Liberty

Libertarian Foreign Policy: A Dialogue on Imperialism

Brandon Christensen Liberty , , , , ,

Brandon: For the most part, I am happy to let your comments stand. Together, we do a reasonably good job of clearing up issues about intervention. I don’t need to “win” the argument. However, however, I think you don’t pay enough attention to easily ascertainable facts: Your write: “I don’t think our involvement will be looked upon with graciousness by the peoples we are inevitably trying to help.” The Libyans don’t look on the NATO intervention, including the US, with graciousness?

Good point, good point. Here is my quick (or not-so-quick) take: the Libyans living in exile in the United States have certainly been gracious. The temporary government in power has certainly been grateful. The Libyans in Europe harbor very different views, though. They see this as an imperialistic adventure. They loathe the fact that NATO helped the rebellion in any way, shape or form.

The Libyans in Libya have even more disparate views on the subject. Some have turned their ire towards the tyrant of Algeria. Some are claiming that NATO intervened because of Libya’s oil, and they point to the Palestinian territories to ask why NATO hasn’t helped them. Some of them have been gracious towards the Arab monarchies that purportedly helped NATO in its bombing campaigns. Some Libyans have expressed thanks to NATO. Some Libyans have fixated on Israel. None of them, from what I have seen, have expressed any sort of graciousness at all to the United States of America.

My sources are the unscientific and spam-prone discussion boards on Al-Jazeera’s Arabic-speaking website and a couple of films that I have watched in some Anthropology classes. In fact, in one of the films there were calls for help from Egypt, Jordan, and Kazakhstan after Ghaddafi began fighting with airplanes, but nobody on the streets was calling for help from the West.

Libertarian Foreign Policy: A Dialogue on Imperialism

Brandon Christensen Liberty , , , , , , , , ,

This is starting to feel a lot like shooting fish in a barrel Dr Delacroix. Since we both know exactly how Leftists argue, I think it would be pertinent to over your rebuttals point-by-point.

I am glad we agree on the US intervention in Afghanistan based on the fact that the Taliban hosted and refused to deliver the terrorist Al Qaida.

And it would have been nice if we had focused our resources and our energy on staying there and hunting down al-Qaeda. There is also something amiss here: Osama bin Laden was shot dead in a shootout involving our special forces underneath the nose of Pakistan’s version of West Point. As we both know very well, the Taliban and Islamabad have never been on friendly terms, yet both sides gave refuge to bin Laden.

My suspicion is that both factions harbored bin Laden because of his immense wealth, not because of ideological solidarity. Also, I am not sure that the Taliban would have even been able to retrieve bin Laden if they wanted to. Rule by the Taliban was no doubt cruel, but for the most part they relied heavily on regional strongmen and political alliances to maintain control of the state.

With all this being said, I don’t think we ever declared war on Afghanistan. I may be wrong, but I think we focused our efforts on toppling the Taliban regime and hunting bin laden rather than fighting the Afghan state. This is actually a logical outcome, if you think about it, because al-Qaeda was not sponsored by Kabul, and it most certainly was not sponsored by the impoverished warlords of the Afghan regions, either. I’m willing to bet that the Taliban were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Remember, al-Qaeda, or whatever is left of it after President Obama gets finished with them, is not the same thing as the Taliban. I would even say, with some confidence, that the Taliban knew nothing of the attacks being planned against the United States.

Either way, both factions are finished, and it’s time to bring our troops home after a job well done (thanks to President Obama’s strategy).

The “some press reports” statement regarding the Taliban blinding of little girls with acid shows what might be deliberate ignorance. The assertion was made by several responsible neutral sources, including National Geographic, not exactly a hawkish extremist publication. I suspect the Libertarian pacifist stance cannot be maintained without a broad practice of tactical ignorance such as you just demonstrated: Iran’s nuclear weapons? No problem.

My point wasn’t to discredit the press reports, it was to suggest that going to war with a state because a regime sometimes sponsors the throwing of acid into little schoolgirls’ eyes is a little bit silly. And where did the statement on Iran’s nuclear weapons come from?

Pulling stuff out of thin air to legitimate a point that was used to purposefully misconstrue the argument of your opponent is something only Leftists do, usually.  When are you going to come out of the closet, Dr Delacroix?  We’re all dying to know!

Your disquisition on the French Revolution simply ignores my question: Is the American revolution any the less valid because ti was helped by the intervention of a foreign power, France? When you seem to relate the Terror to this intervention, you are going out on a very thin limb. There is a conventional belief that the French intervention hastened the revolution in France by aggravating the public debt.

Ah. Here I think there is a miscommunication between us. If a revolution happens, it is valid regardless of who is involved and who it affects. Pretending otherwise is a waste of time. I brought in the French angle because today the United States IS France playing the role of interventionist in the Middle East.

How is relating the social, political, and economic upheaval of the Terror – which was aggravated by French intervention in the Anglo-American war – going out on a very thin limb? I did not suggest that we are on a crash course for violent revolution. I only drew some (quite pertinent) parallels between the two situations: supporting revolutions that have nothing to do with national security has never bode well for the states that do the intervening.

If you negative feelings, your apprehensions about the Arab Spring were all well-founded (were) should we then, as a country, continue to favor tyranny in those countries as we did for thirty years?

Ah. I have never said that I do not support the revolutions going on in the Middle East. Ever. What I have done is raise a flag of caution in the face of bellicose calls for more bombing, more involvement, and more intrigue on the part of Washington in the revolutions going on in the Middle East. Given that we have been supporting brutal regimes in that part of the world for the last half century, I don’t think our involvement will be looked upon with graciousness by the peoples we are inevitably trying to help.

Of course I support the revolutions going on in the Middle East, I just don’t support our government getting involved with them. When the dust clears, I think we should be the first state to stick out our hand and offer our friendship to the new governments.  I think the people of the Middle East would be inclined to agree with me.

Zimmerman, Martin and Racism in America: Who’s Really Promoting Prejudice?

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty, Politics , , , , ,

Campaigners chose to make Trayvon Martin the focus for a national discussion of race in America. But it was never going to lead to an enlightened and rational debate. In seeking to personalise the issue and create an emotional tie through Martin’s case, campaigners dodged the significant structural and institutional barriers that give rise to racial inequality. And by portraying racism as something that comes from deep within the hearts of white people (so deep that whites often don’t even realise they’re racist), today’s elitist ‘anti-racist’ outlook makes racial divisions appear hopelessly insurmountable.

This comes from Spiked, an online British publication (h/t Mark Brady). Read the whole thing.

I am a little disappointed in myself for not paying closer attention to this trial. Its importance for understanding American society has just become evident to me over the past few days. For what it’s worth, I think the US is still a deeply racist society. I think there are structural and institutional barriers in place today that prohibit most blacks from having the same support networks as other ethnic groups.

I think that the government is responsible for these structural and institutional imbalances, but also that black leaders are responsible for failing to consider (consider) anything other than statist solutions to the problems that afflict American society. I also think that religion is partly to blame. Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams may go to church on Sundays, but you’d never know it based solely on their arguments.

I’ve got a post on peace coming up shortly. Hopefully it’ll be much clearer than this.

Libertarian Foreign Policy: A Dialogue on Imperialism

Jacques Delacroix Liberty , ,

Brandon: I am glad we agree on the US intervention in Afghanistan based on the fact that the Taliban hosted and refused to deliver the terrorist Al Qaida.

The “some press reports” statement regarding the Taliban blinding of little girls with acid shows what might be deliberate ignorance. The assertion was made by several responsible neutral sources, including National Geographic, not exactly a hawkish extremist publication. I suspect the Libertarian pacifist stance cannot be maintained without a broad practice of tactical ignorance such as you just demonstrated: Iran’s nuclear weapons? No problem.

Your disquisition on the French Revolution simply ignores my question: Is the American revolution any the less valid because ti was helped by the intervention of a foreign power, France? When you seem to relate the Terror to this intervention, you are going out on a very thin limb. There is a conventional belief that the French intervention hastened the revolution in France by aggravating the public debt. It’s not much and isn’t there a chance it’s a little out of your area of expertise? All the same, I admire your gumption! Next thing you know, you are going to offer to continue this discussion in French and you will correct my grammar in that language! (OK, that last statement wasn’t fair. I couldn’t resist. I am deeply ashamed!)

Reply Part II: You sidestepped my main question by taking advantage of my advanced age to distract me with ancillary issues:

If your negative feelings, your apprehensions about the Arab Spring were all well-founded (were) should we then, as a country, continue to favor tyranny in those countries as we did for thirty years?

Same question: How about individually, as human beings?

Libertarian Foreign Policy: A Dialogue on Imperialism

Brandon Christensen Liberty

All reasonable except for what’s not covered in your program:

  1. When an existing state protects actively terrorists on its soil that it could stop and those terrorists kill Americans, are we supposed to say, “Win some, lose some?”
  2. Should the United States be returned to British rule because it gained its freedom through foreign intervention?

And I know you have already answered the question below; I just want confirmation, to make sure I don’t misunderstand you.

When someone is burning little girls’ faces with acid next door do you really believe it’s best to do nothing?

When Egypt and/or Libya turn out to do real well in two years, will you think of sending and “Ooops” message? I ask, because, as you well know, your fellow isolationists who are on the Left, never do.

Haha! You never cease to amaze me Dr Delacroix…

1. When an existing state protects actively terrorists on its soil that it could stop and those terrorists kill Americans, are we supposed to say, “Win some, lose some?”

No, if a state is sponsoring terrorism against the republic or against our allies then we should go to war with the sponsoring state. After the fall of communism state-sponsored terror essentially ceased, though, because despots like Ghaddafi realized that they couldn’t play the superpowers off on each other.

It is trickier when there are terrorist organizations that are not connected to states. Luckily we have all the resources needed to maintain a leaner, meaner military and clandestine force to combat such organizations. Additionally, removing our government-sponsored military from places where they are not welcome would also decrease the likelihood of being targeted by terrorist organizations.

Unfortunately, bringing our troops home and modernizing our military and clandestine apparatuses don’t seem to be high on Washington’s priority list.

2. Should the United States be returned to British rule because it gained its freedom through foreign intervention?

I think you’re looking at this from the wrong angle. We should not be focused on the two factions who fought what was essentially a civil war, but rather on the foreign influence that intervened in the war on behalf of one side. What happened to France politically, economically, and socially after the Anglo-American War?

I don’t think that our society is going to descend into something resembling the Terror anytime soon, but the political, economic, and social constraints placed on our society by Washington’s interventions – both foreign and domestic – are all very visible today.

When someone is burning little girls’ faces with acid next door do you really believe it’s best to do nothing?

This practice is horrible, and of course I condemn it. However, bombing, invading, and occupying a foreign state because of some news reports documenting the throwing of acid into little girls’ eyes is just a little bit ridiculous.

Do you think it would be fair to say that the Soviet Union would have been justified in bombing the United States from Cuba because of the Jim Crow laws? The logic in this last point suggests that they would have been.

We should publicly condemn this practice, and even publicly support (but not fund) rebellion in despotic states, but ultimately this despicable practice needs to be stopped by those whom it affects. The men in Afghanistan need to grow a pair.

If Egypt and Libya turn out to be fine and dandy in two years time, I will be ecstatic and relieved. And of course I will send you a letter of apology. I’m just hoping you’ll do the same if you’re wrong. However, based on your bleeding heart arguments for fighting other states because little girls sometimes have acid thrown in their eyes, I won’t hold my breath expecting one [Editor’s note: I have yet to receive a letter of apology, but technically Dr Delacroix has a few months left…].

Про некоторые стереотипы мышления

Evgenii Grigorev Liberty ,

Всем привет. Давно я тут ничего не писал: новая работа и тотальная нехватка времени даже на некоторые домашние дела оставила проект NOL далеко позади,в  самом хвосте моего списка дел. Но вот, наконец, я слегка разгрузил свое расписание, и вновь готовь писать свои мысли и наблюдения о жизни России и всех сопутствующих проблемах.

Сегодня речь пойдет о стереотипах мышления и “врожденной злости” некоторых категорий граждан по отношению к различным национальностям и меньшинствам, проживающих на территории нашей необъятной страны. Вот сколько лет живу – до сих пор не могу понять этих стереотипов. Одно дело, когда заходит речь о “гостях из дружественных республик”, которые порой не умеют вести себя в чужой стране и вообще всячески пытаются насадить нам свой образ жизни. Здесь, в общем, уместна если не ненависть, злоба и агрессия – то по крайней мере “усталость и раздражение”. Однако большинство тех, кто открыто выступает против приезжих – сами вечером идут на рынок и покупают у них овощи и фрукты, нанимают их для выполнения ремонта в квартире. Кто мешает бойкотировать? Правильно, у них дешевле. А желание сэкономить в нашей крови.

Другой разговор – всякие меньшинства, которые и так постоянно в обиде. Несколько дней назад у меня состоялся весьма долгий и интересный разговор с незнакомцем в интернете, который, несмотря на возраст и в общем-то грамотную речь и определенный кругозор, свято верил, что, например, гомосексуализм можно “вылечить”.  Из разговора я понял, что у некоторых людей нетерпимость базируется исключительно на каких-то дремучих пещерных предрассудках и банальном незнании теории. Как и полагается любой настоящей тайне, предрассудки сами себя отлично охраняют, блокируя всю новую и важную информацию, и полагаясь на фразу “мне бабушка сказала, что геев можно вылечить”.

Говорят, что “в России две беды: дураки и дороги”. Но я хочу слегка преобразовать эту поговорку: “в России две беды. Дураки – и предрассудки”. Интересен факт, что чем больше человек активно во что-то верит, тем больше у них шансов обратить в свою веру остальное адекватное население. Так, любая глупость, сказанная по телевизору, воспринимается как истина.

Мне вот интересно, как борются с предрассудками среди населения в других странах?

Libertarian Foreign Policy: A Dialogue on Imperialism

Brandon Christensen Liberty , , , , ,

Brandon: I share many of your suspicions and even your fears though not especially about Libya, I think it’s going to be OK. But supposing you turn out to be completely right elsewhere. What’s the implication for action? Leave butchers in peace? Hope their victims don’t succeed in overthrowing them? Forever?

No, I think that the people who live under dictatorships should overthrow their overlords, if they can. This doesn’t mean I support the U.S. government helping them out. Too many questions arise out of such policies. It’s easier to blame a foreign influence for troubles in our society than it is to blame ourselves.

My quick policy proposal for foreign relations:

  1. stop hurting people through economic sanctions. Those only hurt the people we are trying to help and help the people we are trying to hurt.
  2. stop supporting regimes for strategic purposes. Doing so often causes us to turn a blind eye towards the some of the worst aspects of these strategic partners.
  3. stop condemning states for doing things that we do ourselves. It’s hard to condemn the prison states of China and Cuba when we have the highest rate of incarceration in the Western world, for example.

I think Egypt and Libya are going to be just as bad as they have been, if not worse. Only Tunisia, which did not rely on foreign support AND recently elected Islamist parties to their new government, will come out of this for the better. I hope I’m wrong, of course, but libertarians rarely are!

The Islamist parties in Tunisia, by the way, don’t have the same “anti-imperialist” sentiments as the Islamists in Egypt and Libya do. I wonder why…

Libertarian Foreign Policy: A Dialogue on Imperialism

Brandon Christensen Liberty , , , ,

Ghaddafi is dead. Hooray.

Now on to the part where we actually have to think about the consequences of our actions. Why don’t we take a look at the region of the Middle East that has actually held elections without being occupied by a foreign power: the Palestinian territories.

Would you like to Google ‘Fatah’ and ‘Hamas’, or shall I?

It’s great that Ghaddafi is dead, and it would be nice if our actions in helping to bring him down were celebrated throughout the Muslim world. I won’t hold my breath though. After bombing the Serbians to help out Muslim Bosniaks the U.S. was thanked with a couple of airplanes being flown into our commercial buildings (it also refroze relations with Russia that still haven’t thawed).

The point I make here is not that all Muslims should be lumped together, but rather than our foreign policy establishment DOES lump all Muslims together. They never take into account all of the intricacies involving the political processes taking place in this part of the world. The effort in Serbia was a calculated response by the Clinton administration to win over the hearts and minds of the whole Muslim world, but what we got instead was soured relations with Russia and a nod of approval from the monarchies of the Gulf states, Turkey, and the autocratic regimes of Jordan and Egypt. One enemy (though certainly not the only one) of the Gulf state monarchies – al-Qaeda – had a different opinion on the matter.

Al-Qaeda looked the other way and saw military troops protecting the monarchies of the Gulf states.

Does anybody here seriously think that helping to dislodge a brutal dictator from power in the Muslim world is going to earn us the approval of the same Muslim world? In fact, what happens if – miraculously – a liberal, secular regime is voted into office in Libya? What do think will be the claims of the rival parties (especially the Islamist ones): that the elections were held fair and square, or that the new liberal regime is a mere puppet of the West?

Bottom line: unless there is a direct threat to the U.S. republic, we shouldn’t be playing that Old World game of Realpolitik. All that leads to is intrigue, speculation, and entangling alliances. Sure, some dictators have died because of our efforts. Then again, some have also benefited. Everybody is a hypocrite of course, but the more we can avoid being so, the better. The idea – nay wish! – that the newly liberated people of the Arab world will somehow elect secular, Western-friendly governments after 50 years of oppression by regimes that were perceived by the Muslim public to be secular and Western-friendly belongs to be filed under the category of ‘fantasy,’ not foreign policy.

The Ghaddafi regime undertook policies that were hostile to the West. His regime sponsored terrorism against innocent people in the West. I am glad he is dead. I am glad that his own people shot him in the streets. But I think one of the major complaints that Libyan elites had for his policies was not that he sponsored these acts, but rather that he sponsored them under the guise of anti-colonialism rather than for Islam.

A couple of thought exercises: what happens if the Libyan electorate chooses to entrust an Islamist political party hostile to the West with running the state? Does the United States accept the outcome, or do we take the same route we did when Hamas was elected in the Gaza Strip?

How would the U.S. be perceived by the Muslim world if our role there was limited to one of trading, and not one of policing?

Has anybody here thought about the possibility of a prolonged civil war in Libya due to regional rivalries that have been suppressed by a strong-arm dictatorship for the last 40 years? After all, the main reasons given for NATO’s operation in Libya was twofold: 1) to keep Libya from disintegrating into a civil war that would send thousands of refugees to Europe’s decadent shores and 2) to win over the hearts and minds of the Muslim world.

Can we be confident that these goals have been accomplished, or are we merely stabbing at shadows in the dark in the name of democracy?

Libertarian Foreign Policy: A Dialogue on Imperialism

Jacques Delacroix Liberty , , , , , , , ,

[Editor’s Note: I had an extremely enlightening dialogue with Dr Delacroix in October of 2011 over the various merits and pitfalls of American imperialism. The dialogue was so interesting that I thought I’d break it up into installments – but still keep it in the exact order that it appeared – over the next little while. I hope you find it as informative as I have, and don’t hesitate to throw your own two cents into the ring, either]

Well Done Mr Obama!

I don’t argue with success. President Obama initiated and led a successful operation to get rid of another tyrant who also had American blood on his hands. He did it without losing a single American life. Whatever the cost in treasury was small in the broader scheme of things. It was a good investment. I think it’s fine to borrow a little money to deal with a rabid dog, however small the dog. Incidentally, my guess would be that the cost was less than 1/1000 of 1% of GDP. Want to bet?

I wonder what Libertarian pacifists have to say about the whole thing. I am going to ask them. One of the things they will probably argue (just guessing) is that there are many rabid dogs in the world, too many for us to deal with. Yes, I don’t mind borrowing money to deter all of them if need be. Tranquility is priceless.

There are several benefits to the Libyan/NATO victory for this country. (That’s Libyan blood and courage and NATO arms, including our own.)

First, rogues and political murderers everywhere are given a chance to suppose that if you kill Americans, we will get you afterwards, even if it takes twenty years.

Two, Arabs and oppressed people everywhere are figuring that we mean it when we say we like democracy for everyone. We did not always mean it. We do now that communism look like an antique instead of a superpower with the largest army and the most tanks in the world.

Three, this Obama international victory will cost him dearly in the next election. A fraction – I don’t know how large – of the people who voted for him the first time around oppose all American military interventions. For years, they have explicitly preferred a native butcher to an American liberator. Given how tight the election is likely to be, his victory in Libya might be the cause of President Obama’s fall.

If I were he, I would consider resigning this morning, like leaving the ocean after a really good wave.

The Zimmerman Verdict, Racism and Trial by Jury

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Law, Liberty , , , , , , , ,

First of all, I have to admit up front that I had not been following the Zimmerman trial at all until the Not Guilty verdict flooded my Twitter feed and Facebook page. The case was just too common, too parochial and had attracted the type of Americans who normally don’t read the more cerebral musings found on this blog (if you get my drift).

I knew it was racially-charged, and that it was taking place in the South, but other than that I had really been in the dark about the relevant details. Nevertheless, you’re gonna get my two cents.

Here are the details that I have found relevant. Some of them may not, at first glance, seem relevant because they don’t even pertain to the Zimmerman-Martin case at all, but stay with me:

  1. George Zimmerman identifies as a Hispanic, not a white person, and is a registered, tried-and-true member of the Democratic Party. I bring this up first and foremost because race in this country has become an odd thing, to say the least. Perhaps it always has been. See Dr Delacroix’s ethnographic musings on race in America here for more on race in the US.
  2. In Jacksonville (also in Florida), a black woman was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a judge (not a jury) for firing warning shots at her estranged (and black) husband. It is unclear if the woman had a prior criminal record.* She was seeking a restraining order against the man and her defense team used the same “Stand Your Ground” laws used by Zimmerman’s team.** The trial was taking place at the same time as the Zimmerman one.
  3. In Miller Place, an affluent, predominantly white hamlet of Long Island in New York City, a black man was convicted by a jury of killing an unarmed white teenager who showed up at the black man’s house in the early hours of the morning and was threatening to assault the man’s son. The white teenager, now dead, had been friends with the black man’s teenage son.

All three of the verdicts were handed down over the weekend. I take away a couple of things about American society from these three cases. Firstly, the only white person involved in any of these cases directly was an unarmed teenager who got shot in the face. Secondly, America still has a long way to go before racism becomes more irrelevant than relevant. Jim Crow ended in the late 1960s, but its legacy of state-sponsored racism lives on in a number of ways that I don’t want to list here (feel free to do so in the ‘comments’ section).

Thirdly, and perhaps more importantly, I think that, were the woman from Jacksonville to have received a trial by jury (and it is still unclear to me why she did not get this constitutional right), she would have been found Not Guilty. Given this speculation, and given the large amount of ignorance about each of these cases on my part, I still have to conclude that the juries made the right decision.

Tocqueville once wrote about the unique trial by jury system found in the United States and argued that it was the jury itself which guaranteed liberty and freedom in the United States. Were this unique system ever to be removed from the legal system, Tocqueville mused, it would signify the beginning of the end of the American experiment in self-government. The right to be judged by one’s peers, instead of by a member of the court, is a right too few Americans appreciate enough. The trial by jury is not perfect, not by a long shot, but it is also no accident that liberty, tranquility and prosperity reign prominently in the few societies where it has been implemented.

*[Update: the woman had no prior criminal record]

**[Update: the Zimmerman team did not use the “Stand Your Ground” law of Florida]

Another Housing Bubble?

Warren Gibson Current Events, Economics, Liberty , , , , ,

Last year I wandered down the street to an open house for sale. Even though I announced myself as a looky-loo, the agent welcomed me. We sat around talking and eating cookies for an hour; no prospects showed up.

It was a nice day today and I decided to walk to another open house thinking I’d again look around and chat with the agent. Hardly – the place was mobbed! It looks great in this picture but the reality is it’s stuck way up on a hill with a steep driveway and no garage. It’s 80 years old and although it’s been fixed up cosmetically it’s nothing to write home about; not in my book anyway. Nevertheless, I’m betting they’ll have multiple offers before this first day on the market is over.

This is the San Francisco Peninsula which is by no means representative of the whole country but I hear that Las Vegas has turned around too, as have tony places in New York. Why? Although I can’t prove it, I believe a good part the gusher of money that the Fed has been printing is now making its way into housing. The stock market has stalled, the bond market is in retreat, gold has plummeted, and that pretty much leaves housing.

So although the basic premise of monetary stimulus is plausible, it just doesn’t work. The new money seems to go careening around the economy in search of the Next Big Thing. Bubbles form and collapse, malinvestments are revealed and the cycle starts anew. What’s different this time is that it’s been such a short time since the collapse of the previous housing bubble to what looks like the start of another.

If these wasteful cycles of boom and bust are to end, the Fed must cease its stimulus programs. But it can’t. When the Fed dropped just a hint last week that it might start “tapering” off its bond-buying (money-printing) program, the bond market panicked. Why should we care about the bond market? For one thing, the average maturity of the federal debt is just a couple of years. Maturing debt must be rolled over into new debt, and if the new debt carries higher interest rate, the total annual interest payment could quickly swell from a “mere” $345 billion for the current fiscal year toward a trillion dollars per year, swamping any efforts to contain spending, like the $80 billion sequester that just took effect. We could end up needing a bailout from China.

The Fed will very likely continue or even accelerate its bond buying, depending on who occupies Bernanke’s seat come January. We should expect continuing cycles of bubbles and busts and the real possibility of some very nasty fiscal consequences.

Libertarianism and Psychology

Fred Foldvary Liberty, Philosophy , , , , , , ,

by Fred Foldvary

Recently there have been a stream of negative critiques of libertarianism. All of them are misunderstandings.  It seems that these critics are just dressing up their antagonism with pseudo-scientific textiles.

The latest attack is in Psychology Today. Peter Corning, Ph.D., asks and answers “What’s the Matter with Libertarianism?” under the rubric “The Fair Society.”

He says, “The libertarian model of individual psychology is grounded in the utilitarian, neo-classical economics model of ‘Homo economicus,'” by which he means selfish economic man. Corning provides a couple of quotes by Nozick and Dawkins, but no general evidence that such is the viewpoint of most libertarians.  Is there a survey?  Is there  inductive logic leading to this conclusion? No, there is nothing. And this is supposed to be a scientific finding of a scholarly psychologist.

He cites the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, but is evidently unaware of Smith’s other book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, in which Smith explained the other human motivation, sympathy for others.  Most libertarians that I know personally or from writings believe that it is quite good to be benevolent.

Perhaps Corning is confusing libertarianism with an extreme version of Randian Objectivism. He cites Ayn Rand as writing “Man’s first duty is to himself.”  But libertarian philosophy posits no such “first duty.”  The only libertarian moral duty is to avoid coercive harm to others.

Some libertarians are “anarcho-capitalists” who seem to envision an atomistic society of individuals contracting with protective agencies.  But libertarianism includes the communitarian vision of consensual communities with collective goods.

Corning claims that “libertarians generally have no model of society as an interdependent group with a common purpose and common interests.”  But no libertarian denies that society is interdependent. What is denied, and properly so, is that all the persons in a country have some common purpose and interests.  A multicultural society such as the USA consists of many interests, sometimes in conflict.  The interest of a thief clashes with that of peaceful victims.  If libertarianism is applied to society, the diverse interests can co-exist, the rule being that one may not force one’s interests on others.

Corning then notes that corporate interests sometimes perpetrate malfeasance. Yes, and if they commit fraud, that is theft, and libertarian policy would be to punish this.

He writes, “our first collective obligation is to ensure that all of our basic needs are met.” Now we see his political agenda.  Corning is a statist collectivist who favors the governmental welfare state. There is no abstract moral collective obligation. All obligations are individual. There can be a group with a mutual contract that then creates a collective obligation, but only from individual delegation.  As to basic needs, libertarian policy enables people to apply their labor and keep all the wages from that, which enables them to provide for their needs.  It is today’s statist restrictions and taxes that deprive workers of the ability to obtain their needs.  The few adults unable to work would get charity. The mass poverty of today is caused by government, not by the non-existent free market.

Evidently Corning believes that a libertarian world would be too selfish to care about the few who fall into misfortune.  But there is no evidence that greater freedom results in greater selfishness in the sense of not caring about others.  So here we have an article that seeks to apply psychology to an ideology, but with no evidence and with flaws in logic.  Psychology here is being applied as a cover for ideological views.  Has this been peer reviewed, or are the peers just as biased and lacking in scientific principle?

Around the Web: Rumpy Pumpy

muricaderp Liberty, Links, Politics

Just one link tonight, since I have to be onsite at a vineyard in less than five hours for work tomorrow.

Here it is, in all its sharp English glory. What does Mark Steyn find so compelling about an almost unheard-0f British politician named Nigel Farage? Here’s a taste:

The wobbly boozer turned out to be the steady hand at the tiller UKIP needed. He was elected (via proportional representation) to the European Parliament, which for the aspiring Brit politician is Siberia with an expense account. Then, in 2010, Farage became a global Internet sensation by raining on the EU’s most ridiculous parade — the inaugural appearance by the first supposed “President of Europe,” not a popularly elected or even parliamentarily accountable figure but just another backroom deal by the commissars of Eutopia. The new “President” was revealed to be, after the usual Franco-German stitch-up, a fellow from Belgium called Herman van Rompuy. “Who are you?” demanded Farage from his seat in the European Parliament during President van Rompuy’s address thereto. “No one in Europe has ever heard of you.” Which was quite true. One day, Mr. van Rompuy was an obscure Belgian, the next he was an obscure Belgian with a business card reading “President of Europe.” But, as is his wont, Nigel warmed to his theme and told President van Rompuy that he had “the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low-grade bank clerk.” A few days later, having conferred in their inner sanctum, the Eurocrats ordered Farage to make a public apology. So he did — to low-grade bank clerks for having been so ill-mannered as to compare them to President van Rompuy. He was then fined 2,980 euros (about $4,000) for his impertinence, since when he has referred to the European president as Rumpy-Pumpy, a British synonym for a bloody good shag.

I have to say, I like the guy. Nigel Farage is why we need Englishmen in Congress. But please no Belgians.

I’d round out this piece with some topical porn links or other suitable rudeness (autoerotic asphyxiation figures in Steyn’s piece), but I have  to be up before dawn. I’m the Help these days.

On the plus side of the ledger, the site where I’m working tomorrow is beautiful, and the grapes don’t talk back.

Yo, bro, suck it up and pray!

muricaderp Law, Liberty, Links, Religion

It’s time for the libertarian discourse to get rude again. Stephanie Drury called attention yesterday to a donnybrook over a Family Research Council prayer campaign graphic, a graphic one indeed, that has been construed to depict a man performing oral sex on one of his fellows.

Did that coalition of family men after God’s heart in fact publish such an obscene image? You be the judge. I suspect, however, that this is an instance in which Potter Stewart would have known it when he saw it. Ignore, if you wish, the civic mind rot in the preceding link about the Family Research Council having been “officially designated a ‘hate group.'” It’s unfortunate that such a bigoted organization’s opponents aren’t suggesting that its members get in line for the coming Sunday’s “services” instead of insinuating that their free speech be chilled merely because it offends a lot of people, especially since it’s so easy to demonstrate that the FRC’s modus operandi is to misuse concern about the health of American families for the purpose of censorious asshattery pending the nationwide implementation of Comstock-style theocratic government. Thankfully, it’s also an organization that tries too hard to be hip and ends up with slogans like this:

call 2 fall 

On our knees for America.

June 30, 2013

I’m in. 

Or, as General Petraeus said to Colonel Broadwell, “Yeah, baby, I’m all in.”

The whole thing has to be seen to be believed. I’ll note without further commentary that “I’m in” is written in white lettering on a smeared blotch of red.

For a counterpoint in defense of family values, prayer, and all that, let’s now turn to Drury’s “Facebook comment of the day”:

“Thanks for pointing this out. I did not know about the call to prayer which I certainly will join. The group that wrote this article would think a Christian sleeping is daydreaming of homosexual activity. They are mean, biased and christian-haters. That is rather obvious to anyone with the slightest bit of objectivity or integrity. Only a perverted mind would see a man praying and construe it as this article does.”

Project much? This “call 2 fall” is, of course, in response to Wednesday’s  Supreme Court rulings invalidating the Defense of Marriage Act and California Proposition 8 on equal protection grounds. A summary layman’s explanation of why these laws were properly held to be unconstitutional is that they denied numerous civil benefits to committed cohabiting partners on account of their sexual orientation, many of these benefits having nothing whatsoever to do with childrearing.

In other words, this is a national call to prayer for the sole purpose of reversing court decisions expanding equal protection under the law. It’s bigotry and bad civics. At the risk of causing further hurt to already tenderized religious right fee-fees, I should add that bigotry and bad civics are the stock in trade for much of the religious right. At rock bottom, much of the religious right’s agenda is the soft subversion of the United States Constitution.

To return to the subject of sexual purity, no prominent, Bible-teaching evangelical pastor has ever regularly consorted with a male meth whore and partaken of the crank pipe. That kind of thing is obviously the province of liberals: secularists, pluralists who are against religious tests for public office, low-class people who are too busy having unsanctioned sexytime to make it to church on Sunday morning, those of us who get a bit rattled or disgusted when the in-your-face nutters take over our congregations, those of us who find that morning services conflict with some combination of sleep and Face the Nation, those of us whose attitudes towards whores are at least as favorable as St. Augustine’s. We, not sexually repressed evangelicals in Colorado Springs, are obviously the ones with impure inclinations. We’re the ones who kick girls off football teams because they’re fixing to cause lust among teh boyz. It must have been a freak like Ron Wyden who publicly told an unsubstantiated story about bathroom privileges being restricted for high school girls in Southeast Oklahoma in response to an epidemic of lesbian sex, because it couldn’t have been a pious, conservative man of God like Tom Coburn.

If I dare say so, I have reasons for being all in for the return of the Victorian gynecological day spa, as well as an increase in the number of its manly counterparts. In fact, I haven’t come close to providing a comprehensive survey of these reasons. I just know that Senator Coburn is itching to get in on that action, no matter what he says. Methinks the doctor doth protest too much. Switzerland, with its sixteen-year-old age of consent and distance from the power centers of the Northeast Corridor, will be an appropriate jurisdiction for him and Chris Hansen to ply their new trade.

Ladies, don’t get any dirty ideas, but in an ideal world I’d be available for outcall massages in the Salem area. In the real world, I’m doing stoop labor with Yamhill County felons. There’s no sexual angle to that pathetic situation, so I don’t expect any intercession from the Family Research Council.

Blow me.

Edward Snowden is a Commie

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty , , , , , , , ,

So says Max Boot at Commentary, a neoconservative publication that specializes in lies and slander to further the imperialist cause (there is, if you think about it, no other way to further a cause such as theirs). No, really, read it yourself.

Boot tries to pretend that the NSA was only spying on citizens of foreign states, rather than on Americans, but this is laughable on its face, especially given the recent IRS scandal (where an august body of bureaucrats charged with collecting taxes suddenly finds itself targeting conservative political groups during a close presidential election season).

I’ve read elsewhere that Snowden was inspired by Ron Paul. If this is true, then Ron Paul is even more of a bad ass than I thought. The only people on my campus who do not like Ron Paul are hardline Democrats and hardline Republicans. But just think: very few young people identify with a specific political party. The reasons for this vary, but for the most part young people are much more independent thinkers and have yet to enter the workforce. Once they enter the workforce, of course, they will begin to vote for a party line, but kids in college who already identify with a political party tend to constitute tomorrow’s fascists: they are condescending, gullible and believe that the political system is the best way to change society for the better.

American imperialism is dead. Once the Obama administration begins arming al-Qaeda, and the media begins to really throw Obama under the bus, the idea that US government can magically make the world a better place by bombing, arming and invading other countries will find its rightful place in the dunce’s corner of American politics once again. In the mean time, we need more heroes like Snowden to expose the horrific abuses of liberty that Washington has been pursuing under the guise of wars on terror, drugs and poverty over the last half century.