Author: Scott Halleck

Further thoughts on abortion, technology, and getting around the state

Posted on by Scott Halleck

NB:  I am fervently pro-choice.  I want abortion to be safe and legal, I want laws to that effect in all 50 states and federally, and I would absolutely support a constitutional amendment explicitly recognizing the right of bodily autonomy.  Read on at your own risk.

A few nights ago I wound up inadvertently pissing a lot of my friends off by ruminating a bit on how technology might render any law prohibiting abortion irrelevant.  Admittedly I was pretty short in my posting and a bit flippant in my tone, and so I was basically accused of wanting to bring back coat hangers.  They were also pissed when I drew equivalencies between the right to bear arms and the right to an abortion.

However, after spending considerable time reading and writing about the leaked Supreme Court decision, I think the ideas are worth expanding on, and writing about more seriously.  So…

One of the biggest ongoing debates in the libertarian movement has always been how do we get from here-a very statist and imperfect world-to there, a world of individual liberty and free, autonomous individuals voluntarily interacting with each other.  Usually the ideas fall into three main camps:  working through the political system (aka the Libertarian Party, or co-opting one of the majors), armed revolt or waiting for things to collapse on their own (what I tend to call the “nihilist libertarian” school of thought), and building competing institutions, such as private education, private security or arbitration firms, alternative currency etc.  Related to this debate is how much defiance of bad law is morally acceptable and practical-civil disobedience in the now, not just in the 1950s and 60s.  History does seem to show that laws that are unenforceable eventually change.  Laws that are resisted change as well.  Prohibition is the classic example, but so too the Jim Crow laws that mandated segregation.  The draft during the Vietnam era.  Laws prohibiting pornography, or dissemination of birth control information.  All of these eventually fell because people refused to comply with them, often actively resisted them, and eventually the law had no choice but to catch up.

What about today?  Let’s start with guns.  There were homebrew guns long before 3d printers (Philip Luty wrote one of the other famous banned books, for example), but 3d printing technology has definitely accelerated the process.  In 2013, the Liberator .380 was a single shot pistol that fell apart after 8-10 shots.  Less than 10 years later the FGC-9 has survived hundreds and even thousands of rounds, and NaviGoBoom’s Amigo Grande has pushed 3d printed weapons into rifle calibers.  Despite the best efforts of gun grabbers, technology may soon render any firearm law irrelevant and push firearms construction and ownership well outside the reach of the state.  The right to bear arms may well wind up guaranteed by entrepreneurs and hackers rather than laws, even if both is ideal.

What about abortion though?  What’s the connection with guns?  The first is a simple question of natural rights.  For those of us that are pro-choice (and I understand that not everyone is), the right to abortion is about bodily autonomy.  Even if you’re pro-life I don’t think the idea of bodily autonomy as a natural right should be in question, contra Alito and company.  You either own yourself or you don’t-and the right of self defense, the right to bear arms is how you guarantee the right of bodily autonomy.  Much as with the other natural rights, it is the insurance policy, and the last check and balance. 

While armed protests, like jury and state nullification, absolutely have a mixed record in history, they have been used to be positive ends.  The penny auctions of the 1930s and the armed aspects of the civil rights movement, along with the Black Panthers immediately come to mind.  The fact that the Portland protests, which while they didn’t have guns, but did feature a lot more fighting back, were able to keep the cops bottled up and effectively useless for weeks.  Why not have armed supporters standing, Black Panther style, outside of abortion clinics to guard patients and staff?  Lefties, if you believe in bodily autonomy then it’s worth defending-not just with words, but with force.  And if the Supreme Court gets guns as right as they got abortion wrong, which is likely, then suddenly that’s going to be much more possible. 

There’s also another possible connection.  In addition to being a small scale pundit, I’m also a geek, and as such I think a lot about the future, and what could come to pass.  3D printed guns represent a decentralization of technology, as well as a resulting decentralization of power.  Similar efforts have been underway for a long time, in computing (such as Linux and just assembling one’s own system), in farming, especially the urban farming movement, and even in other industries as people rediscover old skills and the joy or necessity of making one’s own stuff. 

Medical technology has also been starting to decentralize over the past 20ish years as well.

Obviously since things are much more complicated the pace has been a lot slower. But you’ve seen groups like the 4 Thieves Vinegar Collective emerge. Genome@home and Folding@home have used distributed computing to help with genetics research.  3D printing has made some inroads in prosthetics and other medical devices.  Which leads to the question that, admittedly sans enough surrounding context, greatly bothered many of my friends:  we’ve had abortion recipes going back to the ancient Greeks (and Ben Franklin!).  Even before Roe v. Wade abortion was widely available, whether legally or illegally, especially if you had money.  Given this fact and technological trends, I wonder if enterprising young biohackers will figure out and publish how to make medical grade recipes, or how to 3d print an easy and safe abortion device that will make any laws moot. Can the medical equivalent of Defense Distributed or the gatalog be made?  And if so, why not envision a world where abortion becomes a truly private decision, not because of the return of the coat hanger, but because what can be done at home is just as safe and effective as any Planned Parenthood visit?

Let me once again be 100% clear:  a world that requires armed protestors at abortion clinics, or diy solutions that hide from the state is NOT my first choice.  Women and trans folk with uteri already face a difficult enough decision when considering an abortion, they sure as hell shouldn’t have the state bearing down on them as well  Abortion should be safe and legal as a function of respecting bodily autonomy, and I believe that we should continue fighting through the political process to make sure that continues.  BUT…a world where the edicts of the state didn’t matter because the private citizenry had found a way around them, more or less guaranteeing access for anyone that needed the service…it’s a poor second choice, but it does seem to be the next best thing.  And history has shown that people, over time, are often remarkably good about getting around bad ideas, especially bad ideas turned into bad laws.

 

Airing the dirty laundry of the libertarian movement, part 3: the aftermath of the LP convention

Posted on by Scott Halleck

Part 3 of an ongoing series of inside baseball stuff about the Libertarian Party.  I’m not happy about things.  See part 1 and part 2.

So. 

After much gnashing of teeth, accusations and counter accusations, (see, for example, here and here), and long trips to Reno for many people, it’s over.  The Libertarian Party Mises Caucus made essentially a clean sweep of party officers and platform revisions.  What all happened?

Well, simply put, they had the numbers.  Thomas Knapp alleges parliamentary shenanigans and an illegitimate convention; he’s got a lot more credibility as a longtime member of national committees to comment on such things.  From my perspective it is a fiat acompli, and so the question then becomes what does this all mean for the future of the LP? 

Here is a pdf of the MC’s action plan, which seems to have been followed almost to the letter.

Honestly…most of the proposed changes either were good, or not terrible, with a few exceptions.  Most of the parliamentary reforms proposed were fine, and LP conventions are legendary for their inefficiency, so making them go faster is not a bad goal in and of itself.  I do take issue with raising the delegate count for presidential and vice presidential nominees; it seems to be targeted directly at people like Vermin Supreme, and quite frankly reeks of the kind of exclusionary ballot access restrictions we’re perpetually railing against.  Yes, we have some oddball candidates, but part of what makes us special as a party is allowing for a lot of different voices.  To say nothing of the fact that you never know where the next Spike Cohen is going to come from-the joke candidate that quickly became the best serious public speaker the libertarian movement has had in decades.

Now…on to the platform change recommendations.  The good?  Aggression, foreign policy, migration, free movement of goods, firearms accessories, electoral reform, “if you’re the age of majority you get all your rights”, etc.  I’ll gladly admit that a lot of the language is better, and makes for nice updates.  I do, however, take significant issue with three recommendations:

  • Deleting the abortion plank:  yes, abortion is absolutely a contentious as hell issue among libertarians.  But you know what?  It’s an issue that matters to a lot of people, including libertarians, and new voters will absolutely be looking for some kind of official statement on the matter.  And the old language as written represented probably the best, and maybe even only possible compromise on the issue.  While some commentators have pointed to 4.0, “Our silence about any other particular government law, regulation, ordinance, directive, edict, control, regulatory agency, activity, or machination, should not be construed to imply approval” or the plank on medical freedom as still covering things, it’s still weak tea on a subject that should be addressed by a national political party.
  • Deletion of “We condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant”.  Yeah…the stated rationale for this, “One of the major goals of the Mises Caucus is to make the LP appealing to the wider liberty movement that is largely not currently here with us. That movement strongly rejects wokism and the word games associated with it. This along with the deletion of the abortion plank will display that there are serious cultural changes in the party that are more representative of that movement” is gross, and flat out ignorant.  MC people, along with conservatives generally (who are not libertarians!), are so suspicious of anything “woke” that a)it regularly blinds them to wisdom from any camp other than their own (maybe read this, or my takes on similar ideas?), and b)it blinds them to terrible behavior in their own camp.  To elaborate a bit from my twitter post, we can defend someone’s right to hold & express horrible, idiotic, repugnant views while still choosing to condemn those views as horrible, idiotic, & repugnant, & refusing to have anything to do with the holders of said views. And really, who the hell are you trying to appeal to that wouldn’t think bigotry is irrational and repugnant?  Where are you trying to pull people from, MC?  This REALLY shouldn’t be a difficult concept.  But in certain quarters there’s such a fear of anything labeled “woke” that a lot of you forgot to discriminate against assholes, and somehow forgot that doing so (such as in this story that floats around the internet regularly), as long as you don’t use the force of the state, does NOT make you anti-liberty.  Instead, the fear of the woke has let a holocaust denier and an actual groomer into high esteem in the MC’s ranks.  Likewise,
  • Recommending against the amendment to plank 1.4 that explicitly recognizes individuals’ right to determine their own issue of gender expression.  Everything I said above applies, with the rational for no being “an issue of biology” and more anti-woke rambling.  This is both completely ignorant of biology and science, as well in direct conflict of the LP’s long history with LGBTQ rights.  Spoiler alert:  we were always in favor, we ran an out gay man as our first presidential candidate in 1972, and while we of course would much rather see the originally racist government marriage licensing regimes abolished altogether, we were in favor of marriage equality LONG before it was cool.  Furthermore, it would be one thing if trans people were simply not liked by some people.  But even though things are better now than they were, trans people are still under considerable assault from the state, in the form of bathroom bills, bans on care for trans youth, bans on trans athletes, and continued allowance of “trans panic” defenses.  People are facing the full face of state oppression and even being killed for expressing their individuality, and a party that claims to be founded on the sanctity of the individual damn well should be speaking up for them.

I’ve already renounced my support for the Libertarian Party until things change, and announced myself as politically homeless for the first time in my adult life.  Was it worth it over three bad proposals and some terrible people?  Absolutely.  The three bad proposals are very bad, and represent rejection of core libertarian values and core support for individuality.  And the terrible people?  Wouldn’t we-haven’t we-jumped down the throats of major party politicians for the exact same things Borysenko and Woods have done?  Wouldn’t we be furious if a Kennedy had said it was ok to get a woman drunk to sleep with her?  And wouldn’t we-haven’t we-brought up that thing at every opportunity to our major party supporting friends, acquaintances, and audiences?  How dare we not hold ourselves to the same standards?

So, Mises Caucus, the ship is yours.  Maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe you’ll nominate Spike Cohen for president, get a bunch of city council members elected that repeal zoning laws, business licenses, and deprioritize the drug war, fully audit the LP books, come to your senses about trans people, and keep the David Duke types out.  Maybe.

But I’m not holding my breath.

 

 

Yes Virginia, guns are for defense against tyranny. And they’ll be more effective than you think.

Posted on by Scott Halleck

“Gun control [properly understood] is we the people getting whatever arms we want, and telling the government what they’re allowed to have.” –Spike Cohen

Libertarians have long argued that the purpose of the second amendment, and the right to keep and bear arms is not the national guard, it is hunting, it is not defense against private criminals, and it’s not even keeping the King of England out of your face, as The Simpsons once put it-it’s keeping the king of Washington out of your face.  In short, it’s about defense against tyranny.  It is the right of rebellion made manifest, and it is the last check and balance in defense of liberty.

Let me be clear:  I have absolutely no desire for civil war (not looking forward to any big boogaloo of any kind), nor do I think that our system has degenerated far enough where armed rebellion is remotely morally or practically appropriate.  But the threat needs to always be there, ideally so that the simple threat will keep our politicians in line enough so that more drastic action is ever necessary.

That said…whenever this argument is posited, inevitably someone thinking themselves clever says something to the effect of “what about nukes and drones?” or “yeah sure, Bubba and his 50 extra pounds and CPD, and his single shot AR are gonna do great against the entire US military”, usually followed by something like “the second amendment is outdated”, “submit”, or general accusations of craziness.

Yeah…that whole argument is garbage for a multitude of reasons.  Let’s dissect them.

First, nukes.  Simply put, the chance of the US government using nukes on its own people is pretty damn low.  Not because the feds are moral exemplars-I’m sure they would if they could do so consequence free-but because it would destroy the prize.  A civil war is almost by definition about controlling territory rather than destroying it.  No matter how much war by its nature destroys, it’s very unlikely that any tyrannical government would destroy its own home beyond its ability to send troops to stand on it.

Next, drones.  Millennium Challenge 2002 put that to rest pretty damn quick.  Drones are nifty tech, but they’re not invulnerable or inescapable.  New problems demand new solutions, and this is an area where new solutions have already been prepared in abundance.

More generally, how about a high tech, numerically superior military vs. a scrappy band of freedom fighters?  First off, that sound you hear is anyone who’s ever studied history laughing in Afghani, Iraqi, Vietnamese, and a host of others.  Second, wars of attrition are expensive and morally complicated at best for the crowds back home.

So…how conquerable is the US, really?  Answer:  not very.  Any civil war would almost certainly divide the United States military, meaning that its full strength could never be brought to bear on  a particular rebel group for very long.  Next, the United States is big, with incredibly varied geography and terrain.  Finding someone in all of that, with at least something of a friendly populace, would be guaranteed to wreck havoc.

Or in other words, any rebellion, however undersized, would probably have a surprisingly good chance of tying up the United States federal government for years, and given that an insurgency really just has to outlast rather than win, well…

Again, I have absolutely zero taste or desire for civil war, for any number of reasons.  But to say that the second amendment is a dead letter because private citizenry with simpler weaponry couldn’t stand up against the US war machine is both terrible on principle and ignorant of reality.

 

Libertarians and Abortions, Also Terrible Supreme Court Decisions

Posted on by Scott Halleck

A few days ago a draft Supreme Court decision on abortion, authored by Samuel Alito, leaked.  The reactions are…exactly what you’d expect.  Pro-choice folks are up in arms and out in the streets, pro-lifers are cheering, libertarians are split, and lots of smarmy accusations of hypocrisy are flying through the virtual air.

To fully examine this issue, first a general discussion of libertarian thoughts on abortion is needed, then examining the various charges of hypocrisy, and then looking at the draft itself.  NB:  I am fervently pro-choice, and remain so, but I will do my best to be fair to the pro-life arguments.

Left leaning friends of mine have asked me more than once, “why aren’t libertarians more vocal about abortion?”.  The answer is that to libertarians, who are generally used to seeing issues as very clearly right or wrong, it’s a complicated question.  Libertarianism is a philosophy that has as its fundamental unit of value the sanctity of the individual.  Every bit of our political and legal morality is (at least theoretically) based on that.  Which means, however, that where the individual begins is the breaking point of the philosophy.  At the moment science can’t clearly tell us where life begins, and arguments about viability are very easily countered by “absent modern medical intervention, this fetus would not be viable”.  Rothbard said that the mother’s property right to her own body trumps the fetus (an idea recently advanced by many pro-choice folks), to my idea that the mother’s right to control her actual life trumps the fetus’ right to potential for life.  There are also, of course, a number of arguments from practicality that are not strictly libertarian but worthy of consideration, including long term impacts of unwanted pregnancies, health consequences, a dysfunctional adoption system, and the surprising correlation between the beginnings of fully legal abortion and the drop in crime.

The pro-life arguments are that the since we don’t know where the individual begins, it’s better to err on the side of caution, or religious arguments.  Pro-life people also make arguments from practicality, especially health and psychological effects of abortion, as well as the perils of decoupling sex from consequences.

The Libertarian Party has typically come to what I feel is the best possible compromise on an essentially intractable issue, which is that abortion should be kept 100% safe and legal, but no tax dollars should ever be used to pay for one.  Either way though, it’s complicated, and I still think that while some pro-choicers are Neo-Malthusian whackjobs, and some pro-lifers are patriarchal religious nutjobs interested only in controlling women, generally speaking people of good conscience can hold views on both sides of the issue.

Next, let’s look at some of those hypocrisy charges.  The ones I’ve seen pop up most often have been:

  • Nice to see “my body, my choice” make a comeback after two years of mask and vax mandates.  Not quite the own you think it is, folks.  You can argue the science and legality of those mandates all you want (and essentially the entirety of my social media feeds for the past two years has been two camps of very smart people, with a lot of numbers, calling the other side bastards and idiots), but an airborne virus can spread to others in a way an abortion can’t.  And not protecting oneself and then going out into places with lots of people could arguably be negligence.  It’s the difference between smoking and drinking-neither is good for you, but as far as I know no one’s ever gotten cirrhosis of the liver from secondhand beer.
  • Look at how quickly the left abandons “birthing persons!” in favor of “only women should make decisions about women’s bodies!”.  Yeah, transphobic assholes can @#^! all the way right off.  Check here for some science.  But pro-choice folks, this is one time where the inclusive language really would help show some moral consistency, even if it’s just “women and other birthing persons”, or “women and everyone else with a uterus”.
  • Even if the fetus is a life, the mother’s bodily autonomy trumps all, in much more detail and more articulately here.  This is the argument that makes the most sense to me, and very clearly (though almost certainly unintentionally) echoes Rothbard’s argument from decades earlier.  But here’s the thing-this argument backs directly into the libertarian argument about coercison, extortion, and bodily autonomy.  If you believe that someone cannot be coerced to sacrifice their body to save another, that they have no legal obligation to do so independent of any moral obligation, then consequently you have to believe that no one can be forced to pay for the expansion of someone’s business, or their home, or their healthcare.  The entire statist/socialist conceit falls apart if you truly embrace bodily autonomy.

So let’s look at the decision itself.  Spoiler alert:  it’s mostly terrible, even if you are pro-life.  Also disclaimer:  I am not a lawyer, I do not play one on tv, I am not bar certified in any state, this is not legal or financial advice, discontinue use if rash persists after four weeks.

The crux of the decision, as I read it, rests on two main parts:  first, that Roe was badly decided because it was an incoherent decision, including usurping the legislature by legislating from the bench, and second, that because the right to abortion is not “deeply rooted in American tradition”, and not enumerated in the constitution.

The only part of that I have some concurrence with is the idea that Roe was legislating from the bench.  At least as referenced in this decision, Roe did not come out and say unequivocally abortion is a right or abortion isn’t a right, rather it said that abortion is a right here, but is only kind of a right here, and isn’t a right here.  A proper decision should have either gone all the way in one direction or the other, or punted completely back to the states by saying it was absolutely not a matter for the federal government.  Saying what’s left is a bit of a mess is a fair point, and the decision does cite multiple pro-choice advocates who were never satisfied with the reasoning of Roe.  Aside from pointing out that stare decisis is not necessarily permanent and that the court has screwed up more than a few times, that’s about all it gets right.

Throughout the decision the argument rests on multiple appeals to the common law tradition, but does not recognize that law, like democracy, is not an ends unto itself.  It is a means to an end, that end being liberty.  Yes, the English that became the first Americans brought with them English common law, and that is important, but they were animated by the spirit of natural rights theory.  The US constitution is far more the embodiment of John Locke than William Blackstone, especially the Bill Of Rights-hence the “chains of the Constitution” conceived of by Jefferson.  While it’s true that there are limits to what is implied rather than simply written in the text, especially as concerns negative liberty vs. positive liberty, but almost all the debates of the founding era, and especially the plain text of the ninth and tenth amendments, indicate very strongly that the founders wanted the government to err in the direction of more liberty, not less.

Not a word about either of those two amendments makes it into the decision.

Though to its credit it does recognize that the fourteenth amendment incorporates most (if not all) rights in the federal constitution into state and local documents as well, prohibiting any level of government from impinging on fundamental liberties.

First, a practical matter.  Towards the end of the decision, starting on page 59, it raises the concern of reliance, ie court decisions need to remain stable so that people can make decisions based on known law, unless of course there’s a very good reason to overturn said law.  The decision finds traditional reliance interests uncompelling, because abortion is generally an unplanned decision.  They also found a more vague reliance test lacking as well.

I do not.  Thanks to the sexual revolution (and an expanding idea of bodily autonomy; see below) Americans are generally able to plan when they reproduce and when they don’t.  Yes, much of this is easy access to cheap, reliable, and legal contraception, but some of it is also the knowledge that unwanted pregnancies can be terminated if necessary.  This is an, if not essential, certainly very important part of modern life, and one that depends on reliance on established law, ie a right to abortion.  The opinion gets this wrong. 

More importantly liberty across American history properly evolves in two ways, neither of which the decision recognizes.  The founders recognized that new technologies and new manners of living would arise that they could not entirely predict, so they left mechanisms in place to give people the liberty to adapt to these new circumstances.  First, contra the decision, rights enumerated in the constitution do imply other rights, very easily.  The first amendment in toto is all about freedom of conscience and freedom of thought, and the amendments that deal with criminal jurisprudence clearly guarantee a freedom from coercion except as part of punishment for a crime for which one has been duly convicted.  It’s a very simple leap from here to freedom of marriage, and to freedom from buying a product one finds repugnant or unnecessary.  The enumerated right to being secure in one’s papers very clearly also guarantees being secure from government intrusion in one’s digital papers. 

The second major path of evolution is to a much more expansive view of who is worthy of fundamental rights-of who is human.  During the times cited in the decision when abortion was illegal, women were viewed as second class citizens at best.  They were not thought of as fully human, and not deserving of full bodily autonomy, thus making citations of laws of this time concerning them suspect at best.  Perhaps this is assuming too much-after all, I grant above that pro-life people can believe just as much from good conscience as pro-life-but the historical context has to be examined here.  Failure to do so, and simply listing the history without a broader context of womens’ legal status in the 1800s, was a severe failure of logic.

And then there’s page 32.  “‘These attempts to justify abortion through appeals to a broader right to autonomy and to define one’s ‘concept of existence’ prove too much…Those criteria, at a high level of generality, could license fundamental rights to illicit drug use, prostitution, and the like…None of these rights has any claim to being deeply rooted in history.”

Bullshit.

Before it was rephrased as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, John Locke’s rallying cry was “life, liberty, and property”.  In his Second Treatise On Government, he states that “every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his.”  The concept of liberty that animates the United States was all about bodily autonomy.  The enumeration of the right of assembly, the right of security of one’s person and effects, and the constitution’s original text creating a free trade and free travel zone in the 13 colonies all add up to liberty of the individual in their own body.  And, in 200 or so years, it’s reasonable to assume that we can and should be much more ecumenical about whose bodies are recognized as autonomous and inviolable.  Furthermore, yes, Justice Alito and company, the implication is absolutely that there is a fundamental right to drug use, prostitution, and the like-as there should be.  The laws prohibiting such things between consenting adults are blatantly unconstitutional at the federal level under the tenth amendment, and the ninth amendment, in concurrence with the first amendment and others above, should very easily guarantee cognitive freedom and freedom of commerce-in short, bodily autonomy. 

Not coincidentally, this is why even pro-life libertarians should be up in arms over this decision.  It scoffs at any concept of rights in the US that would allow for real liberty, and takes such a narrow view of the Bill Of Rights as to completely gut whatever is left of the ninth and tenth amendments.

If this decision had come out unequivocally one way or the other (as Roe probably should have) it would have been required to show much better reasoning.  Instead it punts in the worst way possible, in such a way that not only denies bodily autonomy for women (and others with uteri), but bodily autonomy for all and potentially severely narrows the potential for personal liberty going forward.  It is a terrible decision that ignores history, ignores the plain text of the constitution, and ignores basic principles of natural law.  If any of this reasoning makes it to the final decision it will be terrible for everyone.

Airing the dirty laundry of the libertarian movement part 2: Tom Woods, wtf? And whither LP National.

Posted on by Scott Halleck

My previous entry was something I’ve been meaning to write for a while (sorry, not all of us have the luxury of being full time pundits), and was written when I could dismiss the Mises Caucus as a group of people that attracted some assholes and said some things I disagreed with, but were generally moving in the same direction as me.

And then it hit that Tom Woods met his first wife when he was 26 and she was 15.  The details, including significant corroboration from his ex-wife’s sister, are spelled out here.

Mr. Woods is already a controversial figure in the libertarian movement, being dogged by allegations of racism given his founding of an organization called League Of The South 30 or so years ago.  Personally I thought he did a pretty good job of setting that all to rest here, with receipts.  Moreso since almost every libertarian starts off in one of the big two camps and migrates to a vision of a freer world, and therefore allowances should probably be made for what we believed then if we can prove, by our actions, that we believe different and better now. 

I don’t know that I’d describe him as a personal hero, but I do think he’s done a lot of important scholarship and helped advance the intellectual case for liberty.  Contra Krugman was great work, consistently refuting one of the dumbest people to ever get a PhD.  Without him I wouldn’t know about the Depression of 1920-21, which is one of the clearest historical refutations of Keynsian economic interventionism in modern history.  The man has done the work.

Which makes the revelation here very disappointing.

Let us be clear:  as of right now, Woods is being accused of grooming, which is a crime in the court of public opinion, not in a court of law.  No one has come forward with any evidence that the relationship was consummated before she was 18.  But Wood’s response was…bizarre at best, arrogant and dismissive at worst.  Especially troubling to me was his claim that “traditional Catholics marry young”.  Well fine, yes, more conservative religious folk often do get married young…to other young people, not people eleven years their senior.  If he had responded in pretty much any other way-the timeline is wrong, we were acquaintances and our relationship only deepened after she became an adult, or even something along the lines of “you know what?  This does look bad and it wasn’t my shining hour, but it worked out ok”-it might be grounds for a different conversation.  Instead the whole response basically boils down to “@#^! you, nothing to see here, it’s all ok because I’m a traditional Catholic”.

That’s just gross.

Let’s open the whole can of worms here.  What children are, in a legal sense, is something that can give libertarians, which like nice and neat answers carefully derived from first principles, absolute fits.  Two of the three major answers-that children are the legal property of their parents or that children are immediately completely sovereign individuals from birth-have really awful implications very quickly if carried to any kind of logical conclusion.  The third-that children are in the custody of their parents until they obtain majority, unless the parents screw things up-leads to all sorts of questions about who decides what’s appropriate and when majority happens.  And I’ll even acknowledge (in what I’m sure will please libertarian critics everywhere) that situations like the 17 and 364/18 and 1 make things very messy, and probably indicate a need for some kind of reform.  But regardless, everyone with a modicum of human decency agrees that there is a very strong dividing line before which one cannot consent to sexual relations (or most other adult responsibilities), and after which one can.  Moreover, it’s not anything unreasonable to point out that while age gaps do get smaller and less important as people get older, 15 and 26 is a giant eleven years that pretty much guarantees a huge imbalance of power in the relationship.  You know, the perfect circumstances for grooming, especially if the older person was in a position of trust with the younger person’s family.

If Woods had acknowledged any of that and shown any kind of humility, as long as his ex-wife wasn’t alleging any kind of abuse, this probably would have been a non issue.  Instead his response, again, was basically “@#^& you, I’m Catholic.  Also buy my homeschool course”.

Which brings me to the most galling part of all of this:  the absolute hypocrisy of Woods’ defenders, usually fellow Mises Caucus people.  Since I got back into things during the Jorgensen campaign, I’ve heard all manner of jokes about how pedophiles need to go straight into the woodchipper.  At least in spirit I agree-child abuse is horrific and disgusting, and the only addendum I’d make is “after due process of law”.  I’ve also seen conservatarian after conservatarian attack LGBTQ folk as “groomers” and “child molesters” for daring to say that Johnny might have two moms, and they’re cool, or that Uncle Steve might show up next Thanksgiving as Aunt Barbara, and that’s ok too.  This is, of course, fully ignoring that libertarianism is a whole philosophy based on the sanctity of the individual, that celebrates the individual defining their individuality in their quest of life, and that the LP itself has been pro-LGBTQ since 1972 and ran a gay man as its first presidential candidate.

What, then, have the responses been?  Well how about this from Dave “getting a woman drunk to sleep with her isn’t so bad” Smith?  Or Eric July getting the article yanked from Being Libertarian?  Or the counter accusations of grooming I’ve seen.  Two years of yelling about pedos (sure) and grooming (against people that aren’t groomers, using accusations almost as old and debunked as the Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion), and then when presented with an unrepentant groomer in their own midst, the responses are nothing but deflect or excuse.

As libertarians, we claim the moral high ground.  And we usually come to libertarianism because we find ourselves disgusted by the either the inability of the major parties to do good for people, or the shameless power and bloodlust usually on display by their highest standard bearers.  We say, with great regularity, “this is what I believe.  My ideas derive from clear first principles and are not only the best for practical reasons, but because they are morally right.  My ideology, and the people and policies I support are consistent because of this.” 

In my very first real essay here, I made the point that if you claim membership in a group, such as a fandom, or a political movement, you also claim responsibility for the baggage of that group unless you acknowledge it and qualify your loyalty.  Well, Mises Caucus folks, here we are.  You have an actual, unrepentant groomer in your midst, and most of you have either shut up or said “NO U”, because he happens to be from your camp.  If you’ve got credible evidence of other groomers and abusers in our movement, let’s drag them all into the light.  I’m sure Cliff Maloney wasn’t the only garbage lurking in the bowels of #YALtoo, and there’s a reason why this group exists.  But your response to the one that belongs to you is disgusting, galling in its hypocrisy, and absolutely unworthy of people who try to claim the moral high ground.

And speaking of calling out garbage in one’s own camp, to give a final addendum to this horror show, the national Libertarian Party voted down a motion to disinvite Woods to this year’s convention.  Meaning that’s who my party chooses to have on their stage.

Ugh.

“Party of principle” my ass.

If the LP gets its collective shit together and repudiates this garbage I’ll be happy to start working for party causes again.  I’ll support individual candidates as I see fit.  And it’s still better and less scandal ridden than either of the majors.  But this is a bridge too far for me.  I will not donate to LP National, and I will not support any candidate or local affiliate that does not clearly repudiate Woods and his actions.

This is foul, and all of you know it.

 

 

 

Airing the dirty laundry of the libertarian movement part 1: yay or nay on the Mises Caucus?

Posted on by Scott Halleck

Here’s the essay I would have written before the Tom Woods revelations dropped.  I feel it’s important to post in its relatively unaltered form to give context, and to give proper perspective to my feelings on the Woods problem.

Over the last year or two, the Mises Caucus of the Libertarian Party has been at the center of, well, a civil war inside the Libertarian Party and the broader libertarian movement.  Accusations have flown from one side to the other-from the Mises Caucus, they’ve alleged corruption, pandering, appeasement, and the classic not being real libertarians.  The retorts have been homophobia, transphobia, cop worshiping, racism, sexism, and just flat out missing the point, among others, and of course not being real libertarians.  Also there have been many accusations of rules lawyering and rules violations from both sides, which are harder for me to comment on.

I’m a 20+ year veteran of LP politics.  I’ve seen a lot of things in my time in the party, including some successes, some colossal failures, and some seriously missed opportunities.  I left party activism for a long time over my own frustrations with the deficiencies of party leadership.  But the Mises Caucus overall…it makes me uncomfortable. 

To show why, a good deal of background is needed.

First, the modern libertarian movement has its roots as a fusion of ex-Republicans and ex-hippies.  There are socially conservative libertarians.  Internally we disagree on things, most notably abortion and the death penalty, although also strategy, and relative importance of the many issues we do agree on.  That sometimes uncomfortable fusion means that there are libertarian spaces that intersect with the left, sometimes even the asshole left, and some that intersect with the right, including (although far less than our leftist critics would believe) sometimes the alt-right.

Second, there are plenty of very valid criticisms of the Libertarian Party to be leveled.  In my time the most glaring would be:

  • Outright scandals:  in my time there were serious allegations during the second Harry Browne campaign about missing money, and later on with Carla Howell’s campaign for governor.  There were probably a few others along the way that I missed.
  • Mismanagement and unnecessary party expenditures:  The LP’s physical office has always been a source of contention, for location, for expense, for any number of things.  More important to me is the lack of coordination between national and local affiliates.  If the point of a political party is to run candidates that win and thus advance the ideological agenda of that party and ideology, it’s an absolute travesty that national and most local parties have no idea what the elected offices even are, let alone put any real time into candidate recruitment.  I will say that one of the most refreshing things of the Jorgensen/Cohen campaign was actually trying to have some coattails and support local races, and of course Pennsylvania recently kicked ass in local races, but it’s still a major issue.  I’ve also heard tell of significant lack of coordination between the Jorgensen and Cohen sides of the campaign this time out.
  • Everyone wants to be president, no one wants to be dogcatcher:  related to above, and again better than it was in the early 00s, there’s still a cultural problem where everyone wants to run for the top spots, and no one wants to run for city council.  Yes, the top spot campaigns are important, but the only way to build a farm team, a track record of effective, non-societal ending governance, and proving that Libertarians can win is at the local level first.  We need city council members to run for mayor, mayors to run for county supervisor, county supervisors to run for state assembly, and so on.
  • Botching the war issue:  My final disillusionment with the party came in 2002, with the onset of W Bush’s Iraq War.  Despite peace, non-aggression, and anti-imperialism being in our DNA since before our movement had a name, the LP dwaddled on a response at a time when the country was begging for a proper anti-war movement and party.  And since then, while individual libertarians have certainly been leading anti-war voices, the party as a whole hasn’t done a great job on what could be the issue of our time.
  • Soft messaging:  We’re the Libertarian Party, damnit.  Don’t just call for the legalization of marijuana, call for the end of the whole damned drug war and immediate pardons and expungements for any non-violent convictions relating to it.  Don’t just call for no war in Syria, call for the end of the whole damn empire.  This hasn’t always been applicable, to be sure, but there have been a lot of times when LP National should have come out swinging with the biggest bat it could find, and instead was wielding a kid’s whiffleball toy.
  • Running Republican retreads:  Bob “Defense Of Marriage Act” Barr was simply disgusting.  Gary Johnson is, as far as I can tell, a nice guy and a successful governor, but libertarian lite.  And Bill Weld, he of the praise for Hilary and the calls for gun control, had absolutely no business on a libertarian ticket.  Every time we put a former Republican on the top of our ticket (that hasn’t won lower office as a Libertarian first), we a)give credence to the criticism that Libertarians are just Republicans that like pot and b)far more importantly dilute the message.  Libertarians are libertarians, not Republicans or Democrats.  Also, when the LP runs homegrown talent that are committed libertarians, like, say, Jo Jorgensen and Spike Cohen, the people that are brought in are so much more motivated and so much more inclined to stick around.  Johnson’s campaign brought in some fair weather annoyed Republicans.  Jorgensen’s campaign brought in the next generation of city council candidates.

So what about that Mises Caucus then?  Well…I can’t say they’ve done no good.  There are a lot of MC people that are awesome personally and doing good work.  Bringing motivated people into campaigns and activism is generally a good thing.  Some of them have had the sense to reach out to non-LP groups on different issues and start to coalition build, which is essential for actually changing policy when you’re a small movement.   And personally I’m all in favor of radicialism and being unapologetic and loud about one’s beliefs.

BUT…the Mises Caucus’ central conceit seems to be a complete inability to acknowledge good ideas from outside our own camp.  The constant condemnation of anything and everything, including traditionally very libertarian issues, as “woke”-and thus worthy of complete dismissal-is just ignorant.  Some of the posts from Mises affiliated sources have just been idiotic, such as LP New Hampshire’s assertion that “libertarians suffer more oppression than black people”.  Second, the caucus doesn’t isn’t just an intersection between libertarianism and the right, it’s often an intersection between libertarianism and the alt-right.  In the Mises Caucus facebook group and from various members I’ve seen entirely too many posts decrying Black Lives Matter and acting as police apologists (to say nothing of all the “pandering” bullshit during the election season, which I had a lengthy response to), claims about Trump being the most libertarian president ever, a lot more homophobia than I’d expect from libertarians, courting of anti-semites and entertaining their theories (especially gross given that the namesake of their caucus escaped Germany before the rise of the Nazis), and especially a lot of transphobic postings.  Just a little while ago there was a fresh post complaining about “males competing in womens’ sports”, never mind that the current science on the matter is complicated but generally falls on the side of trans athletes, and the very phrasing denies the individuality and identity of people. Some of whom, might I add, are otherwise with us but ready to quit the movement because enough of us can’t get it together there.

And there’s stuff that’s flat out gross, like Dave Smith dismissing the idea of getting someone drunk just to sleep with them being bad, or the way Cliff Maloney had MC affiliated defenders even after being fired in the wake of the #YALtoo revelations, or the embrace of Kyle Rittenhouse as not just legally innocent or in a bad position, but as an outright hero of some kind.

Oh, and then there was Lew Rockwell publishing an article that ends with praise for literal fascists.  No, LewRockwell.com isn’t MC, but there’s enough overlap to not look very good.

Now…all of this is not an everyday occurrence, and the various Mises Caucus groups are still far more tolerant places than a mainstream Republican gathering these days. But it’s still a lot more than I think is appropriate for those claiming to hold libertarian values. And enough of them hold beliefs that I find repugnant for me to be fully comfortable with them.

If you’re doing good work for liberty, keep it up.  But please think carefully about whose banner you choose to wave. Those banners often come with a lot of hidden baggage.  And while yes, the LP absolutely needs a serious housecleaning on a lot of levels, but I don’t think the Mises Caucus is the right group to do it.

 

 

In defense of sex workers and normalization

Posted on by Scott Halleck

 

In the latest round of internecine libertarian infighting, Delta Tkasch and Dave Smith have gotten into it about “normalization of sex work”, with Tkasch, a sex professional, taking the pro side and Mr. Smith dismissing the idea as “goofy”, and even detrimental to the cause of libertarianism.  This twitter thread and its subthreads get into it.  I’m going to try to be as fair to the positions of both sides as possible-some of it is disagreements over terminology-but I’m definitely going to be taking the pro-sex worker side on this, and I wanted to respond in a longer form than I could accomplish in tweets.  Here I’ll be using sex work broadly, so including not just prostitutes, but also strippers, pornographic actors, etc.

Both “combatants” and their respective supporters agree with the longstanding libertarian position that sex work between consenting adults (always an important qualifier, and will be assumed for the remainder of this essay) should be completely legal.  There are a number of core libertarian positions this idea involves, along with many questions of practical effect which I’ll address later.  The core questions include bodily autonomy, self ownership, and freedom of contract.  The question is whether such work should be “normalized”, and if so what exactly normalized means. 

As an aside, terminology matters, and terminology is at the heart of many internal debates in political movements.  Most (though definitely not all) of libertarian debates start with an agreement over the NAP, and then start fighting about what qualifies as aggression.  Tkasch has repeatedly argued specifically for “decriminalization” rather than “legalization” of sex work, although even there qualification is necessary.  In most instances of “decriminalization” being used in non-libertarian contexts that I’ve seen it means that decriminalized activity is still a matter for law enforcement, just with much less priority or serious consequences.  The most notable example would be marijuana possession being punishable by a civil fine like a traffic ticket, and/or pushed to official lowest priority enforcement.  Legalization, on the other hand, means the activity is now completely acceptable in the eyes of the state, and faces no more or less regulation than any other activity.  Tkasch, on the other hand, and some though not all other libertarian commentators, use decriminalization to mean free of state interference, with legalization being undesirable because it subjects that activity to the regulatory regimes of the state, including licensing, taxation, and regulation.  Personally I think that legalization is a lot better than converting something from a cageable to simply a fineable offense, but I can see their point.  Either way though, clarity of definitions is important.

Now on to the heart of the matter-normalization of sex work.  Does normalization mean that everyone needs to embrace prostitution, pornography, stripping, writing terrible fanfiction, etc. as  great and noble profession, and the best of our society?  I don’t think so.  We all have different interests and passions, there are many matters that libertarianism is purposely silent on to give space for religion, ethics, etc., and dare I say it being socially conservative is ok as long as you don’t impose those views on others.  But to simply have it treated as other professions, a part of life like fast food, lawyers, garbage collectors, etc.?  That’s a lot more reasonable proposition.  Elsewhere Smith agrees that there is a major social stigma around sex work, and says that that stigma exists for a reason, and in the same tweet he says that sex workers often have lots of bad things in their early childhoods. 

Let’s take those apart.

As for the idea that all sex workers are traumatized or coerced into their jobs, maybe that was true in the 1970s, but these days?  In my conversations with sex workers I’ve known in real life, reading accounts online, and dare I say it occasionally reading/watching interviews with favorite porn stars (shut up, you’ve done it too), the overwhelming takeaway is…it’s just like any other job these days.  Some people get into it because they’re really passionate about the work, whether it’s the sex, the theatricality, the therapeutic aspects, the technology, etc., some people do it because it’s a job and a means to an end, and yes, some have bad things happen to them early on that lead them to it.  The idea that everyone is in the profession simply because they’re traumatized, desperate nutcases is way too broad a generalization these days.  Ditto for assuming all sex workers are women.

For the second part, the stigma.  Well yes, it exists, and it exists for reasons, but why?  What are those reasons?  They aren’t as cut and dried as you might think, as even a cursory study of history shows that societal attitudes towards sex work have changed many times through human history, including even within Western cultures-even within American culture.  Who’s to say that it can’t change again?  I think the stigma goes to one of the big problems of libertarians, and one that I’ve addressed from a different perspective before, namely failing to recognize that while the state is the greatest threat to human liberty, it is not the only threat to human liberty.   Social stigma can’t send drones to a wedding party like the state can, or kill on an industrial scale the same way, but it can enable terrible laws and completely upend the power dynamics between people.  It’s a lot like Rand’s description of racism as “barnyard or stockyward collectivism”; it gives people permission to view other people as Other and less than.  This is not entirely a bad thing, as there are absolutely good things and bad things, good and evil, and they should be called as such.  But does sex work really worthy of that shame here?  Are services that, to one degree or another, most people avail themselves of, that concern a natural function, that provide people outlets to explore their sexuality and desires, really worth the violence, the terrible law, the empowering of the state, the spreading of disease, and the shame that the social stigma that comes with it all?

I don’t think it is.  And I think as libertarians even though we may choose not to approve or partake ourselves we have a responsibility to speak up for those who are consistently crapped on by society without good reason.  You don’t have to subscribe to someone’s onlyfans, you don’t have to hire your local hooker, but you should be speaking up for them and doing your best to make sure the boot of the state drops as far away from them as possible.

Not because it’s special.  But because it’s normal.

 

Some thoughts on Kyle Rittenhouse: it’s not nearly as great or as bad as you might think

Posted on by Scott Halleck

[note:  some of this concerns discussions I’ve seen in passing on twitter or conversations I’ve had in my personal life, so this will have less direct documentation and links than my usual essays.  This essay is less about Rittenhouse’s actual guilt or innocence-I’m not going to be discussing the minutae of the trial much-and more about the lessons that should be taken from it.]

This week the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict came out in his trial related to shooting three people during a Black Lives Matter protest last Augst:  not guilty on all counts.  Reaction from across the political spectrum has been incredibly polarized, usually along partisan lines.  People on the left (with a few exceptions, such as Glenn Greenwald and Jimmy Dore) are generally appalled and disgusted, screaming racism, judicial impropriety, and accusing Rittenhouse of crocodile tears during his crying in court.  On the other side, the right and a LOT of libertarians (often but not always Mises Caucus types, and some of the state affiliates) have come out in favor not only of the verdict, but of Rittenhouse’s actions.  He has been praised as a hero by many, as a picture of cool and collected self defense in a crisis, and as an antidote to violent rioters and the woke mob.

It seems like both sides have made some critical errors in reasoning, desperate to find either a hero or a villain in a mess that left two people dead and one seriously injured.  And the all or nothing arguments have obscured the reality of what happened and what it means in context.  At the same time, both sides have made some good points about the reality of our justice system and our society, and its flaws.

On the left, the argument that Rittenhouse crossed state lines never really held water, and was shredded in court.  Same for being too young to possess a firearm.  While the idea that if minors can’t consent and aren’t legally responsible they shouldn’t be allowed the full exercise of the natural rights of an adult has merit (and opens up a much bigger debate beyond the scope of this essay), under Wisconsin law he was probably ok.  And if he was old enough to fully exercise his right to bear arms, the geography shouldn’t matter.  Rights are rights, wherever you are.  Certainly the law as written, along with the prosecution’s failure to have the gun measured (since the relevant portions hinge on short barreled rifles vs. long guns) is ambiguous enough to make him legal on that aspect of things.  And likewise characterizing the AR-15 as a “high powered rifle” is a bit of a misnomer.  Anything more powerful than a BB gun can be lethal pretty easily.  They’re not designed to be squirt guns. 

More seriously and more defensible, friends of mine have raised the contention that self defense laws as written, combined with a still too racist society, give people open license to murder minorities as long as they can scream self defense afterwards.  They cite numerous examples of cops “fearing for their lives”, along with George Zimmerman.  They argue that this case shows the need to reform self defense laws, and that it will have a chilling effect on protests.  While I can see why they’re concerned, I don’t think this is a completely fair comparison.  Rittenhouse was being attacked right before at least one of the shootings, and was definitely on the opposite side (of the issues) of most of the protestors.  More knowledgeable people than myself have waded through the minutae of law (you can read the relevant WI statues here) and made the case that legal innocence rested on whether Rittenhouse had moved back into the legal prerequisites for self defense for each shooting, regardless of what brought him there .  I’m not a trained lawyer, and this is more complicated than simply saying to the typical politician “hey asshole, follow your oath of office!”, so I can’t comment on the validity of this line of reasoning.  But what I can say is there’s enough there there to make it a real question. 

I don’t think this trial raises huge implications of law.  Wisconsin self defense statutes include a duty to retreat and specify that only life can be defended with lethal force, not property.  And I think no matter how self defense law is written, there will always be situations that are very clear cut, and some that are ambiguous enough to be matters for a judge and jury.  In that regard, at least, the system worked as it should.  Likewise, I don’t think there’s any real implication for gun laws either way here.  Rights come with consequences, and sometimes people use their rights really stupidly, to the point where they need to be punished for it.  Whether that punishment comes in a court of law or the court of public opinion depends on the nature of the stupidity, of course, but both are valid and necessary.  Here while you can certainly argue that there wasn’t enough consequences in either court, Rittenhouse was arrested and at least faced the threat of serious consequences for his actions.  The system churned on him rather than simply ignoring him.

On the other side we have a number of errors as well, and since this side includes a lot of people in my camp I find their errors a lot more disturbing and/or infuriating.  Let’s start with “he was just there to protect property”.  If that was the case, how come we had an entire year of Black Lives Matter protests that often had Redacted Bois guarding property and supporting the protestors with essentially no incidents that I know of, except for Garret Foster (RIP) getting run over by a counterprotester.  If he was there to defend property he did a crap job of it, and given that it wasn’t his property it didn’t justify lethal force to defend.  Holding Rittenhouse in the same light as Kenneth Walker (and by extension capitalizing on Breonna Taylor’s death) is not a good look.  Walker and Taylor were in a private residence, assaulted by agents of the state acting in bad faith under laws that should never have existed in the first place.  Rittenhouse…far more questionable (more on that later).  Bringing up the criminal pasts of those that were shot is simply idiotic; however horrible they are (and they’re not good) either Rittenhouse had no way of knowing who/what they were beforehand or he went to the protest to shoot those three specific people.  One assertion is dumb and insane, the other is simply dumb and irrelevant.

Most important is Rittenhouse’s character.  He was not, to put it mildly, a moral exemplar.  It came out pretty quickly after his arrest that he was a cop worshipper, and then he partied with Trumpers after his release.  Partying with Trumpers perhaps doesn’t automatically make one a racist, but it’s certainly strong evidence in that direction.  When I’ve made this argument in online discussions the response has usually been Biden whataboutism or pointing out some of Trump’s policies and reforms, which did include some minor criminal justice reform.  Here’s the thing though-both Trump and Biden said a lot of horribly racist things and implemented a lot of horribly racist policies, usually connected to immigration, empire, and the drug war.  @#^! them both for it.  But it was only Trump that had a large number of avowed racists and nationalists among his supporters.  Trump voters may not have all been racist, but they joined the fandom with all the racists and were ok with that.  It tars anyone still in a MAGA hat with an ugly brush.

This is not to say that all of the keyboard pounds spent on this haven’t gotten anything right.  The allegations of judicial bias and prosecutorial incompetence ring very true.  Introduction of evidence painting Rittenhouse as a racist was disallowed, and that could have gone strongly to motive, which would seem to be important in relation to a claim of self defense.  The prosecutor pointing a potentially uncleared weapon, with his finger on the trigger, at a jury (although the details are disputed) was insane.  On the other hand, a defense lawyer acquaintance of mine has argued that the public eye on the case forced the judge and prosecutor to do their jobs, and that most prosecutors are generally incompetent, but are granted wide latitude by judges.  Also, this slate article characterizes judge Bruce Schroeder as generally pro-defendant-this time the defendant happens to be white and high profile.  I would guess that most of the people yelling about Klan robes under Schroeder’s judicial one would probably agree that the justice system tends to railroad the accused and favor incarceration over conviction.  There is a potential disconnect here.

The comparison with women in jail for killing their abusers absolutely has merit.  The immediate solution would be jury nullification, but over the longer term carving out exceptions in self defense law specifically to cover this is probably a good idea.  How exactly to word this I’m not entirely sure, and I welcome suggestions.  Many of these situations would most likely still be matters for a jury, but given how insidious and long lasting domestic abuse can be, and how destructive mentally and physically it is for its victims, protecting them from punishment for defending themselves seems like a necessary thing.

Finally, there’s one more bad argument that brings me to the two things at the heart of what bothers me about all of this.  Many on the pro-Rittenhouse side have asked “how can Rittenhouse be racist?  His victims were white!”.  There’s been a lot of screaming about the woke mob, and how Black Lives Matter is this evil communist group (that one is an easy refute, and I’ll take it on again later in this essay), and how it wasn’t really a “peaceful” protest.

All of that misses context, and context matters here.  Ultimately both sides are so focused on what they want to see that they can’t see the full picture.  The left can only see how Rittenhouse fits into the broader social and historical narrative, while Rittenhouse’s supporters can only see his actions in microcosm and isolation during each specific shooting.  One misses the points of law and what may have been legitimate actions of self defense, while the other doesn’t ask the important questions of how this happened in the first place.  What started this all?  Sure, it was a riot.  Protests aren’t always peaceful, which begs the question why were people pissed enough to riot in the first place?  2020 was the year of Black Lives Matter protests across the country as a lot of people got very pissed off at years of police murdering people, usually not white people, and facing zero repercussions for it.  These shootings ranged from people who may well have been guilty (and had criminal pasts) to children, and were never about situations where officers were being fired upon.  Much of this happened in the context of the drug war, which is arguably the most horrible thing that government has done to its own people post-slavery.  For libertarians, I have to remind too many of us again that we’ve been opposed to the state murdering people since before our movement had a name.  We’ve also been arguing for the moral legitimacy of violent revolution and shooting back for just as long, even though most of us hope that such times never come to pass and that real change can come either through the political system, building competing institutions, or both.  Sure, we can be dismayed that a lot of the rage tends to be directed at private businesses and residences rather than police stations and legislative headquarters, but it shouldn’t be any kind of stretch to understand why the rage exists in the first place.  Yes, much of the leadership of the Black Lives Matter movement came from the left, including some outright communists.  So?  They’ve also done more to bring attention to a core libertarian issue in a year than our movement has done in three decades.  While the contention that the Black Lives Matter movement has been co-opted by the Democratic Party is very valid (and a hell of an argument for voting third party), dismissing a whole group of people that are angry about some of the same big things we are because they started from a different point on the Nolan chart is stupid.  

One commenter argued that Rittenhouse’s cop worship can be dismissed at the naive beliefs of a young kid.  This is fine as far as it goes, but lots of kids draw tanks and planes as a kid, or dress as a cop for Halloween before growing out of it as they get older.  Most of them, however, don’t actually steal a tank and run over people with it, or go out and shoot people thinking they’re helping.  He may well be young and dumb, but his actions crossed big lines into serious consequences and went a lot farther than the usual young and dumb sort. 

It’s easy enough to dismiss conservatives as simply pro-cop, racist to one degree or another, or both.  I think libertarians, on the other hand, are so concerned about gun rights and the right of self defense that we often can’t see anything else.  It’s like our version of one of the great moments from The Boondocks.  To riff a bit on Huey’s speech towards the end, not every person with a gun made a heroic last stand against a rape gang!  Yes, the government does conspire to put a lot of people in jail (or straight up kill them) for acting in self defense, and yes the right to bear arms is still under constant legal and legislative assault.  But just because someone has rights doesn’t mean that every use of those rights is smart or moral.  Rights should not mean freedom from consequences when those rights are abused or otherwise used stupidly.  Again, those consequences can come in a court of law or the court of public opinion, depending on the nature of the stupidity, but we can’t be so zealous in our defense of rights that we’re blind to the context of their use.  If we can’t defend someone’s right to do something while also acknowledging that what they did was terrible, or supporting terrible people, or just really dumb we’re doing it wrong.

I think that’s at the heart of it all.  The ex-Republican chunk of the libertarian movement is so suspicious of anything that smacks of communism, and so paranoid about gun control (and not entirely without reason) that they can’t see that even if he was a dumb and naive kid, Rittenhouse was a cop worshipper and probably a racist on the wrong side of a protest against state murder.  Yes, he had the right to be there.  Generically speaking, he had/has the right to defend himself, and in the moment it’s very arguable that he was defending himself.  Even if he was legally right, which he may well have been, he was morally wrong.  He should have been allowed to be at that protest, but he shouldn’t have been there.  He should be allowed to hold his beliefs, but his beliefs are wrong.  He has the right to defend himself, but he shouldn’t have been in the situation where he needed to in the first place.  To hope for his acquittal is defensible.  To hold him up as any kind of hero, anything other than either a piece of crap or young and dumb is deplorable.

Finally…I wish this wasn’t a footnote, but unfortunately it fits.  The country has spent several weeks talking about this dumb white kid, which has sucked all the metaphorical oxygen away from what the protests were about in the first place.  People are still being shot by police.  Gods help you if you’re mentally ill and have a runin with the cops.  The drug war is still a thing, with too many people in jail for bullshit as a result.  Occupational licensing that stifles the poorest from working and holds convicted felons back from better jobs is still all too prevalent in our country.  The bigger structural factors behind poverty and racial injustices are still there.  What those factors are can and certainly is debated between, say, the left and libertarians, but either way they’re still there.  Where is the outrage over any of that?  Electing a Democrat (especially the particular Democrat) didn’t fix any of that.  When will there be enough anger again to truly change things?

Old bosses and new

Posted on by Scott Halleck

Right on schedule, Trump actually went.  I’m at least a little surprised.  So now that it’s actually over, let’s look back a bit at the Trump regime, and then take a look at what’s to come.

I will give credit where credit is due. Much as Obama had 3 1/2 good things in his 8 years (rapprochement with Iran and Cuba, having the DOJ prosecute corrupt cops, and being around when the Supreme Court handed down Obergfell), Trump had, by my reckoning, 1 and 2 small fractions good things. The tax code is slightly simpler for a lot of people. There was a bit of rapprochement with North Korea. And, though it probably pained him to tell the truth about something as much as it pains me to admit it, Trump was more or less right when he said he started no new wars. This makes him the first US president since Warren G. Harding not to do so-and before that it was Grover Cleveland.

And the fact that this is actually a major, not-in-a-century accomplishment says a lot about just how far we’ve fallen.

Now let’s look at the awful. While not a completely comprehensive list, some of the especially egregious lowlights include, in no particular order…

Worst president ever? Eh. As I’ve said before, we still have Wilson and Jackson in our history, so maybe not. But Donald J. Trump, you were still complete shit who did a lot of things that ranged from awful to outright evil. You will not be missed, please let the door hit you upside the head on your way out, and I hope against hope that you were the one that was finally egregious enough to convince a Senate or a jury to convict your sorry ass and set a precedent of accountability for all of your successors.
@#^! you, and good @#6!ing riddance.

So with Trump actually out of the way, how about the new boss?  I hope I’m wrong about Biden. I hope he decides not to be a warmongering jackass with a cop sidekick. I hope his immigration proposal goes through. I hope he backs off/forgets about/gives it up in exchange for money to prosecute corrupt cops/is defeated in court his gun control plan. I hope he ends the trade war. I hope he ends the drug war. I hope having a president that only votes for racist legislation and says racist things on occasion improves things over someone who signs racist legislation and says racist things every day. I hope he magically decides to tear down the insane system of subsidies, bailouts, and other corporate welfare that strangles our populace. I hope that talking to other countries in complete sentences again might increase the chance of peace in the world and reduce the US’s elected class’ appetite for war. I hope that maybe someone will be able to sneak pardons for the most important whistleblowers of our age past him. I hope that someone around him will say something to the effect of “Hey! 27 trillion in debt is kind of a bad idea!”.

I had similar hopes for Obama too. But much like Obama’s record made me very skeptical about the reality to come (and I was essentially 100% right), Biden’s record does not inspire.

Sure, @#^! Trump, I’m glad he’s gone, and I’m glad peaceful transfer of power is still a thing around here. But expecting much different from Biden where it counts? I’m not holding my breath.

Coups, protests, false equivalencies, and all sorts of other nonsense

Posted on by Scott Halleck

Two days ago a bunch of pro-Trump people stormed the US capitol, thrashed some offices, and generally tried to disrupt the final certification of the electoral college vote and the confirmation of Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election.  Since then social media has been abuzz with the talk about the details and the implications.  There’s been a combination of frustration, hand wringing, disgust, anger, confusion, and a lot of other things besides.

Suffice to say I have Some Thoughts on the matter.

First off, this was a disgusting action by a bunch of pro-tyranny, often horribly racist idiots pissed that their tyrant didn’t win. 

This was not any great day for freedom or righteous assault on a terrible place.  Had it escalated the worst possible outcome was a civil war with no good sides, rather than a good side and a bad side.

This was not the work of antifa or some false flag operation, and to say so is some of the most ignorant, delusional, and rank stupidity I have ever heard in over 20 years of being politically aware.

Spike Cohen’s call for understanding is admirable, but in one of the few times I disagree with him I think it’s wasted words on people full of hate, bile, and blind cult worship.

This is not a great opportunity for the libertarian movement either.  It’s probably the optimistic minarchist in me, but the combination of a return to more banal, functional evil and a LOT of newly energized people from the Jorgensen campaign ready to run for city council in 2021 is a powerful one.  Massive chaos at the top and an almost inevitable crackdown won’t help advance our cause.

The argument that if the protestors had been black or brown they would have gotten their asses kicked by police rather than allowed to waltz in almost entirely unopposed has a lot of merit.

The whataboutism being drawn by some people over the Black Lives Matter riots this summer is false equivalency.  Black Lives Matter had and has a completely legitimate and gigantic gripe, namely that the state really shouldn’t be murdering people, especially those that aren’t pale skinned.  While I do wish that more of the rage had been directed specifically at the state rather than everywhere, as much as I can I understand that level of frustration, anger, and desperation.  It’s palpable, and real, and justified.  How you can listen to this, for example, and not be moved to tears or blind fury (or both) is beyond me.  The Trumpians’ gripe, on the other hand, is complete bullshit.  Every allegation of fraud was either shut down, often by Republican election officials in states Trump lost, or defeated soundly in over 50 lawsuits, often in front of Republican appointed judges.  And as Legal Eagle pointed out, the gap between what Trump’s legal team said in public vs. what they actually said under oath was staggering.  Black Lives Matter went to war for an ugly truth.  Trump’s cult went to war for a lie.  And contra Slim Charles, fighting on a lie only destroys.  There are serious systemic problems with how we do presidential elections, including precinct consolidation, gerrymandering, the Commission On Presidential Debates, and stuff like I covered here.  But under the rules as they stand Biden won fair and square.  Trumpers need to suck it up and deal, and run a better candidate next time.

The LP’s public statement on the matter, contra the Mises Caucus, were right.  The why, the how, and the who matters.  There are scenarios I can envision where a group would have charged the seat of power like that and I’d cheer.  But again, a bunch of racist wackadoos whining about their cult leader not winning over the other cult leader?  Nothing righteous about it.  And unless you’re really prepared for civil war, with all of the blood and pain that would result AND the highly uncertain outcome, maybe it might be a good idea to let a combination of political reform, growing our movement, and building competing institutions like alternate currencies, direct primary care providers, private education do its thing.

My opinion of the federal government and most of its actions ranges somewhere between my opinion of syphilis and AIDS.  It remains a horrid, murderous, thieving monster that should be opposed whenever possible.  But one of the few things it does well is relatively fair and open elections, with plenty of systemic problems but almost no retail level fraud.  And yes, democracy has its own problems, but those elections still represent a real avenue for potential change and societal improvement.  They shouldn’t be left to the violent whims of easily deluded racists begging for a new king.