The obvious ad hominem aside, can you in fact prove that the "collapse of government" caused "the death of millions"?
"Would the prevention of a million deaths from disease and starvation a proper function of a government?"
It would be the proper job for anyone, including the wizard of Oz. Asking that question puts the cart before the horse: the real question is, was lack of government directly responsible for those deaths?
"The obvious ad hominem aside,"
My comment was not 'ad hominen'. It was clearly directed at VMI and if you take the time to read a few of the articles found at VMI you'll see that my comment is entirely factual.
"...can you in fact prove that the "collapse of government" caused "the death of millions"?"
I've not argued that the collapse of the government caused the deaths. Only that the writer at VMI seemed to think that Somalia was better off without the central government even if one of the results was the deaths.
Another Freeper and I were having a discussion of my perception of a very anti-government bias at VMI when I received this article by email from VMI. I linked to it as an example, a rather mild example BTW.
The point is, based upon my reading of many VMI articles, that this institute is very anti-government. I've been receiving their daily email for three or four years now. While I find their economic analysis rather sound, I do have issues with articles of this type. Just a caveat, I do like their economic analysis except when they get into the abolition of the central banking system and the return to the gold standard stuff.
FYI, VMI is associated with Lew Rockwell. I think he is President of the institute. Lew Rockwell is associated with Justin Raimondo of antiwar.com.
As further evidence of the overall bias against any form of central government, the author of the article you posted is the founder of a website 'anarchism.net' and is dedicated to the dissolution of all forms of government? BTW, Have you visited that website? Rockwells? Raimondo's?
No, my comment was not a personal attack, it was based upon facts.
Glad to hear we agreed that the prevention of these deaths would be a valid function of government. Now, in the context of the article posted at the beginning of this thread, would the central government have the right or obligation or moral responsibility to force it's citizens or residents to bear a portion of the cost of preventing these deaths? Also, would that government's citizens or residents have a moral responsibility to willingly pay their share of that cost? What should the government do if a citizen or resident refuse to pay (ie a free rider)? What if there were no direct benefit to a particular citizen, would the state still be morally correct in taking his assets to assist in this effort?
I think I need to expand a bit on my comments relative to VMI/Rockwell/Raimondo that I made in my last post to you.
I just noticed that you joined this site in 2005. That is not intended as a criticism in any form. I think you might find some Free Republic history interesting.
We used to get a lot of articles posted here from Rockwell and Raimondo was a frequent poster here on free republic. That changed shortly after 9/11. All articles from Rockwell were banned and Raimondo was banned several times. I'm not sure the ban on Rockwell's site is still in place but I'm fairly certain that Raimondo's site is still banned.
Part of the ban may have been the result of some legal issues (I seem to remember that after he was banned, Raimondo may have asked not to have any of his articles posted here.)
The main reason for this ban was the profusion of articles from Rockwell's site and Raimondo's in particular blaming 9/11 and our involvement in Iraq on a Jewish/military industrial complex conspiracy. As you are well aware, Jim Rob doesn't allow even the mildest forms of anti-semiticism here.
For example, Raimondo really bought into the nut case conspiracy theories that cruise missiles brought down the twin towers, that the government of Israel knew about the attacks before hand, etc., etc. Rockwell frequently posted articles of this nature as well, many of them authored by Raimondo or posted on his website.
If you visit these websites, you'll find that Rockwell, VMI, and Raimondo's sites are really a part of the same. Rockwell is president of VMI for example. Follow the links and you'll find they are subsidiaries of the same foundations, etc. You really can't separate them.
All of this is specifically relevent to my point that VMI is a very biased source.