Here’s a fun, brief speech from Less Antman at the LP convention.
Some favourite bits:
As someone who joined the Libertarian Party more than 32 years ago, when our party and platform already was committed to marriage equality, while the rest of the country, including Democrats, were still debating gay imprisonment, I can tell you the first 27 years were the hardest.
Antiwar is the health of the antistate movement.
[Obama] holds the record for the most children killed by a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
(I have my doubts about the last statistic, though; remember that Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Henry Kissinger, Yasser Arafat, and Mikhail Gorbachev were all winners as well. Admittedly most of their killings were committed before rather than after winning the prize, but Kissinger still got a good score in afterward, though admittedly as an advisor rather than a direct commander.)
In 1980, really?
(No sarcasm, I honestly don’t know.)
Well, for example.
I’m happy to see Colorado was among the first to decriminalize. Of course, it’s also where the LP was founded, so maybe that follows.
Illinois decriminalized homosexuality way back in 1961 . . . twenty states decriminalized it in the 1970’s, including (yes) Colorado and Oregon, and including all of northern New England (ME ’75, NH ’73, VT ’77). New England was also the first to tolerate gay marriage (MA ’04; CT ’08; VT ’09; NH ’10; NY ’11) . . . Colorado and Oregon’s state constitutions ban it.
I guess “War is peace”…?
And hatred is a family value . . .
Well, the Mansons are a family too …
Hehe yes . . yes they are.
Thanks, Roderick: you’ve already anticipated my defense of the Obama stat, but we can all agree that the mere fact he is in the discussion makes the point, and how could I not use the line once it occurred to me?
Folks might be interested to know that Ralph Raico wrote the LP plank on equal treatment under the law, including marriage laws, which was first adopted by the national party in convention in 1975.
[BTW, a cleaner version of my speech is on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI15o_Z7d4w%5D
Obama has not personally killed anyone as far as I know.
While he certainly is partially responsible for many deaths, I think it is important to differentiate between ordering to have someone killed and actually being the killer.
If we fail to take note of this difference then we may forget that tyrannical states (that is, all states) are only able to survive to commit great atrocities because of the large support that they have of the obedient masses.
The Chain of Obedience:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NcLNoxiPBk
Hitler did not kill millions of people.
While I agree with your point that “tyrannical states (that is, all states) are only able to survive to commit great atrocities because of the large support that they have of the obedient masses,” I don’t think that the need to get the obeyers on the hook necessitates getting the commanders off the hook.
In other words, the “I was only giving orders” excuse should be given no more credence than the “I was only taking orders” excuse.
So I do think Hitler killed all those people. Though I think the people who carried out the orders killed them too. Think about it this way:
Suppose you sneak a venomous snake into your enemy’s sleeping bag. The snake bites your enemy, who dies. All is revealed, so now you’re on trial for murder. Suddenly your lawyer comes running in with a special report: new studies reveal that that particular species of snake has free will and moral agency! Should you be off the hook now? I don’t see why.
Thanks for the reply, Roderick.
“I don’t think that the need to get the obeyers on the hook necessitates getting the commanders off the hook.”
I agree. I didn’t mean to imply that the commanders are innocent or off the hook. I just meant to suggest that the soldier’s act of murder is often worse than the commander’s act of ordering that soldier to commit the murder. Surely they both are responsible though.
Note that it is possible for the act of commanding the soldier to commit murder could be a greater crime than the act of the soldier obeying the order. For example, if the commander held a gun to the obeyer’s head and said, “Kill him or else I’ll kill you,” and the obeyer obeys and kills the innocent person, then in this case I would say that the commander’s crime is greater than the obeyer’s crime.
So perhaps in some situations the commander’s order may be a greater crime that the obeyer’s crime and in other situations the obeyer’s crime may be a greater crime than the commander’s order. And then of course there is a spectrum of situations in-between.
In general I would say that most people tend to stress the commander’s responsibility for the war crimes a lot, but often forget about holding the soldiers responsible. This is why I said that Hitler didn’t kill millions of people–I wanted to draw attention to the fact that there were millions of soldiers who committed murder. Everyone knows how evil Hitler was, but I think they often forget–or don’t stress enough–how many average-Joes there were who murdered plenty of people.
I think I hear the excuse “I was just obeying orders” more often than “I was just giving orders; I didn’t shoot anyone.” Certainly neither works as an excuse, but I think more people seem to accept the former excuse than the latter.
And actually, the latter excuse may actually be legitimate in some circumstances. For example, if a US soldier in Afghanistan is agressing against an innocent Afghan and the Afghan chooses to defend himself with lethal force, then we would say his actions are justified. But, if someone wanted to use such force against Obama for ordering that soldier to be there, would we say that that force is justified? I don’t think so. Thus, I think Obama’s hypothetical excuse that “I was just giving orders; I didn’t shoot anyone” is a genuine excuse in some sense. It certainly doesn’t absolve him of responsibility, but when it comes to answering the question of what acts of force are justified in self-defense, I would say that the act of shooting the obeyer may be justified, whereas the act of shooting the commander probably is not justified.
– Will Kiely
PS: You are the author of my favorite quote: “A consistent peace activist must be an anarchist.” ( http://praxeology.net/unblog03-03.htm#01 ) 🙂
I most certainly would say it’s justified.
PeaceRequiresAnarchy: In general I would say that most people tend to stress the commander’s responsibility for the war crimes a lot, but often forget about holding the soldiers responsible.
I don’t know; it seems to me this depends on a number of factors. Notably who’s in control of the investigation and the prosecutions. Calley went to prison for what he did in Vietnam; neither Nixon, nor Westmoreland, nor Colin Powell, nor even Capt. Medina, ever did. Nobody above the rank of Sergeant ever faced more than a reprimand for Abu Ghraib; Rumsfeld certainly will never face any serious legal or even social consequences for what he knew about or what he approved or what he ordered or what he covered up for.
Yes, it depends strongly on whether those doing the prosecuting are conquering victors punishing a defeated enemy or high-ranking officials covering their own asses during a scandal.
I believe Roderick once described the state as the problem that will go away if we ignore it.
Oh and I realize that this is probably not the best place for a long discussion on this topic, so it is perfectly okay if my thoughts are left hanging there. I’m not necessarily expecting any reply.
Rad Geek, point taken. Indeed there are many commanders who get off the hook, while there are soldiers who commit possibly lesser crimes who get punished without any forgiveness.
Yes, and I agree with JOR’s point above — whether the “just giving orders” or the “just following orders” excuse gets invoked often depends on whether the court and the order-giver are part of the same government or not. That’s one reason I think both points are worth stressing.
We should treat these cases the same way we would in a case of organised crime: if Boss Corleone orders hitman Vincent Vega to bump someone off, we would prosecute both of them.