Category Archives: libertarianism

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.

UPDATED: Those Gay Berets

Aesthetics, America, Business, Capitalism, Constitution, libertarianism, Outsourcing, Regulation, Sport

There is an alphabet soup of government agencies that ride American business. Business is buried under regulation, having to expend money and time on licenses, permits and forms for almost every transaction. What with the legal obligation to give an employee practically a lifetime of benefits, who can afford to make these gay-looking Olympic berets in the USA?

Capital flows to where it is best utilized.

I expect the PC patrol to come after me for saying that America’s Olympic team’s caps look campy.

But what’s wrong with a cowboy hat made in Texas? The gay berets cost a pretty penny and look … well, both gay and French.

My sartorial suggestion?

This here “Cattleman Wool Felt Cowboy Hat” costs $26.99.

And it looks American.

UPDATE: I FORGOT TO REMIND YOU ALL: Join the thread on Facebook, if you wish to contribute comments.

Here are my replies to the thread on Facebook:

To GJ: A cowboy hat is militarism to you? Where do you get that? Cowboys used to represent the (dying) great American frontier mentality. The equivalent of a “voortrekker” in South Africa.

To MP: MP is, of course, correct; there is no warrant in the Constitution or in libertarian law for state sponsorship of sports. But I always broaden the discussion to include more than libertarian justice/law—or else there would be little to discuss, as most of what the Federal Frankenstein does is unconstitutional/immoral, etc. And how dull, dour and lazy would that repetition be! But you already know that much about this writer, MP.

UPDATE II: On The Radio Show Of ‘Austrian’ Jay Taylor

Economy, Ilana On Radio & TV, libertarianism, Media, Natural Law, Political Economy, South-Africa

I will be a guest on The Jay Taylor Radio Show (“Turning Hard Times into Good Times”).

Date: Tuesday, June 26, at 3:30 EST.
Topic: Into the Cannibal’s Pot, as it applies to private property rights, gold in South Africa, and the backdrop to the establishment of Apartheid.

Jay Taylor is a New-York based investor and broadcaster, who invests and broadcasts in the intellectual tradition of Austrian economics. We met at the New York Junto gathering, where I was the month of May’s featured speaker.

I was delighted to hear that the topic of the talk—“Natural Rights in ‘Into the Cannibal’s Pot’: Abstractions or Facts of Life?”—resonated with Jay.

Jay is a treasure. Tune in to support his work. (And, it goes without saying, go easy on me.)

UPDATE I (June 26): You can listen to the show here.

UPDATE II (June 27): An MP3 of my segment is here.

UPDATE IV: What’s One More Extra-Constitutional Power Grab? (‘Meanwhile, At The Border . . .’)

Barack Obama, Bush, Constitution, Democrats, English, IMMIGRATION, libertarianism, Private Property, Republicans, Welfare

As measured by the Flesch-Kincaid readability test, the president’s speeches are written at an eighth-grade level. (And we’re not talking simple as in straightforward, precise and concise; but simple as in laden with emotion, and full of hot air and appeals to feelings.)

Read his “Remarks on Immigration.”

As an example of Obama’s eighth-grade writing, take this run-on ramble—a paragraph with the most awful syntax. BHO just adds clauses as he goes. This man’s mind is every bit as disorganized as was Bush’s.

As I said in my speech on the economy yesterday, it makes no sense to expel talented young people, who, for all intents and purposes, are Americans — they’ve been raised as Americans; understand themselves to be part of this country — to expel these young people who want to staff our labs, or start new businesses, or defend our country simply because of the actions of their parents — or because of the inaction of politicians.

What a dreadful cur!

It is, of course, incongruous to profess libertarianism, while supporting free-for-all immigration, affirmative action, anti-private property Civil-Rights laws, and public education extended to all trespassers—these are policies that violate private property, which is the cornerstone of libertarianism.

Most illegal aliens do not come to the U.S. to wage war, but the reality is that, once in the country, almost all wage welfare. Would that the American Welfare State did not exist. But since it does and is, unfortunately, likely to persist for some time to come, it must stop at the Rio Grande.

UPDATE I: Van Esser at NumbersUSA writes the following:

Perhaps I’m missing something but I can’t find a provision of the US Constitution that authorizes a president to act because he/she just can’t wait for Congress. The Obama Administration must have found the language. Otherwise, the new administrative amnesty-in-place for illegal aliens under the age of 31 would be considered an extra-constitutional directive by fiat.

As far as his Orwellian overreach, Strongman Obama is no different than “The Decider” when it comes to flouting our Constitution. Republicans fuss a lot when Democrats sidestep a Constitution that has long been a dead-letter. Democrat do the same.

It’s a meaningless dance.

Big Man Obama gave the great, late, Democratic Senator, Robert Byrd, palpitations. Byrd, RIP, was “a stern constitutional scholar who always stood up for the legislative branch in its role in checking the power of the White House.” According to Politico.com, this old Southern gentleman, after whom Republicans were always chasing for his past indiscretions, warned about Obama’s executive-branch power grab. Chief Obama created a number of new, extra-constitutional White-House fiefdoms: one on health reform, urban affairs policy, and energy and climate change.

AND now on immigration.

Ditto “The Decider.” He habitually sidestepped the chain of command in the military and winked at the Constitutional scheme. Under The Decider’s dictatorship, matters that ought to have been the business of the people or their representatives were routinely consigned to the executive branch.

So quit the posturing, Republicans. The Obama “Get-Out-Of-Deportation-Free-Card” is business as usual in the republic, RIP.

UPDATE II (June 17): BHO claimed that deportation of criminal aliens was up 80 percent. Bush did close to nothing to defend against the invasion from the south. Compared to that standard, it is probably true that Obama has bested Bush in enforcement. But when the numbers are so miniscule, percentage increases are huge. So, if Bush deported 50 illegal aliens, to exaggerate; then at 90, Obama can boast of kicking out 80 percent more.

UPDATE III: DAVID FRUM via VDARE.COM:

Every serious economic study of immigration has found that the net benefits of present policy are exceedingly small. But that small net is an aggregate of very large effects that cancel each other out. The immigrants get higher wages than they would have earned in their former country. The affluent gain lower prices for in-person services. Lower-skilled native-born Americans face downward wage pressure. In any other policy area, people who consider themselves progressive might be expected to revile a policy whose benefits went to foreigners and the rich, and whose costs were born by the American poor. Immigration policy baffles that expectation.

UPDATE IV (June 18): ‘Meanwhile, At The Border . . .’ via The Center for Immigration Studies:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the agency charged with guarding the U.S. borders, has written a secret draft policy that would let its agents catch and release low-priority illegal immigrants rather than bring them in for processing and prosecution. The policy, which has not been signed off on, would be the latest move by the Obama administration to set new priorities for the nation’s immigration services, and would bring CBP in line with other Homeland Security Department agencies that already use such “prosecutorial discretion.”
The policy was detailed in an internal memo obtained by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith and reviewed by The Washington Times, which confirmed the document.
According to the memo, the draft policy “provides circumstances when to pursue enforcement actions … and includes detailed discussion of several factors CBP personnel should consider when exercising discretion.”
Opponents say it amounts to another “backdoor amnesty” for illegal immigrants and could give the administration a tool to pressure Border Patrol agents not to pursue some people.

To continue the theme of this blog post, how is this different from policy under Bush? On this front it isn’t.

…the underlying reason why America’s deportation system remains inexplicably paralyzed by federal litigation and rigged in favor of relief from removal:
Internationalists in the Bush and Clinton Administrations have decided to confine immigration enforcement only to the U.S. borderlands…until there’s no enforcement at all, because the U.S., Mexico and Canada will have been merged into one unit behind a new “North American security perimeter.”
This shared Canada-U.S-Mexico “security perimeter” is exactly what the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America has in mind for America someday.

[VDARE.COM]