Greetings from Seattle! My entry in the aforementioned Cato Unbound symposium is now up. It’s titled “In Praise of Bleeding Heart Absolutism.”
Tag Archives | Left-Libertarian
Cordial and Sanguine, Part 21: War Among the Bleeding Hearts
Greetings from Las Vegas! Our two panels went well, and I’ve been having a great time hanging out with my Molinari/C4SS/ALL comrades. This is the first Vegas conference where I’ve actually stayed at the conference hotel (I got a special deal, half the conference rate) rather than my usual venue, three miles up the strip at the Mohamed Atta EconoLodge; that’s certainly an improvement.
The latest Cato Unbound symposium, on the topic “Where Next? The Past, Present, and Future of Classical Liberalism,” features a lead essay by Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi titled “A Bleeding-Heart History of Libertarianism.” Replies by David Friedman, Alexander McCobin, and your humble correspondent will follow later in the week.
Here’s the executive summary of Matt’s and John’s thesis and my reply:
- They say that earlier classical liberals were friendlier to social justice, more concerned with consequences, and less attached to absolutist property rights than contemporary libertarians, and that we need to go back to the gude auld way.
- I say that this difference is overstated, and that in any case we can embrace social justice, concern for consequences, and absolutist property rights simultaneously, so yay.
Molinari/C4SS/ALL Wild West Tour Dates
Next week I’m off to Las Vegas for the APEE (Harrah’s, 1-3 April), and then to Seattle for the Pacific APA (Westin, 4-7 April). Our sessions are as follows:
APEE, Monday, 2 April:
FMAC Session 1: 1:35-2:50 p.m. [M3.9, Parlor F]:
“Topics in Free-Market Anti-Capitalism”chair: Sheldon Richman (The Freeman)
presenters:
Gary Chartier (La Sierra U.), “Fairness and Possession”
Darian Worden (Center for a Stateless Society), “State-Capitalist Plutocracy or Free-Market Progress: Which Way Will We Go?”
Roderick T. Long (Auburn U.), “Enforceability of Interest Under a Title-Transfer Theory of Contract”commentator: Keith Taylor (U. Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
FMAC session 2: 4:15-5:30 p.m. [M5.11, Laughlin room]:
“Explorations in Libertarian Class Theory”chair: Roderick T. Long (Auburn U.)
presenters:
Sheldon Richman (The Freeman), “Seeing Like a Ruling Class”
Steven Horwitz (St. Lawrence U.), “Punishing the Poor: The Redistributive Effects of Inflation”
Gary Chartier (La Sierra U.), “Jasay and Libertarian Class Theory”commentator: David Friedman (Santa Clara U.)
Pacific APA, Saturday, 7 April:
Molinari Society, 7:00-10:00 p.m. (or so) [G9G, location TBA]:
“Explorations in Philosophical Anarchy”presenters:
David M. Hart (Liberty Fund), “Bastiat’s Distinction Between Legal and Illegal Plunder”
Kurt Gerry (Independent Scholar), “On Political Obligation and the Nature of Law”commentators:
Daniel Silvermint (U. Arizona)
Charles Johnson (Molinari Institute)
Roderick T. Long (Auburn U.)
Like a Pope on the Wire
According to the Pope, the Catholic Church is “always on the side of freedom, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion.”
This seems like a claim that should have an asterisk next to it.
Understanding Your Ground
Lawrence O’Donnell, Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow, et hoc genus omne are desperately trying to have it both ways.
On the one hand, they want it to be the case that George Zimmerman’s shooting of Trayvon Martin was unlawful, so that they can blame the authorities for not arresting and prosecuting him.
Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman
On the other hand, they want it to be the case that the shooting was lawful, so that they can blame the law (specifically, Florida’s stand-your-ground law) for allowing the shooting.
So the establishment lapdogs at MSNBC are inconsistent; no surprise there. But which way should they resolve this inconsistency?
Well, here’s the actual text of the stand-your-ground provision, which actually seems pretty reasonable to me:
A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.
(Read the entire law here, including some not-so-nice bits, such as the 14th-Amendment-violating exception concerning self-defense against police officers.)
So unless Zimmerman a) was attacked by Martin, and b) had a reasonable belief that Martin posed a serious danger to him (two conditions that, from the evidence thus far available, do not appear to have been met – and certainly the critics clearly do not believe either condition was met), the stand-your-ground provision offers no defense of his actions.
Of course it is entirely possible that local Florida authorities have been misapplying this law, and indeed that they have been doing so with racist motivations. That wouldn’t exactly shock me. But in that case, the problem lies not with the stand-your-ground law but with the authorities; and the solution is to hold them accountable by depriving them of their monopoly.
Santorum Converts to Anarchism!
Rick Santorum has been selling himself as the candidate who’s reliable and consistent, in contrast with Romney’s flop-flipping. But here’s what Santorum has said in the past:
Republicans, I think to our credit, have sort of morphed away from the Goldwater idea that government needs to be smaller, it needs to do less, it needs to be doing nothing except what its core functions are. … I am not a libertarian, and I fight very strongly against libertarian influence within the Republican Party and the conservative movement. … We are not a group of people who believe in no government. … They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues – you know, people should do whatever they want. Well, that is not how traditional conservatives view the world …. There is no such society that I am aware of, where we’ve had radical individualism and that it succeeds as a culture.
And here’s what he just said today:
We don’t need a manager. … We need someone who’s going to pull up government by the roots and throw it out … and liberate the private sector.
Um … uh … welcome to the revolution, comrade?