History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.
There's nothing "strange and novel" about it. It's a form of communitarianism - dare I say bordering on fascism - wherein there's no morality outside of the collective and no moral obligations owed to anyone who is not a part of the collective. It's dressed up in nice-nice talk about social contract. And it's NOT libertarian, so you may find it captivating and interesting, but please don't try to sell the story that it's in anyway libertarian.
Lysander Spooner -
12/7/2004
1. Were you being disingenuous when you said you didn't put the IHS contact info at the end of your post to get him fired? I wonder, since your subsequent posts have justified at least the notion of him being fired over this.
2. Who are YOU to say ANYTHING about the nature of libertarianism. I don't know all the linkages - but I do understand that antiwar.com is linked in some way to the Mises Institute and Lew Rockwell. Cerainly there's enough crank talk on lewrockwell.com to make one wonder whether it isn't just a site to pimp for the confederacy. I'd write a complaint the next time someone writes admiringly of Sam Francis or Jared Taylor on lewrockwell.com, but it wouldn't do any good.
I, too, am attracted to the libertarianism that is cosmpolitan. The LAST place I'd look for that sort of libertarianism is antiwar.com or lewrockwell.com.
Lysander Spooner -
12/7/2004
Caricature? I'll provide the links to Jared Taylor and Sam Francis and Hans Herman Hoppe all day long. That you lecture at that place is your choice.
Who is Sam Francis - fired from the Washington Times, and then subsequently editor of the Informer, the newsletter of the Council of Conservative Citizens... www.cofcc.org
Who is Jared Taylor - editor of American Renaissance, one step up from Der Stuermer.
And Hans Hermann Hoppe... well... he's the anti-immigration libertarian.
My point is that Matt Barganier has some nerve defining what is and what isn't libertarian...
Lysander Spooner -
12/7/2004
Their argument most decidedly does not TURN on tax-funded benefits like welfare. That's absolutely wrong. Hoppe's argument turns on the bizarre notion that if the borders were private, there'd be no movement because private property owners could exclude whomever they like. Given that the borders are not privately owned, he thinks government should default to a closed border solution. He has said quite explicitly that the argument does not turn on the welfare state:
"It would also be wrongheaded to attack the above case for free immigration by pointing out that because of the existence of a welfare state, immigration has become to a significant extent the immigration of welfare-bums, who, even if the United States, for instance, is below her optimal population point, do not increase but rather decrease average living standards. For this is not an argument against immigration but against the welfare state. To be sure, the welfare state should be destroyed, root and branch. However, in any case the problems of immigration and welfare are analytically distinct problems, and they must be treated accordingly."
You need to read Hoppe more closely before you say stuff like this. This argument flies in the face of centuries of liberal thought.
Lysander Spooner -
12/7/2004
Rod,
You're a nice guy, and super smart. I've provided the link. Read the article carefully. This is not an argument that turns on the nature of the welfare state and access to public roads. This is an argument that turns on who owns the borders.
If you want to delude yourself that what Hoppe is really critiquing is the welfare state (when he explicitly separates out the two issues) then that's your business.
Others can read him and judge.
Quotes from Herr Professor Hoppe, a German with a sinecure at a state university (what a welfare bum!):
I've quoted more below, including some choice bits about who kinds of people should be allowed to enter the country (hint, hint, it's not the Bangladeshis!):
"Moreover, with the establishment of a government and state borders, immigration takes on an entirely new meaning. Immigration becomes immigration by foreigners across state borders, and the decision as to whether or not a person should be admitted no longer rests with private property owners or associations of such owners but with the government as the ultimate sovereign of all domestic residents and the ultimate super-owner of all their properties."
"The current situation in the United States and in Western Europe has nothing whatsoever to do with "free" immigration. It is forced integration, plain and simple, and forced integration is the predictable outcome of democratic – one-man-one-vote – rule. Abolishing forced integration requires a de-democratization of society, and ultimately the abolition of democracy."
"What should one hope for and advocate as the relatively correct immigration policy, however, as long as the democratic central state is still in place and successfully arrogates the power to determine a uniform national immigration policy? The best one may hope for, even if it goes against the "nature" of a democracy and thus is not very likely to happen, is that the democratic rulers act as if they were the personal owners of the country and as if they had to decide who to include and who to exclude from their own personal property (into their very own houses). This means following a policy of utmost discrimination: of strict discrimination in favor of the human qualities of skill, character, and cultural compatibility.
More specifically, it means distinguishing strictly between "citizens" (naturalized immigrants) and "resident aliens" and excluding the latter from all welfare entitlements. It means requiring as necessary, for resident alien status as well as for citizenship, the personal sponsorship by a resident citizen and his assumption of liability for all property damage caused by the immigrant. It implies requiring an existing employment contract with a resident citizen; moreover, for both categories but especially that of citizenship, it implies that all immigrants must demonstrate through tests not only (English) language proficiency, but all-around superior (above-average) intellectual performance and character structure as well as a compatible system of values – with the predictable result of a systematic pro-European immigration bias."
First, I disagree with Micah. Borders' arguments are self-evidently un-libertarian, but not because of the morality of boiling innocents. Investigate further, and what you'll find is a communitarian/fascism at root. And that's troublesome.
However, there are exceptional circumstances when it would be justified (under a consequentialist scheme) to boil an innocent child of a terrorist in order to get the terrorist not to set of a bomb to kill 1 million other innocents.
Obviously, this is going to be problematic for a rights theorist, but that still doesn't make it un-libertarian.
> Anyway, whether or not it's self-evidently un-
> libertarian, I think it's self-evidently wrong, which
> is really more important.
That may be true, but no one ever said (all forms of) libertarianism are right.
Lysander Spooner -
12/7/2004
Thanks, Rod, for conceding my point that Hoppe's argument does not turn on the welfare state. It turns on the curious fact that in a world of nation states, the gov't owns the border, has a "super-ownership" over all property, and can "force" integration.
So in the real world - the second best solution, as you term it - Hoppe is anti-immigration and his position contravenes almost all classical liberal/libertarian writers for the past two centuries.
All this gets back to the original point: how can people who associate with the Mises Institute and Lew Rockwell (and notice, you didn't respond to my other post about the racists who have been admiringly referred to on lewrockwell.com) claim to speak for libertarianism. The mind boggles.
Lysander Spooner -
12/7/2004
I agree entirely that Barganier is guilty of ad hominem and bad form. That's clear. And frankly, par for the course for antiwar.com and lewrockwell.com and so forth.
The most charitable thing that can be said about Max Borders' boiling statement is that it was poorly written.
I'm as hardcore as the next libertarian, but could conceive of emergency cases in which torture would be morally justifiable. Consider this admittedly outlandish example: a terrorist has a nuke that will kill 1 million in NYC. I have the terrorist's 5 year old child, whom I know to be dear to the terrorist. You can see where this goes.
(I do not want to get into a debate about my consequentialism, but simply to show that even the most libertarian among us can justify torture in certain circumstances.)
But the problem is that his larger American exceptionalism isn't identifiably libertarian. His blanket denial of rights, or rules that respect others who live outside of his "social contract" etc. is not lib't.
That having by said, you all might recall the great classical liberal - although not thorough-going - J.S. Mill's essay on non-interventionism. It's got some stuff in there about barbarians... we call them rogue states... and what we, civilized folks, might do to them.
I know many of the folks at the IHS. This shouldn't need to be said, but they are libertarian. And whatever I think of Max's views on foreign policy, he is otherwise libertarian. So ignore the comments about "not the IHS that we loved..." stuff.
Roderick T. Long -
12/7/2004
Hi Micha,
I'll reply in due course, but I first want to understand why the system is deleting so many past messages before I risk penning some long and scintillatingly brilliant reply that may vanish into cyberlimbo.
Roderick T. Long -
12/7/2004
For one thing, all of Lysander Spooner's messages (and my replies to them) are gone. For another, several of my exchanges with Micha, including my longwinded analysis of Hoppe on immigration, are also gone. Was gibt?
Roderick T. Long -
12/7/2004
Hey, last night there were a lot more messages on this thread, including a number of mine, and today they've just vanished! What happened?
Aeon J. Skoble -
12/7/2004
"Nor is ethical subjectivism, contractarianism, or granting more rights to Americans than to non-Americans (as all minarchists do) un-libertarian."
Ethical subjectivism and contractarianism aren't per se un-libertarian views, that's true - but it's either ignorant or ill-mannered to argue (as he does) as if all real libertarians hold these views.
> But then the government, by eminent domain, seizes the
> land next to your house and turns it into a public
> thoroughfare.
Well, sure. But it's a far cry from this limited use of eminent domain to a condemnation all public roads in toto. (Of course, we can condemn public roads for other reasons.) And how often do situations like this occur? And insofar as they do, again, this is not an argument against immigration but against eminent domain.
There is something decidedly illiberal about Hoppe's position on immigration, even if it is excused as merely second best. Now, to be sure, there is something decidedly illiberal about Border's position on torture, too. But if we can tolerate Hoppe's discussion without flashing our more-libertarian-than-thou cards and calling for his excommunication, surely we can do the same for Borders, no?
Micha Ghertner -
12/7/2004
I apologize for mischaracterizing your argument; it has been a while since I read it. It was not my intent to mischaracterize (nor was it forseen).
I don't see an important moral distinction between foreseen and intended killing in this case. Maybe it's just my consequentialism talking, but it seems to me that if a group of people decide to bomb a munitions factory in the process of a legitimate war of self-defense, and they know that the bombing has a high probability of collateral damage, the deaths of these innocent noncombatants are both forseen and intended given the available options, even though the ultimate target is the munitions factory and not the civilians.
If a result is foreseen, an action taken with the knowledge that this particular result will occur with high probability is rightly described as intended. It makes no sense to say that this is an unintended consequence when we know beforehand what the result will be. If we know beforehand that raising the minimum wage will cause unemployment, and yet we do so anyway in order to increase the wages of the employed, we cannot excuse our action by calling the foreseen unemployment an unintended consequence. We knew what consequence to expect; therefore it was an intended consequence, even though our ultimate goal was to help people.
> My point was that minarchists presumably believe that
> every person is entitled to such services from his own
> government; so the right is universal, not partial.
Hmm. Could Max excuse his statement by claiming that since every person is entitled to protection against torture from his own government, but not other governments, the right against torture by government is universal? I think not. Neither can minarchists, who know that people who live in the third world do not enjoy the same positive, taxpayer-funded legal protections we do, claim that these protections are universal. There is still something inherently nationalistic about minarchism - about the belief that those lucky enough to be born with U.S. citizenship deserve protection paid for with U.S. tax dollars, while those unlucky enough to be born with Zimbabwean citizenship do not. At best, this is a difference in degree, not a difference in kind, with Borders' view that U.S. citizens deserve more legal protections against torture than foreigners.
Roderick T. Long -
12/7/2004
> and notice, you didn't respond
> to my other post about the racists
> who have been admiringly referred
> to on lewrockwell.com
Well, we hashed through this sort of topic a couple of months ago, and my position now remains what it was then: see here, here, and here.
Roderick T. Long -
12/7/2004
And my point was that describing LRC as "just a site to pimp for the confederacy" implies an ideological uniformity and party-line orthodoxy there that is, in fact, nonexistent.
Roderick T. Long -
12/7/2004
Well, suppose you don't want any Nazis living next door to you. So you pay your neighbours not to rent to Nazis. They agree. All is well and good. But then the government, by eminent domain, seizes the land next to your house and turns it into a public thoroughfare. The Nazis drive up and down it all day, chanting their Nazi slogans. You complain to the government, and they say, "this street we'be vuilt is public property, anyone can use it."
Have your rights been violated? yes, i think so.
Do you have a right not to live next to Nazis? No, not thus simply described. (If you'd had no contract with yout neighbors, and they had voluntarily brought in Nazis, you;d be in the same predicament.)
But while you have no right not to live next to nazis full stop, you do have a right not to live next to Nazis so long as your neighbors agree. And the government has violated that right. So I do think Hoppe is technically right that public roads involved forced integration. I just think Hoppe has exaggerated the weight of this evil compared with other evils.
Similarly with Hoppe's stand on monarchy. He's not in favour of monarchy; he's an anarchist. But he thinks that, as second-best solutions go, monarchy is better than democracy. Now I think that in his writings on monarchy Hoppe has identified some genuine respects in which monarchy is preferable to democracy, incentive-wise. I just happen to think that those respects are often outweighed by other respects in which monarchy is likely to be usually worse than democracy, incentive-wise. But as with the immigration case, this is a matter of different weights assigned to candidates for second-best. However, Hoppe and I agree (well, not completely, but more or less) on the best system and the principles leading thereto.
Micha Ghertner -
12/7/2004
I don't see why public roads entail "forced domestic integration." True, public roads make travel easier. But then so do helicopters. Would Hoppe criticize helicopter manufacturers for helping "undesirables," as you so euphemistically put it, gain even better access to all private property, and thereby make it impossible, or anyway much more difficult, for people to form voluntary proprietary communities that enable them to avoid contact with groups they don't like? Public roads aren't stopping Hoppe and other like-minded bigots from buying up large tracts of land and forming intentional private communities that prohibit "undesirables" from entering.
He has a better case with anti-discrimination laws. But then, as Hoppe himself has argued, this is not an argument against immigration but against anti-discrimination laws. Allowing current "undesirable" U.S. citizens to have children also involves some element of forced integration, and yet we don't hear Hoppe calling for reproductive controls (at least, not to my knowledge).
Roderick T. Long -
12/7/2004
> No, I don't think it does. Elsewhere, you have
> noted your agreement with Rand's justification
> for large-scale war.
Um, no I haven't.
> Recall the case of the baby
> strapped to the terrorist.
That example of mine was conceding a (minor, unusual) exception to the principle I was defending, which was a ban on collateral damage. And my example made no concession to the direct targeting of the innocent. The main purpose of my argument was to reject the Randian argument overall, while making a slight concession to it in a minor case.
> By shooting the terrorist, this person
> has chosen to violate the rights of the
> baby for the greater good.
I disagree. The terrorist has dragged the baby into the shooter's boundary zone. On my view the right of self-defense has to do primarily with boundary-crossing, not with guilt or innocence.
> Once one accepts that intentionally killing an
> innocent noncombatant is sometimes acceptable,
> complaining about torture is just haggling over
> price.
I agree. But I accept the distinction between foreseen and intended killing, and I have not endorsed intended killing; in the baby case it is not one's aim to kill the baby.
> And even if one accepts the strained Randian
> argument, one could apply the same reasoning
> to torture: the terrorist made me do it, so its his
> fault.
Again, this is analogous only if one denies the foreseen/intended distinction.
> Yes. All minarchists believe that their fellow
> citizens are entitled to positive rights to police and
> military protection that non-citizens are not entitled to.
My point was that minarchists presumably believe that every person is entitled to such services from his own government; so the right is universal, not partial.
Micha Ghertner -
12/7/2004
Dammit, I wrote a really, really long reply and then promptly hit backspace and lost it all. Let me try again.
>Torturing innocent people, non-aggressors, surely counts as >self-evidently un-libertarian?
No, I don't think it does. Elsewhere, you have noted your agreement with Rand's justification for large-scale war. Recall the case of the baby strapped to the terrorist.
I find this justification unconvincing from a natural rights perspective. The shooter still has a choice: he can kill the terrorist and the baby, or allow the terrorist to kill or enslave him. In one case, the baby lives; in the other, the baby dies. By shooting the terrorist, this person has chosen to violate the rights of the baby for the greater good. No amount of handwaving can shift the blame for this act entirely from the shooter to the terrorist. True, the terrorist ultimately set into motion the series of events which led to this terrible choice. But it is still a choice.
Once one accepts that intentionally killing an innocent noncombatant is sometimes acceptable, complaining about torture is just haggling over price. And even if one accepts the strained Randian argument, one could apply the same reasoning to torture: the terrorist made me do it, so its his fault.
>There's nothing self-evidently un-libertarian about any >particular philosophical basis for defending >libertarianism. But the conclusions defended have to fall >within some range to be libertarian, no?
Yes. And Max's conclusions, at least as far as this controversy is concerned, fall within the libertarian range. On the other hand, those who call for perpetual war for perpetual peace (as some "libertarian hawks" do), fall outside the libertarian range, because turning the U.S. government into the world's policeman can in no way be defended as a libertarian conclusion.
>Do all minarchists do that? Even minarchists who aren't >Americans?
>But as much as I disagree with the anti-immigration >position, boiling people alive still seems worse to me >than preventing people from crossing a border.
That may be so. (Although I might be willing to boil one baby alive in exchange for removing all immigration restrictions. It would almost certainly result in a net decrease of torture.)
Regardless, it is important to note that Max Borders was not advocating boiling people alive, but was making a metaphysical point about ethics.
Roderick T. Long -
12/7/2004
With regard to Hoppe's argument, one needs to distinguish two questions. One is: what is the best immigration policy? The other is: what is the second-best immigration policy?
Hoppe's view on the best immigration policy is uncontroversially libertarian: each person controls access to his or her property, letting in or excluding whomever he pleases. End of story.
The controversy concerns the second-best immigration policy. Given government as it stands, which is preferable: open borders or closed borders? All parties to this dispute can agree, I take it, that both policies violate rights. The question is which way of violating rights is least objectionable.
Why does Hoppe think an open-borders policy violates rights? Hoppe says quite clearly, in the article you cite, that when governments "take control of existing roads" and "produce even more roads to gain even better access to all private property," they thereby make it impossible, or anyway much more difficult, for people to form voluntary proprietary communities that enable them to avoid contact with groups they don't like -- something they could do more easily in a free society. The public roads system thus "involves forced domestic integration (artificial desegregation of separate localities)." And this is a rights-violation, because people who could avoid contact with "undesirables" in a free society are prevented by government coercion from doing so. Whether or not they ought to want to avoid such contact, the fact is that they have a right to avoid it (via private communities) and public roads do interfere with that right. And open immigration, by increasing the number and variety of people who can use public roads, does compound that violation. Moreover, governments also pass anti-discrimination laws that "open even the physical access and entrance to everyone's property to everyone else," thus compounding that violation still more.
Surely Hoppe is right about all of that. Given public roads, anti-discrimination laws, etc., open immigration does violate some rights. That much a pro-immigration libertarian can certainly grant.
Of course immigration restrictions also violate rights. And Hoppe says so, again in the very article you cite: open borders, he says, commit the rights-violation of "forced integration," but closed borders commit the corresponding rights-violation of "forced exclusion." Hoppe is against both policies. And so am I. His favourite solution is to reject both policies in favour of anarchy. So is mine.
The difference is that Hoppe and I disagree about the second-best solution; we disagree about which rights-violating policy -- open borders or closed borders -- is least bad. And a major reason for the difference is that we have radically different views about culture. Since I don't remotely share Hoppe's views about various national groups or his worries about cultural contamination, the rights-violation of not allowing certain prejudiced groups to avoid contact with people they don't like strikes me as fairly trivial compared with the rights-violations involved in immigration restrictions; so if I have to choose I'll choose the former over the latter. But all of Hoppe's cultural preferences, however much I disagree with them, come in, not as reasons for preferring a closed-borders state to a pure libertarian system, but as reasons for preferring a closed-borders state to an open-borders state.
Roderick T. Long -
12/7/2004
> I agree, Roderick, but neither is torture
> self-evidently un-libertarian.
Torturing innocent people, non-aggressors, surely counts as self-evidently un-libertarian?
Anyway, whether or not it's self-evidently un-libertarian, I think it's self-evidently wrong, which is really more important.
> Nor is ethical subjectivism, contractarianism
There's nothing self-evidently un-libertarian about any particular philosophical basis for defending libertarianism. But the conclusions defended have to fall within some range to be libertarian, no?
> granting more rights to Americans than to
> non-Americans (as all minarchists do)
Do all minarchists do that? Even minarchists who aren't Americans?
> I have great respect for the Mises Institute,
> and you in particular. (I met you at the last
> Mises U.) But I find their anti-immigration
> stance much more offensive than anything
> Max Borders ever said.
Thanks for the kind words. But as much as I disagree with the anti-immigration position, boiling people alive still seems worse to me than preventing people from crossing a border.
Roderick T. Long -
12/7/2004
First of all, I was taking about libertarian anti-immigration arguments generally (which often do rely heavily on the welfare argument), not Hoppe specifically. Second, I didn't mention welfare alone, but "tax-funded benefits like welfare and public roads." If you actually read the rest of the Hoppe article you cite here, you'll see that Hoppe's article turns crucially on public roads and government property, and other such governmental interventions. Criticise him all you want, but criticise what he actually wrote.
Micha Ghertner -
12/7/2004
I agree, Roderick, but neither is torture self-evidently un-libertarian. Nor is ethical subjectivism, contractarianism, or granting more rights to Americans than to non-Americans (as all minarchists do) un-libertarian. These are all issues with answers that do not follow directly from libertarian first principles (or even if they do, there is enough room within the broad definition of libertarianism to describe those who disagree).
I have great respect for the Mises Institute, and you in particular. (I met you at the last Mises U.) But I find their anti-immigration stance much more offensive than anything Max Borders ever said.
Yet despite this disagreement, I wouldn't try to use their beliefs on immigration as a way to get them fired or reprimanded, as Barganier tried to do with Borders. That was simply bad form, no matter which way you look at it.
Roderick T. Long -
12/7/2004
As I said above, I don't agree with the anti-immigration argument that some of my friends at lewrockwell.com make. But come on, you've hardly described their argument fairly. Their argument turns crucially on immigrants' access to tax-funded benefits like welfare, public roads, etc. I don't buy the argument, but it's not self-evidently un-libertarian.
Roderick T. Long -
12/7/2004
I'm a LewRockwell.com columnist, and a regular lecturer at Mises Institute events. I'm also a vocal pro-immigration, pro-feminist, pro-multicultural, anti-religious-right, anti-Confederacy left-libertarian -- see my website. So I have a bit of trouble finding your caricature of these organisations convincing.
Micha Ghertner -
12/7/2004
If using the coercive power of government to keep peaceful immigrants out of the United States best served the interests of the American people, then it would be neither be moral or immoral.
Whoops, we just eliminated nearly all of the people associated with lewrockwell.com
Matt Barganier -
12/6/2004
A commonly accepted ideal (one that I share) holds the university to be a place of unfettered debate, where, so long as standards of scholarship are maintained, anything goes. Thus, in the economics department, it's perfectly fine (even desirable) to have a Marxist, a Keynesian, and a Misesian; in the history department, a professor who reveres Abraham Lincoln and another who thinks him the root of all evil; in the philosophy department, one who supports outright infanticide and another who believes that rights begin at conception, etc. According to this John Stuart Mill approach, all ideas – good and bad, lovely and repugnant – will slug it out, and the best will emerge not only triumphant, but strengthened by the combat.
Fine. But ideological organizations are supposed to promote certain ideas and fight (or at least discard) others. Their responsibility is to their avowed program and the donors who support that program. Let's take the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). No matter what you think of the ASPCA, you will likely agree that it has an obligation to its financial backers to promote its stated principles, just as Dell Computers has an obligation to deliver on its promises to its customers. To do otherwise would entail mismanagement or even fraud.
Now, let's say that Ray holds a prominent position at the ASPCA. Ray announces that cockfighting and bear-baiting may in fact be acceptable. Ray doesn't say this in a bar, or write it in his diary, or even jot it in an e-mail. He publishes it in a global forum under his own name. Is it not OK for supporters or potential supporters of the ASPCA to ask just what the hell is going on?
Granted, Ray may be able to separate his own views from his work. Perhaps after a hard day of fighting animal testing, he just likes to unwind by sneering at the conventional wisdom on rooster mutilation. Next morning, he's up screeching about fur coats to the best of his ability. Of course, if he publicly takes a whizz on values dear to his employers, i.e., ASPCA donors, they may have good reason to suspect that he's not doing his best to promote their agenda, or that he's even subverting it. But that's for his supervisors to decide. Ray isn't the issue; the ASPCA's credibility and accountability to its supporters is.
Back to libertarianism: it is not Stalinist, as some dramatic folks insist, to believe that certain issues should be off the table for libertarian organizations. I'm open to correction here, but I doubt that Cato staffers waste much time debating the merits of gun control, sodomy laws, or the war on drugs. I doubt that Reason would consider printing an essay that claimed, ""If incarcerating potheads best served the interests of the American people, then it would neither be moral or immoral." Ideological coherence aside, there are opportunity costs to consider. I'm sure Dell's shareholders would be horrified to learn that Dell engineers spend their days building a better abacus, not improving the laptop.
But, you say, Ray is different! He may find animal abuse debatable, and even write about it on the Web, but he does so on his own time. True. And I'm sure most ASPCA supporters would be satisfied just to hear the front office say that, although they do not interfere with employees' off-duty advocacy, they most certainly do consider cockfighting a moral issue.
Aeon J. Skoble -
12/6/2004
“I ignore Just War Theory largely due to the fact of its obsolescence when applied to issues of 21st Century global terrorism.”
To call JWT obsolescent is to drastically overstate the case. It’s still true, e.g., that parties need to have a just cause and so on. Indeed, it’s precisely with reference to classical JWT that we can articulate objections to terrorism: terrorism violates, among other things, JWT standards of target and weapons discrimination.
““Real rights are conferred by political institutions” is not the same as saying “real rights are conferred by a sovereign.” The former expresses the complex relationship in a social contract between agents, their laws, and their government. So, yes, they are both conferred and protected by such institutions, unless you are one of these anarcho-capitalists who lives in a fantasy world where private Team Americas will go off and protect us from the baddies.”
This passage assumes or implies (a) that anarcho-capitalists are correctly characterized by their having such fantasies, (b) that anarcho-capitalists aren’t sensible, (c) that proper, sensible, non-anarchist libertarians are contractarians, and (d) natural-rights theorists can’t really be libertarians. Not only are all of these false, they’d be easily recognized as false by anyone who has studied libertarian thought. Assuming that Borders has in fact studied libertarian thought, it follows that he is willfully caricaturing those who disagree with him.
“If boiling people alive best served the interests of the American people, then it would neither be moral or immoral.”
That’s a non-sequitur. What sort of position is this? An ethically non-cognitivist, yet social-contractarian libertarianism? That’s illogical. If non-cognitivism were right, it would be pretty hard to defend libertarianism (or anything else), especially by appeal to social-contract principles. On any kind of moral realist view, boiling people alive is either moral or immoral (fairly sure it’s the latter), regardless of any odd claims about what serves the interests of the people.
“it doesn’t match up against any grand moral standard etched into a Libertarian Rosetta Stone.”
More caricature. Pure rhetoric. Is there any actual argumentation deployed against moral realism or in favor of ethical non-cognitivism? No.
“To momentarily digress into pop-philosophical obscurantism, it’s intersubjectively “wrong,” not objectively wrong (i.e. politically circumscribed).”
Obscurantism is the right tag – this is a nonsense claim. What could it possibly mean to say that the definition of “objectively wrong” is “politically circumscribed”? I hope it’s obvious that this is a relativistic standard – what was politically circumscribed in 1930s Germany, or 1920s America, certainly wasn’t “objectively” right or wrong.
“My position with reference to Logan's Nozick citation is that libertarians tend to be naïve about rights and employ an unsustainable rights theory, generally (unless they’re contractarian like me).”
Tend to be? To whom, exactly, is he referring? Name the names. This is more straw-manning. Bad enough that communitarians (left and right varieties) like to make these straw-man caricature arguments about libertarianism being relativistic and so on. Now we have to hear these straw-man arguments from fellow libertarians (and IHS employees, no less)? Please.
Micha Ghertner -
12/6/2004
Charles,
"Whether or not there are some cases of boiling foreigners alive that can be open questions for deliberation under a libertarian theory of justice, there certainly are some cases of boiling foreigners alive that could not possibly be open for deliberation. But Borders gladly admits that his position means that both the former and the latter are up for deliberation, based on matters of strategy and of personal taste."
Borders certainly makes a strange, novel argument. I've classified it as a form of nationalistic contractarianism. The nationalistic part is the part that bothers me. But what I've noticed is that Max's position isn't all that different from other minarchists, who necessarily make a moral distinction between U.S. citizens and citizens of other countries. Minarchist libertarians believe that their fellow U.S. citizens are entitled to the positive legal rights of police and military protection, while citizens living in other countries are not. This is not much different than Max's belief that U.S. citizens are entitled to negative legal rights against torture, while non U.S. citizens are not so entitled.
As I wrote in a recent blog post, "All Men Are Created Equal…,"
"Yet insofar as we postulate any positive rights at all, even positive rights like police protection, which are in turn allegedly justified because they help secure negative rights, we are not living up to the standards of The Declaration of Independence unless we are willing to grant this same positive right to police protection to all people in the moral community, regardless of national origin."
"I don't know whether Barganier is acting in bad form or not; his post is insulting, to be sure, and his encouragement of writing to IHS over the issue may be questionable. Fine. But he is engaging directly in an argument; the form is: Max Borders' position entails a monstrous consequence; in fact, he admits this very consequence; no libertarian theory can involve that consequence; therefore, Max Borders position is deeply in conflict with libertarianism. That's a straightforward and valid argument (moreover, I think, a sound one); it's certainly not an argumentum ad hominem, let alone one of a particularly vile form."
I have no strong objection to your formulation of the argument (although I do disagree that Max's position is in any more conflict with libertarianism than minarchism in general). It's the calling on his readers to complain to IHS for what Max wrote on a personal blog that I have a problem with.
Bill Woolsey -
12/6/2004
I had never even heard of Max Borders before
I read Barganier's post on anti-war.com.
Perhaps he has developed his political
philosophy in order to rationalize foreign
interventionism by the U.S.
But perhaps not.
His views seem like an effort to overcome
moral skepticism. An effort to develop a
"true" account for libertarian rights.
Given his postivist/contractarian approach,
claims that a foreign policy violates the
rights of foreigners don't make sense.
It is based on a narrow usage of the term
"morality" and "rights"
I don't agree with the approach. But I
would point out that all efforts at overcoming
moral skepticism are going to be problematic.
I do believe it is a bit ironic that Borders
appears sympathetic towards efforts at imposing
a libertarian order upon Iraq, while arguing
that it makes no sense to say that Iraqis have
individual rights that Americans must respect.
(I guess at this point it is the Iraqi insurgents
that have no rights we are obligated to respect.)
On the other hand, those of us who take a more
traditional libertarian position see the invasion
and reconstruction of Iraq to be a disaster, yet
believe that Iraqis have the same individual
rights as all other human beings.
Years ago, I followed the Rothbard plumbline
and I am pretty sure I said and thought that
various people who failed to tow that line
were not "really libertarians." When I got
over that (late in my undergraduate years,) I
have reacted badly to any effort to impose a
libertarian orthodoxy.
I have covered most of this territory before.
I think one can be a libertarian imperialist
(though it seems to be to be a foolish approach.)
I think one can be a libertarian legal positivist
(though the usual notion is that a libertarian legal
order and scheme of rights is moral and statist ones
are immoral.)
And I think that one can be a libertarian moral
relativist or value subjectivist.
When I say that I have been over this before,
I mean that I have discussed the matter in other
forums where some were claiming that anyone who
holds those sorts of views cannot be "really
libertarian."
I see Borders' political philosophy as being an
unusual combination of these sorts of heterodox
views.
By the way, there are some Objectivists (who are
libertarians for the most part) that have
made claims that I think are trully beyond the pale.
Slaughter the savages and steal their oil--that sort
of thing.
When Borders begins to promote torturing innocent
foreigners for some purpose or other, rather than
just defending his peculiar usage of the term "rights"
and "morality," then he will move beyond the pale.
I must admit that I have limited interest into
delving into the details of Borderism. I presume
he believes that it is somehow sensible for those
in political communities to agree to a libertarian
scheme of rights. Whether this applies generally to
all political communities or is limited to the U.S.
is something I don't know, but to this point I had
assumed it would apply generally. Similarly, the
posts I reviewed where he discussed agreements for
mutual respect for rights between political
communities weren't clear to me. When it is
sensible to enter into such agreements wasn't obvious,
but that provides a second avenue for something
other than American exceptionalism.
I am a libertarian universalist because I believe
that Jesus, the Son, taught mankind to love their
neighbors as themselves, and in the parable of the
good Samaratan suggested that everyone is our
neighbor. While I understand that many libertarians
find that sort of thing unpersuasive, I must admit that
I have yet to find a secular argument for universalism that I have found persuasive.
By the way, concerns that the fact that the current
American scheme of legal rights leaves much to be
desired from the perspective of a libertarian has
nothing to do with whether or not foreigners would
be violating the rights of Americans if they killed
them. According to Borders' approach, anyway, Osama
Bin Laden didn't violate the rights of all of those
New Yorkers in the World Trade Center. We can't even
say he was immoral. To claim that what he did was
immoral or violated rights misunderstands the
proper meanings of those terms. Only another
American can immorally violate the rigths of an
American. When a foreigner does some evil to
an American it is morally no different than if a
polar bear eats a hiker.
An odd view, but that is what I think Borders is saying.
Off to class!
Charles Johnson -
12/6/2004
Me: "Bargainer certainly didn't; what he did say is that there is no open question about the morality of boiling innocent foreigners alive under a libertarian theory of justice."
Micha: "But this is clearly not the case. The vast majority of libertarians are not pacifists when it comes to war between nations states. Most libertarians believe that war between nation states is sometimes justified, even though war between nation states necessarily involves killing innocent non-combatants."
Thanks for the prodding, Micha; I deserve it. But surely this isn't quite the issue. It's true that there are plenty of undoubtedly libertarian accounts of justice in wartime that allow for knowingly killing innocent civilians in the course of attacking legitimate military targets (if you're waging a legitimate war, anyway). But I'm going to be a bit of an aprioristic wank here and just stipulate that *no* libertarian account of justice allows for intentionally targeting civilians for attack. (If an account endorses it, I'd just argue that's enough to make it something other than a libertarian account.) And the sort of cases that Barganier and Borders are fussing over are clearly in the latter camp--it's hard to imagine how you'd be boiling civilians alive for the war effort unless you were intentionally targeting civilians to be pitched into the cauldron. And even if you could devise some sort of story to make it fit libertarian strictures, this would be beside the point: Borders' stated position commits him, afortiori, not only to saying that the possibly-acceptable cases don't violate any objectively binding moral obligations, but *also* that the *clearly unacceptable* cases don't violate any objectively binding moral obligations, either. Whether or not there are some cases of boiling foreigners alive that can be open questions for deliberation under a libertarian theory of justice, there certainly are some cases of boiling foreigners alive that could not possibly be open for deliberation. But Borders gladly admits that his position means that both the former and the latter are up for deliberation, based on matters of strategy and of personal taste. I don't think it requires a lot of hermeneutical acrobatics to see that that's what Barganier's taking Borders to task over. And I think on that point that Barganier is clearly in the right.
Micha: "Whether you find Max's argument offensive, at least it is an argument. Barganier's is a vile form of ad hominem, and terribly bad form."
I don't know whether Barganier is acting in bad form or not; his post is insulting, to be sure, and his encouragement of writing to IHS over the issue may be questionable. Fine. But he is engaging directly in an argument; the form is: Max Borders' position entails a monstrous consequence; in fact, he admits this very consequence; no libertarian theory can involve that consequence; therefore, Max Borders position is deeply in conflict with libertarianism. That's a straightforward and valid argument (moreover, I think, a sound one); it's certainly not an argumentum ad hominem, let alone one of a particularly vile form.
Micha Ghertner -
12/6/2004
Charles,
"Bargainer certainly didn't; what he did say is that there is no open question about the morality of boiling innocent foreigners alive under a libertarian theory of justice."
But this is clearly not the case. The vast majority of libertarians are not pacifists when it comes to war between nations states. Most libertarians believe that war between nation states is sometimes justified, even though war between nation states necessarily involves killing innocent non-combatants.
Further, even if we focus on torture alone, it remains an open question according to libertarianism. Libertarian first principles do not rule out torture under all conceivable circumstances.
Whether you find Max's argument offensive, at least it is an argument. Barganier's is a vile form of ad hominem, and terribly bad form.
Charles Johnson -
12/6/2004
Bill Woolsey writes: "So, regardless of whether boiling foreigners alive is or is not in the interest of America, it is neither moral or immoral.
"He went on to argue that he (like most people)
would find boilling people alive distasteful and
that he doesn't believe that it is in the U.S.
interest.
"In no way was he advocating boiling people alive."
But Bill, nobody that I've read on the matter has suggested that Borders does advocate boiling people alive. Bargainer certainly didn't; what he did say is that there is no open question about the morality of boiling innocent foreigners alive under a libertarian theory of justice. Whether he advocates boiling innocent aliens alive or not, Borders leaves the question open for deliberation about its strategic value and our own tastes; and that is monstrous enough from the standpoint of common decency--let alone libertarian political theory--on its own demerits.
As for his own attempt to weasel around this problem by offering our "sentimental" reasons for finding the whole affair ghastly, they are incoherent, as I argue elsewhere. I won't re-argue it at length here; the bottom line is that the only way we can make sense out of "sentimental shoulds" is by reference to how our emotions do or do not express judgments about what we ought and ought not to do. But that means that the reasonableness of the sentiments has to stand up to reflective judgment or else be dismissed as irrational (and so not giving any "should"). And that seems to tie our sentimental shoulds back into our normative shoulds: the sentiment of horror is only a reasonable sentiment if it expresses a judgment of a real state of affairs (viz. that it is really is horrible to boil someone alive).
There are some further epicycles that you could try to put onto the theory to explain away the judgment as something other than a moral judgment. Some of them I considered and rejected in brief; others can be dealt with elsewhere and at more length; but Borders set out none of them in the course of his argument. He just invoked the sentiments as a sort of magic charm to summon up reasons for action. But it doesn't, in fact, advance the argument one inch.
As for comparing Borders to Prince Dracula--whether it's juvenile or not is not something that I'm a fit judge of (since I'm rather partial). But I will say that Max Borders has explicitly stated, and argued at length, that there is no moral difference in principle between himself and Vlad Dracula. He has tried to argue at length and in several different places for a theory that would hold that absolutely any atrocity whatsoever could be committed against aliens without violating any principle of justice--from assault and pillage to impaling and boiling alive. It is his own stated position that the only difference between what he's willing to do and what Vlad was willing to do is a matter of contingent circumstance, and a matter of personal taste. If that is not a monstrous position to hold, then what is?
Bill Woolsey -
12/6/2004
Borders' comment was in response to
a claim that Borders' view is that
if it is in America's interest to
boil foreigners alive, then it was moral.
Borders' reply was a bit unclear. At least
I think his position is that actions
concerning foreigners don't involve morality.
So, regardless of whether boiling foreigners
alive is or is not in the interest of
America, it is neither moral or immoral.
He went on to argue that he (like most people)
would find boilling people alive distasteful and
that he doesn't believe that it is in the U.S.
interest.
In no way was he advocating boiling people alive.
And I believe that you and any number of those
quoting him are suggesting that he does advocating
boiling people alive if that serves the interest
of America.
Now, I have no use for his use of the term
morality. Nor do I agree with his view of
rights
But there is nothing monstrous about the view.
For example, how could you link to a "good"
response, that characterizing Borders as
Val the impaler?
How juvenile. (Though I do agree with the point
in that discussion that to the degree Borders
has drawn the correct implication from his
scheme, it suggests there is something wrong
with the scheme. Unfortunately, that approach
points to a rather unsatisfactory moral
intuitionism.)
Roderick T. Long -
12/5/2004
Charles Johnson has a good critique of Borders' argument here:
