its historical conclusion:

While the strike has so far deprived me of one free lunch and drinks with some friends from grad school, even I was tempted to endorse one acquaintance’s plan to go to Seattle and Cleveland and encourage the fire departments that serve these yahoos to go on strike before engaging in a spot of selective arson.

Burn out the wreckers of the glorious People’s Transit System!

And this is what passes for libertarianism?