Libertarianism III: It's All About Me and My Needs

Sand in the Gears ^ | 11/15/02 | Tony Woodlief

[Demidog]

Also, the embargo on Japan was widely popular in the United States.

And?

[Demidog]

Wrong.

Perhaps you should educate yourself on the word regulate. In this sense it means to "facilitate" and cannot be construed to mean "prevent" or "ban" by any stretch of the imagination.

[xdem]

You contend there were people coerced into avoiding trade with Japan. Name two.

[xdem]

Libertarians "attacked" the United States by not voting Republican. Maybe that's what he meant? :)

[Poohbah]

Perhaps you should educate yourself on the word regulate.

I have. Perhaps you should educate yourself on the word.

In this sense it means to "facilitate" and cannot be construed to mean "prevent" or "ban" by any stretch of the imagination.

Oh, you mean we're supposed to "facilitate" the provision of nuclear bombs to people screaming "Death to America," not "prevent" such?

You know, f.Christian is almost more coherent than you are.

[wimpycat]

Perhaps you should educate yourself on the word regulate.

Etymology: Middle English, from Late Latin regulatus, past participle of regulare, from Latin regula rule Date: 15th century
1 a : to govern or direct according to rule b (1) : to bring under the control of law or constituted authority
(2) : to make regulations for or concerning
2 : to bring order, method, or uniformity to
3 : to fix or adjust the time, amount, degree, or rate of

In this sense it means to "facilitate" and cannot be construed to mean "prevent" or "ban" by any stretch of the imagination.

Says who? You?

See the above definition for its etymology of the word and some of its synonyms: "govern", "direct", "control"

What you think the word means "in this sense" is irrelevant.

Congress has the power to govern, direct, and control trade with foreign powers according to the U.S. Constitution and all your Clintonian attempts at semantics won't change that fact.

[hscott]

"A child overdoses on heroin"

Children are a different kettle of fish. Anyone who sells heroin to a kid should, I think, be prosecuted. (And in fact thrown under the jail).

"So it's the government's job to protect idiot old babyboomers So it's the government's job to protect unwary and unwise investors" Well not by me. I guess I agree with you that IOBs will have to go somewhere else. (Of course I guess I am an IOB myself having lost heavily in the market)

[hscott]

First I agree with most of what you say here. My attitude about the terrorists is the same as yours

And admire you any anybody for having the persistence to actually read the Patriot Act.

That being said I still have qualms about the attacks on the Patriot Act etc. First many libertarians would sacrifice security to save their civil liberties. And yes it may be true that the Patriot Act is a Trojan horse, that it is unneeded to fight terrorism. But it is at least conceivable to me that such measures are regrettably necessary. And I can't really trust you or anyone to make that determination for me. Everyone has an ax to grind. So I guess I'll just have to keep pondering the issue myself.

[Action-America]

The restrictions on liberty at the time of the Civil War were temporary war measures, that ended with the close of hostilities.

Duh!

So by your definition, the 12 years of Reconstruction, where the Republicans plundered the South was Liberty?  God save us all from your type of Liberty.

But at a less personal and subjective level, it's clear that things would not have reached a war footing had slavery not embittered relations between sections of the country.

We know from archived records that even before his election, Lincoln wanted to implement a neo-Hamiltonian Whig-Republican economic system.  It irked him that he was blocked by the Constitution and particularly, by the South, who staunchly favored states rights and free trade.  Punitive taxes and tariffs had already been imposed that weakened the South's position, before Lincoln was elected.  Lincoln's election signaled even more punitive legislation and spurred the legal secession of seven states.  To fight this legal action of the South, Lincoln argued on several occasions, prior to hostilities, that in effect, the Union had created the states rather than the other way around and therefore, the states did not have the right to secede.

Lincoln used the whole secession issue to plunge the nation into that terrible and unnecessary war in order to centralize the U.S. government on behalf of the Whig-Republican economic system, based on protectionist tariffs and subsidies for what we today call "economic infrastructure", including a national bank and other forms of government intervention in the market.  All of that is still with us today, in slightly different forms, but it can all be traced back to Lincoln and the Whig-Republicans.

Lincoln needed a war to get people to ignore the Constitution, long enough for him to implement his Federal-centric economic plan.  Slavery was most definitely an afterthought, that proved a convenient excuse for Lincoln's war.  Much of our problems today, stem from that breach of the Constitution.

In fact, the states did create the Union, not the other way around.  The Tenth Amendment did vest all power that was not specifically granted to the Federal government, to the states.  But, it was Lincoln who argued exactly the opposite in the first case, so he could get the people to ignore the Tenth Amendment in the second case.  Lincoln is surpassed in his subversion of the Constitution only by Bill Klinton.  At least Klinton didn't get us into a Civil War to further his anti-Constitution agenda.

The problem that you have with quoting revisionist history is that as long as the government archives all of the records of that day and age, Lincoln's speeches and documents will be available to refute your position.  Maybe, if you could get the government to destroy those documents, then your arguments might work.  Perhaps the US would be more successful at rewriting history than the former Soviet Union.  If you had gone to school back when I did, you might have known all this.  But Federal intervention in schools (partly supported by Republicans) has totally ruined our schools in the following years, with things like politically correct history.

Fortunately the Republican Party of today is not the Republican party of Lincoln's era.  But, on the other hand, they are headed back in that direction at a blinding pace.  Such things as the USA Patriot Act, the The Homeland Security Act and the Our Lady of Peace Act do not bode well for where the GOP is headed.

It is that Republican Party race back to even more Federal intervention and control, that now leads me to always vote for the candidate, rather than the party.

 

[billybudd]

Why exactly do you disagree with what I said?

[x]

God save us all from your type of Liberty.

I would say the same for the "type of liberty" that characterized the antebellum or post-Reconstruction South.

We know from archived records that even before his election, Lincoln wanted to implement a neo-Hamiltonian Whig-Republican economic system. It irked him that he was blocked by the Constitution and particularly, by the South, who staunchly favored states rights and free trade. Punitive taxes and tariffs had already been imposed that weakened the South's position, before Lincoln was elected.

In what sense was "a neo-Hamiltonian Whig-Republican economic system" "blocked by the Constitution"? It was constitutional in Hamilton's day. It was constitutional when later Jeffersonian Republicans like Madison and Monroe established a national bank and a protective tariff. Such policies were not the fashion in Jacksonian days and might be bad economics or politics, but in no way were they unconstitutional.

Tariff readjustment was in the cards even during the administration of Southern-oriented Democrat James Buchanan. When depression struck, the government thought it needed the money, and the tariff was the primary source of revenue. Tariff rates had been quite low for a generation.

So an upward adjustment was coming. It did not have to be so high. That was a result of the Democrats splitting, the Southerners leaving Congress and the need for financing the war. Had Southernern political leaders really cared about free trade most, any increase in the tariff would have been far more modest. But slavery and the dream of a Southern nation obsessed them to the point where they no longer cared so much about tariffs.

What arguments like Tom DiLorenzo's ignore is the centrality of slavery in the debates of the 1850s. Sure, Lincoln had been a Whig in the 1830s and 1840s and still accepted many Whig principles, but to argue that he was above all motivated by the Whig agenda is to neglect the bitter disputes of the years leading up to his election. DiLorenzo even had to lie about the Lincoln-Douglas debates to put economic questions at the center of the 1858 Senate campaign.

While the states retained powers under the 10th Amendment, secession, which contradicts the supremacy clause of the Constitution was not among those rights. Washington, Madison, Marshall, Jackson, and other prominent leaders of the Republic agreed with Lincoln about this.

I don't think that the Civil War is so relevant to discussion of today's politics. But if you want to drag it into the forefront, I'll always be ready with counter-arguments.

[xdem]

If libertarians are "minuscule in number" and "of no consequence," why are some many Republicans shouting that libertarian votes "cost" Republicans several elections?

[Demidog]

What you said was untrue. Hope that helps.

[Reagan Man]

Libertarians have every right to play the spoiler at election time, but in the final outcome, its of no real consequence. Republicans shouldn't be whining.

However, Ronald Reagan did say:
Well, third parties have been notoriously unsuccessful; they usually wind up dividing the very people that should be united. And then we elect the wrong kind-the side we're out to defeat wins.

Now I don't consider libertarians to be the smartest people around and their voting patterns back that up conclusively. If libertarians care so much for America, they wouldn't be voting for a candidate who has no chance of winning, only in the hope of damaging the Republican candidate. That leads to liberals and Democrats getting elected and that is not the goal of Free Republic.

[driftless]

For your information I am a Catholic school graduate, and only people blinded by ignorance, ideology, or extreme loyalty to the South would fail to see that slavery indeed precipitated the Civil War. Read the Ordinances of Secession, and then tell me what you think. I only wish you could have been a slave at that time. Then we'd see how you feel about terrible federal government "usurping" states rights.

[Demidog]

None of the words "govern" "direct" or "control" imply elimination. Elimination in fact of foreign commerce eliminates governance, direction and control.

[Tokhtamish]

If slavery was not central to the Confederate cause, then why did they not emancipate and recruit black slaves ? Why was the South's price for reconciliation the blood drenched imposition of Jim Crow ?

Demidog, you maintain the ludicrous libertarian fiction that America somehow can exempt itself from world history, from patterns of force. Only a libertarian or an idiot would choose to fight without allies. Only a libertarian or an idiot could not see in 1939 that the Axis Powers would someday come after us. In fact, a Gallup Poll taken in 1939 found 60% of the American people understood that if the Axis won this war, we're next. So I should think that basic common sense should make it clear that their winning the war would be a very, very bad thing and something that basic survival self interest (funny how libertarians have this incredible sense of entitlement, as if survival were a given) should dictate against.

Libertarianism is a totally American ideology. Only a country with an ocean on either side and weak continental neighbors could be that geopolitically pampered. The rest of the world, nations which know what it is to have dangerous neighbors, cannot be so frivolous.

[Demidog]

You contend there were people coerced into avoiding trade with Japan.

Shell Oil and Standard Oil. And any American living at the time that wanted to sell Oil to Japan or the territories in China controlled by Japan.

[Demidog]

If slavery was not central to the Confederate cause, then why did they not emancipate and recruit black slaves ?

Is it your belief that no blacks fought for the Confederacy?

[Demidog]

Oh, you mean we're supposed to "facilitate" the provision of nuclear bombs to people screaming "Death to America," not "prevent" such?

No, the federal government is given the power (first posessed by you I might add) to facilitate trade between the various states and foreign nations. The federal government is given no power that you didn't first posess. You don't have the power to prevent your neighbor from trading with anyone. Thus the government doesn't have that power either. (We hold these truths to be self-evident....That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed)

What another country develops is none of our business. Nobody has attempted to restrict us from developing our own weapons and we shouldn't be in the business of deciding what other nations do within their own borders.