Category Archives: libertarianism

Get Off Your Knees, Gov. Pence! (You’re Not In A Gay Bathhouse)

Individual Rights, libertarianism, Private Property, Religion, Republicans

“Get Off Your Knees, Gov. Pence! (You’re Not In A Gay Bathhouse)” is the current column. An excerpt:

Pretend the U.S. is as free as the Founding Fathers intended it to be. In this authentically (and classically) liberal America, no one can tell free men and women what to do with their property, namely their bodies, their abodes and their businesses.

The individual living in America as it was meant to be is free to run his business as he wishes, associate with those he likes, dissociate from those he dislikes or disapproves; hire, fire, rent to or evict from, invest and disinvest, speak and misspeak at will.

This hypothetical free man is at liberty to bruise as many feelings as he likes, so long as his mitts stop at the next man’s face. So long as he harms nobody’s person or property, our mythic man may live as he wishes to live.

Americans have been propagandized for so long; they no longer grasp the basic building blocks of liberty. A crude reductio ad absurdum should help:

A retail store selling Nazi memorabilia opens its doors in my neighborhood. I enter in search of the yellow Star of David Jews were forced to wear during the Third Reich. The proprietor, decked out in Nazi insignia and regalia, says, “I’m sorry, we don’t serve Jews.” “Don’t be like that,” I say. “Where else can I find a pair of clip-on swastika earrings?” The Nazi sympathizer is polite but persistent: “Ma’am, I mean no disrespect, but back in the Old Country, Jews murdered my great grandfather’s cousin and used his blood in the leavening of the Passover matzah.” “Yeah,” I reply. “I’m familiar with that blood libel. I assure you my own mother’s matzo balls were free of the blood of brats, gentile or Jewish. No matter. I can see where you’re coming from. I’m sorry for your loss. Good luck.”

There! Did that hurt?

Did I rush off to rat out my Nazi neighbor to the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice? Not on your life. A principled Jewish libertarian (with a sense of humor)—who believes in absolute freedom of association and the rights of private property—would doff his Kippah and walk out. …

… Read the rest. “Get Off Your Knees, Gov. Pence! (You’re Not In A Gay Bathhouse)” is now on WND.

Featured on The Unz Report:

“Is Anarcho-Capitalism Compatible with Natural Justice?” By Ilana Mercer

UPDATE II: Judge Andrew Napolitano: Some Libertarian (A Good Lawyer Counters)

Individual Rights, libertarianism, Paleolibertarianism, Private Property, Religion

The much-lauded Judge Andrew Napolitano, a feature speaker on some heavy hitting libertarian forums; quoted ad nauseam by these outlets too—does not appear to believe in the most basic of liberties: absolute freedom of association and the rights of private property. The Judge—supposedly a libertarian who should support the spirit of a law in furtherance of freedom of association and property rights—objects to giving individuals who want to exercise these individual rights, however, obnoxious, a legal standing to argue their case in a court of law.

WATCH.

UPDATED I: FACEBOOK THREAD & The Cult of Personality.

I suggest people listen again to the Judge. Moreover, it’s so stupid the way these TV personae acquire their fans who will defend them no matter. I’ve been following the Judge long enough to know he is a Reason-type, left-libertarian, who supports Civil Wrongs legislation. Look at the hot mess he made here.

UPDATE II: Jim Ostrowski is excellent, as always. Listen to a good lawyer as opposed a blowhard TV persona:

As I understand Indiana law, the only plausible libertarian position is to support the (very wimpy) religious defense statute. All laws banning private discrimination are to be opposed. This statute carves out a small slice of liberty in an otherwise loathsome legal regime. Liberty always trumps equality, including equal protection of the laws. It does sound like the Judge opposes this statute which position is NOT libertarian.

Also, as I argued on my page, the liberty required to carry out one’s religious obligations is far more that the right not to be shot on the way to church. The pioneers of liberty, many of whom were deeply religious, understood this and supported liberty in the fullest sense of the word (the right to do what you wish with what you own) precisely in order to meet one’s one religious obligations.

Further thoughts on Indiana–

Sandy Beach, WBEN.com, is a social moderate but fiscal conservative who opposes a religious exemption to civil rights laws. He appears not to realize that the very same principle that allows progressives to force business firms to serve this or that designated group, that is, the state’s right to force its alleged values on individuals, ALSO justifies all the taxes and regulatiions that Sandy presumably objects to, e.g., Obamacare. Liberty is seamless and so is progressivism!

Sandy made the point that being forced to do business with this or that group doesn’t threaten their religion. He misses the point. To be able to carry out one’s religious views, one needs liberty in all things, e.g., to be charitable, one needs the fruits of one’s labor. To raise your children properly, one needs the fruits of one’s labor as well. To visit the sick or prisoners, one needs time, energy and even money. All state coercion interferes with one’s religious moral duties.

Now that the progs have made quick work of several uber-conservative politicians, they smell blood in the water and will now go after religious groups more aggressively. You may laugh but I know the progressive mind fairly well. They start out attacking a thing but soon end up banning it.

Move On. Nothing More To See @ The Site Of The Rand Paul Crash (Ron, Rand: Politicians Both)

English, Iran, libertarianism, Republicans, Ron Paul

Libertarians seem fascinated with tracking Rand Paul’s every move, waiting for some critical-mass of evidence to show that Rand is no libertarian. How often can one relive the same eureka moment? Move on. There’s nothing more to see at the site of the Rand Paul crash.

“Rand Paul: Action Hero, Or Political Performance Artist?” was penned in 3/1/2013, when Rand was first presenting himself to the public in a big way. Back then, there were still questions to be asked. Matters were inconclusive on the Rand Paul front.

Like most Americans, I like an action hero. I am just incapable of telling whether Rand Paul is such a hero, or whether he is no more than a political performance artist.

One thing should always be a certainty for libertarians:

“It is a smart libertarian who retains a healthy contempt for politicians, even the libertarian ones. Ultimately, they’re all empire builders, who see nothing wrong in using fame and the public dime to peddle their influence and their products.
The people—at least those who’ve never fed at the “public” trough, unlike every single politician and his aide—are always morally superior to the politicians.
In all, some politicians are less sickening than others, but all fit somewhere along a sick-making scale.”

The Daily Beast’s “Why Real Libertarians Hate Rand Paul” is yet more hoo-ha about Rand Paul’s latest un-libertarian mistep—Paul signied Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R-AR) open letter to “the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The letter stated, rather condescendingly, that Iranian leaders ‘do not fully understand our constitutional system.’ Soon a new president would be in office, Cotton wrote, and that president could (if Republican, would) ‘revoke’ any executive agreement President Obama signs.”

While the Beast pardons Justin Raimondo for his prolonged Rand Paul crush; I cannot forgive the Beastly writer for a usage such as “cyber-bullying” and “… it feels like.”

UPDATED (3/22): Ron, Rand: Politicians Both.

Ron and Rand Paul are just … politicians. A few years back, in the midst of the Ron Paul orgy, Karen De Coster pointed this out rather gruffly. She must have gotten flack of the order even she didn’t feel like handling, because she did not repeat the observation. It bears repetition. Here: Rand and Ron Paul are politicians. Senior is way better than junior, but he too showed all the trappings of a politician. We just turned a blind eye, b/c he was ours.

The Grotesquely Stalinist FDR

Capitalism, Communism, Crime, Free Markets, libertarianism, Russia

“The Grotesquely Stalinist FDR” is the current column. It questions the current libertarian support (my own included) for Russia, and recounts how ‘grotesquely Stalinist’
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was. An excerpt:

… One can well understand why the medieval blood ties that tethered some Ukrainians to the Russians would have been severed by the criminal communist regime, which targeted the Ukrainian breadbasket with a vengeance. The communists robbed the Ukrainian peasants of their fertile farms, forced them into slave labor by corralling them into state-owned, collective farms, and systematically starved them by requisitioning most of their grain. The peasants had been left with a fraction of the amount of grain required to sustain life.

Yet these heroic, individualistic farmers rose up against the Reds.

The slogans of the Ukrainian peasantry, in 1919, were “Ukraine for the Ukrainians, down with the Bolsheviks and the Jews (whom they associated with the Bolsheviks), free enterprise, free trade.” Besides the standard mass executions, in order to wipe out this class of people, Stalin devised a diabolical man-made famine which killed up to 10 million .

Fast forward to Kiev, circa 2013, where Ukrainians tore down the statue of the founding father of Bolshevism and a mass murderer in his own right. But that man, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, still reposes in a mausoleum in Moscow’s Red Square.

Why, pray tell? …

Read the rest. “The Grotesquely Stalinist FDR” is now on WND.