Defense of Liberty

Free Republic ^ | September 23, 2001 | Annalex

[annalex]

Defense of Liberty

By Annalex

This is not the article I intended to post this week. Instead, I decided to put together some thoughts on the essence of libertarianism as applied to this war. I believe that the theoretical foundation of libertarianism: individual rights and freedoms, primacy of the individual over the collective and distrust of democratic government unrestrained by strict constitutionalism, -- will continue to animate American conservatism through this crisis and for years to come. In fact, when the President speaks of America as a force of good, hated because of her freedom, -- he speaks of libertarian values.

I also believe that the future of libertarianism in American political thought is in danger. There is a distinct possibility that the libertarians as a group of thinkers will blunder into irrelevance, --not because of their principles, but because of a cultural bias that has rendered them blind to the reality of the war that just started.

What is the bias and what is the reality?

Among all nations, America is uniquely dedicated to the proposition of individual freedom. It also has a powerful government, that is, as is its nature, intrusive and often violative of individual freedoms. There is no paradox here: it is the normal tension between the individual and the collective. Libertarianism is one-directional: no matter what is the present condition of individual freedoms vis-à-vis the collective coercion, libertarianism will pull for the individual just because the government will always pull for the collective. In absence of a recognized theoretical foundation and an analytical attitude, the pulling becomes a cultural bias: if the government does something, it must be wrong. If the individual wants something, it must be his right.

Thus a review of the recent offerings from the usual sources of libertarian thinking: Harry Browne, Lew Rockwell, Future of Freedom Foundation, -- reveal an amazingly myopic view of the conflict. It boils down to the assertions that the government has created the crisis with its imperial foreign policy; that punishing the terrorists is a matter of law, not war; that a rapid retreat from America's global positions is the road to victory; that any wartime measure that the government may adopt is a further assault on our freedoms.

Not so.

The government exists to protect individual rights. I cannot think of a greater violation of individual rights than having an airliner explode over you as you reach for your morning coffee. Our country has been invaded. The individuals that make up this country have their lives in danger. Thousands already lost theirs. We don't know how many future victims we'll mourn before it's over. The perpetrators of this atrocity are organized: they are a country in all but geography. From September 11 on, our government is waging a just, defensive war. It is doing precisely what a government should be doing. Every libertarian should be out on the street with an American flag and a lit candle. Any assistance should be given the government in prosecuting the war. Any impeding of the government's warmaking function is an assault on individual rights.

So, isn't the criticism of American foreign policy prior to September 11 valid? Some of it is. But it now belongs to the past. The important thing is that nothing in our foreign policy was aggressive in nature. The worst, the cruelest blunders of the Clinton's administration were reactions, -- often, misguided or self-serving reactions, -- to someone else's greater cruelty. This war is between civilizations. In that it is similar to the Cold War. It is not between nations, -- it is between ideologies. Our libertarian ideology of individual freedom is at war. Note that the enemy didn't strike Europe, where freedoms and individual rights are handouts form the state; it didn't strike Israel where the actual fighting for territory takes place; it didn't, in all likelihood, come from Iraq, which is our enemy as a nation. Its bloodiest attack was against peaceful traders of property. Of all political colors and stripes we, libertarians should be in the front, and we haven't been.

This is a war and not a police action. Those who perpetrated the atrocity are already dead. At the root of this is an ideology that will breed new atrocities just as fast as we punish for the old ones. This is a war. Call it a war. Fight it like a war. Go on the offensive: invade countries, topple regimes, install friendly governments. For every mullah out there, afraid of his own women, we have a General MacArthur. Godspeed.

We can be certain that the forces of statism will exploit this tragedy to their nefarious ends. War surtaxes are likely; a citizen database is a virtual certainty; a taxpayer bailout of the airline industry has already happened; a thorough bashing of political opponents of strong central government or imperial foreign policy as unpatriotic and outright treasonous should be expected. It is our duty to fight such encroachments of freedom, not only because of what they are, but because they do not make America stronger, and we need strength.

At the same time, we should remember what rights really are. No libertarian can seriously say that a private transaction that happens between the airline and the passenger is a matter of rights. There is no right to a steak knife or a gun in a carryon luggage - unless you put it in the trunk and drive. Anyone can rightfully refuse service to a customer without identification. It is not clear to me, and I think of individual rights a lot, what "right to privacy" precisely is. At most we can say that a national ID and a citizen database are dangerous tools in the hands of a hostile government. But they are not necessarily violations of individual rights per se; their misuse is.

The libertarians like to think in proximate causes. Thus we have an aversion to foreign policy, because it is all about preemptive actions, choosing sides early, and making prognoses based on cultural proclivities rather than concrete deeds. For the same reason we have a difficulty understanding nationhood and war. We need to learn very fast.

***

I changed the tag of our series from "Pursuit of Liberty" to "Defense of Liberty". I will continue the topics that we have started: individual rights, nature of property, moral defense of capitalism, just taxation, proper role of government, liberty and God's law. I will post as much as I can on nationhood, civilization, civil society and culture. I will have to slow down from a weekly publication to, perhaps, monthly, unless someone is willing to be my partner in this. That is because, sadly, I don't anticipate much help from the libertarian publications any more, and doing my own writing or researching sources that are not on the surface of the Internet takes time.

All rights reserved. Reproduction in full is authorized with attribution to the Free Republic and Annalex.

[annalex]

I think that the NWO is an illusion. U.S. foreign policy was, and will be, an attempt to bring order to the world. Clinton, and GHW Bush before him did it stupidly, and that contributed to our vulnerabilities, but in one form or another this conflict would have happened anyway.

Immigration policy has nothing to do with it, either, since mass immigration is not needed in order to inject 20 sleepers into this country.

[cornelis]

Let us then welcome chivalry. Chivarly is the suspension of total war. Chivalry alone is consummate dignity and a check against the delusions (conjectures) produced by ignorance. Chivalry is le maigre terrain d'entente pour l'homme, a tight-rope for crossing the abyss of the beast and the vacuum of divinity.

Chivalry crosses the gap in the pass and escapes the treason of delusion. La Breche de Roland!

[Benoit Baldwin]

"Chivalry's Age--gone."
(thus the mob spoke, and then cried:)
"Let's nuke 'em 'til dawn!"

[LSJohn]

There is an almost total absence of thoughtful discourse on this subject. Even leaving aside the "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" faction, when one says anything which implies it might not be a good idea to turn a half-dozen countries into parking lots, many will "hear" defense of all Arabs/Muslims. When one says our foreign policy played a role in motivating these attacks (without even implying that the foreign policy was wrong) many "hear" a claim that this was all our fault. If one says radical Islam cannot/will not tolerate our freedom, religion[s] and culture, many will "hear" a call to kill all Muslims and/or Arabs.

I don't think you'll find many libertarians who disagree with this from sourcery :

The issue is the fact that terrorists will be able to acquire and deploy nerve gas, biological weapons and perhaps even nuclear bombs. Those who are willing and able to acquire and use such devices in order to commit mass murder must not be allowed to live. It's them or us.

We need to keep our eyes on the prize.

Find and prosecute -- with extreme prejudice when advisable -- those who fit sourcery's description above.

Avoid, to the fullest extent possible consistent with the objective, the taking of truly innocent lives.

These cannot be accomplished either quickly or through conventional military means.

Libertarians are more skeptical than most conservatives about the likelihood that those in the U.S. decision-making hierarchy are likely to pursue these objectives wisely, justly, honestly or with that single goal in mind -- not necessary here to catalogue the many possible competing interests which might enter into decision-making and thereby lead to inappropriate adventurism.

Can we agree we should:

1) Do whatever is actually necessary to build, or rebuild, the information-gathering apparatus necessary to identify those who are mortal threats to our country.

2) Do whatever is actually necessary to build or rebuild the covert operations apparatus necessary to aggressively deal with those threats.

3) Accept that it will take years to accomplish these goals and resist the temptation to engage in exploits designed primarily to demonstrate that we're "taking names and kicking a$$e$. "

It's in the actuallys that the problems and the fears of most libertarians lie, IMO. I'll bet the vast majority of libertarians on FR would be far more comfortable with aggressive action if the decisions were in the hands of annalex, sourcery, Lysander, Taliesan, Uriel1975, A.J. Armitage, and a dozen or so more I could name, than in the hands of a decision-making apparatus which has established a consistent pattern over the past century of so often taking actions with which we disagree on the periphery of or as a by-product or secondary objective of a stated policy initiative which we generally support. It's often not the stated goal or the publicly known aspects of these operations with which we disagree, but the unstated and the secret.

Whom can we trust? I hope it's GW and associates, but I'd feel a lot better if the likes of Robert Mueller, Glen Fine, Lee Radek, Norman Minetta, Richard Armitage -- and yes, Colin Powell and John Ashcroft -- were not in the mix.

[LSJohn]

Re April Glaspie:

"Told Saddam that her instructions were that whatever Iraq did, the US had no opinion or interest in Kuwait."

Close, but I think not quite correct. I believe her instructions were to convey that "The United States takes no position in Iraq's border dispute with Kuwait;" (there were a few million oil-producing acres which both Iraq and Kuwait had claimed for decades, and which was then under Kuwaiti control.)

I think the message Saddam "heard" was as you stated, and that may indeed have been the intent, but the actual words were somewhat different.

[lakey]

I stand corrected. Thank you.

At the time I posted that, the copy was not on my desk. "Excerpts From Iraqi Document on Meeting with U.S. Envoy" can be found at http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/glaspie.html

"U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie's interview with Pres. Saddam Hussein", July 25, 1990, from The New York Times International Sunday, Sept. 23, 1990.

[Liberal Classic]

Thank you, annalex. And though I would not have said things exactly as you have, on the whole I agree.

[secretagent]

That's the nature of the game. One can't have a functioning defensive policy without aggression. That is why the proper yardstick for foreign policy is national interest, and not non-aggression.

I meant by aggression, the initiation of force, a libertarian no-no. I agree that once attacked, we have the right to aggressively pursue the attackers.I disagree with you if you meant that the United States doesn't itself initiate force directly and by proxy, in pursuit of the majority's "national interest", clearly violating the core libertarian principle.

[roughrider]

"Libertarianism is one-directional: no matter what is the present condition of individual freedoms vis-à-vis the collective coercion, libertarianism will pull for the individual just because the government will always pull for the collective."

The part about libertarianism in the above quote is correct. They will always pull for the individual as opposed to the government. The part about the government is not quite right. Government is typically out for itself, not for "the collective." Politicians want to be re-elected, and bureaucrats want to maintain their jobs and advance within the system as their primary objectives. There is always the danger that the politicians and bureaucrats will confuse what is good for them with what is good for the people, just as some confuse the government with the nation itself.

One reason we have a FIRST AMENDMENT was to make it possible for those who are naturally reflexive against new and unprecedented government actions to raise alarms. Frequently, the movement of the majority, particularly when strong emotions are driving the majority, can cause harm to the nation, so the Founders desired a multiplicity of groups and factions to have their right to speak out protected. Groups in natural opposition to a particular mass movement of the majority are protected in speaking out against it. Such activity can serve as a brake to the overreactions of the majority. The government may get some of the concessions they think they need to prosecute a given war, or to accomplish a given social program, but the government may not get ALL of it if there are enough objections voiced by the minority over time, and they begin to sway some of the majority into a more moderated position. I think you will find that the more extreme the advocacy of the majority, the more extreme the objections of the minority. That is the phenomenon that is driving a lot of the dynamic that is causing the flame wars and deleted threads over the war issue. This will continue for a few months until we realize that most of this war will involve rounding up illegal aliens that never should have gotten into the country, finding bin Laden's money and seizing it, and reallocating resources away from boondoggles and more toward legitimate internal security needs that have no effect on Constitutionally guaranteed rights of American citizens. The processes that are likely to animate this war will take so long that the majority's passions will cool. The Founders were very wary of government actions done in the heat of the moment, and no war should be conducted in a blind rage. War requires a nimble mind, and rancor is a pimple on the brain.

[annalex]

You describe the police action approach: some criminals violated a law, so let's find them, bring them to justice, and increase the policing in the future.

I disagree with that. I believe that we should, perhaps through proxies, install a friendly to us government in Afghanistan and in other countries that we can identify. That government can only be installed as a result of a war. It will be conventional war inasmuch as it is a war for control of government and territory. It definitely will have unconventional tactics, given the nature of the enemy.

I believe that the government that will emerge from our military victory should win the hearts of the Afghanis. It should be able to do so if it respects culture and religion, adheres to the rule of law, and fosters democratic institutions. The model for that is our occupation of Japan in the aftermath of the Second World War.

If we succeed in that, the threat of terrorism will be eliminated. There are two ways in which we can fail: we can treat Bin Laden et al as criminals rather than as a military adversary, -- in which case there will be more Bin Ladens and more attacks in the future; or we can wage an indiscriminate total war from the air on the much-suffering Afghani population, leading to the same end result as a failure to act militarily. The only way to succeed is a conventional ground war for control and territory.

[roughrider]

"The government exists to protect individual rights. I cannot think of a greater violation of individual rights than having an airliner explode over you as you reach for your morning coffee."

Actually, the purpose of government is to enforce justice. There is no freedom possible without justice, and it is the government's sole duty to use the sword to preserve justice. In the atmosphere of justice, freedom is possible. When the environment is one of injustice at every turn, no one is really free.

The acts of the individuals who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks were acts of injustice. Even if they had complaints against US foreign policy, and there is evidence that no Muslim had any legitimate grievance against the US foreign policy of the 1990s, their response was unjust as it was directed against individuals who are not directly responsible for developing and enforcing US foreign policy. Force must be used in both proportion and against the proper targets to be considered a just use of force. In this case, not only was the action disproportionate, but also directed against those who are not responsible for US foreign policy. Therefore, the actions of 9/11 constituted VIOLENCE, not force. Violence is the unjust use of force, as force is only legitimate if it is used to defend justice.

The proper defense of justice brings about liberty as a natural result.

[annalex]

The second assertion [(that libertarians advocate rapid retreat from America's global positions)] surprises me

In Browne and Rockwell pieces there is a recurring theme of the Swiss model: if we stop being an empire no one will attack us. The implication of it is that we should put Bin Laden and Co. in jail and retreat from everywhere, e.g. from the support of Israel or from NATO. That part is similar to what the Buchananites would recommend. I disargee: I believe that in absence of the American empire the power vacuum will be filled quickly, and not by the Swiss.

numerous libertarians call for stepped up security

That is true, but it is the legitimate government function to fight wars; I see a desire to somehow bypass the warmaking ability of the government, replacing it by a citizens' action. I think that is incorrect because it denies the government its only proper function, protection of citizens' rights.

[annalex]

If it is determined that a violation of rights cannot be remedied by increased domestic policing, the government in charge of the protection of rights should initiate war to prevent recurring attacks. It should do so as a consequence of the original violation of rights, in this case, the attack on 9/11. From that point on, the language of initiation of force stops to apply, and the military prosecutes the war in order to win it, in accordance with the broad objectives laid out by the government, but not under a democratic tactical control.

[annalex]

Government is typically out for itself, not for "the collective."

That is generalyl true, but since our government is elected democratically, it pulls for the majority. That is wha tI meant by "pulling for the collective". I agree with you that in this crisis the best we can do is cool off, particularly since it will be a long campaign. I don't think that rounding up illegal aliens and seizing Bin Laden's assets will benearly enough. See #71, I would like to see your comments.

[LSJohn]

If it were true, or even largely true, that only Afghanistan supports anti-U.S. terrorism, a good case could be made for your approach. However, it should by now be obvious to everyone that anti-U.S. terrorists are at least tolerated by the existing governmental structures in many countries, including most of these:

Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Egypt, Lybia, Tunisia, Yemen, UAE, Pakistan, Lebanon, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Chechnya, most of the "republics" of the former nation of Yugoslavia, possibly Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and certainly Palestine (if it can be said Palestine is a country or has a government.)

Of course limiting the list to these presumes that neither the PRC, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar Burma!, Kampuchea Cambodia!, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cuba, Russia, Venezuela, Peru, Columbia nor any other government which is composed of at least some individuals who would cheer such acts are a likely future terrorist threat. There are also anti-U.S. terrorists who use the territories of the Phillipines, Germany, Greece and the U.S., presumably with out those governments intentionally turning a blind eye.

There is no conventional military means to combat this. Using Afghanistan as a demonstration project will, IMO, be worse than useless.

(I may be skating on thin ice in choosing some of the countries on my lists above, but I'm not currently interested in arguing them individually, and you get my point, despite possible errors of inclusion or exclusion.)

[annalex]

Actually, the purpose of government is to enforce justice [and not to protect individual rights].

We don't have a real argument, do we? Rights are the basis of justice.

there is evidence that no Muslim had any legitimate grievance against the US foreign policy of the 1990s

Exactly so.

[annalex]

Most of those countries (excepting, really, only the Palestinian Authority), have means to eradicate the terrorist networks, and Afghanistan doesn't, since the Taliban is their government. So with most of them enough pressure can be brought to bear through diplomatic means. A typical third-world government would be happy to do our bidding if the alternative is war.

I know it is imperialist, but that epithet with me closes no arguments.

[roughrider]

In regards to Reply 71, the US Government had all the information they needed to head off this threat, as has been revealed by several threads posted by OKC Submariner and others. You should view these threads, compiled from primarily "mainstream" sources, before making the judgment that the government actually needs more powers in order to root out terrorist cells operating inside the United States. There is voluminous information already compiled about where the cells are, who is in the cells, where they meet, what they do, and who has stayed in this country beyond the limits of their visas. Visit OKC Submariner's homepage, hit "Find in Forum," and read some of those threads.

With the use by three of the saboteurs of the identities of Saudi nationals who remain alive, and in Saudi Arabia, we can't be sure any longer about who actually perpetrated the 9/11 attacks. The terrorist groups are the primary logical suspects, but most of them don't act like fundamentalist Muslims in their personal behaviors. Even the FBI, who is probably reading a lot of what is posted about this, has admitted that most of this group fits no known profile of Muslim terrorists.

The whole point of terrorism is to commit an atrocity, claim credit for the atrocity, make demands, and then threaten more atrocities if the demands are not met. This has not been done, or at least it has not been publicly reported to have taken place. If the terrorists do not make such announcements, then the act of terrorism accomplishes no political goals whatsoever for the terrorists, and political goals are the reasons for terrorism. Terrorists do these things as they do not have a nation behind them. They are a private group, fighting for a political goal that is not in the interests of the more powerful nation states that stand in their way of achieving their political goal. To remain silent about perpetrating this act, the group allegedly responsible for this act are not doing anything to accomplish the changes in US policy that are supposed to comprise their motive for the attacks. As long as they remain silent, they behave more like the hired "cut outs" of some nation state's intelligence agency than they do a dedicated, fanatical terrorist group.

[independentmind]

As long as they remain silent, they behave more like the hired "cut outs" of some nation state's intelligence agency than they do a dedicated, fanatical terrorist group.

In my mind, the only question is who. I am extremely leary of the idea of a "war on terrorism." Who gets to define what terrorism is? Doesn't a global war on such ensure that we become the world's policeman? IMO, Bush should have been much more careful about defining exactly what we are targetting.