From: Brian Holtz [brian@holtz.org]
Sent: Monday, January
30, 2006 11:16 PM
To: 'LPCalPeace@yahoogroups.com'
Cc:
'marketliberal@yahoogroups.com'
Subject: Re: More challenges on Iraq
for Paul Ireland to duck
Paul
Ireland wrote:
PI> I
answered all of his questions on a point by point basis. <PI
BH> This is flatly
false. If you (or anyone else) can quote from your previous
messages to me your specific answers to each of just these
five of my ten questions, I'll donate $1000 to the Libertarian Party
in the name of Paul Ireland. <BH
PI> It's not false. I answered every
question you answered, that was worthy of being considered
seriously. <PI
I knew you couldn't quote from your previous
messages to me your specific answers to each of the five questions, and so I
designed the challenge to embarrass you about that fact. It worked better than I
could have hoped, because not only did you obviously fail to meet the terms of
the challenge, but in belatedly answering the questions you also finally
stumbled into the traps that the questions created for you. (See
below.)
PI> Somehow I doubt they will see a
single penny of the money you promised to send them on my behalf for answering
these though. <PI
I promised nothing for answering them. I
promised $1000 to the LP "if you (or anyone else) can quote from your
previous messages to me your specific answers to each of" them. You quoted
nothing, so I pay nothing.
PI> Since you've never asked these
particular questions of me before, your claim that answering them now is
an admission of failing to answer them earlier is entirely
false. <PI
In my $1000 challenge this morning I
explicitly referred to "my ten questions" -- the ten yes-or-no
questions near the top of my previous email sent Jan 28. The
whole point of my email this morning was to highlight that you didn't
answer these questions two days ago, so it's comical for you to now claim
I've never asked them before this morning.
In fact, I challenged you with the language
of question 1 on Feb 14 2005
and Oct 3
2005, saying "You assume that an investment in force initiation could
never lead to a net reduction in the overall incidence of force
initiation". And questions 2, 3, and 5 were based on points
I made to you on Oct 3 2005:
- "No lover of liberty
recognizes an absolute sovereignty to commit arbitrary aggression against
third parties."
- "As a Sovereigntarian, you should also
consider it an initiation of force for a state to violate its contractual
agreements with other states".
- "Saddam protected [Abbu Abbas] from
extradition for years in Baghdad before he was finally captured by the
U.S. military in 2003".
You continue:
PI> You have a tendency to
ask absurd questions and present
unrealistic and insane analogies that
aren't worth dignifying with a response.
<PI
Don't blame me if your positions contain
absurdities that are easy for me to tease out and embarrassing for you to admit.
See below for what happens to you when you try to answer my questions.
Perhaps stonewalling was simply the best option available to
you...
BH> 1. Do you claim that an
investment in force initiation can never lead to a net reduction in the
overall incidence of force initiation?
<BH
PI> You're asking if I
think starting a fight with a bully will lead to less kids getting beaten up by
bullies. <PI
No, your paraphrase is not
equivalent because it invokes extra-legal vigilantism in the context of a
force-wielding authority already charged with preventing and punishing the
aggression of bullies. The principle I'm getting at is the idea that absolute
non-interventionism abroad is as mistaken as anarchism is at home. I made this
point to you on Feb
11 2005:
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.
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.
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.
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.)
You continue:
PI> it doesn't matter if it would or
wouldn't lead to less overall bullying. So the answer to
your question is "no" I don't make such a claim <PI
Very good -- you just admitted that
you care less than I do about minimizing the overall incidence of coercion. You
just admitted that aggression doesn't end up minimized if the strategy for
minimizing it is just for liberty-lovers to promote aggression-virginity by the
example of their abstinence. You can
claim (as anarchists do) that the essence of being a libertarian is to merely to
set a good example by agreeing with fellow non-coercitarians to abstain from
first use of force. I claim instead that minimizing the overall incidence of
coercion is the essence of libertarianism. As long as we agree on how our
priorities differ, I don't care that we disagree on which of these two positions
best deserves the disputed label -- because the answer is obvious.
PI> The ends don't justify the
means. <PI
This opens up the classic philosophical
question of deontological ethics vs. consequentialist ethics, and you have
neither the temperament nor the background knowledge to be worth debating on
this subject. (For curious readers, my position is that a consequentialist
meta-ethics combines with empirical facts about human nature to yield an ethical
system that functions just as if it were deontological.)
BH> 2. 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?
<BH
PI> I
believe that any liberty lover should recognize that the sovereignty of all nations including
aggressive and tyrannical ones. I further believe that if this prevents
us from taking part as a third-party by interfering with their
aggression this is just fine and very libertarian. <PI
Excellent -- you just admitted again that
you care less than I do about minimizing the overall incidence of
aggression.
BH> 3. Do you believe that
the sovereignty of an aggressive tyrannical state immunizes it from all
possible consequences of it violating signed treaties with other sovereign
states?
<BH
PI> I don't believe the
sovereignty of a nation protects it against consequences when it violates
that treaty, but those consequences are only to come from the individual
nation in which the treaty has been
violated. <PI
Excellent -- unless you are going to insist
that multi-nation treaties are somehow impermissible, you just admitted that a
multi-nation treaty like the UN Charter could in principle be the basis for a
liberty-loving nation to intervene against a nation that is violating the
Charter terms and processes by which it agreed with all its
co-signatories to be bound.
BH> 4. Would foreign governments have a green light
from Paul Ireland -- i.e. complete immunity from U.S. military response
-- to kill as many Americans as they want as long as it's outside of
U.S. jurisdiction? <BH
PI> If you choose
to go to a country where it might
be dangerous for Americans to visit, and you are harmed, you accepted the risks involved, and America
isn't here to stop you from making
stupid decisions. If Americans go to a foreign
country and are getting killed, the extent of the American government's
actions should be warning Americans of the dangers, and possibly refusal
to trade with them. If that didn't work, the next step would be
letters of marquis and reprisal.<PI
(Readers should note the Paul the
Constitutional Scholar is referring to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_marque --
but don't take Wikipedia's word for it, because Paul tells us Wikipedia is
worthless.) So if Fidel Castro started slaughtering Americans by the
thousands anywhere they stepped outside of U.S. jurisdiction, your only
response would be to authorize members of the Yacht Club to seize Cuban merchant
ships? Excellent -- trap number 4 just closed shut on you.
BH> 5. Does protecting from extradition a terrorist who
targeted an American tourist for murder constitute support for
an anti-American terrorist?
<BH
PI> No. <PI
Given your answer to question 4, all you've
done here is put your other leg in the same trap.
Now that we've seen how unwise it is for you
to accept the challenges I design for you, let's in closing review some of
the outstanding ones that you've failed to satisfy:
- Since you
claimed you'd already answered every point I'd ever raised, I challenged
you in my last message to compose any response using nothing but quotes of
your earlier statements to me, just as I did in that message to you. Your
failure demonstrates that while I've already addressed all your tired recycled
arguments, you haven't addressed my still-fresh unanswered ones.
- After eleven
months, I'm still waiting for a rebuttal to my three-paragraph
analysis of your imaginary
territorial/jurisdictional limits on the Art I Sec 8 war-making power.
- I challenged
you to produce quotes supporting your claims that
Brian Holtz