Samizdata

Dr. Frank on the Blogs of War has blogged an article called Group Think which raises all sorts of interesting issues to those of a libertarian persuasion. He also touches upon one of my earlier bloggings.

Libertarianism is not a political party, it is a social but non-statist meta-context within which political though occurs: a ‘vibe’ if you like. There are no ‘official’ principals and by its very nature there are only a loose series of underpinnings as the ends of libertarianism is simply liberty, rather than, say, tractor production or discouraging one-parent families. In my view at least, all forms of genuine libertarianism revolve around this:

You are not a libertarian unless you accept as axiomatic that, at its core, society must allow individuals to make their own choices in the pursuit of self-defined ends.

I have always thought all the other sundry libertarian principles often quoted, such as ‘Propertarianism’ and the ‘non-initiation of force’ principles all flow from that. Other libertarians see it the other way around.

Can the “aggressive defender” sub-species in de Havilland’s aviary legitimately launch pre-emptive strikes without turning into an Imperialist “predator?”

For sure. The big difference would be going in to destroy a threat and then going home or going in and making all of Arabia and Iraq into an American satrapy, as some seem to be suggesting.

Yes indeed. It seems to me that September 11^th was a watershed in that it resulted in an event so stark in its moral simplicity and lacking in the ambiguity that shades Iraq, Israel, Kosovo etc. that the true nature of many was revealed in the shadowless light of the burning twin towers. Much to my astonishment some on the left, like Christopher Hitchens, turned out to be critically rational whilst many who I had thought far better of, were revealed to be crypto-subjectivists so emotionally attached to their unalterable world views as to be incapable of rational moral judgement.

And by the way, I wonder why all my recent articles seem to feature birds in some form or other? Is someone e-mailing me subliminal messages?

Truth on campus?
With the new airport security measures going into action today across the old USA, I expected to hear my teachers rejoice that Big Brother has come to the airports to “protect” us.

However, one of my teachers surprised me, saying, and I quote:

“The new airport security bill combines the worst of the private sector with the worst of the federal government”

Despite all the negative stuff that goes on at the university, in terms of the “politically correct” nonsense and blatant communism, there are some good things, such as far and few between truthful statements.

The good times can’t last forever
Showing their Puritanism-like beliefs, the university has beefed up the anti-drug and anti-sex rhetoric. While I am anti-sex and I am anti-drug, the university’s luck with cracking down on these vice crimes is doomed with the same fate that plagued the War on Drugs, the War on This, and the War on That.. College kids, with the exception being me and ummm me, want sex and want drugs. The authoritarian puritans that run the school apparently have no concept of reality, and instead want to violate human nature and individual rights to sex and to getting high.

Jim Henley over on Unqualified Offerings has turned a private exchange between us into a very interesting open letter to yours truly. He makes some very interesting points!

I’ve got to tell you, Perry, I get infuriated too. What we have is, on one side, Rothbardians arguing that prophylactic war is incompatible with limited government. On the other, self-described “anti-idiotarians” who claim to believe that it is. The identity of the actual idiots here is less clear to me than it is to some others. When you factor in the Rothbardians’ least tenable thesis – that “aggressive defense” can never be anything but a smokescreen for imperialism – neither side seems to brim with promise.

Sort of Anti-anti-antiwar.com… but only sort of. I have always thought Unqualified Offerings was a daily ‘must read’ and this confirms it if you enjoy the illuminating spotlights of reason and insight. Thought provoking stuff.