Tag: Libertarianism

I’ve spent significant time criticizing Thomas E. Woods (here and here), a conservative-libertarian author of several books and a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Woods will speak this evening at the University of Colorado and tomorrow in Colorado Springs. In response to several anonymous postings, I’ll extend my comments here.

Woods’s older articles — published by the racist and theocratic League of the South — condemned the abolitionists and the Declaration of Independence while praising the “social harmony and adherence to tradition that characterized the South.” These older writings are repugnant and wrong.

I hasten to point out that some that Woods’s newer ideas — the ones he still promotes — are also disturbing and wrong, though not grotesque as were his older writings.

As I pointed out, even Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, a libertarian favorite, writes for the Ludwig von Mises Institute in a review of Woods’s Politically Incorrect Guide to American History — a book published in 2004 that Woods actively promotes on his web page as of this morning– “Woods clearly wants to tender a neo-Confederate interpretation, in which slavery is shunted into the background as a motive for southern secession.”

As I reviewed yesterday, Woods’s essay on 9/11 puts him squarely in the “blame America first” camp (along with Ron Paul and many other libertarians) and further reveals his view that American policy should be rooted in theology. So, even discounting Woods’s writings for the League of the South, Woods clearly advocates states’ rights even when individual rights take a back seat, criticizes American support of legitimate allies such as Israel, and endorses faith-based politics over the separation of church and state. (To take another example of this last point, Woods calls abortion “intrinsically immoral” based on Catholic doctrine.) So even discounting all of Woods’s older writings, he has provided plenty of reasons to distrust his agenda.

I granted that Woods may have changed his mind about his older writings. I’ve also written some things in my younger days that I would not today endorse (though nothing so nasty as what Woods wrote.) The onus is on Woods to demonstrate that that he has repudiated his older writings. Yet, in a 2005 essay, Woods writes that, though he “had an intermittent membership in the League [of the South] over the years,” “I have nothing to apologize for.”

Really? Woods is not going to apologize for calling the Declaration of Independence a “polluted source,” for condemning its statement “that all men are created equal,” or for calling the abolitionists “reprehensible agitators?” Readers may peruse Woods’s 2005 essay and evaluate for themselves the extent that Woods’s views have changed.

I am not alone in questioning Woods’s commitment to liberty. In a review of Woods’s Politically Incorrect Guide, Cathy Young writes for Reason:

Much of the book’s first half is an apologia for the antebellum South and its cause in the War Between the States (Woods’ preferred term). …

[R]eaders will search The Politically Incorrect Guide in vain for any moral outrage at a brutal system that allowed some human beings to own others. The best Woods can do is suggest that without the war, slavery could have been phased out peacefully, a stance that is speculative at best. …

In a 1997 article titled “Christendom’s Last Stand,” [“Removed by request of the author” but available on archive] Woods proclaims the Confederacy’s defeat “the real watershed from which we can trace many of the destructive trends that continue to ravage our civilization today.” …

Woods complains when critics quote his older essays. But when I contacted him to ask if he now rejected any part of those writings, he replied, “I don’t so much object to their use of old quotations, much of which I’m sure I still stand by; I was simply taken aback at the lengths to which some have gone to avoid discussing my book.” Woods claimed his views had evolved in a more libertarian direction. But he still spoke sympathetically of the defenders of the Southern order, telling me that “certain strains of abolitionist argument, Southerners feared, could corrode all kinds of human relations” since they challenged the principles of authority and subordination. …

This book provides quick ammunition to those for whom “the abolitionists were the bad guys” and “FDR didn’t save the country from the Great Depression” are equally outlandish ideas.

In that last cited paragraph, Young gets to the heart of what’s wrong with Woods. By packaging free-market economics with theology-based neo-Confederatism, Woods discredits the free market. Thus, I must correct my previous statement that Woods “is as dangerous an enemy of liberty as any leftist.” Woods is the far more dangerous enemy.

This morning an anonymous poster (I assume it’s the same person, though I wonder why that person didn’t state his or her name), send in three comments within a two-minute span. I am happy to respond to those comments:

Here’s a thought: given that Woods’ article on abolitionism is no longer available online, such that you have to use a gimmick to find it, is it possible that he changed his mind over the past 15 years? Especially since he’s on record as saying that the slaves had the right to kill their masters and take their property? Why, apart from your hatred of reason, would you focus only on an article Woods obviously wanted taken down, rather than his easily available archive of articles that makes your interpretation of his work look ridiculous?

Reisman, Richman, and Schiff are all supporters of Woods.

Is it possible that Woods has changed his mind over the years? Why don’t you dig up his old articles praising the Persian Gulf War, too?

I’ve dealt adequately with the “change” in Woods’s views. It is hardly a “gimmick” to see what Woods actually wrote. I will ignore Anonymous’s ad hominem attacks. If Anonymous wishes to cite particular articles of Woods that make my “interpretation of his work look ridiculous,” Anonymous is free to do so. Otherwise I will treat Anonymous’s claim as just another ad hominem and baseless attack. Woods’s old articles “praising the Persian Gulf War” are not relevant to my criticisms of Woods. (If Anonymous thinks they are, Anonymous is free to cite some particular article and explain its relevance.)

The reference to Reisman, Richman, and Schiff pertains to this exchange (which I assume is with the same anonymous poster):

Anonymous said…

“There are plenty of other credible people explaining the economic crisis.”

Really… Name three…

Ari said…

John Allison, Yaron Brook, Richard Salsman, Peter Schiff, George Reisman, Sheldon Richman…

It occurred to me at the time that I was opening myself up for this criticism, but it’s not much of a criticism. Absent any citation from Anonymous, I don’t have much else to say about the matter. Do they endorse (or even know about) the views of Woods that I have criticized? Woods does not gain credibility by a favorable mention by somebody else; the person making the favorable mention loses credibility.

I have saved the important issue for last. Woods has written “that the slaves had the natural right to rise up and kill their masters and confiscate their property.” Does this excuse his defense of the pro-slavery South or his condemnation of the abolitionists? Hardly.

Woods claim is that slaves, who were horribly oppressed, physically beaten and restrained, and often forcibly prevented from gaining an education, had the “natural right to rise up.” No doubt. But all this position allows Woods to do is abstain from committing himself to governmental action to abolish slavery. How magnanimous of Woods, to grant slaves the “right” to “rise up” and be slaughtered! What is relevant in this discussion is not the rights of slaves to rise up, but the rights of slaves to enjoy protection by the government from the slave-holders. But those are precisely the rights that Woods with his neo-Confederate views fails to uphold.

Yesterday I briefly reviewed some of the views of Thomas E. Woods, who will speak at the University of Colorado tomorrow and in Colorado Springs on Saturday. Largely I drew on an article by Eric Muller, who, as I suggested, is not automatically wrong about Woods simply because Muller is a leftist.

I thought it was an interesting irony, given that a jury will soon decide whether the University of Colorado owes Ward Churchill restitution for firing him for academic fraud, that Muller attacked Woods for his Churchillesque foreign policy. (Churchill, you may recall, argued that American foreign policy was to blame for the 9/11 terrorist attacks.) Muller blasts “Dr. Woods’s memorable insistence that the September 11 attacks were ‘bound to’ happen to us because of ‘the barbarism of recent American foreign policy’ in ‘attempt[ing] the hubristic enterprise of running the world -– and not even on Christian principles.'”

I will get to Woods’s essay on foreign policy in due course. But first I want to review another essay by Woods (also cited by Muller) published by the League of the South. The two essays are ideologically connected, it turns out.

Woods’s article, “Dispelling Myths… The Abolitionists,” is no longer available directly through DixieNet.org, the web page of the League of the South (which is a racist, theocratic outfit, as I pointed out yesterday). However, it remains available through Archive.org. The biography with the article states, “Mr. Woods, a graduate student at Columbia University, holds a B.A.in history from Harvard and is a SL Founding member.”

Woods condemned not only the abolitionists but the principles of the Declaration of Independence:

Charles Sumner had equally mischievous plans for postbellum society: to elevate the Declaration of Independence that it might “stand side by side with the Constitution, and enjoy with it coequal authority.” “Full well . . . I know that in other days, when Slavery prevailed . . . there was a different rule of interpretation,” Sumner conceded. This “different rule of interpretation,” which it pleased our Fathers to call “constitutionalism,” was far too restrictive to allow the kind of innovations of which the scheming Sumner dreamed.

The war, he claimed, had established “a new rule of interpretation by which the institutions of our country are dedicated forevermore to Human Rights, and the Declaration of Independenceis made a living letter instead of a promise.” Thus the statement that “all men are created equal,” condemned by John Randolph of Roanoke as a “most pernicious falsehood,” was to become the central organizing principle for the republic. It is to this polluted source that we may trace the scores of crusaders for Equality from forced busing to affirmative action which have been visited upon us ever since. …

Any civilized man must recognize in the abolitionists not noble crusaders whose one flaw was a tendency toward extremism, but utterly reprehensible agitators who put metaphysical abstractions ahead of prudence, charity, and rationality. Indeed, with heroes like this, who needs villains?

Woods argued, first, that some abolitionists were mean, and, second, “that an abstract commitment to Equality and human rights has a way of degenerating into totalitarianism and mass murder.” In essence, Woods argued that the sins of the French condemn human rights as such.

But Woods omitted a couple of key facts. First, whereas some abolitionists may have erred on occasion, the abolitionists accomplished the magnificent goal of abolishing slavery. Shouldn’t that bare fact at some point factor into our evaluation of the abolitionists?

Second, Woods ignored the critical distinctions between the American and French revolutions. The American Founders — those loyal to the Declaration — advocated legal equality — equality before the law — and individual rights for all. This is a far different ideal than egalitarianism, though Woods conflated the two.

I don’t know how Woods’s views have evolved since his years as a graduate student. But Woods’s old essay is profoundly disturbing.

Some will argue that it’s not fair to dredge up Wood’s old writings. However, his more recent writings, while different in substance, share many of the same basic flaws.

In an article published by Pravda (yes, Pravda), Woods discusses the 9/11 attacks.

Woods mocks the view that “the terrorists must hate ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy'” — despite the fact that they have stated as much. He writes, “Pat Buchanan was the only person who warned that the barbarism of recent American foreign policy was bound to lead to a terrorist catastrophe on American soil.” It is American military intrusions, he argues, that “invite terrorist attacks on our citizens and country.” The answer is “extricating the United States from ethnic, religious and historical quarrels that are not ours and which we cannot resolve with any finality.”

To his credit — and this is what distinguishes Woods from Churchill — Woods writes, “I am obviously not suggesting that past U.S. actions somehow justified these unknown savages in their kamikaze attacks on innocent Americans.” Still, Woods is squarely in the “blame America first” camp.

Woods also emphasizes the theological roots of his ideology; he suggests U.S. foreign policy should manifest the “spirit of Catholicism.” He concludes, “God hates the proud. Our leaders have attempted the hubristic enterprise of running the world –- and not even on Christian principles, but on a combination of simple greed and Enlightenment philosophy. That cannot go on forever.”

Woods also approving quotes another professor critical of America’s “Israeli proxy.”

Again Woods ignores the key facts.

First, though U.S. interventionism is a contributer to terrorist activity, the primary cause of Islamic terrorism is the Islamist ideology of theocratic conquest.

Second, while I quite agree that the United States should cease its altruistic military actions around the globe, the United States also needs to protect critical allies, particularly Israel, in the name of American defense. While Israel is hardly a consistently free nation, compared to its neighbors it is a bastion of liberty. Israel has every right to defend itself against its aggressive neighbors, and the United States has every right to help.

Third, trying to resolve some ethnic conflict is hardly the same thing as, say, preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Fourth, as Bush made clear, his foreign policy proceeded on Christian principles as he understood them, which promote the sort of altruistic actions that Woods condemns.

Though the subject is different, Woods makes the same basic error in both essays: he condemns state action as such (particularly if the state in question is the United States), regardless of the standard of individual rights. Despite Woods’s arguments, the abolitionists were right, and the south was wrong, because slavery is morally monstrous. Southern states had no right to maintain slavery, and the south is responsible for the primary evil. Likewise, United States responses to totalitarian aggression and to state sponsored terror are not remotely comparable to that aggression and terror. In both cases, Woods makes a crude “moral equivalency” argument — the abolitionists made some mistakes, therefore they were worse than southern slave holders; the United States government errs in many of its foreign policy decisions and is therefore to blame for Islamist terror.

Woods’s antistate fervor causes him to condemn the abolitionists and the Americans and to downplay or overlook the evil of slave states and Islamic totalitarians. In other words, Woods is the quintessential libertarian.

I was excited when I first heard that Young Americans for Liberty had invited Thomas E. Woods to speak at the University of Colorado, Boulder. I figured that Woods, author of Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse, would have some interesting things to say about the economic crisis. I agree with his general thesis that federal policies caused the crisis and that “bailouts will make things worse.”

Woods will also speak on Saturday, April 4, in Colorado Springs at an event sponsored by the Limited Government Forum. The event will feature other speakers associated with the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

But then a friend pointed me to an article by Eric Muller blasting Woods as a “founding member” of the League of the South. Through archive.org, I found the web page that includes this claim in a biographical note. (I only wish this were an April Fool’s joke.)

Another archived page notes that the League of the South “seeks to protect the historic Anglo-Celtic core culture of the South” and keep that culture from being displaced. The current web page notes that the group “reveres the tenets of our historic Christian faith and acknowledges its supremacy over man-made laws and opinions.” The League “upholds the ontological or spiritual equality of all men before God and the bar of justice, while recognizing and rejoicing in the fact that is has neither been the will of God Almighty nor within the power of human legislation to make any two men mechanically equal.” The group further believes that Southern culture is “structured upon the Biblical notion of hierarchy” and the “natural societal order of superiors and subordinates.” The League of the South is thus racist and theocratic.

Woods wrote to one blogger, “I am in fact not a member of the League of the South, though I did attend a meeting in 1994 when a decentralist organization was said to be forming. I was 21 at that time.” Muller offers several facts indicating the relationship went beyond the attendance of a meeting.

In a review essay for the Mises Institute, Jeffrey Rogers Hummel writes:

Some of the critics [of The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History] have laced their denunciations with ad hominem attacks on Woods. Going beyond his book’s content, they have dredged up what they consider either guilty associations with the League of the South or unconscionable past writings in The Southern Partisan. [Actually it’s the Southern Patriot.] The most egregious offender is Eric Muller. Although Muller in no way qualifies as either a libertarian or conservative, his venomous assaults, descending to the low of Klan baiting, have been frequently referenced by other critics of the book.

Obviously Muller has his own ideological ax to grind, but that doesn’t automatically invalidate his criticisms of Woods. In fact Woods was associated with the League of the South, however loosely. But Muller’s criticisms hardly end with that fact. Hummel himself writes, “Woods clearly wants to tender a neo-Confederate interpretation, in which slavery is shunted into the background as a motive for southern secession.”

So Woods is not a member of the racist and theocratic League of the South, he is only a neo-Confederate who argues the South had the right to secede. How comforting.

Muller points to an article of Woods published by the League of the South; the archived article remains available. Woods wrote that “hard-core northern conservatives have admired Southern society for remaining socially and theologically sound long after John Winthrop’s ‘city on a hill’ had descended into a nightmare of Christian heresies and secular crusading.” He praised the “social harmony and adherence to tradition that characterized the South.” The South, he wrote, “remained stubbornly orthodox in it’s Judeo-Christianity further undermined the myth that the two sections constituted a single nation.” He denounced the Fourteenth Amendment as “incompatible with a federal system.”

I’m all for federalism, but only as a means to individual rights. States do not have “rights” in the fundamental sense of the term. No state that systematically and massively violates individual rights has any “right” to secede from a broader government.

Even disregarding Woods’s past associations, he clearly believes that liberty has its roots in theology and is defined by theology. Thus, it is no surprise that Ron Paul, who has vacillated between a state’s-rights argument against abortion and a federal amendment laying the grounds for outlawing abortion, wrote the foreword to Woods’s latest book.

I do not doubt that Woods has many insights into the financial meltdown. Nor do I doubt that, ultimately, he is as dangerous an enemy of liberty as any leftist.

Bob Barr was the most logical choice for the Libertarian Party (LP), so I was surprised that the Libertarians chose him. They almost didn’t; Barr beat out rival Mary Ruwart only after joining forces with Wayne Allyn Root, who joined Barr’s ticket after dropping out of the presidential run. David Weigel reviews the story for Reason.

But was the Libertarian Party the logical choice for Barr? I might have checked into an independent candidate (though Barr’s record on abortion is worrisome), but I can’t vote for a Libertarian Barr, because the Libertarian Party is such a disaster. Nevertheless, I do think that Barr is Barack Obama’s only hope to win. (I plan to vote for Obama as the best way to register my disgust with McCain.) I don’t think that Barr will make any difference — I predict that Obama is such a weak candidate that McCain will Dukakisize him. Yet Barr could actually make the difference in some states, though I doubt it.

Weigel writes:

Early in the balloting on Sunday [May 25], Barr’s strategists — and the candidate himself — thought the Radical Caucus might have beaten them. … The 25 percent Barr scored on the first ballot was lower than everyone expected. … Barr didn’t steamroll, instead grinding out a series of ties with radical favorite Mary Ruwart before the Las Vegas businessman Root dropped out and sent his support Barr’s way, wrapping up the nomination.

Why didn’t Ruwart win? Known from her work with Advocates for Self-Government, Ruwart, a self-proclaimed anarchist, scared off even some Libertarians with some of her views.

One problem with anarchist Libertarianism (and party anarchists are inherently peculiar) is that it tends toward anti-state reaction, as I’ve argued. For example, the Radical Caucus favors “Radical Abolitionism.” What is it that they want to abolish? Government. “[T]he outright removal of the injustice and interference of the State is our ultimate goal. … The Libertarian Party is the only political party that traditionally advocates for real freedom from government interference.”

This is untenable. When somebody is trying to mug me, I’d really like some “government interference.” Likewise, if a hostile foreign power tries to kill me or invade my country, I’d like the government to take strong military action.

In general, the proper and necessary function of government is to protect individual rights. While the Radical Caucus mentions rights, it establishes no means to protect them. (I understand the anarchist conception of competing defense agencies, and I toyed with the notion for several years, but the anarchist view ultimately is incoherent and unworkable). Abolishing the government is hardly the same thing as protecting individual rights, and in fact contradicts it.

Ruwart’s anarchism led her to some outrageous positions, which were exploited by Barr’s supporters. As Weigel reviews, Ruwart writes in her book Short Answers to the Tough Questions:

Children who willingly participate in sexual acts have the right to make that decision as well, even if it’s distasteful to us personally. Some children will make poor choices just as some adults do in smoking and drinking to excess. When we outlaw child pornography, the prices paid for child performers rise, increasing the incentives for parents to use children against their will.

Ruwart’s position is ridiculous and abhorrent, yet it is typical of anti-state reactionaries. To them, arresting child pornographers is “government interference.” While some anarchists may argue that competing defense agencies might defend children from pornographers, often the reactionary element wins out, as it has with Ruwart in this case.

Ruwart’s position is wrong, first, because children do not acquire their full rights till adulthood (because not fully rational), and thus they do not have the right to make every decision that an adult can make. While it might be true that the prohibition of child pornography increases prices, the same can be said about the prohibition of murder for hire. The argument about prices is a useful side-issue in the drug-war debate, but that’s only because producing and consuming drugs do not inherently violate rights. Murder and child pornography do inherently violate rights. If Ruwart has since revised her position, I have not read about it.

So Bob Barr’s claim to fame now is that he barely beat an anarchist who defended the legality of child pornography. Barr may have lent the Libertarian Party his credibility, but the Libertarian Party has lent Barr its insanity. In this election, a vote for Bob Barr is a vote for the Libertarian Party, and that is not an organization that I wish to promote. (I learned my lesson thoroughly after working for the state LP a few years ago.)

In his May 31 column, Dave Kopel reviews the media coverage of the party’s convention. Unfortunately, he fails to get to the heart of the debate within the LP:

One piece [by Cara DeGette] detailed the fight between Libertarian pragmatists and fundamentalists; the former wanted a platform that could appeal to the 16 percent of the U.S. population that is generally libertarian in outlook, while the latter wanted a platform that set forth maximal Libertarian goals. For example, the pragmatists wanted a platform promising to abolish the federal income tax and the Internal Revenue Service, while the fundamentalists wanted a platform demanding an end to all taxation.

Yet the problem with the anarchists is not that they are interested in fundamentals; it is that their fundamentals are wrong. The pragmatists are thus only reacting to the anti-state reactionaries. The result is that one wing endorses untenable principles, while the other wing eschews principles.

Kopel also conflates the debate over principles with the debate over strategy. Ultimately, I too believe that civil society should ban the initiation of force, of which taxation is an instance. But that doesn’t mean that I do not also advocate the repeal of the income tax. Incrementalism is compatible with radicalism. I would be thrilled to live in a society in which a progressive income tax topped out at four percent. Hell, I’d be thrilled if we could merely phase out the Social Security tax, which devastates the working poor and lower-middle class, even if the income tax remained untouched. I am not against taking a bite of liberty merely because I cannot now have the whole enchilada. If politics is the art of the possible, the goal of the radical is to expand what’s possible by influencing cultural debate at the deepest level.

Unfortunately, by allying himself with a party that tends toward reaction against government at the cost of individual rights, Barr has set himself up to possibly influence the election without improving the long-term prospects for liberty.

Ironically, after spending many years as a libertarian who flirted with “anarcho-capitalism,” I was recently criticized in a letter to the Rocky Mountain News by a libertarian anarchist. I’ll take that as a sign of my progress. John Chamberlain of Longmont writes for a letter dated February 14:

It’s a shame when someone gets so close the truth without quite reaching it.

Ari Armstrong (“Loading the dice against responsibility,” Speakout, Jan. 18) scores many good points against Rocky Mountain News columnist Paul Campos, especially in explaining how government activism actually hurts the poor.

But he also writes, “Government can be effective when it sticks to protecting people’s rights – that is, preventing crime and protecting people and their property from violence.” The problem is that governments, in their current form, depend on taking people’s property by violence for their very existence. They are self-contradictory. Their acts of theft (which are euphemized as “taxation”) are considered crimes if anyone else does them.

Furthermore, modern governments prevent anyone else from competing against them within the same geographic area.

Governments performs many useful services, but they shouldn’t be monopolies. Why would anyone support monopoly? Government should be a voluntary subscription service. Let’s take “government by the consent of the governed” seriously!

I am quite familiar with the notion of competing defense agencies, having read the works of Murray Rothbard, David Friedman, and others. (I’ve also written about Randy Barnett’s “polycentric” legal system.)

I essentially agree with Ayn Rand (who, by the way, does not conflate the issues of taxation and geographic monopoly), that competing defense agencies would devolve into violence. Rand writes:

[S]uppose Mr. Smith, a customer of Government A, suspects that his next-door neighbor, Mr. Jones, a customer of Government B, has robbed him; a squad of Police A proceeds to Mr. Jones’ house and is met at the door by a squad of Police B, who declare that they do not accept the validity of Mr. Smith’s complaint and do not recognize the authority of Government A. What happens then? You take it from there.

The typical response is that the two defense agencies will seek arbitration and reach a peaceable solution. But there are two problems with such a reply. First, it manifest a typical libertarian failing of assuming universal rationality in motives. (This is the same failing that leads many libertarians to conclude that Islamic terrorists would become peaceable if only the United States did not antagonize them.) Yet, as world history demonstrates, people do not always reach peaceable solutions that would be in their “rational self-interests;” quite the opposite.

Second, if the competing defense agencies all agree to binding arbitration, then they have formed the very sort of “monopoly” that motivated the criticism in the first place. (I think this is basically along the lines of what Robert Nozick had to say on the matter.) To make such cooperation work, defense agencies would necessarily have to subject themselves to a monopoly power. And if a “competing” agency tried to defy those rules, its members would be arrested and thrown into jail. Sort of like what happens today. As “anarcho-capitalists” are fond of pointing out, today most peace officers are privately hired. Yet they are subject — and quite properly so — to the government’s rules. Once “competing” agents of force agree to create and obey a central authority, they are no longer “competing” in the relevant sense. And, once they make this move, they must consider the optimal structure of government — for which no better alternative has been found than a constitutional republic.

I was looking up Radley Balko’s comments on a drug-war raid, when I came across this post about Ron Paul, which links to this article from The New Republic. I do not doubt that Paul deeply regrets the comments in his old newsletters condemning Martin Luther King, Jr., and tolerating David Duke, whether Paul himself wrote those words or not, but, regardless of Paul’s sincerity of repentance, his campaign for president is dead (even though few people ever seriously expected him to win). The great tragedy is that Paul is very often right about issues involving economics and civil liberties, and unfortunately the revelations will undermine his efforts to promote those ideas.

Craig Bolton left a comment beneath my post, “Recovering from Rationalism.” While Bolton claims to defend libertarianism, his claims actually demonstrate what is wrong with libertarianism.

I do not wish to address Bolton’s bizarre claim that “there is no such thing as ‘induction’.” I don’t even know what he could possibly mean by such a statement. So let’s move on to his politics.

Bolton wishes to separate voluntarist society from politics and political ideology. Opposed to “society” is government, which “is essentially about coercive force,” even though government “may be useful” in suppressing violent individuals.

Thus, Bolton affirms that libertarianism is precisely what Objectivists say it is: a political or social goal explicitly detached from a moral theory.

However, it is impossible to define what properly falls within the bounds of voluntarism without a political ideology that flows from a moral ideology. Following are just a few examples.

* If a 10 year old boy “voluntarily” agrees to have sex with a 40 year old man, is that okay with libertarians? This issue has in fact been seriously debated in libertarian circles. Yet, apart from political and moral theory, libertarians have no way to resolve the issue. Objectivists, though, have a ready response that is consistent with the common view: the concept of voluntarism rests on the rationality of adult people. A child has not yet developed into a fully rational person. Therefore, a child is not in the position to consent to certain things, such as sex, marriage, business contracts, and the purchase of dangerous objects. The extent to which libertarians answer the question (in a non-crazy way) is the extent to which they abandon libertarianism.

* Let us say that you are throwing a barbecue party in your back yard, and either there is no fence or the gate is open. Then an uninvited religious nut comes into the yard and starts delivering a sermon. Is this “voluntary?” Did the nut initiate any force? If so, how? All he did is go on a walk and start talking. Where’s the force? Is the answer property rights? But “Libertarianism is not about… asserting that ‘people have rights’.” A theory of property rights requires an overarching political theory that rests on a moral theory as to why people have a right to their property. And any reasonable person will call the police — agents of the government — if the nut refuses to leave.

* What about people who “voluntarily” offer copyrighted music for “free” downloading? The legitimacy of copyright is often debated among libertarians.

* Does abortion limit the voluntary behavior of an embryo, or does a ban on abortion limit the voluntary behavior of the mother? Libertarianism has no answer.

Bolton also shows that libertarianism, as I’ve argued, tends to descend into anti-state reactionism. For Bolton, coercive government is fundamentally at odds with voluntary society, even though he thinks that government can be useful. Because libertarians dismiss moral theory as the foundation for politics, they assume that everything would be fine, if only nasty government would leave people alone. Yet libertarians are inconsistent about this, because most of them realize at some level that we need a government to protect our rights, and that we do need a moral and political theory of rights. The reactionism of libertarianism manifests in a variety of ways, from conspiracy theories about 9/11 to anarchism. Libertarians who do not hate government tend to become pragmatists, for they have already dismissed moral principles as the basis for politics.

I understand that this post is brief, so any reader who does not follow my arguments here is encouraged to read my lengthier critiques, starting with “More Libertarians Against Liberty,” which in turn links to additional articles.

A condensed version of Peter Schwartz’s essay, “Libertarianism: The Perversion of Liberty,” is published in Ayn Rand’s The Voice of Reason.