Libertarians and Murder: Ron Paul Doesn’t Speak for All of Us
by Max Raskin The following does not represent my political beliefs; it is merely an attempt to garner fame through publication in the Wall Street Journal. I am indebted to Dr. Walter Block for his suggestions. He represents the anti-murder contingent of the libertarian movement. To the Editor: This laudatory letter is a response to Randy Barnett’s op-ed of Tuesday, July 17, in which he limns a brilliant vindication of the mass killing of Iraqi civilians. He has done us pro-murder libertarians a great service by reclaiming the movement from the radical flapdoodle pacifists who doggedly insist upon what they have labeled a "non-aggression axiom." This incoherent moral law essentially proclaims that violence committed against innocent people is wrong. Mr. Barnett and I are opposed to this supposed tenet of libertarianism for a plethora of philosophically tenable reasons: 1) The government says so. As every genuine libertarian knows, the State is the sole institution that is capable of determining right and wrong. Few would deny that our current Leader is in favor of murder. Ergo, by nature of a priori deductive reasoning, because our State has moralized murder, murder is moral. 2) The terrorists cannot hide amongst the innocent if we kill all the innocent. By killing innocent people, there exist fewer people in the world. The fewer people that exist, the greater our chances of killing the bad people. It is a matter of recondite mathematical probability theory, so this proof will necessarily be lost on the dull masses. 3) Being against murder won’t get you published in the Wall Street Journal; neither will it get you tenured at a prestigious university. 4) President Bush knows best. Our President said that they were capable of attacking us. That this turned out to be false is immaterial to our brand of libertarianism. The very fact that the man across the street eyes us suspiciously gives more than enough justification for his murder. Moreover, Saddam was not just eyeing us suspiciously, he spoke Arabic! 10) The Arabs are evil 11) Not everyone is a libertarian. We must remember that everyone who isn’t American hates us because we are a libertarian country. So we are justified in murdering everyone who is not American because by extension, they are not libertarian. And now we come to the extremely un-libertarian Ron Paul. Paul believes in limited government and consistently votes against increases in federal power. This is a slap in the face to all good libertarians, e.g. Randy Barnett. Without a police state and strong military, how in the world is the government going to impose libertarianism? So as we see, Paul is simply another in a long line of so-called libertarians who have espoused the rhetoric of limited government and personal liberty, while at the same time professing to be against murder, rape, and theft. As Mr. Barnett lays out the case for the legality of the Iraq War based on the fact that Saddam was firing missiles at our planes invading his country, he lays out the case for the Hobbeso-Libertarian bellum omnium contra omnes. In a brilliant foreign relations insight, Mr. Barnett points out that all we need to do to justifiably invade a country is invade a country’s airspace beforehand. Given the profundity of this intellectual discovery I officially nominate Mr. Barnett for a Nobel Peace Prize. Does being a libertarian commit one to a particular stance toward murder? The simple answer is "no."
July 20, 2007 Max Raskin [send him mail] goes to high school in New Jersey. Copyright © 2007 LewRockwell.com |
