From: ptireland [ptireland@charter.net]
Sent: Saturday, February 12, 2005 11:08 AM
To: 'Brian Holtz'; libertarian@yahoogroups.com;
marketliberal@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: RE: Allow me represent you in the Ex-Com


BH: 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: It’s a good thing, because I know more about the U.S. Constitution
than most Supreme Court Justices, and I would embarrass you further than
you’ve already embarrassed yourself up ‘till now.

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

PI: I stand behind every word I’ve ever said. It IS an excuse, and a
very poor excuse at that. And as far as questioning your honesty, I
don’t question it. I’m flat out saying you’re dishonest if you claim to
be a libertarian and also support the war in Iraq.

BH:  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: Yes I do. It is absolutely NOT helpful for the cause of liberty in
the United States to start unprovoked wars against other nations, or to
use our military to take sides in their disputes, or overthrow
leadership of other nations, or to enforce U.N. sanctions. Switzerland
has been surrounded by war yet haven’t been involved in one for more
than 100 years. That’s not an accident. It’s because they are neutral
in all disputes, have a very powerful defense, and they don’t intervene
in the affairs of other nations or bully them around. I was responsive
both times and you were wrong both times.

BH: 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.

PI: For a closet-fascist you seem to forget that libertarianism is about
the “live and let live” attitude, and about the spread of power with
clearly defined lines. This localizes tyranny when it breaks out.
Libertarians wish freedom and liberty for everyone, but do not violate
libertarian principles (neutrality, non-military intervention,
non-coerciveness, non-initiation of force, etc) in order to win freedom
for someone else. If you’re so-called “devotion to human liberty” means
you’re trying to rationalize and justify unwarranted, unprovoked,
unconstitutional, and unreasonable attacks against non-threatening
sovereign nations because you personally don’t like they way they do
things or the level of freedom the people have, you should mark yourself
as equally libertarian as Pol Pot, Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, etc.

BH:  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: The 21st century isn’t any different than any other century. There
have always been tyrants willing to kill people in the name of
“defending liberty” (as long as it’s the kind of liberty THEY think they
should have) or “providing security”. There have always been dishonest
people willing to violate the sovereignty of other nations, and who have
no respect

BH:  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: No, you’re not more interested in defending human liberty. You’re
interested in enforcing what YOU consider to be liberty on foreign
peoples at the point of a gun. You’re interested in violating
everything that is libertarianism and call it for the “cause of
liberty”. I’ve got news for you. America isn’t here to win anyone’s
freedom but our own. If you want to help free other people, get off
your ass and go there on your own, but you have absolutely no right to
use MY military to do it.

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 [...]
BH:  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.

PI: Idiotic. If you want to calculate the exact numbers of every
single death from the war launched against Iraq in 1991, in 2003,
bombing them for 12 years straight of bombing them without stop and
keeping them from life saving medicines, etc. feel free. The fact of
the matter is there are hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi people, and
dozens of thousands of American, Australian, English, and others dead
who otherwise wouldn’t be if Bush and his father hadn’t started this
unprovoked and blatantly illegal attack on Iraq, you can feel free to
look up your own evidence. I don’t care what evidence you asked for. If
it were one death, it would be too many.

***** PI: Keep in mind these numbers don?t include the 200,000 who were
starved to death and kept from life saving medicines or who were bombed
for 12 years straight [...]
BH:  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.

BH: You falsely claimed the deaths caused by sanctions made by the UN
and enforced by America were Saddam’s fault. This is after Iraq was the
victim of an unwarranted attack, and forced to sign a treaty under
duress. I don’t care about the oil for food program. The fact is Iraq
is a sovereign nation and doesn’t require the permission of the U.N. or
the United States to have any weapons they want. Neither America, nor
the U.N. had any legitimate authority to attack in 1991, to create
sanctions that caused the deaths, or to choose the conditions under
which they’d be allowed to have food. Only a monster and an idiot
without the slightest clue about libertarianism would claim otherwise.
Iraq’s trading partners are within their rights to decline to engage in
commerce with Iraq, but that’s not what happened. They blocked Iraq
from trading with anyone else. There were many nations who would have
traded with Iraq but they were stopped by the U.S.. Nice try, but once
again, you’re telling the exact opposite of the truth….and yes, I am
saying you’re dishonest.

BH:  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.

BH:  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: Since Bush got into office, the LP has been wooing disenchanted
Republicans into the party, just like you. They aren’t libertarians in
the slightest and they seek to change the LP to be something it’s
not…just like you. They want to misuse the military, violate the
Constitution, attack civil rights, etc. In other words, they want to
continue business as usual and the only part of the LP they agree with
is lowering their own taxes. There empty words claiming to support
freedom have no weight because they don’t know the meaning of freedom.

BH: 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 don’t know which is a grosser violation of libertarian thought.
That someone would claim the unprovoked violent overthrow of a sovereign
nation and murder of its people is a significant increase in human
liberty or that they’d want to stick around while the party is invaded
by those who are against libertarianism such as all who support the war
in Iraq. I’m very happy though that you admit the party’s position is
against the war. If you are pro-war, and the party is against the war,
you are against the party and against libertarianism in general.

***** BH: Are you saying you would favor the expulsion of anyone who
would ever advocate America forcibly replacing tyranny with liberty? 

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?. 

BH: 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 thought I just said that. I don’t know how I can say it more
plainly. I am against anyone using the U.S. military for ANY REASON
other than to defend against direct attacks against American soil and
ships. That includes the expulsion of anyone who would ever advocate
America forcibly replacing tyranny with liberty in any nation that has
not directly attacked us from the libertarian party, and in my personal
opinion they aren’t worthy of calling themselves Americans let alone
libertarians. The U.S. military has one and only one purpose, that is
to defend our own ships and soil and nothing else. End of story.

***** 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.

BH: 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: You mean like the narrow-mindedness and lack of thinking on the
part of those who would murder people based on their own personal
judgments about how free they think they should be? If someone
seriously supports smaller government they won’t vote for Republicans
because voting for a Republican guarantees you’ll have larger
government. That’s a fact.

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

BH: 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: Your love of liberty and hatred of aggression is so strong, that
you want to use aggression to violate the sovereignty of other nations,
to violate the U.S. Constitution, to violate libertarian principles, and
to murder people so you can enforce what you deem to be the best way for
them to live. America is to be a beacon of hope and liberty for other
nations, not the champion of it. You keep mentioning how people like to
“save thinking” and it seems as though you’re vastly experienced in this
area as you don’t do much thinking of any kind when it comes to
libertarianism.

BH: 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?

PI: I wouldn’t declare myself to be an anarchist, because I’m not one.
I support the use of force in the defense of rights and I support
limited government. This means the government of America has limited
authority, even limited authority to defend rights and protect people.
All of the powers of the U.S. Government are limited to being within our
own borders. The U.S. government has no authority to defend other
nations, to “free” the people of other nations, or to defend the rights
of anyone other than the people in our own country. This is the
libertarian point of view, and there is no deviation from it. If you
disagree with any part of it, you are not a libertarian.

***** PI: I laugh at your use of the phrase ?non-coercitarians? because
that is pretty much the definition of a libertarian.

BH: 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: No, “I” don’t define libertarian. Libertarianism is what it is.
Libertarianism is about not using force for political gain or social
engineering even if you think that use of force will “free” those in
another country. For a Libertarian, there are no circumstances when
STARTING an unprovoked war (as America did in Iraq) is justified. I
don’t care how YOU define libertarian. If you’re a member of the party
you agreed to a statement of principles as a condition of your
membership. If you support starting unprovoked wars for ANY REASON,
you’re violating those principles and you’re not a libertarian by any
stretch of the imagination.

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

BH: 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.

PI: As usual, you’re completely wrong. Anarchists are those who
believe in the abolition of government. I am not now, nor have I ever
been an anarchist. And please stop your laughable comparison between
having a witness mandated to present evidence in court to murdering and
injuring hundreds of thousands of people who posed no threat to America.
It only increases how badly you look and shines a bright light on how
untenable your arguments are. Your ridiculous excuse for logic is that
if we have a law requiring people to testify in court, it’s ok to commit
genocide. LOL