Category Archives: The State

Updated: ‘Voting on November 7, 2006’

America, Bush, IMMIGRATION, libertarianism, Politics, The State

Walter Block has some sensible advice for freedom lovers, which I can safely second (not a given, mind you). Do as Walter says, with one caveat: Vote for your Libertarian state representative, provided—and only if—he is not a “La-Raza Libertarian“—i.e., opposes unfettered immigration and vows to stop the bleeding on the Southwestern border to the best of his abilities and commensurate with the powers delegated to him. Moreover, his avowal to do so must exclude Genghis Bush’s Guest-Worker Program.

I stated in “America’s Open House” that, “as a proponent of states’ rights and decentralization, instantiated in the Ninth and 10th Amendments, I rarely wish to see federal solons usurp the states. Local police ought to be tasked with immigration enforcement.” While immigration officially comes under federal jurisdiction, desperate localities are indeed stepping in to protect their beleaguered constituents. Libertarians ought to welcome such usurpation, especially when it’s to protect life, liberty, and property. Is this not the flip side of Jeffersonian interposition and nullification, whereby states beat back the federal occupier by voiding unconstitutional federal laws? Here, municipalities and states enforce hitherto-unenforced laws that protect lives and livelihoods.

For the rest, over to Walter:

“I really cannot support the federal Libertarian Party. For they, too, just like Paul “Stabilizer” Krugman, want to pull troops out of Iraq, but not bring them home either; instead, send them to yet other foreign countries, where, presumably, there [sic] imperialist services are in greater need… How the principled have fallen. It is one thing for the Democrats, a la Paul “Stabilizer” Krugman to support such a policy. But for Libertarians to do so? Murray Rothbard must be spinning in his grave at the prospect, after he spent so much time and energy trying to inculcate some modicum of principle into this group.

No, I cannot in good conscience ask anyone to support the federal Libertarian Party. Not, at least, until they rescind this horrid policy. (Whenever I get a fund raising letter from them, I reply that I will contribute, but only when and if they publicly climb down from this eminently anti-libertarian viewpoint.) The state libertarian parties, still, are a different matter. In my view, the rot has not set in there to anywhere near the same degree. To the contrary, at the state LP conventions I have addressed, I have found the rank and file to be pretty sensible on all issues, certainly including foreign policy.

So, two cheers for the LP at the state level, and none for them at the federal.”

Updated: 'Voting on November 7, 2006'

America, Bush, IMMIGRATION, libertarianism, Politics, The State

Walter Block has some sensible advice for freedom lovers, which I can safely second (not a given, mind you). Do as Walter says, with one caveat: Vote for your Libertarian state representative, provided—and only if—he is not a “La-Raza Libertarian“—i.e., opposes unfettered immigration and vows to stop the bleeding on the Southwestern border to the best of his abilities and commensurate with the powers delegated to him. Moreover, his avowal to do so must exclude Genghis Bush’s Guest-Worker Program.

I stated in “America’s Open House” that, “as a proponent of states’ rights and decentralization, instantiated in the Ninth and 10th Amendments, I rarely wish to see federal solons usurp the states. Local police ought to be tasked with immigration enforcement.” While immigration officially comes under federal jurisdiction, desperate localities are indeed stepping in to protect their beleaguered constituents. Libertarians ought to welcome such usurpation, especially when it’s to protect life, liberty, and property. Is this not the flip side of Jeffersonian interposition and nullification, whereby states beat back the federal occupier by voiding unconstitutional federal laws? Here, municipalities and states enforce hitherto-unenforced laws that protect lives and livelihoods.

For the rest, over to Walter:

“I really cannot support the federal Libertarian Party. For they, too, just like Paul “Stabilizer” Krugman, want to pull troops out of Iraq, but not bring them home either; instead, send them to yet other foreign countries, where, presumably, there [sic] imperialist services are in greater need… How the principled have fallen. It is one thing for the Democrats, a la Paul “Stabilizer” Krugman to support such a policy. But for Libertarians to do so? Murray Rothbard must be spinning in his grave at the prospect, after he spent so much time and energy trying to inculcate some modicum of principle into this group.

No, I cannot in good conscience ask anyone to support the federal Libertarian Party. Not, at least, until they rescind this horrid policy. (Whenever I get a fund raising letter from them, I reply that I will contribute, but only when and if they publicly climb down from this eminently anti-libertarian viewpoint.) The state libertarian parties, still, are a different matter. In my view, the rot has not set in there to anywhere near the same degree. To the contrary, at the state LP conventions I have addressed, I have found the rank and file to be pretty sensible on all issues, certainly including foreign policy.

So, two cheers for the LP at the state level, and none for them at the federal.”

The Logic of La-Raza Libertarians

Crime, IMMIGRATION, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, The State

“Utopian libertarians are especially fond of claiming the welfare state is the sole reason illegal immigrants cost much more ($26.3 billion) than they contribute ($16 billion). Were it not for its provisions, they say, these unskilled, uneducated, non-English speakers would become a boon—not a burden—to the communities they infiltrate. In its determinism, the thinking of the love-in-at-the-border libertarian is indistinguishable from that of the left-liberal. Both see the social environment as the single most important determinant of behavior.
However, what of this cohort’s cultivated militant distinctiveness? What about crime and disease? Will these dissipate with the unlikely dissolution of the welfare state? I suggest the hippies have confused the causal sequence. The point of departure is the quality of immigrants entering the U.S, post the 1965 Immigration Act. For the kind of immigrant given preference under current policy, welfare is more of a magnet. Also ignored by La-Raza libertarians is the evidence of the rapid acculturation among post-1965 immigrants to U.S. largess: the longer these immigrants reside in the country, the likelier they are to receive welfare…”

More non sequiturs from open-border fetishists in my new WND column, “The Logic of La-Raza Libertarians.”

Shades of Waco?

America, Criminal Injustice, Law, libertarianism, Media, Morality, The State

Another prosecutorial team is on the make, this time in Utah, where the state has been pursuing Warren Jeffs, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Prosecutors have been egged on by a histrionic media—cable coquettes, especially, with their mangled maternal instincts.

First came District Attorney Michael Nifong of the Duke “rape” case fame. By the admission of the accuser’s co-striper, her story lacks credibility. The accused has an alibi. The DNA found on the accuser is not his. And the lineup was in violation of procedures. Yet this DA run amok forges on, oblivious to the constitutional and procedural safeguards to which an accused is entitled. (Here’s another superb source on the case.)

Mary Lacy, Boulder County’s inept DA, arrested a man in the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, based on no other corroborating evidence than a confession, a practice that was once prohibited, for obvious reasons. Lacy attended Patsy Ramsey’s funeral and was clearly personally invested in the intruder-theory of the case. Lacy and Nifong appear to represent a decaying legal system festooned with incompetents, who substitute the constraints of the law with their “grand” visions.

As to Jeffs, the mindless media has always been enthralled by child-abuse crusaders. Janet Reno, one of the most murderous DAs, established her career by launching the day care child sex abuse witch hunt that gripped the nation in the 1980s. She used fabricated accusations elicited from children (who never lie, right?) with the aid of highly suggestive techniques, to imprison her victims absent corroborative evidence. These cases served as a professional stepping stone for Reno, who went on to commit even greater crimes.

Here are the Jeffs arrest warrant and affidavit. It’s ludicrous. He is charged with being an accomplice to rape, no less. Such an accusation conjures visions of Jeffs holding the victim down while another commits the act. Jeffs, however, is charged, based on hearsay, with encouraging a girl, then under 18, to submit to intercourse with her husband, who was a little older. How does urging someone to consummate a marriage amount to being complicit in a rape, a very brutal crime indeed? By this standard or test, aren’t the girl’s parents also complicit?

The sect is wealthy and owns large compounds in Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, South Dakota, and British Columbia. Despite the fact that they live in peace and are non-violent, the federal government has described Jeffs, who was unarmed and did not resist arrest, as extremely dangerous.

The polygamist was placed on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list in May, alongside Bin Laden. In this way, presumably, when the federal and state police storm these compounds and remove the children (with a view to seizing the valuable property too, no doubt), the public, dimmed and dulled by state-worshipping media, will shrug it off. After all, it’s all for “The Children,” isn’t it?

Question: Islam permits multiple marriages, doesn’t it? I have no doubt that devout American Muslims follow the dictates of their faith here in the US. Have you ever heard of any such prosecutions against members of that community?