Preemptive Strike on LRC by Gene Callahan

Perry de Havilland of Samizdata, a UK libertarian web site, has recently attacked LewRockwell.com in a blog post entitled, "LewRockwell.com adopts a deliberate no-brain strategy." The immediate source of de Havilland's ire was an article by Gary North, "A Deliberate No-Exit Strategy," a piece which de Havilland calls "gibberish." However, his criticism is directed more broadly at non-interventionist libertarians in general.

Now, I happen to think that de Havilland's attack on North involved a "deliberate no-comprehension strategy." This is used to make a writer with whom one disagrees appear to be of subnormal intelligence. The chief tactic employed in it is to regard the most commonplace remarks of the 'designated moron' as nonsensical. For instance, de Havilland, in describing North's argument, writes, "The USA wants to invade Iraq to 'control' the flow of oil." "Control" is placed in quotes, implying that de Havilland can't imagine any government having any interest in controlling any natural resource, as if North had written something like "The earthworms in my backyard want to 'discuss aesthetics.'"

Similarly, de Havilland is flabbergasted that North would use 'England' to stand for the UK: "It is usually a good indication of someone engaging in a cranio-rectal insertion when they refer to the UK as 'England,' which is rather like describing the USA as 'New York State.'" Well, yes, if New York State encompassed over half of the territory of the US, contained roughly 80% of its population, and had added the other 49 states to the union mostly by conquering them, then the two figures of speech would be rather alike. One wonders if de Havilland has never heard of the synecdoche, which, according to YourDictionary.com, is "A figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole…"

However, my chief aim here is not to defend Dr. North, since he is quite capable of defending himself. Rather, I think that de Havilland's argument is typical of many libertarian interventionists, and since he seems to be an intelligent fellow, and the libertarian split between the interventionists and non-interventionists is an important issue in libertarianism today, I believe his argument is worth examining in some detail.

De Havilland responded online to a number of readers' comments about his original post. (You can view their comments and his responses by following the same link as above.) What I quote below is entirely from his responses, I believe.

De Havilland views himself, and presumably other libertarians, as faced with a difficult choice: "[T]he way I see it if I have to choose between nasty and occasional murder-by-proxy statists like one finds in Western polities... and nasty psychopathic mass murderous ethnic cleansing and village gassing statists like Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein, then clearly I will side with the lesser evil."

If de Havilland feels he has to choose between, say, Hussein and Bush, then who could argue with his pick? But why are libertarians forced to choose between the two at all? And choose between them for what? One's brother-in-law? Best man at one's wedding? Personal banker?

Let me be clear: I am happy that George Bush rather than Saddam Hussein is ruling the country in which I live. And if there were some remote possibility that Saddam Hussein was going to become the ruler of the US, then I would certainly do what I could to prevent it from occurring. But it is about as likely that one day Hussein is going to be US president (or UK prime minister) as it is that Perry de Havilland will be chosen to lead the Labour Party next year.

No, de Havilland seems to mean that, if some less nasty statists choose to pick a fight with some more nasty statists, libertarians should sensibly side with the less nasty ones. But why is that? Given that the fight will almost certainly result in an increase in the scope of government in the less nasty regime, why shouldn't we oppose the fight itself, rather than feeling compelled to choose sides? Well, one such circumstance might be if war seemed inevitable, and the outcome of a loss by the less nasty side would be the conquest of "its" territory by the more nasty side. For example, that seems to be how Ludwig von Mises regarded the Cold War, and, given his analysis of the international situation, his "hawkish" position seems a reasonable one for a libertarian to have adopted.

However, the conflict between the US/UK and Iraq doesn't closely resemble the Cold War. Even if one accepts the hawks' view of Hussein, and believes that he still has designs on the territory of one or more of his neighbor's, it is absurd to suppose that after knocking off Kuwait or Iran, it's on to Liverpool or San Francisco for the Iraqi army.

De Havilland continues: "All crimes are not the same: magnitude matters." No doubt! But he then contends: "What the Rothbardians seem to keep doing is choosing the greater evil on the basis of a very parochial and blinkered Americocentric world view."

There are a number of problems jammed into the previous sentence. One is that Rothbard certainly did not intend to choose among greater and lesser evils. He intended to choose liberty. And he thought that the best American foreign policy for promoting liberty was the non-interventionist one recommended by our founders. Therefore, he was highly critical of American interventionism. During the Cold War, for example, he certainly did not think he was "choosing" the Soviet Union. He felt certain that the Soviet Union was doomed to collapse, since its attempt to implement socialism was inherently untenable. In fact, I believe that he thought that an aggressive American Cold War policy helped to prop up the Soviet Union, the same way that one could actually hold up a collapsing house by trying to push it over in the opposite direction from the one toward which it was collapsing.

Of course, de Havilland might contend that Rothbard didn't mean to choose the Soviet Union, but that his policy recommendations in fact forwarded Soviet interests. But that is a whole different matter than choosing the greater evil. And even to make the lesser charge stick, de Havilland would have to show why Rothbard's belief in the inevitability of Soviet collapse was wrong.

Another difficulty is the curious charge of "Americocentric" leveled at Rothbardian foreign policy critiques. Rothbard lived in America, and probably the majority of those most influenced by his views did or do live there as well. American foreign policy was both the foreign policy upon which they could hope to have the most influence and the one that was likely to have the most influence on them. Therefore, it hardly seems surprising that they have focused their anti-interventionist arguments on American interventionism.

Lastly (yes, we're still dealing with that sentence from four paragraphs ago!), de Havilland casually equates "writer for LewRockwell.com" with "Rothbardian." The underlying belief appears to be that Lew Rockwell (and by extension, the Mises Institute) always forwards a "plumb line" Rothbardian point of view.

That belief is false. Although the issue is peripheral to my main argument, it frequently crops up in libertarian circles, and is worth addressing briefly.

One reason that I can assure you of the falsity of that belief is that Lew Rockwell and the Mises Institute have vigorously promoted my writing even though I am far from a plumb line Rothbardian, a fact of which they are well aware. My own path to libertarianism was probably somewhat unusual, in that I spent over a decade studying libertarian ideas before I ever personally knew another libertarian or had any connection to libertarian organizations. Therefore, my influences were whomever I happened to stumble across in my solitary wanderings, the main ones being, in order of acquaintance, Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, F.A. Hayek, David Friedman, and Ludwig von Mises. When I first began writing for Mises.org and LewRockwell.com, I was quite surprised to find that many people assumed that I was a disciple of a writer, Murray Rothbard, of whom I was barely aware!

Since then, I have become more acquainted with Rothbard's writings. While I greatly admire his tremendous accomplishments, I still do not consider myself a Rothbardian. In retrospect, I recognize that one of my earlier published pieces of libertarian writing was a criticism of Rothbard's approach to ethics, written before I even knew that Rothbard had an approach to ethics. And the publisher of that article, critical of Rothbardian ethics, was… Mises.org.

Similarly, based on my own reading of a few of the other writers whose work has appeared frequently on LewRockwell.com, I believe it would be a significant stretch to call Robert Higgs, Paul Gottfried, Ryan McMaken, Humberto Fontova, Bob Murphy, Butler Shaffer, or Michael Peirce strict "Rothbardians," although Rothbard has probably influenced each of them. Indeed, I am hard put to think of anyone writing for LewRockwell.com who doesn't disagree with Rothbard on some significant issue.

"I have even heard one Rothbardian tell me that Waco shows that the USA is no better than Ba'athist Iraq, as if killing 100 people was no different to killing hundreds of thousands. That is why I regard the Lew Rockwell worldview when it comes to the world's tyrants as actually rather ludicrous."

I find the view of the "Rothbardian" in question ludicrous as well. But it is hardly less ludicrous to cite one silly opinion from some person vaguely associated with Lew Rockwell and refer to it as the "Lew Rockwell worldview"! What would Mr. de Havilland think of our trolling for opinions among the least astute readers of Samizdata and calling the worst of what we dredged up the "Perry de Havilland worldview"?

De Havilland declares: "I do not support war against Iraq because Iraq is a threat to the UK or USA, I do so because I support war against 'the greater evil' by the lesser evil."

His reasoning implies an interesting principle: libertarians should support any regime going to war against any other regime that is more evil than it is. So let's take a look at the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom in which, for example, Singapore ranks ahead of the US. So, per "The de Havilland Doctrine," libertarians should support a declaration of war by Singapore on America.

That can't be right! Perhaps he supports only those wars that the less evil regime is likely to win? OK then: The US ranks significantly higher than Greece in the index, and the Americans could surely defeat the Hellenes. So does de Havilland support a US attack on Greece?

De Havilland might protest that the difference between the degree of freedom in the US and in Greece is too small to justify war. OK, then let's take Hong Kong and Belarus, which are roughly as far apart in their scores as are the US and Iraq. Presumably, libertarians then should be angling for an attack by Hong Kong on Belarus.

No, de Havilland probably didn't mean any of those things. What he probably meant was that in some circumstances, he will support a "war against the greater evil by the lesser evil." But what are those circumstances, and why do they hold in the case of Iraq? We await word.

De Havilland employs the odd tactic, at least for a libertarian, of using taxation to justify an interventionist foreign policy:

"Yes, I am all in favour of seeing tyrants the world over reap the fruit of my stolen tax money, i.e., a smart bomb through the window of their presidential palace….

"That is also why I supported the Cold War against the Soviets. I want evil barbarians like Saddam Hussein dead and if the nation-states in which I have worked and been taxed (i.e. the UK and USA) are going to keep funding volunteer militaries with my stolen tax money, then I would at least like to see some value for my money.

"Alas we do not yet live in a rational libertarian world, so until then, I promise to stop demanding the military kills people I don't like when the state stops taxing me to fund said military."

Let me offer an analogous case: I like open land, forests, parks, and so on. I like tramping around in them. I love little critters. I even, I confess, have feelings for trees similar to those of J.R.R. Tolkien. It is my sincere hope that all of those things would exist in relative abundance in a society without governmental coercion. But should that not prove to the case, I am unwilling to violate the rights of other humans in order to increase their supply.

However, if I adopted de Havilland's approach, I presently would be lobbying for increased government seizure of open land. After all, as long as the government is going to be taking my money, then I would at least like to see some value for it! Similarly, libertarians who enjoy the opera or ballet should be campaigning for increased subsidies for the arts. Libertarians who abhor drug use ought to enthusiastically back the drug war, as long as taxes are being collected anyway.

The above strikes me as a startling argument to hear from a libertarian. Rather than the de Havilland's position, I would think the libertarian stance, for someone who feels as he does about Iraq, would be something like: "I believe that a private army ought to be raised to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein. However, given that under current circumstances the funding for any such invasion doubtlessly will be supplied by stolen money, I must oppose a war against Iraq for now."

De Havilland might well contend that I have placed myself in an untenable position. He could ask me: "Don't you hope, as long as you are being taxed for law enforcement services anyway, that the police arrest as many murderers and robbers as possible? Don't you want the Postal Service, since you are paying for it regardless, to actually deliver your letters? Wouldn't you want the US military to defend your country if a foreign country invaded it?"

Yes, yes, and yes. But there is a crucial difference between those three cases and the ones I mentioned previously: The government in the US has monopolized the legal right to provide law enforcement, letter delivery, and national defense. If those goods are to exist at all, then the government must provide them. If the US government had monopolized land ownership in America, then I would want it to make some provision for the preservation of open space, just as it would have to make provision for housing space and gas station space. If it had monopolized the oxygen supply, then I would hope it would provide me with some for breathing. And, if the US government somehow had monopolized the service "overthrowing Saddam Hussein," I would look more favorably at the possibility of an invasion.* But there is no such monopoly. In fact, there is a group of people who are much better qualified to weigh the costs and benefits of overthrowing Hussein then are the US or UK governments, namely, the residents of Iraq, as they are the people who will bear the brunt of the costs. If they do decide to revolt, and Mr. de Havilland heads over to help them, he has my best wishes and my admiration for his courage.

* Just because the government has monopolized the possibility of undertaking some activity doesn't necessarily mean that it ought to undertake the activity. For instance, if, by controlling all guns in the US, the government was the only possible provider of "random sniper attacks," that doesn't mean it ought to be engaging in such attacks.

January 6, 2003

Gene Callahan [send him mail], the author of Economics for Real People, is an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and a contributing columnist to LewRockwell.com.