DISQUS

This is a great question CA. My own view is identical with that of Jason Kuznicki over at Positive Liberty: http://www.positiveliberty.com/2009/04/fake-rig...

The central argument:

If it is essential to Christianity that all good Christians shun and disapprove of gays and lesbians — and I think that it is — then let the Christians have that right. Shunning, too, is part of a healthy society, because the alternative — forced friendship — is a sham. (Do you seriously think that gays and lesbians don’t shun conservative Christians?)

The ultimate outrage will come, though, when churches are forced to marry gays and lesbians. I’m increasingly concerned that that’s where we’re headed, and I can’t even begin to say how wrong this is. Well… maybe I can.

Here’s my offer: I will publicly switch sides on the issue of same-sex marriage the moment that any church in the United States is forced by the government to marry two people of the same gender, or to welcome them as if they were married. From that point on, I’ll be a lifelong opponent of same-sex marriage. Getting religious liberty right is far more important than anything that might happen to me or my family. If it turns out that we can’t have civil marriage as well as getting religious liberty right, then I know which one I’d choose.

Right on again Will. Let me just echo the idea that equal protection and more generally equality under the law are *part of the liberal tradition from which libertarianism springs*. We do indeed get bound up with our concern about the limits of state power, and rightly so. However, the question of how the state treats people when it DOES exercise its power is part of our tradition too, as even a glance at, say, *The Constitution of Liberty* would indicate. There's no only nothing "unlibertarian" about arguing for equality of marriage rights, but I would argue there is something very much libertarian in arguing for it, GIVEN that the state has claimed the power to decide who is and who is not married.

Rock it, Will.

It's also worth noting that it is not "illegal discrimination" to say that there are meaningful differences between men and women. Who's denying that men are convex and women are concave? As you rightly note, the question is whether those differences are *morally relevant*.

Actually, skylights, we aren't using it that way. We are using the word "fascism" the way the Italians meant it and defined it themselves. I recommend Luigi Vilari's "The Economics of Fascism" as an account of the system by a 1930s Italian. I also recommend reading about how FDR and many of his Brain Trust looked to Mussolini for inspiration during the New Deal. The NRA was very much in the fascist mold. The fact that the word "fascism" has since been associated with a whole variety of nastiness doesn't mean that those of us who are raising it in the contemporary context are just engaging in scare tactics or accusations of Naziism.

We are asking exactly the questions Will is raising here because we think fascist economic ideas are bad for the economy and because they can also, as Tom Palmer suggests, give the state all kinds of non-economic forms of power. None of that means Obama is out to create concentration camps. It just means that we are concerned about freedom, peace, and prosperity being threatened.

Interesting thought Will: economics education as the centerpiece of a recovery plan. We'd get more bang for the buck out of that than anything else (not to mention the obvious short-run increase in the average wage for econ profs! ;) )

Yeah, it was -26 here this morning, with a high that won't break zero for the second day in a row. Still -14 at 10am EST.

Will, I do think it's a matter of strategy and emphasis. My point was not to dismiss all government everywhere because of folks like Blago (I have plenty of other arguments beside him to do that ;) ). My point was simply the juxtaposition of a string of recent corruption cases (Jefferson in LA too) that seem to involve influence peddling and the like at the very same time we are handing over MASSIVE new powers to those very same folks. Blago et. al. wouldn't be so notable in this regard if we were enacting a new leash law on city council, but when we're talking trillions and nationalization, it behooves us to remember that the higher up the political food chain we go, the more likely it is that folks have a comparative advantage at behaving in ways that aren't so civically responsible. The worst do tend to get on top, a la Hayek.

Also: Ed is very often a voice of reason - certainly compared to me!

Well... I'm not sure that I think government is "unreformable." I do think we'd have better government if government had less power. So in that sense, I think it's reformable. But differently - I don't think you need to leap all the way to anarchy to improve matters. There are ways to make government better.

My point was that in the current climate, under the current institutional arrangements, complaining about politicians selling their power for cash while others bailout those who will do them the most electoral good seems to me to require some level of cognitive dissonance.

VERY well said Will. This is more or less how I feel, though I'm perhaps slightly less convinced of Obama's positive qualities than you are. Still, seeing Jesse in tears got to me too - the sight of a man who marched with Martin watching a black man elected president IS history.

Uh-oh, Angry Will has been awoken! You go!

I think you're largely on target here Will. I also think she's a "category buster" in so many ways, which is precisely what is driving the left and the media crazy - and exactly what is so damn entertaining about it all. Living in a town the same size as hers for almost 20 years, I know "Sarah Palins" and they do indeed speak to a good number of women out there. And her appeal to men is, I think, more or less what you've identified. Even those of us whose rational sides know better and will still never let us vote for her and her quasi-fascist running mate are still "rooting" for her in some generalized way.

I think you're largely on target here Will. I also think she's a "category buster" in so many ways, which is precisely what is driving the left and the media crazy - and exactly what is so damn entertaining about it all. Living in a town the same size as hers for almost 20 years, I know "Sarah Palins" and they do indeed speak to a good number of women out there. And her appeal to men is, I think, more or less what you've identified. Even those of us whose rational sides know better and will still never let us vote for her and her quasi-fascist running mate are still "rooting" for her in some generalized way.

Micha,

It's a losing battle. This guy has been around other libertarian websites and he's like one of those finger traps. The harder you push, the worse it gets.

A few thoughts I just posted over at Liberty and Power ( http://hnn.us/comments/123067.html ). I'm not enthused about Barr, but I do see some possible upsides.

As someone whose substantive views were probably closest to Ruwart, here's a few thoughts.

Downside of Barr:

1. He's a politician.
2. Although I do think he's on the road to libertarianism, I'm not yet convinced he's there sufficiently. I remain skeptical but open to be persuaded.
3. He will reinforce the image of the LP as disaffected conservatives. That is not an image I wish to project.
4. There is a long-run risk of turning the LP into the GOP Jr., which is a real problem.

Upside:

1. He's a politician. He has a name and knows how to play the game that the LP should be playing.
2. He will bring media attention to the LP and its ideas and especially the reasons he broke with the GOP (civil liberties and the war esp.).
3. His call for withdrawal from Iraq distances him from BO and JM.
4. He'll likely pull more votes from McCain from Obama, and that is a GOOD thing for liberty, on the margin anyway.

If Barr and Root can run a campaign that articulates three things clearly, I'll declare it a good thing:

1. A clear defense of a non-corporatist free market economic policy that stresses the way deregulation, competition, and economic growth can address the problems that will be on the agendas of the major candidates.

2. A foreign policy of "trade, don't invade" that includes a clear call for withdrawing from Iraq as quickly as possible.

3. Convey an air of tolerance of "experiments in living" on the social/cultural front. The federalist position here is acceptable IF it's accompanied by some understanding that it would be a good thing if more states backed off the war on drugs and allowed for same-sex marriage (among many other things). Given Root's background, internet gambling might be another issue here too.

Can they do this? Does Bob Barr really mean it all? Stay tuned.

I have been trying to hammer home this point in various presentations and on the web for a few years, as has Don Boudreaux among others. You can check here for one example: http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/44568.html .

Gonna have to read that paper I guess!

As many have noted, the danger with giving the state the power to intervene in families is a very real one. Like all other pieces of state power, one can muster arguments for them IF the state actors just do what you think they should do. The problem, of course, is that once they have the power it gets abused, which is why so many libertarians are distrustful of arguments where people only point to the good things states do. K. Larson got it just right above:

"Admittedly, this brightline seems impossible in practice- the potential for abuse by State bureaucracy is too high. It may be that a bit of child abuse now and then is the price of admission into a free society in the same way that the occasional KKK rally is the price of admission for Free Speech. This is sad, but considerably better than the alternatives."

To prove the point, folks might check out this story from the Detroit Free Press. A guy mistakenly gave his 7 year old son Mike's Hard Lemonade at a Tigers game (he doesn't watch TV and assumed it was regular lemonade). A security guard sees the kid drinking it and next thing you know the kid is in foster care for a couple of days until dad, who is a prof at Michigan, got a law school colleague to help him cut the red tape and get his kid back.

Whatever might be the real problems at FLDS, giving the state the power to intervene in families is like giving matches to, uh, children. The odds of it being used only wisely are very small.

I've been thinking about this one a lot and I haven't said much because the facts aren't as clear as I'd like them to be. I'll just make two general points:

1. Exit is important. To the degree these kids had no option to exit, I do think this poses a serious problem for libertarians in two ways. First, it challenges our notions of freedom in exactly the way you and Kerry indicate. Second, in the world of the state it would appear to be a legitimate use of the state to protect the rights of those kids (and perhaps the wives). But what about the anarchist world?

I wrote a paper as a senior in college called "Children and Choices in Nozick" that addressed exactly this sort of scenario. I think it's a very hard case for anarchist libertarians, as I really do believe a severe lack of exit for children is a problem and it's not clear what's going to protect that right of exit other than the state. (Of course whether the state can itself protect it without going overboard is an equally good question.)

2. The line between "icky" and "rights violating" is SO very hard to draw sometimes. This might be one of them. I'm okay with polygamy by itself, assuming the parties to the practice were all of sufficient age/competence. Were it legal, would it lead to these sorts of bizarre cult-type organizations? Probably not - think about the parallel argument about drug legalization.

But here we are. My great fear about the "class action" rounding up of the kids is the precedent it sets. Without clearer discussion of exactly what the problem was in this case, it's much easier to intervene in any family situation that we find "icky" without identifying exactly whose rights were violated and why.

For all the reasons classical liberals are familiar with (e.g., knowledge and incentives), I think the burden of proof rests squarely on the state when they go to intervene in families and that burden should be high and heavy. I really need to be persuaded that the situation being intervened in involves rights violations.

Abuse is the easy case. Neglect is harder. Raising kids to fear strangers and think their community is the only way to live is harder still.

I'm not yet persuaded in this case that the evidence is clear and convincing enough, but I certainly don't find the idea of intervening to protect children in situations like this to be ipso facto anti-libertarian in a world where it is the state's task to protect rights.

"And so cleaner air can be a form of poverty. QED."

Indeed. That reminds me of this classic cartoon:

http://everydayecon.wordpress.com/2007/04/24/ca...

Evidently, those cavemen were pretty wealthy....

Damn, I didn't make the list!

Of course I'm 550 miles from the Orange line.

National Greatness Conservatism, like all quasi-fascist movements, is based on a weird romantic teenager’s fantasies about what it means to be a grown up.

I'd make one change Will: "a weird romantic TEENAGE BOYS' fantasies..." National Greatness Conservatism is nothing if not evidence that sometimes radical feminism's worst stereotypes have some basis in fact.

GR,

I know the difference between free speech and a threat. You are just more certain than I am that a swastika on my neighbor's lawn constitutes an actionable threat against me. Standing up and saying "I'm a Nazi and think all Jews should die" is not the same as "I'm a Nazi and think Horwitz should die." I'll protect the first one but not the second.

Well GR...

1. Whose walls? Public property? Not acceptable. The state may not engage in discrimination. The property of the targeted group? Why that's a tort and unacceptable to libertarians. Their own property? Different story. If I don't want blacks in my house, that's my business. I'd say the same about someone's firm. What I would NOT be is "perfectly happy" about it. I'd protest that behavior in all the ways I could. (A trickier case if someone puts a giant swastika on their lawn where all I can see it. Like every other political philosophy, libertarianism doesn't have and shouldn't promise definitive answers to very tricky questions.)

2. Shunning and disassociation are legitimate behaviors, whether done by the racist or to the racist. I don't think those are coercive. I do think some forms are illiberal (e.g., shunning people on the basis of race) and should get an equally strong disassociating response by libertarians.

3. This Jewish person would feel threatened by the Nazi next door, but feels more threatened by giving the state the power to decide what speech is okay and what isn't.

Your last paragraph is especially good here Will. I think your point about the extra burden on those of us, and I include myself here, who do not think the state should be restricting private choices about association but who also find racism etc. to be utterly unacceptable, is an excellent one. If libertarians believe that reducing racism is consistent with, if not required by, our liberal values (which I do) and we further believe that using persuasion not force to do it is the only means to do so consistent with those same values (which I do), then we should indeed be shouting from the rooftops about the problems with the Paul newsletters and those who share those views.

Will - ever read The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood? It takes your title question to its logical conclusion.