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Archive | May, 2010

Maddow Bashes Anarchism

By on May 25, 2010 48

Just saw Rachel Maddow explaining that Republicans have a secret hankering for anarchism (if only!), and that the spurious appeal of statelessness can be refuted by considering the nightmarish conditions in Mogadishu, capital of stateless Somalia (interesting that she just happens to pick the area of Somalia with the highest government presence).

The truth, of course, is that in Somalia as a whole, security and prosperity have improved, not deteriorated, as a result of state collapse.

I just sent her (no doubt pointlessly) the links to Benjamin Powell et al.’s article “Somalia After State Collapse: Chaos or Improvement?” (observatori.org/paises/pais_74/documentos/64_somalia.pdf) and Peter Leeson’s “Better Off Stateless: Somalia Before and After Government Collapse” (peterleeson.com/Better_Off_Stateless.pdf).

If anyone wants to join me in this probably futile gesture, her address is rachel@msnbc.com.

C for Vendetta?

By on May 23, 2010 5
As we tear through the statute book,
we’ll do something no government ever has:
We will ask you which laws you think should go.
– Nick Clegg, to the British public
You’ll be free to do anything you wish.
If you don’t like controls – repeal them.
– Mr. Thompson, offering John Galt the job of Economic Dictator

Nick Clegg the liberator?

Nick Clegg is promising (CHT Tom Palmer) all sorts of libertarian goodies, including “the end of the controversial ID cards scheme” and “the scrapping of universal DNA databases.” Other state intrusions to be abolished include “limits on peaceful protest,” the “storage of … email records without good reason” (whatever that last means), and schools’ right “to take a child’s fingerprint without parental permission.” Clegg and his Tory allies are supposedly planning to inaugurate the “most radical redistribution of power from the state to the people for 200 years.”

Yeah, yeah, it all sounds sexy. But I remember the Reagan and Republican “Revolutions,” Bush I’s “no new taxes,” Clinton’s “era of big government is over,” Bush II’s “humble foreign policy,” and Obama’s “hope and change.” As for Clegg’s side of the pond, I remember Thatcher’s Hayekian rhetoric and Blair’s antiwar rhetoric.

Let’s just say I won’t be holding my breath.

If people want freedom, they should think about taking it rather than waiting for some politician to keep his promise to give it to them.

Fun Quotes from Rand Paul’s Website

By on May 23, 2010 4

Here.

(Admittedly, the line about how “the percentage of our federal budget spent on national defense would increase” could be misleading, since just about any minarchist wants to increase the percentage spent on defense – namely, by merely slashing defense spending drastically, while eliminating most other spending. But the line about “robust funding,” and his support for the Afghanistan adventure, don’t support a charitable interpretation.)

How Walter Williams Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the State

By on May 22, 2010 112

Walter Williams asks (CHT LRC):

There are close to 7 billion people on our planet. I’d like to know how the libertarians answer this question: Does each individual on the planet have a natural or God-given right to live in the U.S.? … I believe most people, even my open-borders libertarian friends, would not say that everyone on the planet had a right to live in the U.S.

Well, that’s an easy one: yes, of course each individual on the planet has the right to live anywhere she chooses, so long as she violates no one’s rights.

No One Is Illegal

All human beings are equal; being a u.s. citizen does not magically confer special rights on some human beings that are not enjoyed by others. Thus immigrants, as human beings, have every right to buy or lease naturally owned property wherever they find a willing transactor, and likewise a right to homestead naturally unowned property (which describes most of the land in the u.s.). Or has Williams decided to reject the concept of property rights?

Williams goes on to say:

What those conditions [for immigration] should be is one thing and whether a person has a right to ignore them is another.

Nope. Those are not two separate questions. If a “law” is unjust, then of course anyone has a right to ignore it. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr.:

One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. … One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.” … An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. … Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.

Williams himself has written elsewhere:

I have a right to travel freely. That right imposes no obligation upon another except that of non-interference.

If Williams means what he says, then he has just acknowledged his own right to cross the borders of other “nations.” How, then, can he deny the right of other people to cross the borders of the “nation” in which he lives?

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