leftlibertarian.org

The post “The Libertarian Party Must Die” was mentioned over at Third Party Watch. While I made a few sparse comments over there, there’s one longer one that I want to republish here.

Robert Milnes asked:

Brad, I always admired the Groucho Marxists. But no party? No candidates? What do they do for fun? What about the rest of us?

My response follows:

“Real libertarianism is simply the non-aggression principle. It is an ethical framework rather than a political ideology. The “political” RESULT of making the non-aggression principle the default consideration in matters of justice would demonstrably be some variant or another of free-market oriented anarchism. If a stateless society is not your goal, then, you need to stop reading at this point and go hang out with the other slow minarchist kids. May your chains rest lightly, yada, yada, yada…

Modern “libertarianism” in the sense of a political creed principally crafted by ONE man, Murray Rothbard, consists of a refined version of individualist anarchism used as a rationale for a revived classical liberalism in the political arena. As you’re no doubt aware, the default thinking states that narrowing the scope of state policy, the amount of state spending constitutes “progress” toward that goal.

While certainly no anti-statist advocate of the non-aggression principle could advocate expanding the state, some libertarian anarchists have dissented against the Rothbardian theory of “progress” and more often than not they were otherwise hardcore Rothbardians (“more Rothbardian than Rothbard”) who deeply valued Murray’s refinement of anarchist theory itself. These “left libertarians” or AGORISTS noted that the ultimate goal, the accomplishment of a libertarian society, was essentially the suppression of the state as criminal activity (which Rothbard taught that it was) by a new market-oriented system of law and justice which respected the non-aggression principle. To these pioneering early libertarians, political reformism was far worse than merely a waste of libertarian activist time. It confused matters by assisting the statists in maintaining the illusion of state moral legitimacy, essential for compelling obedience and without which the state could not last for long.

Samuel Edward Konkin III, in particular, was adamant in insisting on an “anti-political” approach and developed a comprehensive theory of libertarian revolution to guide activists—outlined in New Libertarian Manifesto. He also detailed advances in radical libertarian class theory that work in tandem with his theory of revolution and which you can read about in Agorist Class Theory.”

Again, if you want to support an effort to get the Libertarian Party to dissolve itself, pledge money today.

I’ve been putting in some tweaks to the page layout, as you may have noticed, and, while I was at it, the appearance of one too many animated ads for the Fighting Uruk-Hai of Arizona in my sidebar finally inspired me to revise and expand my ad disclaimer. As you can see, if you scan over to the right, it now reads: Views inscribed in the Rad Geek People’s Daily are mine, and may not be those of sponsors. Google ads are served algorithmically, without individual review, so contrariwise, an ad’s appearance does not imply my endorsement of the sponsor.

To be fair, the Adsense management interface does have a provision for screening out future appearances of particular ads, after-the-fact, if you catch one that you don’t want them to appear on your page. On the other hand, I should hope that most of my readership is not about to vote for Gothmog. And if I let the ads appear, then, should anyone happen to click on a McCain ad, that means a little more money is taken away from the McCain 2008 Presidential campaign, and given to me instead. Which seems like a particularly sweet sort of revenge.

The evils being peddled by the federal conservatives are coming thick and fast. Well at least this is giving bloggers something to talk about. The Harper Index has many new items on the latest sleaze from parliament hill. Here are just a couple. Check out the rest here.

OTTAWA (28 Feb. 2008) - Before he became prime minister, Stephen Harper headed the National Citizens Coalition (NCC), a pioneering wolf-in-sheep's-clothing outfit that championed conservative causes while posing as a grassroots organization.

The NCC was founded more than 40 years ago by the late Colin Brown, a cranky insurance millionaire who sensed populism could be faked and milked for political impact. He'd approve of the tactics Harper is using in Ottawa today.

Over its many years, the NCC has poured millions of murky dollars into billboard campaigns, national newspaper ads and Supreme Court challenges on behalf of right-wing causes, never once identifying the "citizens" it speaks for or allowing anyone to view its list of donors. The suspicion has always been that corporations fund the lion's share of its activities.

The NCC is a model that right-wing groups have used repeatedly and, with a federal election again looming, the concept is being put to use once again by the Harperites.

Two suspect groups

Two recent examples of groups sporting a phony independence while pushing causes in line with the Harper re-election campaign are Canadians for Afghanistan (CFA) and Friends of Science (FOS).

CFA is supporting the Conservative plan to extend Canada's mission in Afghanistan to 2011 while FOS is dedicated to debunking global warming and thus shoring up weak Conservative environmental policies.

While claiming independence, both groups include, or are influenced by, partisan associates or former operatives of the Harper Conservatives.

Canadians for Afghanistan describes itself as a coalition of students and young people. However, the Ottawa Citizen reports that one of the key operatives behind the recently-unveiled group is Josh McJannet.

While others did the talking, as the group introduced itself to parliamentary media, McJannet sat out of sight, a few metres away in a briefing room. He later admitted to being on the group's "steering committee" but declined to answer questions about his role.

Until last September, McJannet was a Conservative staff member in the office of Conservative Whip Jay Hill. Before that he worked for Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer. When he left the hill, he became a lobbyist with Summa Strategies, a firm that counts defence contractors such as the Boeing aerospace giant among its clients.

Although I haven't seen this issue mentioned in H.I. the scandal continues to grow over the late Chuck Cadman the former conservative who won a seat as an independent MP in the constituency of Surrey North, in British Columbia. He sided with the minority liberal government in 2005 on a budget vote because he believed that his constituents did not want another election. The Tories have been accused of trying to bribe the dying member of parliament with a million life insurance policy in order to help them bring down the government. Both his widow, Dona, and daughter, Jodi, say that evidence given in a taped interview with Prime Minister Harper is correct. Why Dona is still willing to run for the Conservatives almost defies reason. I guess it is like older generations of social democrats who refuse to give up on the NDP. Habit can be a powerful force. Here is part of a recent item from the Victoria Times-Colonist:

OTTAWA - Prime Minister Stephen Harper incriminated himself in the alleged bribery attempt of the late Chuck Cadman when he said in a taped interview in 2005 that Conservative envoys offered the terminally-ill MP "financial considerations" in exchange for his vote, Opposition MPs charged Friday.

Tempers flared over the accusations in the House of Commons as Cadman's daughter Jodi said her dad had not wanted to publicly reveal a Conservative offer of a $1 million life insurance policy because the political fallout would have overwhelmed him. He was near death from skin cancer at the time.

Jodi's husband, Holland Miller, supported the two women by confirming that he was in on the family secret that was revealed through a book excerpt leak this week. "I can tell you that according to Chuck when he did get back from Ottawa he did specifically tell me this offer was made," Miller said in an interview with Vancouver radio station CKNW.

"He said a million dollar life insurance policy. Now I know that doesn't make a lot of sense to what people are saying but that's exactly what he had said."

Jodi Cadman said she has a bad taste in her mouth over the whole experience, and that she thinks her mother should reconsider her Conservative candidacy for the next federal election in Surrey North, the riding her husband held. "I think she is mulling it over, as well she should," she said. "They are calling her a liar."

The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) has issued a publication on the bad state of casual housing for street people. It's entitled "They Call It Struggle for a Reason" and is available for download in PDF format. The introduction is reprinted below. For more information go to the hyperlink.

" The City of Toronto is in the process of dismantling the hostel system in the downtown core. By mid summer of last year five shelters in the downtown core were shut down: Council Fire, 110 Edward, 60 Richmond, Salvation Army’s Riverdale Shelter, and Treasure House. The total number of hostel beds lost was 312. These shelters provided more than 340,000 meals and supplied 113, 880 beds annually. The total savings to the city and the province is $4 million. These cuts will further deteriorate conditions in city hostels, where overcrowding, violence, TB, and bed bugs have already become the norm. " The OCAP will be demonstrating at the Toronto City Hall on Tuesday, March 4. "




" (Last) Wednesday night an Aboriginal man who was homeless was found frozen to death in a stairwell around Yonge and Charles St. Another man was found in Chinatown with serious injury from exposure.

Just six days ago the City heard 12 deputations from agencies and community members about the current crisis. After the loss of over 300 shelter spaces and basic needs such as food, we have been left in a dangerous situation. Demands were made for only the most basic need -
shelter. The City's response was to leave people in danger and to risk injury and death.

The death of this man and the injury and suffering of other homeless people is on the hands of the City. On Tuesday will be going to City Hall to face Miller and demand an immediate response to this crisis. This is a serious situation and we ask that you make all efforts to join us."

The libertarian movement predates the Libertarian Party and will survive after it is gone. There was a time when radical libertarians like Samuel Edward Konkin III denounced formation of a “libertarian” politicial party as incompatible with libertarianism properly understood. With evisceration of the LP platform in recent years by “small government” statists longing to join the ruling class, the Ron Paul GOP presidential campaign has served not to shout out the irrelevancy of the Libertarian Party so much as serve as the heavy duty exclamation point punctuating that death cry that the LP already delivered to itself.

A shutdown of the Libertarian Party would get radicals and moderates out of each others hair. Radicals could pursue the long neglected non-electoral strategies for long-term radical change and moderates could apply their energies to seeking small reforms inside the major parties, as Ron Paul does. Sufficient social space for needed overlap between wings and their ideological cross-fertilization would exist organizationally in groups like ISIL and the Advocates for Self-Government, as well as out on the internet in political discussion forums of all sorts generally.

The first step in a campaign to shut down the LP would be to develop content for a web site comprehensively laying out both radical and moderate libertarian cases for shutting down the Libertarian Party as counter-productive to the cause of libertarianism.

DEATH WITH DIGNITY?

Is the market ready for this? Does the support exist for such a project? Can libertarians take responsibility for cleaning up their own mess?

Or should the Libertarian Party instead be left to wither on the vine and further become even more of a sad parody of the ideals of the thousands of activists, including myself, who put huge amounts of their lives and treasure into building it?

If the membership of the Libertarian Party wants to shut down the LP, they can do so at an LP national convention by amending Article 2 of the LP bylaws — the part that lists the duration of the party as “perpeptual”. It will take a 7/8 majority.

If the membership are to be persuaded to adopt such a course of action, the case(s) for doing so will have to be properly presented to them.

The domain www.shutdownthelp.info has been registered.

I am seeking $2500 in funding to develop comprehensive content for that site in support of a potential LP shut down effort. It is my opinion that if $2500 can not be raised to fully spell out the case for shutting down the LP, then there wouldn’t be enough potential support for an actual attempt to shut down the LP to be worth trying.

Will you pledge a donation toward Death with Dignity for the LP so that the libertarian movement can develop a consensus to move on to other strategies? Or should the Libertarian Party just be ignored until it goes away?

Pledge using Fundable. You will not be billed if the $2500 pledge goal is not reached.

Here’s Mike Tennant at LewRockwell.com Blog, quasi-approvingly quoting Jacob Heilbrunn’s summary of Bill Buckley:

Jacob Heilbrunn writes: Buckley wasn’t a radical conservative. He didn’t believe in trying to destroy the Eastern Establishment; instead, he wanted to reform it. Therein lies the entire problem.

Hold up. I’m lost.

In what possible sense of the word conservative is it a genuine conservative’s goal either to smash or to reform the ancien régime?

Maybe this political debate is really about something other than what Tennant, or Heilbrunn, or for that matter Buckley, thinks it is about.

Further reading:

• GT 2005-02-03: By George, I think he’s got it!
• GT 2004-08-23: The Conservative Tradition

The economist Joan Robinson (1903-1983) wrote, "The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of readymade answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists."

A better reason to study economics is to avoid being deceived by politicians; they are the far greater threat to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. When you consider that the typical political campaign is little more than a series of confidence games, understanding basic economics is a matter of survival. Without such an understanding one is an easy mark.

The rest of this week's TGIF, "Health-Care Cons," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Like many Canadians I am very glad that Robert Latimer has finally been allowed day parole. And like so many I think he should not have spent time in jail. His first trial was overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada due to allegations of jury tampering by the RCMP. The verdict in 1994 was first degree murder. In the second trial held in 1997 both the jury and the presiding judge called for a minimum sentence which the "Crown" in all it's vindictive glory overturned. The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal ruled that Latimer would have to serve a life sentence. Latimer appealed this decision to the Supreme Court of Canada, asserting that he had not been allowed to argue that he had no choice but to kill Tracy, and that a life sentence was "cruel and unusual punishment". The Supreme Court unanimously upheld Latimer's conviction and sentence. Last December the National Parole Board refused to grant Latimer day parole ostensibly because he had failed to show sufficient "remorse". In normal language this translates as a refusal to parrot the standard litany of psychobabble which every real criminal learns in the process of "working the system". I've made this point in previous postings as have other anarchists. On appeal the parole board's decision was overturned (to the great relief of his family) on a point that "remorse" was not a significant condition only the likelihood that he would "re-offend" ,which, of course, is basically zero

From the Ottawa Citizen ...

Laura Latimer said her family was pleased the National Parole Board's Appeal Division would allow for him to begin day parole and that they wished to thank the people that had supported her husband over the years.Robert Latimer killed his severely disabled daughter, Tracy, on Oct. 23, 1993. Robert Latimer remains at the William Head Institution near Victoria, B.C., but will be moved to a halfway house in Ottawa.

From an interview with Robert Latimer's sister Pat Latimer-Martin last December:

... " he will never lie to the National Parole Board - even if lying is the only thing that will set him free."

"They want him to lie, He will never lie. He hasn't since he was old enough to talk. He's got to stand up for his convictions and stand up for Tracy." He remained unapologetic and angry at the legal system. "The laws are not as important as Tracy was," he said. "I still feel don't feel guilty because I still feel it was the best thing to do."

Latimer killed his daughter Tracy by placing her in a truck on the family farm in Wilkie, Sask., and pumping exhaust into the vehicle until she died of carbon-monoxide poisoning.

He contended it was an act of mercy because Tracy was severely disabled and suffered from cerebral palsy caused by brain damage at birth. She was a bed-bound quadriplegic who could not speak or feed herself. She suffered from a twisted spine, malnutrition, seizures and chronic vomiting.

For more information see the
Robert Latimer Website.

(Story via Holly @ feministe 2008-02-17. Video thanks to GLAAD 2008-02-13.)

There are a couple of different points to make about conservative reactions to the recent story of a government elementary school in Douglas County, Colorado making some accommodations for a transgender girl in the second grade. Both are well illustrated by the ridiculous discussion of the story by professional blowhard Neil Cavuto on Fox News.

The first point to make is about the first-order issue — how to run an elementary school and what to do if a kid who has been living and attending school as a boy decides that she wants to live as a girl instead. As far as this goes, Cavuto’s reaction is based on a tissue of nastiness, nonsense, and a few plain lies. As far as I can tell, for example, the claim that any student other than this little girl will be using unisex bathrooms is simply false — the school will have its normal girls’ and boys’ bathrooms; the girl in question just won’t be forced to use them. The claim that it will cost millions of dollars also seems to be something that Cavuto just made up out of thin air; the school already has plenty of bathrooms, doesn’t need to build more, and is just reclassifying a couple of already-existing bathrooms — which from the sound of it are probably single-stall rooms in the teacher’s lounge, or something similar — for this girl’s use. More broadly, the entire discussion is premised on the positively bizarre notion that the school should be ragged on for bending over backwards to suit this girl’s delicate sensibilities, just so long as they don’t follow the Genital Correctness Busybody Blowhard Brigade in deliberately trying to make the kid’s life more unpleasant, e.g. by refusing to call her by her chosen name, or by forcing her to use the boys’ bathroom when she doesn’t want to use it, or by refusing to intervene against bullies as they would with any other child being bullied for any other reason, or by harassing her, punishing her, or throwing her out of school for wearing the wrong set of clothes. Apparently it’s the acme of liberal hypersensitivity and authoritarian political correctness run amok, and indeed it’s robbing children everywhere of their childhood (!), if you should ever fail to go out of your way to be as obnoxious as possible toward an eight-year-old kid, who never did anything to you, all in the name of heteropatriarchal gender-role social engineering.

The second point to make is about a second-order issue — whether or not the local government in Douglas should be taking a role in promoting one way of running a school or interacting with transgender students over others. Cavuto tries to invoke the issue implicitly by repeatedly referring to tax dollars, and although his specific claims about millions of tax dollars are obvious bullshit, there is a legitimate point buried under it. It should not be the local government’s business to promote either a tolerant or a punitive school environment for this kid — because while I think it’s stupid for any school to harass this kid or try to force her into the right gender identity, I also think that it is tyrannical for any government to force local taxpayers to pay for projects that they personally find abhorrent (whether because they are being forced to pay for violations of their own religious beliefs, or for any other reason). Nor should local parents be forced to enroll their kids in a school that allows openly transgender students to participate in classes. Again, I think that’s a stupid policy to make, but is tyrannical for the government to force parents to put their children in environments that they deeply believe that their children shouldn’t be in.

If we had an argument to the effect that local taxpayers should be able to withhold funding from schools that establish policies they consider wrongheaded, or to the effect that anti-trans local parents should be free to withdraw their kids from this school and make other arrangements (homeschooling, parochial schooling, or whatever), without having to jump the government’s normal punitive bureaucratic hurdles, and without being forced to continue paying for a school that they no longer feel to be fit to educate children, then I would be perfectly willing to take their side on that one — I may disagree with everything that they want to teach kids, but I’ll defend to the death their right to teach it. But, of course, principled small-government conservatives that they are, Cavuto and the rest of the GCBBB are constitutionally incapable of making that kind of second-order argument. Instead, we find a lot of phony-concern hand-wringing from letter writers about local government and school authorities promoting gender confusion, deviance, professional help, a lifetime of pain, etc. (As far as I can tell there’s no evidence that the girl is at all confused; she seems to be pretty clear on what she wants. And there’s no reason to believe that her decision to live as a girl promises a lifetime of pain, unless and except to the extent that other people, i.e. these same busybody blowhards, go out of their way to make it painful. There’s no promise here; only a threat.) But it is no more the job of government authorities to promote conformity to traditional gender roles and their assignment based on biological sex, than it is their job to promote the opposite; it would be just as immoral as them to force me to pay for harassing and penalizing transgender children who would otherwise be happy as clams until they fit back into their proper gender, when I consider that abhorrent. Cavuto, meanwhile, shows his principled conservative bona fides by arguing that no matter how many transgender kids there may be in elementary schools, they are far from the majority. We live in a country where majority rules, which apparently, to his mind, means that when 99% of kids follow traditional gender norms for the sex they were assigned at birth, it must be the government’s job to direct school authorities to treat the remaining 1% like shit, so as to spare the 99% from the terrible confusion of possibly learning something. The majority rules, the minority drools, and if you don’t like it they’ll force you to pay for their Right-wing social engineering anyway. And, oh yes, you will pay.

Further reading:

• GT 2007-12-08: Lazy Linking on Liberatory Learning
• GT 2005-10-07: Small-government conservatives
• GT 2005-03-09: The Most Depressing Photograph in the World
• GT 2001-12-10: Gender terrorism in Nashville