Category Archives: libertarianism

Standard Libertarian Immigration Non Sequitur

Low-wage illegal aliens cost much more ($26.3 billion) than they contribute ($16 billion) to the economy. [See “The High Cost of Cheap Labor: Illegal Immigration and the Federal Budget“] But to make light of their indisputable weight on the American welfare state, open-border libertarians advance a standard non-sequitur: “We don’t care if immigrants use a disproportionate amount of social services, because we believe all social programs should be scaled back or preferably junked,” as one put it.

From the fact that you oppose taxpayer-funded welfare for nationals, it doesn’t follow that extending it to millions of illegal newcomers is financially or morally negligible. (Or that this is congruent with the libertarian aim of curtailing government growth.) The argument is akin to declaring that because a bank has been robbed by one band of bandits, arresting the next lot is unnecessary because the damage has already been done.

It’s hard to imagine how immigration evangelizers would extend this logic to the cost of crime perpetrated by illegals. Let’s see: “We don’t care if illegal immigrants commit more violent crimes than locals, because we believe all violent offences, committed by nationals and non-nationals alike, are wrong and should be phased out.”

Shades of Waco?

America, Criminal Injustice, Law, libertarianism, Media, Morality, The State

Another prosecutorial team is on the make, this time in Utah, where the state has been pursuing Warren Jeffs, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Prosecutors have been egged on by a histrionic media—cable coquettes, especially, with their mangled maternal instincts.

First came District Attorney Michael Nifong of the Duke “rape” case fame. By the admission of the accuser’s co-striper, her story lacks credibility. The accused has an alibi. The DNA found on the accuser is not his. And the lineup was in violation of procedures. Yet this DA run amok forges on, oblivious to the constitutional and procedural safeguards to which an accused is entitled. (Here’s another superb source on the case.)

Mary Lacy, Boulder County’s inept DA, arrested a man in the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, based on no other corroborating evidence than a confession, a practice that was once prohibited, for obvious reasons. Lacy attended Patsy Ramsey’s funeral and was clearly personally invested in the intruder-theory of the case. Lacy and Nifong appear to represent a decaying legal system festooned with incompetents, who substitute the constraints of the law with their “grand” visions.

As to Jeffs, the mindless media has always been enthralled by child-abuse crusaders. Janet Reno, one of the most murderous DAs, established her career by launching the day care child sex abuse witch hunt that gripped the nation in the 1980s. She used fabricated accusations elicited from children (who never lie, right?) with the aid of highly suggestive techniques, to imprison her victims absent corroborative evidence. These cases served as a professional stepping stone for Reno, who went on to commit even greater crimes.

Here are the Jeffs arrest warrant and affidavit. It’s ludicrous. He is charged with being an accomplice to rape, no less. Such an accusation conjures visions of Jeffs holding the victim down while another commits the act. Jeffs, however, is charged, based on hearsay, with encouraging a girl, then under 18, to submit to intercourse with her husband, who was a little older. How does urging someone to consummate a marriage amount to being complicit in a rape, a very brutal crime indeed? By this standard or test, aren’t the girl’s parents also complicit?

The sect is wealthy and owns large compounds in Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, South Dakota, and British Columbia. Despite the fact that they live in peace and are non-violent, the federal government has described Jeffs, who was unarmed and did not resist arrest, as extremely dangerous.

The polygamist was placed on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list in May, alongside Bin Laden. In this way, presumably, when the federal and state police storm these compounds and remove the children (with a view to seizing the valuable property too, no doubt), the public, dimmed and dulled by state-worshipping media, will shrug it off. After all, it’s all for “The Children,” isn’t it?

Question: Islam permits multiple marriages, doesn’t it? I have no doubt that devout American Muslims follow the dictates of their faith here in the US. Have you ever heard of any such prosecutions against members of that community?

Costs of War Predicted By Prescient Libertarians

Iraq, libertarianism, War

On April 30, 2003 I wrote the following:

According to figures provided by Yale professor William Nordhaus and the Council of Foreign Relations, the eventual costs of the war on Iraq will be roughly $1.2 trillion.

Very many libertarians debated—and were familiar with—this estimate.

On March 17, 2006, MSNBC’s Martin Wolk finally awoke and wrote:

One estimate puts the total economic impact [of the war] at up to $2 trillion.

On May 28, 2004, I noted in amazement that the neoconservative talking twits [have] been wrong all along about the invasion of Iraq. Their utter ignorance of geopolitical realities had them insisting our soldiers would be greeted with blooms and bonbons and that an Iraqi democracy would rise from the torrid sands of Mesopotamia. They’ve consistently dished out dollops of ahistoric, unintuitive, and reckless verbiage.

They were wrong all along, yet they’ve retained their status as philosopher-kings.

On the other hand—and unfortunately for America—there hasn’t been a horror in Iraq that certain libertarian prescients did not foretell well in advance.

And I asked: “So why are insightful commentators, whose observations have predictive power, generally barred from the national discourse, while false neoconservative prophets are called back for encores?”

The answer I gave in 2004 applies today:

Elites—media included—can rule only if they represent ideologies that are widely embraced, as the invasion of Iraq was. Today’s news is not what it used to be because a dumbed-down population, well represented in newsrooms, cannot distinguish evidence from assertion and fact from feel-good fiction. News is now nothing but a slick, demand-driven product designed to please—not inform—the populace. Having their worldview affirmed—even affirmed in a parallel universe—is worth a lot to news consumers, who are keener to avoid the pains of cognitive dissonance than to get the real deal.

Those Cartoons: A Reply To Walter Block

Free Speech, Ilana Mercer, libertarianism

…Dr. Block has denounced the rather mild Danish cartoons as not nice, not moral, not appropriate and not considerate…
Whereas Dr. Block and I both agree the cartoons are perfectly licit in libertarian law and that the cartoonists and their publishers deserve to be safe from death or threats thereof, Dr. Block has asserted, under the rubric of a libertarian analysis, that libertarians would view the cartoons as immoral and that “from the libertarian perspective, both sets of acts—”drawing pictures of Muhammad” and offending “western sensibilities”—are “improper”…
What is Dr. Block’s premise for asserting these things are immoral? Other than that they offend Muslims, I see none. And to give offence is not always immoral. It is certainly not immoral to lampoon the connection between Muhammad, author of Islam, and the savagery and atavism that grip the Muslim world today…
… if a radical proponent of freedom such as Dr. Block can dub mild satire immoral, inadvertently tainting innocent, non-aggressive satirists, then it’s imperative to address the substance of the speech being debated, lest innocent polemicists and illustrators be maligned.

The complete essay, “Those Cartoons: A Reply To Walter Block,” is on the Free-Market News Network. Responses are welcome.