All Thoughts Being Equal

I. The other day (N.B. months ago at this point) I got into a very interesting discussion with C. Michael Pickens, a prominent member of the Washington State Libertarian Party, on what principles should form the proper ground of a theory of liberty. In his original Facebook post, Michael claimed that "Liberty is an optimistic concept based on the philosophy of self-ownership." Someone else asked whether liberty could be grounded in concepts of free will and autonomy; Michael replied that these are themselves based in self-ownership. In the discussion, I (and the other guy) both raised the possible issue of indentured servitude—I had in mind specifically the condition of indentured servants during the early American colonial period, which was a condition of chattel slavery in all but name. Michael wasn't arguing that slavery was permissible—obviously it isn't, regardless of your libertarian principles, unless you're a Confederacy-fetishist douchebag like, s...

Yesterday I wrote a piece for Little Green Footballs that ended up being part 2 in a three-part series on something nasty in the publication history of Reason magazine. Namely, a "special edition" from February 1976 on historical revisionism... that ended up including some really odious Holocaust denial and reads like a Who's Who of deniers and friends-of-deniers. When called out by PandoDaily , Reason editor Nick Gillespie issued a really weak-tea response: I went back and looked into each alleged denialist contributor to the special edition, and yeah, it shouldn't have been hard for 1976! Reason to say no to these cranks, and even less hard for 2014! Reason to condemn its past self and move on. I won't retread that specific ground here; if you're interested, read the LGF posts here [1], here [2], and here [3]. Instead, let's look more at the meta-level callout by Mark Ames at PandoDaily and response by Nick Gillespie at Reason . In my mind this e...

Reason magazine has a great piece by Sheldon Richman on the theme of 'thick' versus 'thin' libertarianism. It's worth the whole read, but this comment on the article grabbed my attention in particular: Because there are two ways to arrive at libertarianism - two distinct methods. One method is to arrive at libertarianism by way of doubt . You can say, "I don't think anyone can overcome the Hayekian information problem in economic policy. I also don't think anyone can ever conclusively devise an exhaustive set of moral norms. Further, I think that the people who occupy government positions are incredibly fallible, and we need to diminish their ability to impose their fallibility on others, by procedural and other means." But the other way is to arrive at something that looks a lot like libertarianism by way of certainty . (The Objectivists are the best known example of this.) You say, "I know exactly what is right and wrong, and among t...

Delightfully apropos to Katrina's newest post about who's hurting the liberty movement, user Obdicut at Little Green Footballs uncovers a surprising convergence between Glenn Greenwald and Rand Paul's "Southern Avenger." I do not understand how any man with any shred of integrity as a ‘civil rights’ speaker can share the stage with someone named the Southern Avenger. Even the Southern Defender, I could slightly imagine. But vengeance implies someone who thinks a wrong has been done to the South, that there is some reckoning against the enemies of the South that has to come. And that is the really fucking scary kind of racism. Too right. The Lost-Cause neoconfederate nostalgia among some in the liberty movement is, or should be, cause for concern. To be really blunt about it, you can dislike Abraham Lincoln's policy's, but...