Category Archives: Liberty

Shit Happens. Live With It, Or Be Prepared

Constitution, Crime, GUNS, Individual Rights, Law, Liberty

Trust RT to present a cool-headed, reasoned antidote to the hysteria that ensues, invariably, in mainstream media, each time the reality of evil asserts itself.

Reason magazine Senior Editor Brian Doherty did a good job on RT America in explaining the errors of the thinking behind the clamor for gun control, and central management of risk, vis-a-vis the Colorado ‘Batman’ screening massacre, earlier today.

These events, and gun murders in general, are rare and getting rarer every year, says Doherty, who is the author of a book about guns. This, despite the fact that all states have liberalized their gun laws, many more Americans are carrying weapons—and four million Americans each year apply for gun-ownership licenses.

Alarmist news headlines notwithstanding, gun violence has plummeted by half, says Doherty.

There will never be a policy prescription that will preempt or stop the lone “lunatic” from carrying out his evil intentions.

Policy prattle is futile. Let us talk, instead, about readiness, in the event the next coward thinks he will meet with no resistance.

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

Leave a reply

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.

Let’s Break-Up And Break Free, Says BAB Contributor

America, BAB's A List, Federalism, Founding Fathers, History, Liberty, Nationhood

Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli has an Independence-Day message of freedom: Let’s break-up and break free. If you haven’t gotten his drift, on this Independence Day—Dr. Pauli recommends doing away with the supersize version of the United States of America, as this will do wonders for liberty. Hear hear! (Myron’s bio is below. It’s packed with his usual flare. Perhaps Myron’s highest achievement, however, is his teenage daughter. Dr. Pauli is the most devoted single dad I know.)

DO WE NEED TO HAVE A “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA”? Of course, our Founders asked questions like that – but nowadays, to ask is even borderline treason making one a racist, terrorist, or psychotic. So much for the Land of the Free. But I will ask it anyway!

Other Empires have devolved – USSR being the best recent example. I don’t want to get caught up in detailed nuances but it can be done – so we can have 20 to 50 “countries” instead of one. OK – the 2 Dakotas and Montana can be the Republic of Northland. It will not be a superpower – but not everyone has to be #1. The Danes, Swiss, and Costa Ricans sleep soundly even if China, France, and Israel have more powerful armies. Is China about to invade Northland, anyway?

In fact, the “Federal” Government of the 1787 Constitution was not created (dismissing the Articles of Confederation as more of a Congressional coffee klatsch) to ward off imminent attack from Frederick the Great. Much of the impetus came from the corruption and ineptitude of the 13 states which quickly slid into “banana republic” governments. The soldiers of the Continental Army were stiffed and would have staged a coup if not for General Washington. Fiat paper money was shoved into circulation (sounds like today!). Debts, foreclosures, and contracts were negated by demagogic mobs that controlled the local legislatures. If someone in Rhode Island owed money to a creditor in Virginia, forgetaboutit!

If, when debts were not repudiated, gangs like Shays Rebellion put pressure to do so. Goods flowing from Maryland to New Jersey risked getting the “TSA treatment” from goons in Pennsylvania or Delaware. It was with that mess in mind that people like Franklin joined up with quasi-monarchists like Hamilton and supported a national government with LIMITED powers to restrain the states from the hanky-panky they were sliding into. An indirectly elected national government with limited powers could serve as a check-and-balance on the two-bit state demagogues. Franklin recognized this in his famous 17 September 1787 speech – that it would serve the cause of liberty for some time until the people will have grown corrupted.

Even 100 years after, advocates of limited government had a champion in Grover Cleveland, but by 1896, there was an electoral choice between the Plutocratic Imperialists of McKinley and the Currency Debasers of Bryan.

The country has grown but government has grown more and liberty has shrunk. The price of keeping Wyoming safe from an invasion from India currently includes SWAT teams raiding chemo patients for pot plants and bureaucrats from 3000 miles away scanning algebra test scores.

If we did break up, we run the risk of DC turning into Zimbabwe and Mississippi becoming Klan land, but there might be some restraint on the states due to economic competition. If Texas and North Carolina wanted racial, second-class status for Asians, their universities and engineering companies would become a laughing stock. The higher Massachusetts raises taxes, the more people would emigrate to New Hampshire.

But it might not go all that smoothly. What would prevent a combination of Mexico and California from invading an Arizona that attempted to enforce immigration restrictions? Would a power-hungry New York megalomaniac (Bloomberg) attempt to coerce Connecticut as well?

The danger is not as likely to come from China or India or Russia or some bucktoothed Afghan Pushtuns, but from North American Huey “Kingfish” Longs.

Franklin supported the Constitution, but warned that it “can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.” One can also add Jefferson’s quote: “experience hath shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”

The TSA, the SWAT Teams, the endless undeclared wars, the out-of-control deficits, the drones and constant surveillance – this was not forced on us by Germans or Martians but what WE HAVE DONE TO OURSELVES. Local corruption might be preferred to national or international corruption, but it is still evil.

So my preference is summed in one word – small may not always be beautiful, but it’s better for liberty.

**
MYRON PAULI, Ph.D., grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism.

UPDATED: Barely A Blog (BAB) Closes Comments (& Says ‘So Long’ To Cowards)

BAB's A List, Education, Etiquette, Free Speech, Ilana Mercer, Liberty, Private Property

Barely A Blog (BAB) Comments Section is now closed.

For years, I’ve moderated this forum, hoping to educate visitors. The goal was noble, but naive. The labor-intense effort involved considerable opportunity costs, and few returns (Comments do not drive traffic to BAB or to IlanaMercer.com).

Time is scarce and thus precious.

With the exception of a few valued voices (who may, like Myron Pauli, submit editorials), this public-minded forum attracted a lot of maladroit, often maladaptive, men and women, who, for the most, hadn’t the faintest idea how to behave on private property (BAB).

As for learning or researching? Forgetaboutit!

The BAB forum was seen as an opportunity not to broaden horizons, but to abuse the host and display ignorance. Generosity, and an invitation to debate with civility and decorum: These were treated by most as yet another entitlement; free-reign on a domain for which they were not paying, and to which only a few contributed funds.

Unfettered freedom became a standard demand. As good libertarians know, you have no automatic rights of free speech on private property; you have the right to petition private property for that prerogative. Few did so, and few complied with the minimum standards of grammatical, polite speech.

For such irremediable attitudes and sense of entitlement one develops contempt.

Why labor over irredeemably rude individuals, who will never imbibe the basics of liberty, and will resent you and diss you for your efforts?

So, for now, “Comments” are no more. If you’ve had a change of heart; if you wish to discuss posts—and do battle for liberty in a civilized way—do so @Twitter, on my Facebook Wall, or on WND’s and RT’s Comments Sections.

I trust that good friends of BAB and IlanaMercer.com will do what they can to support and contribute to the ongoing work on these sites.

UPDATED (July 3): Militating for a policy of minimal contact going forward is the following: I used to be critical of writers who never-ever responded to their readers, even writing the blog post “Manners As Virtue.”

As a person with a strong sense of duty and propriety, I used to answer almost all my mail. Imagine the kind of opportunity costs involved! (In other words, the extra book I might have written had I not been self-sacrificing and nice, as Ayn Rand would, no doubt, castigate this “good-girl” behavior.)

The goal was to galvanize readers to the ideas of liberty and to my idiosyncratic way of conveying these ideas.

The outcome after 15 years of doing this? I made about 3 really good personal friends.

For the rest, readers are freeloaders—individuals who’re interested in “access” to you and, thus, in ego affirmation. They will use your civility to drain your energies, to no avail. A gush with praise for you in private, they are generally too cowardly to defend important ideas publicly.

A prime example: Most longtime correspondents of mine, individuals who’ve enjoyed the outlet afforded them on Barely a Blog for years, responded not at all in my defense, following the repulsive Karen-Klein pack-attack I sustained.

The detritus of humanity unleashed itself on their supposed favorite writer. But these individuals could not muster one cutting comment in defense of ideas and writing they say they favor and would like to see prevail.

Damn straight Comments (and other communications) are closed.