For sticking to his word, which is more than can be said about his most prominent detractor.

I won’t vote for Obamacare Lite that keeps 90% of the taxes & spending just so some people can claim credit for something that didn’t happen

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) September 22, 2017

As for that detractor, interesting how “Mr. Anti-Establishment” will be in Alabama tonight to campaign for Mitch McConnell’s boy and someone with the actual name of Luther Strange, which sounds like a villain from a Marvel comic.  Lex Luther Strange’s opponent is ahead and will hopefully stay there, delivering another well-earned defeat to Doofus Drump.

From: B
Sent: Friday, September 22, 2017 12:09 PM
To: Walter Block
Subject: Re: A question about Ragnar

What if the government were to confiscate property from bandits, who had killed off all the legitimate owners, would they then become the legitimate owners themselves? Thanks, B

Dear B: From a libertarian limited government (minarchist) point of view, the legitimate state may indeed become the appropriate owner of the stolen property, in behalf of all the citizens. Presumably, this government could then lower taxes using this property to defray licit expenses. From an anarcho-capitalist point of view, however, all governments are bandits, and, thus, could not be the proper owners of anything, until and unless they made full recompense to their victims.

“The killers need to know they have nowhere to hide, that no place is beyond the reach of American might and American arms,” said Trump. Americans killers are excepted, of course.

69.8 million Americans are earning cash on the side and not reporting it to the IRS. Wonderful news. Americans are depriving the IRS of an estimated $214.6 billion.

DEW stands for Directed Energy Weapon, like, for example, a powerful laser beam. These are being brought forward now by the U.S. Navy. Dr. Judy Woods is the foremost exponent of the theory that a DEW is responsible for the Trade Towers destruction. For her, the main anomaly is the debris volume and pattern. The Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth agree with her in rejecting the crash theory (airplanes caused the destruction) but they strongly reject her theory and the anomaly she highlights. IMHO, her theory carries even more burdens than the demolition theory (explosives caused the destruction).

Two people have alerted me to Pilots for 9/11 Truth. They explicitly offer no theory. They want a thorough investigation, however, because they believe that government reports on technical matters are flawed, as compared with their assessments. They rightly point out that all the interested parties deserve better than substandard government investigations. They’re interested in technical matters relating to the aircrafts flown, their ability to maneuver, the pilot skills, aircraft speeds, communications with the ground, etc. While they sell their research on DVDs, their site provides a sampling of their concerns.

One person suggested the possibility that C-4 plastic explosive goes missing from U.S. inventories and could have been used on the buildings. The GAO and Inspector General monitor inventories of weapons and explosives. There are indeed reports of occasional thefts and losses, but nothing like what would be needed to blow up the Trade Towers without extensive planning and placement.

The 8-story Khobar Towers were bombed by a truck bomb that contained 1.5 to 2.5 tons of plastic explosives. The building remained standing; the truck blew up in front of the building. An article about bringing down buildings by implosion says “carrying out such a demolition involves painstaking preparation. It can take up to six months to survey the structure and prepare it for the blast by removing non-load bearing walls, weakening support structures and fitting the charges.”

A truly large theft of precursor chemicals used to make C-4 explosives occurred in Iraq in 2004, estimated at 380 tons. This was under the supervision of the Iraqi government. This is 3 years after 9/11.

The first Trade Towers bombing used a “1,336 pounds (606 kg) urea nitrate–hydrogen gas enhanced device”.

The demolition hypothesis has a lot of explaining to do, judging from these findings.

From: D
Sent: Thursday, September 21, 2017 1:51 PM
To: wblock@loyno.edu
Subject: Nature Preserves Under Anarchism

Hi Walter, Can a nature preserve exist in an anarcho-capitalist society? By the definition of this term, a nature preserve cannot have any human labor mixed with it. So it seems that it will always be unowned and therefore capable of being homesteaded (and developed, thereby ceasing to be a preserve) by someone else. In addition, if it stays unowned, it will be unmanaged and uncared for and so may suffer the tragedy of the commons. But what if a small preserve could be a profitable business if it could come to be owned? The owner could gain by selling tickets or licenses for outdoor activities, hunting, or scientific research on wildlife. What if such use is in fact the most socially valuable for a given tract of land? Thanks, D

Dear D: I have already co-published a libertarian analysis of this issue; I suggest you read it:

Block, Walter E. and Michael R. Edelstein. 2012. “Popsicle sticks and homesteading land for nature preserves.” Romanian Economic and Business Review. Vol. 7, No. 1, Spring, pp. 7-13; http://www.rebe.rau.ro/REBE%207%201.pdf

If you still have questions, do get back to me.

A driver in Indianapolis failed to signal her turn and also failed to stop so badged bullies could rob her after this dire infraction (“I was not running away from them,” she explained but was rather heading home). When cops finally caught up with her, they beat her “like she is a rag doll … seriously injur[ing]” her .

“All I know is that I was on the ground,” said the victim of her violent arrest during which her assailants “tackled” her. “I felt a punch in the back of my head. I felt a kick to my face and someone stepping on my hands and feet…”

She “was not resisting, and in fact, appeared to be unconscious for a spell as other officers joined in on the melee. She was kicked, kneed, punched, and the life nearly squeezed out of her as police piled on top…” That’s multiple men ganging up against one woman. Thank you, Feminism, for legitimating such brutality. The lady suffered “torn ligaments, knocked out teeth, and a fractured bone in her face,” with medical bills amounting to $80,000.

I’m grateful to DaveForTexas, who’s undoubtedly glad he lives far from Indianapolis (not that Texas’ thugs are any better, alas), for alerting me to this story.

New Hampshire just became the 22nd state to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana. “Under the new law, people found with three-fourths of an ounce of marijuana will now face a $100 fine rather than jail time.” Eight of the 22 states have also legalized the production and distribution of marijuana for recreational use, with limits, of course, since no government wants to give its serfs too much freedom.

Twenty-eight more states to go.

From: B
Sent: Monday, September 18, 2017 2:55 AM
To: wblock@loyno.edu
Subject: A question about Ragnar
Dear Professor Block, If I try to plunder Ragnar’s plunder can he defend himself? What if I just take his plunder when he isn’t looking, can he use force to get it back? Thanks for your time, B. Ps, And please don’t take Ragnar’s side just because he’s cool.

Dear B: Ragnar didn’t “plunder.” He relieved thieves of their ill-gotten gains. If you use violence, or stealth, to remove these very proper takings of his from him, then you are a thief. I always take the cool side of all arguments. Here are some publications of mine on this issue:

(more…)

What we really need for 9/11 truth is to open the files of the CIA, NSA and FBI, and we need it for truth in many other realms too. The Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth have a petition that seeks a new and truly independent investigation. This is a step in the right direction. We need far more than that. We need to penetrate the secrecy of the CIA and NSA on a timely and complete basis, not 50 years after the fact and only partially. Their files have to be opened. We cannot let the government continue to hide behind “national security”.

This blog began as a comment on theories of the Trade Towers collapses, but it grew into a criticism of secret government hiding behind the term “national security”. I sympathize with the petition for a new investigation of 9/11, but I want to see a far more radical process, the dissolution of the CIA and the NSA. The call for opening their files and exposing their activities is part of that process. Edward Snowden’s work is a major step in that process as is the work of a number of others whose desire to expose the evils of the CIA and NSA has led them to personal sacrifices and risks.

My scientific approach is (a) devise and adopt a simple theory first to rationalize the known observations, (b) consider the anomalies if any, (c) reconsider the initial theory and revise if need be, or else live with the unexplained anomalies. I follow Occam’s Razor and Kuhn in this respect. My mind prefers simplicity. I prefer to understand the basic facts first, leaving details and anomalies to later consideration.

What are “anomalies”? They are observations we do not understand or that seem to contradict our understanding of basic facts through our initial theory. If the anomalies are large enough, we have to revise the theory or even abandon it and devise an entirely different theory.

The Trade Towers collapsed. What caused this? There are two leading theories: the crash theory and the demolition theory. The crash theory says that the airplanes that crashed into the towers were the cause. This rationalizes the largest known facts, which are that the two planes did crash into the towers and did cause destructive fires because they were loaded with large amounts of jet fuel. Also, the fires burned for 102 minutes and about 60 minutes in the North and South towers, respectively. This weakened steel girders, ergo a collapse eventually occurred. This theory is simple but powerful. The towers were standing, Planes crashed into them. They eventually collapsed. Ergo, the planes crashing into the towers caused their collapse. As a supplemental fact, the manner of construction of the towers was not as strong as in earlier skyscrapers.
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An editor of a technical publication asked Heather Adkins, Google’s (boo, hiss) Manager of Information Security whether “she thinks of the NSA as a state-sponsored threat in the same way as China and Russia. She confirmed, yes, she considers the US’ National Security Agency in that way.”

Whoa! And this from a Googler with ten years of indoctrination-sorry, employment under her belt!

But then she dashed that magnificent conclusion by explaining that “it’s good to worry about [the NSA] because if they can attack, other organizations can attack too. … ‘A technique the NSA can use can easily be used by a Mexican cartel against our users,’ she said. ‘All of these actors have these tools available to them.’”

A net score of zero for freedom.

Jewish libertarians

Recently, I had occasion to list Jews who were libertarian oriented, who favored free enterprise and private property rights.

Are All Jews Socialists, Progressives, Communists, Left-Liberals, Bernie and Hillary Supporters, Democrats? No!

I asked, then, for help in adding to this list. Happily, many of you obliged me in this regard, so the list is now far more inclusive. If I am still missing anyone, please let me know as I would like this to be as complete as possible. I want to demonstrate that not all of my co-religionists are commie, pinko, progressive Bernie fans. Here it is:

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… and is much more respectful than Pope Francis is to those who disagree.

Mr. Tancredo makes an important point that our Catholic bishops ignore: their authority lies in the area of the Church’s “magisterial” teaching – that is, the truths of the Faith that are unchangeable and handed down from generation to generation for 2000 years.

When it comes to political issues on which good people (and good Catholics) can disagree, a bishop’s opinion is no more authoritative than anyone else’s.

Moreover, when a bishop pretends that his political opinion **is** authoritative, he commits the objective wrong called “clericalism.” That has two consequences:

1) it dilutes his true authority (and indeed, most of our bishops are silent on the tough moral truths that are so unpopular in today’s secular culture.

2) it drives people away from the Church and to denominations that preach the Gospel, not politics (this is also the case in Latin America).

One more comment: Mr. Tancredo is much more gracious to Pope Francis and the bishops than the bishops are to those who disagree with them: for them, we are bigots, nativists, xenophobes – even “Pharisees and hypocrites.”

That is hardly the language of love and evangelization.

From: R
Sent: Monday, September 11, 2017 6:53 PM
To: Walter Block
Subject: Anti-Semitism

I have to say Dr. Block, that I have deep feelings of resentment toward Zionist Jews. From Mayer Rothschild to Bernanke and Soros, I have serious problems. I have liked Ben Shapiro for a few years. Wow what a brilliant young man he is. But I just read an article that was linked on LRC in which he said that Yasser Arafat was “the most notorious thug of the 20th century”. What does that even mean? Certainly other men in the 20th century were more thug like and more notorious? Maybe Truman dropping the bomb perhaps? It’s that kind of thing that bothers me. I think you are Jewish, so I am reaching out in need of guidance on this. R

Dear R: I have great resentment not to Zionist Jews, but to virtually ALL Jews. Why? Because most of them are socialists, progressives, communists, liberals, Bernie and Hillary supporters, Democrats; ugh.

As it happens, I am myself Jewish. I’m not practicing, but I was born to Jewish parents, I was bar-mitzvahed, and when and if the next Hitler comes along, I will be undoubtedly on his list. But I don’t resent ALL Jews. Some of us were/are leaders in the freedom movement. Just to name a few:

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Tomorrow is the launch date of a great new book by Brion McClanahan entitled How Alexander Hamilton Screwed Up America.  I’ll be writing a review of it in the next couple of days, but in the meantime buy it, read it, tell others about it, and write about it.

When my own book on Hamilton, Hamilton’s Curse, was published my publicist at Random House wrote such a compelling press release that MSNBC immediately invited me on the “Morning Joe” television show.  They sat me down next to Patrick J. Buchanan who said to me, “Alexander Hamilton is my hero.”  It was all down hill from there.  At one point I attempted to interrupt the four barking dogs (Joe, Mika, Pat, and some guy from NY on satellite) to inform Pat that “you know, Hamilton was the original Ted Kennedy.”  He wasn’t impressed.

Brion McClanahan would agree with me, writing that “Hamilton was . . . the architect of modern ‘big government’ in America.”  No wonder Lincoln was a Hamiltonian, or why leftist lawyers have spent the past two centuries fine tuning the “Hamiltonian interpretation” of he constitution, which essentially says there is no constitution in the sense that it would impose any limits on governmental powers.  And no wonder that Hamilton is the new darling the Left, with that idiotic “rap” musical about him in New York plundering what seems to be every lefty in the country with thousand-dollar (and up) theater tickets.

I did manage to get the last word in on “Morning Joe,” saying right before the commercial break that “at least Aaron Burr had a good reason for shooting someone, unlike Dick Cheney.”

A special address by Ron Paul on the creeping authoritarianism infecting American life…

Once again, a large mob of rioters is running amok in an American city in response to a judge’s ruling that a police officer shot a black man who had just committed a felony in self defense and was not guilty of murder.  St. Louis may well turn into Baltimore if the rioters become more violent, and if the mayor of St. Louis does what the former Baltimore mayor did and instruct the police to stand down and just let the rioters burn part of his city down.

Both riots — in Baltimore and St. Louis — are essentially the result of the war on drugs.  Freddie Gray, who died in a Baltimore police van after being arrested in a drug bust, and the man shot by the former St. Louis policeman in a high-speed car chase with the police, are victims of the war on drugs, not racism.

At the same time, we are stuck with drug prohibition for now.  The judge in the St. Louis case produced a 30-page decision explaining how the policeman behaved in self defense and was not guilty of murder.  It has been impossible to learn of this by the news coverage, which seems to assume that the judge was wrong and that the riots are justified.  The effect of this in Baltimore has been that the police simply refuse to respond to calls for help because when they do so, they are surrounded by mobs “armed” with cameras and fear being sued.  Consequently, Baltimore criminals have gone wild in the past two years, averaging a murder a day in the city.  This is now what St. Louis can expect to experience.

From: T
Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2017 7:20 AM
To: Walter Block
Subject: “Defending” Scenario – Question About Compulsory Insurance
Hello Dr. Block, What would be your analysis of someone committing “insurance fraud”? For example, since we are required by law (at gunpoint) to purchase home, car, and other types of insurance – at least in some states – is it then immoral to commit “fraud” against the insurance companies? It certainly isn’t more immoral than the insurance companies spending tens of millions of dollars lobbying politicians to pass laws mandating that citizens purchase insurance. I’m interested in your take. I’m also willing to admit ignorance in how insurance lobbying works. Thanks! T

Dear T: You make an excellent point. Whenever anything coercive is done to a victim, all bets are off; the latter is now under duress. However, I cannot advocate committing insurance fraud, since to do so might well be against the law (I’m no lawyer), and I am too cowardly to want to risk that.

Lew, Ringo also is quoted in several places on the Web as saying that “Everything government touches turns to crap.”  (This of course has been scientifically proven a gazillion times).  I have this on my office door next to an image of Ringo.  So, as they used to say in the ’60s, who’s your favorite Beatle?

How Bullwinkle Taught Kids Sophisticated Political Satire: Culture critic Beth Daniels argues the cartoon moose even allowed viewers to reckon with nuclear war.

When I lived in Hollywood decades ago I frequently drove past the Jay Ward Productions studio on the Sunset Strip, home to the subversive animation characters lovingly described above. It is one of my great regrets that I never stopped in. My best friend Jack did that years before and had a lengthy chat with the great man himself, Jay Ward, concerning his wonderful creations which have delighted and edified generations.

Here is Charlton Heston’s powerful, prophetic address at the Harvard Law School in February, 1999 on the virus of political correctness, Dr. Martin Luther King as heroic role model for engaged civil disobedience to intolerance and oppression, and the decline of civility and rational dialogue in America.

Deputy Fire Chief Vincent Dunn (ret.) suggests that the reason for the Trade Towers collapse was their construction. Dunn points to worsening changes in building codes over the preceding 50 years, brought about by political pressures of builders. (By the way, that article has one photo of the rubble, and it’s not all dust.)

When building codes are created by government, they are a minimum for all builders. There is little or no incentive for builders to improve their methods. Competition loses its effectiveness because the code organizes builders into a cartel. Safety innovation declines. The codes become a target for political pressures to weaken them. Building inspectors can be corrupted. Construction lobbying funds and political contributions enter the picture. These codes become a way for builders to avoid liability. Courts are reluctant to make it easy to sue for negligence or code violations.

Going back in time, the Trade Towers tragedy is inextricably linked to the preceding foreign policies of the U.S. government and to failures of FBI and CIA intelligence leading up to the event. Going forward in time, it’s linked to the misconceived war on terror and to U.S. aggression in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan and Syria.

Both the U.S. government and the country were thrown off balance, nurturing social and political disequilibrium in the shadow of 9/11 and what followed. Neither has yet recovered. There is a pronounced uncertainty, as if waiting for the other shoe to drop. Neither one to this day is on a good foot or on the right foot. Good feelings, humor and consideration in the public forum have given way to hysterics, vulgarity, insults and bitterness. The marked change in police behavior from helpful to abusive is an example of the change. However, I think 9/11 was not only cause but catalyst for social and political negatives, anti-libertarian ideas and policies, that were already in place prior to that event.

There must be something about being named US Ambassador to the UN that brings out the inner mass murderer in people. Madeline Albright famously admitted that she thought 500,000 dead Iraqi children due to US sanctions was “worth it.” John Bolton never met a disagreement he didn’t want to turn into a war. Samantha Power barked about human rights while her Administration’s drones snuffed out human life in unprecedented numbers. The real “butcher of the Balkans” Richard Holbrooke sold the Yugoslavia war on lies. John “Death Squad” Negroponte sold the lie that Saddam Hussein needed to be killed and his country destroyed for democracy to flourish, and so on.

Considering how many millions of civilians have been killed on the war propaganda of US ambassadors to the UN, perhaps the equivalent of another Holocaust could have been avoided if Ron Paul’s HR 1146 has passed 30 years ago.

But nothing could have prepared us for Nikki “Holocaust” Haley, who has thundered into the Trump Administration as US Ambassador to the UN despite hating Trump and Trump hating her. Why would President Trump pick someone for such an influential position despite her being vocally and publicly opposed to the foreign policy that provided the margin of victory for him? We can only guess. Was Trump lying on the campaign trail? Possibly. Does he not bother to notice that he has surrounded himself with people who are deeply opposed, at the DNA level, to the policies he ran and won on? Seems more likely. As Johnny Rotten famously ended the Sex Pistols run, “ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”

In fact yes. One-time top Trump supporter Ann Coulter today Tweeted the question “is there anyone out there left who doesn’t want Trump impeached?”

Coulter meant the wall or something else, but she could just as well have been complaining about the foreign policy about-face. Trump ran as a Ron Paul Republican, he governs as a George W. Bush Republican. Cheated? Yes, once again.

Which brings us back to the odious Nikki Haley. Today she no doubt thought she was being clever Tweeting in response to the predictable fact that yet another round of sanctions against North Korea did not result in Kim Jong-Un doing a Gaddafi suicide knife dance, that since the sanctions destroying the North Korean economy — such as it is — have not resulted in Kim’s surrender it was time to hand the matter over to Defense Secretary James Mattis.

Said US top UN diplomat Nikki: “We cut 90% of trade & 30% of oil. I have no problem kicking it to Gen. Mattis because I think he has plenty of options.” (more…)

Eleven years ago, this essay argued against hate-crime laws. One argument read “People can eventually be accused of hate crimes when they use hateful speech. Hate crimes laws are a seed that can sprout in new directions.” This has now come to pass, I am sorry to say. This week, the Congress passed S. J. Res. 49, and President Trump signed it, making it part of the U.S. legal code.

The law rejects “White nationalists, White supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and other hate groups…” But why? Because of their ideas? Because of their expression of these ideas? No government that stands for freedom and free speech, whose charge is to protect rights, should be singling out specific groups by name and by law declaring them as outlaws or threats because of their philosophies. If they have committed a crime, such as defamation of character or incitement to riot or riot itself, then charge them and try them. But American government has no legitimate authority to single out some of its citizens in this way. This, furthermore, is an exceedingly bad precedent. Who’s next?

The resolution is too specific, but it’s also dangerously vague. The term “other hate groups” has no known definition. Suppose that this term is defined by a group like the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC currently names 917 groups as hate groups (see here for a list). Their criteria are not restricted to violent actions. They comprise SPEECH. They say “All hate groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.” They are very clear about this: “Hate group activities can include criminal acts, marches, rallies, speeches, meetings, leafleting or publishing.”

This Congressional resolution is a declaration that certain kinds of groups, some named but many, many others open to inclusion, are to be attacked by the U.S. government. The law urges “the President and the President’s Cabinet to use all available resources to address the threats posed by those groups.” The term “threats” in the first paragraph is vague, dangerously vague. However, the very next paragraph singles out free speech actions when “hundreds of torch-bearing White nationalists, White supremacists, Klansmen, and neo-Nazis chanted racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-immigrant slogans…” The same sentence joins this with violent actions “…and violently engaged with counter-demonstrators on and around the grounds of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville…”

This law regards free speech as a threat, linking it to violence, painting them with one brush. There can be no justice that can stem from such a completely sloppy and inexcusably amateurish legal treatment. This linkage is made clear in paragraph seven with this language: “…communities everywhere are concerned about the growing and open display of hate and violence being perpetrated by those groups…” There is no distinction made here between the “open display of hate” and “violence being perpetrated”. As I predicted 11 years ago in arguing against hate crime laws, hate speech is being identified with hate crime.

I am just as uncomfortable with the notion of defining and singling out “hate speech” as some sort of new danger or threat or harmful activity or crime, to be dealt with by government or courts of law as I was 11 years ago with the idea of “hate crime”. The standard categories of crime are quite enough without adding to them a government laundry list of prejudices and aversions that everyone is not supposed to express or feel, under penalty of government law.

Our Rulers want us to believe that even with a hurricane impending, we dare not evacuate via air until the Thieves and Sexual Assailants grope us. You wouldn’t want to die from turrism at 30,000 feet when a perfectly good hurricane threatens you on terra firma, now, would you?

With that nonsense as its premise, the TSA has shuffled its perverts at airports around the country to replace deviants in Hurricane Irma’s path who took time off from stealing passengers iPods to deal with ravaged homes. And to hear the shuffled degenerates themselves tell it, they’re thrilled to “help” out (why not? Free trip to Florida at taxpayers’ expense). Indeed, one of them enthused, “We really are a family at TSA, and we work [sic] together to get resources where the need is greatest.”

“Resources.” So that’s what bureaucrats call robbery and gate-rape! But even better is the bizarre idea that these criminals are “family.” Oh, indeed. One more devoted to pedophilia and incest than the Mob is to broken knee-caps.

. . . so that their candidate could continue the Obama policy of working with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi to “restructure” America and “spread the wealth around” along Marxist/socialist lines.  I speak of course of Hillary Clinton voters, not Trump voters.  Is “The Donald” morphing into Hillary Rodham Trump?