This is the “X-Box Age” when kids grow up to think reality is a video game, with point scores and multiple characters that can be “All You Can Be.” Death is pixilated on a computer monitor far away from the injuries and pain of the battlefield; where strategy and tactics aren’t the unpredictable, messy things that actually happen in war; where the goals are nice little short-range “Game Over” entries on a screen; and where there are no long-term effects from the weapons – no children killed, no financial loss, no dreams ended. That’s not war. Never was. Never will be.
War doesn’t go after a single “Saddam” or “Adolph” or whoever, war goes after an entire society, with countless men, women and children lined up as cannon fodder on each side. It is a violent, unjustifiable, irrational action for any individual to advocate. No libertarian in their right mind would urge this on any country, state or city.
How many Americans, Brits, Europeans, and innocent Iraqis, have been killed in the last six months or year? How many maimed or injured? Do you really think killing one man, is worth all of the harm that has occurred during this period? Do you really think it is worth all of the additional billions of taxpayer dollars that have been spent by the Federal government? Do you really think that passing the line from a Republic to an Imperial empire even further is worth this?
I don’t. I fought against the VietNam war, against the impressment of our citizens, and against the anti-libertarian imperialism that was framed by LBJ and Nixon and their minions, and am proud of what I have done. If there is anything further that I could do to put a halt to the anti-freedom, imperialist, statist policies of our current Idiot-In-Residence, the freedom-hating Bush Jr, I would do it.
Even conservatives, outside of the pretend conservatives, the ex-trotskyite neocons, hate what Bush has done.
When I listen to pro-war “objectivists” and their lines of argumentation, I’m reminded of the objectivist/libertarian discussions in the 1960’s–70’s about the nature of government, and whether an “objectivist government” would have to be a “one-world” government, or whether individual, local governments could be allowed to exist. Individual sovereignty, as such, would not be a consideration because “objective law” was the criterion for government action. How could you have “competing governments” under an “objective law”? You couldn’t! There would be inherent differences between the content and structure of different governments. This means that some governments will be less “objective” than other governments. Thus, “objectivist” logic leads to all of humanity under the direction of a “one-world” government.
This is pretty much what I hear underlying the current batch of pro-war objectivists. America must force our system of laws onto every continent and tiny island in the world, because our laws are more “objective” than any other government, and we cannot allow any “competing government” to exist. If we did, we would be acting immorally, from an objectivist standpoint. War is a necessary method to attaining this “one-world” governmental condition. Bush certainly likes his position as Leader of American War, so pro-war objectivists, like the ones who dominate ARI, for example, are more than happy to follow his lead, although for their own reasons. Today’s arguments are just a repeat of arguments upheld some two score ago. There were no articles on it in the major objectivist journals, although I seem to recall some in the minor ones, and there were certainly discussions and debates about this in objectivist groups.
It’s an argument which I’ve found pointless for many years, particularly since I began working in the field of mediation. Now I look at law as being built from the ground up, through bargaining and mutual agreements. One can induce general rules from such individual activity, but these relatively simple rules are far from the sense of “objective law” which many objectivists promote. While I appreciate Tibor Machan’s “meta-ethical” view of proper action, the Douglas’s (Rasmussen & Den Uyl) “virtues ethics” and what I’ve seen of Michael Huemer’s “Ethical Intuitionism,” my anarchistic view of law is much different from even those with a variant of the objectivist notion of law. Once you go beyond VOM and VORP (victim/offender mediation and victim/offender reconciliation programs – Google on them sometime), law is pretty much an ass. Crime should be individualized, not socialized by the state. Lysander Spooner has much to say about this in his essay, “Natural Law; or The Science of Justice” (1882) in his powerful concluding paragraph:
“What, then, is legislation? It is an assumption by one man, or body of men, of absolute, irresponsible dominion over all other men whom they call subject to their power. It is the assumption by one man, or body of men, of a right to subject all other men to their will and their service. It is the assumption by one man, or body of men, of a right to abolish outright all the natural rights, all the natural liberty of all other men; to make all other men their slaves; to arbitrarily dictate to all other men what they may, and may not, do; what they may, and may not, have; what they may, and may not, be. It is, in short, the assumption of a right to banish the principle of human rights, the principle of justice itself, from off the earth, and set up their own personal will, pleasure, and interest in its place. All this, and nothing less, is involved in the very idea that there can be any such thing as human legislation that is obligatory upon those upon whom it is imposed.”
Is libertarianism dead? Has it been killed by pro-war “libertarians” and objectivists? I don’t regard myself as a determinist, but there is one thing that I am certain about. Change will happen again and again, and the funny thing about it is that change occurs in some 90-degree tangent from what we expect. The current libertarian movement died with the rise of the Libertarian Party, which has destroyed any possibility of libertarian success with the LP traveling, hat in hand, upon bent knee, into the political process of today, mimicking every other statist, teaching freedom-lovers that the only way to become free is to suck on the federal teat. What an education! If the LP is an educational vehicle, it is demonstrating statism, not libertarianism!
Radical libertarians have failed to make a significant impact in the current anti-war and anti-Bush movements, certainly not in providing any awareness that they are involved in either movement. The popular press, even the main internet conduits, barely mention libertarians, if at all. One would think that libertarians do not exist in either. That is our fault, the fault of the antipolitical libertarians who were ignored and ridiculed. We failed to provide a sufficient vision and opportunity for young libertarians to see a meaningful, realistic alternative to ballot boxing. There are so many pro-war (and Beltway) libertarians today who have grabbed onto the slimy coattails of the Republican Party, blinded by the hint of a possibility of a chance to grab a tiny drop of political power that they are unable to see that liberty is in another direction!
And the LPers are worse! They realize that the DemGops are wrong, but they foolishly slide into some self-congratulating, masturbatory activity that everyone else laughs at. Do they feel the ridicule? Do they even notice? LPers are so dense they are unable to get out of the rain and, like the proverbial turkey, stare up at the clouds with their mouths open until they drown! Thank you, LP, for the Darwinian process of killing off the fools! But, alas, libertarianism as a movement goes too, for you have identified libertarianism with the LP.
There will be change, but not before this current generation has come and gone, and, for us libertarians today, that will be too late. There are some good alternatives for the future, if they are not destroyed as “persons of interest” or some-such by the state or through internal disputes: Mises Institute, Independent Institute, Liberty Magazine (under Stephen Cox), and a few other places. These I look at for their future potential and I see hope, but not for any chance that they will make a change today.
I have studied the freethought movement for as long as I have studied libertarian history. Its rises and falls generally come around the same time as libertarianism’s does, and for probably similar reasons. They are connected in ways too long to discuss here (see Bill Cooke’s The Gathering of Infidels: A Hundred Years of the Rationalist Press Association (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Press, 2004) for some details), save that many of the same people are involved in both. Both movements go up and down. There have been times when one or the other have come to dominate culturally, but not forever. It is possible that one person or a small group will come to affect a cultural change for the better, and may do far better than previous individuals or persons.
Radical libertarians blew it in the current anti-war, anti-Bush movements, and it is unlikely that some libergreen will step up, just like there is almost no chance that some liberdem or libergop will take the lead. Until the realization comes, with wisdom, of the folly of electoral politics, the failure to achieve liberty is assured. I hope for change, but have no clue as to what direction it will come from. Change always comes. Perhaps it will be for the best next time.
In the meantime, I try to take care of my girls (they are now both teenagers in high school) as best as I can, get some writing done, and try to keep up with the bills (ugh!). X-Boxes are verboten in my household!
Just a thought.
Just Ken
June 26, 2006
