Category Archives: Private Property

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: 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.

Your Republican Reptile In Action

Ethics, Etiquette, Individual Rights, Internet, Private Property, Republicans, Ron Paul, The State

Fredrick Ray Hartman, a DC-based statist Republican, in the employ of the government, had petitioned me for Facebook Friendship (not the other way around).

On getting notice of my Facebook Policy, he writes furiously:

“don’t send people [note the royal plural] a copy of facebook policies again…you are being deleted…..i was your friend ditto… removing you from my friends list…..i tried to friend you from another wall and you had the gull [sic] to respond with a facebook policy note….you don’t know your friends i guess…..good luck”

Your Republican politician (or aspiring overlord) in action.

And OMG! What will I do without these Republican faithful “pals” of mine, of whom I have none, as they deserted me on September 19, 2002, when I wrote this op-ed for the Globe & Mail, one of Canada’s national newspapers.

Let me remind Hartman and his ilk (statist, power-hungry Republicans, whom we libertarians disavow) that he was the one to petition me for Facebook Friendship, not the other way around. This statist and I (a long-time paleolibertarian) have nothing in common.

This conduct is a taste of what you should expect from your reptilian Republican in office, should you demand that he comply with YOUR rules, enacted on your turf, or property.

This is the chance of all like-minded Republicans on this Wall to join Fredrick Ray Hartman; Unfriend me please.

Ron Paul for president.

Noblesse Oblige Is Back

Democracy, Ethics, Etiquette, Europe, Family, History, Private Property

Stripped of their property by the political class (at the behest of the masses), landed aristocracy is making a comeback to a desperate Europe, in the role private property has always encouraged: duty and custodianship, in contrast to pillage politics (which is what the political class does).

Noblesse oblige means to “act with honor, kindliness, generosity,” as the privileges of high birth dictates.

At Taki’s (via Lew Rockwell.com):

With the exception of Greece, which with Anglo-American help had avoided its sister countries’ red servitude, the populations of the formerly Marxist region welcomed back their former monarchs (or their heirs) with open arms—going so far as to reverse the theft of much of their former property. The Balkan royals began once again to play supporting roles in their homelands’ public life. Simeon II of Bulgaria was perhaps the most successful. Acting as the focus of a grassroots political movement, he was elected prime minister in 2001.
…So steeped have we become in the politics of envy that the government robbing a rich man—better still, an ex-reigning sovereign—will bring joy to many. This is why the decades-old reduction of Britain’s landed aristocracy from a political force to a band of desperate folk trying (and often failing) to hold onto what is left of their inheritance begets either a smile or a yawn. If Simeon is to continue to play a useful role in his country’s life, he will need to seek justice—paradoxically enough—from the European Court of Human Rights. It is ironic that this is happening under Boyko Borisov’s scandal-ridden prime ministry. The contrast between monarch and politico could not be starker. …

MORE.