The Presumption of Non-Intellectual Inquiry

Norm Singleton makes a great point here. Vast majority support for anything – ending genocide in Darfur; social safety nets; drug prohibition; etc. – doesn’t make it right. In most cases, I personally hold ideals that are counter to prevailing sentiments. Drug prohibition is a bad idea on a lot of levels, as are social safety nets.

My point is: Historically, now and likely forever, the vast majority of people are not particularly “intellectual.” (I sometimes believe that those of us who are so have been cursed, but that’s another matter.) Perhaps we don’t need to do as the Romans do when in Rome, but it does seem wise to at least speak in a language that Romans can understand.

So, one can, for instance, advocate the end of the social safety net tomorrow (non-Roman) or advocate a path that makes the social safety net irrelevant by transitioning the function to charities (Roman). These are questions of strategy and rhetoric, not philosophy, IMO. My concern is that abolitionism in this case tends to discredit the advocate. End welfare in “Roman” means bread lines and starving masses. They are incorrect, IMO, but undoing that thought pattern is no small matter.

Ideally, yes, no nation – and more importantly no citizen of a nation – should be forced to intervene, even benignly, in a foreign land. Yet we’re not at a place where the private institutions are sufficiently robust to make a difference in a place like Darfur. Governments have crowded out Lincoln Brigades. Personally, I’m comfortable with government acting as proxy for a Lincoln Brigade in the context of the times, although I’m of course highly skeptical that the motive is truly humanitarian. But I surely would prefer the US being part of an international effort to bring peace to Darfur vs. the Coalition of the Willing’s clear overstepping of reasonable justification in Iraq.

Darfur would be light gray for me; Iraq, quite dark.

-Robert Capozzi

Achewood on Hating America and Anarchy

Thanks to John Stephens for pointing out these two very silly Achewood comics on Hating America and Anarchy.

-- Kevin D. Rollins

Mr. Libertarian

New from the Ludwig Von Mises' Institute, the complete Libertarian Forum Murray Rothbard's newsletter which ran from 1969-1984. The Libertarian Forum served as Rothbard's primary outlet for his commentary on current events and this collection provides Rothbard's real time commentary on the major economic, political, and social events of the time, plus detailed accounts of Rothbard's feuds and friendships in "this movement of ours." Plus Rothbard's movie reviews, published under the name Mr. First Nighter!

The Mises Institute has also republished Rothbard's Libertarian Manifesto For a New Liberty, Rothbard's best selling work. Even those Free Liberals who reject Rothbardanism can benefit from reading these works. At the least, they will come to understand why Murray N. Rothbard was, is, and will always be known as Mr. Libertarian and the greatest enemy of the state.

Free Liberals may also be interested in Roderick Long's Rothbard's Left and Right" Forty years later, which takes a fresh look at Rothbard's attempt to form alliances with the left and examines whether today's libertarians should look left for allies.

Feingold's predecessor

Paul, while I disagree that no one besides Russ Feingold has been challenging Bush, I agree with you that Feingold has much to offer Free Liberals, despite attaching his name to the most egregious assault on the First Amendment in recent times. Your comments about Feingold's record on spending brought to mind the great William Proxmire, an anti-war Wisconsin senator who served from 1957-1982. Proxmire was famous for his "golden fleece" awards, given to the most outrageous abuse of taxpayer funds. Proxmire was also a favorite of the National Taxpayers Union and, I believe, was also one of Murray Rothbard's favorites.

More thoughts on Darfur

Thanks to Bob for his thoughtful response to my response to his piece on Darfur. I have two thoughts, first, yes the Founders did deploy troops abroad. However, these deployments where all done in the name of protecting the interests of America, not for humanitarian reasons. (Whether the interventions really were for American interests is not relevant, the point is they where not done for humanitarian purposes.) Secondly, regarding Bob's comments wondering how my arguments would be affected if 90% of taxpayers favored humanitarian intervention in Darfur, I don't see anything silly about expecting 90% of the population to obey the laws of morality and not force someone via the means of taxation to support causes unrelated to the primary function of the state. Libertarians have no problem rejecting the argument that "most taxpayers support using federal funds to help the poor" when it comes to the welfare state, so why should it be any different for the welfare state?

If you can't get enough of my thoughts on Darfur, click here.

The Other Enemy of Free Enterprise

I love Free Enterprise. The Republicans claim to be defending Free Enterprise against the socialists. So why am I not a Republican? Why am I writing for The Free Liberal?

One answer is that freedom is more than Free Enterprise. Freedom is more than freedom from the policeman or the bureaucrat. Poverty is a form of unfreedom – a restriction on personal options regardless of how small or democratic one’s government may be.

The other answer is that the political Right can be just as dangerous an enemy of economic freedom as the Left. I encountered this idea years ago when reading Adam Smith and Murray Rothbard. However, this point did not really hit home until I read a short essay in LP News by science fiction author David Brin.

This essay helped trigger a state change in my thinking which led to Holistic Politics and to the discussion with Kevin Rollins which led to The Free Marketeer becoming The Free Liberal.

Just recently, I have had the honor of publishing a much longer essay by Brin on this subject. It can be found on the Libertarian Reform Caucus web site (www.ReformTheLP.org). This essay was originally written in 1986, but only now has been published in this form. Read it and see one of the important inspirations for the modern free liberal movement.

Destroying Individual Virtue

Dick Cheatham's "Making Virtue Obsolete" reminded me of a great quote from The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek:

It is true that the virtues which are less esteemed and practiced now—independence, self-reliance, and the willingness to bear risks, the readiness to back one’s conviction against a majority, and the willingness to voluntary cooperation with one’s neighbors—are essentially those on which the working of an individualist society rests. Collectivism has nothing to put in their place, and in so far, as it has destroyed them it has left a void filled by nothing but demand for obedience and the compulsion of the individual to do what is collectively decided to be good. The periodical election of representatives, to which the moral choice of the individual tends to be more and more reduced, is not an occasion on which his moral values are tested or where he has constantly to reassert and prove the order of his values and to testify to the sincerity of his profession by the sacrifice of those of his values he rates lower to those he puts higher.

“Good Wars,” In Context

Perhaps to further our discussion about Darfur, it strikes me that it may be helpful to assess wars the US has waged over the last 100 years, and to put them in some context. It seems there are three types: Defensive; Small, Humanitarian; and Pre-emptive.

I suggest that WWII and Afghanistan were two that were defensive. The US was attacked, and the US responded.

Pre-emptive wars were WWI, Korea, Vietnam, and the two Iraq wars.

The small, humanitarian wars are much tougher calls. Perhaps Bosnia falls in this category, as the main motive seemed to be to end atrocities, and was an international effort that the US participated in. Perhaps Grenada, for many US citizens were involved and it was very close to our shores. It was certainly “small,” though it did have a pre-emptive component to it as well. If the US got involved in an international effort in Darfur, it would seem to fall into this category.

All wars – indeed, all government spending – involve tax dollars. In theory, one might object to WWII on the grounds that taxpayers in, say, North Dakota were not threatened by the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Nor were they, perhaps, threatened by attacks of 9/11. This is an interesting theory, but I find it unpersuasive, at least as the world stands now. While there may well be outliers, I suspect that virtually all Americans “consent” to their tax dollars being used to defend other Americans, at minimum.

Pre-emptive wars have tended to involve deeply prospective threats… “democracy” was threatened in WWI; the “Domino Theory” of worldwide Communist domination threatened in Korea and Vietnam; “Islamofascism” threatens us now in Iraq. In each case, history seems to suggest that the presidents at the time stoked fears among the American people to, apparently, make the “deeply prospective threats” tangible, or at least apparently so. They succeeded, in that the US went to war. Years later, however, there seems to be a consensus that these were not “good,” justified wars; some say we were collectively “duped” in each case.

Not the case with Grenada and the Balkans, at least so far. These were not defensive wars, yet my sense is that most people do not view these actions in the same category as, say, Vietnam.

Some like to quote Barry Goldwater’s famous line: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” To me, that statement’s true enough, but is it the right question? Is extremism a virtue? Is it effective?

Through most of history, my read is “no, extremism is not effective.” Indeed, when it is effective, it tends to be totalitarian. It may well be “virtuous” in the sense that the individual takes pride in his or her principles, but rare is it that a zealot convinces the masses of his or her sense of principle.

One can, for example, oppose most or all of the programs in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and support, at least in context, the Department of Justice. Both are funded by fungible tax dollars.

Similarly, one can oppose the US presence in Germany, and advocate an end to NATO, but take a different view of, say, tsunami relief. I can stomach tsunami (or Hurricane Katrina) relief, even if I personally might vote against it, were I in a position to. Or, I might suggest that, sure, in the context of these times, I support these relief efforts, but I strongly urge budgetary offsets to “pay for” them.

Frankly, in context, if US bases were closed in Germany and South Korea; annual and recurring foreign aid budgets were cut; and yet the US occasionally stepped in to dire situations and saved thousands – even millions – of lives, I’d call that progress. It’d be more progress if government spending were slashed more, enabling individual Americans to exercise their sense of compassion charitably and voluntarily, of course.

-Robert Capozzi

Does the Dear Leader Understand Incentives?

In last week's issue of The Economist(Apr 29-May 5) there is an obituary for a South Korean film director, Shin Sang-Ok, who was once kidnapped by Kim Jong Il and forced to make propaganda films for the totalitarian North Korean government. Especially amusing was the following:

Mr. Kim was worried that films produced in decadent, capitalist South Korea were better than those produced in the North. Perceptively, he explained to Mr. Shin that this was because North Korean film workers knew the state would feed them regardless of the quality of their output. In the South, by contrast, actors and directors had to sweat to make films the public would pay to see.

It would be hard to believe that Mr. Kim could not extend the analogy to other aspects of his command-and-control economy. It is not always a lack of knowledge of the problems of socialism that cause tyranny to continue. Those who run the beast sometimes know the evils they delivering, but choose to continue them anyways, as long as they themselves are not harmed by the system.

-- Kevin D. Rollins

Darfur, Continued

Thanks to Norm Singleton and Quincy for commenting on my initial post Thinking Out Loud About Darfur. I did post it to be provocative, and to be clear, I am not advocating intervening in Darfur. I’m asking the question, not suggesting an answer.

My initial post should have been clear that I see that there’s a very strong case for doing nothing about Darfur. I don’t, however, believe that freedomistas should simply and blithely wave their hands and say, “None of our business.” To me, being a human being should mean to have compassion about the plight of others, innocent people who are being slaughtered simply because they happen to live in a particular geography. Such callousness is not my cup of tea. Of course, having compassion does not necessarily mean taking military action.

Perhaps Quincy’s solution is the more appropriate. Worldwide protests may do the trick.

Quincy also makes a great point: If the African and Arab nations don’t see fit to intervene, why should the US? Certainly without a call by their neighbors who are closer physically and culturally, it truly is a fool’s errand. But what if the African and Arab nations did ask the US to intervene in some manner? And they wanted, say, logistical and air support to stop the senseless killing?

Our first reaction might be to say, No, none of our business. But, like Reagan’s action in Grenada, this might be a case where I might bend my strongly held views on non-intervention. Why? Mostly because “life” is the first words in our list of rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Quincy correctly points us to the notion that “civil society is the key to bring lasting change.” Still, people cannot have “civil society” if they are being slaughtered. The exigencies of the moment may suggest that doing something – in context – is preferable to doing nothing.

Further, Quincy points out that the Islamic terrorists would use intervention in Darfur by the US as “spin” against the US. I concur. For that reason alone, the case for intervention is weak. But what if the hypothetical were true: What if the African and Arab nations asked the US to lend logistical and air support to quell the violence, and the US said No? That, too, would likely not play well in Africa and the Middle East. The US intervenes in Iraq for dubious reasons, but won’t help out in Sudan for purely humanitarian reasons? That truly would be hypocrisy.

Norm of course makes excellent points about the Constitution. No question that the Founders and Framers were generally opposed to entangling alliances. But they did allow for treaties in the Constitution. They did intervene in Canada prior to the War of 1812. And Jefferson himself did dispatch US forces to put down the Barbary Pirates.

At this point, it seems that anyone who voluntarily joins the military has no expectation of fighting only on US soil. The historical record is clear: The US sends the military around the globe. I oppose it, but signing up for the military does seem to suggest one is signing up to be a “global cop.”

Norm’s best point is the financing of a prospective action in Darfur. Taxes are taken by force from virtually all to be used by some. I certainly take that point. But let’s say that perhaps 90% of the American people favored a true humanitarian intervention to stop another Holocaust in Darfur. Yes, the 10% would be wronged in that case, no question. But to expect the 90% to form Lincoln Brigade’s seems a bit silly to me. The Lincoln Brigades were, after all, an exception, an historical rarity.

Might the exigencies of the moment and the technologies available suggest that, in some cases, the case for purely humanitarian military action is justified? The knee-jerk libertarian answer is, of course, no.

To be clear, based on the Iraq War travesty, I have no confidence that the Bush Administration could possibly handle the Darfur situation in a reasonable, appropriate manner. But, like Reagan’s intervention in Grenada, some intervention in theory can be stomached, if not supported wholeheartedly. I remain strongly biased against intervention generally, but I remain open to the possibility that there may be rare times in which judgment and compassion can overrule ideological bright lines.

But, then, I’ve been wrong before. Maybe the world is black and white, but for the life of me, I don’t see it. Ever, actually.

-Robert Capozzi

Thinking about Bob thinking about Darfur

In "Thinking Outloud about Darfur," Bob Capozzi says American military intervention in Darfur would not be unconstitutional if declared by Congress. True, but even a cursory glance of the Founders' writings on the war shows they would be repulsed by the idea the United States should embark on "humanitarian" intervention unrelated to the national security interest of the United States. The Founders recognized the threat to republican institutions and individual liberty posed by empowering the government to go abroad "in search of monsters to destroy."

Intervention in Darfur is also unjust because it involves taking the lives and treasure of others by force to be used for what someone else has decided is a good cause. Before someone objects that that may be true if there where a draft but today America has an all-volunteer force, consider that people enlist in the US armed forces to serve and protect America, not to serve as global cops. To send them into danger, and I don't think anyone who seriously thinks about intervention in Darfur thinks we can avoid causalities, is to violate the government's responsibility to ensure those who have volunteered to defend the country are only asked to give their lives in defense of the country, not on some "humanitarian" mission. Are supporters of military action in Durfur prepared to explain to a future Cindy Sheehan that the US Government was acting justly when it sent her son to his grave in Darfur?

If that argument is unpersuasive consider that intervention in Darfur will have to be financed. The money will either come from taxes or debt. By what right does the government take my money, or saddle future generations with debt, for military interventions unrelated to my, or my families and neighbors, security? Under Lockean "social contract" theory, which most limited government libertarians rely on for their justification of the state, the reason I submit to government rule and agree to support the current government is so it will provide me with safety, not so the government can force me to support humanitarian crusades with either my blood or treasure. Davy Crockett's rule that money spent on purposes unrelated to the proper functions of government are "not yours to give" applies just as much to the warfare state as it does to the welfare state.

Finally, the enthusiasm of certain members of the left, including many who opposed the Iraq war, leads me to wonder about the long-term sustainability of a liberal-libertarian-free liberal anti-empire alliance.

Thinking Out Loud about Darfur

As the words "Darfur" and "Sudan" seem to be in the news increasingly, I've been thinking about the notion of whether purely humanitarian military intervention is ever justified, at least in context.

One author, Charley Reese, says no. I respect his position, certainly. I'm very biased against war, but I wonder about this one.

To say that people like George Clooney are hypocrites on the subject has some truth, I suppose. I don't personally feel I, however, need to strap on a gun and go to Africa to be for some kind of intervention to stop killing is necessarily hypocritical.

To say that Darfur is "none of our business," there I cannot agree. For me, genocide and suffering are everyone's business. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's appropriate to intervene militarily, of course. It may well not be.

To say that intervening in Darfur would be unconstitutional seems patently false. The ability to declare and wage war seems unbounded by the Constitution, near as I can tell. I may not LIKE that, but there it is.

Reese makes excellent points about the US's propensity to behave like a bull in a china shop. There are, of course, lots of reasons NOT to get involved militarily in Sudan.

Neither pro nor con at this point on Darfur, but I for one view a prospective action in Darfur as substantially different than the action in Iraq. And, substantially different in yet another way than the action in Afghanistan, which I support.

-Robert Capozzi

I'm a John Mackey Libertarian

If I wanted to sum up everything I want the Free Liberal to be about, I could not do better than John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, as he has articulated his speech, " Winning The Battle of Freedom and Prosperity" posted at LibertyUnbound.com.

If you don't read anything else this year, you must read this. A snippet:

The Left entices the young with promises of community, love, purpose, peace, health, compassion, caring, and environmental sustainability. The Left's vision of how to meet these higher needs in people is fundamentally flawed. But the idealism and the call to the higher need levels is magnetic and seductive, nonetheless. The irony of the situation, as I see it, is that the Left has idealistic visions of higher human potential and social responsibility but has no effective strategies to realize its vision. The freedom movement has strategies that could meet higher human potential and social responsibility but lacks the idealism and vision to implement these strategies. I assert that the freedom movement can become a successful mass movement today if it will consciously adopt a more idealistic approach to its marketing, branding, and overall vision, and embrace a vision of meeting higher human potentials and greater social responsibility.

I'm definitely a John Mackey libertarian. Or perhaps, John Mackey is the definition of "Free Liberal."

-- Kevin D. Rollins

Sticking it to the Welfare State

A German liberal (the free-market variety) has moved to Paraguay and is declaring that hundreds of foreign children are his, which will put them on the German welfare rolls.

Hass has decided to take advantage of a loophole in Germany's legal system that allows men to recognize children as their own as long as the mother agrees and no other man claims paternity. The 56-year-old has told the magazine that he's already recognized about 300 children from Paraguay, Romania, Hungary, Moldavia, Russia, Ukraine and India.

Read the rest of the story at Deutsche Welle.

It's an interesting example of the difficulty of having a social welfare state. Even when the club is closed to outsiders, those already on the inside can engage in behavior which imposes costs on the other members of the club. The solution of course is to limit the behavior of the members to minimize the damage they can do to others. This means, of course, a general reduction in freedom.

-- Kevin D. Rollins

Margins “Don’t Matter”?

I happen to think talk radio is a great thing. Issues of the day are sometimes discussed in something more than a sound bite, and of course we get to hear the callers. No random sample, surely, but the callers give us a glimpse of what “real” Americans think.

Still, talk radio is dangerous. Mostly because I sometimes hear blatant, ridiculous falsehoods uttered by otherwise informed people.

Bill O’Reilly of late has been banging the drum against the oil companies. He picks up on Congress’s concerns about “excess, windfall profits” by the likes of ExxonMobil.

As I pointed out back in November, the reportage on oil company profits completely miss the point. Profit margins have edged down, not up, for Exxon Mobil. This is no surprise. With supply under pressure, ExxonMobil’s costs go up, which they pass onto consumers, and then revenues go up. In the process, because prices tend to be “sticky” – adjust more slowly than costs – profit margins have actually fallen a bit. (Of course, this over-simplifies, as the income statements of oil companies have a number of complexities, but this I think captures the basic facts pretty well.)

O’Reilly, who seems to have invested a lot of his reputation as being “for the folks,” has been confronted with this rather important fact.

Rather than admit he made a mistake, he yesterday made an astounding statement:

“Profit margins don’t matter.”

Hmm, that’s news to me. Having worked for publicly traded companies and dealt quite a bit with Wall Street, I can assure Bill that margins are what Wall Street focuses on. Profitability rates are the key measure for financial performance, yet O’Reilly thinks otherwise. If he doesn’t believe that, he should leave Fox’s Manhattan studios and head to a bar around Wall Street to explain his theory. Or perhaps he should go up to Columbia Business School and teach a class.

I’m confident that the otherwise proud Mr. O’Reilly would be met with scornful laughter about his “theory.” Not one to ridicule, but on this one, O’Reilly’s simply ridiculous.

He then pointed out that sometimes companies allow their profit margins to shrink in order to capture market share. Here, he’s of course correct. But in a near ubiqituous, mature industry like oil, shifts in market share are tiny and inconsequential. That’s why the industry has been consolidating through mergers in recent years, to find economies of scale through cost cutting.

It’s really a shame that such an instructive tool like talk radio is used to confuse rather than enlighten.

-Robert Capozzi

Hillary the failure

Turns out Madame Defarge, oops, I mean Hillary Clinton, only went into politics because she could not be an athlete, astronaut,scientist, or doctor. Of course, Hillary never lost her interest in medicine, except instead of curing people she works to deny us health care by eliminating the few vestiges of the market left in America's health care system.

A colleague remarks that this confirms his observation that most politicians are (or would be) failures in the market. Yet they feel qualified to control the lives of the rest of us.

Those who can do, those who can't do and resent it become politicians.

Power Surge

Congratulations to CATO's Gene Healy and Tim Lynch for their great new study Power Surge: The Constitutional Record of George W. Bush. Healy and Lynch detail many of the ways in which "President Bush's constitutional vision is, in short, sharply at odds with the text, history, and structure of our Constitution, which authorizes a government of limited powers." Read more about the study here.

Shock & Awe Becomes Awfully Shocking

The neocons seem to REALLY be fraying, and, like the perp in the interrogation room presented with incontrovertible evidence, saying the darndest things.

Don't believe me? Check THIS one out on Opinion Journal by Shelby Steele entitled "White Guilt and the Western Past."

Steele walks us through how "western guilt," even WHITE western guilt, seems to hold "us" back from doing the job "we" should do. I can't say for sure, but I get the distinct vibe that Steele is a kind of American crusading jihadist, wanting to civilize the rest of the world.

Perhaps I'm from another planet, but Steele shockingly writes this:

"Possibly white guilt's worst effect is that it does not permit whites--and nonwhites--to appreciate something extraordinary: the fact that whites in America, and even elsewhere in the West, have achieved a truly remarkable moral transformation."

I see. We "white Americans" are, what, the next stage in evolution, and therefore we are justified, I presume Steele means, to intern Japanese Americans, incinerate innocents with the only nuclear weapons ever used, engineer revolutions in Iran and elsewhere, invade Vietnam and Iraq with dubious cover stories, etc., etc., etc.?

I would like to know what Steele means by "moral transformation," but even if it were so (and I'm NOT buying), his ideas here are simply repellent.

Still, Steele has done us a great service, exposing the very darkest side of neocon thought for all to see.

-Robert Capozzi