Chapter 10 of 12 · Toward a Libertarian Society by Walter Block

IV. Libertarian Theory A. The Basic Premises Chapter 36 Turning Their Coats For the State

The non-aggression axiom is the lynchpin of the philosophy of libertarianism. It states, simply, that it shall be legal for anyone to do anything he wants, provided only that he not initiate (or threaten) violence against the person or legitimately owned property of another. That is, in the free society, one has the right to manufacture, buy, or sell any good or service at any mutually agreeable terms. Thus, there would be no victimless crime prohibitions, price controls, government regulation of the economy, etc.

If the non-aggression axiom is the basic building block of libertarianism, private property rights based on (Lockean and Rothbardian) homesteading principles are the foundation. For if A reaches into B’s pocket, pulls out his wallet and runs away with it, we cannot know that is the aggressor and B the victim. It may be that A is merely repossessing his own wallet, the one B stole from him yesterday. But given a correct grounding in property rights, the non-aggression axiom is a very powerful tool in the war of ideas. For most individuals believe, and fervently so, that it is wrong to invade other people or their property. Who, after all, favors theft, murder or rape? With this as an entering wedge, libertarians are free to apply this axiom to all of human action, including, radically, to unions, taxes, and even government itself.

The non-aggression axiom and private property rights theory which underlies it have recently come under furious attack, amazingly, from commentators actually calling themselves libertarians. Let us consider two cases posed by these people.

First, you are standing on the balcony of a 25-story high-rise apartment when, much to your dismay, you lose your footing and fall out. Happily, in your downward descent, you manage to grab onto a flagpole protruding from the 15th floor of the balcony of another apartment, ten floors below. Unhappily, the owner of this apartment comes out to her balcony, states that you are protesting by holding on to her flag pole, and demands that you let go (e.g., drop another 15 floors to your death). You protest that you only want to hand walk your way down the flag pole, into her apartment, and then right out of it, but she is adamant. As a libertarian, are you bound to obey her?

Second case. You are lost in the woods, freezing, with no food. You will die without shelter and a meal. Fortunately, you come upon a warm cabin stocked with staples. You intend to eat, stay the night, leave your business card, and pay double any reasonable price that could be asked. Unfortunately, the cabin has a sign posted on the door: “Warning. Private Property. No Trespassing.” Do you tamely go off into the woods and die?

Opponents of the non-aggression axiom maintain that you have no obligation to die in either of these cases, much less in the name of private property rights. In their view these concepts have been adopted to promote human life and well-being, which, ordinarily, they do, and superlatively so. But in these exceptional cases, where the non-aggression standard would be contrary to utilitarian principles, it should be jettisoned. The non-aggression principle, for them, is a good rule of thumb, which sometimes, rarely, should be ignored.

There are several grave problems with these critiques of the non-aggression axiom.

1. They misunderstand the nature of libertarianism. These arguments implicitly assume that libertarianism is a moral philosophy, a guide to proper behavior, as it were. Should the flagpole hanger let go? Should the hiker go off and die? But libertarianism is a theory concerned with the justified use of aggression, or violence, based on property rights, not morality. Therefore, the only proper questions which can be addressed in this philosophy are of the sort, if the flagpole hanger attempts to come in to the apartment, and the occupant shoots him for trespassing, Would the forces of law and order punish the homeowner? Or, if the owner of the cabin in the woods sets up a booby trap, such that when someone forces his way into his property he gets a face full of buckshot, Would he be guilty of a law violation? When put in this way, the answer is clear. The owner in each case is in the right, and the trespasser in the wrong. If force is used to protect property rights, even deadly force, the owner is not guilty of the violation of any licit law.

2. These examples purposefully try to place us in the mind of the criminal perpetrator of the crime of trespass. We are invited, that is, to empathize with the flag pole hanger, and the hiker, not the respective property owners. But let us reverse this perspective. Suppose the owner of the apartment on the 15th floor has recently been victimized by a rape, perpetrated upon her by a member of the same ethnic or racial group as the person now hand walking his way down her flag pole, soon to uninvitedly enter her apartment. May she not shoot him in self-defense before he enters her premises? Or, suppose that the owner of the cabin in the woods has been victimized by several break-ins in the past few months, and has finally decided to do something in defense of his property. Or, suppose that the owner, himself, views his cabin as his own life preserver. Then, may he not take steps to safeguard his property? To ask these questions is to answer them, at least for the consistent libertarian.

3. The criticisms of libertarian property rights theory base their views on the philosophy of emergencies. The non-aggression axiom is all well and good in ordinary circumstances, but when there are lifeboat situations, all bets are off. The problem, however, with violating libertarian law for special exigencies is that these occurrences are more commonplace than supposed. Right now, there are numerous people dying of starvation in poor parts of the world. Some are suffering from illnesses which could be cured cheaply, e.g., by penicillin. We have all read those advertisements placed by aid agencies: “Here is little Maria. You can save her, and her entire village, by sending us some modest amount of money each month.”

In point of fact, many so called libertarians who have attacked the non-aggression axiom on these emergency grounds live in housing of a middle class level or better; drive late model cars; eat well; have jewelry; send their children to pricey colleges. If they truly believed in their critiques, none of this would be true. For if the cabin owner and the apartment dweller are to give up their property rights to save the hiker and the flagpole hanger, then they must give up their comfortable middle-class life styles in behalf of all the easily cured sick and starving people in the world. That they have not done so shows they do not even take their own arguments seriously.

The logical implication of their coercive welfarist argument is far worse than merely being required to give a few dollars a month to a relief agency. For suppose they do this. Their standard of living will still be far greater than those on the verge of death from straightened circumstances. No, as long as these relatively rich “libertarians” have enough money to keep themselves from dying from poverty, the logic of their argument compels them to give every penny they own over and above that level to alleviate the plight of the endangered poor.

Published February 17, 2003.

Chapter 37 The Libertarian Axiom and Jonah Goldberg, Neo-Con

The foundation of libertarianism is the non-aggression axiom. This states that it is illicit to initiate or threaten invasive violence against a man or his legitimately owned property. Murray Rothbard characterized this as “plumb line” libertarianism: follow this one principle, and you will be able to infer the libertarian position on all issues, without exception.

Before considering the latest Jonah Goldberg criticism of this philosophy (saving a friend from suicide by force), consider, perhaps, an even more difficult case.

You are standing in the path of an onrushing boulder, completely unaware of your fate. In a second, this massive rock will hit you, and you will die. (Let us stipulate the truth of this supposition.) Instead, however, I push you out of its path, and into safety. The only trouble is, as a result of it, although I have saved your life, I also broke your arm.

Now, if you are a reasonable sort of person, you will be grateful to me. Instead, you insist upon sticking to the literal letter of libertarian law, and sue me for damages for the injury you have sustained. After all, I did initiate a violent act upon your person, which resulted in an injury to you. If this is not assault and battery, you argue, then nothing is. How shall the libertarian judge rule?

One possibility is to hold me innocent of this charge. This could be done by adding up the two acts, the life-saving and the arm-breaking, and deciding that the former is far more important than the latter. So much so that the one ought to be in effect “subtracted” from the other, and since the result would be a “positive” (I contributed more to your life by saving it than I cost you through the injury you sustained), I would be let off scott free. The point here is that I committed not two acts, but only one: saving-your-life-and-injuring-you, and that this complex but single act is not one of initiatory aggression.

A difficulty with this line of reasoning is that you might have been standing in the way of the boulder as part of a suicide attempt. You regarded the situation where you are dead far more highly than the one where you are alive, but debilitated. We may assume you wanted to end your life because of bodily malfunctions like a broken arm, and now I have worsened your welfare, not improved it.

Another problem is that these really are two separate acts. It is certainly possible that I could have pushed you out of death’s way without breaking your arm. To call it two separate acts is really to fudge: this would only be done in order to achieve the common sense result we all presumably want: to find me innocent of bodily harm.

No, the only proper libertarian judgment is that I am indeed guilty of a battery upon your person. My motives may have been exemplary, but my act, strictly speaking, was in violation of your property rights in yourself. I might well be let off with a light sentence, given the extenuating circumstances, but guilty I am.

With this introduction, I am now ready to consider Jonah Goldberg’s attack on libertarianism. Before I do so, let me say one word in his favor: at least he does not muddy the waters by claiming he is a libertarian. No, he flies the banner of conservatism (or Republicanism; despite his claims to the contrary, I don’t see much difference), a matter of accuracy and decency on his part. This is in sharp contrast to Milton Friedman, a person who does claim allegiance to this philosophy, and yet uses precisely the same argument as Goldberg in an attempt to undermine the non-aggression axiom.

Consider a drunken A, who is standing at the edge of a bridge, ready to jump. B, a friend of hers, forcibly grabs A, and saves her from suicide. According to our analysis, B is guilty of a battery, and even of a (short bout of) kidnapping, given that B follows up his act of life saving by restraining A from further attempts to harm herself until she sobers up. But now what? Suppose that when she wakes up the next morning, cold stone sober, A still wants to kill herself. According to the logic of the argument of the Goldbergs (and Milton Friedmans) of the world, B may restrain her from so doing for the rest of her life. This is the role accorded Goldberg to the state. After all, if it is justified to use violence against a person to save her life, and this works in the short term, why not for the long run? When life is placed at the core of a political philosophy, not the non-aggression axiom, this all follows from the laws of logic.

Something else is inferable as well. Goldberg is really a paternalist. For drinking alcohol, using addictive drugs, and smoking cigarettes are all slow ways of committing suicide. Riding a motorcycle without a helmet or an automobile without a seat belt, hang gliding, rodeo riding, football playing, boxing, are all ways of risking it. There is a paternalist continuum between Goldberg on the “right” who is willing to utilize initiatory aggression against innocent people for very limited good purposes, and your typical leftist who is willing to do precisely the same thing on a wider scale. It is only the libertarian who stands four square in favor of the non-aggression axiom.

If you really think saving your friend’s life is important because the desire for suicide is only temporary, then you ought to be willing to pay a relatively small penalty if this friend then turns around and sues you for battery, or kidnapping. The problem with the Goldberg variation (sorry, I couldn’t resist) is that he wants a freebie: to initiate violence against an innocent person with no risk of punishment whatsoever.

Nice try, Mr. Goldberg. But if this is the best you can do, you had better consider renouncing your views, and becoming a libertarian.

Published November 10, 2001.

Chapter 38 Compassionate Conservatism

President Bush rightly notes that government has been a dismal failure in terms of alleviating poverty. Bureaucrats have thrown (our) money at the problem for most of the last century — at a feverish clip since the 1960s — and the difficulties have worsened, not improved. Our president quite perceptively sees that the faith-based private charities have had a much more salutary impact, not least because they are run on a voluntary basis, and if they fail their funds tend to dry up. This contrasts sharply with the welfare bureaucracy, where continued disasters call forth greater and greater budgets. Jay Leno and his pinko ilk may make fun of Bush’s intelligence, but they are miles behind him in their appreciation for private as opposed to public initiatives in this regard.

Why, specifically, have private charities run rings around their public counterparts in terms of easing poverty? This is because the former, not the latter, insist that the poor not remain passive, but rather undertake efforts in their own behalf. Often, they are called upon to personally or by letter thank the specific donors responsible for their upkeep, there being no “welfare rights” in this sector of the economy. When recipients realize that flesh and blood creatures, just like themselves, are the source of their support, they tend less to take it for granted. Then, too, churches and synagogues address the entire problem — spiritual, religious, moral, as well as economic, not just the latter, as does the so called “welfare” department.

From this, the present administration draws the not totally unreasonable conclusion that instead of continuing to allow credentialed social workers employed by government to throw money at poverty and homelessness, these funds should be funneled through the private charitable sector. It is a sort of privatization of a public purpose, or a “contracting out,” of which many moderate free enterprisers have approved in the past (think tradeable emissions rights, school vouchers, private warehousing of prisoners, etc.). In order to obviate any possible difficulty with church-state overlap, the plan calls for financing of meals and beds only, not prayer books, etc.

There have been howls of outrage launched at this compassionate conservative plan, much of it emanating from those who call themselves libertarian. Their arguments, too, just like Bush’s, have a veneer of good sense. They maintain that the key reason for the success of private ventures is their voluntariness; giving the church tax revenues would undermine this. Another difficulty is that “he who pays the piper calls the tune”: with government money comes government oversight, and then we are right back to where we started; the private sector institutions will come to resemble their public counterparts, warts and all. For example, the Salvation Army, which accepted some government funding to support its efforts, has just been hit with a 25-page long list of requirements, mandating among many other things that its menus be approved by an American Dietetic Association registrant, and that all its employees pass complaint and grievance procedure courses.

It cannot be denied that there is a modicum of truth, too, in this charge. There is little doubt that anything the state touches it will poison, and private charity is certainly no exception to this general rule.

However, I venture to suggest, this is entirely apart from what should be the libertarian concern. We are not directly concerned with curing poverty, or homelessness. To be sure, these come about as a result of implementing our program, but they are not to be confused with it. Libertarians of course do not oppose increasing the wealth of the poor (and of everyone else for that matter) but this is hardly the essence of this philosophy. Very much to the contrary, plumb line libertarianism consists of nothing more than an insistence that all interactions take place on a voluntary basis; that no one be forced to do anything, except to keep his mitts off of the persons and legitimately owned property of everyone else. (Limited government libertarians, or minarchists, would make an exception for courts, armies and police; but certainly not for the welfare state.)

Let us, then, instead of confusing ourselves with conservatives, remind ourselves of our own philosophy, and use it to analyze George Bush’s “compassion.” Let us, that is, sit back, relax, and take another look at this plan from a quintessentially libertarian perspective.

We have here a man, President Bush, who is in effect a thief He and his minions have stolen vast amounts of money from an innocent populace (e.g., any taxes at all for anarcho-libertarians, tax funds used for anything other than armies, courts, and police as far as the minarchists are concerned). Libertarians, particularly the “charitable ones” may not so much blame the man as the system. After all, George W. Bush has only been in office for six months; he may any day soon do away with this pernicious practice in its entirety. But here he is, forget about the antecedents for the moment, offering to return to private individuals vast amounts of money that does not properly belong to him in the first place. How are we to greet this move?

I say, in the spirit of that great saint Ragnar Danneskjöld, we ought to rejoice. This removes from this fictional character the responsibility of doing what he did in Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged. There is no need to seize any government money; it is being freely offered!

Now, of course, it would be far better if these funds were directed right back at their rightful owners; very little of it was mulcted from the churches and other charitable organizations. And if the latter turned libertarian over night, they might well take these monies and return them to the long-suffering taxpayers, from whom they were seized. But surely it is better that the churches retain this financing rather than that they remain under the control of those who now illegitimately hold it?

Suppose the Crips, or the Blood, or the Mafia, or the Cosa Nostra, or any other gang suddenly made an announcement: here are several millions of dollars we are giving to the Salvation Army. The Sally Anns might refuse to accept it, on grounds it is dirty money. But why is government money cleaner? If anything, it is more honest in that these gangsters, after robbing us, do not, as Spooner reminds us, have the temerity to stick around and pose as our saviors.

Now, there is obviously no requirement on the part of the Salvation Army to accept these funds. My claim, though, just as it was when the Libertarian Party faced the possibility of accepting “matching funds” from government under election law, that this is a matter of pragmatism, not principle. There is no libertarian principle which precludes the transfer of funds from those who have stolen them, to those who have not (such as the LP, or the SA).

It is not as if President Bush were offering vast sums of money to the “usual suspects” in the business community, who actively aid and abet the power structure in their statist depredations. Neither voluntary charities, nor the Libertarian Party, are part of the ruling class; e.g., those in and out of government who are responsible for our present political economic plight.

Conservative libertarians oppose Bush’s program of “Compassionate Conservatism” on the ground that it will not alleviate poverty, and will instead in effect suborn those private charities that have hitherto been part of the solution, not the problem. But it is a direct violation of libertarian principles to oppose the disgorging of government funds to the private sector! We ought to adopt our own unique libertarian voice in analyzing issues of the day, and not fall into lockstep with moderate so-called friends of liberty.

Published September 4, 2001.

Chapter 39 Ideas Rule; For Good or Ill: The Importance of Ideology

When I was young and foolish (the two don’t necessarily go together), I used to believe that rationality, common sense, and pragmatism would overcome ideology. That is, I thought that when push came to shove, and it became clear that our economic or political system was not working, when people were actually dying as a result of it, that it would be jettisoned in favor of something that could actually work, and thus save lives.

1. My first rude awakening from this naïve and complacent view concerned the ideology of socialism-communism. The economic system of the USSR killed millions of people — this is entirely apart from millions more of actual murders also perpetrated in the name of the proletarian revolution — and yet it was allowed to persist for some seven decades. One could, perhaps, dismiss this occurrence on the ground that these people were, after all, foreigners, and the ordinary rules of rational human behavior do not apply to such persons, but for the fact that there were also legions of commie sympathizers cheering them on from the good old U.S. of A., in accents that were as American as apple pie.

2. The second ideology involved the AIDS — Red Cross — blood transfusion episode. In the early days of this debacle not only did not the Red Cross refuse to accept blood donations from gay men, it even declined to single out their donations for special testing. This would be an insult to the gay community. Yet, such was the prestige of this organization that they were able to stay in business, despite having in this way killed thousands of hemophiliacs, and other recipients of poisoned blood transfusions. (Since then I have resolved never to financially support the Red Cross, even indirectly as when it appears under the umbrella of groups such as the United Way.)

Here, again, was the triumph of ideology over rationality, morality, and common sense. Gays, after all, are “good”; at the very least it is a mortal crime and sin to do anything that has even the slightest chance of insulting these people, and they insult easily. This holds even when actual lives are not only at stake, but, even, had already been lost.

A third episode which impacted my thinking is of recent origin. On 9/11/01, a day that will forever live in infamy, when 19 men, 15 of them Saudi Arabian males between the ages of 25–40, killed about 3,000 innocent civilians. This horrendous event has triggered several further ideologies, each of them still operational.

3. One of the new ideologies is the utter and total evil of racial profiling. Given that these murderers commandeered commercial airplanes, it is only natural that attention would be paid to Saudi Arabian men in their twenties to forties, in an effort to preclude a repetition of this tragedy. Has this been the case? It has not. Instead, while greater efforts have indeed been made to monitor passengers, none of it has focused on this age-gender-ethnic cohort. Indeed, the very opposite has occurred. That is, efforts have been made not only to search other groups too — such as black grandmothers, white children, Orientals — but to reduce coverage of the very type of person responsible for the events of 9/11/01.

And why, pray tell, is this? Yet another ideology raises its ugly head. We must never engage in racial (or ethnic or gender) profiling, lest this offend other groups in society, mainly, in this case, young black males, and those who support their “rights” not to be singled out by the police as suspects for criminal behavior. Let us get something clear. The police have never engaged in “racial” profiling against blacks. Had they done so, their attention would have been paid, equally, to black grandparents, toddlers, teen-aged girls, disabled, etc. Instead, they have focused almost totally on male blacks in their teens and twenties. Why? Is this some sort of limited racism? Not at all. Rather, this is precisely the age-sex-race grouping most disproportionately over represented in the crime statistics. Thus, there has been criminal profiling, but no racial profiling at all.

And yet, because of ideological sensibilities, we have shown ourselves as a country willing to take on extra risks of a repeat of the World Trade Center catastrophe, merely so as to not be seen as treading on racial toes. For shame.

4. Next, gun control. The perpetrators of 9/11/01 did their evil deed based on the threat of no more than razor sharp box cutters. (There was also the fact that previously, air plane high jackers were not suicidal, so pilots were told to submit in order to save lives). Well, there is one way to obviate future such occurrences: arm, if not all passengers, then at least the pilots and staff. No more crashing into buildings, then, nor the need to shoot down a future hypothetical airliner for this purpose. In any rational world, anxious to avoid a repetition of 9/11, this is exactly what would take place. But ours, alas, is beset by destructive ideologies. Earnest entreaties by pilots’ associations to this effect, signed by literally tens of thousands of them, have fallen on deaf Department of Transportation ears. Instead, they have contented themselves with meticulous searches for box cutters, nail clippers and nail files; talk about the Maginot Line.

According to the ideology now prevalent amongst our masters, we are to entrust the landing and takeoff skills of pilots with our very lives, but dare not rely upon them to be armed, even when specifically qualified to do so, as a last line of defense against evil doers. And this despite the best efforts of John Lott and other researchers who have shown that gun legalization saves lives.

5. Now consider Saudi Arabia, from whence emanated most of the terrorists. It is all well and good to seek out and punish the perpetrators of the events of 9/11 in Afghanistan, if that is where they are hiding. But business as usual with Saudi Arabia? Not even a strongly worded diplomatic note of protest? Not only do the monsters hail from that country, but so does Osama bin Laden, the arch-criminal mastermind. Instead, President Bush puts out the welcome mat at his ranch in Texas for the head of this nation.

Why? It is difficult to reject the hypothesis that the U.S. is dependant upon oil from that corner of the globe. But if our purchases of this resource even indirectly enables the financing of terrorism, why do we not seek out alternative energy sources, for example in our own country, e.g., in Alaska?

Let’s take the troops out of Saudi Arabia, indeed from the whole region, and stop the foreign aid and other meddling, including the murderous sanctions on Iraq. We can’t solve ancient hatreds, but we can follow the example of Switzerland, and mind our own business. Thus we may even avoid further terrorist attacks.

6. The failure to develop oil in Alaska is due to the power of yet another powerful ideology, left-wing environmentalism. It would appear that not only are bald eagles, spotted owls, snail darters, and various types of salamanders and frogs more important than human well-being, but this applies, also, to land itself. Case in point: the pristine nature of the Alaska wilderness, plus, perhaps, inconveniencing a few brothers of ours of field and stream, such as the caribou. Let it be said once and for all, loud and clear, however; private property rights are not the enemy of a clean and safe environment. Indeed, the very opposite is the case. Free-market environmentalism is not an oxymoron. Just go and ask the environmentalists on the other side of the Iron Curtain about how well socialist governments treat the land, air, and water. As long as private property rights include the right to sue trespassers, e.g., perpetrators of mud slides, oil spills, wayward dust particles (air pollution), this system is the last best hope for a sound ecological system.

7. But this does not at all exhaust our tour of pernicious ideologies. What of the much vaunted Immigration and Naturalization Service, which a half year after the tragedy was still granting papers to terrorists who had already committed suicide? Has the INS lost profits and been forced into bankruptcy? It has not. Has this bureaucracy even had its wings clipped administratively? Had its budget cut? Been supplanted by a more efficient government agency, better able to sift through immigration applications, and prevent terrorists from arriving upon our shores? To ask this question is to answer it.

8. And this is to say nothing of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The failure of the FBI to protect the American public was horrendous. Records are even now coming to light indicating that the lower level operatives of this “intelligence” community had foreknowledge of an impending World Trade Center attack. But the organizational apparatus was so inept no use could be made of this information. Yet the popular, nay, exalted status of the FBI is such that it, too, paid no penalty for its abject failure. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that the FBI’s reputation remains untarnished in the aftermath of 9/11.

9. Worse, far worse, is the statolatry (worship of government, for the uninitiated) which has taken deep root in our society. For victims of this particular ideology, the government simply can do no wrong. Or, if it can, then the motto of the people is, “My state, right or wrong.”

Consider the facts. For years the U.S. government has been poking its snout into hornet’s nests the world over. The American state has a standing army, contrary to its own constitution. Nor does it leave these men under arms within its own borders. Much to the contrary, it stations them abroad, in the seas and on the territory of foreign nations. It has more soldiers abroad than the combined numbers of all other countries taken together (and most of them, e.g., from the United Kingdom, are there at the behest of Uncle Sam).

Unhappily, the government of the United States has not adhered to the advice given to it by George Washington, in his “Farewell Address,” to avoid entangling alliances. It has spurned the dictum of President Adams to the effect that we wish all other nations their freedom but will fight only for our own.

Finally, finally, a few of the hornets from abroad we have disturbed in their own lands have struck back in a big way. Does the American public blame its government for its unconstitutional meddling into the affairs of others? Not a bit of it. George Bush’s approval ratings have shot through the roof. A wave of “patriotism” sweeps the nation. But this is not the patriotism that befits a free country, one that minds it own business, one that limits itself to a defensive posture in world affairs. This is the jingoism of a veritable empire. Let’s face it. Were any other country to have acted as we have done in world affairs, say, a triumphant Nazi Germany, or a super bellicose China (now that is an oxymoron), or a reinvigorated bad old U.S.S.R., the only one with massive numbers of troops stationed abroad, and people in this country would know full well how to accurately label such an entity: as an Empire, not a Republic. According to the famous Peanuts cartoon, “we have met the enemy, and he is us.” The U.S. has become the Darth Vader of the earth. It is our country which is now out of control. Yes, the perpetrators of 9/11 were terrorists, in that they targeted innocent civilians. But they were hardly the first to engage is so heinous an act.

Let us hope and pray for a return of the U.S. to sanity on the world stage. But if this is to occur, we must renounce the evil ideologies of socialism, communism, obeisance to homosexualism, opposition to racial profiling, gun control, to the claim that Saudi Arabia is not a “rogue” state, to left-wing environmentalism to the INS, the FBI, and most important, to the notion that the U.S., the first of the modern “rogue” Empires, is really a completely innocent victim of oppression.

According to that old saw, the reason disputes amongst the professoriate in academia are so vicious is that there is so little at stake. But if our analysis is correct, this is about as far from the truth as it is possible to be. For faculty members at universities inculcate their charges with ideology, and there is scarcely anything more important for the future of the human race. Professors are in charge of nothing less than the ideological development of the entire next generation of leaders and scholars.

Published June 7, 2002.

Chapter 40 Sex, Drugs, & Rock ‘n’ Roll; and Libertarianism

Susan Lee, a member of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, has written an interesting essay entitled “Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll.” Her aim is to distinguish libertarians from conservatives. And a good thing, too, say I.

Were this a student essay handed in from a member of my class, I would award it a B-. It shows some familiarity with the concepts involved, but misses many important nuances, and mischaracterizes even some basic points. This is disappointing, in that we would expect better political reporting from such a source.

Let us begin with some of the good points. First and foremost, the choice of subject. For all too many political economic commentators, the only distinction worth making is that between liberals and conservatives, or Demopublicans and Republicanocrats. For a high profile periodical such as the Wall Street Journal to even have recognized libertarianism as a distinct philosophy is a great virtue.

Second, she starts out strongly: “Libertarianism is simplicity itself. It proceeds from a single, quite beautiful, concept of the primacy of individual liberty that, in turn, infuses notions of free markets, limited government and the importance of property rights.” Well put. Indeed, it would be hard to improve upon this description.

But then, we run into problems.

In what is to follow, I offer my critical comments, interspersed with her text. That is, what appears below is her article, in regular print, with my comments in italics.

Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll

Libertarians have more fun — and make more sense

By Susan Lee

Sometime this month, Congress will vote on whether to ban cloning, human and therapeutic. Conservatives want a total ban, liberals only want to stop human cloning. What’s mostly missing from the debate, however, is the libertarian position. And that’s a shame. A little bit of libertarian thought would clear the political sinuses.

Libertarianism is simplicity itself. It proceeds from a single, quite beautiful, concept of the primacy of individual liberty that, in turn, infuses notions of free markets, limited government and the importance of property rights.

In terms of public policy, these notions translate into free trade, free immigration, voluntary military service and user fees instead of taxes. Sometimes these policies are argued in a totally unforgiving way so that it’s not easy to separate the lunatics from the libertarians. But it’s a snap to separate libertarians from conservatives.

“Free trade”? Yes, a thousand times yes. But “free immigration” is a highly contentious issue amongst libertarians. The prestigious Journal of Libertarian Studies devoted an entire issue to this subject, featuring entries from all sides of this debate. Perhaps the strongest case against open borders can be found in Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy: The God that Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarch, Democracy and Natural Order; Peter Brimelow, Alien Nation: Common Senseabout America’s Immigration Disaster. For the diametric opposite point of view see Walter Block and Gene Callahan. “Is There a Right to Immigration? A Libertarian Perspective.”

While the voluntary military resonates far better with libertarians than a draft, here, too, there are complexities. Suppose that attracting soldiers through market wages, as opposed to drafting them, enables an imperialistic nation to wage war even more effectively. Then, it is hardly clear that the former is to be preferred. (See on this Walter Block, “Against the Volunteer Military.”)

And what is the libertarian supposed to make of “and user fees instead of taxes”? Both emanate from a government that, presumably, is operating outside of its proper and very limited functions. Why should the overburdened citizenry be forced to pay user fees to government for such things as parks, roads, tunnels, bridges, libraries, museums, when these are improper roles for the state in the first place? Rather than paying user fees, these amenities should be privatized.

Nor can we overlook “Sometimes these policies are argued in a totally unforgiving way so that it’s not easy to separate the lunatics from the libertarians.” Who is “unforgiving?” Who are the “lunatics?” One senses that these are libertarians with whom Lee disagrees, but this simply is not good enough. As I tell my students, if you want to criticize someone, fine, do it. Have the courtesy to cite them, and then give reasons against their stance. But this sort of thing is just name-calling; it does not by one iota promote intellectual dialogue.

Reading in between the lines, one discerns that her target is anarcho-capitalists, or libertarian anarchists. These people believe (true confession time: I am one of them) that government which governs best not only governs least, but governs not at all. That the “single, quite beautiful, concept of the primacy of individual liberty” leads logically, and inexorably, to no state at all. In these cases, even the limited tasks assigned by limited government libertarians, or libertarian minarchists, would be taken over by the market. This includes armies for defense against foreign aggressors, police to protect us from domestic malefactors, and courts to determine guilt or innocence.

For starters, although these two groups do clasp hands on the importance of free markets, not all their fingers touch. To conservatives, the free market takes its force only as an economic construct — and even then, this is often reduced to an automatic complaint against high taxes. To libertarians, on the other hand, the model of a free market functions as a template for all things. Not only does the market operate as a continuous process for sorting through competing ideas as well as goods, it also allows each individual to express himself or herself. The latter is simply a consequence of the market’s function in testing individual preferences. That some ideas triumph and others fail is necessary.

Our authoress is close here; an A- on this one paragraph. The conservatives’ adherence to free market principles is very superficial indeed. I was present at the annual convention of Young Americans for Freedom, held in St. Louis in 1969 (Murray N. Rothbard, “Listen, YAF”). This was the point at which massive numbers of libertarians split from this conservative youth group, and began setting up their own institutions. One highlight of this event was the burning of a draft card by libertarians, which set the young conservatives into a hissy fit. The other was the taunt of the latter against the former: “lazy fairies.” For the non-initiated, this was a jibe at laissez faire capitalism.

But perhaps the single distinguishing feature between conservatives and libertarians is that libertarians are concerned with individual rights and responsibilities over government — or community — rights and responsibilities. Consider how conservatives and libertarians divide over cultural issues or social policy. Libertarians are not comfortable with normative questions. They admit to one moral principle from which all preferences follow; that principle is self-ownership — individuals have the right to control their own bodies, in action and speech, as long as they do not infringe on the same rights for others. The only role for government is to help people defend themselves from force or fraud. Libertarians do not concern themselves with questions of “best behavior” in social or cultural matters.

Close, here, but again no cigar. It is not that libertarians are “not comfortable” with normative questions, regarding the morality of certain actions. Rather, it is that they have no view whatsoever on these issues, since theirs is a philosophy which asks but one type of question, and gives but one answer. The question? What is just law? Under what cases is it justified for the institutions of law and order to utilize force against a person? The answer: only when he has first initiated force against another person or his property.

Further, the government is by no means the same thing as the community (the advocates of Public Choice to the contrary notwithstanding), and the group, whatever it is, cannot have any rights or responsibilities. This applies solely to individuals.

Libertarians most certainly do concern themselves with questions of “best behavior” in social or cultural matters. But they do not do this, they cannot do this, qua libertarians. Rather, they, like all other human beings, do this in their role as citizens, individuals, whatever. Similarly, most doctors, chess players and athletes like ice cream. But they express this taste not as practitioners of these callings; rather, they do so as individuals.

By contrast, conservatives are comfortable with normative issues. Conservative thought works within a hierarchical structure for behavior that has, at its top, absolute and enduring values. These values are not the result of the agnostic process of the free market; they are ontologically inherent. Because conservatives assume that there is a recognizable standard of excellence, they deal easily with notions of virtue and moral behavior. For example, they argue that the state of marriage between a man and a woman possesses great virtue. And they can go on to distinguish lesser states of virtue in other types of relationships. This process of distinguishing isn’t an entirely epistemological argument, however; it is based, in part, on tradition and, in part, on sociology taken from assumptions about “best behavior.”

It is not exactly true that “conservatives are comfortable with normative issues,” and libertarians are not. Surely, the question of just law is a normative one. Rather, at least insofar as modern conservatism is concerned, their perspective is defined in terms of certain positions on what is virtue and moral behavior. Someone who favors homosexual marriage is to that extent not a conservative.

Libertarians believe that marriage between a man and a woman is just one among other equally permissible relationships; they eschew the question of whether there is inherent virtue in each possible state. The only virtue to be inferred is a grand one — that those involved are freely consenting and thus expressing individual preferences in a free market competition among these states. It is no wonder, then, that the cultural debate between conservatives and libertarians takes place over a great divide. Unlike debates over economic policies, there are no liminal issues. Indeed, there cannot be any because the strictness of the divide is a consequence of opposing matrices. Conservative thought proceeds from absolutes, hierarchies and exclusivity. Libertarian thought promotes relativism and inclusiveness — although, admittedly, this tolerance comes from indifference to moral questions, not from a greater inborn talent to live and let live. Conservatives favor tradition and communitarian solutions, and resort to central authority when it serves their purpose. Libertarians value individual creativity and are invariably against central authority.

It is a mistake to believe that “Conservative thought proceeds from absolutes, hierarchies and exclusivity. Libertarian thought promotes relativism and inclusiveness. …” If anything, almost the very opposite is the case. Both are absolute in the sense of having principles, although a sharp distinction must be made between the principles of the two. For the libertarian, as we have seen, it is the sanctity of private property rights and the non-aggression axiom. For the conservatives, matters are a bit more complex. There are differences between the old right of classical liberalism, and the Buckley and neo-conservative right. For example, the former was anti-war (isolationists adopting a defensive non-imperialistic posture in international relations) and the latter two favored U.S. interventionism into the affairs of other countries.

Nor does libertarian thought promote relativism and inclusiveness. I can’t begin to imagine from what source Lee got the former contention; libertarians are absolute on private property and non-aggression. As to the latter, libertarians certainly would not prohibit by law private owners from excluding from their homes, and, yes, businesses too, any group of people they wish. That is, discriminating on the basis of age, gender, ethnicity, race, sexual preference, would all be legal. Would it be moral? That is a question entirely outside of the realm of this political philosophy.

All this falls to the bottom line in obvious ways. Conservatives are against gay marriage, they are often ambivalent toward immigrants, and patronizing toward women; they view popular culture as mostly decadent and want to censor music, movies, video games and the Internet. They crusade against medical marijuana. For their part, libertarians argue for legalizing drugs; they are in favor of abortion and against the government prohibition of sex practices among consenting adults. They abhor censorship. In the conservative caricature, libertarians believe in sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll — but it is not far from the truth. Unfortunately, these debates are often animated by the fact that conservatives see libertarianism only as the face of what it defends: transgendered persons adopting children, video games of violent sadism and, yes, cloning. Simply put, the shocking and repellent decline of civilization. But for libertarians, these are merely some of the many aspects of a civilization that is advancing through vast and minute experiments. The exercise of freedom trumps the discomforts of novelty.

Libertarians do not favor abortion (pro-choice). Nor are they opposed to it either (pro-life). Rather, and I concede there is some debate on this issue within libertarian circles, they offer a third option, evictionism. Very briefly, the mother is the owner of her body. The unwanted fetus is a trespasser. What obligations does the owner have, when faced with someone sitting in on one’s property? To remove him, but in the gentlest manner possible. One hundred years ago, with technology of that era, the only way to remove a fetus was to kill it. So, the libertarian position implies pro-choice then. One hundred years from now, if technology marches on, it will be possible to evict the fetus from the womb without harming it in the least. Then, the libertarian will be a staunch pro-lifer. Right now, matters are more complicated. But the rule is, roughly, if a fetus can live outside the womb, the mother may not kill it. If libertarianism were installed tomorrow, there would be no more partial birth abortions, nor any late in the last trimester. As technology improves, we would move earlier and earlier into the second trimester with this ruling.

It is very far from the truth to say that libertarians believe in sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Rather, we believe that these things should be legal, a very different matter. And, if there is anyone who is patronizing toward women, it is not conservatives, it is, instead, left liberals. For they are the ones who espouse “feminism,” the basis of which is the premise that women are helpless and exploited. Nothing could be further from the truth. See on this Micheal Levin, Feminism and Freedom.

To push my argument further, libertarian thought, with its fluid cultural matrix, offers a better response to some of the knottiest problems of society. It is, especially when contrasted with the conservative cultural matrix, a postmodern attitude. In fact, it is precisely this postmodernism that enrages conservatives who are uncomfortable with a radical acceptance that, in turn, promotes change and unfamiliarity. Yet no matter how scary (or irritating), libertarian tolerance provides a more efficient mechanism in dealing with those places where economics, politics and culture clash so intimately.

While I of course appreciate this business of “better response to some of the knottiest problems of society,” calling libertarian thought, a “fluid cultural matrix” is not so much objectionable, as it is meaningless. Further, Lee must just about be the first person who has ever characterized libertarianism as “postmodern.”

Although libertarians tend toward an annoying optimism, no reasonable observer would venture a prediction on the winner of the conservative-libertarian debate. The outcome depends crucially on where societies ultimately fix the locus of coercion between liberty and authority for politics, and between tolerance and conformity for culture. One can imagine, though, how discouraged F.A. Hayek must have felt in 1944 when he sat down to write The Road to Serfdom. Now, few doubt that Hayek has won and that the economic argument has been settled in favor of free markets. What remains is the battle over politics and culture. One down, two to go.

Why are we libertarians “annoyingly optimistic?” This is sophomoric; any student of mine who wrote such bilge would feel my editorial wrath. Dear Miss Lee: If you are going to criticize a political philosophy, any of them, try to be specific.

She is also very much mistaken about Hayek’s book. This is hardly the bastion of free markets it is widely thought to be. Rather, it “leaks” all over the place, making compromise after compromise with the socialism of its day (see on this Walter Block, “Hayek’s Road to Serfdom”).

Were this written by a student of mine, I would have emphasized the positive more than I have done so here. But this is an adult journalist, from whom we readers have a right to expect more, and better. Nevertheless, she did do a reasonably good job, despite all these errors. After all, the usual mainstream journalistic description of libertarianism is to dismiss it as a variant of Nazism. At least this authoress did not sink to that level. I stand by my B- evaluation.

Published August 21, 2004.

B. Secession

Chapter 41 If at First You Don’t Secede, Try, Try Again

The law of free association is a crucially important implication of the rights of private property (in physical material, and in our own bodies). For if we cannot freely associate with others on a mutually voluntary basis, our property rights are to that extent abrogated.

The most serious denigration of property rights in persons and thus in free association is, of course, murder. No one favors such behavior (killing in self-defense is entirely another matter) so this is not at all controversial. Another grave violation of the libertarian code of non-aggression against non-aggressors and their property is slavery (or kidnapping, which is short-term slavery). This, too, is non-debatable.

There are, however, many institutions, actually favored by “respectable” commentators on political economy, which partake of slavery to a greater or lesser extent. All laws against “discrimination” are violations of free association, because they force two parties, one of which who wishes to have nothing to do with the other, to interact despite these desires. When a store owner is forced to sell to customers against his will, and is not free to snub any of them on whatever racial, sexual, religious, etc., basis he chooses, he is to that extent a slave. The difference between such laws and outright slavery is only one of degree: in each case, the essence of the matter is that people are forced to associate with others against their will. Another instance is forced unionism. Our labor legislation forces employers to “bargain fairly” with those they would prefer to avoid entirely.

Perhaps the most important violation of the law of free association, at least on pragmatic grounds, occurs in the political realm. This is crucial, because other infringements, such as affirmative action, union legislation, etc., stem from political sources. If freedom of association in the realm of affirmative action is the right to discriminate, and in the field of labor the right to hire a “scab,” then when it comes to the political realm, it is the right to secession.

Those who are not free to secede are in effect (partial) slaves to a king, or to a tyrannous majority under democracy. Nor is secession to be confused with the mere right to emigrate, even when one is allowed to take one’s property out of the country. Secession means the right to stay put, on one’s own property, and either to shift alliance to another political entity, or to set up shop as a sovereign on one’s own account.

Why should the man who wishes to secede from a government have to vacate his land? For surely, even under the philosophy of statists, it was the people who came first. Government, in the minarchist libertarian view, was only instituted by them in order to achieve certain ends, later, after they had come to own their property. That is to say, the state is a creation of the people, not the people a creation of the state. But if a government was once invited in, to provide certain services, then it can also be uninvited, or invited to leave, or expelled. To deny this is to assert that the government was there first, before there were even any people. But how can this be? Government is not a disembodied entity, composed of creatures other than human (although, perhaps, there may be legitimate doubts about this on the part of some); rather, it is comprised of flesh and blood, albeit for the most part evil, people.

Given, then, that secession is a human right, part and parcel of the right to free association, how can we characterize those who oppose this? Who would use force and violence, of all things, in order to compel unwilling participants to join in, or to remain part of, a political entity they wish to have nothing to do with? Why, as would be slave holders, of a sort. Certainly not as libertarians.

Thus, it is nothing short of amazing to find that there are commentators who actually call themselves libertarians and yet oppose the rights of secession. Were these people to remain consistent with this view, they would be logically forced, also, to give their imprimatur to union and anti-discrimination legislation, surely a reductio ad absurdum.

One of the grounds upon which so-called libertarians oppose secession, the right to be left alone politically speaking, is that those who wish to secede might be less than fully perfect in various ways. For example, the Confederate states practiced slavery, and this is certainly incompatible with libertarian law.

Let us assume away the awkward historical fact that this “curious institution” was operational in the North, too. After all, we are making a philosophical point, not a historical one. Let us posit, arguendo, that the North came to its confrontation with the South with totally clean hands as far as slave holding, or, indeed, any other deviation from libertarian law is concerned (e.g., tariffs, high taxes, etc.). That is, the North is a totally libertarian entity, the South a morally evil one. (I know, I know; I’m only talking here for argument’s sake.)

Would that premise be a valid rationale for the North to in effect enslave the south, and thus violate its rights of free association? It would not.

If it was proper for the North to hold the South captive against its will, the implication is that India was not warranted in seceding from England in 1948 since the latter practiced suttee; that African countries were not justified in departing from their European colonial masters since they practiced clitorectemy; that it would not have been permissible for the Jews in 1930s Germany to have left the jurisdiction of the Nazis since they, too, were doubtless imperfect in some way or other.

Let us move from the realm of the macro to that of the micro. If groups of imperfect people are not justified in seceding from groups of perfect people, what about individuals? If we rigorously apply the principle on the basis of which confederate secession was opposed to the individual level, again we run into all sorts of counterintuitive results.

For example, divorce. Under this “logic” no spouse could leave another if the departing one were less than perfect.

In the words of Clyde Wilson: “If the right of secession of one part of a political community is subject to the moral approval of another, then there really is no right of secession.” Either you have the right of free association and secession, or you do not.

If secession is always and everywhere justified, what, then, is the proper libertarian response to the existence of suttee, slavery, clitorectomy, etc., in other countries (e.g., in seceding territories)?

Under libertarian free-market anarchism, it would be permissible for a private defense agency to invade private property if a crime is occurring there (if a mistake is made in this regard, libertarian punishment theory, kicks into gear; in this type of society, even the police are not above the law). If A is about to murder B in A’s house, A may not properly object when the police kick in his door to forestall this dastardly act. Thus, free market competing defense agencies could have gone into the South to free the slaves, but once this was done, given that there were no other crimes occurring, and that due punishment was meted out to the evil-doers, that would be the end of the matter. There would be no further interaction. The South (or India in the case of suttee) would then be allowed to go its own way.

Under limited government libertarianism, the government of the North would take no steps to rid the sovereign Confederacy of its slavery (or India of its suttee). The purpose of the state in this philosophy is to protect its own citizens. Period. And, on the (historically accurate) assumption that the Confederacy showed no indication of invading the North, but merely wanted to be left alone to its own devices, that would be the end of the matter as far as the northern government was concerned.

However, even under these assumptions individual abolitionists would be perfectly free, and, indeed, justified, in going in to the Confederacy, guns in hand, with the intention of ridding the south of this evil institution of slavery. But if things went poorly for them, they could not then scurry back to the North, tails between their legs, hiding behind their mama’s skirts, because that would necessarily bring in the northern government into the fray. It would violate the non-invasion (except in self-defense) provision of limited government libertarianism, or minarchism.

There would be no “reconstruction.” There would be no “indivisible” U.S.A. Rather, there would now be two totally separate countries. The U.S.A. and the Confederacy. Again, once slavery was ended, given that there were no other crimes occurring, and that due punishment was meted out to the evil-doers, that would be the end of the matter. On the (historically accurate) assumption that the Confederacy showed no indication of invading the North, but merely wanted to be left alone to its own devices, that would be the end of the matter as far as the northern government was concerned.

Published July 9, 2002.

Chapter 42 Secession and Slavery

Professor Tibor Machan, in his essay “Lincoln, Secession and Slavery” has taken the position that while secession in and of itself is unobjectionable to the libertarian, it cannot properly be applied to political jurisdictions which practice slavery. For, if secession rights were allowed to slave-owning countries, it would in effect be to justify kidnappers absconding with their victims. He applies this perspective to the United States, circa 1861, and concludes that Abraham Lincoln, for whatever his faults, and Machan concedes they were many and serious, is still “a good American.” Why? This is because he was justified in stopping the Confederate (slave) states from seceding, even though, Machan again stipulates, stopping slavery was no part of Lincoln’s motivation.

While it cannot be denied that this is an interesting viewpoint, even a refreshing one, in that it has not hitherto been broadly discussed, it cannot be reconciled with libertarian principles.

One argument which might be launched at Machan is that if the South was unjustified in seceding from the North in 1861, given that the South was a slave-holding community at this time, then the same holds for the 13 colonies breaking away from England in 1776, since the latter also engaged in forced labor of human beings. If the Confederate states must be precluded from seceding from the North on the grounds that they would be making-off with kidnap victims, then the same can be said of the United States of American leaving the British yoke. As it is the rare libertarian who would oppose the American Revolutionary War, this alone might give Machan pause for thought. However, let us take this argument to its logical conclusion, and posit that if the North was morally justified in keeping the South in the fold, even against the will of the latter, then the same applies to the U.K. vs. the U.S. Namely, that both breakaways were improper, however much this offends common sense.

A second problem with the Machan thesis is that if the South was unjustified in departing from the North, then, too, it would have been improper for the North to leave the South, and for the same reason. That is, if the Confederate states had slaves in 1861, why then so did the Union, during this epoch. Actually, long before the “Civil War” there was a movement afoot amongst the New England states, fueled by the Abolitionists, to secede from the South, since the latter favored the slave system and they opposed it. This, too, would have had to have been squelched, if Machan’s objections to Confederate secession are correct, for even though the proponents of this idea opposed slavery, still, this institution was legal at the time, and there were some actual slaves in this territory.

(A word on nomenclature. What occurred in the U.S. between 1861–1865 was not a Civil War. This phrase is properly reserved for the case wherein each side is contending for rule over that which is claimed by both. In sharp contradistinction, the South in the War of Northern Aggression — or, more radically, the First War of Southern Secession — was attempting to achieve a divorce from the North, not a conquest of it.)

A third difficulty is that the North, also a slave holding territory, comes to its attempt to stop slavery in the South with “unclean hands.” That is, it is not for the slave-holding North to ride any moral high horse, in that, as even Machan concedes, it was no part of the intention of Lincoln to end slavery; merely, to preserve the Union. But coercing one section of the country which no longer wishes to be yoked to the other to remain against its will is to violate the law of free association; it is to violate the rights of those in the South who wish to go their own way. This, however, is not a fatal objection; at worst, it shows the North to be hypocrites. The more basic question is, as Machan correctly notes in effect, not whether or not the North acted in a logically consistent manner, but rather whether they acted rightfully.

It might well be that the Nazis were the worst society to have ever besmirched the globe (there are, unfortunately, several strong competitors for this “honor”). Does that imply they could do nothing right? Not at all. Presumably, the Nazi police captured and punished, for example, rapists. Now it might well be the case, indeed, it is the case, that the Nazis did far worse things than any one rapist. Nevertheless, in that specific case where the Nazis penalized our hypothetical violator of a woman’s right to bodily integrity, they acted in an entirely proper manner. So, too, then, could the North act properly in stopping slavery in the South, if indeed they were justified in doing this, despite the fact that they, too, were guilty of this very selfsame crime.

Take another case. Suppose serial murderer, A, witnesses serial murderer, B, in the process of killing an innocent person, C, and A kills B before B can carry out his nefarious deed. (Perhaps A’s motive is that wants to be the only serial killer in town.) Was A justified in this one act? Yes, indeed, he was, since he saved the life of C, and the person he killed, B, was himself guilty of (previous) murders.

But this brings us to a more basic question: would a hypothetical North, completely innocent of any slave holding itself, be justified on libertarian grounds, in opposing by force the attempted secession of the South, on the grounds that the latter is a slave owning society? (We are now also asking the question, assume, arguendo, that the U.K. did not own slaves in 1776; would they have been warranted in taking on the role they actually did in the Revolutionary War?) Machan argues in the affirmative, I in the negative.

At first blush, my opponent in this debate has a strong case. Suppose the following: a thief breaks into a grocery store, robs it, and then, when he is surrounded by the police, grabs a hostage. Whereupon he makes the following statement: “I hereby secede from your society; since you are all libertarians, you must allow this. Therefore, I am walking out of this store, with my hostage in tow, and none of you have the right to stop me, or to save my victim, based upon your own principles.” If this indeed is the position of the South, then the North was completely justified in not only fighting its attempted secession, but in actually winning the war. For, surely, the police need do no such thing as obey the robber-kidnapper in his curious demand.

But a moment’s reflection will show a disanalogy between our hypothetical robber, and the South. For the libertarian police could reply, “Sure, we’ll allow you to secede; you are now a sovereign country. However, we hereby declare war on you, first, to fulfill our contractual obligation with your hostage, to free him from your unjustified kidnapping, and, second, to punish you for your past robbery as well as this bout of unjustified imprisonment of this victim.” The point is, a refusal to allow secession is a violation of the law of free association. Machan is so concerned with ante bellum slavery, he allows this to blind him to the fact that this “curious institution” is merely an aspect of the denigration of the law of free association. Yes, the southerners (and the northerners, too) unjustifiably enslaved black people. But the northerners compounded this rights violation by also refusing to allow the southerners the “divorce” they requested, and in so doing perpetrated another form of slavery upon them, namely the slavery implicit in violating secession rights. To repeat: slavery is but the most egregious form of denigration of the rights of free association. But there are other, lesser versions, such as refusal to recognize the natural right of secession.

The analogy between the South and the kidnapper-robber would hold true if and only if every single white resident of this territory was guilty of slave holding, and every single non-white resident was a slave. Then and only then would the North be justified, not in refusing the South secession, but by invading them, to get them to free their slaves. But the North would still not be warranted to “save the Union,” against the express wishes of the southerners (after they were duly punished).

Another difficulty with the Machan position is that slavery is not the only crime. If the North is entitled to violate the secession rights of the South because the latter committed the crime of slavery, then, too, they are justified in taking this coercive position against them for many other things as well. For example, suppose a southerner stole (or was accused of stealing) a northerner’s cow. Then, based on this perspective, the North would again be warranted to stop by force the departure of the South. Such a theory might well be entitled, “Secession in theory, captivity in practice.”

We are all sovereign individuals. When anyone else, be he a king, a thug, or a majority, demands anything of us (other than that we respect the libertarian axioms of property and non-aggression), they are imposing upon us; they are invading us, and violating our rights. Secession is a necessary concomitant of liberty.

Machan, in explicitly endorsing secession (as long as there is no slavery), has come a long way out of the wilderness of minarchism he previously occupied, in the direction of anarcho-capitalism. But he must go further. He must recognize that there is no stopping point. If he truly recognizes the law of free association, he is logically compelled to accept, also, laissez faire and secession, as they are its necessary implications.

Based on the Machan insight, whether or not coupled with the heroic assumption that the North was not itself a slave-owning society, this section of the country would have been justified in saying to the South no more than “Free your slaves, and we shall allow you to depart in peace.” Did Lincoln say any such thing? He did not. Indeed, he specifically disassociated himself from any such idea. He rather took the very opposite stance. To wit, that the South could go on enslaving blacks until kingdom come for all he cared; his only concern was that the Union not be rent asunder. From all this Machan somehow derives the notion that our sixteenth president was a “good American,” indeed, almost a libertarian, forsooth, in that the South should not be allowed to depart while still they held hostages, and that Lincoln stopped them.

Published June 10, 2002.

C. Punishment Theory

Chapter 43 The Death Penalty

At first glance, the death penalty seems cruel, unusual, horrendous, and uncivilized. It is one thing, the argument goes, for a murderer to bump someone off; this is truly an abomination, since all of human life is precious. However, it is quite another, and far worse, for society as a whole to kill such a person in response, retaliation or revenge, for we, at least, if not the criminal, are supposed to be enlightened. According to the popular bumper sticker: “Why kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?” Then, as a purely pragmatic issue, it costs more to fry an inmate on death row (due mainly to legal costs) than it does to imprison him for life, and such a penalty has little or no disincentive effect in reducing the murder rate.

What the murderer has done, essentially, to his victim is, in effect, steal his life away. If there were but a machine that could transfer the life out of the dead victim and into the live murderer (I am inspired in this fanciful example by Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia, must reading for all non-libertarians) it would be the paradigm case of justice to force him into this machine, and make him disgorge the life he had stolen. It would be a matter of supreme injustice to refuse to do so. Who knows? Maybe in 500 years (if we don’t blow ourselves up before that time) such a machine will actually be created. It doesn’t matter. By use of this example, we can demonstrate that the murderer’s life is forfeit now, for justice is timeless.

If the murderer is not the legitimate owner of his own life in the future, or even hypothetically, he is not now either. The point is, to reply to the bumper sticker mentality of some commentators, it is not necessarily wrong to kill people. It is not impermissible in self-defense, nor is it to kill those who no longer have entitlement to their own lives. Let the message go out, loud and clear: if you murder, you give up the right to your own life. (I am assuming arguendo that innocent people are not executed for murder; given the congenital inefficiency of government operation, this is the only legitimate reason to oppose the death penalty.)

Of course, we do not have any such machine at present. To whom, then, does the murderer owe his life? Obviously, to the heirs of the victim. If I murder a family man, for example, his widow and children then come to “own” me. They can put me to death, publicly, and charge admission for this event, or they can force me to do hard labor for the rest of my miserable life, the proceeds to go to them. It is a crime and a disgrace that such criminals now enjoy air conditioning, television, exercise rooms, etc. They owe a debt to (the heirs of) their victims, who are now, to add insult to injury, forced to pay again, through taxes, to maintain these miscreants in a relatively luxurious life, compared to what they richly deserve.

As for the pragmatic argument, it is simply silly. Yes, economists who ought to know better have found no statistically significant correlation between reducing the murder rate and being or becoming a death penalty state. But that is only because murderers, like most of the rest of us, pay attention not to dead letter laws, but to actual penalties. (It is fallacious to regard murderers as irrational: very few conduct their business in police stations.) When multiple regressions are run on murder rates, not against death penalty status, but with regard to actual executions, the evidence is consistent with the notion that such punishments reduce these crimes. (Isaac Ehrlich has done yeoman work on this issue.) This is entirely compatible with the economic principle of downward sloping demand: the higher the price, the less people wish to access. This holds for all human endeavor: cars, pizza, and, yes, murder too. Nor is it possible not to regard murder as a stiffer penalty than life in prison. Were this not so, we would scarcely find the denizens of death row trying desperately to stave off, or better yet overturn, their executions.

As for the costliness of executions, this is entirely a function of present judicial functioning, which can be changed with the stroke of a pen.

Published November 11, 2003.

Chapter 44 A Silving Lining in Unjust Executions?

I. Introduction

I contend that there is a silver lining in the executions undertaken by the government which DNA testing has later shown were unjust. That is, innocent men were murdered by the state, and here I am, seeing some good — from the point of view of libertarianism — in these horrific occurrences.

Let me be very clear. I do not (NOT!) favor the murder of innocent people. Even less do I do so in the name of libertarianism. I think such acts the very paradigm case of a violation of libertarian principles, perhaps the worst sin against the philosophy possible, apart from mass murder of which this is but a necessary part. Yet, I persist in my claim that some good from a libertarian perspective can eventuate from such travesties of justice. To immediately see why, gentle reader, please skip down to section IV below. For those with more patience, I will first establish that the death penalty is compatible with libertarianism in section II and that this punishment may legitimately be imposed even by an illegitimate government, in section III.

II. Death Penalty Justified

The essence of libertarianism is the inviolability of the person, and of course of his property too, but that is secondary. E.g., murder is a worse crime than theft. Private property rights of the human person, and the non-aggression axiom, lie at the very core of libertarianism.

But when crimes occur, the emphasis is, properly, not on reforming the criminal, nor yet even on deterring future crime, however important are these tasks, especially the latter. No, the focus is on making the victim whole, insofar as is possible. Not for libertarianism is making the victim pay, once, through the theft, and then a second time through taxes to put the perpetrator into an air-conditioned cell, with three square meals a day, color TV, etc. No, the goal is to force the criminal to compensate the victim. Under libertarianism, jail would be work camps, to keep the miscreants at hard labor, the proceeds of which would be used to pay off the injured party.

This scenario is a reasonable one, even for non-libertarians, when it comes to stolen cars, cash, etc. But what about murder? Here, we must venture into science fiction land, a trail blazed by Robert Nozick in his Anarchy, State and Utopia, where he introduced all sorts of weird “machines.” Well, here is another one: assume we have a “machine” into which we place two bodies. One of them is that of the dead victim of a murder, the other is that of the live murderer. We flip a switch, and presto!, the life is transferred out of the latter, and into the former. That is, after our “operation,” the now resuscitated murder victim walks out of the machine, and the dead body of the murderer is dealt with appropriately.

If we had such a machine, would its use be justified? Under the assumption that it was the guilty party and no one else who was forced to give up his life in this manner, it is the rare person, libertarian or not, who would object. Certainly, no one espousing this philosophy could see this occurrence as anything but a highly just one.

We have just proven that the death penalty is justified. Q.E.D. True, we have no such machine available, and might not for another 5,000 years. But we have proven, by the use of this example, that the murderer’s life is forfeit.

III. May the Illicit Government Utilize the Death Penalty?

Suppose there to be an illicit government. (I know, I know, this is unlikely in the extreme. But bear with me.) Would such an institution be justified in imposing the death penalty on the actual murderer (e.g., not an innocent person)? My claim is that it would. In order to convince ourselves of this, consider a few scenarios.

1. A steals a radio from B. The unjust government (a redundancy if ever there was one) forces A to give it back to B.

2. A steals a life from B; that is, A murders B. The unjust government forces A to give this life back to B by forcing both the live A and the dead B into our Nozickean machine. Out walks a live B, and out is trundled a dead A.

3. There are two equally culpable criminal gangs, the Hoods and Thugs. One day, while the Hoods are about to rape a woman, the Thugs intervene and stop it. The woman goes free.

4. A Soviet policeman saves a drowning man (a non-bourgeois, of course).

5. A Nazi concentration camp guard saves a drowning man (a non-Jew, of course).

The point is, no matter how illicit is the unjust government, no matter how illegitimate are the Hoods, the Thugs, the Nazis, and the Soviets, in this particular one single act they are on the side of the angels. God, presumably, may strike them down at almost any time, but not at the precise moment they are doing these good deeds.

So my answer to the question is Yes, the illegitimate government may indeed execute a murderer who is guilty of that crime.

IV. Benefits of Executing Innocent Men on Death Row

There has of late been a brou-ha-ha about the execution of innocent death row inmates. Gov. George Ryan of Illinois has gone so far as to call a halt to all executions in that state due to the fact that several inmates have been killed, who have been later proven to be innocent of the charges for which they were executed.

Let us make no mistake about this. No man of good will, certainly not a libertarian, can applaud such an outrage of the elementary aspects of justice. But, is there a silver lining? Is there any good whatsoever that can come about as a result of the trashing of righteousness?

There is, indeed.

Even though the man was innocent of the crime for which he was executed, he might well have been guilty of committing an entirely different murder. Many of those on death row have murdered on numerous occasions, and were only caught, found guilty, and sentenced for, one such crime. Suppose, then, that A has murdered victims B, C, D, E, … J. And, posit, too, that he was erroneously found guilty of, and executed for, only murdering K. Now this latter was a vast mistake; even, an unspeakable one. However, under these assumptions, still, justice of a sort has been done. A murderer was executed. True, this penalty was imposed upon him for the murder of K, and A is entirely innocent of that particular transgression. But he is guilty of murdering B, C, D, and thus richly deserves his fate.

But what of due process? Is this not an entire denigration of this bedrock of our legal system? My response is that due process is only a means toward an end, justice; it is not, and is not to be confused with, this goal itself. In the present case we are stipulating that at least some of those executed for murders they did not commit were in fact guilty of committing other such vile acts. Thus, we do not need any due process to determine this; we assume it as a fact. If it is not the case, of course, then none of these executions can be justified.

Let me, at the very real risk of repetitiveness, state that I do not welcome such occurrences. Criminals should be executed not for the murder of those they have not killed, but for their actual transgressions. However, honesty compels me to acquiesce in the notion that sometimes a sort of justice can occur even when this does not take place; when people innocent of a specific crime are executed for it nonetheless.

Published August 18, 2003.

D. Politics

Chapter 45 Term Limits Make Me Sick; A Hoppean Analysis

If I hear just one more time, from a supposed libertarian, about the greatness of term limits, I think I’m going to be sick.

Yes, yes, I know all the arguments. Kick the bums out. Promote political competition. Incumbency confers Soviet style (99 percent) voting majorities. This way, at least, we’ll get new thieves.

There is only one problem with this scenario: it runs dab smack into an important insight of Hans Hoppe’s book, Democracy, the God that Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy, and Natural Order.

The main message of this brilliant economist-philosopher is, of course, that the only justified political economic system is what he calls “natural order,” or what is commonly characterized in libertarian circles as anarcho-capitalism, or free-market anarchism. And his contribution to this line of reasoning is superb. However, a secondary message emanating from this book is that, given, arguendo, that we must have a government, monarchism has several strong, indeed, overwhelming advantages over democracy. (Take that, pinko liberal democrats, neo-conservatives, and all other denizens of the political-economic swamp.)

And why is this you may ask (if you’ve been Rip Van Winkling it for the past several months)? Simple: a monarch in effect “owns” the kingdom over which he is in charge. As such, he can afford to take a long-run view of it, and, also, can maximize his “take” by pursuing policies that prove to be of benefit to the economy, or at least do not harm it too quickly. “Why kill the goose that lays the golden eggs,” might well be his motto. As king, he will likely be around in the long run, by which time, to mix metaphors, he will be able to reap what he had previously sown. If he has any desires to benefit his progeny, he would prefer to hand over to them a functioning enterprise, rather than one that has been looted for short-term benefit.

In contrast, the democratically elected head thug (sorry, I meant president) has a very different time perspective. Not for him the pursuit of policies that will bear fruit in the long run. He will not be around then to benefit from them. He has only eight years, at most. Nor can he hand over to his children the keys to the treasury. No, in order to maximize his revenues, he has to grab what he can, now, and the devil take the future. His motto might be “make hay while the sun shines,” or “let’s kill the golden goose, now.”

What has all this to do with our subject under discussion? Term limits are to ordinary democracy without them what the latter is to monarchy. An alternative way of putting this is that the system furthest removed from monarchy is democracy with term limits. Democracy with no term limits at all occupies a position in between these other two. The ordinary politician (with no term limit) need not take an extremely short-run perspective. He knows, if he can avoid being caught in bed with a dead boy, or, if he is a Republican, with a live girl (the rules are slightly different for Democrats, given the hypocrisy of the feminist movement), he’ll be in office for a nice long while. The advantages of incumbency and all that. Why, several thieves (sorry, I meant congressmen) have been in office for decades. “In the long run they are all dead,” true, but if the long run takes dozens of years, the incentive to loot and run is somewhat attenuated.

However, introduce term limits, and all bets are off. Now, the focus is on making off with as much of the silverware as possible, in the short term specified by the term limit. Take term limits to their logical extension in order to see them for what they are: suppose the term limit was exceedingly short; not eight years, or even eight months. Suppose it was eight weeks, or, even better yet, only eight days. Can you imagine the feeding frenzy such a system would give rise to! Why, there wouldn’t even be the pretense of “public good,” “making the world safe for democracy,” “a chicken in every pot,” or any of that other politician babble. It would be a pure race to accumulate riches, with very little pretense.

One implication of this insight: the longer the term limit in term limits, the better. A term limit of hours, days, or months would be an absolute disaster. Many years is better, and decades even more so. A lifetime term limit would not be so bad, as far as these things go. Then, when we arrive at the “term limit” which affords the ability to bequeath to one’s children the crown, e.g., full monarchy, we arrive at the other end of the spectrum. The point is, given any government at all, the closer to monarchy the better. The problem with term limits is that they move us in the wrong direction. If anything, we ought to be expanding present terms of office.

Although this can only be speculative, the reason many people, even libertarians, have been fooled by the siren song of term limits is that they are still in thrall to the idea that mainstream politicians (I make an exception for Ron Paul and a handful of other libertarian officeholders) are legitimate. If these politicos were seen in a true light, the last thing we would want to do is leash an unending stream of them upon us, with little or no incentive to rein in their natural tendencies to pillage. If have them we must, then let us wish them the longest possible terms of office.

Published July 8, 2002.

Chapter 46 Federalism: Is It Libertarian?

Is France justified in invading New York City to force the latter to get rid of its rent control legislation? Would it be compatible with libertarianism for California to forcibly prevent the U.S. government from imposing a draft on California citizens? The federal government physically attacks Mississippi in 1950 for its Jim Crow legislation; Mississippi resists. Which side does the libertarian root for? The U.S. (or the state of Louisiana, it matter not which) forces Canada to give up its Sunday shopping restrictions. Several Crips members physically prevent several members of the Bloods gang (or vice versa) from raping an innocent woman. State policemen stop a robbery in progress. A member of the Murder, Inc., on a busman’s holiday in the U.S. (or in Mexico), shoots down a member of the armed forces of that country who is in the act of kidnapping an innocent person. Brazil invades the U.S. because of the protective tariffs of the latter. Little Rhode Island (think The Mouse that Roared) forces the U.S. government to leave Iraq. How should the libertarian analyze these occurrences?

We take it as non-debatable within libertarian circles at least that the following are improper: rent control, a military draft, Jim Crow legislation, Sunday shopping restrictions, rape, robbery, kidnapping, tariffs, and the U.S. intervention in Iraq. We also take it as non-debatable within (at least anarcho-capitalist) libertarian circles that the following are also illegitimate: the governments of France, New York City, California, the U.S., Mississippi, Louisiana, Canada, the Crips, the Bloods, state policemen, Murder, Inc. and the governments of Mexico, Brazil, and Rhode Island.

Thus, in all these cases there is one illegitimate institution attacking another illegitimate institution. Further, in all instances mentioned above if the initiators of the violence, call them all, A, succeeds, and B, the recipients of it, fail, the world, all other things equal, will be a more libertarian place. That is, there will be less bad things (rent control, a military draft, Jim Crow legislation, Sunday shopping restrictions, rape, robbery, kidnapping, tariffs, and U.S. imperialism) going on.

Thus, libertarians must favor all these incursions. It cannot be denied that most if not all of these incursions would be undertaken by groups that are themselves illegitimate. But, let us abstract from this issue, and focus solely on the act itself, and ignore the status of the person or group itself. Thus, we may readily concede that the Bloods and government of Louisiana are both illegitimate institutions. Both engage in robbery on a massive scale (the latter far more than the former). Yet, in the specific instance mentioned above, both are doing good works. The Bloods stop a rape, and the state of Louisiana ends Canadian restrictions on Sunday shopping. If we focus narrowly on these two acts alone, it is difficult to see why the libertarian should oppose them.

On the other hand, and there most certainly is an “other hand” in the matter, the crucial supposition “all other things equal” certainly does not hold true. Rather, were all these incursions to take place, this would be a recipe for unjustified violence on a truly monumental scale. This scenario would imply mayhem; chaos on a scale never before even contemplated. Think the U.S. war on Iraq, multiplied, say, one million fold. Were this scenario ever to occur, it might really mean the end of virtually the entire world, with all or almost all of the entire world’s population being consumed in the conflagration. We take it that this too is incompatible with libertarianism.

Governments, in particular, are truly vicious organizations. It is bad enough that they continually maul their own citizens. At least let us strive to keep them confined to their own territories. For when each poaches on that of the others, rights violations are multiplied enormously.

So what is going on here? Do we libertarians side with the federalist centralizers, or the anti-federalist de-centralizers? Well, neither or both. The point is, these two groups are speaking past each other. Some are focusing on one crucial element of the situation, their own, and ignoring the insights of the other.

Is France justified in invading New York City and thereby ending its rent control? Well, the government of New York City would seem to have little ground for complaint, and the liberated victims would surely not complain. New York’s housing regulation has done all sorts of harm not only to landlords, but also to tenants. This is true in the short run, and if nothing else changes. On the other hand, any such act on the part of the French will inevitably setup a chain reaction leading to horrendous conclusions, even apart from the precedents set up by any such move.

Henry Hazlitt in his Economics in One Lesson tells us: “The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.” No words could be truer of the present case.

In the immediate short run, the federalist centralizers are indeed correct. Saddam was indeed a bad man, and if the U.S. invasion of Iraq could be confined to the one element, with no “collateral damage” and no precedents setup by it, such an act would be undoubtedly libertarian. (Again, we are ignoring, arguendo, the fact that the U.S. army is financed in a manner incompatible with libertarianism.) When Brazil assaults the U.S. and forces it to give up its protective tariffs, this, too, promotes freedom, in the short run. Interferences with trade are quintessentially unlibertarian.

But when we take into account the implications of these deeds that are good in the short run and from a narrow perspective, it is difficult to see how they can be reconciled with libertarianism. The anti-federalist de-centralizers would have to get the nod from this point of view.

So which is the correct perspective from which to look at these events? The long run or the short run? Unfortunately, economics vouchsafes us no answer to this perplexing question. It is all a matter of time preference, which, as Austrian economics teaches us, is inherently a subjective matter.

Notice, no mention was made, above, of the U.S., or any other constitution. This is because, along with Spooner, we regard this document as of “no authority.”

But this is hardly the end of the matter. There is more to be considered, much more.

First, if France invades New York City to stop rent control, as a practically inevitable matter, France would necessarily be killing innocent New York City civilians too. The French cannot just attack the New York City government. Also, France would necessarily aggress against its own citizens to attack New York City, by taxing and/or conscripting them.

Second, the real question at issue is this: If a dangerous state is already setup, but which claims to derive its authority from a document that grants it powers, but also limits them, then is it useful, from the libertarian point of view, to try to hold them to this document, that is, to try to keep them within the limits even the state admits it is bound by?

We believe it is imminently sensible and libertarian to tell such a government — “Hey, waitasec — you yourself said you are only permitted to do A, B, and C, and that you cannot do X, Y, and Z — and here you are doing X, so you had better start playing by your own rules.” In other words, the federal government purports to be defined by the Constitution. The Constitution, illicit as it is, as written would not permit it to force one of the states to drop its rent controls (for example). So if we as libertarians advocate that the federal government engage in an unconstitutional action to force New York City to drop its rent controls because that result is a libertarian one, the immediate and accompanying cost is that we are advocating the principle that the feds can disregard the Constitution. That means we are advocating getting rid of one of the few institutional features that as a practical matter does put some limits on the central state.

Think of it like this: you have a dangerous dragon chained to a mountain. You want him to attack a roving gang of bandits, but to do this, you have to unchain him. So you unchain this monster, and he flies up and attacks the bandits, killing a couple of them. But to keep the analogy accurate, only some of the bandits are killed, not all of them, since the state is notoriously inefficient. We would say this is a good thing, for the dragon to have killed some of the bandits.

But is it a good thing to unchain such a beast? The acts are intertwined. Both the means, and the ends, of the action must be libertarian. The end (killing bandits) is libertarian, but is the means, unleashing a dangerous monster? Likewise with the federal government: the end nullifying New York City’s rent control laws, etc., is good, but the means chosen, loosening the restrictions on a monster, is clearly unlibertarian. And here we dovetail back to the point about considering the short run vs. the long run, which is analogous to the choice between means and ends.

Third, libertarians in our view ought to be honest and above board. Whatever our views are of what would be a more libertarian system or situation, honesty and integrity calls for us to accurately identify our current system. If it is obviously libertarian for the feds to nullify a New York City rent control law, the honest libertarian would then simply have to say he is glad of the result, glad the Supreme Court did what it did, even though it is not constitutional. It is dishonest in our view to come up with twisted makeweight arguments that the action you prefer just happens to be constitutional. It is just too much of a coincidence that when the centralist libertarians like a result of a given federal action, it just happens to be squared with the Constitution. It would be better to simply admit that the federal action is unconstitutional but then say “so what.”

Fourth, while as wertfrei economists we might not be able to choose between short- and long-run preference, as humans with values, and as libertarians, we think we can say that it is sensible to give the long run at least some weight. One does not want liberty for fifteen minutes only.

One last thought. If a Constitutional Convention were in session as we speak, and a bunch of uppity Franklins and Madisons were planning a new government, should a libertarian be in favor of the new central state having limited/enumerated powers? Of course, it would be understood that if the new central state has only enumerated powers, in some cases it will be unable to intervene to stop the constituent states from engaging in certain unlibertarian practices. We would definitely favor such a structure — to enumerate the new central state’s power and limit it to only those powers. The alternative is for the new central government to have unlimited powers. What libertarian could be in favor of setting up an unlimited government? So we would choose, and be in favor of limiting that government’s powers, even if it meant that later on, it would have diminished ability to stop the constituent states from doing bad things.

And this holds true even if, in the future, we would try to get the central government to violate its constitutional limitations for the sake of liberty in a particular situation. The fact that we would adopt a more ad hoc or results-oriented approach on a case-by-case basis does not mean we oppose having limits as a general principle.

Washington, D.C. stops New York City’s rent control, and ends New York state’s wine tariffs. Looked at in isolation, this sounds pretty good to libertarian ears. But from a deeper perspective, looking at the long-run implications, such acts are highly problematic.

Published May 25, 2005.

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