***** PI: The U.S. Military is defined as being solely for the defense of America. 

Since you're under consideration for an LPC position and not the federal bench, I won't bother correcting your misunderstandings of constitutional jurisprudence.

***** PI:  The tired "Tyranny anywhere is a threat to liberty everywhere" line is just a way for people to excuse their desire to practice imperialism and military  interventionism.

PI: I haven't questioned your desire for the liberty of the Iraqi people.  I have questioned your desire to start an unprovoked war [..]

Thus you don't stand behind your earlier "just a way for people to excuse" statement. QED.

***** BH: To a libertarian, the purpose of the state military is to defend liberty. I disagree with the assertion that defending liberty outside our borders is never helpful for defending liberty inside our borders.

PI: To a libertarian, the purpose of the state military is to DEFEND our own liberty, and not to meddle in the affairs and disputes of other nations.

Non-responsive. I disputed the assertion that defending liberty outside our borders is never helpful for defending liberty inside our borders. Do you assert the contrary, or not?

***** PI: Libertarians believe in respecting the national sovereignty of other nations.

For a crypto-anarchist, you seem to attach a lot of moral significance to the boundaries of existing nation-states. I've never been to either Maine or Iraq, and don't know anyone in either place. My interest in defending the liberty of people in Maine or Iraq does not stem purely from my own selfish interest in maintaining whatever mutual defense arrangement I may enjoy with them. The contrary may be true for you, but if so my higher devotion to human liberty should mark me as more libertarian than thou, not less.

If true, it's because intervention has almost never been in defense of liberty. Well, welcome to the 21st century. Don't be surprised if things tend to be a little different from here on out. :-)

PI: This is where you deviate from libertarianism.

I indeed am more interested than you are in defending human liberty. We'll just have to agree to disagree on whether that makes me more libertarian than thou or less.

***** PI: There are hundreds of thousands less Iraqi people today than there were before this blatantly unconstitutional war in Iraq. 

BH: What is your evidence for this claim?

PI: Every single death related to the war in Iraq is America?s fault including the deaths by beheadings, deaths on Spanish trains, deaths of American and other allies, and the deaths of the 100,000 civilians and several thousand others who were merely defending their own country from a hostile invasion force that had no justification to attack.  All of these deaths could have been avoided [...]

Non-responsive. I asked for evidence that "there are hundreds of thousands less Iraqi people" as a result of the 2003 invasion. Let us know if you ever come up with any.

As I already said, deaths from the sanctions are Saddam's fault, not the UN's. Saddam could have at any point agreed to the oil-for-food conditions, but he stalled for years.

Also, if you're going to ground your moral analysis of Iraq on the sovereignty of nation-states instead of the liberty of human beings, then Iraq's trading partners were well within their rights to decline to engage in commerce with Iraq.

***** PI: I don?t care if Saddam Hussein personally murdered 100 million men, raped their wives, boiled their children in oil and ate them on live television.  It still isn?t a valid use of the U.S. Military to stop him.  What happens in their country is a matter for their people to deal with and not ours.

We'll just have to agree to disagree whether this lack of concern over these violations of human liberty marks you as more libertarian than I.

***** PI: People have been leaving the LP in droves thanks to the kind of people I mentioned.

BH: What is your evidence for this claim? 

PI: All you need to do is look at the membership numbers since Bush took office.

Last I checked, Bush is not a member of the LP. The conventional analysis is that Bush has alienated Republicans who favor smaller government.  For example, I went from LP sympathizer to activist only after the GOP used their full control of the federal government to finally prove that their position on shrinking government was only rhetorical.

***** PI: And I personally know more than 100 people who have left the party due to the destructive influence of ?Republitarians? like those in the party who claim to be libertarian and yet violate the foundation of libertarianism by supporting an unwarranted, unjustified, unlibertarian, and unconstitutional war in Iraq.

I'm not sure which is more odd: that the most significant increase in human liberty in 15 years would not be occasion for celebration by self-proclaimed lovers of liberty, or that the war would be an excuse for opponents of the war to quit a party whose official position is against the war. These folks seem quite confused.

PI: I?m saying I?d favor the expulsion of anyone who would ever advocate America using its military to attack any country that hasn?t attacked America first or anyone who would advocate using the military for ANY REASON other than the defense of our own country from direct attacks and not ?possible threats?. 

So is the answer to my question above an unqualified "yes"? If so, do you have the courage to say "Yes, I would favor the expulsion of anyone who would ever advocate America forcibly replacing tyranny with liberty in a country that had not attacked us"?

***** PI: I don't care what libertarian sounding rhetoric they [the RLC] use, or what they CLAIM to support.

BH: Do you have evidence that what they "claim to support" differs from what they actually desire?  Or is this more mind-reading? :-)

PI: If they actually supported those things they would never vote for a member of the Republican Party.

It's ridiculously narrow-minded to take disagreement with your personal judgments about political tactics as evidence for dishonesty in one's claims about the political principles that one supports. However, it conveniently saves you from a lot of hard thinking if you imagine that anyone who disagrees with your tactics must also secretly disagree with your principles.

***** PI: Every one of your responses are directly opposed to the non-aggression principle and therefore directly opposed to libertarianism itself.

My love of liberty, and hatred of aggression, is so strong that I seek to actually maximize liberty and minimize aggression, rather than merely to set a good example by agreeing with fellow non-coercitarians to abstain from first use of force.  I admit that being a non-coercitarian saves you a lot of thinking compared to being a libertarian, because setting a good example is a lot easier than actually making a difference in the world.

***** PI: I proudly support the use of force for defending human liberty.  Unless you're an anarchist, you agree with this principle and simply disagree with me about how to apply it.

PI: I proudly support the non-aggression principle

Are you proud enough of anarchism to declare yourself an anarchist? Or is there some government first use of force (e.g. taxation to finance court/police protection for the indigent) that you would allow?

***** BH: Do you think someone who is on trial should be allowed to compel the attendance for testimony of an innocent bystanding witness? If so, you support the initiation of force.

PI: I support the right of anyone charged with a crime to be able to present evidence in their defense, but this has nothing to do with the topic at hand, so I?ll leave it at that.

The "topic at hand" is your claim that absolute fealty to the non-coercion principle is the one true standard for libertarianism. Either you stand by this claim, or you don't.  As a candidate for the Ex-Com, why be so shy about taking a stand on this point?

You define a libertarian as one who seeks to maximize liberty only by agreeing with fellow liberty-lovers to set a good example of abstaining from first use of force. I define a libertarian as one who seeks to maximize liberty, period.

***** PI:  If you support coercion, force, etc. for political gain or social engineering in this or any other country, you?re not a libertarian.

If you oppose the first use of force under any and all circumstances, you are an anarchist. If you would allow first use of force even just in a "compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in [one's] favor" [can you say "Sixth Amendment"?], then you've lost your anarchist virginity, and have to debate what other ends might permit coercive means.