OR
Professor Eric Muller of the University of North Carolina Law School has been using his web site www.isthatlegal.org to uncover rather interesting bits of information about the book The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History and author Professor Thomas Woods of Suffolk Community College and his affiliations, including the rather spooky League of the South. (You can go through the various threads, links to Woods’s defenses, and so on and make up your own mind.)
Addendum: Cathy Young of Reason magazine has a review of Woods’s book in the Boston Globe, to which Professor Woods has responded by calling her a “neocon” (the slam of choice on lewrockwell.com for anyone who disagrees with their Confederate Revivalism) and writing, “There is no point in answering someone like this.” Zing!
How about this: I “invade” your neighborhood to remove a serial killer or rapist. You shoot me (out of loyalty to your neigbor, patriotism, because you oppose the “invasion,” etc). I shoot back.
Was my “invasion” to stop a serial killer wrong? Was my shooting back at you? Is the fact I might be a mugger relevent to the fact I am stopping serial murder?
” But the CSA is not the same as the people of who lived under it, even if many of those people shared with the CSA the goal of secession.”
We are not talking about “people” (I assume you mean whites), we are talking about the actions of the CSA, a criminal regime which enforced enslavement.
I completely oppose the Union’s shooting at any hermits who wanted to be left alone. But that isn’t what we are talking about, is it?
“inexplicable,” sorry.
When the Nazis invaded Russia, many Russians fought back. Not all of them were doing so in endorsement of Stalin’s regime which was, arguably, even worse than Hitler’s at the time of the invasion, at least internally (by that time Stalin had killed more people than Hitler).
When the British tried to keep the colonies under their control, many Americans fought back even though America was less free than Britain, especially on the issue of slavery.
When the British and French empires subjugated colonial subjects worldwide, many people fought for the independence of their countries, even though Britain and France were more internally free than most of those satellites could have been expected to become.
Resisting invasion from an outside regime is something people naturally seem to do. It’s not always wise. It doesn’t always necessarily bring about greater liberty. But those who do it aren’t all evil and defenders of the principles of the home-grown regimes under which they live.
I don’t think any tyranny has a right to exist. I think individuals have a right to resist and overthrow their tyrannies, or to help other people resist the tyrannies that oppress them. I don’t believe states have a right to invade countries suffering under local tyranny, kill a bunch of people who live in those countries, and use censorship, crushing taxation, conscription, deportation and violence against “their” own people and the people of the invaded states to maintain such invasions.
There’s a reason that people such as Spooner and Garrison supported armed assistance to slaveholders and yet opposed the war. Just because people have a right to overthrow authoritarian states and institutions doesn’t mean states have a right to expand their power and kill innocents for the same purpose. Indeed, people have all sorts of rights that states don’t have.
Of course, the Union didn’t invade the South for the purpose of freeing the slaves, so any defense of the invasion on the basis of slavery in the South is wrongheaded. At the very least, it’s a retrospective consequentialist argument that not only, in my opinion, is incorrect and unsound, but also doesn’t demonstrate that there weren’t large numbers of Southerners who were fighting for their freedom from the Union’s invasion and not to reaffirm the evil institution of slavery.
In one of the posts above, someone claimed that those southerners who didn’t own slaves didn’t fight to protect slavery.
I don’t believe any polling was done. Of course, there may be plenty of ancedotal evidence that all, nearly-all, or most non-slave owners weren’t interested in defending slavery.
However, I get the impression that it is treated as a matter of common sense. Why would anyone who didn’t own slaves fight to protect the system?
I can think of two basic reasons.
One is that those who didn’t own slaves hoped that they or their decendants would one day be able to purchase slaves. It is rather like supporting private enterprise even if one doesn’t own a business because one hopes that one’s family will eventually reach that esteemed status. Being a wealthy and successful farmer in the South involved buying slaves.
A second reason is fear of emancipated slaves causing some sort of trouble. It was made illegal to free slaves in most of the South. Efforts were made to restrict the practice of letting slaves go about unsupervised. Under slavery, most African Americans were concentrated in prime agricultural areas. If the slaves were free, who knows? They might spread all about. They might even all take a mind to move around here! (Whatever neck of the woods our potential Southern soldier called home.)
I recently read that the majority of South Carolinians were black, and the majority of white
South Carolinians owned slaves. And here is where the whole mess started!
By the way, Southern politics promoted the expansion of slavery in terms of the number of slave states in order to maintain a balance in the Senate. When slave states start to leave, then what appeared to be a key goal of southern politics becomes impossible. While the upper South appeared willing to believe what Lincoln said, what would the next Republican President be like? And how could a President elected solely from the North be stopped as Southern states leave the union. If one goes, then the next one goes, and the next. And when it became clear that the Repubicans wouldn’t let anyone go, the upper South left too. They might have stayed, if they knew they could go if necessary.
Necessary for what? To avoid emancipation.
I’m not saying the soldiers of the CSA were “evil” – only that the CSA itself was a criminal regime which had no rights. Morally, ANYBODY (states, individuals, anarcho-capitalist defense companies) could have destroyed it for whatever reason they wanted to. In this case, the USA did. We can cheer that fact and NOT cheer the bad things the USA did.
Comparing Stalin vs. Hilter in this context is silly. Both were vile slave-states. The US vs. Britain too is deceptive, as only half the future-USA were slave-states.
The USA did some very bad things during the Civil War, but most of the North did not enslave half their populations. Maybe the differences we have is one of degree; you think slavery is not as bad as higher taxes and conscription. I happen to think it is nearly as bad as democide.
“How about this: I ‘invade’ your neighborhood to remove a serial killer or rapist. You shoot me (out of loyalty to your neigbor, patriotism, because you oppose the ‘invasion,’ etc). I shoot back. Was my ‘invasion’ to stop a serial killer wrong? Was my shooting back at you? Is the fact I might be a mugger relevent to the fact I am stopping serial murder?”
Did you invade my privately owned land? Did I feel threatened by your running around with an accompanying army that was shooting innocents? Were you part of an organzation that declared you were NOT there to stop rapists, that frequently sent rape victims back to their rapists, that engaged in rape against innocent people in my neighborhood to destroy their morale, that killed innocents in my neighborhood to punish them for their collective guilt in living nearby the rapist, that condoned rape in “its” own neighborhood,” that had made clear for years that its purpose was to ensure I would be forced to pay tributes to you for all trade I engaged in with other consenting people? Were you sent by a man who forced people to participate in the invasion and shot people in “his” own neighborhood who refused to go along with his invasion? Did I have legitimate reason to believe that the success of the invasion would mean much less freedom for me, regardless of the fact that I opposed rape?
Your example has little to do with the Civil War. If Lincoln had come down himself, into the South, to free a slave from his slaveowner, that would have been justified. But this is nothing like his intentions or actions. (Actually, Lincoln as a lawyer did defend a slaveowner in court who claimed his “property” should be returned to him. Thank goodness Lincoln lost the case.)
“We are not talking about ‘people’ (I assume you mean whites), we are talking about the actions of the CSA, a criminal regime which enforced enslavement. I completely oppose the Union’s shooting at any hermits who wanted to be left alone.”
Well, the Union did shoot at people who wanted to be left alone. I already said I don’t defend the legitimacy of the Confederate government. But many of the people who died in that war on the Southern side were hardly slaveowners. They wanted to be left alone.
Incidentally, I think the Constitution wasn’t entirely legitimate either, nor were many actions of the fledgling U.S. government, including its die-hard endorsement and enforcement of slavery. This doesn’t mean I oppose the rights of Americans to secede from Britain. You can sympathize with the American cause without sympathizing with the Constitutional Convention or the embryonic American government, even if that regime shared in common with the American people of being free from the British yolk. Like Garrison, I think the original Constituion was a compact with the devil. That’s not the same as opposing American secession, and defending Southern secession is not the same as defending the Southern government.
“But that isn’t what we are talking about, is it?”
I don’t know exactly what we’re talking about. I oppose the Confederate government and the Union government — both supported slavery, both were brutal to American Indians (especially the Union: after the war Union generals massacred the Plains Indians with genocidal fervor), both didn’t respect the rights of women, both implemented conscription, both taxed people, both had nothing against nationalizing resources or, theoretically at least, nationalist expansionism. But in the context of the actual Civil War, looking at the people fighting, I must say I can’t condemn every Southerner for fighting back against an invasion that was killing innocents, torching homes, raping women and spreading death and destruction everywhere. In the context of the war itself, I do oppose the Union’s invasion. Would I take up arms to “defend the Confederacy”? No. Would I take up arms to “defend the U.S. government” even? I don’t think of it that way. I don’t like violence, but I imagine I might take up arms to defend the myself and my community from invasion. And if some of the people who also thought of themselves as resisting the invasion happened to put on the uniform of the local regime, I would consider it a mistake, but I wouldn’t assume they’re purpose in fighting was to defend everything that regime stands for.
Why do you make excuses for the invasion? Why do you compare it to a private commando raid liberating a rape victim or apprehending a serial killer? There is no analogy here.
“And when it became clear that the Repubicans wouldn’t let anyone go, the upper South left too. They might have stayed, if they knew they could go if necessary.
Necessary for what? To avoid emancipation.”
Why do you assume this? There were plenty of Southerners who saw far more of a threat from the Union in terms of protectionism than in terms of abolition.
“I’m not saying the soldiers of the CSA were ‘evil’ – only that the CSA itself was a criminal regime which had no rights. Morally, ANYBODY (states, individuals, anarcho-capitalist defense companies) could have destroyed it for whatever reason they wanted to. In this case, the USA did. We can cheer that fact and NOT cheer the bad things the USA did.”
Morally any state has a right to invade a county to topple a criminal regime? Sounds like a formula for world war.
“The US vs. Britain too is deceptive, as only half the future-USA were slave-states.”
What? During the Revolution, EVERY American colony had slavery, and Britain had none, and offered emancipation to American slaves who fought for Britain.
“The USA did some very bad things during the Civil War, but most of the North did not enslave half their populations. Maybe the differences we have is one of degree; you think slavery is not as bad as higher taxes and conscription. I happen to think it is nearly as bad as democide.”
No. I think slavery is worse than taxation. I think conscription is a form of slavery. Something like 5% of the American population died in the Civil War. Being drafted by the state to fight in it meant disease, injury, psychological damage and painful death for hundreds of thousands of them. How is being conscripted and forced into such a situation NOT slavery? How is it not as bad as slavery? If someone forces you into a war and you die, that person effectively murdered you.
I wrote:
“In a free society, on one’s own property, or on the property of a consenting owner, one may say anything one damned well pleases.”
Tom Palmer replied:
“Jeff Riggenbach has spoken too loosely, I believe. …What one says can be a part of a criminal act; if you threaten a person, for example, you are speaking, but not ‘only’ speaking. Your speech is a part of a threat. The threat is a violation of rights, even if the gun that is held to one’s head is not discharged. Indeed, if one hears a threat and considers it credible, one can react and harm the one making the threat, even if it turns out that he had no weapon or that the gun was merely a toy.
“So, in a free society, in [sic] ‘on one’s own property, or on the property of a consenting owner,’ one may not say to another person, ‘Go and kill Ralph Jackson; here is his address; you will find a gun hidden in his mailbox,’ when that speech is not a part of a joke or a play, but is a part of a plan to commit murder, no matter how well one is pleased by saying it. Thus, it is not the case, that, ‘on one’s own property, or on the property of a consenting owner, one may say anything one damned well pleases.’
“Jeff Riggenbach’s remarks might be correct if it were the case that human actions were describable only in corporeal, spatial, and physical terms; thus, if speech were merely the expulsion of air that is modulated by the merely physical movements of lips and tongues, then it would be hard to characterize speech as an element of a rights violation. But if that were the case, one could not speak about the matter at all. The fact that we can speak about such things is evidence that speech has meaning, that is, that it is a part of a complex intentional whole that endows what would otherwise be mere movements with significance. Planning a kidnapping on my own property is criminal, regardless of whether the kidnapping ever takes place and regardless of whether the body of the one who does the planning and speaks the orders actually comes into contact with the body of the one kidnapped. Intentions matter.”
Yes, they do, Tom. And while your analysis above is correct as a description of current U.S. law, I made no statement about current U.S. law. I made a statement about what would be true in a free society — the kind of society libertarians want to live in. In a free society, on my property, or on the property of a consenting owner, I can say anything I damned well please. If you advocate any restrictions on speech that go beyond that, your intentions are quite clear. You do not seek a free society. And you are not a libertarian.
I’m afraid that Mr. Riggenbach has lost his moorings. If Bill and Sam and Tony meet in Bill’s house to plan the murder of Anthony, and Sam and Tony go off and murder Anthony, Bill is still a part of the murder, even if he was not the trigger man. I simply don’t understand how one could deny that. What kind of a “libertarian” would let Hitler and Mao (and yes, FDR, too) off the hook, since all they did was talk about killing and persuaded others to do the deeds, but punish or otherwise sanction the trigger men? That, frankly, is nuts.
It’s not a matter of present law, but of any law that makes a lick of sense, and most especially law that is guided by libertarian principles. How would it make any difference whether Bill plans and organizes the murder of Anthony on his own property or on someone else’s? It’s the organization of a murder (which, last time I checked, was a rights violation). Organizing a murder is a crime. Paying someone to murder another person is a crime. Duh.
Mr. Riggenbach has evidently taken leave of his senses. “Even Murray Rothbard” (as some posters above might put it) would have denounced, not me, but Riggenbach for such a silly and hare brained idea.
“If Bill and Sam and Tony meet in Bill’s house to plan the murder of Anthony, and Sam and Tony go off and murder Anthony, Bill is still a part of the murder, even if he was not the trigger man. I simply don’t understand how one could deny that.”
Why would Tony murder himself (Anthony)? And if Bill was joking, as in “Strangers on a Train,” is he responsible? And why would anyone want to murder this Anthony fellow, whoever he is? Sounds like a nice guy to me.
A serious philosophical question for Tom, though: I’m sure you would agree that states frequently murder people, and that the U.S. government is not completely innocent of this. Are members of the public who call upon politicians to wage aggressive wars (that you would agree are murderous wars) — guilty of murder? Were the people who, in March of 1993, called upon the Clinton administration to hurry up and just crush the Branch Davidians guilty of murder?
It seems to me that “conspiring” to murder is a slippery slope, is it not?
Isn’t all non-libertarian political advocacy and activism basically the same as organizing and conspiring to commit rights-violations?
“Aside from invasions of property, however, freedom of speech will necessarily be upheld to the uttermost by every libertarian. Freedom to say, print, and sell any utterance becomes an absolute right, in whatever area the speech or expression chooses to cover.”
“In our view, ‘incitement’ can only be considered a crime if we deny every man’s freedom of will and of choice, and assume that if A tells B and C: ‘You and him go ahead and riot!’ that somehow B and C are then helplessly determined to proceed and commit the wrongful act. But the libertarian, who believes in freedom of the will, must insist that while it might be immoral or unfortunate for A to advocate a riot, that this is strictly in the realm of advocacy and should not be subject to legal penalty.”
“If advocacy should never be a crime, then neither should ‘conspiracy to advocate,’ for, in contrast to the unfortunate development of conspiracy law, ‘conspiring’ (i.e., agreeing) to do something should never be more illegal than the act itself. (How, in fact, can ‘conspiracy’ be defined except as an agreement by two or more people to do something that you, the definer, do not like?)”
— Murray N. Rothbard, For a New Liberty, Revised Edition. New York: Collier Books, 1978.
Well, this has turned out to be a rather controversial and convoluted thread of conversation and it’s hard to keep track of all of the contributions. That must explain why I used the names “Anthony” and “Tony” to designate different people. I should have done the normal thing in analytic philosophy discussions and used letters. Oh, well. Assume that Anthony and Tony are, in fact, referring to different imaginary characters.
The anonymous poster above (7:32 pm) raises the issue of slippery slopes. There are slippery slopes, but not all slopes are slippery and not all of the slippery ones are so slippery that we should refuse to step on them. It depends on how slippery they are and where they lead. The one that the poster raises doesn’t seem all that slippery to me. It’s little different from the question of when is behavior threatening? (I recommend the papers on the slippery slope arguments by Eugene Volokh of UCLA Law School, as he has helped to explicate the issues rather well.)
A legal system worthy of the name recognizes distinctions between merely advocating rights violations and actually posing a threat. Furthermore, we recognize different degrees of facilitation of criminal activity, some culpable and some not. (The fellow who hands a gun to a raving madman bear some responsibility for what happens, but the person who merely prepared his meals for him for the past month, without which he could not have the energy to harm others, is not.) I don’t see the questions posed immediately above as especially troubling. They are problems of boundary drawing and such problems cannot be solved without greater knowledge of the particular circumstances of particular cases.
Goodness! I’ve been “zinged” by Jeff Riggenbach. I’ll just have to rush to my bookshelf and find some other quotations from other books or essays by the Sainted Murry, say, from The Ethics of Liberty, that say something else. It may take a bit of time. In the meantime, as I try to get other things done, too, I suppose that taking as the God’s truth the odd quotes above, without context, we would have to suppose that virtually every dictator in all of human history was…..innocent! After all, only the really crude ones actually picked up a hammer and hit anyone with it. They merely ordered others to do so. And an order is just words, so the one who listened and obeyed bears 100% of the guilt! By jove, what a brilliant notion. It makes the people guilty and the dictators innocent.
“The anonymous poster above…”
Sorry, that was me. I keep forgetting to put my name in the comments field. The “Anthony”/”Tony” comment was a joke. Sorry if anyone didn’t get it. I just find it funny to hear about people conspiring to murder Anthony! How could someone named Anthony have any enemies?
Okay, I’ll be serious from now on.
I think Mr. Riggenbach mentioned Rothbard because of what you said:
“‘Even Murray Rothbard'(as some posters above might put it) would have denounced, not me, but Riggenbach for such a silly and hare brained idea.”
I understand that. What I’m going to check is A) the context, B) what else he wrote. I’m not much for checking holy writ, but I did know Murray and, despite disagreements and worse, I don’t recall him as being completely crazy. Libertarians typically refer to “force and the threat of force” as what they object to, but Mr. Riggenbach seems to think that threatening force is no problem at all. That, I submit, is indeed crazy, and too crazy for “even Murray Rothbard” to believe it.
“Freedom of speech is supposed to mean the right of everyone to say whatever he likes. But the neglected question is: Where? Where does a man have this right? He certainly does not have it on property on which he is trespassing. In short, he has this right only either on his *own* property or on the property of someone who has agreed, as a gift or in a rental contract, to allow him on the premises.”
Rothbard, Power & Market. Kansas City: Sheed, Andrews and McMeel, 1977, pp. 238-239.
Don’t bother with The Ethics of Liberty, Tom. There’s nothing in there to support your unlibertarian ideas about freedom of speech.
As to dictators, here’s more from For a New Liberty:
“[I]f A is a boss in a criminal enterprise, and, as part of the crime, orders his henchmen: ‘You and him go and rob such and such a bank,’ then of course A, according to the law of accessories, becomes a participant or even leader in the criminal enterprise itself.” (p. 95)
“[I]f you want to know how libertarians regard the State and any of its acts, simply think of the State as a criminal band and all of the libertarian attitudes will logically fall into place.” (p. 46)
Tom is, of course, famous for never having time enough to do all the many, many things he has to do in his busy, busy life: carefully trimming his “libertarianism” so as not to offend anyone inside the Beltway; virulently attacking Lew Rockwell as the chief enemy of libertarianism, while singing the praises of the detestable George W. Bush for his absurd Social Security “reform” proposal — that sort of thing.
So I won’t be holding my breath while waiting for those non-existent counter-quotes from “Murry” [sic] to materialize.
Thus Spoketh Our Lord*
(our Lord is Rothbard)
Anthony is speaking nonsense. He has yet to prove the CSA had a right to exist, hence he has no argument anyone anyone destroying it. The fact he attempts to paint a distinction between state action in this regard and private action only shows how much of a statist he is (here is a hint, states are made of invididuals). He also pretends as if the CSA regime is blameless, as if they didn’t claim ownership (and slavery) over half the population and therefore put the population at risk in the course of its vile crime (as a bank robber does with hostages while facing the police).
All he can do is whine the face of tyranny, as his slave morality tells him to do. A world war? Perhaps if that is what it takes against tyrants and slavers. You will read it here first, it is only a matter of time before the Rothbardians begin touting the National Socialists and Communists and waving their respective banners. Scratch a Rothbardian and find a statist.
Conscription, though immoral, has VERY LITTLE in common with life-long slavery (and I should note that Mises supported consrcription at one time, though I am not sure what Mises’ status is in the caste of saints in the Rothbardian mythos).
Obsession, Part 12,479
Sigh. Do Cato people ever really *work*?…
Nice job, Tommy Boy. Now you’ve painted Mr. Woods as a pointy-headed nutbag. In regards to your friends at Cato, pray tell, why do your friends let a friend drive drunk?
Mr. Boaz:
You still don’t understand That War, do you? Well, we wouldn’t want you to endanger that pristine career at Cato, would we? That might spoil those glorious parties wherein Cato invites Bush’s fascist parade and Fed Reserve pointy heads to speak on “libertarianism.”
Why don’t you come up to Detroit if you want to see real “pointy heads in white hats?” In fact, what I am getting at is that very well-known fact that racism is mostly promulgated in the North, where, of course, Yankee cities are far more segregated than anyplace in the South. Look at the last 2 or 3 census studies. Ahh, nah, couldn’t be! It’s that damn Confederate flag and Lynyrd Skynyrd!
Well, I just got back from a late night meeting (I’ve got a lot on my plate, as usual) and found that Jeff Riggenbach had done my homework for me:
TGP: “I’m quite concerned, however, that the legitimate claims for secession around the world are tarred with association with the illegitimate claims for secession that motivated the Confederacy.” I wonder if the root of our disagreement here is basically just strategy. For my part, the chief reason that I’m interested in the War or in the Confederacy at all is that, in my experience, once you start seriously discussing secession under any circumstances (except for the Revolutionary War, which is mysteriously excluded), the other party will very often bring up the Confederacy as a counter-example: “What? Quebec secede from Canada? What? Somaliland secede from Somalia? Don’t you know how that turned out in the Civil War?” Now, there are two ways to deal with this: one, which Tom Palmer seems to prefer, is to immediately change the subject back to what is actually at hand, pointing out its differences from the situation in 1861. In general, I prefer a more involved but potentially more rewarding approach, which is to establish the South’s secession as a separate question from its slavery, thereby vindicating the most-oft-mooted critique of secession in general.
A few quick comments on this huge thread:
The attempted whitewash of the Conferedate actions is bewildering. To imply, as George F. started to do, that the North and Lincoln was responsible for the war and its casualties, is a revisionist perspective. The Confederates not only upheld the abominable institution of slavery, we can also place the responsibility of the outbreak of war with them. If you want to blame anyone for the 600,000 deaths, it should be the Confederacy and Davis, not the Union and Lincoln. Buchanan holds a large share of the blame too, by idly standing by while the conflict escalated.
The Confederacy started mobilizing before the Union did. They made the first moves and fired the first shots. Jeff Riggenbach’s contention that ‘Fort Sumter was on Confederate territory’ is begging the question. You might as well say it was in Union territory, which was certainly Lincoln’s perspective.
Lincoln gave the South every chance to negotiate a peace. The expedition he sent to Fort Sumter carried no arms or ammunition, only food. He made this clear to South Carolina. In response, the Confederate forces fired the first shots of the war on April 12. Not until then did Lincoln prepare for war; his first mobilizing action was to ask for volunteers on April 15.
I want to respond to an earlier comment that trashed Cathy Young. I think she’s an excellent writer and enjoy all her Reason articles. I think they should be proud of her. She acknowledges multiple sides to most issues, which may be disturbing for the moral absolutists, but refreshing for the rest of us. On the review in question, I don’t think Young has a problem with Woods’ un-orthodoxy, in the sense of being unusual, but more with his orthodoxy, in the sense of preaching dogma.
“Anthony is speaking nonsense. He has yet to prove the CSA had a right to exist, hence he has no argument anyone anyone destroying it.”
Wrong. I made my argument. The Union didn’t have a right to exist, either. No government has a “right to exist.” Therefore no government can have a “right” to destroy another government, especially if in doing so it violates rights in myriad ways. I didn’t say the Confederacy had a right not to be destroyed. I said that Lincoln had no right to do what he actually did.
“The fact he attempts to paint a distinction between state action in this regard and private action only shows how much of a statist he is (here is a hint, states are made of invididuals).”
Sure, because if I were an individualist, I would see no distinction between states and individual action? That makes sense.
If you had done privately what Lincoln did as a head of state — if you had stolen millions of dollars, killed hundreds of thousands of people, conscripted hundreds of thousands, deported people you disagreed with, shot people who didn’t want to participate with your plan, and so on — I would not say you had a “right” to do these things. In a sense, you are right. States are made up of individuals — acting coercively. All a state is is a supposedly “legitimate” monopoly on violence. But what Lincoln did he had no moral right to do, whether he was a head of state or not.
I think it would be legitimate to peacefully overthrow or abolish any government, including our own. But if another government drafted and taxed people and invaded America to overthrow our government, killing thousands of Americans, I would certainly not say the invader government has a “right” to do this.
“He also pretends as if the CSA regime is blameless, as if they didn’t claim ownership (and slavery) over half the population and therefore put the population at risk in the course of its vile crime (as a bank robber does with hostages while facing the police).”
Where did I say the CSA is blameless? The CSA was an immoral institution, had no right to exist, and was a mistake, even to the extent that I think secession is defensible.
“All he can do is whine the face of tyranny, as his slave morality tells him to do. A world war? Perhaps if that is what it takes against tyrants and slavers.”
It’s been tried. Twice. The first time killed twenty million people, including millions of conscripted military slaves, and destroyed international relations so much that the world’s tyrannies and slavers multiplied their global oppression as never before. So it was tried again, leaving fifty million people dead and the domination of half of Europe and much of Asia by the worst slavers and totalitarians in world history. Then there was the Cold War, which was a world war in slow motion that killed millions of people. Oh yeah, I’m the statist. Not the guy who’s calling for the worst thing that governments do.
And don’t tell me “democide” is worse than war. They’re not all that different, and they feed off each other.
“You will read it here first, it is only a matter of time before the Rothbardians begin touting the National Socialists and Communists and waving their respective banners. Scratch a Rothbardian and find a statist.”
Yeah. Not believing in war is statist. Sure. And I’m the one speaking nonsense.
“Conscription, though immoral, has VERY LITTLE in common with life-long slavery (and I should note that Mises supported consrcription at one time, though I am not sure what Mises’ status is in the caste of saints in the Rothbardian mythos).”
Let’s see. In one case, you must work for a master and if you try to escape you’ll be shot. In the other, you must kill for a master and if you try to escape you’ll be shot, and you might be shot anyway. Though in the second case many are freed after the war, they were slaves for the duration.
Or do you think that if the South only wanted to maintain slavery for people in four-year intervals, it would have been okay?
Hundreds of thousands of Americans were enslaved for the rest of their lives when they were drafted. Those lives didn’t last long, however, and often came to a horrifying end.
Conscription is more than immoral. Cheating at poker is immoral. Shoplifting is immoral. Telling lies is usually immoral. Conscription is slavery, and if you think characterizing state ownership of individuals as slavery is “statist,” I think you’ve lost touch with reality, or at least with libertarianism.
“The Confederacy started mobilizing before the Union did. They made the first moves and fired the first shots.”
After Lincoln said they could have Fort Sumter. Though it was a big mistake to fire at it. But that first battle did not justify the war that followed. I believe there was only one fatality: a Confederate horse.
I think a little bit of definition is required here.
Slavery was legal throughout the South from the time of the founding until the 13th Amendment was ratified in 1868. Leaving the morality of the founder’s allowing it to be so for one second, how does this legitimate the use of force against those states by the Federal government? It doesn’t. They explicitly allowed slave states into the Union. This means the federal government had no power over that “peculiar institution” from the moment of founding. Using force against those states that had seceded had no Constitutional legal basis, save the thin, thin thread of the Confederates’ (stupid) firing on Fort Sumter.
Secondly, when Lincoln was elected, the states that felt they had the most to lose seceded. They believed they had the right to do so, for any reason, or for no reason at all, and furthermore, without the expectation of Federal force used against them. If you say “Well, they seceded illegally because they just wanted to hold onto their slaves”, then you are being inconsistent from the standpoint of the libertarian prime concept that the initiation of force is always wrong. The fact that the individual southern STATES enabled their citizens to engage in the forceful enslavement of people is only indirectly relevant – according to the Constitution of the time, what was not expressly delegated to the federal government or prohibited by it to the states was totally legal.
The only way to have resolved this inconsistency would have been to require emancipation of slaves as a condition for a state joining the Union, or, alternatively, a requirement that slave states leave the Union. This did not happen, to the everlasting disgrace of the founders. For pointing this out, Lew Rockwell and other Rothbardians are called statists and worse, this without any of them (that I know of) calling slavery a “good” or “right” or “liberty-enhancing” thing. History is on the side of those who decry slavery, but I cannot help but think it was gotten rid of here in the US in the most violent, pointless, freedom-destroying way possible, compared with the peaceful emancipations that occurred in the British Empire, Brazil, and the Caribbean.
Finally, whatever federal government the seceded states formed was of course going to be a statist thuggery, flowery declamations of liberty to the contrary. It had to be – it legitimated the holding of half of its residents in bondage. But the Union had no right, at that point, to invade, or even to maintain a military installation within that declared sovreign nation, even to rid the world of the evil of slavery. To believe otherwise is to demand that the US military immediately invade, say the Sudan to free the slaves there. As it is, we have no right under the Constitution to invade any of the places we have already invaded.
Tom,
You say:
“Well, Jeff Riggenbach, keep up the good work. Reading and re-reading and re-reading those books that were published when you were young is sure to have a big impact on the world. Someday. You just wait and see. You’ve accomplished so much of that already.”
Where did you learn your posting etiquette? From Stephan Kinsella?
Riggenbach has been pretty civil here, and made some good points. You make a fair point in return about speech acts and causality (by the way, there’s an entire seminar on the matter in vol 18 no 3 of the JLS). But then, you ruin it by dancing in the end zone like a juvenile.
At the very least, Riggenbach helps you in your efforts at expanding liberty, since he narrates some of the Cato University Home Study Course that you direct. Lurkers: I highly recommend these tapes.
Also, I know you regret implying that no libertarian works published in the 1960-70’s will not stand the test of time.
Karen De Coster is a bitch.
Mr. Guillory,
Jeff Riggenbach stepped over the line. As someone who has gone out of his way to assist him, I found his remarks especially churlish. And being denounced quite thoughtlessly as an enemy of the free society and not a libertarian for believing that people don’t have the “right” to engage in criminal conspiracy to violate the rights of others was both uncivil and simply bizarre. Furthermore, how to take this?:
“Tom is, of course, famous for never having time enough to do all the many, many things he has to do in his busy, busy life: carefully trimming his “libertarianism” so as not to offend anyone inside the Beltway; virulently attacking Lew Rockwell as the chief enemy of libertarianism, while singing the praises of the detestable George W. Bush for his absurd Social Security “reform” proposal — that sort of thing.”
I do indeed keep busy. It seems that Mr. Riggenbach is upset that on my personal website I post notices of where I’m speaking, what I’m publishing, and on what projects I’m working, all of which is helpful to me, as it allows people to contact me when I’m in town, to attend my seminars or lectures, or to send me suggestions. To add to his cri de coeur a claim that I am a “trimmer” who is afraid of offending people inside the beltway is also rather strange. Do the words envy and impotence suggest themselves?
The idea that the way to resolve disputes is to check sacred texts, after which one finds a quotation that simply states precisely what I was explaining, indicates that Mr. Riggenbach has taken leave of his senses.
I have not read anything by Mr. Riggenbach recently that has not been a denunciation. (That includes when I agree with his conclusions; he denounces, but he doesn’t reason or give arguments.) He seems incapable of anything else. That is a mark of a cultist, the kind of person who pores over sacred texts but who doesn’t subject them to critical thought. It’s a shame, since he does have a remarkably mellifluous voice.
P.S. Regarding works published in the 1960s-1970s, you’re right that some will stand the test of time, but I didn’t imply otherwise. What’s disturbing is the idea that you can read a hastily written work such as For A New Liberty (a book I know a bit about, as I read drafts of it) and refer to it on questions where reason and thought would serve better. Too many people are stuck in the mindset of the 1970s, when there was a “left” and a “right” and libertarians were somehow beyond, except…oops!… earlier Murray Rothbard aligned libertarianism with the right, then it was the far left, then the right again, then the hard right, then….well, how can one follow such things and discern any principle in them? People are better advised to use their own intellects — to offer reasons and evidence — than to follow deceased gurus.
“[E]arlier Murray Rothbard aligned libertarianism with the right, then it was the far left, then the right again, then the hard right, then….well, how can one follow such things and discern any principle in them?”
Now this is obscene. Simple, Mr. Palmer: It’s called strategy. As you well know, Rothbard believed in forging ad hoc alliances when he thought they would advance libertarian principles. In the 1950s, it was the Old Right; in the 1960s, the New Left; in the 1990s, the paleo Right; and so on. You are free to disagree with his choices, but to imply that this pattern of tactical alliances represented senseless, incoherent meanderings, or that Rothbard was some kind of opportunist without principles, is a low blow, even for you.
” It’s called strategy”
It’s called failure. I would also call it dishonesty. The combination of both is called stupidity.
“Too many people are stuck in the mindset of the 1970s, when there was a “left” and a “right” and libertarians were somehow beyond, except…oops!… earlier Murray Rothbard aligned libertarianism with the right, then it was the far left, then the right again, then the hard right, then….well, how can one follow such things and discern any principle in them? People are better advised to use their own intellects — to offer reasons and evidence — than to follow deceased gurus.”
Yes Tom, I am ashamed of you for following deceased gurus like Jefferson, Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, Madison, et al….LOL.
Seriously, had Murray lived to see our hideously gnarled political system as it has currently mutated, I suspect that he (like Lew, who probably knew him better than anybody), would probably align himself with the far/anarchist/old left, and have nothing to do with the Right, Old, New, or Neo, simply because the poverty of libertarian ideals there nearly equals that of the New Left. Anybody who knows a little about Rothbard’s history (and I know as little as possible while still knowing who he was) knows his allegiances were temporary and pragmatic BECAUSE he was acting from libertarian principle, and not simply hoping to be included in some “big tent” or appointed to a federal post as a “court intellectual”.
Having said all that, I see no reason anarcho-libertarians and conservative-near-libertarians have to call each other vile names. We do have some common interests that, given a bit more civility in the discourse, we could advance together for global benefit.
But, just to keep everybody clear, anarcho-libertarians prefer not to settle for token,ultimately insignificant progress toward the goal of minimal/no government. We have seen the net result of such “reform” is actually the reverse – a federal government that has doubled in size, in both absolute and relative GDP terms since Reagan’s election. I don’t claim to speak definitively, but I suspect that most Rothbardians would think that this is, how do you say it, BAD.
Mr. Tim (or may I call you “Tiny”?):
You have an alternative, more successful strategy to propose? Please, we’re all ears.
“You have an alternative, more successful strategy to propose?”
Don’t align yourself with racists. Don’t join a Leninist cult. Don’t marginalize others because they don’t mouth the “party line” of the Vanguard, Cadre, Cult, etc. Be honest and think for yourself. Drop the absolutist morality and try living in the real world. Most important, stop being a movementarian collectivist and start acting like an individual.
How is that for a start?
And this strategy has advanced libertarianism how, exactly? Please provide specifics.
Well if your expectations for “advancing libertarianism” are the vaunted libertarian cadre vanguard (led by Chairman Lew) smashing the evil US in a people’s revolution and leading us to Rothbardian libertopia, I am afraid any strategy I propose will leave you sorely dissapointed.
“Well if your expectations for ‘advancing libertarianism’ are the vaunted libertarian cadre vanguard (led by Chairman Lew) smashing the evil US in a people’s revolution and leading us to Rothbardian libertopia, I am afraid any strategy I propose will leave you sorely dissapointed.”
I fail to see how Rothbard’s goals and his vision of a free society were in any way inconsistent with libertarianism. Surely, a minimal night-watchman state would be preferable to what we have. Heck, a Clintonian federal government of 2/3 the size of the government under Bush would be preferable. But Rothbard’s outline of a truly free society, while involving details with which some libertarians can in good faith disagree (such as his punishment theory and anarchism), is hardly not “libertarianism.”
What is your view of a libertarian society? Does it involve world war and occasional conscription? What is it about Rothbard’s vision of a free country that disturbs you so much, and seems so incompatible with your version of libertarianism?
“I am afraid any strategy I propose will leave you sorely dissapointed.” Ah, as I suspected. You have nothing. No action plan. No successes to report. Just mudslinging. Too bad.
It wasn’t Rothbard economic and philsophical theories that bother me. He was a marginally valuable libertarian economist and writer. (He was a hack as a philosopher, but that doesn’t bother me so much.)
What bothered me was his politicking, his comfortable relationships with communists, anti-semites and racists, his leninism, his intelletual dishonesty when dealing with “opponents” (usually other libertarians who he wanted to “smash”), how he fostered utopianism and cult-like devotion, etc. I find this vile on a number of levels. The fact is has been totally ineffective makes it stink even worse.
Much like the worst of the Randians, his cult-like followers continue this today, which is even more sad. But I could care less if his followers continue marginalize themselves to nothing, which really wil be the end result. What sickens me is to watch them contaminate libertarian ideas as a whole and (especially) tarnish the good name of Ludwing von Mises with their despicable tactics.
I could care less if Anthony and George are convinced about above. They are True Believers and beyond help. But I do hope others read this before they get stuck in the Rockwellian tar-baby.
Wait a minute, Rothbard had “comfortable relationships with…anti-semites”? Wasn’t Rothbard Jewish?
Wasn’t Karl Marx?
Marx was, but did he have any dealings with anti-semites (and why the hell am I defending Marx over Rothbard?)?
Well, I’ll be out of internet range for a bit (and have been too busy to intervene much, anyway). Have fun.
I’ll just mention that Murray’s various gyrations were not always “strategic,” but often also quite personal. Finding a smaller pond in which one can be a bigger fish is a common feature of status seeking primates. That explains at least some of Murray’s various swings from one end of the political spectrum to the other. And whoever didn’t follow him was…a wrecker, a deviationist, a non-libertarian, a right-opportunist, a left….you get the picture. It’s not the whole story, but it’s a significant part of it.
But then, all this started with a discussion of what sympathy with the Confederate States of America tells people about one’s underlying political and moral motivations. There are two images at the top of this page — which one is at work in the romantic yearning/whitewashing of the Confederacy and of its reliance on slaver?
“Karen De Coster is a bitch.”
Posted by: at February 25, 2005 09:00 AM
Wow, deep stuff. Oh, how I cry. I see that the Palmerettes are at the top of their game.
“but did he have any dealings with anti-semites”
Fredrich Engles.
I guess Marx was a hypocrite, wasn’t he? You would think a guy who wrote a manifesto against private property with his factory owning friend would reek of spotless consistency.
Engles was anti-semitic??