According to the website the criteria for making this distinguished list is as follows:

If Twitter is a popularity contest, then Klout is the judge. Using an algorithm that factors “true reach,” “amplification,” and “network impact,” the website assigns every tweep a score, on a scale of 1 to 100. It’s not perfect, but nonetheless, here’s how Klout scored notable members of D.C.’s press corps.

Doug made the list at number 46 with a score of 74. This is what the site had to say about Doug:

Doug Mataconis: 74
“Lawyer, libertarian, Yankee fan. Very Opinionated, ‘Hell bound sinner,’ blogger.” Sample tweet: “OMG the extent to which these people don’t understand what Senate Reconciliation means is incredible #EconDebate.” Followers: 5,456

In addition to writing here* at The Liberty Papers, Doug is a contributor to Outside the Beltway, writes at his own blog called Below the Beltway, and as mentioned above, very active on Twitter with an impressive following.

On behalf of all of us here at The Liberty Papers, congratulations Doug!

*Not as often as in the past but still offers some solid posts when he does.

Well, my streak of not getting pulled over came to an end last Thursday. I was driving to my mother-in-law’s house when I saw the dreaded flashing lights in my rearview mirror. As I pulled over having no idea why I was being stopped, I started thinking about the “10 Rules for Dealing with Police.”
With my window rolled down and my hands on the steering wheel (always a good idea to keep your hands where the police can see them) the highway patrolman asked why I thought he pulled me over. I shrugged and patiently waited to hear his response.

So why did I get pulled over? I didn’t have a license plate on my front bumper. The bracket for my front plate had broken off some months ago. When he told me his reason for pulling me over, I pointed to the plate that I had put just inside the front windshield. From there the patrolman explained that by Colorado law, the plate has to be attached to the front of the vehicle because sometimes the plate falls off in hit-and-run collisions (a plate left at the scene makes it very easy to identify the vehicle’s owner).

I have lived in three states, one of which does not even require a front plate at all (at least when I lived there). I wasn’t sure exactly what the Colorado law was so I took the gamble that placing the plate on the dash would be good enough. It wasn’t.

Of course there’s the old expression: “ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking the law.” The patrolman was well within his rights to write a citation but he chose to give me a verbal warning instead. A verbal warning and something else: a business card with his name and badge number.

The patrolman handed me the business card and said that I could call the number on the card to make a comment about the stop whether good or bad.

“When did they start doing this?” I wondered. I was taken aback. What kind of comments would I leave if I actually called the number?

As I reflected on this, on balance I thought the patrolman did his job well. Though he could have written the citation, he decided to inform me instead of punish me. For my part, I followed rule #1 (Always be calm and cool) and was very respectful (again, this may surprise my detractors that I wasn’t being snarky toward the patrolman. It probably helped that my wife answered the one question that annoyed me: “Where you folks headed?”). In following this first rule, I didn’t need to worry about the other nine.

But the thing that impressed me the most about this encounter with an officer of the law was the business card. Apparently the Colorado DPS actually cares about how well their patrolmen do their jobs! How refreshing! This in a time of police scandals, use of unnecessary force, and “professional courtesy” that has plagued the Denver Police Department and departments across the country.

What the business card policy (?) says to me is that yes, the police work for me. It’s a statement that recognizes that the job of the police it to serve and protect me: their customer, their boss, the person who pays his salary.

This is how the police should do their jobs and I hope this is something we will see more of more generally.

Stephen Gordon, a very good friend of mine and fellow libertarian, was involved in a serious car accident on Tuesday evening in his hometown of Hartselle, Alabama. From what I’ve been told, a truck crossed over into his lane and hit him head on, causing his car to flip. In addition to Steve’s lungs collapsing, he suffered broken ribs and a broken ankle. He was airlifted to a hospital in Huntsville and is in critical, but stable condition. The good news is his prognosis is positive.

I know I speak for everyone at The Liberty Papers when I say that we pass along our thoughts and prayers for Steve’s recovery.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here at The Liberty Papers either by the post authors or views found in the comments section do not necessarily reflect the views of The Innocence Project nor its affiliates.

In support of our fundraising efforts for The Innocence Project, I have decided to dedicate at least one post per week over the next four weeks to the cause of criminal justice reform – many of which are the very reforms The Innocence Project are working to bring about. As of this writing, you readers have already donated $310 – 62% of our $500 goal! Thanks to everyone who has donated so far or plans to donate. Remember: your donations are 100% tax deductible.

With that out of the way, now I will turn your attention to the topic at hand: Eyewitness Misidentification.

Back almost three years ago to the day, I wrote a post about Troy Davis who had his death row appeal denied despite seven eyewitnesses recanting their testimonies (this case is still winding its way through the courts; here is an update on where the case stands today). As is often the case whether here at The Liberty Papers or at other blogs, the discussion that followed my post was actually a great deal more interesting than the post itself IMHO. Jeff Molby, a person who comments on a somewhat regular basis, really got the discussion going with several Liberty Papers contributors and readers.

The part of the post that Jeff believed to be “misleading” was the following statement I took from The Innocence Project webpage that dealt with the role eyewitness misidentification plays in wrongful convictions:

Eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, playing a role in more than 75% of convictions overturned through DNA testing.

While eyewitness testimony can be persuasive evidence before a judge or jury, 30 years of strong social science research has proven that eyewitness identification is often unreliable. Research shows that the human mind is not like a tape recorder; we neither record events exactly as we see them, nor recall them like a tape that has been rewound. Instead, witness memory is like any other evidence at a crime scene; it must be preserved carefully and retrieved methodically, or it can be contaminated.

This was Jeff’s response:

Eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, playing a role in more than 75% of convictions overturned through DNA testing.

That’s a misleading stat. The relevant stat would be the percentage of convictions based on eyewitness identification that were later overturned due to DNA testing.

Comment by Jeff Molby — March 17, 2008 @ 12:51 pm

Perhaps the reason Jeff found the quote was misleading was my fault rather than The Innocence Project’s. The page that I took the quote from goes into greater detail complete with links for further reading. From my reading of their material, it seems to me that the statistics they are dealing with are from their now 266 exonerations. As the discussion unfolded, this forced me to do some additional research outside of The Innocence Project [Thanks a lot Jeff : ) ] to see if I could find more data to support –or refute The Innocence Project’s claim. Fellow contributor and lawyer by trade, Doug Mataconis also weighed in with his thought about the reliability of eyewitness testimony.

The highlights from this discussion are below the fold.

The relevant stat would be the percentage of convictions based on eyewitness identification that were later overturned due to DNA testing.

I don’t completely agree. A very small portion of convictions are amenable to DNA testing. The proper denominator would be the number of convictions that are subsequently tested where eyewitness identification played a role.

The problem with examining the cases tested by the innocence project is that there will be a sampling bias: people who are innocent are much more motivates to seek out avenues for exoneration, and the innocence project will select cases that where they have a higher probability of success to focus their limited resources.

Comment by tarran — March 17, 2008 @ 6:38 pm

The proper denominator would be the number of convictions that are subsequently tested where eyewitness identification played a role.

I would also include those convicts for whom DNA evidence was available, but never tested. If a convict isn’t pursuing all possible means for an acquital, it’s hard to assume he’s anything other than guilty.

Regardless, I think we can agree that the statistic cited is pure garbarge.

Comment by Jeff Molby — March 17, 2008 @ 8:05 pm

If you read a report analyzing aircraft crashes, and the report stated that cracks in the pressure hull had contributed to 75% of crashes, I doubt you would be claiming that that statistic was somehow misleading and that the important question was how many planes flew with similar cracks safely.

It depends on the point you’re trying to make.
Read that sentence again:

Eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, playing a role in more than 75% of convictions overturned through DNA testing.

Notice that the assertion is about “wrongful convictions” (herein referred to as “apple”), yet their supporting statistic is about “convictions overturned” (herein referred to as “orange”).

We can agree that there are some unknown number of wrongful convictions that never get overturned, right? Isn’t it quite possible that there are other unmentioned factors that bias the sample?

And even if there aren’t, the author goes on to assert that eyewitness testimony is “often unreliable.” He didn’t offer a shred of evidence to support that statement. The eyewitness testimony could be right 99.999% of the time for all we know, because he only examined the convictions that were overturned.

In the context that it was presented, the stat is useless at best.

Comment by Jeff Molby — March 18, 2008 @ 9:46 am

The only wrongful convictions we know of are ones that are overturned. Well, that’s not completely correct; there are cases like the one that’s the focus of Stephen’s post here.

These aren’t apples and oranges. The convictions overturned is a subset of a larger, unknown and unknowable set, all the wrongful convictions. The use of a small sample to come to conclusions concerning larger sets is the heart of “hypothesis testing” which is one of the most highly developed branches of statistics.

You could argue that they are making conclusions about all apples from a sample of golden delicious apples, and I would agree with you. But to claim that this is apples and oranges is a bit much.

With that being said, they are absolutely correct that eyewitness testimony can be quite unreliable. In fact some branches of eyewitness testimony are known to be often unreliable, such as identification of a stranger. There was a series of psychological experiments that demonstrated this; the researchers could consistently get witnesses to finger the wrong man as a person who committed a a simulated robbery merely through having a patsy in the crowd loudly and incorrectly describe one aspect of the thief’s appearance.

Now, again, you could argue that the statistics they present, on their own do not back up this claim. However, the unreliability of witnesses when describing novel people or situations is well known enough that it needs no confirmation anymore than a guy talking about airplane design need to justify his assertion that air pressure can be used to calculate altitude.

Comment by tarran — March 18, 2008 @ 10:35 am

Jeff:

If you actually follow the link, you will see that TIP considers such factors as estimator variables, and system variables. TIP also has made observations about eyewitness misidentification based on the over 100 convictions they have helped overturn. If you look to the right side of the web page, you will find more outside information about the unreliability of the use of eyewitness identification: here’s an Iowa University Study and a website from one of the study’s authors Iowa State Psychology Professor Gary Wells .

If you are skeptical about TIP’s sources, do an independent Google Scholar Search on the topic from 2000 to 2008. You will find that Dr. Wells’ articles are among the top scholarly articles cited by other peer reviewed scholarly articles found by Google Scholar.

On Table 1 of this study which interviewed 64 psychologists who had courtroom experience found in the May 2001 issue of American Psychologist, the very first of thirty variables listed in determining the reliability of an eyewitness is the stress level at the time of the event. The statement next to this variable reads as follows: “Very high levels of stress impair the accuracy of eyewitness testimony.”

This would explain why I could not remember exactly what this man looked like even though he was looking right at me less than 2 feet away; I was scared shitless (to use a scientific term).

The very first page of the same study states the following:

In 1996, the National Institute of Justice reported on 28 wrongful convictions, cases in which convicted felons were exonerated by DNA evidence […] Remarkably, all of these cases contained one or more false identifications.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. The body of research being done concerning eyewitness mistakes is growing. Read these studies as well as a few of your own and then tell me that eyewitness testimony is generally reliable enough to take someone’s freedom or someone’s life.

Comment by Stephen Littau — March 18, 2008 @ 11:56 am

Stephen,

This case, and the issue of eyewitness testimony, reminds me of two classes I took, one in college and one in law school, where the professor engaged in an experiment that showed just how unreliable eyewitness testimony can be.

It should be familiar to anyone who’s taken a criminal justice class of any kind.

In both cases, we witnessed what looked like a crime (theft in one case, attempted assault in the other) but was actually a ruse between the professor and a graduate assistant. After it happened, the professor asked the class to recount details about what they saw such as:

- The height of the person who had run into the room
- What color hair they had.
- How tall they were
- Whether they were fat or thin
- What was said

Stuff like that.

Without exception, everyone got at least one crucial detail about the incident completely wrong. And that was mere minutes after it happened.

I don’t practice a lot of criminal law, but even on the civil side it became obvious to me quite early on that when someone gets up on the stand in a courtroom and is asked to recount the details of an event that happened years in the past, they usually aren’t getting everything completely right.

In a civil case, it usually isn’t crucial because documents usually control.

In a criminal case, where someone’s freedom or life is on the line, basing a conviction solely on the testimony of witnesses, without corroborating physical evidence seems foolish.

Comment by Doug Mataconis — March 18, 2008 @ 1:09 pm

You could argue that they are making conclusions about all apples from a sample of golden delicious apples, and I would agree with you. But to claim that this is apples and oranges is a bit much.

Ok, you can reduce the scale of my analogy if you like, but my point is still valid. The subset is non-random* and therefore it is not logically possible to draw conclusions about the whole from that subset; if you want to make a hypothesis from the subset and use that as the basis for further experiments on the whole, knock yourself out. You can’t, however, make conclusions.

*Not only is it not random, it isn’t even mixed up a little. The subset is narrowly defined to only include a single class of cases.

Now, again, you could argue that the statistics they present, on their own do not back up this claim.

That’s what I was doing.

With that being said, they are absolutely correct that eyewitness testimony can be quite unreliable

If you actually follow the link, you will see that TIP considers such factors as estimator variables, and system variables. TIP also has made observations about eyewitness misidentification based on the over 100 convictions they have helped overturn.

I don’t necessarily take issue with their conclusion. I just take issue with the way that stat was presented. It struck me as MSM-style sensationalism.

Even if the stat did speak directly toward their conclusion, they still should have given it some context. “Played a role in more than 75%”? Ok, where does that fall in comparison to other factors? Presumably there are multiple factors in most wrongful convictions, so 75% might not even be good enough for 3rd place for all I know.

Comment by Jeff Molby — March 19, 2008 @ 1:25 am

A Final Thought
Just how reliable are eyewitnesses and their testimonies? Whether or not The Innocence Project is being “sensational” in presenting their data to make their point, I think we can all agree that the courts rely entirely too much on eyewitness testimony – particularly when the eyewitness in question doesn’t know the person who they saw committing the crime. I think we can also agree that the techniques that the police use when interviewing eyewitnesses can be improved to minimize the possibility of convicting an innocent person.

The Innocence Project does have some great ideas for doing just that and some of their reforms have been adopted at the state and county level. To learn more about how The Innocence Project is working to reform eyewitness identification procedures, follow this link. If you believe these reforms and others will improve the system and you would like to help make these reforms possible, I would encourage you one more time to go to our “Innocence Partners Page” and make a tax deductible donation to help us meet our $500 goal (we’re only $190 away!).

Also, a special thanks to Jeff Molby, Tarran, and Doug Mataconis, for contributing so much to a discussion that was so valuable that it deserved to be revisited and reintroduced to readers a full three years later. This is what makes blogging such a rewarding hobby for me.

In 5 years, we’ve written nearly 4,000 posts, had almost 33,000 comments, and have crossed the traffic thresholds of 1.5M unique visits and 2M page views. If you had told me personally back in 2005 that some of the posts I’d written would have reached as many people as they have, I’m not sure I’d have believed it. We’ve had contributors interviewed on cable news networks, had traffic spikes (described below) as we broke a major story picked up by both Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, and in general have either elated or enraged people on all sides of the aisle. Even more importantly, though, from meeting many of our contributors and from interacting with them over 5 years, I believe that everything that we’ve done at this site has been from the heart. We’re not about deference to conventional wisdom or spewing the party line — at various points I’ve seen almost every contributor to this site willing to slaughter the sacred cow if he thought it had to be done. Our readers won’t always agree with us — hell, we contributors don’t always agree with each other — but I know that intellectual honesty is never sacrificed. That fact itself has generated a great deal of respect from me for everyone who writes here, and I hope it has done so for those of you who visit as well.

Eric, the founder of The Liberty Papers, was able to get an exception to his no-blogging policy and sent along this message:

5 years, what a cool thing that is! I remember how upset I was by Kelo and how I felt the need to respond. I started the Life, Liberty and Property group (does it still exist?), I encouraged all of my friends online to have a new Tea Party (I’m pretty sure I was the original Tea Partier) and I started The Liberty Papers. Boy, this has gone way beyond what I thought it would do. This group has broken news stories, helped influence politics, been the lead item on Google News lord knows how many times and some how managed to keep going in the face of blog fatigue.

I am very pleased that they put my post in their top posts of all time, but when I compare to some of the other folks that write here, I feel fairly lucky and rather humbled. I regret not being able to participate in this effort and all the other online efforts around liberty, smaller government and more individualism. But I made some choices about my career that ended up with employer desired limits on what I can say and write publicly.

I’m looking foward to 5 more years ……. and perhaps one or two anonymous comments when the urge strikes!

So how does a blog such as this celebrate a milestone like this? We thought the way to remember 5 years is to highlight the best of those 5 years. Over the past few weeks, we’ve worked as a group to catalog some of the top posts we’ve written, and then balloted them off to build up a top-10 list. I’ve presented that below, and suggest you take a look there and through the archives. I’d also like to open the comments to contributors and commenters alike. Do you have a specific memory of something that’s occurred here, or a post you really enjoyed? Feel free to offer your thoughts.

It’s been a good five years. Many times through the past five years, we’ve talked about fulfilling one of Eric’s promises in this opening post — to take longer-form writing and expand it into more permanent articles called “Liberty Papers”. In generating the posts making up our internal ballot, we’ve done the hard work and identified most of the posts which fit that criteria. While I can’t say that I was able to devote the necessary time to actually have that ready by this anniversary, it’s on the way.

Top 10 Liberty Papers posts of the last 5 years:

#1. The Sovereign Individual – Eric: When Eric first developed the idea of this site and offered contributor spots to those of us in the wake of the Kelo ruling, one may ask why we’d have joined the site. This essay is an example of the writing and the depth of thought that convinced us all to follow behind Eric. Due to his own career aspirations (holding a job with too much public visibility to present controversial opinion) he had to cease blogging, and I hope you read this essay and realize that the general fight for liberty is worse off for his absence. Of all the posts in our balloting, this one is the only to achieve unanimous votes for inclusion.

#2. The Case Against an Article V Constitutional Convention – Doug Mataconis: Those of us in favor of liberty often look at our Constitution, see the way that it has slowly been eviscerated by the ever-wider interpretation of its clauses, and wonder whether we might be able to “plug the holes” in the document. Doug points out, powerfully yet pragmatically, why the conditions that led to even the imperfect document we have no longer exist. He points out all the reasons that simply demanding change is likely to result in something worse than we have today, and nothing like libertarians might expect.

#3. The Politics of Liberty – Chris: If you’re looking for a logical foundation for basically 90% of libertarian or classical liberal thought, you’re not going to do much better than this piece. One of the things that has always impressed me about Chris’ writing and thinking is his ability to boil complex issues down to their roots, and explain them from those roots up. His posts can sometimes be very long, but that is due to necessity — you can’t write a foundation for all libertarian thought in 800 words. Unlike me, though, he wastes very little space.

#4. Liberty and Racial Discrimination: Responding to David Duke – tarran: Running up to the 2008 election, Ron Paul was a lightning rod for racial tension. Much was due to his own tone-deafness on the subject, and much was due to many unsavory elements of society finding his room within his stances for economic liberty to fit their own discrimination. Because of this, many people associate Ron Paul’s libertarian leanings (and libertarianism in general) with being an apologist for racism and discrimination. tarran wades into the depths of controversy to defend libertarianism and destroy some arguments of David Duke.

#5. The Scales of Justice Need Rebalancing – Stephen Littau: The statue of the goddess of justice is often depicted blindfolded, with scales and a sword. The scales denote impartiality, the sword signifies the punishment, and the blindfold suggests that the facts shall be weighed without consideration to he who presents them. As we all, know, the practice does not live up to the ideal. Juries are swayed by appeal to authority, by character rather than evidentiary consideration, and by the fact that often the state can easily out-spend and out-defend their argument. Cases that should be tried in a court of law are tried in the court of public opinion, and the question of a “fair trial” stretches the limit of fair. Stephen blows the doors off the prosecution-friendly system we have, and even — note my previous statements about sacred cows — suggests that our civil liberties are better served by furnishing through public funds access to the same level of experts & attorneys for the defense as for the state. When the cost of error is stealing years of a man’s life, I find it hard to disagree.

#6. You Should Want What I Want – Quincy: Much of politics is simply human biology and social evolution run on a massive scale. We’re simple tribal creatures, trapped in our own minds and our own biases. Some people think that those who don’t share those biases are depraved and immoral. We call those people conservatives. Some people want to enshrine those biases into law. We call those people leftists [okay, and some conservatives]. Quincy lays out the basis for these people, while arguing why their impulses to ban everything in sight are completely incorrect, immoral, and incompatible with human individualism.

#7. Homeland Security document targets most conservatives and libertarians in the country – Stephen Gordon: I mentioned above the point at which we broke news catching the notice of both Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, and this is the post in question. DHS released a report basically claiming that everyone with a distrust of federal power, believing in limited government or states rights, and/or a fan of Ron Paul, might just be a domestic terrorist. No, I’m not exaggerating. Read it, and you’ll see why it was probably the highest traffic day we’ve ever had.

#8. On Tea Parties and Republican hypocrisy – Jason Pye: The Tea Party movement exploded on the scene in early 2009, and drew a lot of compliment and a lot of criticism across the ‘sphere — we offered both here. Both our compliments and our criticism did include the same point, as suggested by Jason in the post: “The involvement of politically polarizing figures will ruin and destroy the credibility of a good movement.” Jason’s post came early in the Tea Party movement, and yet with folks like Palin and Huckabee seizing “leadership” of the movement, it seems that he has been proven correct.

#9. Mercantilism, Fascism, Corporatism — And Capitalism – Brad Warbiany: One of the hardest political subjects to grasp is economics, largely due to constantly misused terminology. This post simply and directly defines the terms and explains how they’re misused.

#10. Libertarianism and Democracy (pt 1), Libertarianism and Utilitarianism (pt 2) – Brad Warbiany: These two posts became a bit of a two-part series based upon comments, but at this point they still fit together quite nicely. The first post of this pair is a response to a leftist who complained that libertarianism is anti-democratic. In short, one is a moral system and the other is a political system, making the statement in itself nonsensical. The second post compares libertarianism to utilitarianism, which is much more apt as both are moral systems. Those who support socialism often [misguidedly] do so for utilitarian ends. Crowing to them about liberty accomplishes little, because they are working from different first principles. Showing them that socialism isn’t the best utilitarian system is a much better tactic.

Honorable Mentions:

The below two posts advanced far enough in the voting to merit mention, falling just short of the above:

Ramos and Compean Should NOT be Pardoned – Stephen Littau: In the waning days of the Bush administration, conservatives argued a pardon for two Border Patrol agents who were convicted of shooting an unarmed illegal immigrant in the back while he fled resisting arrest, and then covered it up. Stephen pointed out quite well that even if the facts those advocating pardon suggested (that the fleeing immigrant was a drug smuggler), a pardon was STILL not warranted.

An Open Letter To Neal Boortz – Jason Pye: Neal Boortz, a prominent libertarian/Republican radio host and advocate of the FairTax, was actively pushing for Mike Huckabee in the 2008 elections. He did this, one must think, because of Huck’s support for the FairTax, as having listened to Boortz quite a bit, the two agree on very little else. Jason Pye, in intense detail, explained all the reasons why Mike Huckabee is and should be anathema to libertarians. Replete with enough supporting links to crash Internet Explorer (sorry, bad example, that’s not saying much), I think that this post is one that should be kept around in the run-up to 2012, when Huck may return.

That wraps it up. As mentioned, feel free to post your memories of the last five years down below in the comments.

Warbiany added that California, if Prop. 19 passes and allows the modern equivalent of soma to be freely ingested, the state really will look like Brave New World. With the state already self-organized into a caste system (Listen to someone from Northern California talk about Southern California or someone from Berkeley talk about Sacramento some time), abortion and every sort of contraceptive widely available and the domination of a vapid mass culture (seen at San Diego Comic Con or Wonder Con in San Francisco) taking precedence over civic involvement for Californians, the Golden State really resembles Huxley’s “negative utopia.”

Warbiany also handed me this great cartoon:

On Twitter, alot of progressive and libertarian leaning activists tend to advocate alot for issues of freedom and emancipation in countries like Iran or China. In a way, situations in so obviously repressive countries like those are much easier for the activist. They fit into the Orwell dynamic and the villains and heroes are very clear. In his opposition to the death penalty, our own Stephen Littau does take on the American equivalent to state repression. Along with questionable foreign policy and drug policy, however, those are really the only avenues for passionate American political activism.

Beyond such clear issues of state force, however, one runs into a brick wall when faced with the mass culture, dullness and vapidity of consumer society. It seems that in this society, the majority of more normal people (myself and most people reading this strongly excepted) do not become Jeffersonians but instead “turn on, tune in and cop out,” as Gil Scott Heron once said. How does one become an activist in a society in which people freely subjugate, segregate and limit themselves?

I have a funny story that relates to this, that I didn’t even remember until I read what Brad said. While living in Alameda, California, I lost my phone. A teenage girl, around college age most likely, found it and called my mom, who e-mailed me about it. When I got the phone back, I was really grateful but had no money on hand. The only possession I had literally was a copy of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. I offered it to her.

She literally responded, “No thanks. I don’t read.”

I know. Alameda is not a low income area where reading should be rare, either. There are several bookstores in the area, along with hip restaurants, record stores and everything else you expect in cosmopolitan society. It even has an incredible vintage movie theatre that I rank as the best in Northern California, next to Oakland’s Grand Lake Theatre. This girl was obviously more involved in other factors of modern life, all of which I can safely assume are of less consequence intellectually than the work of Huxley.

It’s especially ironic given that there is a passage in Brave New World in which infants are given books while bombarded with screeching, loud noises, in order to dissuade them from being too intellectual when they reach adulthood. With video games, television, the internet and iPhones, that seems unnecessary as modern people have been incentivized out of intellectualism.

That girl did go to extra trouble to give me my phone back, with no advantage to her, however. That means she had a decency and sense of altruism that her lack of reading hadn’t impeded. Having grown up around the hyper-educated and being on that road myself, I can also attest that we’re not the nicest group of people. Perhaps then we really are on the road to progress.

I think that most Americans on both sides of the Iraq debate have the best interests of America at heart (to the extent there even is a debate anymore).

Much of the Iraq debate seems to be based on emotion rather than reason. Emotional talking points from the Left such as “Bush lied, people died” (though I do believe he over sold the threat), “Bush wanted to be a war time president,” and “the Iraq war is really about Halliburton” or “BIG oil” remain unconvincing to me. I took great exception to war critics who resort to calling anyone who supports any war for any reason a “war monger” or a “chicken hawk” (and I still do).

I also took great exception to those on the Right who would say that “you can’t support the troops if you don’t support the mission.” Such a claim is obviously ludicrous because some of the troops themselves do not support the mission. That would mean they do not support themselves! Arguments that individuals should not criticize the president because “we are at war” have always seemed Orwellian and scary to me.

Though I like to think of myself as a man of reason, reasonable people will fall into emotional traps from time to time; no one is 100% logical or reasonable 100% of the time on each and every issue. I fell into the emotional traps that many on the Right (and most everyone else for at least a short time) fell into in the aftermath of 9/11: anger, hatred, and fear.

Why I supported the War in Iraq

My immediate response to the aftermath of 9/11 was anger, hatred, and fear (and I’m sure I wasn’t alone). I was angry that these religious extremists attacked my country, I hated them for their reasons for doing so, and I feared more attacks would come at any moment. I wasn’t interested in justice for those responsible for the attacks, I wanted vengeance!

Though I never believed that Iraq had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks, I believed that it was time to rethink my positions on how America should deal with rogue states such as Iraq. While I would not have supported invading a nation, overthrowing that nation’s government, and rebuilding a nation prior to 9/11, it seemed that America needed to be proactive and “preempt” such nations from even the possibility of attacking America first. I supported the invasion because I truly believed the WMD threat was real and that overthrowing Saddam Hussein would lead to liberty spreading throughout the region and thus would make America safer.

For a short time, this theory seemed to becoming a reality. U.S. and coalition troops defeated the Iraqi forces in record time. The cable news channels showed Iraqis pulling down Saddam Hussein’s statue and in broken English saying such things as “Thank you America” and “Thank you Mr. Bush.” Shortly thereafter, President Bush made his infamous tail-hook landing on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln which had a large banner which read “Mission Accomplished.” I thought for sure that this meant the troops would be coming home and that the critics of the war had been proven wrong in their dire predictions. Sure, Saddam Hussein and his sons were still at large, there was still some violence in the immediate aftermath, and no stockpiles of WMD had been found but all these things would be taken care of in a matter of time. A few more months perhaps?

It all made a great deal of sense in theory but the reality seems to be quite different.

What Changed?

It’s hard for me to pinpoint exactly when I began to realize the invasion and subsequent occupation Iraq to be a mistake. When weapons hunters failed to find the WMD in the first couple of years after the invasion, my thinking was that perhaps the “preemption” approach was wrongheaded but because the troops were already there, the damage had already been done. I believed that because American foreign policy lead to the chaos that followed the invasion, it was the duty of our government to clean up the mess (i.e. the “you broke it, you bought it” argument). I further believed that if coalition troops pulled out of Iraq “the Islamofascists will follow us home” unless the Iraqi government was stable enough to handle the violence itself.

The truth of the matter is my reasoning was clouded by fear. This post I wrote in early 2007 illustrates this fear . We could not afford to allow our enemies to claim victory in Iraq as they would become “emboldened” and be encouraged to carry out future attacks both on American soil and abroad. This is not a war we could afford to lose; failure was not an option.

But when I was challenged by readers and fellow TLP contributors define exactly what “victory” in Iraq would look like, I struggled in vain to find a satisfactory answer. I now realize that if American troops were to leave tomorrow, next year, or 100 years from now, the radical Islamists will claim victory no matter when the troops leave. They are master propagandists and those who follow their ideology do not allow facts to get in the way of their beliefs. Some of these people don’t even acknowledge that the Holocaust even happened despite all of the mountains of documentary evidence to the contrary.

The first thing that has changed in my thinking is the fear factor. The whole purpose of terrorism is to cause people to be terrorized. When we overreact and do such things as pass the Patriot Act, surrender liberties we otherwise would not, or send troops to fight undeclared wars against countries that might have WMD and may directly or indirectly use these weapons against the U.S. or her allies, the terrorist act has accomplished its intended goal.

The second big change is my understanding of contemporary history. My thinking was that America’s military might would be enough to transform the Middle East from a region of oppression to a region of freedom. These were people yearning to be free. All that needed to happen was for the despots to be deposed, the people liberated, and our world would be more peaceful as a result.

In the Point post “A Case for Non-Intervention,” Brad correctly pointed out the flaws of this logic of fatal conceit: that man can shape the world around him according to his wishes. By the time I wrote the Counterpoint to Brad’s post, I was already beginning to see the error of my thinking but still holding out hope that somehow we could avoid the “reverse King Midas effect” this time.

But why would this time be any different?

At least since President Woodrow Wilson, the U.S. has been intervening in internal affairs of other countries allegedly to “make the world safer for democracy.” But rather than making the world safer, in most cases it seems, American foreign policy has created more enemies rather than less. The conditions that led up to the adventures in both Iraq and Afghanistan are in many ways the result of American foreign policy. The continued presence of American troops occupying and nation building in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere fosters resentment among these populations.

Lessons Learned

One argument I used to make was that leaving Iraq as a failed mission would mean that those troops who had died for the cause would have died in vain. I no longer believe this necessarily has to be the case if we as a people learn the right lessons of Iraq.

There were people who opposed the war in the very beginning for very principled reasons (and I’m not talking about the so-called anti-war Democrats who seem to have nothing to say about Iraq now that their guy is in office). Others like me, unfortunately, had to learn the lessons of Iraq the hard way. I was naive and trusted that the government was acting in such a way that would make its citizens safer but I now see the error in this thinking. Neither North Korea nor Iran seems to be slowing down their WMD programs as a result of Operation Iraqi Freedom. And despite the anti-terror policies that have been enacted since 9/11 and despite this war, our cities are likely as vulnerable if not more so than before 9/11. Our own government is a much greater threat to our liberties than al Qaeda ever will be.

It’s really the open-ended nature of this “war on terror” and failure on the part of our government to define who exactly the enemy is that makes the concept of victory unobtainable. Who specifically is our enemy? Is it just al Qaeda and/or the Taliban or is it anyone and everyone the U.S. government calls a “terrorist”? If we cannot even define exactly who our enemy is, how is victory even possible?

Once the enemy has been identified, the congress (not the president) should debate whether or not to declare war on the enemy. Any declaration of war should include not only who the enemy is but define in precise terms the meaning of victory (as opposed to making it up as they go along). The idea of going into another undeclared war in the future should be considered a complete non-starter (and the notion of “preemptive” wars of choice in particular).

Now What?

Its time for the people of Iraq to decide for themselves what kind of future they want. Our brave soldiers have done the heavy lifting for far too long. Its time for our brave troops to come home to their families and let them move on with their lives.

Ditto for Afghanistan. The only troops that should be left behind should be those with the sole mission of hunting Bin Laden and his extremist followers. The nation building mission should be brought to an end.

Its time to completely rethink the American foreign policy of the last 100 years or so. Has the presence of American troops made the world, and more importantly America safer? Is it still necessary to our national security to have so many troops stationed around the globe? (Was it ever?) What ever happened to the “walk softly” part of “walk softly but carry a big stick”?

Its time to move beyond the Cold War posture and allow other nations to determine their own futures.

In the mean time, we should be doing all we can to secure our own futures and help our wounded war veterans put their lives back together.

Brad Warbiany and Doug Mataconis have been very welcoming, and my new realm into libertarian thought should be fulfilling and rich.

I’ve been at United Liberty for two years, starting with the 2008 election and running all the way up to coverage of Arizona’s discriminatory immigration law. My work goes back even further, back to the San Francisco Examiner and the neighborhood newspapers North Seattle Herald Outlook and Madison Park Times in Seattle, Washington.

In the times we live in, there seems to be a political shift going on. The United States is becoming more ethnically diverse, the economy continues to stagnate, and government is making short term maneuvers without foreseeing long-term effects. On the other side of the coin, the Right, who talk a lot of jive about freedom, are parading their own twisted form of nationalism. In these times, it’s important to try to solidify and distinguish the libertarian movement as a separate alternative to the forms of authoritarianism so far proposed to us. I hope my work at The Liberty Papers will help to do that.

I am also currently working on a book on the future of race in politics. It should be finished within the year and published subsequently.

For that I, and we, apologize.

We are not professional bloggers; rather we are blogging professionals. All of the contributors here have other obligations to attend to out there in the world of “real life”. It’s common at times for some of us to be more ready to write while others are occupied — it seems that we’ve hit a spell where just about all of us are slammed. Whether it be personal or professional, positive or negative, persistent or transient — and it’s been any combination of the above, depending on the author* — it’s gotten in the way of spending time writing for The Liberty Papers.

The good news is that I think things will be improving moving forward. Some of the issues being faced have definite end points in time, and others seem to have peaked and should allow more attention to the blog. I expect and hope things to start picking back up this month and return to a more consistent form from there.

In the meantime, we hope you hang in there with us, as the forces of collectivism take no respite from their cause. For as C.S. Lewis pointed out, they believe they’re working for our benefit:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

* I do not presume to discuss the situation others are under, but I am faced with escalating pressures in my career (which is a positive and productive thing) and the demands of a toddler and infant at home. From morning to night I’m consumed by one or the other, and get to the end of the day with a brain in shutdown — and the prospect of a night that might include wakings from either young’un. The kids are starting to consistently make it entirely or almost entirely through the night, and I’ve started a workout regimen to put my body and my mind right, and I’m already sensing a return of normal brain function. Well, as “normal” as it ever was, anyway.

They (Jason and UL Assistant Editor Brett Bittner) recently honored me be asking that I join them as a guest on their podcast, which you can find here or on iTunes.

Topics ranged from the Federal Reserve and Ben Bernanke, to health care, to home weatherization (a topic where I nearly defect from doctrinaire libertarianism), immigration and Copenhagen. All in all, I had a lot of fun and hopefully some of you may enjoy the listen.

Well, today marks four years since the site began, and it’s been quite a ride since then. Some contributors have moved on, due to life intruding on blogging. We’ve expanded our rolls to replace them and try to expand our ideological coverage as well. And Eric, our founder, was put into the choice of taking a new job that would be wonderful for his family and career, but would mean he had to stop blogging. He turned the reins of the site over to me, and I’ve tried not to muck it up too badly.

In four years, we’ve written over 3500 posts, received over 31,000 comments, and we’re well on our way to 1.5M unique visits. We’ve had our successes, with Stephen Gordon breaking the DHS “domestic terrorist” report, attracting attention from Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.

All in all, I think we fit into a very nice space in the libertarian blogosphere. We hail from a wide range of disciplines, with nearly none of us in a position to call “political operative” an occupation rather than a hobby. We hail from such diverse fields as technology, law, and even music. We all share, though, a common fight — for the increase of liberty.

We’ve come a long way in four years, and I’m proud of the contributors who work to make this site great and thankful for all our readers who regularly comment here and make The Liberty Papers more than a broadsheet, but a conversation. I’m very happy with what this site has become — but I’m not sure I’m satisfied. My hope is that one year from today, we can mark our fifth year as a site bigger, stronger, and more active than its ever been.

United Liberty is, much like The Liberty Papers, a “big-tent” libertarian site. They’ll run the gamut from anarcho-capitalists to Ron Paul Republibertarians. They include portions of their site for “headlines” and other news-related items, and I’m sure they’ll have great analysis, as Jason will be posting somewhat over there, and I’ve seen a few posts from Chris Moody of Cato and our own Doug Mataconis. As Jason says, “We want to be inclusive, not exclusive. If you believe in liberty, you have a home at UL.”

When you get a chance, head over and check it out. In addition, they do have some openings for contributors, so if you’re spilling over with things to say in support of liberty but don’t have a venue, let him know.

It’s always a treat to hear from Eric, the founder of The Liberty Papers. Its comments like this one which make me miss his “grumbles.” This comment was in response to a discussion sparked by Stephen Gordon’s post concerning waterboarding:

Interesting discussion. Chris has a very valid point about altering the meaning of the language. He also points out that waterboarding is a form of coercion and that coercion should not be used on prisoners. But, in the heated and traumatic rejection of his assertions about what torture is, the more important point he makes is lost.

The point is, coercive interrogation is wrong to do to someone who we hold prisoner. Chris said that loud and clear, but folks are so incensed that he might not agree that something is torture that they miss the fundamentally more important point. Another fundamentally important issue, if you believe in The Rule of Law, is that we don’t have clear laws on what to do with terrorist combatants and that poses a problem. One of the keys to solving the problems of piracy in the 17th and 18th centuries was to promulgate clear, consistent, logically and legally sound laws and regulations for dealing with pirates.

We don’t have that for terrorists today, and that’s a problem.

P.S. adding to the point about use of language. We used to know that torture meant causing permanent injury to someone. When we talked about the police giving someone the “third degree”, it meant physically injuring someone to coerce them to do something. The reason we said “third degree” is that there were three levels of Inquisition used during the Catholic Inquisition.

1st Degree – Discussing the crimes someone is accused of and informing them that stronger methods of inquisition can be used if they don’t cooperate

2nd Degree – Showing the accused person the methods that can be used, like racks, knives, flails and other implements of torture

3rd Degree – Actually using those implements on the accused person, i.e. the Third Degree of Inquisition.

So, the very tortured definitions of torture that folks are trying to come up are actually changing the meanings of the language in ways that support the individual’s position. This is something that Orwell argued strenuously against and that most “libertarians” argue against, as well. Except, it seems, when being for it supports their personal beliefs.

Causing PTSD does not automatically make something torture. PTSD can be caused by a car accident, by seeing your sibling die, by participating in violent combat and many other things. None of which are “torture”. I suggest that we should return to the traditional definition that doing things which would be considered “the third degree” is torture. Let’s use the language right. AND we can still agree that things which are not torture, but are inhumane or coercive, or both, are wrong for US interrogators to do to our prisoners.

Comment by Eric — June 5, 2009 @ 8:24 am

This morning teabagger-in-chief and “Top Conservatives on Twitter” (TCOT) co-founder Rob Neppell posted this message on TopConservativesOnTwitter.org (which has since been removed) outlining his decision to shut down the site and encouraging fellow TCOT co-founder and notorious douchenozzle Michael Patrick Leahy to, essentially, eat a bag of dicks.

According to the note, Leahy also “was recently asked to leave the leadership team of Tea Party Patriots” “due to his inability to work in a group decision-making environment.” Oh, snap.

Revolution is never easy.

While their front page says it’s under construction, the message is still online and one can peek at it though the back door here. I haven’t seen any sort of response from Leahy, yet.

Over at 7mesh.com, thespaghetticat asks::

I wonder how this will affect #tcot frequent tweeter Karl “Turd Blossom” Rove (@Karl_rove)?

In the meantime, there is also Top Libertarians on Twitter (#tlot), where folks feel that even conservative homosexuals deserve equal treatment under the law.  If you are a libertarian on Twitter, be sure to sign up here.

While we are on the topic of social networking, feel free to follow The Liberty Papers on Facebook here and on Twitter here. Here’s where you can follow or friend some of the individuals at The Liberty Papers:

Chris Byrne

Twitter

Eric Cowperthwaite

Facebook Twitter

Stephen Gordon

Facebook Twitter

Doug Mataconis

Facebook Twitter

Jason Pye

Facebook Twitter

Brad Warbiany

Facebook

Feel free to leave your social networking links in the comment section if you’d like to expand your social networking with other like-minded people.

UPDATE: The old TCOT format and data seem to have survived and are available here.