Category Archives: libertarianism

Positive-Law Arguments For The Anthony Outcome

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Justice, Law, libertarianism, Natural Law

Of course, “Caylee’s Law,” Radley Balko points out, is a horrible idea. Stupid too. However, to neglect real evidence because one is against the death penalty is as horrible and stupid, if not more so. These are separate issues.

Alan Dershowitz has been arguing that the Casey Anthony verdict is an embodiment of “our legal system.” In making this case, Dershowitz alludes, curiously, to the positive law, not to any natural-law aspect of the American legal system, or to this woman’s prosecution.

To support his view of the impetus of America’s legal system, Dershowitz (on Huckabee), for example, touted the Exclusionary Rule as exemplifying his view of the impetus of America’s legal system. (I say “curiously,” because libertarians seem not to be distinguishing positive- from negative-law arguments in support of the jury’s innocent ruling.)

The Exclusionary Rule is a technicality tarted up as a real right. Hardly libertarian—at least not if one is a proponent of the natural law.

In the same vein, a procedural violation of the Fourth Amendment, say, an improper search, can get evidence of guilt—-a bloodied knife or a smoking gun—-barred from being presented at trial. Fail to Mirandize a murderer properly, and his confession will be tossed out. Such procedural defaults are very often used to suppress immutable physical facts, thus serving to subvert the spirit of the law and natural justice.

More minted “rights” are “consular rights.” A procedural default such as the failure to apprise a defendant of his consular contacts is never a violation of a natural right. “Consular rights” are of a piece with Miranda rights and the Exclusionary Rule. Again, these are technicalities tarted up as real rights.

Might these gaps of understanding between libertarians touch on the distinction, in our multi-factioned movement, between the hardcore, life-liberty-property classical liberal, and civil libertarianism and “libertarianism lite”?

Dershowitz is a civil libertarian who once conflated the natural law with the law of the jungle.

UPDATED: Libertarianism Lite (Small “l,” Please)

Classical Liberalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Liberty, Political Philosophy, Pop-Culture, Terrorism, The Zeitgeist

From “Libertarianism Lite,” on WND.COM: “A certain establishment-endorsed libertarianism is currently being touted on the Fox News and Business channels as the only legitimate brand of libertarianism. This life-style libertarianism, or libertarianism-lite, as I call it, tends to conflate libertinism with liberty, and appeals to hippies of all ages, provided they remain juveniles forever.

As I noted, when defending Ron Paul, in 2008, from attacks by the same libertarians,

Beltway libertarians … are moved in mysterious ways by gaping borders, gay marriage, multiculturalism, cloning, and all else “cool and cosmopolitan.” Judging by Reason Magazine’s “35 Heroes of Freedom,” “cool and cosmopolitan” encompasses William Burroughs, a drug addled, Beat-Generation wife killer, whose “work is mostly gibberish and his literary influence baleful.” … Madonna Reason has exalted for, as they put it, leading “MTV’s glorious parade of freaks, gender-benders, and weirdos who helped broaden the palette of acceptable cultural identities and destroy whatever vestiges of repressive mainstream sensibilities still remained.” That sounds like the unscrambled, strange dialect spoken by a professor of Women’s and Gender Studies. [Or is it “Wimmin’s Studies”?]

Much as the Left does, libertarians-lite divine, in the country’s founding documents, all kinds of exhortations to let it all hang out. …”

The complete column is “Libertarianism Lite,” now on WND.COM.

UPDATE (July 9): SMALL L, PLEASE. Guys: We’re talking small “l” libertarianism. Capital “L” Libertarainism refers to the Libertarian political Party.

My new book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” is available from Amazon.

Please note that you can purchase the lower-cost Kindle copy of “The Cannibal” without having to own a Kindle – all you need is a PC. This hyperlink describes the free Amazon software application for the PC. So you do not require a gadget to read the book on Kindle.

The print copy is available from the Publisher too. Hurry: Publisher is currently offering free shipping, including to our readers in South Africa. To purchase, click on the “Buy From StairwayPress” Button.

A good way to help this work’s mission is to post your reviews to Amazon. Us talking among ourselves will do nothing to raise awareness of the issues covered in depth and in detail in the book. And you don’t have to have purchased the book from Amazon to review it on the site.

Man up!

Where Was Coulter On … Economic Freedoms, Asks Vox Day

Ann Coulter, Bush, Debt, Economy, Federalism, John McCain, libertarianism, Republicans

My WND colleague Vox Day wants to know “where was Miss Coulter when the McCain-Palin ticket suspended its Republican presidential campaign to help the Bush administration collude with the Democratic Senate to ram TARP down the throats of a protesting American public?”

“Cowering frauds,” writes Vox—with reference to Ann Coulter’s term for libertarians who do not want a department of marriage affairs to be added to the Federal Frankenstein in enforcing morality—“is a term that is best reserved for Republicans, who preach fiscal responsibility while repeatedly raising the debt ceiling, who talk about the importance of respecting the law while permitting Wall Street to openly violate it at will, and who claim to advocate personal freedom while staunchly supporting a futile Prohibition that saw three times more Americans arrested for drugs last year than were arrested in 1980.”

Check the WND archives for the two months leading up to the 2008 presidential election. Miss Coulter was too busy cheering on the Red Faction of the bifactional ruling party in a futile attempt to elect John McCain to bother speaking out against the Republican elite’s rejection of economic reality, small government principles, the U.S. Constitution and the American people. On the other hand, WorldNetDaily’s two libertarians, Ilana Mercer and myself, wrote no less than 10 columns attacking TARP and the treacherous Bush bailouts during those two months. When viewed from this perspective, Ann Coulter calling libertarians ‘”cowardly frauds” looks rather like Anthony Weiner calling Pope Benedict XVI a perverted exhibitionist.

UPDATE II: Libertarianism Lite Likely Won’t Cut It

Constitution, IMMIGRATION, Individual Rights, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Liberty, Political Philosophy, Pop-Culture, Ron Paul, Sex, Terrorism, The Zeitgeist

Some libertarians dream that the establishment-endorsed libertarianism-lite, currently being touted on Fox News- and Business as the only legitimate strand of libertarianism, will catch-on in this America. Dream on.

Liberty loving adults in the US tend not to identify with fast-talking youths, wearing trendy eye-wear, who insist that the cultural foot-and-mouth that is “Glee” and Gaga is the very essence of American freedoms and liberties. (Anyone who has ever read this space knows that I don’t have any objection to risque expression; only to artistically worthless cultural products.)

Granted, life-style libertarians come in all shapes and sizes; they are often older, but are always juvenile. In the country’s founding documents, they divine all kinds of exhortations to let it all hang out. Much as the Left does.

If I’ve learned anything about what remains of Middle America, it is that ordinary, gun-toting, homeschooling, bible-thumping Americans are unmoved by people who draw their paycheques from foundations, think tanks, and academia, and wax orgiastic about MTV and Dennis Rodman. Although it might appear sophisticated, this stuff is reductive and shallow—a kind of post-graduate cleverness that lacks any philosophical depth.

Life, liberty, property: that’s what negative liberty is all about. The rest is either fluff or ancillary.

True, libertinism can be freeing in many ways, but forgotten by left-libertarians (I prefer libertarians lite; it’s more accurate) is this: libertinism is subsumed within a larger, more-inclusive category of liberty.

Besides, joining the Idiocracy is never liberating. Things that addle the brain permanently are, ultimately, not liberating.

(And what’s up with Nick Gillespie’s less than harsh words about the War on Terror? On Fox News’ Stossel, Gillespie seemed to second the general impetus of the War on Terror. He also went soft on the TSA, protesting only that a well-intentioned effort (TSA) had gone terribly wrong. Wrong! The War on Terror is an unconstitutional crock that guarantees the growth of the state. The TSA is engaged in legalized crime and needs to be dismantled, its goons jailed for each assault perpetrated.)

As I noted, when defending Ron Paul, in 2008, from attacks by the same libertarians,

Beltway libertarians … are moved in mysterious ways by gaping borders, gay marriage, multiculturalism, cloning, and all else “cool and cosmopolitan.”
Judging by Reason’s “35 Heroes of Freedom,” “cool and cosmopolitan” encompasses William Burroughs, a drug addled, Beat-Generation wife killer, whose “work is mostly gibberish and his literary influence baleful.”
Madonna Reason has exalted for, as they put it, leading “MTV’s glorious parade of freaks, gender-benders, and weirdos who helped broaden the palette of acceptable cultural identities and destroy whatever vestiges of repressive mainstream sensibilities still remained.” That sounds like the unscrambled, strange dialect spoken by a professor of Women’s and Gender Studies.

[Or is it “Womin’s Studies”?]

Naturally, I’m down with any lifestyle the individual chooses, just so long as he or she doesn’t visit violence on others (as the TSA does). But to conflate low-culture and manifest ignorance with American liberties is asinine. (And very much the essence of life-style libertarianism.) As the libertarian law goes, all human beings have the freedom to act-out in anyway they like, so long as they abide by the non-aggression axiom.

Personally, I favor discretion. For if “civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy,” in Ayn Rand’s magnificent words, then sexual—or any other—exhibitionism is anathema.

UPDATE I (June 29): Tom DiLorenzo has blogged the this post at LewRockwell.com:

“Fast-Talking Youths Wearing Trendy Eye-Wear . . .
Posted by Thomas DiLorenzo on June 29, 2011 02:42 PM

.. and “waxing orgiastic about MTV and Dennis Rodman” on the FOX networks. That’s how Ilana Mercer describes the Kochtopusian “libertarian lite” crowd of Beltway “libertarians.” They’re the same crowd that orchestrated a vicious smear campaign against Ron Paul, as Ilana discusses.
Ilana’s just-released book, Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, is a must-read. Among the “blurb”writers who praise the book on the first few pages are yours truly, Tom Woods, Thomas Szasz, and Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

UPDATE II (June 30): ANARCHISM. In reality, working as we are with so few options, there is not much that separates the classical liberal (your host, Mises, etc.) and the anarchist (Rothbard, LRC). The wise, freedom-loving thinker knows this, and works to optimize collaboration. However, as someone who was once an anrachist, and had reconsidered, after careful thought, turning to liberalism in the classical (and American) tradition, my thoughts on anarchism may be of interest.

Here they are in “AGAINST ANARCHISM.”

“Do Immigration Laws Violate Libertarian Axiom” is another relevant read. Ditto my immigration archive, the articles in which advance (unanswered) arguments as to why humanity does not have the right to venture wherever, whenever.