digamma.net - notes

At the Volokh Conspiracy, Randy Barnett makes some good points on libertarianism and war:

….I was more concerned with the degree to which Libertarianism qua Libertarianism says anything about foreign policy. Because Libertarianism is essentially a philosophy of individual rights, I doubt it says much about what policies either individuals or collective institutions ought to pursue other than that they should not violate the rights of individuals in pursuing them.

Agreed. On the other hand, libertarianism (Barnett uses a capital L, I don’t) DOES make certain predictions as to what outcomes are probable when governments try to do things, and these predictions apply both at home and abroad. Barnett continues:

Even if, as many Libertarians believe, governments themselves inherently violate rights, it does not follow (as some Libertarians appear to assume) that everything such an unjust institution does is a rights violation. Consider mail delivery. The post office may be an unjust monopoly (and unconstitutional to boot), but the letter carrier who coincidentally is walking up my driveway as I type this) is not violating my rights by delivering my mail. Likewise, even if the government of the United States is an unjust institution, this does not make everything (or anything) done by the U.S. Army a rights violation.

Well, I suppose “some Libertarians” might think that, but you won’t hear that in the Cato Institute’s or Reason’s opposition to the war, and they’re a lot more mainstream libertarians than, say, Roderick T. Long. There are a lot of good libertarian arguments against wars like the most recent one in Iraq, and focusing on this one is almost arguing with a straw man.

I'’ll be away for the next week and a half visiting two countries, one of which is bravely allied with the United States in the War on Terror, the other of which yearns for the fall of western civilization and worldwide Islamofascism. Or something like that. So the one year I decide to support the Democrats in the Presidential race, I’m missing their convention. C’est la vie, as they say where I’m going.

I’ll try to grab an American paper every day and stay abreast of what happens, although I’ll still be starved for details. Here’s hoping Kerry can, like Clinton in 1992, ride his “convention bounce” into the White House. I’ll leave with a quote from Jesse Walker:

Making me root for a sanctimonious statist blowhard like Kerry isn’t the worst thing Bush has done to the country. But it’s the offense that I take most personally.