Category Archives: Individual Rights

UPDATE III (1/1/021): Abortion And A Woman’s Title In Her Body

Abortion, Conservatism, Ethics, Feminism, Individual Rights, libertarianism, Liberty, Natural Law, Private Property

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It is clearly untrue to say that a paleolibertarian is one who always opposes a woman’s absolute dominion over her body, as a poster on Wendy McElroy’s Facebook Wall has implied.

Abortion is one hill I do not care to die on; I’ve committed enough professional Seppuku over the years. However, I have repeatedly stated that, for a classical liberal (at least), “it’s [highly] problematic to say that by virtue of her fertility, a woman loses a title in her body.”

To repeat, for me, abortion is not the hill to die on. It seems prudent not to come out on this issue. Division of labor and all that stuff; I’ll leave it to Wendy McElroy, who, I am sure, agrees that “libertarians can agree that no state funding, local or federal, should be allocated to such a procedure.”

Otherwise, here is Wendy’s brilliant articulation of self-ownership. Watch Wendy on Stossel’s, 7:28 minutes in:

Wendy McElroy: As far as I’m concerned, this is my skin. Everything beneath this skin belongs to me, or I don’t own anything. I am a self-owner-

John Stossel: Even if there is a living being inside you?

Wendy McElroy: If there is a living being inside me, I’m glad you used the word “being” and not “individual with rights,” if there is a living being inside me, it exists on my breath, it exists by my, the blood pumping through my veins, by the food I eat. It is within my skin, and if you say to me that there, that I do not have jurisdiction over my body, that, in fact, society or someone else has jurisdiction, the, the word that describes someone else owning my body is slavery.*

UPDATE I: Glad people have remained civil on Facebook, so far. That’s the way. Always. However much one disdains the procedure, you can’t get away from the fact of self-ownership. You have no right to take custody of another person’s body. They either own themselves or don’t.

You can’t “own” your body in conjunction with other busybodies.

UPDATE II (July 21):

From the hopeless Facebook thread:

Your tortured analogy, MW, does not hold or even come close. Any reasoning about this fraught topic must proceed, at the very least, from a correct analogy. This is why this debate cannot proceed from logic. People lose their logic (or perhaps they never had the ability to reason to begin with) when it comes to abortion. Enough, now folks. The most honest position the anti-a-woman’s-right-in-her-body proponents can advance is this: a woman, by virtue of her biology, does not have total title in her body. As a propertarian, I find this position untenable, but agree that individuals who hold it will try to finesse it. So this is the final word. “Respek,” as Ali Gi would say.

JV: This is what I mean by a lack of reasoning faculties on the topic, and plain dissembling. What irks here is not only that I said, “enough,” and this is my Wall. But that you, JV, frame your “distinguishing” argument” as exhaustive. The initiation of force is most certainly not the only distinguishing feature between the mother and the fetus. (Unrelated: there is a prerequisite for Facebook Friendship.)

UPDATE III (1/1/021):

Libertarians view women as having dominion over their bodies! My comment, then, is on the cultural specter of females freed from men, morality and tradition: how quickly they turn into diabolical libertines. Most women need traditional strictures to balance exhibitionism and promiscuity.

The Republic of Rub-a-Dub-Dub Genitalia

Government, Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Law, Natural Law, Regulation, Terrorism, The State, The West

“The Republic of Rub-a-Dub-Dub Genitalia” is the current column, now on RT. Here is an excerpt:

I imagine readers would prefer that I discuss the TSA’s breach of Jonah Falcon’s “formidable” breeches. But there are better ways to keep the terrorists of the TSA in the news, than to spotlight a well-endowed individual who, to go by his boasting, suffers from “small man syndrome.”

… For a while, the natives were restless over being handled like meat at a packing plant. Travelers, however, have begun to relax, and have eased into the role of stunned cattle.

A jury of ‘submissives’ has even gone so far as to enjoin any resistance to TSA tyranny.

You know the drill. During a routine TSA screening, Carol Jean Price, aged 59, had her buttocks, breasts and genitals touched by an agent. Except that Price didn’t think the prodding should be routine. She became upset, as victims of sexual assault often do.

“When TSA supervisor Kristin Arnberg approached the outraged Price after the initial screening,” Price had the temerity to demonstrate the anatomy of “gate-rape” on The Super.

A jury not of her peers convicted the victim (Price) of battery.

In a constitutional republic, The Law should apply to civilian and civil servant alike, with no exceptions. If a country’s legal code outlaws sexual assault—then the act of fondling an innocent and unwilling stranger, without probable cause, between her thighs and around her breasts, must be proscribed to all people, in all places.

Correspondingly, Ms. Price was correct to instinctively infer that if certain forms of touching are legal in her “great” country, governed as it allegedly is by laws and not men—then everyone should be able to practice the treatment these laws prescribe on everyone else. …”

READ the complete column. “The Republic of Rub-a-Dub-Dub Genitalia” is now on RT.

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Samuel Williams: American Hero

Constitution, GUNS, Human Accomplishment, Individual Rights

Her legions of soft, flaccid fans insist Karen Klein is an American hero. Wrong. Samuel Williams is the genuine article.

The spry senior sprung into action faster than any of the helpless young-ones around him. Williams chased and took aim at the armed robbers who had attacked patrons of the Palms Internet Cafe, in Marion County, Fl, where he and his wife were hanging out.

He took aim and HIT them. Take a look:

“…the Florida senior pulled a .380 semi-automatic gun, and started firing away at the crooks,” writes Jim Kane of News.

Wrong. As you can see, Williams took aim and hit both crooks, who suffered “minor gun-shot wounds,” and wound up in hospital.

The zip codes with the strictest gun laws, also have the highest numbers of rapes and murders. More firearms equals less crime.

This gentleman’s courage is astounding, given that the assailants were armed.

Dr. Paul Continues To Cast Pearls Before Swine

Healthcare, Individual Rights, Regulation, Republicans, Ron Paul, Socialism, The Courts, The State

Responding to Justice Roberts’ smart-alec SCOTUS decision in the matter of “The Affordable Care Act,” Ron Paul said this:

“Today we should remember that virtually everything government does is a ‘mandate.’ The issue is not whether Congress can compel commerce by forcing you to buy insurance, or simply compel you to pay a tax if you don’t,” said the Texas Republican. “The issue is that this compulsion implies the use of government force against those who refuse. The fundamental hallmark of a free society should be the rejection of force. In a free society, therefore, individuals could opt out of “Obamacare” without paying a government tribute.”

“Those of us in Congress who believe in individual liberty must work tirelessly to repeal this national health care law and reduce federal involvement in healthcare generally. Obamacare can only increase third party interference in the doctor-patient relationship, increase costs, and reduce the quality of care … Only free market medicine can restore the critical independence of doctors, reduce costs through real competition and price sensitivity, and eliminate enormous paperwork burdens. Americans will opt out of Obamacare with or without Congress, but we can seize the opportunity today by crafting the legal framework to allow them to do so.”

As you read through Dr. Paul’s diagnosis and prescription, of Jun 27, 2012, remember that conservatives in power support third-party health-care distortions in almost all their permutations:

I recently discussed absurd legal arguments by Obamacare advocates that Congress can compel the purchase of health insurance, and the dismal record of federal courts applying so-called “judicial review” in protecting liberty. It is obvious that Obamacare’s legal apologists either are wholly ignorant of constitutional principles, or wholly lawless in their blatant disregard for those principles.
Likewise, supporters of Obamacare are willfully ignorant of basic economics. The fundamental problem with health care costs in America is that the doctor-patient relationship has been profoundly altered by third-party interference. Third parties, either government agencies themselves or nominally private insurance companies virtually forced upon us by government policies, have not only destroyed doctor-patient confidentiality. They also inescapably drive up costs because basic market disciplines — supply and demand, price sensitivity, and profit signals — are destroyed.
Obamacare, via its insurance mandate, is more of the same misdiagnosis.
Gabriel Vidal, chief operating officer of a U.S. hospital system, sees this problem squarely in his daily work. As he explains, Obamacare will only make matters worse because it fails to recognize that “costs are out of control because they do not reflect prices created by the voluntary exchange between patients and providers”» like every well-functioning industry.”
Instead, “health costs reflect the distortions that government regulators have introduced through reimbursement mechanisms created by command-and-control bureaucracies at federal and state levels,” he continues. “But it is theoretically and practically impossible for a bureaucrat — no matter how accurate the cost data, how well-intentioned and how sophisticated his computer program — to come up with the correct and just price. The (doctor-patient) relationship”» has been corrupted by the intrusion of government and its intermediaries (HMOs, for example) to such an extent that we can no longer speak of a relationship that can produce meaningful pricing information.