Big government solutions to terrorism have worked as well as big government solutions to drugs, poverty and medicine. You’ll notice he never even mentions Osama bin Laden. No, he’s attacking libertarians for having the audacity to be right.

Rho, I completely agree with your points here.

FriendsOfLiberty posted:

The fact that pro-government types never want to debate any theory about 9/11 that contradicts the official government story makes me uneasy.

While I think that the odds are fairly slim that the 9/11 attack was anything more than what we saw reported by several visual and first-hand sources, I don’t dismiss 9/11 conspiracy theorists out of hand. Like any crime investigation, good investigators should consider a variety of possible scenarios. Occam’s Razor suggests that the most likely answer is usually the correct answer. This is not always true, but often is.

At this time, I don’t see enough solid evidence to make a case for anything other than the buildings collapsing from the impact of airplanes which were caught on film and in person.

I don’t want to dismiss the 9/11 theories as crazy, just not likely. Like any crime, I’d support a full investigation even if the case seems open and shut, but the burden of proof would be on the accusers to prove machinations beyond what we all saw.

(Also, I don’t know if you had formatting problems from HTML – that’s caught me before – but I strongly recommend paragraph breaks. They’ll make your points more approachable and more likely to illicit discussion.)

Then comes 9/11 and he immediately leaped back to the arms of big government. Because his libertarianism was tissue-thin.

Of course, the people he’s railing against now have been proved completely correct. Big government solutions to terrorism have worked as well as big government solutions to drugs, poverty and medicine. You’ll notice he never even mentions Osama bin Laden. No, he’s attacking libertarians for having the audacity to be right.

He wanted libertarians to drop all their principles and go fight a quixotic war. He was wrong; they were right.

I don’t think libertarians should be the ones offering “answers”. Libertarians are the ones asking all the questions.

The art of fighting without fighting is the only workable military strategy. Our only good philosophy should be the Golden Rule, and the Non-Aggression Principal. Ron Paul is the only candidate who understands all of this. He is America’s only hope.

I co-ordinate the Libertarian International Organization. Far from being indifferent to what is outside US borders, our activists have worked closely with both the LP and members of the Government in working to bring down dictatorships of every description by spreading ideas, mentoring activism, and direct citizen diplomacy. Numerous leaders elected in those dictatorships say the “L” factor was essential in getting change. Groups such as http://www.isil.org and http://www.FEE.org played very key roles.

Libertarians believe that coercive government is to be replaced or circumvented by voluntary action, and view coercive government as essentially impotent or backfiring. The major interest of Libertarians at that time or today is not in taking a position on inane conservative or socialist war policies, but encouraging their own Libertarian view of continued citizen action as paramount:such as creating democracy and Libertarian movements abroad, and encouraging Sister-City type exchanges–what Eisenhower called the true defense of free countries (and also was how we contacted Boris Yeltsin with important effects). The US does not need vast militaries to fight ‘our’ battles. We do need to encourage Libertarian-oriented thinking abroad so they organize to fight our battles by action in their own country.

As to the events in question, I was on the Executive Committee of the LP USA at the time. Our reaction was to urge Libertarians to donate blood, period. In short order we voiced limited and critical support for military response, but more important we co-ordinated with Libertarians in Afghanistan, who had been leading a struggle against the Taliban, to begin action. In fact, on 9/11, there was a picture on our front page we had just uploaded of Libertarians working in Kabul to develop Grameen style banks with the endorsement of Aslam Effendi, a distinguished member of the Afghan royal family. It is forgotten that by the time the US arrives, revolt was in full swing, and then Libertarians there worked with other groups in summoning the jurga AGAINST US wishes that created free elections there. The situation in Afghanistan has moved to an international nation building phase. In Iraq the US–meaning the GOP–has unwisely not repeated the strategy in Afghanistan with mixed results. Meanwhile, the US government and NED have taken to sending activists from other countries to LP HQ to learn about us.

Meanwhile, State LP’s have begun participating in an LIO program adopting Sister groups abroad. The Florida LP, for example, has worked closely with Costa Rica resulting in a strong Libertarian-Liberal party there instead of a trouble spot. No Saddam Husseins there.

Big government cannot help you, small government cannot help you, but self-government can help you. If you want to have a Libertarian ‘position’ on the war or foreign policy, join a local Sister City or similar program trying to help a struggling country and donate to http://www.ISIL.org to bring young students to Libertarian conferences where they can meet and learn from people who have changed their nation because of Libertarian help. National defense by the spread of freedom is ultimately too critical to be left to government, as Eisenhower suggested. Prevent the IRAQ’s of the future by citizen action you can start today as others have: get yourself appointed to a Sister City advisory board,help the leaders of to-morrow learn about freedom and rights, and effective activism to better their countries. You don’t need to be a card-carrying anything to understand or do that.

I don’t know where you’re coming from, Doug. Every single libertarian (including Libertarian Party) I’ve talked with or read has both recognized the blowback and supported the war in Afghanistan.

it’s like wanting to vacation on the beach during a 4 day weekend, but not willing to pay your light bill before you leave. and, for some crazy reason, you’ve also given your boss at work the power to decide what you do on days off. he got you to give him permission to do this by his promising you that if you let him decide what you do, and also by letting him keep half of your future paychecks for the next year,that you’ll be CEO one day.

What part of “I opposed the Iraq War from the beginning” don’t you understand ?

For my mind, the US should’ve stayed in Afghanistan and completed the destruction of al Qaeda and the Taliban rather than going off on Bush’s quixotic adventure.

And, as I asked someone else in a different comment thread, what’s with libertarians who don’t think that people have the right to their own opinions ? How dare I stray for libertarian orthodoxy. Quite honestly, I’ve seen less dogmatic Objectivists.

summararily, it goes like this:

“hey guys, how about we keep our military virtually committed in one country, spend 2.something trillion and counting, start getting ready to airstrike the nextdoor country, and just close our eyes ok? how’s that sound, ready, break!”

crazies like you need to support guiliani.

I can’t speak for Stephen, but my post had nothing to do with Ron Paul and everything to do with the hard-core doctrinaire libertarians who seem to be supporting him.

I’d also note that, outside of cutting and running, I haven’t heard any discussions from the campaign about what he would do about the threat Islamic radicalism.

The idea that it will simply disappear if we go and hide behind the walls of Fortess America is, quite simply, naive.

How do you wage a war on a tactic?

When we win the war on terror will terror surrender? Will all terror stop? Should we wage a war on using superior firepower, or a war on excessive collateral damage, or a war on perfidy, or a war on leveraging terrain and weather?

We already have a War on Drugs. Anyone want to predict when we’ll win that one (or lose it, for that matter)?

Sorry.

More to the point of the original post: Pro-war and anti-war are not required Libertarian positions, per se. Pacifism and libertarianism are distinct concepts. I cannot think of a big-L Libertarian who doesn’t agree that national defense is one of the few core roles of the federal government. Almost all of the libertarians I know (big or small L) supported retaliating against the Taliban government in Afghanistan and hunting down the al-Qaeda perpetrators; almost all still do. We don’t hear of much effort or progress on that front though.

But “war” in its implementation can simply be a statist boondoggle if waged without a popular mandate and defined, achievable goals. When Randolph Bourne observed that War is the Health of the State, he underscored this distinction. Anthony Gregory wrote what I thought was a good reiteration of this relationship when it comes to Libertarians, who may be anti-statist on domestic issues of financial security, but might be too easily won over to statism in the form of pre-emptive foreign adventures to attempt physical security.

Unless there are clear and enforced limits to governmental action, abuses can easily arise both domestically and internationally.

“You picked a funny time to turn against Ron Paul, since on the one issue you hold up as your example of why you “turned” – the war in Afghanistan – Paul was on your side.”

interesting point about the ultimate goal of national defense, i often thought the same thing that the ultimate expression of this current philosophy would be simply destroying other nations now.

Proposed answer: pre-emptively destroy every other nation on Earth—or at least their capacity to attack us. If some are left alive, they must be bombed occasionally lest they plan revenge.

There is such a thing as an overly aggressive defense. We will tend in this direction if our main goal is to eliminate all risk of attack. But avoiding attack is not the only, nor even the most important, function of military defense. National survival is obviously of higher importance. Survival of the population is higher still. And then there is preservation of liberties, material wealth, and so on. If we fool ourselves into thinking that we can completely eliminate any risk of being attacked, no matter how little our survival and prosperity as a nation are threatened, we will be likely to select counter-productive strategies. This is because, though we may aspire to making the risk of attack zero, we will never take the brutal actions necessary to achieve this. But, by setting policy with this unrealistic goal in mind, instead of a policy of risk reduction based on respect for others’ sovereignty and a realistic, affordable military posture, we will continue in an offensive, meddlesome, and destabilizing mode.

It is ironic that so many who seem to subscribe to the notion that central planning is a flop when applied to provision of inanimate goods can yet somehow believe that a national bureaucracy can execute far-flung campaigns against minor threats enmeshed in essentially neutral–but intelligent–populations and predict the mid- to long-term effects with an accuracy greater than a that of a technocrat…or a die-roll. Talk about a fatal conceit.

So the question is where does someone who believes in individual liberty, but also believes that the War on Terror is a war not only worth fighting, but a war that has to be fought go ?

The military? I hear they’ve having recruiting problems…