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To Paul Or Not To Paul, Part 2

By on January 3, 2008 5

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

As promised, here’s my follow-up post on the exchange between David Gordon and Charles Johnson over the merits of Ron Paul’s candidacy. (To see the context of the following excerpts, see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here – apologies if I missed any installments.)

Abortion and Federalism

DAVID: One critic of Ron Paul has admitted that Roe v. Wade is bad law but thinks we should somehow get to the “correct” pro-abortion view. Is this not to surrender the possibility of constitutional limits on the federal government?

CHARLES: Yes. So what? Anarchists don’t believe in constitutional government.

DAVID: Anarchists oppose a monopoly state, but it hardly follows from this that if there is a government, anarchists shouldn’t be concerned with restraining it.

CHARLES: But I do not claim that anarchists shouldn’t be concerned with restraining actually existing governments. … But if constitutional government has no special claim on our allegiance with respect to its legitimacy, then restraining government through the instrument of a written constitution is, at the most, a pragmatic strategy which should be pursued or abandoned in any given case according to its likelihood of success. … But if the question is one of practical prospects, then the strategy of trying to restrain the federal government through the instrument of the United States Constitution has already been empirically tested, and it has already failed. …
Since I am an anarchist, I regard the U.S. constitution as having no color of legal authority, so I don’t much think that there is a “right way” or a “wrong way” to read the Constitution in legal contexts. … To the extent abortion laws are invasions against the liberty of pregnant women to dispose of their own bodies as they see fit, a ruling that repeals those laws is a good ruling, even if it doesn’t line up with a literalist reading of the Constitution.

DAVID: Even if one thinks that women have an unlimited right to abortion, it does not follow that the federal government should enforce this right. People are under no obligation to enforce anyone’s rights, and it doesn’t violate libertarian principles to think that the federal government should be denied standing in this area.

My take: Part of what’s at issue between Charles and David is whether being pro-choice on abortion means favouring federal imposition of pro-choice policies on the states. Certainly David is right that favouring a given policy doesn’t necessarily imply favouring its imposition by the federal government on the states; after all, most of us wouldn’t want the United Nations to be empowered to impose libertarian laws on the U.S. But on the other hand, the case for general decentralisation doesn’t automatically translate into support for turning any particular issue back to the states. Just as whether deregulation counts as a move toward or away from liberty depends on the extent to which the deregulated industry remains the beneficiary of state privilege, so whether turning any particular issue back to the states counts as a move toward or away from liberty depends on the extent to which the states remain entangled with the federal government. As I’ve written elsewhere:

Since neither the central government nor the member states can be counted on to be consistently libertarian, I favour decentralisation simply because it allows for more competition: if Alabama passes a crummy law there’s the hope that I can move to some other State with better laws, whereas if the Federal judiciary imposes a crummy decision on the entire country then my ability to vote with my feet is much weaker. … So as a matter of general policy the Federal government ought to follow a hands-off policy toward State-level legislation. … In the actual world, however, where federalism does not remotely reign as it should, it is by no means clear that refusing to strike down local legislation is the decision we should hope for. … [I]t is an anachronism to think of our State governments as in any serious sense counterweights to Federal tyranny. While Federal and State governments may clash from time to time … for the most part the State and Federal governments are entwined into a single criminal organisation that oppresses us.

Hence I would favour turning abortion back to the states if doing so were part of a thoroughgoing overall shift in power from the federal government to the states. In the absence of such a shift, though, I see the states as little better than administrative departments of the federal government, and if one branch of the Leviathan wants to prohibit abortion, I would prefer to see it checked by another branch. This is one of the many cases where what would be a move toward liberty if implemented completely becomes a move away from liberty if implemented partially. (By the same principle, tax credits for everybody who wants to buy body armor might be acceptable, but tax credits just for cops to buy body armor makes things worse.) Thus one can agree in principle with David’s case for decentralisation and still agree with Charles that as things stand, Roe v. Wade is a good thing.

David Gordon and Charles Johnson What are the implications for Ron Paul’s candidacy? Unlike many Republicans who agree with him in wanting to return abortion to the states, Paul does favour a “thoroughgoing overall shift in power from the federal government to the states” – which makes his abortion policy less objectionable to me than theirs. But would a Paul presidency actually result in such a thoroughgoing federalism? Or would it be more likely, given the political context in which he’d be operating, to result in only a partial federalism of the kind that I’ve argued would make things worse? That’s harder to say.

I’ve heard some Paul supporters say that Paul as president would have relatively little influence on abortion policy, so pro-choice libertarians should have no objection to voting for him. That’s a fair argument, but of course it works both ways; how much influence would Paul as president be able to have on federalism itself? (I suppose that might depend on how many Supreme Court vacancies might arise during his term.) It’s also worth noting that Paul evidently favours banning abortion at the state level. If helping to spread a general libertarian attitude is part of the reason to support Paul (as Paul’s supporters often argue), then worries about spreading a general anti-abortion attitude would logically have to be part of the reason not to support him. How those competing considerations weigh out is a trickier issue.

Immigration

DAVID: Free immigration combined with a welfare state is a dangerous brew: does it make sense to reject Ron Paul because he cannot accept it?

CHARLES: It may be true that when you combine something fundamentally moral – free immigration – with something completely immoral – a coercive welfare state funded by expropriated tax funds – you’ll get bad consequences from the combination. But that’s a good reason to try to limit or eliminate the immoral part of the combination, by undermining or dismantling the apparatus of taxation and government welfare. It’s certainly not a good reason to try to limit or eliminate the moral part of the combination by escalating the federal government’s surveillance, recording, searching, beating, jailing, and exiling innocent people.

DAVID: He points out that some efforts to restrict immigration use violence against people; and he is right that here lies danger. Libertarians who favor immigration restrictions need to specify exactly what measures they think permissible. Ron Paul doesn’t favor beating and jailing people.

CHARLES: Of course Ron Paul does favor beating and jailing people in the name of his immigration control policy. He favors the creation and enforcement of federal immigration laws, including a paramilitary lock-down of the land borders, aggressive enforcement of the existing visa system, and the continued criminalization (“no amnesty”) of currently undocumented immigrants. He also favors the necessary means to these ends: border walls, paramilitary border patrols, government immigration dossiers and employment papers, internal immigration cops, detention centers, and all the other necessary means to interdicting, discovering, arresting, jailing, and deporting people who try to live and work peacefully in the United States without a federal permission slip for their existence. If you don’t believe that this process necessarily involves violent means, then just try to cross the border without government papers and see what happens to you.

DAVID: I don’t think one should accuse Paul of supporting immoral conduct unless one has clear evidence that he does. Perhaps he disagrees that such measures are necessary to enforce the restrictions he wants. If it turns out that restrictions do require such tactics, why assume that he would use them rather than abandon the restrictions?

David’s position seems a bit odd to me. He is technically correct, of course, that Paul conceivably might favour some noncoercive means to his immigration ends. If Ron Paul were being tried in a court of law (perhaps the sort of tribunal Walter Block fantasises about convening after the revolution), then sure, the burden of proof would lie with those who claim that he must favour immoral means to his ends. But Ron Paul is asking us to entrust to him the supreme executive power of the world’s most powerful nation; in that context surely the burden of proof rests with him and his supporters to show that, unlike just about everyone else who opposes open-borders, Paul favours some unknown and never-hinted-at noncoercive means of securing compliance with immigration laws (perhaps really big signs saying “Immigrants, please go away”?).

DAVID: I do not contend that [closed borders] is the best libertarian view, only that it isn’t clearly unlibertarian. Charles vehemently disagrees. It is clear from his articles on this site that he regards restrictions on immigration as morally abhorrent. If he is right, though, it doesn’t follow that these restrictions violate libertarian principles. Not everything immoral is also unlibertarian.

First, I’m not sure why it matters whether a view is clearly unlibertarian or not. Suppose it is unlibertarian in fact, but not “clearly” so – meaning, I suppose, that the case for its being unlibertarian is complex or not obvious. This might be relevant if we were trying to decide whether Paul is intellectually culpable for reaching the wrong conclusion; but I didn’t think that was what we were doing. (For more on this see here.)

Second, while it’s true that not everything immoral is unlibertarian, a) Charles does argue not just that restrictions on immigration are immoral but that they are unlibertarian, and b) even if they were immoral but not unlibertarian, advocacy of an immoral policy would presumably be a reason not to vote for someone.

Foreign Policy

CHARLES: It’s perfectly likely that at some point in the upcoming years, Congress might pass a declaration of war in the name of bogus “national interests” in order to spread the slaughter into Iran or North Korea. At this point, President Ron Paul has two options:
1. He can fulfill his Constitutionally-enumerated role as commander-in-chief of the military, and prosecute the imperial war that Congress has ordered him to prosecute; or
2. He can refuse to fulfill his Constitutionally-enumerated role, by sitting on his hands and refusing to prosecute the war in any way even though Congress has declared it, on the grounds that there is a higher law than the Constitution ….
Which would he be willing to do?

DAVID: Grover Cleveland said that even if Congress declared war against Spain, he would, as Commander-in-Chief, refuse to enforce the declaration.

Good for Grover Cleveland, but what would Ron Paul do? For the reasons mentioned above, the burden seems to lie with Paul’s supporters to give reason to expect (2) rather than (1).

Left-Libertarianism

DAVID: Oddly, some of the same people who condemn Ron Paul for apostasy are themselves so devoted to “left libertarianism” that they subordinate libertarian principles to certain cultural values. They favor gender equality and are concerned lest we think ill of certain preferred minority groups. Libertarianism, they think, will best promote these values, and this fact is for them a chief reason to support libertarianism. … Does not the question then arise, should libertarianism be subordinated to these values?

CHARLES: First, I don’t think that libertarianism should be “subordinated to certain cultural values” such as radical feminism. I believe that libertarianism, rightly understood, is both compatible with and mutually reinforcing with the cultural values of radical feminism, rightly understood.
Second, “libertarianism” is not conceptually equivalent to “actively supporting the most libertarian candidate in a government election.” Libertarianism is a theory of political justice, not a particular political party or candidate. If one invokes feminist, anti-racist, or any other reasons not to actively support Ron Paul’s candidacy, those reasons may be good reasons or they may be bad reasons. But they are reasons for subordinating one particular strategy for libertarian outreach and activism – a strategy which, by the way, has basically zero empirical evidence whatever in favor of its effectiveness – to other concerns. But so what? There’s no reason for libertarians, and especially not for anarchists, to treat government elections as the be-all and end-all of libertarian principle.

DAVID: Johnson correctly claims that the concept of libertarianism doesn’t imply political support for libertarians in elections. I think, though, that if someone who defends political action refuses to support Ron Paul just because he is not a left libertarian, then he is subordinating libertarianism to leftist views.

CHARLES: There is no reason for principled libertarians to treat a candidate’s overall level of libertarianism as the sole or the decisive or even the most important criterion in choosing whether to vote for that candidate, or someone else, or nobody at all. Insofar as voting has any worth at all for anarchists, it is only instrumentally, as a means of defense against government invasions of your own or the liberty of other people you are concerned for. But there’s no guarantee that that end will always be best served by adopting the candidate’s overall level of libertarianism as the sole or the decisive criterion for supporting that candidate.

Part of what’s at issue here is the relation between libertarianism and other values. Charles believes (as do I) that libertarianism is allied to other values by various kinds of “thickness,” such as application thickness (where values other than non-aggression are needed in order to determine how to apply the non-aggression principle), instrumental/strategic thickness (where values other than non-aggression are causal preconditions for the stable implementation of the non-aggression principle), and grounds thickness (where values other than non-aggression are supported by the best reasons for accepting the non-aggression principle, so that one couldn’t reasonably reject them while accepting it). (For more on these and other forms of libertarian thickness, see here and here.) Charles also believes (as again do I) that various values traditionally associated with the left are among those that libertarianism is thickly related to. If any of that is correct, then the fact that a given libertarian candidate does not share those values is going to be not just a lefty reason but a libertarian reason (not necessarily a decisive reason, but surely some, perhaps defeasible, reason) not to support his candidacy – and not a matter of subordinating libertarianism to other values.

DAVID: I maintained that some left libertarians subordinate libertarianism to their leftist views. He wonders whether my remarks were directed against a paper written by him and Roderick Long and defends himself against the subordination charge. My remarks were not about his paper, which is about the compatibility of libertarianism and feminism and doesn’t discuss support for non-leftist libertarians.

I suspect the reason Charles thought David might have had our paper in mind is that in that paper we defend not just the compatibility of libertarianism with feminism, but more strongly their being thickly related; we argued in particular that statism and patriarchy were part of an interlocking, mutually reinforcing system, so that one could not effectively combat one without combating the other. If that’s right, then the fact that a given libertarian candidate is not also, e.g., a feminist candidate is going to be reason (again – not necessarily decisive reason, but surely some, perhaps defeasible, reason) to regard his candidacy as an unpromising method of advancing libertarianism.

There are also questions here about electoral strategies in general, but I’ll save those for part 3.

A Question for Critics of Ron Paul’s Critics, Part 2

By on January 1, 2008 8

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

In a post about a month ago, I asked why (many of) Ron Paul’s supporters regard opposition to Paul on the basis of Paul’s views on, e.g., abortion and immigration as misguided, yet would not regard opposition to a hypothetical Randy Barnett candidacy on the basis of Barnett’s views on, e.g. federalism and war as misguided.

Ron Paul My friend Walter Block (whose views on abortion and immigration are, incidentally, closer to mine than to Paul’s) has recently offered an answer to my question. I quote from his answer, interspersing my comments:

First, as stated above, immigration and abortion are unsettled issues amongst libertarians.

True, but so are federalism and war. In any case, why does it matter whether these issues are settled or not? It matters what the correct libertarian position on some issue is; it also matters how important deviations from that position are. But neither of those considerations correlates particularly closely with which issues have achieved a consensus among libertarians and which ones haven’t.

We have to be able to tolerate some degree of uncertainty, of ambiguity, in our perspective.

I’m not sure what that means.

I defy Roderick Long or anyone else for that matter to cite acknowledged leaders of our intellectual movement, such as Rothbard, Hoppe and Kinsella, who favor the U.S. role in the Iraq war.

Well, “acknowledged” by whom? Randy Barnett would ordinarily, I think, be considered one of the intellectual leaders of the libertarian movement. Evidently Walter does not so acknowledge him. But in any case, what does it matter whether a position is or is not held by some “acknowledged leader” of the movement? That seems like an argument from authority (or maybe an argument from absence-of-authority). There was a time when the overwhelming majority of libertarian intellectual leaders rejected anarchism, embraced intellectual property rights, etc. Which proves what?

Second, the issue of what is a threat, what is coercion, is very central to libertarianism, and relatively straightforward. According to that old joke, if you can’t tell the difference between a living room and a bathroom, then “don’t come to my house.” If you can’t tell the difference between aggression and defense, then don’t get into political economy.

But all disputes over the interpretation and/or application of libertarian principles turn on “telling the difference between aggression and defense.” In libertarian disputes over abortion and immigration, no less than in libertarian disputes over foreign policy, each side accuses the other of confusing aggression and defense.

Randy Barnett fails this test dismally, while Ron Paul passes with flying colors. Indeed, to place the two of them in the same sentence in this regard is highly problematic. What can we say about anyone who seriously maintains that the U.S. invasion is justified on grounds of defense against attack from Iraqis? At the very least, it cannot be seriously maintained that they are libertarians at all in any meaningful sense.

I agree that in the case of the war, Randy (IMHO) confuses aggression with defense – just as I think that in the case of abortion and immigration, Paul (again IMHO) confuses aggression with defense. But given that they both draw the distinction correctly in the vast majority of cases, I have no problem saying that they are both libertarians. (Which by itself, I should add, doesn’t settle the question of whether either’s candidacy would be worthy of support. How much of a deviation makes a candidate unworthy of support and how much of a deviation makes a candidate no longer count as a libertarian seem to me different questions.)

In sharp contrast, abortion and immigration are highly complex issues, as the voluminous scholarly literature on them eloquently attests.

I agree that abortion and immigration are complex issues, though I think foreign policy is too. (And it’s not as though there isn’t a “voluminous scholarly literature” on the justice of war as well.) But I can’t see how the complexity of an issue matters to this debate. Is Walter assuming that how important, how seriously bad, a deviation from correct libertarian principle is, is inversely correlated with how complex the argument for its being a deviation is? I don’t see why that should be so.

Nor are they at all at the very core of our libertarian philosophy; rather, they are implications of it.

Here Walter seems to slide from opposition to aggression’s being central to libertarianism, to war’s counting as aggression being central to libertarianism. But why wouldn’t it be just as justifiable (or just as unjustifiable) to slide from opposition to aggression’s being central to libertarianism, to restrictions on abortion or immigration counting as aggression being central to libertarianism? What’s the difference?

Elsewhere in his article Walter elaborates on his remark on libertarian authorities:

[W]hen expert libertarian philosophers disagree with each other, it is a bit much to declare either side anti- or non-libertarian. It is therefore highly improper to castigate Dr. Paul for taking a position on immigration and abortion incompatible with libertarianism ….

Perhaps an analogy may be of use in this context. When physicists are not of one mind on a problem (is matter a wave or a particle) it is altogether too harsh to castigate an engineer from taking either side.

Of course, Walter’s use of this argument depends on a choice of which people will be regarded as authorities. Walter himself is certainly willing to castigate people who agree with Randy about the war – because he does not regard Randy as a libertarian expert. But isn’t there a danger of circularity here? Randy, despite what are surely prima facie credentials for inclusion, is excluded from the ranks of libertarian experts because of his position on the war – and deviation on that issue is grounds for expulsion from the ranks of libertarian experts because it’s not an area where libertarian experts disagree!

In any case, surely the relevant question is not whether Ron Paul (or Randy Barnett for that matter) is to be castigated for his deviations. Talk of “castigation” suggests that what’s at issue is whether a given deviation is, as it were, epistemically innocent or epistemically blameworthy – whether it was arrived at by culpable evasion or honest mistake. But again, it sounds to me as though Walter is assuming that how seriously bad a deviation is, must be reliably correlated with how intellectually culpable someone is for arriving at it; and that’s far from obvious to me. After all, I think there are plenty of reasonable, intelligent, well-intentioned non-libertarians (benighted souls though they be); so I have no problem granting that there are likewise plenty of reasonable, intelligent, well-intentioned “deviationist” libertarians. The question is not whether Paul’s deviations are grounds for castigating the poor guy (who I’m happy to stipulate is as intellectually conscientious as a summer day in Reykjavik is long) but whether they are grounds for declining to vote for him and/or support his candidacy. (For what it’s worth, I don’t think there are decisive reasons either for or against libertarian support for Ron Paul’s candidacy per se, though there may well be decisive reasons for particular libertarians to support or to oppose it; I’ll explain what I mean in a future post.)

In a comment on my earlier post, my friend David Gordon offers an argument similar (though not identical) to Walter’s, so I’ll quote it here too:

Some positions, e.g., support for conscription, can’t be defended as libertarian; someone who favors conscription can still count as a libertarian, though, if he holds a sufficient number of other libertarian views.

Thus far I think David may actually disagree with Walter, in that by David’s criterion here Randy would certainly have to count as a libertarian.

I think, though, that there are important issues, e.g., abortion and immigration, in which libertarian principles don’t mandate a single position as the only permissible libertarian one. There may well be, on these issues, a single best interpretation of what libertarianism requires; but we can’t say that anyone who adopts a different view is to that extent unlibertarian.

That’s the part where David seems to be taking a position similar to Walter’s. I’m not sure, though, that I understand David’s distinction between a position that deviates from libertarian principle and a position that deviates from the “single best interpretation” of libertarian principle. If a position deviates from the single best interpretation of libertarian principle, why isn’t that a way of deviating from libertarian principle?

Incidentally, I haven’t forgotten my promise to say more about the David Gordon / Charles Johnson debate. Coming soon!

Random Notes on a Bygone Debate

By on January 1, 2008 2

I made these notes for a blog post a few weeks back and forgot to post them; I forget how many debates ago this was. But for what it’s worth:

      

Finally saw the most recent Repub debate in rerun. A few random comments:

1. I was glad to see that Paul focused on substantive rather than merely constitutional arguments this time; and I thought his answer to the conspiracy question was pretty good (in the strategic sense that it was so worded as to avoid annoying either believers or disbelievers in conspiracy theories).

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? 2. Thank goodness for McCain, because his two attacks on Paul forced the moderator to let Paul respond, and so got some sanity injected into the foreign policy debate. But what an ass McCain is. When he gave Paul that “message from the troops,” I suspect maybe he actually didn’t know that Paul gets the highest support from the military – because if he had known, would he have been so foolish as to make a remark that would guarantee that Paul would get both an excuse and a chance to mention that fact?

As for isolationism making Hitler’s rise to power possible, isn’t it even the conventional wisdom that World War I was what made Hitler’s rise to power possible? (And anyway, is he suggesting that America should have invaded Germany as soon as Hitler was made chancellor? Or what?)

As for McCain’s remark that the U.S. never lost a battle in Vietnam, I doubt that the DEA has ever lost a shootout with drug dealers either. Does that mean the DEA is winning the “war on drugs”?

3. Giuliani, criticising Romney, oozed from the premise that some categories of crime rose and others fell during Romney’s tenure as governor to the conclusion that Romney succeeded in fighting some forms of crime and failed in fighting others. Post hoc, anyone? I mean, I can’t help noticing that the incidence of terrorism-related deaths in New York City was much higher during Giuliani’s tenure as mayor than during those of his predecessors’ ….

4. Duncan Hunter’s argument for not allowing gays in the military was that most soldiers are social conservatives and shouldn’t have to serve with people they disapprove of. I wish someone had asked him why this wouldn’t have been an equally good argument, back in the day, against racial integration in the military.

5. Huckabee talked about all the benefits that came to us from the government-funded space program. As a wise Frenchman would have pointed out: Those benefits are what is seen; the benefits that would have been produced if that money had been left in private hands are what is not seen.

6. Huckabee had all the funniest lines, but they weren’t usually intended as funny. For example, he said he wants to be part of a Republican Party that “touches every American from top to bottom.” (Hands off, buster!) Also, one of the Huckabee ads showed a clip of him saying something like: “We believe in some things! We stand by those things! We live and die by those things!” Okay, so maybe in context this generic profession of dedication to unspecified principles sounded less silly. But it was Huckabee’s own ad that gave it to us out of context.

7. Several of the candidates seemed uncomfortable about admitting that they didn’t believe every word (I suppose they really meant every sentence) of the Bible literally. (Huckabee bravely defended the controversial view that “The Bible is what it is,” presumably against all those who maintain that the Bible is not what it is.) I’d think it should be easy enough to answer this question. There are a number of cases in the Bible where someone interprets some saying of Jesus’s literally, and he himself explains that the saying is to be interpreted metaphorically. For example:

Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?
Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. (John 3:3-7)

In the meanwhile his disciples prayed him, saying, Master, eat.
But he said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of.
Therefore said the disciples one to another, Hath any man brought him aught to eat?
Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work. (John 4:31-34)

If Jesus himself says it’s okay not to interpret his words literally, what’s the problem?

8. Romney, criticising Huckabee for supporting tax-funded academic scholarships for illegal aliens, said something like: “You remind me of the liberals I argue with in Massachusetts. I understand that you thought you were using this money for a good cause. But it’s not your money.”

Gee, that’s a good point. Taking people’s property against their will in order to spend it on academic scholarships for illegal aliens seems a lot like theft.

Thank goodness it’s not theft if you take people’s property against their will in order to spend it on something else!

Well, okay, I think I know how Romney would respond. He’d say there’s a difference between taxing American citizens to spend money on programs for American citizens, and taxing American citizens to spend money on programs for non-citizens. But there are three problems with this response:

a. This is collectivist thinking; such a response apparently assumes that taxing some citizens in order to benefit other citizens counts as taxing some American collectivity in order to benefit itself. This is what Rawls and Nozick identified as ignoring the distinctness of persons.

b. Even leaving aside the distinctness of persons, taxing a person in order to benefit that person still doesn’t escape the “it’s not your money” objection. If I steal your money and then buy you a big bag of cookies with it, it’s still theft. Even if you like the cookies.

c. And even leaving aside both these latter objections, and granting for the sake of argument that it’s okay to tax people so long as the benefits go to people in the same group as the people taxed, it’s not as though illegal aliens don’t pay taxes. They pay some taxes directly (sales taxes, for example) and many taxes indirectly; plus hidden taxes like inflation hit them as hard as anyone. And as for the taxes they don’t pay directly, like income taxes, many citizens don’t pay those either – so the citizen/alien distinction doesn’t really help much here.

When Platform Shoes Pinch

By on December 24, 2007 5

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

I didn’t catch Tim Russert’s interview with Ron Paul, but check out the transcript. (Caveat: I don’t know how accurate the transcript is as a whole, but I’m willing to bet that Paul didn’t actually say “Randolph Bourne says war is a helpless state.” And what is “the Robert/Taft wing of the party”? Who’d they get to do the transcript, Dana Perino?)

anarchist rEVOLution I think Paul did a pretty good job on the whole, but the transcript does illustrate the perils of a libertarian electoral strategy. If you run as a consistent libertarian, you’ll scare off voters as they now are; if, instead, you water down or soft-pedal some aspects of your philosophy, you’ll get called on the inconsistency – as happens here, where Paul ends up sounding like he’s defending the FBI, the CIA, public schools, and the legitimacy of invading North Korea as long as Congress declares war first.

I don’t think this dilemma is a decisive argument against going the electoral route, but it certainly counts in the minus column.

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