Adolescent Libertarians.

Jonathan Calder, in a post about libertarian* bloggers, makes a lot of good points:

They are irredeemably adolescent. The issues that motivate them over and over again are "get out of my room Mom!" ones: alcohol, gambling and smoking.
.......
Where are the libertarian writers on education? God knows we need some, given the ludicrous centralisation that has taken place over the last 20 years. What would a libertarian health system look like? Can you have a libertarian foreign policy? Or libertarian social services?

He is certainly correct about the disproportionate focus on libertine issues and not so much on the most important issues. The 'hedonism' issues are a lot easier to deal with than the big stuff, so simply telling the government to piss off is the solution.

Major public services can be shifted in a more libertarian direction but realistically any reform has to be made up of incremental reforms rather than a sweeping revolution. This is messy and doesn't really give an opportunity for grandstanding. Sure you can declare that the NHS should be abolished overnight but as there is no chance of it happening it is a waste of time.

* I'm sort of between libertarian and conservative.

Fun Online Test, (Without The Fun).

I've just taken the "Libertarian Purity Test" where I've scored 64.

Dope, Tobacco & Coherent Thinking

This Reason article on the growth of the nanny state in US municipalities confirms something which I have long suspected is the case, that very often a libertarian attitude towards illegal drugs is associated with an authoritarian attitude towards everything else. In fact the correlation between liberal laws on tobacco and liberal laws on illegal drugs is actually slightly negative (about -0.07).

Very few people or politicians adopt consistently libertarian or authoritarian principles, support for liberalising laws on drugs largely comes from those attracted to the counter culture attitude that the likes of marijuana exemplify. Equally support for allowing smoking in public places comes largely from those who view it as an established part of our culture rather than those who oppose state interference full stop.

Personally I think drugs probably should be legal and also oppose the increasing moves to outlaw smoking but principled libertarianism isn't the dominant outlook among advocates of either situation.

Libertarians & Psuedo Libertarians.

Although in most aspects of public policy I want the government to have a much reduced role, central government in particular, I am slightly wary of self professed libertarians. In part it is for reasons I explained here but that isn't the only reason.

Many of those considered to be libertarians are not opposed to a powerful government in principle, just to pluralistic and democratic governments in particular. Not all libertarians are like this, some like Milton Friedman or PJ O'Rourke are entirely consistent in advancing liberty but others who don the mantle of libertarianism are nothing of the sort and are psuedo-libertarians at best.

Take the prominent US writer Lew Rockwell, who is generally associated with libertarianism and has a long term association with Ron Paul. Today he shares his deep thoughts on the Korean War:

When the Syngman Rhee regime in South Korea, which launched the war on the North in cahoots with the Truman regime here, also murdered at least 100,000 of its own people, with US supervision and approval. Truman's Air Force then drowned more than a million civilians in the North by deliberately bombing the dykes. Today, despite a militarist regime still supervised by US occupation forces, the South Korean people want peace, trade, and travel with the poor people of the North, no matter how rotten their socialist government. The US occupation prevents this. US Out! (Thanks to Ralph Raico and Antiwar.com

If he is aware of a single credible source that backs up the idea that it was South Korea that launched the war then he is keeping it to himself. At the start of the war the American and South Korean forces were so unprepared that the surprise attack managed to drive them all the way down the peninsular where they had to mount a desperate last stand just to cling on in Korea which makes no sense if they were the ones who launched an invasion. However rather than relying on reputable historians or using his brain, Rockwell prefers to simply parrot North Korean propaganda that is laughably dishonest. For someone who professes a distrust of all powerful states this is rather surprising behaviour.

It is true that Syngman Rhee was a despicable man who led a vile regime, but the fact that after just a few weeks of Communist rule most Koreans decided that he represented the lesser of two evils tells its own story.

A Free Market Route To A DNA Database.

The law on taking DNA samples means that at present the government get to keep records on everyone who is ever arrested regardless of whether they are ever charged or convicted of an offence. This is so obviously unjust that it is hard to see how it remains legal. Having said that it is clear that the DNA database is an incredibly useful tool for legitimate policing functions that it is clearly useful that a DNA database exists, although not as some rather authoritarian police officers are suggesting a universal and compulsory one. Simply abolishing it as is proposed here by the Libertarian Alliance is not going to happen and it isn't particularly desirable in any case, I want the police to have access to the DNA records of violent criminals.

So if forcibly taking DNA samples of innocent people is unjustifiable yet a large database is desirable then another means is going to be needed. Offering people a cash sum in return for them providing a DNA might be the solution, if a price of say £1000 was offered for a sample I'm sure the take up would be vast. The objection to this would be that criminals won't be stupid enough to take part, but actually criminals are generally quite stupid, in want of cash and poor at thinking through the consequences of their actions so this isn't a problem. Criminals themselves don;t even need to sign up as long as their close relatives do.

What A Difference A Year Makes.

David Cameron has just declared that the Conservatives are a libertarian party. This is the same party that was proposing Fat Credits back in January.

Link via Here.

The Problem With Libertarians.

I've personally got a lot of sympathy with libertarian objectives for domestic policy- lower taxes, lower spending, fewer regulations and little interference in people's private lives. However there is one problem that I have with them, on foreign policy libertarian purists are often wildly unrealistic. Take the current challenger for the Republican nomination for president Ron Paul whose candidature is a genuine phenomenon, from a recent interview:

Is this case not different? Religious fanatics hate us and want to kill us because of our culture.

I don't think that's true. It is not Muslim fanaticism that is the culprit. The litmus test is whether we are actually occupying a territory. In the case of Saudi Arabia, that was holy land.

US troops have been in Britain for 50 years yet we've managed to restrain ourselves from shooting at them, almost as though there is another factor at work. If anything expansionist philosophies like radical Islamism go harder on societies that are more pacifistic in their responses.

And if in most of Iraq, some religious fanatic comes to power and has money to buy nuclear weapons, we should just leave him alone?

The Soviets had the technology. They were 90 miles off our shore, and they had nuclear weapons there. But we were able to talk to them. We took our missiles out of Turkey. They took the missiles out of Cuba. We should be talking to people like this. It's the lack of diplomacy that is the greatest threat, not the weapons themselves.

Yep let's sit back whilst countries where the national motto is 'death to America, death to the West' acquire nuclear bombs. After all they won't eventually come to us will they? The rest of his foreign policy would leave an open door to any expansionist regime (except Canada) to destabilise the planet.

If North Korea invades South Korea, we should just leave it alone?

Sure, but it's not going to happen. South Korea's about 10 times more powerful than North Korea.

If China invaded Taiwan?

That's a border war, and they should deal with it.

If Canada invades Montana?

I think that might be a little bit different. Montana probably could take care of it, but we'd probably help them out from Washington if that happened.

That's a role for the federal government?

Oh, sure.