These libertarians are also notoriously guilty of pretending that their favorite kinds of coercion aren’t. Threatening force to deny another person use of one’s land, or one’s house, is coercion. A system of private property is a system of coercion. It may be justified coercion. It is justified coercion. But then the question is: What justifies it? The coercive protection of property is justified because people do better with it than without it. If people do better in a system that defines rights to property a bit less strictly, and coercively guarantees an economic minimum, then that is justified coercion. It’s not really a philosophical question whether it is or not. Justified coercion, like the coercion in the protection of property, isn’t wrongfully liberty-limiting, but it does limit liberty.

If libertarianism is the view that coercion is never social or emotional, and that coercive limits to liberty are justified only in defense of private property, or in the enforcement of contracts, then libertarianism is false, and I am not a libertarian. If libertarianism is the view that human well-being is best promoted by ensuring “that every man may claim the fullest liberty to exercise his faculties compatible with the possession of like liberty to every other man,” then I am a libertarian. If this is a libertarian view, then the goal to minimize or abolish wrongfully liberty-limiting social norms is a libertarian goal.

I find myself in complete agreement. Living in civilization, I enjoy the benefits of being a short walk from a downtown metropolis and put up with what I consider a reasonable level of freedom-shackling. I certainly make efforts to minimize it, though, by a) not owning a car, b) renting, c) living in a state with no income tax. I also further voluntarily tax myself by trying to buy local when possible.

While this is all well and good, there are great (large, not good) ills which afflict us as a majority-rules society. One of them is taxes which target income rather than consumption. The so-called “progressive” tax is especially wrong-headed, but even the income tax pales in comparison to the horrifying ways that our tax money is used — the Iraq war, corporate welfare, and the destruction of our civil liberties with wiretaps and ever more overreaching federal agencies.

..which leads to this interesting snippet from a link in Will’s above post:

Free people do all sorts of things you won’t like, and they are no less free (in any libertarian sense) for it. Claiming free people aren’t really free until you see certain patterned outcomes you like is the root of all tyranny and rhetoric unbecoming a libertarian.

I must admit that I fall into this trap occasionally — perhaps frequently — because I don’t understand how people would a) not want the best (read as: most free) for themselves, or b) voluntarily give up rights of their own in order to make sure that party B doesn’t have them.

In the case of public education and school choice, while there can be state-sponsored alternatives like public schools they should not be forced upon those who would rather choose to send their children to a [better] private school. Doing so limits choice — freedom — for the sake of a lower quality product for all, and seriously limiting the ability of lower/lower-middle class parents from giving their children a higher quality education and enabling them to not be locked into that (for lack of a better word) caste.

I don’t understand why opponents of education privatization (or at least vouchers) would willingly give up MY freedom to affordably send my kids where I want so that they can shut their brains off and not worry about where their kids will go. I can’t understand the motivation of those who openly admit to being okay with sacrificing my rights. Come into my home yourself and do so rather than hiding behind a ballot. Want to force me to fight your war? You are going to have to do so with a gun to my head and my hands tied behind my back. I suppose it is easy to cowardly vote away the rights of others when you don’t have to look them in the face while you are doing it, when the victims are nameless and faceless statistics.

So sayeth former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr:

“The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.”

When it comes to religion, I think it is reasonable to expect religious organizations like the LDS to respect others’ rights and not just those of its members. Particularly if they wish to retain their tax-exempt status (which I think is bullshit to begin with.) You would think that a religious organization — particularly one which has been persecuted for their own unconventional take on marriage — would understand the golden rule and at least pretend to abide by it.

As my buddy Will states, we still have quite a ways to go..

America becomes no worse as it becomes more secular. And American atheists would be both happier and more cooperative if we were less marginalized by our culture.

Also, the fact that non-religious Americans (who don’t lie about it) are basically disqualified from high public office ensures that many of the most rational and intellectually accomplished people in our society cannot participate in electoral politics.

In closing, enjoy some wise words (and, caution, some eye-roll-inducing corniness) from a guy I typically dislike hearing the voice of:

What?

What moral high-ground do we have as a nation when we are invading sovereign nations on false pretenses? Much less any beyond-imagined authority to do so. Crackpot defenses like “moral authority” are used to subjugate, enslave, and persecute people. They are not used to create freedom or extend liberty.

The United States has no business policing the affairs of the world, just as the Vatican has no business policing what is on our televisions. If you find yourself about to speak those two words, “moral authority,” stop yourself and rather than to pretend to believe it, simply admit to yourself that you want to control people by force. You want to force someone to do something they wouldn’t otherwise do, because you think it is right for them but they shouldn’t be able to decide for themselves. Just admit it: you’re a fascist, not a freedom-loving American.

We would all be a lot better off if everyone just minded their own fucking business. We wouldn’t be as comfortable, but we would be significantly more free and that is what really matters.

There, I said it.

Our country is a loose federation of states, all of which are intended to handle matters not specifically allocated to the federal government in the Constitution. Things like healthcare. If the California state legislature wants to attempt to enact a universal healthcare program, they are perfectly free to. However, if Alabama doesn’t want to they should not be forced to enact their own or to pay for California’s.

What about those Alabamans(?) who don’t have healthcare and want it for free? They can move to California. Surely, you say, that would cause an influx of non-tax-paying people to California to leech off of their universal healthcare system and that would be awful! Indeed — that is a major downside of providing something to everyone at no cost to the recipient.

Assuming that tax-paying individuals found universal healthcare coverage to be something valuable, they will flock to states who provide it and reinforce effective policy with the movement of their tax dollars. Hey, that sounds a lot like competition?! It certainly does — make states compete for the tax dollars of its citizens just as they do for businesses (case in point, the $75 million tax break Washington (state) is giving Microsoft for a server farm to keep it in the state.) Competition is good, it sparks innovation and necessitates efficiency.

One behemoth federal system will be garbage, and we will see no other option other than to deal with it. It will be a drain on the economic and physical well-being of our younger generations for the sake of the prescription drugs and hip replacement surgeries of the same baby boomers who are destroying Social Security (another result of no competition and federal government overreaching.)

States’ rights is hugely important, and should be considered anytime that programs like universal healthcare are considered. The federal government has their fingers in so many pies already that they simply have no right to be in — education, healthcare, drug enforcement, agriculture, steroid use in sports, the list goes on. We need to cut out all of the federal fat and get back to the basics, leaving the states to decide those really important issues like whether or not Roger Clemens is a liar and how much money to give people to not grow anything on their farm land.

We’ve all heard the above phrase, and for many it summons forth an image of a “White Only” water fountain, and a “Colored Only” fountain 50 feet away. There are certainly those who may still argue that “separate but equal” works, but I doubt many of them are proponents of gay marriage today, which is fundamentally the same concept.

Gay marriage, by means of “civil unions” or “domestic partnerships” is harmful to the spirit of equality unless it is applied universally to gay and straight couples alike. What about committed partnerships between a man and two women? A woman and two bisexual men? Will they need to wait another sixty years for their “separate but equal” union?

Why is a social contract — that’s what marriage is at its core — being limited in number and gender by the government? Why is it ever? Why, to legislate morality, of course. The people who want to limit marriage to one man and one woman (either directly or by supporting “separate but equal” options) are the same people who want to prevent you from smoking marijuana or paying that nice Korean masseuse $20 for a happy ending.

The solution, as with the “drug war” and taxes, is abolition. Strip marriage from the tax code and let social institutions handle social contracts. Strip marriage from legal documents and let the association be known for what it is — a contract between two (or more) people to share responsibility of and for assets, including each others lives.

Stories like this in The Olympian disgust me:

Pond suffered the aneurysm just before the R Family Vacations cruise ship left Miami for the Bahamas in February, Langbehn said. After Pond was taken to the emergency room, Langbehn said she was informed by a social worker that they were in an “anti-gay state” and that they needed legal paperwork before Langbehn could see Pond.

Even after a friend in Olympia faxed the legal documents that showed that Pond had authorized Langbehn to make medical decisions for her, Langbehn said she wasn’t invited to be with her partner or told anything about her condition

To what end was she prevented from being at her dying partner’s bedside? What was gained?

Google and the X Prize Foundation have announced that 10 teams will compete to put a privately funded robotic spacecraft on the moon.
The Google Lunar X Prize, announced six months ago, offers $30 million worth of prizes for the first teams to create a machine that can travel at least 500 meters on the lunar surface and send video and other images and data back to Earth.

Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, said the two organizations received more than 560 letters or inquiries of interest from more than 53 countries.

“By comparison, at the six-month point of the Ansari X Prize, we had only two teams registered,” he said in this week’s announcement. “I think we’re going to see an exciting and very competitive race to the moon, highlighted by some very creative designs unlike anything we’ve seen come out of the government space programs. Many of these teams represent some of the most creative and entrepreneurial minds in space exploration today.”

This is great. I was a big fan of the Ansari X Prize (the competition to create a craft capable of suborbital flight) and this will hopefully be as successful. These pots of gold help to create and stimulate new markets, and provide much needed incentive for R&D in those areas. It is market stimulus in a similar way that a tax refund is economic stimulus — give back some tax money, and people will spend it; put forth a $20 million prize, and people will compete for it.

These market stimulus prizes put forth by private ventures are precisely what we need, and are 180 degrees from the government standard of no-bid contracts. The Google X Prize will help bring about practical and efficient methods of space travel and exploration of the moon. I have no doubt that the hundreds of billions poured into NASA will be looked at in stark contrast of what private ventures can do for < $20 million.

It is more important than love, security, equality, or health. It also is a prerequisite for all of those things. Until taste absolute freedom you cannot truly feel love in an objective fashion. The blissful experiences some feel out in nature, unattached from everything else, is as close as we can get. Without freedom, security and health are meaningless. A caged bird does not live for itself, but for its owner. Its security is incomprehensible to it, or to us who sacrifice our freedom for security. As for equality, the only way any of us will be equal to another is for us both to have absolute freedom to determine our future. The outcome may not be the same, but our opportunities will be equal.

It is alternatively sad and infuriating to see freedom given and taken away so hastily. From former small-government conservatives brainwashed into accepting the sacrifice of others freedom for their own security, to bleeding-heart Robin Hoods “stealing from the rich to give to the poor,” stealing from others for what they perceive to be a good cause.

No cause, no matter how noble it may seem, is worth sacrificing freedom for it. Someone who respects freedom would never steal from one man to feed another. He would never force one man into military service to protect the state, regardless of the cause. If the cause for war cannot sustain itself by the choice of those who are able to enroll in service, the war should not be fought. If military victory requires forced enlistment in order to prevail, the battle is already lost.

If a charity cannot survive on a free and open market of ideas, it should not continue to exist — it should not, then, exist solely because of government-sponsored Robin Hoodery™. Relief of suffering is an easy sell — there is no reason why a charity cannot market itself to consumers-turned-contributors just as a set of encyclopedias was years ago. In this great information age — when dark horse candidates can raise multi-millions in a single day — a well run charitable organization can survive, even thrive, without taking freedom-stained blood money. Propping up inefficient organizations with involuntarily acquired funds (read: taxes) is reprehensible and provides no incentive for positive change within the organization.

Each organization — along with each person within it and, sadly, a majority of Americans — will do the bare minimum in order to maintain the status quo. This is unhealthy, as maintaining the status quo leads to stagnation of thoughts and ideas — of innovation. Each person and each organization must feel the sting of imminent defeat/failure so that it can recognize what it must work to avoid. If a child never experiences pain or loss, how can it have any perspective of success or failure? You must let it touch the hot stove once so that it can learn from its mistake and become a more informed and prepared individual. The same principle applies to all people and all organizations. Corporate bail-outs do nothing to teach other than the lesson that no matter how badly you fuck up the government will help you out — as long as you continue to contribute to a few dozen politicians’ campaigns. These safety nets become hammocks, and once they are reclining in one, it is difficult to dump someone out.

Both the Republican and Democrat parties are driven by lust for power. Both Republicans and Democrats are blindly ignoring the economic crisis that they are spending us into. There no longer is a distinction in terms of economic policy between the “tax and spend liberals” and the war-mongering neo-conservatives. While the Republicans want to spend trillions on wars, Democrats want to spend trillions on universal healthcare and social safety-nets which functions as hammocks. Where the money is spent is irrelevant — it is taken from us and redistributed for votes. We are paying for them to remain in power, and not only in dollars.

I’ll believe in a “candidate for change” when one of them starts to listen to this guy:

I immediately drew a parallel to the US political system. Democrats and Republicans hold all of the cards in our winner-take-all system. Which of them wins is not as important to them as keeping other contending parties out of the mix. Democrats block Nader. Neocon Republican organizations block Ron Paul. They are terrified of option C, that people will choose it, and that they will thereby lose their combined monopoly on political power. After all, what good is a Democrat or Republican who cannot make good on promises to their various corporate interests?

The “Ron Paul revolution” is important to this country because he represents that third option and its struggle for survival. Not only the struggle, however, but the wide appeal for more options than typical-Democrat and typical-Republican — both of which had might as well be collectively referred to as “typical-politician.”

This country does not need consensus. We do not need to stand united while ignoring the blood pooling at our feet. We need a dozen splintering points of view to choose from and determine the way to move forward for the moment. Only with this dilution of political power will we be able to regain a reasonable notion that said power is being used properly. Concentration of that power brings us only mass corruption — both in depth and breadth.

Those in power will never vote themselves out. It is up to us to ignore option A and option B and write in our own option C.

And so, in these great states you must fight for your right — your responsibility — to protect yourself. Minnesota and Washington are both “shall issue” states. This means that the Sheriff “shall issue” handgun conceal/carry permits to all who apply, unless there is danger in doing so as defined by law. Typically the danger is described as a history of mental illness, violent criminal convictions (including domestic abuse), etc. This is to prevent the crazies and crooks from getting permits to carry guns. Of course, they will carry anyhow if they have one, but won’t be doing so legally.

What does it mean if you don’t live in a “shall issue” state? It means that the Sheriff may — and most often will — deny your request for a conceal/carry permit for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Before Minnesota passed its “shall issue” law in 2002 or 2003, Hennepin County Sheriffs would refuse anyone without a law enforcement background regardless of an absolute lack of criminal record, mental illness, or any reasonable reason to deny a permit. The logic is nonexistent.

I got home today and read the following on SLOG:

So last night, I was innocently minding my own business (and maybe a little bit of the business of my friendly companion) when I experienced the most terrifying interaction I have ever had with a street person.

I was walking on Broadway to the Harvard Exit to see Persepolis and I was walking in front of the old, closed down QFC. A man approached me and asked if he could have some money. He was about 6’3”, Asian or Native, and wearing the typical uniform of a street person—dirty baggy clothes of an indeterminate blue-green-grey-brown-tan.

I refused to give him any money. Walking down Broadway, I’d already been asked for money four times. I didn’t have any money to give. Just cards. And, in any case, I don’t give panhandlers money. Sometimes I will buy traveling kids some food, but that’s it.

In any case, he began to follow me, calling me names.

“Fuck you, bitch!”

I rolled my head back on my neck and groaned to my companion. I can deal with “Fuck you, bitch.”

“You fucking slut!”

Again, been there, done that.

“I’m gonna…”

This is where it started to get truly obnoxious.

“I’m gonna grease your asscrack up with Vaseline and fuck you like the bitch you are!”

This is the part of the conversation where, if I had been born the way God originally planned, I would have reared my big fucking tall head around, asked this motherfucker to repeat himself, and when he did, beat the living shit out of him.

But through some freak accident, I was born into the body of a tiny little girl. And we were late for the movie. And my friend is probably not into confrontation (I didn’t ask). So I did nothing. I just kept walking.

I regret it. Generally, I don’t like to let people get away with threatening to violently rape me.

But here’s where I start to run into problems: What could I have done? Told him off? Probably a bad idea. He was obviously fucked-up and a lot bigger than me and my friend. Called the cops? Then, I would have had to wait until they got there to give a statement, if they ever came. What if he just walked away while I sat in Pagliacci’s and waited?

They all seem like dead ends. The only thing I could come up with is taking a picture of him with my cameraphone next time I see him and putting it on Slog.

This is absolutely abhorrent, particularly with the recent shootings and stabbings in Capitol Hill and nearby. If the Seattle PD doesn’t take unprovoked threats of violence seriously, no one should expect them to take actual violence seriously. No one will protect you from this guy or others. You must take into your own hands the responsibility to protect your life (and/or anal virginity.) Buy a pistol. If you live in a “shall issue” state, get yourself a conceal/carry license. Learn how to use it. Visit a pistol range often to get comfortable with it. Learn how and when not to use it.

As stated by someone in the comments of that post, someone who has less to lose than you is a potential threat — especially when they are threatening to rape you. Do not settle for pissing them off by attempting to spray their eyes with pepper spray unless you don’t feel capable of carrying (legally) a gun. In either case, you must follow through with reporting the incident to the police. Failure to do so is a breach in your responsibility to maintaining the safety of your community. Standing by and doing nothing when someone is violently threatened is a breach in your responsibility as an onlooker. The streets will be ruled by Those People™ unless law-abiding citizens stand together united against them. But first, individuals must be willing to stand up, themselves, to the trash that threatens their safety.

Learn the law. Arm yourselves. Defend yourselves, then we may defend ourselves.

In related news, Friday morning I will be applying for my Washington conceal/carry permit.