Undefending the Defendable

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.

“The right of self-defense is the first law of nature…”

-          George Tucker

Most libertarians live within the intersection of these three ideas; leave it to Murray Rothbard to point out where and why this is not always valid.

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, and Other Essays, by Murray Rothbard.

This chapter is entitled “War, Peace, and the State.”  I have read and used portions of this essay in some of my past work (here and here, when reviewing the book “Nuclear Deterrence, Morality and Realism”); I have not previously gone through the entire chapter in detail.

I am not sure how to properly phrase this: this might be my favorite work of Rothbard’s (of what I have read).  It is on the single-most important topic for libertarians to consider, and Rothbard introduces a wonderful method of deconstructing the use of weapons – one that runs counter to the intersection represented in the above three statements.

Rothbard introduces the reason why he decided to tackle this subject:

The libertarian movement has been chided by William F. Buckley, Jr., for failing to use its "strategic intelligence" in facing the major problems of our time. We have, indeed, been too often prone to "pursue our busy little seminars on whether or not to demunicipalize the garbage collectors" (as Buckley has contemptuously written), while ignoring and failing to apply libertarian theory to the most vital problem of our time: war and peace.

Rothbard gleefully takes on the challenge, suggesting that, once complete, Buckley might regret making such a challenge.

Let us construct a libertarian theory of war and peace.

The fundamental axiom of libertarian theory is that no one may threaten or commit violence ("aggress") against another man's person or property. Violence may be employed only against the man who commits such violence; that is, only defensively against the aggressive violence of another.

In short, no violence may be employed against a non-aggressor. Here is the fundamental rule from which can be deduced the entire corpus of libertarian theory.

There is nothing earth-shattering in this; however, it is necessary to state as Rothbard demonstrates that this simple axiom can then answer the most complex problems of man – and turn the defendable on its head!

Rothbard suggests that we set aside the issue of the state initially; what of relations between private individuals?  Is it permissible to commit violence against an innocent third party when one is taking action against the guilty second party?  The unequivocal libertarian answer is no!

Even during the criminal act, the victim may not spray bullets into a crowd in an effort to stop the guilty party.

If he does this, he is as much (or more of) a criminal aggressor as Smith is.

And from this, the application to the issues in war are evident.  Group of people A are going after group of people B for some violation of person or property.  Is it permissible for group A to blow up village C in an attempt to harm B?  Again, the libertarian answer is a clear no!

The libertarian's basic attitude toward war must then be: it is legitimate to use violence against criminals in defense of one's rights of person and property; it is completely impermissible to violate the rights of other innocent people. War, then, is only proper when the exercise of violence is rigorously limited to the individual criminals. We may judge for ourselves how many wars or conflicts in history have met this criterion.

Not many, however it should be noted that there were times when war was conducted by the principles and not the commoners – this (generally) during the European Middle Ages.  It was also true for much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for European countries (and those with European heritage) when fighting each other; the system broken by Lincoln and the North in the American Civil War, and then in Europe with the Great War.

And this brings us to the key insight, the reason why I so appreciate this piece by Rothbard: the weapons of modern technology – nuclear bombs, gas, pretty much everything fired from an airplane or ship – are different from their predecessors not only in degree, but also in kind:

Of course, one answer to this is that when the degree is the number of human lives, the difference is a very big one. But another answer that the libertarian is particularly equipped to give is that while the bow and arrow and even the rifle can be pinpointed, if the will be there, against actual criminals, modern nuclear weapons cannot.

Yes, the bow and arrow or rifle can also be used aggressively – the point is that these can be used against the specific target.  Inherently today’s modern weapons – best represented by nuclear bombs – cannot; inherently, such weapons can only be used indiscriminately.

These weapons are ipso facto engines of indiscriminate mass destruction….We must, therefore, conclude that the use of nuclear or similar weapons, or the threat thereof, is a sin and a crime against humanity for which there can be no justification.

Maybe not as important, but also inherently a violation of the non-aggression principle.

This is why the old cliché no longer holds that it is not the arms but the will to use them that is significant in judging matters of war and peace.

Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.  Yet here is Rothbard, undefending this seemingly very defendable statement. 

For it is precisely the characteristic of modern weapons that they cannot be used selectively, cannot be used in a libertarian manner. Therefore, their very existence must be condemned, and nuclear disarmament becomes a good to be pursued for its own sake.

Sure, the nuclear bomb kills no one if it is not launched; yet it can do nothing other than initiate aggression against tens-of-thousands of innocents when launched.  The weapon itself is undefendable via libertarian theory (to say nothing of general moral conscience).

And if we will indeed use our strategic intelligence, we will see that such disarmament is not only a good, but the highest political good that we can pursue in the modern world.

So…if liberty is the highest political end and nuclear disarmament is the highest political good, it seems to me that libertarians (myself included) might spend more time focused on nuclear disarmament and war and less time on…well, I will let Rothbard tell it:

…the forestalling of massive annihilation is far more important, in truth, than the demunicipalization of garbage disposal, as worthwhile as that may be. Or are libertarians going to wax properly indignant about price control or the income tax, and yet shrug their shoulders at or even positively advocate the ultimate crime of mass murder?

Conclusion

In other words, maybe we should spend more time undefending the defendable.

Epilogue

Rothbard continues next by introducing the state into the equation.  As this post has run long enough, I will continue this examination in a future post.

I Have a Dream

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

-        Martin Luther King, August 28, 1963, Washington, D.C.

Walter Block has written a brilliant piece, echoing this most famous line of what is perhaps King’s most famous speech.  From Walter:

I recently heard a young black male student give thanks to the fact that at my school, Loyola University New Orleans, for the first time in his academic career, he has had teachers who “look like him.”

Walter offers several thought-provoking counters to this student’s joy:

I have a brown belt in Shoto-Kan Karate. Virtually none of my senseis (teachers) look like me. Well, yes, they all had heads, feet, arms, heads, and, I presume, the usual complements of kishkes (inner body parts), but that is where it ended.

What mattered to Walter is the content of his senseis’ character.

I identify with the New Orleans Pelicans. Yet, apart from maleness (and age and athletic ability too!), virtually none of them “look like me.” Should I be perturbed at that fact? …Not if I want them to win, which I certainly do.

What matters to Walter is the content of the players’ character.

I have learned more economics from Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams in the fields of racial and sexual discrimination than I have from any other two scholars…

What matters to Walter…oh, you get the point by now.

In a line that King would have been proud of – heck, he said the same thing just in a different way (emphasis added):

To return to that young black male student who gave thanks to the fact that at Loyola, for the first time in his academic career, he has teachers who “look like him.” Here is some free advice for him: No, no, no, skin color is entirely irrelevant.

Instead, Walter looks to (maybe you are getting tired of my pointing this out) the content of one’s character:

Yes, we do indeed need more diversity at Loyola but not along the usual racial, sexual, ethnic lines. Rather, there is a great need for this in terms of ideology.

Too many leftists and not enough libertarians and conservatives. 

In other words, the content of one’s character.

What About Liberty?

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays, by Murray Rothbard

So now it’s time to start looking at the “other essays.”  This one is entitled Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty.  Rothbard covers much ground in this essay.  I intend to focus on two aspects: the first is Rothbard’s view regarding the foundation necessary for liberty; the second is the connection of libertarianism and communism. 

Fair warning: I hold some disagreement with Rothbard on the first; however, at the end of this piece, I will bring in a guest libertarian far more qualified than I am to make this point. 

On the second, his analysis confirms a conclusion I reached some time ago (and is also supportive of the reasons behind my disagreement with the first): libertarianism and communism hold common roots that many libertarians might not care to admit.  I suggest that it is imperative for libertarians to understand this relationship in order to understand the hazards to avoid.

The Foundation

Perhaps I should add “or the lack thereof.”  Bear with me.

The Conservative has long been marked, whether he knows it or not, by long-run pessimism: by the belief that the long-run trend, and therefore time itself, is against him.

This belief drives the Conservative to liberty-crushing political action, both at home (left-wing statism) and abroad (the fight against communism).

Pessimism, however, both short-run and long-run, is precisely what the prognosis of conservatism deserves, for conservatism is a dying remnant of the ancien régime of the pre-industrial era, and, as such, it has no future.

To get the right timeframe and context: 

The Ancien Régime (French for "old regime") was the political and social system of the Kingdom of France from the Late Middle Ages (circa 15th century) until 1792, when hereditary monarchy and the feudal system of French nobility were abolished by the French Revolution.

Returning to Rothbard: 

In its contemporary American form, the recent Conservative revival embodied the death throes of an ineluctably moribund, fundamentalist, rural, small-town, white Anglo-Saxon America.

I know you are thinking: “Wait a minute.  How is Rothbard writing about the election of 2016?  Is high-speed internet provided in the after-life?”

I am just pulling your leg; Rothbard wrote this essay in 1965.  I can’t comment on the situation regarding “Conservative” at the time Rothbard wrote those words; however, could these words come from any mainstream, East Coast, establishment, liberal newspaper regarding the flyover country that elected Trump?

What, however, of the prospects for liberty?

And here is where I begin to part ways with Rothbard on this topic.  Because if there is to be any type of move toward liberty in contemporary America, it will come from people who live precisely in this flyover country; most certainly it will not come from places like New York, Washington, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Seattle – the places where they write those kinds of words.

The absolute monarchs were the Old Order writ large and made even more despotic than before.  Capitalism, indeed, flourished earliest and most actively precisely in those areas where the central State was weak or nonexistent: the Italian cities, the Hanseatic League, the confederation of seventeenth-century Holland.

I have two thoughts on this: first, Rothbard rightly rails against the old order that existed in the west before the eighteenth century; he sees the triumph of the liberal revolution at this time as the turning point – on this point, I don’t fully agree. 

The Trees

There is unrest in the Forest

There is trouble with the trees

For the Maples want more sunlight

And the Oaks ignore their pleas.

-        The Trees, Rush

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays, by Murray Rothbard

This book is a compilation of sixteen essays by Murray Rothbard.  The title of the book is also the opening essay: Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature.  It is this opening essay that I will examine in this post.

For well over a century, the Left has generally been conceded to have morality, justice, and “idealism” on its side; the Conservative opposition to the Left has largely been confined to the “impracticality” of its ideals.

With this, Rothbard sets the stage.  The Conservatives have ceded the moral ground; by doing so, they have created an environment where the Left can achieve gradual change – over the long run “practicality” cannot succeed against “moral” and “ethical.”

Rothbard describes the “impracticality” argument as one that holds up economic considerations against the Left’s ideals.  I find this a tremendously important point.  In how many arguments in favor of libertarian (or supposedly libertarian) ideals are the economic justifications raised, while moral and ethical considerations are deemed secondary – if even considered?

The trouble with the Maples

(And they’re quite convinced they’re right)

They say the Oaks are just too lofty

And they grab up all the light

Regarding the value judgment on behalf of “equality,” Rothbard asks:

Is there no requirement that these value judgments be in some sense valid, meaningful, cogent, true?

How is one to judge what is “valid, meaningful, cogent, true?”  From the Introduction to the First Edition, Rothbard writes:

Libertarianism is a new and emerging discipline which touches closely on many other areas of the study of human action: economics, philosophy, political theory, history, even – and not least – biology.

“True” is found in the reality of humanity.  Essentially, the student of libertarianism cannot ignore the reality of the world around him, the reality of humans as they are, the reality of the successes and failures in history and the causes of these.  The better grounded the student of libertarianism is in this reality, the better grounded his advocacy in this reality, the more seriously will his ideas be considered.

But the Oaks can’t help their feelings

If they like the way they’re made

And they wonder why the Maples

Can’t be happy in their shade?

Rothbard asks: “should equality be granted its current status as an unquestioned ethical ideal?  In response, he offers: