Fuck, my stupid computer just crashed! Alright, here we go again… Please forgive me if this text seems rushed…

I’ve had some interesting discussions about libertarianism recently. I realized that almost all discussions about libertarianism finally boil down to two main points. To the economic concern and the philosophical concern. To the Engelsian one and the Hobbesian one. To the concern that monopolies would emerge and the gap between the rich and the poor would increase in the absence of government intervention into the free market, and to the concern that anarchy would dissolve into chaos.

So, this is what I said: “Okay, let’s forget everything. Let me propose something new. What if I offered you a State whose sole purpose was to protect the individual’s right to person and property. Forget about contradictory nature of this proposition; let’s just assume I could offer you such a State.” – “Well, that would be much better,” was the answer.

This got me thinking. The State really is something religious to most people. Most people don’t realize that the State is nothing but a bunch of individuals like you and me who couldn’t do anything if we wouldn’t allow them to do it. People don’t realize that a statist system isn’t fundamentally different from a so-called “state of nature.”

This is what I tried to make them realize. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do so because they soon realized that such a minarchist State wouldn’t “take care” of the poor. I definitely have to find out new ways how to tell people that the poor would be much better off in a libertarian society and that most rich people would basically be screwed. Of course, as soon as I say this the discussion will switch back to the anarchy-minarchy-debate.

So, I really need to stress that a minarchist State would have to rely heavily on acceptance or apathy among its citizens. An ideal minarchist State would be so weak that it would quickly collapse if its citizens decided to make it collapse. But I think the same still applies to western “democracies.” “Democratic” civilization doesn’t work because we have all these brilliant people at the top; it works because we make it work, because we don’t run around with pitchforks all day long! Hell, if everybody decided to kill every government agent with pitchforks, every “democratic” State would collapse in no time. Isn’t the fact that we evil Hobbesians still exist the single best argument for anarchy and the real possibilities of a mostly peaceful society?

Nevertheless, I think we can’t neglect the fact that the peoples’ religious beliefs in the State are an important factor for the relative domestic stability of “democratic” societies. If the government vanished tomorrow, we would most probably have chaos. People would think that they could do whatever they want because there is no government anymore to stop them. What they don’t realize is that the government couldn’t have stopped them the day before. It was mostly their neighbors which prevented them from going berserk and enslaving humankind, neighbors who felt a need for silence and peace.

Where does this leave us? I don’t know. But maybe we don’t need to – and can’t – convince people of the superiority of anarchy, maybe we need to turn anarchism into a religion. Maybe the Discordians are right. Maybe the Discordians are up to something when they worship chaos. All I know about Discordianism is from the Illuminatus-Trilogy, but I think this is what it’s basically about. I think I finally get why discordianism has been described as both an elaborate joke disguised as a religion, and as a religion disguised as an elaborate joke. After all, the same could be said about the State.

What do you think? I haven’t fleshed out this idea at all but I find it kind of interesting. Nevertheless, I don’t think I will give up trying to convince people using rationality.

Oh and speaking of which: RAW is in my (Discordian and Pastafarian) prayers.

Tags: anarchism, libertarianism, statism, religion, discordianism

This is very exciting! Brad Spangler and Roderick Long launched the Center for a Stateless Society yesterday. I suppose everyone already read about it so here are just my $0.02.

I think this center is a very good idea and I really hope that it will get the attention it deserves. I hope I will be able to contribute an article in the near future. I will definitely translate some of the articles into German and publish them on Der freie Markt, in fact, I already translated Per Bylund's article.

Tags: center for a stateless society, molinari institute, market anarchism

I’ve made my first essay contribution to the Center for a Stateless Society press outreach project. I’m not too interested in the whole Foleygate scandal, but I figured anarchists should have a response. The essay is entitled Child Exploitation and the Myth of Moral Management. Here’s an excerpt:

Child exploitation is an evil that has plagued humanity throughout its history. Social awareness of child welfare and consensus on its definition is relatively recent but on the riser. Following this trend, many in Congress work continuously to address this issue, creating new legislative prerogatives for the State to interdict predators and protect children.

How, then, do we reconcile these goals with the case of Mark Foley, a Congressman recently caught engaging in sexually explicit conversations with a minor? Perhaps those who seek to protect us from the nameless, faceless criminals out there have completely misunderstood the problem. The body empowered with enacting nationwide laws, creating criteria for punishing people, and directing the full power of the State contains the very corruption it seeks to root out among us.

It makes one wonder: whom can we trust?

Read more.

UPDATE: Matt Jenny hat die Artikel ins Deutsche uebersetzt und bei seiner neuer Seite, Der freie Markt, veroeffentlicht.  Hier gibt es auch eine kleine Diskussion über meinen Artikel: http://www.yigg.de/10837 (the German language “Digg”)

Tags: mark foley, congress

Jane Galt’s recent post on the offenses to individual liberty posed by Democrats vs. those posed by Republicans is quite sobering and thoughtful. Though she’s not my favorite blogger by any means (I can’t stand the systematic reduction of life to dry economic calculation that seems to plague female libertarian bloggers inclined towards the dismal science) she brings up a question that needs to be asked, even if it doesn’t affect your politicial position:

I think that a lot of libertarians think that the next step is a police state. And that’s not necessarily, or even probably, true. Governments in Europe have quite a lot more freedom to spy on and detain their citizens, and they manage not to have police states. Democratic traditions and social constraints . . . especially ones as longstanding as ours . . . do matter a lot, even where the legal traditions do not provide as firm a check as we would like on state power. Which doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t worry about these things. We should, because they’re wrong. But the arguments against them have to stand on their own, not on the premise that if we permit the Bush administration to waterboard suspected terrorists, in a few short years the Thought Police will be knocking at our doors in the middle of the night. We could do these things, and they could be used against a tiny fraction of the population, most of whom are not citizens, and it could go no further. Britain pulled all sorts of unsavoury legal manoeuvres against the IRA, and it didn’t spread to terrorising journalists.

I’m having trouble writing this because it sounds like I’m saying that warrantless wiretaps don’t matter. They do matter, a lot. But they matter because they are bad in principle, not because it is at all likely that if we allow them, the Bush administration, or any successive administration, will shortly start making inconvenient persons “disappear”.

To take an example I’ve been harping on recently, there are all sorts of appalling violations of power by local police and prosecutors, as Radley Balko has recently exposed with his superb work on the Cory Maye case. Many prisoners endure such brutalization that if I had to choose between going to a high-security prison and being interrogated by the Bush administration’s favoured methods, I’d pick the waterboarding. This is a stain on our national honour, an outrage, an abomination. But does it mean that our society is not worth living in? Are we not free? Have we no liberty? Do we live in a police state because some peoples’ liberties are thusly threatened? Are we close to a police state? Were we under the Democrats, when such abuses were equally likely to occur?

Two voices emerge within my head on reading this.

The first voice says not only that she’s right, but that she’s capturing the truth behind the public’s apathetic complicity in the Bush Administration’s despicable policies. Sure, we’re walking close to the line, but we’re just not going to go over it. The status quo will be maintained, and life will go on. The creeping fascism is targeted; the popular effects of same are miniscule. Europe really is a great example of how few of our Consitutionally-guaranteed rights are necessary to have a modern, liberal life.

The second voice says that I don’t want to be Europe. I don’t want to settle for a modern, liberal life. I want this country to be what the people decide they want it to be - not through elections, but through self-determination in every action, every day. The principles that guide that desire for sovereignty and autonomy matter, and even if they could be safely surrendered to the political elite, would it be worth it? I don’t want the choice between a police state and a free state to be in the hands of politicians, even if they never take us past the point of no return.

Jane seems to be attacking “the politics of fear”: scare tactics that represent our political situation as tending dangerously towards a fascist police state. Now, I think that pointing this possibility out is a good way to fight the expansion of government authority, because none of us know what is possible. Furthermore, a lot of what we take for granted in our current society would have been considered totalitarian not too long ago. What I’m questioning is not the honesty of campaigning based on a fear of government but the degree to which the danger actually exists. Misrepresenting it risks discrediting ourselves.

It’s impossible to tell with any objective certainty; ascertaining any clear cases of dangerous abus necessarily implies values and principles which I’m no longer sure we can count upon the average American to hold. Europe is a good example of squishy principles with respect to the state. While Europeans do give a lot of leeway to their governments as a matter of course, they tend to be more homogeneous culturally (with some exceptions) and less likely to wax biblical on the nonbelievers’ asses. They have values that hold government to an arguably more humane standard than ours, just as a matter of being more socialist. We need to be extremely careful when superimposing their society on ours - the histories, class struggles, and social memories are all different.

On the other hand, we need to find a way to promote skepticism towards the state without being dismissed as crackpots or paranoid. Evidence must be assembled that clarifies a concrete position which cannot be ignored by the typical American. We need a strategy that accurately and convincingly plots our position on the “road to serfdom”, placing us closer to a police state than the electorate realizes. A sense of urgency must be honestly and more persuasively transmitted, and it must come from a frank assessment of we stand vis a vis civil rights and government submission.

Essentially, we need to become clear on what is genuinely at stake and frame our radicalism around that. Perhaps this is already obvious to the reader, but I don’t think it’s uncalled for that Jane has questioned our fear. It is incumbent upon us to demonstrate the erosion of traditional social restraints on the state, the drastic evolution of the character of government in recent years, and the ferocity of the consequences for letting things continue. All of those things are arguments that challenge the assumptions Jane describes - and average Americans hold; assumptions that encourage slience in the face of approaching danger.

In a sense, we aren’t required to prove the danger - fundamentally the threat is obvious given any understanding of history and politics. What we must remember, however, is that getting people to take that history and those politics seriously is a matter of marketing as well. A nation of people examining the true state of things is not a foregone conclusion. We must make ourselves impeccably credible and accessible just to get people to consider the possibility we fear. Because if we truly cannot scare people sufficiently with the evidence, if our fellow citizens really are that complacent, then we have to ask ourselves whether or not we don’t already live in “a liberal European state”.

Finally, we have an organization promoting market anarchism to the masses. Announcing the Center for a Stateless Society:

The Molinari Institute, a market anarchist think tank, today launched a new media effort aiming to put their agenda to abolish government front and center in US political discourse. Dubbing their project the Center for a Stateless Society (www.c4ss.org), institute officials laid out plans to publish and distribute news commentary written by anarchists with radically free-market oriented views on economics — taking market anarchism out of the realm of academia and obscure internet blogs in order to put it in the public eye.

Molinari Institute President Roderick Long explained “For too long libertarians, and I mean anarchist libertarians, have treated market anarchism almost as an esoteric doctrine. It’s time to put market anarchism front and center in our educational efforts, time to start making it a familiar and recognizable position. The Center for a Stateless Society aims to bring a market anarchist perspective to the popular press, rather than leaving it confined to scholarly studies and movement periodicals.”

Brad Spangler will serve as director, and hopefully I will be able to contribue some writing at some point. Roderick’s appeal for a popular, persuasive anarchist movement in this country mirrors my thoughts (as will be clear when my next post is published in a few hours).

Any suggestions on topics on which I could write?  I’m especially interested in those who are still skeptical about anarchism.

Tags: market anarchism

Anthony Gregory on the growing divide between the left liberal establishement and their base, as exemplified by Jon Stewart (via LewRockwell.com):

The battle over the soul of American left-liberalism has begun. Neither side is libertarian, of course. But one is clearly better from a libertarian perspective. One offers a potential return to normalcy – to take the steroids away from the “steroidal Democrats” in the Republican Party – to retract, at least somewhat, the U.S. empire to more tolerable and less globally dangerous levels; to demilitarize the American police at home; even to keep cleaner accounts for America’s financial house and temper the tyrannical extraction of wealth from the taxpaying class for gorging by the corporate state. Yes, it is not totally libertarian. But on the other side, also fighting for the soul of left-liberalism, is the worst of all worlds in American politics: sanguine for war and the nightstick, and intent on inflating taxes on the rich so as to stabilize and better manage the total state and empire. In other words, just as Bush has been a “steroidal Democrat,” Schumer offers a glimpse into a future Democratic administration of steroidal Republicans. Let the battle commence, and let us hope that if the popular left ever rises again in this country, it is more inclined toward the sensibilities of Jon Stewart than the jackbooted thuggery of Chuck Schumer.

As I’ve been trying to tell people, opposing this administration’s foreign policy is about more than getting Republicans out of office: it’s about giving the electorate a real anti-war party.  Let’s remember that the Democratic establishment has a lot of Republican elements of which to rid themselves.  If left liberal independents can figure out that the powers they give their politicians will eventually be used by the others’ politicians, maybe they’ll start to see why leftism need not support the state (at least, reflexively).

Tags: the daily show, jon stewart, democrats, republicans

Paul Birch offers a very fresh take on anarcho-capitalism (well, not actually fresh, since the text was written nine years ago, but you know what I mean). In "A Fatal Instability in Anarcho-Capitalism?", Birch argues that anarcho-capitalism would collapse because of the "restitution ration instability". (I think Birch's point applies to all sorts of market anarchist societies, but that's besides the point.) He thinks that, in an anarcho-capitalist society, private courts would outbid their competitors by offering more than just restitution to the victims. This would reduce crime and would thus require each private court to offer even more restitution to the victims. Finally, such a system would collapse.

Does someone know if Birch's concerns have been addressed anywhere? I don't think so.

Here are some very quick answers to Birch's essay, unfortunately I don't have time to flesh them out.

-A transformation from a statist society to an anarchist society requires a majority consensus that non-aggression is a favorable principle. If such a consensus is established, private courts offering too much restitution would probably be shunned voluntarily.

-When aggressors are forced to pay too much restitution, they themselves become victims and can look for courts who protect their rights. I think Birch is wrong when he says: "Who wouldn't rather have 150% restitution than 100%? And why not? After all, it's the criminals who pay. Who cares about them?"

-Aggressors who paid their due become potential clients of every private court again. Thus, private courts have an incentive to treat criminals "well." (I think Sam Konkin talked about that in the NLM.)

Comments anyone?

Tags: anarcho-capitalism, anarchism, market anarchism, statism

A Caveat

A while back I declared my abstinance from reading Right Thinking Girl in the future. This was a mistake, because it misrepresented my motivations for reading it these past three years or so. It was always a blog that represented not simply an ideology I regard as pedestrian and coarse, but also showcased the sense of entitlement that the right wing mentality proclaims for itself. From that perspective it was a perfect venue to explore a critical dimension of America. I wanted to figure out the underlying psychology and motivations of this new brand of pop jingoism and corporate cheerleading.

I don’t want that investigation to stop, because there’s still a lot that needs to be said - not about her personally, but about the type of American she exemplifies. Her attitude towards the administration of the blog chased me away, not her politics. And like it or not she’s a perfect example of the mentality that not only created the conditions for a War on Terror but proclaims fealty to its core principles without reflection or ponderance. Since she can express her thoughts with some skill, those thoughts can be more confidently deconstructed and analyzed for hidden assumptions and values. These assumptions and values not only matter - they drive the world we find ourselves in. It’s crucial to expose them and investigate them mercilessly.

So like I tried to do with my short-lived Wrong Thinking Girl blog, I will make a point of drawing out her more egregious or thoughtless statements for critique - just as I’ve always done on her blog. What will change is the venue, since nobody can possibly accuse me of using this blog to ride on anybody’s coattails (as RTG did). I would have liked to have had a venue that gave all of the participants on RTG an equal voice in standing up to her. But unfortunately - as often occurs with right wing authoritarian types - dissent is something one is free to engage in so long as it is managed and marginalized, safely tucked away on the offending party’s server.

Moving on…

With that said, let’s address an especially clueless passage from a (not so) recent post of hers. In the course of addressing how 9/11 should be viewed, this gem pops up:

My viewpoint should be obvious: I believe that 9/11 is another in a long series of attacks against our country - and it’s independent of any of our policies. When we start to attach motives (which, by the way, are incorrect according to the attackers) to 9/11, we start hiking up the We Deserved It road and that’s some place I just won’t go. Understand the nonsense of saying that a Windows on the World dishwasher deserved to die because the US supports Israel, or an Aon insurance analyst deserved to be immolated because the USA has ‘too much power’. I can’t connect it like that. I can’t write death warrants for random people because I may or may not agree with lawmakers and politicians about the best way to run our country (my emphasis).

I think it’s incumbent on any honest writer to go down whatever road the truth leads him or her. That’s what makes them worth reading - anything else is whimsical fiction and not truth. To label an entire area of inquiry off limits simply because it is distasteful or “unthinkable” reeks of immaturity and provenciality. Why must these hawks always see themselves as Americans first and human beings second?

Attaching motives to the enemy is the way in which you figure out what is causing the conflict. Obviously, this is a conflict for which America was totally unprepared - September 11, 2001 demonstrates that in spades, at least from a defense point of view. We need to understand this enemy better, even if that’s unpalatable to shoot-em-ups like RTG who’d rather get the blood pumping and the flag waving. It’s crucial to our survival to understand the threat and that need not convey sentimentality towards the terrorists (unless you insist on an artificially constrained mindset).

Whether or not “We Deserved It” is always a fair question to ask. Any question is fair to ask in the pursuit of the truth. That is the Western tradition that separates us from the more authoritarian cultures out there. The fact that RTG doesn’t wish to ask it is irrelevant in the arena of judicious inquiry, or worse: it means she’s afraid of the answer. If she has chosen not to examine her assumptions, others can do it for her.

Who “We” Are

The only way to conduct an honest pursuit of truth is to make plain one’s assumptions. A core assumption I make deals with the “We” in “We Deserved It” - as well as the “We” in “We the People”. The key is to make a sharp distinction between the government and the people. “We the People” are not the same entity as the government, and I believe the experience of the founding fathers with their government was precisely what motivated the authors to preface the Constitution in those terms. This is significant in two respects:

1. The only way citizens can hold their officials accountable is by having interests defined in completely separate terms. In other words, if the government and the people represent the same set of actors or ideals, then it’s logically impossible for the people to hold the government accountable, since by definition the government’s actions are the people’s actions. The idea that the people are the state, embodied by governmental authorities, is the essence of fascism.
2. Making a distinction allows us to “go down a road” that explains many overarching foreign policy events, including islamic fundamentalist terrorism - without denigrating the memories of 9/11’s innocent victims. In other words, the government is hardly “the victim” here - they are at best neutral bystanders.

It’s precisely this distinction that explains why examining past government policies and actions does not, as RTG claims, translate into any innocent civilians “deserving to die”. We are not our government, and if our government’s behavior results in unsavory consequences - well, we’re victims of it as much as those whom the terrorists claim to represent (who have legimitate griveances against U.S. interventions, which I will address below). After all, that is the anarchist insight: we are not the ones with the monopoly on force. The institution of the state is systemic violence, regardless of whether it’s an authoritarian regime, a democratic republic, or some sick hybrid of the two.

The real question is not whether any of us deserved it, but whether any of us have any control over the whole mess. Representative democracy doesn’t mean that we morally back any decision our elected officials make, simply because they’re elected. And even then, in a system dominated by two major political parties where the laws are written to avor them over competitors, even less responsibility lies with us citizens. Who really feels their political choices as reflect in elections are truly authentic? I doubt any group who’d react positively to that question would constitute any sort of majority.

If American citizens are responsible for restraining domestic government, then their performance in overseeing foreign policy is that much more abysmal. As a rule, Americans have only been interested in the overseas activities of the U.S. Gov’t when intervention was considered unavoidable, such as Vietnam, World War II, or the War on Terror. Crises involving foreign threats are plentiful when a citizenry allows the government a blank check to intervene overseas. Not only are conflicts inevitably created and fueled, but the lack of interest in the root causes prevents citizens from connecting the dots between government policy and actual tragedy.

Certainly there is cause for bringing the terrorists who committed 9/11 to justice. There is also cause for reexamining our role in the world - indeed, for beginning to examine it for the first time, in depth. We cannot be apathetic about our security. That is the line Republicans are selling: “Elect us and you won’t have to worry about foreign policy and national security.” But we should be concerned. We should educate ourselves about what’s going on overseas. To the extent that we have troops in over a hundred countries, the world’s politics are our politics. Oversight cannot be shifted to a proxy such as the state without consequences.

Victimhood and Moral Equivalence

My assertion that 9/11 is not a lone event disconnected from any context, but rather a product of U.S. hegemony, has a basis in fact, regardless of whether that interests RTG. Even her beloved Pentagon released a report concluding that our foreign policies are a direct cause of Muslim agitation towards the U.S. So when she makes blithe quips about moral equivalence, such as these, I find her very disingenuous:

…Understand the nonsense of saying that a Windows on the World dishwasher deserved to die because the US supports Israel, or an Aon insurance analyst deserved to be immolated because the USA has ‘too much power’. I can’t connect it like that. I can’t write death warrants for random people because I may or may not agree with lawmakers and politicians about the best way to run our country (my emphasis).

RTG is trying to connect understanding a motivation to endorsing a motivation. This is absurd. Criminal psychology would not exist if people could not understand the margins of human conscience where errors and depravities occur. The question, of course, is whether criminal behavior takes place in a vacuum.

RTG has said on many occasions that she is not interested in the reasons people commit atrocities. She is consistent, at least, in that she applies that indifference to her own government. U.S. policies, after all, are complicit in the deaths of many in the Middle East:

• The shooting down of two Libyan planes in 1981
• the bombardment of Beirut in 1983 and 1984
• the furnishing of military aid and intelligence to both sides of the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88 so as to maximize the damage each side would inflict upon the other
• the bombing of Libya in 1986
• the bombing and sinking of an Iranian ship in 1987
• the shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane in 1988
• the shooting down of two more Libyan planes in 1989
• the massive bombing of the Iraqi people in 1991
• the continuing bombings and sanctions against Iraq
• the bombing of Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, the latter destroying a pharmaceutical plant which provided for half the impoverished nation’s medicine
• the habitual support of Israel despite the devastation and routine torture it inflicts upon the Palestinian people
• the condemnation of Palestinian resistance to this
• the abduction of “suspected terrorists” from Muslim countries, such as Malaysia, Pakistan, Lebanon and Albania, who are then taken to places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where they are tortured
• the large military and hi-tech presence in Islam’s holiest land, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere in the Persian Gulf region
• the support of anti-democratic Middle East governments from the Shah to the Saudis.

The death toll of U.S. intervention in the middle east alone - putting aside other interventions around the world - dwarf the lives lost on September 11. That doesn’t make our grievances less tragic, but it does demand that we not purposely avoid reexamining our activities. Regardless of whether you support these policies or not, you cannot deny the death toll, nor can you discount the provocation they represented. Indeed, understand the nonsense of saying that innocent Iranians, Iraqis, or Lebanese must die because American needs to preserve it’s hegemony, protect a state that desires to keep its majority ethnicity, and keep oil flowing. It certainly is obscene in exactly the same way RTG framed the nonsense of radical islamic terrorism.

To complain about moral equivalence between Islamic fundamentalist terrorist activities and U.S. foreign policy terrorist activities is to try and make a distinction not based on morality but on the nationality of the target. Americans must realize that the families, friends, and fellow citizens of Iraqis, Lebanese, Iranians, and other middle eastern peoples are just as dear to those peoples as ours are to us. When we allow our state to attack innocents, we are as complicit in those deaths as Muslims are in not policing their religion and culture of radicalism.

Now, it may be that RTG, like many Americans, is simply not aware of the history of American intervention. If that’s true, there’s ample opportunity to educate oneself. Or, perhaps she feels these interventions were justified and right. We can disagree on that, but at least she would be acknowledging the basis for reciprocating terrorism which we (somehow justifiably) initiated.

What I can’t accept is simply ignoring inconvenient facts.Doing so disqualifies one from any inclusion in any rational debate, mainstream or otherwise. And while it nearly drove me from paying attention to her at all, I feel it is vitally important to point out how anti-intellectual and unsubstantiated her point of view is. This idea that foreign policy should be made from the gut - facts be damned - must be fought fiercely. We cannot afford another abdication of citizen oversight in the realm of foreign policy. Ignorance must not be allowed to become an acceptable policy position.

I doubt that my endorsement carries a great deal of weight, and to the extent that it carries any at all, it would be silly to assume that that weight is all positive. Furthermore, I had intended to refrain from actively involving myself in a presidential campaign for some time yet. It’s still early, and I’d hoped to be more chronicler than participant until some time next year.

But … I’m beyond the point where I can honestly posture myself as an objective observer. Early as it is, and even knowing that the field of aspirants to the Libertarian Party’s 2008 presidential nomination may grow, I’ve settled on a candidate to support. Please don’t think of this as an announcement/endorsement so much as a notification that from here on out, where the nomination is concerned, I’m no longer engaged in analysis and journalism, but rather in support and propaganda. The “First Look” series ends now.

So: Why do I support Steve Kubby for the LP’s 2008 presidential nomination and for election to the presidency of the United States? I’ve offered a few reasons elsewhere. I’d like to add a few more to the list (but first, to mention that you can order Kubby 2008 buttons like the one pictured on the left at Carol Moore’s site):

- Taking solid libertarian positions on the issues isn’t everything — but it’s the first thing. Steve Kubby isn’t the only candidate I expect to see campaigning on a truly libertarian platform, but he’s one of them.

- Past performance is not necessarily an indicator of future success … but that’s the smart way to bet. Steve Kubby is not the only candidate who has previously engaged in credible political efforts, but his record on that point does stand out from the field both externally (as one of the leading activists in putting Proposition 215 in California over the top) and internally (among the announced candidates, he has received a higher percentage of the vote in internal LP elections at national conventions than any of the others).

- It’s inevitable that Steve Kubby will initially be painted as a “single issue candidate.” As you’ll soon see, he isn’t … but even though the accusation is and will remain incorrect, it is also useful. In a tight 2008 election to which other issues are central, it’s very possible that a Kubby candidacy will finally break the duopoly logjam on the drug war and that we’ll see one or both of the “major party” candidates trying to outflank us by coming out in favor of medical marijuana … and maybe even more than that (industrial hemp, reining in the FDA on supplement/treatment issues, etc.) in search of those last few “marginal” votes.

- If the LP has a future, that future lies in appealing to a number of huge unrepresented constituencies … on the Left. We’ve given the Right its shot and then some. It’s time to admit to ourselves that that approach has failed. Those Republicans who were going to defect to the LP have already done so, and those who remain in the GOP — “libertarian” Republicans included — have amply demonstrated that party loyalty trumps their interest in liberty. It’s time to go after the anti-war, anti-drug-war, pro-immigration thirty-somethings who have (sensibly) never trusted the Right and who have voted Democrat as “the lesser evil” (if they’ve voted at all!) for the last 16 years while the LP has positioned itself as “to the Right of the GOP.” Steve Kubby is not the only candidate who can appeal to these voters (George Phillies is an ACLU leader, and Christine Smith is obviously sensitive to Left appeal — witness her admiration for Gore Vidal), but I believe that Kubby will have the most cachet with that demographic.

- The LP presidential campaigns have become serious very early in this election cycle, and that’s a good thing (for which George Phillies deserves much of the credit). I want to see the LP’s presidential candidate get a good “running start” and as a matter of fact, I hope that the Libertarian National Committee schedules the presidential nominating convention for the earliest possible time under the bylaws (I believe that would be the autumn of 2007) so that the LP has a nominee campaigning as the nominee for a full year and then some instead of just a few months. In my opinion, Steve Kubby is the only candidate who has a chance of building the kind of momentum which could withstand a “late entry” candidacy by The Evil One or some similar “same old Right-Wing-Lite” candidate who would piss away yet another opportunity to build a bigger, better, more successful and more relevant LP.

Since I’m in propaganda mode, I haven’t really covered the down side of the Kubby candidacy. Frankly, I don’t know if there’s a down side to cover (I’m sure one or more commenters will believe there is, and will be happy to explain). It’s too early to tell what kind of campaign organization he’ll put together, whether he’s got a good fundraising strategy in place, etc. And that’s probably the ultimate reason I’ve decided to sign on as a supporter of, and volunteer for, Kubby’s campaign … this is too important to not get started on now.

–
Technorati Tags: Politics, Libertarian, Libertarian Party, Election 2008, Steve Kubby
IceRocket Tags: Politics, Libertarian, Libertarian Party, Election 2008, Steve Kubby

Here is a brief overview of Latin American movements I wrote for a discussion group.
First off, Mexico. In the state of Chiapas, the Zapatista Movement has created a web of autonomous, direct democratically governed villages as well as coops and land reform. The State of Oaxaca has seen a similar movement among indigenous villages as well as the openly anarchist CIPO-RFM. (also a village federation) As I write there is a situation of dual power in Oaxaca with the different movements coming together to non-violently remove the corrupt PRI government. The CIPO-RFM and the Zapatistas have very close relations with the Spanish and French anarcho-syndicalists (more on them later)
In Costa Rica there is a very strong anti-globalist movement that has influenced one of the main parties, coming within a hair's breadth of being elected in the last election.
In Venezuela the democratically elected Chavez government has enacted land reform, built cooperatives, instituted a certain level of self-management and decentralization at the village and neighborhood level. Venezuela is working on a Bolivarian concept, by which the individual nations of Latin America ought to come together for mutual benefit.
In Argentina, while the neighborhood assembly movement has largely faded, due to the meddling of political parties, at least 10,000 workers remain in the worker-managed factories.
In Bolivia, the indigenous majority is, for the first time being empowered. They have rejected statist nationalization of the water, preferring a form of community control. The wealth of the natural resources, chiefly natural gas, will be used to improve the lives of the majority, instead of fattening the profits of some multinational.
In Chile, the social movements are reborn. Evidence of this was the massive (1million) student strike recently. Populism and indigenism are very strong in Peru and Ecuador, populist movements could take power there in the future.
In Columbia, in spite of heavy attacks and death squads the FARC guerrilla army remains undefeated and has at least 18,000 soldiers. It has adopted the concept of Bolivarian Revolution and thus has seemingly moved away from orthodox Marxist Leninism.
Left-wing governments are also found in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, and Brazil. The Sandinistas are poised to return in Nicaragua. Anarchist groups are now found in most Latin American countries, the largest of which are in Brazil.
The general tendency is away from either the Fabian or Marxist Leninist concepts (heavy statism) and towards the populist emphasis upon empowerment of the people and cooperatives.