Paul Ireland (ptireland@) wrote to me two days ago:
PI: [...] that we had no valid reason to start the war in Iraq, that the war was unconstitutional, that it was predicated on lies, that Iraq did nothing to warrant the attack, and that it violates the most basic foundation of libertarianism [...] And for the record, each of those things is a fact, not an opinion.
Speaking of "the record", below is my annihilation of Paul's last response to me in our debate on Iraq. I drafted most of it last October, but got bored of crushing his feeble arguments and since have preferred crushing the arguments of more competent debaters like Anthony Gregory. (Hey Anthony, ping me if you ever muster a reply to my unanswered messages to you here or here or here or especially here.) You see, debating Paul is like running in the Special Olympics -- even though you win, it doesn't prove much. (I can't take credit for the line, but I wonder if Paul posed for the related picture?)
But if Paul is going to mention "the record", then let's take a look. In our last exchange I issued three challenges that remain unmet.
In this message I issue some new challenges for Paul to duck:
I also challenge Paul to answer these yes-or-no questions (or to explain what premise or ambiguity he objects to in them):
BH: There are indeed solid AmericaFirstItarian principles for Americans not ever fighting aggression in Iraq, just as there are solid CaliforniaFirstItarian principles for Californians not ever fighting aggression in Maine. You can call such principles "libertarian" all you want, but that won't make it so.
But even from an America-centric perspective, you conveniently 1) omitted any mention of Saddam's support for anti-American terrorists, and 2) artificially qualified Saddam's WMD ambitions as being against only his own people. Thus you failed to even face the self-defense argument made from the conjunction of Saddam's nuclear ambitions and his support for anti-American terrorists.
PI: What exactly is “anti-American terrorists” supposed to mean?
Terrorists who hate America and have killed Americans.
PI: Not one of the terrorists Saddam supported attacked America.
The same was true of Mohamed Atta on Sep 10. I'll ask you again, point-blank: do you claim that in Mar 2003 no reasonable American could have considered there to be a significant threat to America from the conjunction of Saddam's unrepentant nuclear ambitions and his undeniable support for anti-American terrorists? And if you excuse any such threat as justified by America's previous interactions with Iraq, will that be your argument against retaliation if Iraq ever nukes an American city?
PI: Until they directly attack American soil or ships, which they did not do, we have no valid justification to invade Iraq.
Some of us weren't willing to wait for a mushroom cloud over Manhattan before we recognized a threat from the above conjunction. It's just not tenable to claim that reasonable people could not have disagreed over whether the threat warranted invasion.
BH: Saddam's support for anti-American terrorists is indisputable. Saddam harbored Achille Lauro terrorist Abu Abbas, WTC bomber Abdul Rahman Yasin, and Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal
PI: Actually it’s very disputable. Whether or not these terrorists stayed in Iraq or had some training within Iraq does not mean Saddam was training them or supporting them.
It's just silly to deny that the providing diplomatic passports and protection from extradition qualify as "support".
PI: ALL of the money to train the WTC terrorists came from Saudi Arabia and nearly all of those who took part in the attacks were from Saudi Arabia. NONE of them were from Iraq and NONE of them was working for Saddam Hussein.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring. None of the money came from the Saudi government. The Saudi government doesn't give diplomatic passports or refuge to terrorists who kill Americans. The Saudi government has never pursued nuclear WMDs.
BH: Al Qaeda WTC bomber Abdul Rahman Yasin fled to Iraq where he lived freely and apparently drew a government salary. Abu Abbas used an Iraqi diplomatic passport to flee Italy after killing a wheelchair-bound American on the Achille Lauro, and Saddam protected him from extradition for years in Baghdad before he was finally captured by the U.S. military in 2003.
PI: Your claims that he drew a government salary are baseless and irrelevant. [...] Any attacks that happened in Italy are irrelevant.
I guess "baseless and irrelevant" means "inconvenient for Paul". Also, the Achille Lauro was at sea when it was attacked.
PI: Nothing other than an attack on American land or against an American ship is a valid justification for using the U.S. military.
PI: This is NOT an opinion, it’s a fact and it’s backed by the U.S. Constitution which you tend to ignore, even when I prove you wrong when you try to cite it as I did several times in our previous waste of time you call a conversation.
If you're not humiliated enough by me linking to the consitutional arguments you didn't answer in our last exchange, then I'll just humiliate you some more by quoting them directly:
The word "defense" only occurs twice in the Constitution. Its use in the Preamble neither grants nor modifies the war power, which is enumerated with the other federal powers in Article One Section Eight. Its use in clause one of that section does not modify the war power granted in clause eleven.
The Preamble is simply not operative in granting or limiting federal power. It says why the federal government was created, not what it can or cannot do. If you want to know what the Constitution says the federal government can or cannot do, you need to look for language like "the Congress shall have power..." or "Congress shall make no law...". The word "shall" does not appear in the Preamble.
The war power is granted by clause 11, not clause 1. Clause 1 would indeed disallow a specific empire tax or nation-building tax, but it doesn't require that the general-purpose Armies authorized in clause 12 confine their operations to U.S. soil, or their actions to repelling invasions. Indeed, clause 15 is an example of how the Constitution does limit the scope of military action when it wants to, by placing on the Militia the very sort of restriction that it doesn't place on the Army: "to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions".
You still haven't answered these arguments after ten months, and so it's just hilarious for you to claim I "tend to ignore" the Constitution and that you "proved me wrong" on this question.
PI: No use of the U.S. military other than defending against a direct attack on U.S. soil or ships is a valid one according to the U.S. Constitution because no other use is for the defense of U.S. soil and ships.
1) This argument is hilariously circular. 2) The Constitution makes no mention of soil or ships in connection with any sort of limit on the use of the federal navy and armies (as distinct from the militia).
BH: Iraq's annexation of Kuwait was blatant aggression, and that Kuwait appealed to America and its other allies to reverse that annexation under the terms of UN Security Council Resolution 678.
PI: I will not accept any UN resolutions as a valid reason to use the U.S. military.
I didn't say that the UN resolution is what made our intervention justified. It was justified because annexing Kuwait was blatant aggression. Liberating Kuwait would have been justified even if the Kuwaiti people appealed to us on a napkin instead of under a UN resolution.
BH: libertarian n. One who advocates maximizing individual rights and minimizing the role of the state.
PI: I could care less what your dictionary says. The defining characteristic of a libertarian is the adherence of the Non-Aggression Principle. This is what separates real libertarians from those who merely have libertarian leanings
How can a "leaning" satisfy your NAPsolutist definition of "libertarian" if the leaner denies the inviolability of the NAP? By your own use of the phrase "libertarian leanings" you exhibit precisely the meaning that the American Heritage dictionary says is the primary meaning among speakers of English.
PI: Any claims you make contradicting the fact that the core belief of libertarianism is the non-aggression principle are a violation of your pledge. Any use of aggression, including using it to enforce America’s brand of “freedom” on oppressed people elsewhere is a violation of that pledge, and of the core belief of libertarianism. If you claim otherwise, you only prove your own ignorance.
On the contrary, you appear not to know David Nolan's original meaning for the Pledge. To educate yourself, see http://blog.360.yahoo.com/KnowingHumans?p=171 .
BH: I don't agree that the incidence of aggression is minimized -- i.e. that the incidence of liberty is maximized -- if liberty-lovers merely promote aggression-virginity through the example of their abstinence. I instead advocate the Anti-Aggression Principle, which says that the role and incidence of aggression in human society is to be minimized. You assume that the landscape of attainable levels of liberty has no local maxima, i.e. that an investment in force initiation could never lead to a net reduction in the overall incidence of force initiation. This assumption is in my judgment obviously false, and is what distinguishes non-aggression anarchists from anti-aggression libertarians.
PI: Bad people do bad things. It’s not the valid role of America’s DEFENSIVE military to find every bad man on earth and stop them. Nor is it America’s role to topple every dictatorship or totalitarian regime.
I confronted you squarely with your assumption that force initiation could never lead to a net reduction in the overall incidence of force initiation, and what did you do? You changed the subject to the strawman idea that America should "stop every bad man" and "topple every dictatorship". I never said America should do those things.
PI: Freedom is to be earned. It is to be won by those who would have it.
That's a convenient position to take when living in twenty-first-century America, the strongest and freest major polity in human history. I suppose it doesn't matter to you that France, Spain, and Holland fought for America's independence, and that France's assistance is widely considered to have been decisive. Do you claim that your "I've got mine now you get yours" approach is liberty-maximizing?
PI: I’m an American libertarian. I am responsible for myself, and for making sure my country doesn’t violate its limited powers by invading other nations. Other people in other nations have the same responsibility for themselves. To claim that we should shoulder the burden for fulfill their desire freedom is far from libertarianism. It’s no different than saying your neighbors have a right to take what you earn to pay for their desire to watch cable television.
Whether or not my neighbor has cable television has zero effect on the net incidence of aggression. A proper analogy would be with taxation to pay for police protection that my indigent neighbors cannot afford to buy on their own. Anarchists are against such tax-financed law enforcement. Are you an anarchist now?
BH: It's laughable to dismiss the views of the majority of Iraqis as "pure opinion" and in the same breath invoke the opinion of the tiny fraction of Iraqis who have lost a family member as a consequence of the invasion.
PI: Actually, no it’s not. What’s laughable is claiming to be a libertarian while supporting the use of aggression to spread American hegemony. What’s laughable are your attempts to call this use of unprovoked aggression “defending freedom”
You here offer no defense for your opinions-don't-matter-and-hey-listen-to-this-minority-opinion blunder, and instead just parrot my adjective while boring us with the umpteenth restatement of your position. Yawn.
PI: America’s unprovoked aggression against Iraq is no different than Saddam Hussein’s unprovoked aggression towards the Kurds.
LOL. The Kurds disagree -- as do the Shiites and even many Sunnis.
PI: If I see a man beating his wife and I kill him, IT IS MURDER.
If you kill a wife-beater when there is a functioning court system that routinely and effectively deals with such aggressors, then yes it's murder.
PI: Now you will predictably try to say the man was killing his wife and you killed him to save her. That doesn’t fly either.
Even though I'd already made this point to you earlier about a functioning court system, you failed to predict it would be my response -- and then called attention to your failed prediction. LOL
PI: The rules that apply to individuals do not apply to nation states
We agree on this statement, for interestingly different reasons. For you this is a moral prescription derived from sovereigntarian dogma. For me, it's an empirical statement that describes the largely anarchic relationships among nation states.
BH: "Kurds Enjoy Haven of Peace, Prosperity" http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7230132/
In an April 2004 CNN/Gallup nationwide poll of Iraqis, 42% "said Iraq was better off because of the war", and 61% "said Saddam Hussein's ouster made it worth any hardships." http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/04/28/iraq.poll/In a nationwide poll of Iraqis completed in Mar 2004 for BBC by Oxford Research International, "56% said that things were better now than they were before the war". http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3514504.stmBH: I didn't say that merely making Iraq better off makes the invasion justified. I just refuted your laughable claim that "the people of Iraq are no better off now than they were with Saddam in power".
PI: No, you didn’t. You only disputed it; you refuted nothing. The indisputable fact remains that the Iraqi people are less free now than they were with Saddam in power. The U.S. has shut down their newspapers, kicked down their doors, searched their homes for weapons, captured people who never committed crimes, jailed them, tortured them, beat them (sometimes to death), violated their religious beliefs, etc.
There are more free newspapers in Iraq now than under Saddam, the incidence of the abuses you mention are lower now than before the invasion, and I challenge you to cite authoritative sources saying otherwise. Meanwhile, my citations above stand unimpeached.
PI: But don't take my word for it, take the word of the 9/11 commission which stated clearly that Iraq NEVER POSED A CREDIBLE THREAT TO AMERICA.
BH: Flatly false, yet again. The 9/11 commission report mentions Iraq 158 times. The closest it comes to saying the above is that after the plot against G.H.W. Bush's life, "no further intelligence came in about terrorist acts planned by Iraq". But the report notes without any criticism a DoD paper described as saying that Iraq posed a strategic threat to the United States. Iraq’s long-standing involvement in terrorism was cited, along with its interest in weapons of mass destruction. The invasion of Iraq was outside the scope of the 9/11 commission report, and the report simply does not dispute the charge that Iraq's involvement with WMDs and anti-American terrorism constituted a threat to America. If you claim otherwise, I defy you to quote the report.
PI: A strategic threat? What strategy were they a threat to? The Bush doctrine? Iraq’s involvement with Palestinian terrorists and even the terrorists who happened to stay in Iraq for awhile DO NOT amount to a credible or valid threat to America. Sorry, but it’s the truth.
Instead of quoting the 9/11 Commission's report to back up your laughable "don't take my word for it" bluster, you here argue against the quoted words of the Commission. LOL. Now do you have a 9/11 Commission report quote for your all-caps shout above, or not?
PI: Bush planned on invading Iraq before he was even selected by the Supreme Court as president
BH: Even if Bush had spent his high school prom night planning the invasion of Iraq, it wouldn't affect whether the justification I've given for it is reasonable.
PI: None of what you presented amounts to any justification at all. [...]
Thus you don't even attempt to defend the ludicrous argument that the timing of the invasion decision can invalidate its stated justification.
PI: Hundreds of thousands were murdered, and tortured by America, just as they were under Saddam
BH: Your charges of mass torture by America are absurd.
PI: your claims that America did not torture people are absolutely laughable.
BH: What's "laughable" here is your reading comprehension. I denied that "hundreds of thousands" were tortured. I didn't claim that no Iraqis have been abused by the American military.
PI: I said hundreds of thousands were tortured and murdered. Not all were tortured, not all were murdered. Most were just murdered, some were tortured and then murdered, and some were just tortured.
So instead of defending your absurd charge of mass torture, you desperately try to hide it behind your ethically illiterate claim that deaths caused by Saddam's aggression and sanctions-defiance are somehow American "murders". Hilarious.
BH: Fatalities caused by all sides in the entire conflict since the 2003 invasion are perhaps 50,000:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_in_the_conflict_in_Iraq.
PI: I don't recognize anything at wikipedia as a valid reference source.
BH: The Wikipedia article includes 30 source citations, and a bibliography of 14 references. But don't let a few pesky facts stand in the way of your dogmatic beliefs...
PI: My dogmatic belief in the actual truth is nothing to be ashamed of. Your dogmatic beliefs in outright lies, and your attempts to rationalize the use of unprovoked aggression are.
So when confronted with 30 source citations, you just sputter that they are "outright lies"? LOL.
BH: The deaths in question were Saddam's fault for his six-year refusal of the U.N.'s oil-for-food humanitarian offers while he was refusing to comply with UN Security Council resolutions concerning the reversal of his aggression against Kuwait. You can ignore all the relevant facts documented by Reason Magazine at http://reason.com/0203/fe.mw.the.shtml, but ignoring them won't make them go away.
PI: Nope. They weren’t Saddam’s fault. Neither the UN, nor the US had any legitimate authority to attack Iraq in the first place, to block shipments of food and medicine, or to make an oil for food program. He was under no obligation to fulfill a contract he was forced to sign under duress after being the victim of an unprovoked attack by America in 1991.
If you can't address the Reason analysis, and are just going to repeat your earlier sovereigntarian mantra that no amount of aggression by Saddam can justify third-party action against him, I'm happy to let the record stand as is on the question of which of our two positions is more liberty-maximizing.
BH: If what others are doing is initiating force unrestrained by any effective justice system, then true lovers of liberty consider themselves free to organize to stop it.
PI: Yes, true lovers of liberty and even others are free to organize and stop it. But they are not free to use the U.S. military to do it. [...]
I've already diagnosed your misreading of the Constitution concerning defensive military force. But hypothetically, are you saying that the invasion would have been OK if there had been a constitutional amendment to erase whatever words you imagine prohibit such interventions?
BH: No lover of liberty recognizes an absolute sovereignty to commit arbitrary aggression against third parties.
PI: No lover of liberty recognizes the use of unprovoked aggression against another nation who has not attacked ours (even if they are brutal to their own people and others) as an act of libertarianism.
Do you believe that any lover of liberty should recognize that the sovereignty of aggressors always prevents third party nations from interfering with their aggressions? Yes or no?
BH: If you say the sovereignty of an aggressive tyrannical state trumps the liberty of individuals, then you're just not as libertarian as I am.
PI: Nice strawman you’ve beaten there. Individual liberty belongs to individuals. Your individual liberty does not entitle you to use a collective military to carry out what you personally deem to be “liberating people”. State sovereignty trumps any and all contracts made with any other nation or group of nations.
The only strawman here is your clumsy claim that my personal whims about liberation are in some way decisive here. Do you or do you not believe that the sovereignty of an aggressive tyrannical state trumps any right of individuals to request that bystanding states intervene to defend their liberty? Yes or no?
BH: The map hasn't been drawn that can confuse me about whether state sovereignty is more important than individual liberty.
PI: Bringing back the strawman again I see. Your attempts to blur the lines between individual and state sovereignty are fruitless. Individual liberty is to be protected by individuals. State sovereignty is to be protected by state militaries.
It's absurd for you to pretend that state sovereignty is magically guaranteed to never conflict with efforts to maximize the incidence of individual liberty.
BH: I already corrected you on the alleged unconstitutionality of all U.S. interventions at
http://humanknowledge.net/Correspondence/Paul_Ireland/2005-02-14%200846.htm. [...] Do a search like "paul ireland" jurisprudence on Google or Yahoo and check out the top result. Your abysmal performance in our discussions will be associated with your name for as long as there is indexing and archiving on the web and its successors. Welcome to your legacy.
PI: The funniest part is even on your own website, I destroy your claims that the war in Iraq is anything other than absolutely unconstitutional. I am more than happy to see my legacy in destroying your fallacious claims, and showing everyone what a fool you are.
I'm glad we agree that http://humanknowledge.net/Correspondence/Paul_Ireland/ is a fair representation of our respective skill in constitutional jurisprudence. I challenge you to publish this link on the front page of your congressional campaign site (as I have), so that people can see for themselves which of us is a "fool".
PI: I’m in awe of your arrogance in suggesting your own poorly designed website as a reference. Also the irony is not wasted on me that someone who has virtually no knowledge, would have the unmitigated gall to buy a website named “humanknowledge.net”
I invite our readers to use even the briefest perusal of http://humanknowledge.net to evaluate your claim that I have "virtually no knowledge". (If I ever create a remedial version of my site, I'll include an explanation for you of the difference between buying a website and buying a domain name.)
PI: I have PROVEN that the role and scope of the US Military is solely for the DEFENSE of American ships and soil and for nothing else. Any case law you bring up to the contrary is irrelevant. The U.S. Constitution is the HIGHEST law of the land, and it defines the role of the military. If you want to discuss case law, you can look up Marbury vs. Madison where the first Supreme Court said that any and all laws, court cases, acts of congress, etc., which contradict the U.S. Constitution are AUTOMATICALLY null and void without the need for judicial review. Congress is given limited war making powers to be used in the DEFENSE of American soil or ships. They may not use this power except in such defense.
BH: Every single word of the above -- even the capitalized ones -- is already rebutted either in the above link, or in the subsequent message (to which you never mustered a response) at http://humanknowledge.net/Correspondence/Paul_Ireland/2005-02-15.htm.
PI: See the response above. I destroyed your fallacious claims in our last encounter. Every single word of what I said is the truth, and you’ve failed to refute any of it then or now.
Links are still apparently too high-tech for you, so pasted here (again) are the arguments to which you've had no response:
The word "defense" only occurs twice in the Constitution. Its use in the Preamble neither grants nor modifies the war power, which is enumerated with the other federal powers in Article One Section Eight. Its use in clause one of that section does not modify the war power granted in clause eleven.
The Preamble is simply not operative in granting or limiting federal power. It says why the federal government was created, not what it can or cannot do. If you want to know what the Constitution says the federal government can or cannot do, you need to look for language like "the Congress shall have power..." or "Congress shall make no law...". The word "shall" does not appear in the Preamble.
The war power is granted by clause 11, not clause 1. Clause 1 would indeed disallow a specific empire tax or nation-building tax, but it doesn't require that the general-purpose Armies authorized in clause 12 confine their operations to U.S. soil, or their actions to repelling invasions. Indeed, clause 15 is an example of how the Constitution does limit the scope of military action when it wants to, by placing on the Militia the very sort of restriction that it doesn't place on the Army: "to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions".
You have never so much as even addressed these arguments, so it's amusing for you to stomp your foot and insist you "destroyed" them.
BH: "The Congress shall have power [...] [t]o make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers" Art I Sec 8 cl 18.
PI: Ahh, trying to misuse the “necessary and proper” clause again I see. Contrary to your derisive claims, the “necessary and proper” clause is not carte blanche for the government to make any laws it wishes.
I didn't write "any laws it wishes". I wrote "the foregoing powers". Thank you for giving us such a precise gauge of your reading skills.
PI: Congress is given the ability to make laws to carry out the specific items mentioned in the Constitution and nothing else. This means it can make laws regarding how the U.S. responds to a direct attack against U.S. ships or soil
I defy you to quote anything like your "ships and soil" language in Article I Sec 8.
BH: The House voted 250-183, and the Senate 52-47, "to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces pursuant to United Nations Security Council Resolution 678". Your position on the invasion would be unchanged if the text had met your definition of a declaration of war, so this complaint is specious.
PI: BZZZZ Nice try, but wrong again. Thanks for playing. Maybe you’ll get a copy of the home game. Congress can’t “authorize the use of the U.S. armed forces” in any way other than a formal declaration of war.
I claimed your position would be unchanged. Did you deny this? No. Thus, my claim stands unrebutted. Let us know when you feel up to addressing it.
BH: If as a SovereignTarian you believe that the signatures of kings and tyrants take precedence over individual human liberty in future generations, then you should note that King Faisal II's regime voluntarily committed Iraq to the United Nations Charter in December 1945. Thus your commitment to SovereignTarianism trumps not only individual liberty, but also the notion of contractual claims of sovereign states on each other.
PI: Your strawman must be getting tired by now. The sovereignty of a nation has nothing to do with how the people within the nation are treated.
Do you or do you not believe that the sovereignty of an aggressive tyrannical state trumps any right of individuals to request that bystanding states intervene to defend their liberty? Yes or no?
Do you or do you not believe that the sovereignty of an aggressive tyrannical state immunizes it from all possible consequences of it violating signed treaties with other sovereign states? Yes or no?
PI: Merely joining the UN does not mean you are under an obligation to disarm your nation if the Security Council says so. Only a person who supports unlimited centralized governmental power (a non-libertarian) would suggest such a repugnant idea.
As a libertarian, I believe that right and wrong in international relations is determined only by the effects on the liberty of individuals. As a not-quite-libertarian, you believe that other factors are also important, such as sovereignty and state-to-state force-initiation (which for you may or may not include violation of state-to-state contracts, depending on the phase of the moon).
BH: Above you wrote that "Libertarians support individual, state, and national sovereignty". If individuals have sovereignty and sovereignty can nullify any contract, then you just discarded the entire concept of contract. That's an odd brand of libertarianism you're selling there.
PI: Rights are as immutable as gravity. You can neither take them, nor give them away. You can’t contract them away either. If I sign a contract with you saying I’ll be silent for a year or I owe you a thousand dollars, it does not mean I don’t have the right to speak. It means I’ve agreed to pay you a thousand dollars if I exercise my right to speak.
Do you claim that when a state signs the contractual instruments admitting it to the United Nations, it does not agree to be bound in any way by the decisions of the UN Security Council? Yes or no?
PI: Governments don’t have rights, only individuals do, therefore a government can not make a contract such as the one I mentioned above. Governments can sign treaties, but even these have limitations because no contract (including a treaty) signed under duress is a valid one.
Are you saying that Iraq was under duress in December 1945 when it signed the instruments admitting it to the United Nations? Or are you saying that all treaties between states are meaningless fictions, carrying no obligation whatsoever?
PI: If the U.N. suddenly told America to get rid of our WMD's, what would you say?
BH: It's easy for me to agree that the U.S. should comply with any demand from the U.N. Security Council, because the U.S. has a veto on the Security Council.
But I'll even answer the hard question you didn't know how to ask. I deny that state sovereignty or state contract rights necessarily trump individual liberty. I'm not the one here fetishizing states as moral agents, that's you. You claim that states have absolute immunity from force initiation just like individuals, except on alternate Tuesdays when they're allowed to initiate force by abrogating the written agreements they've signed.
PI: All I saw was you saying you would answer the question, and then you avoided it completely. Whether or not the U.S. has veto power on the Security Council is irrelevant.
I clearly answered your incompetently-formulated question, by agreeing that America should comply with any order that it issues to itself by signing it in the UN Security Council. Don't blame me if you are ignorant of how the UN works.
PI: I seem to remember not discussing things with you because you refused to answer questions directly. Until you answer whether or not America should comply with a UN directive to disarm, this will be our last communication and you will have proven the lack of courage for your convictions.
BH: I personally challenge you to identify any substantive question in your earlier correspondence with me that I didn't address. That correspondence is available at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marketliberal/messagesearch?query=ptireland , along with your final message (that was not a reply-to-all) at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Libertarian/message/31400. I don't bother rebutting people unless I address every substantive point they raise. By contrast, I quite explicitly remember you failing to answer these two questions even when I repeated them:
PI: What are you talking about? You dodged my question in the last paragraph of this conversation! Are you really that dense? The answers to my questions are either A) I think America should comply and allow inspectors from Iraq, Iran, Russia, North Korea, China, Pakistan, etc. go into the Whitehouse, NORAD, Every military base, and every American home to forcibly disarm all Americans… or B) I’d tell the UN to screw off because we are under no obligation to do what the UN tells us to do. Which is it?
I already told you "the U.S. should comply with any demand from the U.N. Security Council", where "U.N. Security Council" is understood to mean the one that exists in the real world. If instead "U.N. Security Council" means the one that exists in the minds of people too ignorant to know that America has a veto on it, then the answer to that different question was "I deny that state sovereignty or state contract rights necessarily trump individual liberty".
PI: As far as answering your questions, I don’t see why I should answer yours when you won’t answer mine, but hell I’m feeling generous so I’ll give it a shot.
I was able to re-answer the question you claim I evaded simply by quoting my answers. Here you tacitly admit the obvious fact that you never answered my earlier questions to you. Also, I "personally challenge[d] you to identify any substantive question in your earlier correspondence with me that I didn't address", to back up your earlier claim that I "refused to answer questions directly". You utterly and predictably failed to identify any such question from our earlier correspondence.
PI: Not all taxation is force. For instance a gas tax to pay for roads is not compulsory. One can refuse to use gas to avoid the tax. Government has no legitimate authority to tax our rights. A gas tax is no different than a usage fee. So the answer to your question is no. There are no circumstances when I’d support governmental first use of force.
You're confused, as usual. If I'm going to use the gas to mow my lawn instead of drive on the roads, then a gas tax is clearly compulsory.
PI: People do not have the right to compel anyone to show up in court against their own will even if it could prove their innocence.
Ah, so you disagree with the Constitution on this score. Does Paul the Constitutional Scholar (who claims to know more about the Constitution than most Supreme Court justices) disagree with any other part of the U.S. Constitution? Yes or no?
BH: I also wrote in my final message to you: "I stand for minimizing the overall incidence of coercion. You seem to stand for merely setting a good example of abstention from coercion. (I made this point in each of my last three messages, and each time you had no specific rebuttal to this diagnosis of our differences. If you ever come up with one, be sure to let us know.)"
PI: You stand for minimizing the overall incidence of coercion and you intend to accomplish this with the unprovoked use of force and coercion?
Your use of "unprovoked" is a clumsy attempt to smuggle your conclusion into your argument for that conclusion. Do you or do you not claim that an investment in force initiation can never lead to a net reduction in the overall incidence of force initiation? Yes or no?
PI: That is a lot like saying you want to promote abstinence through rape.
No, it's more like saying a doctor wants to minimize overall pain by administering painful shots when necessary.
BH: And since you never responded to my final message, every other substantive point in it could be claimed to count as one that you lacked the "courage of your convictions" to face. So it's laughable for you to claim you've made any substantive points in our correspondence to which I haven't responded. In case you haven't figured it out yet, my M.O. is to systematically rebut my critics pretty much clause by clause, and to never concede the last word. I don't say that having the last word means I'm right, but I never let anyone claim that I must be wrong because I yielded the last word. For you to try to claim I ever yielded you that last word is hilarious.
PI: You first say that I didn’t respond to your final message, and then say you never have a final message because you always make sure you’re the last person who says something. Did it ever occur to you that I became bored with your idiotic and pathetic attempts to debate? I beat you senseless with logic, reason, and verifiable facts but you just keep talking.
BH: That's an interesting mental tic you have there, in which you compulsively label those who disagree with you as "dishonest" or a "liar". If you really needed to, could you disagree with somebody without calling him a liar, like maybe to win a bet? Just curious... :-)
PI: You’ve got a knack for telling it like it isn’t. Those I label dishonest earned the label because after I proved them wrong, and gave them the facts, they continued to spread their false statements. What else would you call someone who says something they know to be false as you do with the Constitution and your claims of being a libertarian?
BH: I invite any reader here to anonymously let Mark Stroberg know if that reader has ever seen me be evasive or dishonest. They might consider me wrong or confused or obstinate or arrogant or pedantic, but I'd be surprised if anybody but Paul thought me evasive or dishonest or lacking intellectual courage.
PI: I’ve proven all of those in this very post.
PI: Saying, "If they just cooperated, they wouldn't have gotten hurt" could be used as a defense for rapists in your warped world.
BH: Your analogy fails under my libertarian values because a rapist is an initiator of force. The initiator of force here was Saddam, whose annexation of Kuwait by force was utterly unjustified by any pretext.
PI: Merely being an initiator of force is not enough.
PI: In order to use the U.S. military that force MUST be initiated directly against US soil or ships in order for it to be a valid. The U.S. military is not to be used at the whim of the President or even at the whim of Congress. It’s there solely to defend U.S. soil and ships from direct attack as I’ve proven time and time again.
BH: Your analogy should even fail under your state-fetishizing Sovereigntarian values, because Iraq was violating the United Nations Charter that it voluntarily signed in December 1945. But apparently you think that while violating a contract is always force initiation for individuals, it can fail to be force initiation for a state if the terms of the contract are inconvenient for your rhetorical purposes.
PI: Your post is dripping with irony. You, who support a global, all encompassing government that controls every aspect of every life on earth, accuse me of being a “state-fetishizing Sovereigntarian”. That’s cute. If anyone has a fetish for government, it’s you.
BH: You're confused. I've been invoking the UN so much just to hoist you on the petard of your own anti-libertarian claim that the rights of collectives (i.e. states) regarding force initiation are analogous to -- and in fact trump -- the rights of individuals. If the UN never existed but all the other facts were still the same, my justification for the invasion would still hold up as liberty-maximizing.
PI: You’re the one who is confused and the one who has been hoisted, not once, but many times over. This is just the same, tired, rehashed, excuse for a strawman you’ve mentioned repeatedly. I’ve never said state sovereignty trumps individual rights. I did say that individual rights are to be protected by individuals and that state sovereignty applies even when a state doesn’t respect individual rights.
PI: Not one of the terrorists supported by Iraq attacked America. Not one. The fact that one or two of the non-Iraqi people who attacked America happened to stay in Iraq or happened to know Saddam Hussein does not mean he supported them. In fact it does nothing more than suggest they asked him for help, but he refused.
PI: Saddam was a monster, but he wasn’t stupid. The only relationship between Al Queda and Iraq (other than the letter Q) is their mutual hatred of each other. Osama Bin Laden considered Saddam Hussein to be an infidel who lived in Palaces and murdered Muslims. Their hatred of each other is well documented for decades.
PI: Using your logic, I could punch someone in the face when I see a bulge in thier pocket because it MIGHT be a weapon, and they MIGHT use it against me.
BH: Instead of fantasizing about bulges in pockets and punching faces, you should construct a non-silly analogy that incorporates Saddam's support for anti-American terrorists.
PI: Actually you’re the one who seems to be fantasizing about bulges in the pants of other men, not me..
PI: Your repeated claims of “anti-American terrorists” are meaningless. Not one person who was funded by Saddam attacked America, and you have absolutely no proof to the contrary.
PI: The 9/11 commission which saw all of the evidence already proved that Iraq posed NO CREDIBLE THREAT to America.
BH: I like how you use all-capitals to subconsciously mark your weakest arguments for your readers. Like so many of the redundant assertions in your message, this one is false in each of the places that you repeat it.
PI: You mean like the way your false claims of “anti-american terrorists funded by Iraq” are repeated over and over?
PI: Sorry, but what I said doesn’t apply since it’s the truth.
PI: Any torture, murder, rapes, etc. within their own country is no business of America'sBH: It's bizarre for a lover of individual liberty to say that our moral calculus changes completely at lines drawn on maps by the collectives known as states. I've never been to Maine or Iraq, and I don't know anybody in either place. How do the values of individual human liberty dictate that I should join with others to defend the liberty of Mainers under all circumstances, but never of Iraqis under any circumstances?
PI: Not once have I ever said that the individual rights of anyone are trumped by state sovereignty. Yet you repeat this lie repeatedly throughout this cerebral beatdown I’m dishing out to you.
PI: Individual rights are what created our government, and our military and what placed limits on its use. I know that the people of Iraq have every single inalienable right that we have in America. I wish freedom for them all. But this does NOT mean I’d condone the blatantly unconstitutional (and it is despite your untenable and baseless claims) use of the U.S. military in order to secure those rights. You’re free to establish a militia of your own and to do such, but not to use the U.S. military.
PI: The values of human liberty don’t dictate that you join to defend anyone at any time. Only your own conscience dictates such. If your conscience dictates that you should join with others to defend the liberty of Mainers, you should do so. If it dictates that you should join in the defense of Iraqi people, you should do that.
PI: The difference when it comes to using the U.S. military to carry out that defense lies in our borders.
PI: The role and scope of the U.S. military includes defending Maine, but does not include “defending” Iraq…if you can call an unprovoked full-scale military invasion of a nation “defending” it, which no rational person can do.
BH: As a libertarian and not a sovereigntarian, I of course think that the property lines of individuals have more moral significance than the borders of states. But I never made the extremist claim that state borders are "imaginary" or that the state should defend liberty to identical extents on both sides of its borders. I simply denied the opposite extremist claim that state borders mark the absolute end to the state's duty to defend liberty, and pointed out that this claim is not optimally libertarian.
PI: It’s not extremist to say that the state’s role in defending liberty ends where that government’s borders end.
PI: while you may not be a “sovereigntarian”, you’re also not a libertarian, so you’re hardly in a position to discuss what they’d do. Your claims of being a libertarian are false. Joining the party does not make you one. Your score on the Nolan chart doesn’t make you one. The dictionary doesn’t make you one. Only your pledge stating that you don’t support the use of force for political gain (a pledge in support of the Non-Aggression Principle) does... assuming you actually live up to the pledge, which you don’t. Starting unprovoked aggression in the form of a war is a direct violation of your pledge. You’re NOT a libertarian.
PI: Again, this is not opinion, it’s fact. I thought I’d point that out since you always seem to confuse the two.
PI: If you want to discuss "bizarre" support for someone who claims to love individual liberty, let's discuss your support of a one-world-government that controls everything.
BH: Just because I believe that the state duty to defend liberty does not absolutely end at state borders, or that I mention the UN in a shorthand description of how blatant Saddam's behavior was, it does not follow that I believe in "one-world government".
PI: Don’t try backpedaling now. You mentioned UN resolutions as a valid reason why the US military would be justified in attacking Iraq even though it violates the limited role and scope of our military in our own Constitution. Only a “one world government” supporter would make such a claim.
PI: Each and every part of my arguments has had solid logic, verifiable facts, and reason. The usage of caps was so I could drum it into your empty skull that it was a fact, and not an opinion. You have habitually confused the two. I didn’t question your honestly. I flat out said you are dishonest. We’ve been through this before, and you’re saying things you know to be false. As far as dismissing your pseudo-intellectual attempts to rationalize and justify your wholly unlibertarian desire to initiate unprovoked (against America) aggression for political gain (such as overthrowing the leadership of another nation)
BH: This debate is going to end just like our last one: with me having answered your every substantive point, and with you calling me names and saying my answers aren't worth responding to. The only question is: before this predictable ending, how many times are you going to repeat the same old arguments that I've already answered?
PI: Actually, it’s going to end like our last one in that I will have answered every question you’ve asked directly
PI: you will have avoided answering mine
PI: and you will continue posting your inane drivel after I’ve moved on because you’re too thick-headed and stubborn to admit when you’re beaten. You will stupidly consider yourself the victor by attrition because you’re the last one posting.
We each have our own time budget for any given discussion, and we indeed shouldn't assume that exhausting that budget is a necessarily a concession. When I'm debating someone with more time to spend on the debate than I, my tactic is to challenge him to set up a pair of opposing documents of fixed size that contain our best arguments, and make the documents link to each other (and not to any extra supporting arguments, but optionally to neutral reference materials, news reports, and primary sources). If you or other LPCalPeaceniks dare to take part in such an arrangement, I would suggest a limit of 15K and offer http://blog.360.yahoo.com/knowinghumans?p=201 as my first draft.