by Stephan Kinsella
on December 1, 2009
Update: For related posts:
From: Healy on States’ Rights and Libertarian Centralists, LRC blog, 2005:
In Gene Healy’s blog post about Liberal Federalism [archived here; also here–see below], he notes, “I’d like to think that the Republican assault on federalism would lead to a resurgence of decentralist liberalism” (emphasis added). As I commented there– it would also be nice to see a resurgence of decentralist libertarianism too.
[Update: see Healy versus Bolick and the Institute for Justice]
Healy, a Cato Senior Editor, is a great opponent of “libertarian centralism”: see Healy’s great articles: States’ Rights Revisited, from The Freeman, and the following 4 articles from LRC (all linked at his LRC archive) : Contra Centralism (libertarian states rights scholar Gene Healy takes on Clinton Bolick, Roger Pilon, and John McClaughry, advocates of liberty through federal power); Roger Pilon and the 14th Amendment (Gene Healy, the libertarian legal scholar who’s brought sanity to discussions of an evil amendment, continues his work); Libertarian Reflections (Gene Healy on Waco, Paul Johnson, neocons, war, and left-libertarian nonsense); and The Squalid 14th Amendment (ratified by trickery during the federal military dictatorship over the South, this treacherous appendage to the Constitution is an attack on liberty and its American political foundation, states rights); see also my pieces: Supreme Confusion, Or, A Libertarian Defense of Affirmative Action, Barnett and the 14th Amendment; and Happy Bill of Rights Day — The Problem with the Fourteenth Amendment (which contains links to other articles on this). See also the HNN discussion thread Should We Celebrate Enforcing the Commerce Clause against the States? (2), in which some libertarians oppose the notion of federalism (discussed in Libertarian Centralists and Europe). [continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on November 30, 2009
Update: For related posts:
Someone asked me thoughts to online writings that make the best libertarian case against the 14th amendment. Here is my reply:
The “libertarian” case against it … well that’s a different issue than the legal case. The best legal case is in my view in Raoul Berger’s works, and in the Slaughterhouse decision itself [for Berger, see his work scanned in here; see also here]. My view on the legalities is that if nothing else, the 14th amendment is not clear about what privileges or immunities means. And, given that the broader you construe P-I the more power you grant to the central state, basically eating away at the core federalist structure of the Constitution itself [a great writer on this is law prof Tom McAffee; some of his stuff is here; see also my post The Unique American Federal Government], eroding the “vertical separation of power” and the “limited and enumerated scheme” of powers delegated to the feds, then you have to give the P-I clause a narrow reading and you have to construe any ambiguity against a grant of power to the feds. This is because if you find a right in there, that is a grant of power to the federal government to have jurisdiction over the states on this matter. [continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on November 30, 2009
An acquaintance passed on to me this PDF file of a Powerpoint presentation on global warming by MIT Professor Richard S. Lindzen. As my friend said, “it is a powerful rebuttal to those who are sure that humans are causing global warming.” The file is: Global Warming: What is it all about?, Rockhurst University, February 11, 2009.
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by Stephan Kinsella
on November 30, 2009
Missouri GOP Calls for Revolution notes that “Missouri’s Lafayette County Republican Central Committee has put up a billboard proudly advising citizens to prepare for the violent overthrow of the US government.” The billboard (see right) reads: [continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on November 29, 2009
I saw this sign by the 610 loop in Houston today, and snapped this picture with my iPhone. The sign displays an ominous looking Texas state agent, and the words read:
THE EYES OF TEXAS ARE UPON YOU: Cellular Phone Users: please call 911 to report criminal activities or emergencies.
You know, like if mommy and daddy don’t recycle or pay their taxes.
[LRC cross-post]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on November 25, 2009
I wonder if leftists are happy about the recession and unemployment–think of all the wage-slaves that are being freed of their shackles!
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by Stephan Kinsella
on November 25, 2009
As I mentioned in Radical Patent Reform Is Not on the Way, in in In re Bilski, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) modified previous holdings regarding the patentability of software or business-method patents in upholding the rejection of patent claims involving a method of hedging risks in commodities trading. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court and oral arguments were heard earlier this month. This entire area of patent law is very arcane, but the main issues and the oral arguments are explained very well by the heroic IP-abuse reporter Joe Mullin in Bilski v. Kappos Oral Arguments: Supreme Skepticism Toward Method Patents.
Take a look at Mullins’ discussion of the oral arguments–it’s fascinating seeing the Justices grapple with the absurdity of patent law. A few choice excerpts: [continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on November 25, 2009
From the Mises blog, Nov. 25, 2009
(Archived comments below)
I’ve done a good deal of writing on Hoppe’s argumentation ethics defense of libertarian rights and related matters (see Revisiting Argumentation Ethics, Mises and Argumentation Ethics). I was reminded recently of Guido Hülsmann’s superb and unique presentation of argumentation ethics in his paper “The A Priori Foundations of Property Economics,” Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 7, no. 4 (Winter 2004), in particular the section “The Foundations of Property Economics,” starting on p. 50. It’s really an excellent take on this, and has a fantastic discussion of the nature of appropriation, including his “Counterfactual Analysis of Appropriation.” Highly recommended for those interested in argumentation ethics.
In his paper, Hülsmann draws on the work of both Reinach and Hoppe. The paper was based on a presentation at a symposium on “Austrian Law and Economics: The Contributions of Reinach and Rothbard” held at the Ludwig von Mises Institute on March 29-30, 2001, papers resulting from which were published in Vol. 7, no. 4 (Winter 2004) of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. The late Larry Sechrest also presented a paper, Praxeology, Economics, and Law: Issues and Implications, which also discusses argumentation ethics at pp. 36-38. For further information on Reinach’s writings, see Adolf Reinach’s “The Apriori Foundations of the Civil Law” and “On The Concept of Causality in the Criminal Law,” by Adolf Reinach. For additional material on argumentation ethics, see Revisiting Argumentation Ethics.
Archived comments:
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by Stephan Kinsella
on November 24, 2009
Well, not quite. But this post’s title is based on a little linguistic joke passed on to me by Paul Vahur. He informs me that the word “hallitus” means “government” in Finnish, but in Estonian it means “mold”. (Estonian and Finnish are similar languages like German and Swedish are.)
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by Stephan Kinsella
on November 23, 2009
In response to recent comments by Emily Bazelon on the Slate Political Gabfest, I posted the following on their facebook page:
Two bones to pick with Emily. First, she is infuriated with Palin for not giving credit to feminism, even though she “gained” from victories of feminism. I am no Palin fan, and as a libertarian am not completely opposed to the feminist agenda. But criticisms like these seem incredibly unfair to me. They seek to muzzle people by virtue of their gender or race. It’s okay for a white man to oppose affirmative action but not Clarence Thomas since he “benefited” from it; a man can criticize feminism … but not a woman? People have a perfect right to hold whatever views they want, regardless of their gender or race etc.; they can even disagree with a policy that has affected (even benefited) them. (I oppose patent law even though I’ve made money off of it; a tax lawyer can oppose the income tax; a cancer doctor can oppose cancer, etc.)
Second bone: Emily accuses Palin of lying because of the Death Panels remark. The other lies or errors that I’ve heard of seem trivial, and this one does not seem like a lie. See Lew Rockwell here:
On Morning Joe today, all the Republicans employed by the Obama …regime via MSNBC were united with the Dems in chastizing Sarah Palin for her comment that Obamacare would lead to death panels promoting euthanasia and infanticide of the “unfit.” How could the mobs possibly think this? After all, Obama supports federal funding for killing the unborn, and his plan will massively expand this program. He sends his predator drones to kill those unfit for life, according to his calculus, in Afghanistan. He supports a war in Iraq that has taken a million lives. He has ethnically cleansed millions in Pakistan. He is the product of an ideological movement that is pro-euthanasia. Of course, Obamacare will eventuate in killing people.
We libertarians recognize the state is nothing but a killing machine, an agent of destruction and death. You liberals are very inconsistent about this. As the great Ludwig von Mises said, “No socialist author ever gave a thought to the possibility that the abstract entity which he wants to vest with unlimited power—whether it is called humanity, society, nation, state, or government—could act in a way of which he himself disapproves.”
[LRC cross-post]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on November 23, 2009
Related:
Here’s my reply to Bob Murphy’s post “Can God Own Your Soul?”:
Bob,
I’m not surprised you bring this up–you raised a similar notion as some sort of criticism of Hoppe’s argumentation ethics years ago in this piece. In my reply thereto, I noted:
MC introduce supposed “counterexamples” of God and slavery. … As for God – you can’t just posit that God owns everyone and “therefore” we are not self-owners. Moroever, even if God does own us, it could be that we are still self-owners vis-a-vis each other. In any event, this in no way refutes the conclusion that only the libertarian norms can be argumentatively justified in discourse.
If there is a God, since He is Good, we can assume he’s libertarian and has decreed a libertarian moral law within his universe. So even if God owns A and B, A still has a better claim to A’s body than B does. [continue reading…]
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by Stephan Kinsella
on November 21, 2009
SEE NOW:
I was invited to be a guest on The Peter Mac Show last night and ended up staying on for both hours. It was a pretty in-depth interview. The host asked impressively intelligent questions for someone who had just started coming around to the anti-IP position (after reading my Intellectual Property and Libertarianism just the day before (!)). The MP3 files are here: hour 1; hour 2 (on Peter’s site, hour 1, hour 2). [Local files: hour 1; hour 2]
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:40 — 10.0MB)
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