SomeCallMeTim used to comment on my old site. He disagreed with almost everything I said, and occasionally was a little over the top with his attacks, but he was a sharp interlocutor who forced me to think. I miss him.
Hence, I was a little surprised to find, in the comments of Jim Henley's fascinating quest for libertarian arguments against animal cruelty, SomeCallMeTim characterizing me thusly:
This is going to sound like snark, but it’s genuine: seriously?She was OK with Padilla, OK with Hamdi, and thought the Administration was more protective of civil liberties than a Kerry Administration would be. Those seem like bright-line tests to me.
But I willingly acknowlege that my understanding of “libertarian” is informed by what Mill and Nozick we read in college, as well as things said by you, Julian, and other libertarian bloggers (and things pointed to by the same). I will happily take your opinion as definitive, and stop making “schmib” references about Megan, Insty, or anyone else self-labeling as libertarian. And I sincerely retract and apologize for all such previous comments.
I still think those positions are deeply and grievously wrong. But if not actually anti-libertarian, I should (and will) stop saying or implying otherwise.
I was surprised because this is what I've said about Padilla: i.e., nothing. Here's what I've said about Hamdi: also nothing. And here's what I wrote1 about Bush v. Kerry on civil liberties:
Civil Liberties [I support] Neither. I used to think that Janet Reno was the embodiment of all evil, after she helped gut the fourth amendment and pioneered the use of the paramilitary force to resolve child custody issues. Now I think that whoever becomes attorney general is driven mad by dreams of all the good they could do if only they had a lot more power. Both sides endorse the execrable drug war, which has done more to destroy civil liberties than any post-9/11 moves.
I was probably wrong about this--to the extent that one can know a counterfactual, that is. Though I stand by my assertion that the Clinton administration was pretty amazingly crap on civil liberties . . . as was Bush I . . . and this is why I don't write about civil liberties; it's too depressing. But it isn't what Tim seems to have thought; it was a generalised "pox on both their houses" feeling, the eternal weary burden of any libertarian, not a rousing endorsement of the Bush administration.
I often have this feeling that people on the web are arguing with some other libertarian. I'm fairly frequently confused with Jacqueline Passey or Kerry Howley, even though we don't actually look alike, write about the same things, or for that matter, agree all that often. Even more frequently, I am assailed for my position on some issue upon which I cannot remember having ever taken a position . . . or in some cases, upon which I have taken the opposite position. For example, I am weirdly being described as a "pro-torture" libertarian.
This is the closest thing I have ever written to something "pro-torture", an exploration of how we'd feel about torture if it were unmediated by the state.
I want you to imagine that there's a terrorist group that is threatening, not some faceless person somewhere, but your kid. Your husband or wife. Your beloved brother or sister. Your mother or father. They are planning to kill them. You don't know exactly when, or how, and hence you know that you can't protect them without taking away the liberty that makes their life worth living. Picture the face of that person you love. Picture them dying, horribly, from poison gas. The terrorist group is planning on doing that to them. You know it's going to happen, unless you can somehow prevent it.Now I want to picture that you have a member of that terrorist group tied up in your livingroom. He probably knows about the plans, and if he doesn't, he certainly knows how to get the people who do know about them. Only despite the best efforts of the Feds, he isn't talking.
Now, are you going to give him back to the Feds to be sent to Gitmo in the hopes that a couple years down the road, he might tell you something -- if they haven't already gassed your child, that is? Or are you going to whip out the toolbox and get to work?
I think it's important to think of this in two ways. First, if you endorse torture, you should be willing to perform it yourself, for you are on the same moral level as the torturer. And second, all the victims of terrorists are someone's beloved sister, mother, son. You should not be more willing to sentence them to death for your high principles than you are your own loved ones. The torture debate is ineffective because it's debated at such delicate remove from our own lives.
In the end I concluded what I think most people believe: there are rare circumstances in which almost all of us would endorse the use of torture, the proverbial ticking time bomb in Manhattan. But that doesn't mean we should legalize it. If there really is a nuclear time bomb in Manhattan, and the CIA can find it by torturing one of the conspirators, I'm pretty sure they will regardless of the law. Meanwhile, if you legalize it, they'll start torturing people in ordinary cases, because well, it's legal, innit?
I've written this latter point over and over and over again, but somehow, only the post they think they disagree with (when it's actually discussed, we all pretty rapidly agree) sticks in their head.
I don't know why people think I'm pro-torture, except that I suspect they are angry that the morality of torture can even be discussed; they want to put it in the same basket of questions we dismiss with visceral horror, such as "Child pornography: good for society?" So even though I agree with them as a policy matter, and even as a moral matter2, they are angry that I don't agree with them in the right way. Then they hear other people talking about how I supported Padilla and Hamdi, and this reinforces this increasingly unrealistic mental portrait of me.
1It ought to go without saying, but just in case: obviously, the conclusion I reached about whom to vote for was wrong, though I stand by many of the sub-analyses; in particular, I was most wrong about the administration's staggeringly awful foreign policy, and amazing general incompetence.
2I haven't actually found anyone but a couple of Quakers who is actually willing to argue that if, say, their mother had been kidnapped by terrorists; and one of the terrorists were right there in the livingroom where you could stomp the information out of them, the appropriate course would be to forgo violence. Ditto ticking nuclear bombs in Manhattan. Yes, it's unlikely, but we're trying to clarify a moral principle, not set policy; we already agree on the policy, which is that torture should be illegal.
A friendly piece of advice: stop it with the self-regarding posts. It makes you look thin-skinned, and it's boring. Seriously, move on to something substantive.
Megan, FWIW, although I don't always agree with you, I've been an avid reader and admirer of your prose for some years. I think JW has made a good point.
You don't have the massive ego and narcissism to be Jacqueline Passey, and you're taller than Kerry Howley.
That said, I have to agree with JW and RW Rogers here.
And the whole thing about taking 2x4's to the head of anti-war protesters? That's the thing that galls me. You at once want to say all of these supposedly provocative and over the top things, but you don't like the consequences when you do so. How about this-- don't engage in rhetorical maximalism. Don't use eliminationist rhetoric, as in the statement above. Don't participate in mindless though experiments that don't relate to policy ("Yes, it's unlikely, but we're trying to clarify a moral principle, not set policy"-- as Michael Kinsley said, that talk should stay in a smoked-out dorm room.) And, most of all, don't combine an aggressive, condescending authorial voice with this kind of supposed vulnerability. If you could engage people with a little less scorn, you might receive less vitriol. And, for my purposes, if you could demonstrate that you understand that your societal policy positions ensure an awful lot of hardship for the weakest among us-- if you could show a little more human compassion for the people who you seem intent on belittling (without changing your positions at all)-- then you wouldn't get so much anger. People (like me) would still disagree with your positions, but perhaps people would be a little more polite. But you've gotta reap what you so.
I'm not impressed by someone who seems to delight in the race to be the most insensitive libertarian blogger, but doesn't like similar insensitivity from people who engage you.
I don't speak for Tim, but I know him reasonably well online, and know that the Padilla case, particularly, is a hot button for him, in that it initially involved the indefinite detention without trial of a US Citizen. I would guess that his belief that you were OK with the administration's actions in Padilla comes from this comment thread in which he asks you a couple of times whether the Padilla case bothers you, and you don't respond on that point, while engaging him on other points.
That may have been an overreading of your non-response, but I would guess that that, or something like it, is where he's coming from.
uh, reap what you sew
Quick thing about your point on torture...
In the situation you describe.. what makes you think that "stomping" the information out of the tied up terrorist is going to be the most effective way of getting it? It might make you feel better.. and it might make you let out some of your own prejudices, fears, and anxieties... but it most likely isn't going to help you save your loved one from the poison gas attack and may even contribute to their death...
Over and Over again, interrogation experts have spoken out that torture is an ineffective way to get reliable information.... the world does not work like it does on "24"...
thus.. this continued repeating of the scenario of "ticking time bomb" actually is an argument against torture rather than a support for it... the only way a "ticking time bomb" situation could justify torture is if you make the second assumption that "by torturing this person, I will be more likely to get accurate information to stop the ticking time bomb"--and this is the unspoken assumption that is not borne out by reality...
Personally, I'd actually like to see a portrayal of the reality of what torture gets you played out on tv.... especially on 24.. where Jack Bauer or whomever tortures someone--and their torture gets them the wrong information and something horrible happens... that would be the more realistic situation and result...
Reap what you sow, I believe.
People might also look at this thread. You seem pretty okay with it to me.
Freddie,
It's reap what you sow. As in seeds.
Huh? I signed off on bribing prisoners with chocolate and sea views . . . a position I stand by . . . and said that Geneva should not be unilaterally applied . . . another position I stand by. But I was talking about the rules for things like hot meals, letters, and prisoner exchange, not the rules for torture; as I said very explicitly in that thread, there are some things we shouldn't do unilaterally (torture), and some things we should only agree to bilaterally.
Gah, you're both right.
It certainly seems to me that this would be a good situation to make a statement on Hamdi and Padilla. Do you support the US Government's case in those matters or not?
I was surprised because this is what I've said about Padilla: i.e., nothing. Here's what I've said about Hamdi: also nothing.
A libertarian would have said something. Case closed. You also tried to split the difference on torture.
When Bush started to institutionalize authoritarianism, I actually hoped that the people who had rightly opposed Clinton in this respect would have joined ACLU Democrats (who did oppose Clinton, as I did) in opposing Bush. Some did, but most didn't. Bob Bar did, but he was out of office.
That was a real turning point in American political history, and I'm not at all sure that we'll ever turn back.
The wartime exemption and the terrorism exemption have to be rejected. Those are the arguments authoritarians always use ("War is the health of the State").
Most libertarians, to my knowledge, are complete frauds. They're just non-homophobic, dope-smoking, right-wing Republicans who screw a lot. They have no function in American political life except to give a veneer of coolness to Tom Delay and George Bush.
It's standard "I oppose torture, but..." fare. But you credulously accept inaccurate articles by Heather MacDonald. But you accept the stupid Geneva arguments that were a cause of the fatal torture of innocent prisoners in Afghanistan, and of our abuse & detention for years in Guantanamo of people who we captured in a Taliban prison, some of whom had been tortured by the Taliban. But you argue, contrary to all evidence & without actually bothering to cite any evidence, that torture is no more likely than any other intelligence technique to lead to false information. But you argue, again without evidence, that opposition that torture costs American lives.
President Bush "opposes torture, but..." Vice President Cheney "opposes torture, but....". This is not to say that what you've written is within orders of magnitude of what they've said and done, of course--they've done worlds of harm; you just don't seem to engage with the subject in a serious way. But it makes me pretty f***ing unimpressed by statements that "I oppose torture," as evidence of one's staunch opposition to torture. I can see what he meant by "okay with it".
Emerson is right. It really doesn't cut it to continue playing coy on questions like indefinite detention of US citizens.
Megan:
From the post Katherine linked:
Some of the things that MacDonald cites sound perfectly ridiculous: interrogators aren't allowed to bribe captives with chocolate, or a view of the sea, or switch them from hot meals to MREs. Is making people stand up, or kneel, for hours, acceptable? Making them hot or cold for the duration of the interrogation? Putting a Mickey Mouse mask on them and singing "It's a small world after all" for days (although, come to think of it, I'm sure "It's a small world after all" must be banned by the Geneva accords). Many of these things are forbidden by Geneva, but they don't seem to me to obviously fall into the category of grossly inhumane treatment; they fall into the category of "things I'd rather not have happen to me if I'm taken prisoner, and thus will forgo doing to the prisoners I take."
This may be simple naivete on your part, but some of the conduct you identified as not obviously torture does, in fact, involve physical pain and suffering to an extreme degree. Including techniques designed to inflict extreme physical suffering in a list of things that you don't think of as obviously torture is going to confuse people about your position on torture.
Megan, you dismissively characterized torture through sleep deprivation as "keeping someone awake for eighteen hours". I mean, come on.
A libertarian, a libertarian Republican, or a moderate Republican would not have spent the last several years evading and misrepresenting the question of torture. (Or habeas corpus). Megan is a slick, authoritarian right-wing Republican. Like David Brooks, and perhaps like Glenn Reynolds, she is presentable in polite society, but she has no redeeming merits.
Freddie wrote: And the whole thing about taking 2x4's to the head of anti-war protesters? That's the thing that galls me.
On behalf of considerably more persons than just Jane, or myself: Get over it already.
It was one comment, made once, and issued in the heat of anger regarding war protesters who had decided that the best way to protest war was to start another one in the form of mob riot. And Jane's comment, unless my memory badly deceives me, was one of self-defense on behalf of those wronged; it was not an application of torture, or of purely random violence, or even of directed violence for espousing one's free speech rights.
Is any of this finally sinking in?
Incidentally, numerous states now have some form of a "make my day" law. In any of those states, persons engaged in the violent and uncivilized behavior that those "protestors" were indulging could be summarily shot by the property owner, and the laws of that state and a majority of their fellow citizens would uphold it provided there was no deeper context that gave the property owner a motive other than defense.
war protesters who had decided that the best way to protest war was to start another one in the form of mob riot.
Except, of course, that we hadn't decided any such thing. No one rioted at the protests I attended, and I certainly didn't see any coverage of the antiwar riots of 2002.
John Emerson wrote: A libertarian, a libertarian Republican, or a moderate Republican would not have spent the last several years evading and misrepresenting the question of torture. (Or habeas corpus). Megan is a slick, authoritarian right-wing Republican. Like David Brooks, and perhaps like Glenn Reynolds, she is presentable in polite society, but she has no redeeming merits.
This, naturally, is in contrast to your long list of redeemingly meritorious contributions to society, which are:
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Someone should shoot anony-mouse.
Anony, are you trying to support Megan? Are you trying to make sense? You go from saying that hers was just a passing comment, to explaining that the protestors should have been shot. If Megan wants you standing beside her that's fine with me.
Lizardbreath: Then if nobody was attempting anything along the lines of "civil disobedience, Lenin style", Jane was not advocating any action. I just found the post (issued less than 18 months after 9/11; IIRC they were still finding ocassional human remains in the bottom layers of rubble at that point). Linking it here will probably re-provoke the flamefest, so your treasure hunt clue is 003959.html
Someone should shoot anony-mouse.
You can try, but if I can fit my narrow, pointy head through an opening, the rest of me can get through it, also. I'm consequently hard to catch.
Anony, are you trying to support Megan? Are you trying to make sense? You go from saying that hers was just a passing comment, to explaining that the protestors should have been shot. If Megan wants you standing beside her that's fine with me.
Meagan can defend herself, I should think. I'm just more interested in taking ridiculous, bullying insults such as "person X has no redeeming merits" and exposing them for what they are after a little strategic chewing: a pile of fluff fit only for rodent bedding.
But, if you think you really are qualified to start passing those kinds of snide judgments, start filling in that list. If I provided too few blanks, feel free to continue on the back side of the page as necessary.
LB does indicate what made me angriest, which I guess I should have done. "Making someone cold" can include freezing them to death in secret prisons in Afghanistan, it turns out (look up Dana Priest's article on the Salt Pit). "Making people stand up" in practice sometimes includes chaining them into a standing position with their arms above their heads, which if you read actual victims' descriptions makes beatings sound very tame. That also has been linked to several prisoner deaths, most famously the Manadel al Jamadi case at Abu Ghraib.
I'm sure that Megan is grateful for your powerful support, mousy.
Not surprisingly, John Emerson has you clocked, as they might say in Harlem.
Jane or Megan or whatever you call yourself these days, you essentially believe that government shouldn't interfer in the profit-maximizing objective of legal entities called "firms." Otherwise, government can do as it pleases, especially if your hacks are the ones in power. Perhaps you would have swooned as much for adult-American Padilla if, like Elian, he had been a non-adult-non-American who was illegally in the country.
The only asymmetrical information here is what you truly believe as opposed to what you profess to believe.
So, Megan wasn't actually advocating violence against anti-war protesters when she said that they should be beaten with 2x4s. She was being, you know, metaphorical. Except, if she did, it was okay, because we can shoot anti-war protesters, based on an extremely dubious legal argument. And because anything that can be defended with a flimsy legal argument meets the standards of basic polite discourse and tolerance for other's opinions. And, anyway, she wasn't being serious. Her arguments are only meant to be taken seriously when they don't look bad in hind-sight. Got it.
Here comes a crass over-generalization. You've been warned.
I think that "point of reference" for Asymmetrical Information has drifted very far to the left from where it was, oh, 3 years ago? Most of the debate is with leftish (and VERY leftist, too) blogs. The topics brought up and positions defended by the hostess have drifted left as well. Am I the only one who finds the ensuing discussions considerably less enlightening than they used to be?
[DISCLAIMER: I'd be the last person to tell anybody, least of all the blog's owner, what to think or what to write about. But, I can proffer my observations, can't I?]
John Emerson: "A libertarian would have said something"? Are you suggesting that being a loudmouth about things one doesn't necessarily understand is a prereq for libertarianism? Or that one has an affirmative obligation to gain expertise in any important legal question implicating civil liberties (and, presumably, come to the same conclusion as you)?
I'm a libertarian. I've taken a long, hard look at the issues in Padilla and Hamdi. I vocally oppose the government's position in both. That doesn't mean I want people who haven't the time, inclination, or expertise to dig into these questions shouting their support for my side. It would be obnoxious for Megan to pretend that all of the questions involved are easy ones and declare her support for our side, or anyone else's.
These issues matter to me, but I'm not deluded enough to think that they're required reading and I can toss you out of the libertarian club if your card's not stamped. She knows about (and writes on) topics about which I know almost nothing, and the world is better for a little specialization.
Attacking someone for what they haven't written is a pretty lame use of time you could have spent "saying something" about whatever other topics you think one is obliged to address.
she said that they should be beaten with 2x4s
I'm looking for the comment in which she says that some people should be beaten with 2x4s. I see a post where she says that this might happen, but that is a prediction, not something she advocates should occur. (If you predict that the war will go badly, that doesn't mean that you advocate that is should go badly.)
Maybe there's another post I'm missing. If not, then Freddie seems to have been quite misleading.
Maybe there's another post I'm missing. If not, then Freddie seems to have been quite misleading.
Al, does the fact that Megan's supporters here don't deny she said it not move you? How about everyone who has quoted it before, out in the blogosphere? How about the mini-outrage when she said? It's not a matter of controversy, whether she said it or not.
It would be obnoxious for Megan to pretend that all of the questions involved are easy ones and declare her support for our side, or anyone else's.
She does that all the time about issues she cares about.
Libertarians are political advocates, not academic specialists. If they're not interested in civil liberties, I see no justification for calling them libertarians at all. Bush has moved the US strongly in the authoritarian direction, and any libertarian worthy of the name would have to oppose that. (NOTE: I'm not a libertarian, but an ACLU liberal. The two groups agree about a considerable range of Bill of Rights issues.)
The legalities are not decisive. Libertarians don't come to their conclusions only on the basis of legal precedents: if the law does not support liberty, libertarians should support passing a better law. The question is whether to support or oppose the use of torture, the nullification of habeas corpus, and many more things Bush has done. McArdle tries to split the difference, and I can't see a justification for that.
If she's uninformed about these critical issues, she should get herself up to speed as soon as she can. It really wouldn't take long. She should also quit misrepresenting the facts of the case -- the torture we're talking about is much more severe than she says it is.
Lots of people have tried to get her to address these issues. (I did so myself until I decided to quit reading her stuff). She's evaded these requests for two years or more. This evasivenness can easily be explained if she's an authoritarian republican, but not otherwise.
Here's the 2x4 post, if anyone wants it; Sadly No linked it. The worst Megan said is that some New Yorkers would find it funny if violent antiwar protesters were beaten with 2x4s.
Right. As I said, that's a prediction (wrong, as it turned out), not advocating that violence should occur.
Like Al but more fluently, Megan taunts liberals while retaining plausible deniability. This is why she rouses such animosity.
"If you do that, someone might smash your face in". Sounds like a Mafia goon.
I'm a vegan anarcho-libertarian (essentially against all taxation and economic regulation of any sort).
It seems that libertarian reasoning should dictate that we have no right to harm animals, as it's a gross violation of their rights. Perhaps some would call this ludicrous, because they are a different species. But if we encountered an intelligent species from another planet, would we feel justified in killing them, as libertarians? I say no.
So the issue isn't species. Maybe it's intelligence then. In that case, maybe libertarians could argue that it's okay to kill animals (and raise them in horrendously cruel conditions) because they are less intelligent than us. But then that argument could be applied to retarded humans.
So one is forced to either go cruelty-free, or succumb to some kind of archaic superstition like the "soul" that makes it okay to violate the rights of animals (since scientific testing obviously reveals animals don't have souls).
R.I.: I think a more accurate description of Megan in this case is "selectively ignorant," not "rationally ignorant." Remember, this is a person who has a specific interest in civil liberties and national affairs, who publicly comments on these matters a lot, and who nonetheless doesn't find Hamdi or Padilla worthy of comment. You find that plausible as "rational ignorance"? I don't.
But even if I did buy that story, in the context of this administration's handiwork, you can't talk the way Megan does about torture - see Lizardbreath's comment and my own above for examples - without actively choosing ignorance as a means of glossing over unpalatable reality.
"Schmibertarianism" describes a real phenomenon - if Megan doesn't like it, she ought to come up with her own word to describe her beliefs.
As a longtime Asymmetrical Information reader, I can attest that Megan has sometimes held mistaken views, as have we all, and that she is more willing than most pundits to scrutinize what she's written in the past, a trait I find admirable.
I can further attest that she in neither "right-wing" nor a "hack," varieties of bloggers that can be found in great quantities on the Internet, but that don't tend to be hired away from first rate magazines like The Economist by first rate magazines like The Atlantic.
Comments sections ought to be a rough and tumble forum where readers critique and add insight to the author's posts -- I am perfectly willing to entertain the possibility that Megan is wrong about any individual post, which is part of the reason I peruse the comments section.
Much of the critique offered above, however, is poorly reasoned snark that does more to discredit its authors than the ideas they purport to oppose.
Freddie's advice for Megan, "Don't engage in rhetorical maximalism," is more apt advice for her critics, including Freddie himself, who mere sentences later writes "I'm not impressed by someone who seems to delight in the race to be the most insensitive libertarian blogger..."(emphasis added).
As for John Emerson: could you please explain your theory about how libertarians lend a veneer of coolness to George W. Bush and Tom Delay?
Like Al but more fluently
It was the British spellings, John. You'll see, in no time she'll seem less fluent.
I can further attest that she in neither "right-wing" nor a "hack," varieties of bloggers that can be found in great quantities on the Internet, but that don't tend to be hired away from first rate magazines like The Economist by first rate magazines like The Atlantic.
We wish.
Like David Brooks, Megan is a charming, articulate, socially fluent, politically aware, not-obviously-demented-or-Neanderthal individual who is not very disturbed by Bush and Delay and what they're doing. They make the unacceptable acceptable to a certain kind of socialite crowd.
As a New Yorker since well before 9/11 who was in those protests, no, I won't get over it. For one, the vast, overwhelming, majority of the city supported the protesters, not the war or the RNC. She was speaking for herself and Pam Atlas, not New Yorkers. For another, the tired old trope of tarring all protesters with the actions of a few bad apples back in Seattle a decade ago just proves all the more where her heart is. You didn't have to be a dirty hippie or anarchist in a black mask to oppose Bush and the RNC, you just had to be honest with yourself and accept the obvious reality in front of you.
John Emerson,
1) It seems to me that Megan is disturbed by what the Bush Administration has done in its second term, hence her assertion that she voted for the wrong candidate in the 2004 election.
2) In my previous comment I asserted that Megan is neither right-wing nor a hack. If you disagree, why not tell me why? I suppose "hack" is rather hard to define, but "right-wing" has a definite meaning: it implies that Megan is on the far-right of American politics.
Can you -- or anyone else who has thrown that term around -- please sketch out for me that positions that Megan holds that, taken together, put her far to the right of the American mainstream? All things considered she seems rather centrist to me.
As for John Emerson: could you please explain your theory about how libertarians lend a veneer of coolness to George W. Bush and Tom Delay?
Ooh! Ooh! I can do this one:
There are a lot of libertarian folks who prize economic liberty (as they define it) above other matters that would seem to concern libertarians (torture, habeus corpus, etc.).
That class of libertarians often consists of people who are smart, socially aware, tolerant in their personal lives, etc. To help get this administration elected twice, these libertarians have made common cause with the knuckle draggers - the evolution deniers, the civil liberties opponents, the sexually represssed and repressive, etc.
The effect of this is to make it intellectually respectable to look at administration policy on torture, for instance, and say things like: "Is making people stand up, or kneel, for hours, acceptable? Making them hot or cold for the duration of the interrogation?"
Nice to know that once her opinion had become meaningless, she changed it. After she voted. Wow.
I didn't call her a hack, just a right-winger, though I wouldn't really want to be the one to argue that she isn't one.
Right libertarians are right wing on economic and tax issues. If they're also undisturbed by Bush's civil liberties innovations, they're right-wing on those issues too. (Libertarians cannot be allowed the excuse of ignorance on their flagship issue). I suppose that Megan's non-committal attitude toward the war isn't quite right-wing, but my guess is that 60% of Americans are to the left of her on that one by now.
I would add that being in the political mainstream and being right-wing aren't mutually exclusive. Megan occupied a spot that could reasonably be described as being in the U.S. political mainstream in 2004. So did George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
Political football writes: I would add that being in the political mainstream and being right-wing aren't mutually exclusive.
If used that way the term right-wing seems to me a misnomer that ceases to mean anything, or at best one that is likely to cause more confusion than clarity.
After all, the left-right spectrum only makes sense in relation to something, and when using terms like right-of-center, or left-wing, or far-right, or right-wing, the implied comparison that makes most sense is "left or right of the American center."
Certainly the American center has held positions that are morally reprehensible -- that slavery was a permissible institution, for example -- but there are perfectly good adjectives to disparage such positions: wrongheaded, immoral, foolish, etc.
In this thread, it seems that "right-wing" is being used to disparage Megan's positions even though whatever rhetorical punch the term has is unearned, since Megan's positions actually don't put her on the right-wing of American politics, an assertion that seems irrefutable when one considers that on every issue mentioned in this thread there are officials elected by the American public whose views are farther right than Megan's views.
Megan's positions on taxes and spending are far right-wing. Her positions on civil liberties and the war are right of center, but not far right-wing. The fact that almost all of her snark is directed at people to the left of her is right-wing.
This isn't worth arguing more about. I just am mostly saying that, in what she says and doesn't say, she's more like an authoritarian Republican than she's like a libertarian of any description.
"Libertarians are political advocates, not academic specialists."
Okay, you've redefined the term. Game over, good on you. Like I said, I don't think "she should get herself up to speed as soon as she can," or feel beholden to any commenters who demand that she blog on their idea of what's critical, but what would I know? I'm just a female left-libertarian interested in those not-decisive "legalities."
No, the fact that she seems to mostly respond to the left blogosphere lately reflects how far left she has drifted. Perhaps not as far as her lefty opponents want...
Are you kidding me? With her unwavering support for taxes on carbon emissions? Then again, aren't you the same person who laughs at the idea of Glenn Reynolds being called a libertarian of any stripe?
May I submit a joke of my own then: "libertarians" in favor of eminent domain, socialized healthcare, gun control and redistributive taxation.
No I haven't. I have never heard "libertarian" defined as anything other than a political tendency, and I cannot imagine any definition of the term which would allow someone living in a nation in which torture and the suspension of habeas corpus (etc.) were major political issues to be ignorant of, and noncommittal about, these issues.
Megan has not said nothing. She's repeatedly made evasive, split-the-difference answers when questioned. She refuses to answer.
A libertarian will support liberty regardless of the law in the place where he or she lives. Do you disagree?
I don't care who you are.
"I cannot imagine any definition of the term which would allow someone living in a nation in which torture and the suspension of habeas corpus (etc.) were major political issues to be ignorant of, and noncommittal about, these issues."
Well, sorry about your lack of imagination. Best of luck with your campaign to relabel people.
But if one is not accepting those as major issues, then what? The sheer amount of legal hairsplitting that's going on there casts doubt on the prominence of these problems, especially in the context of [small] overall number of cases in question. Economic matters, healthcare or war on drugs hit a lot closer to home.
OK, I'll restate. Libertarians who are indifferent to torture and the nullification of habeas corpus are frauds and probably morons.
"Libertarian" is a label! It actually distinguishes some people (libertarians) from other people (non-libertarians, especially authoritarians). That's how language works.
We don't want compelte freedom of self-labelling, because the Giuliani could call himself a libertarian.
I can't imagine a libertarian thinking of torture and the suspension of habeas corpus as minor issues when others who were not libertarians thought that they were major issues.
Megan should send in her A-team. This is loony.
Libertarians who are indifferent to increased spending and taxation, nationalization of large segments of the economy and 2nd Amendment are [insert your favorite slur].
There's no indifference, there are degrees of concern. Even in the absence of partisanship.
"I can't imagine a libertarian thinking of torture and the suspension of habeas corpus as minor issues when others who were not libertarians thought that they were major issues."
I daresay you haven't had much practice, Emerson. When I was younger, I used to spend half an hour a day imagining libertarians who don't care either way about large-scale black site torture camps. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!
This is illogical on so many levels I don't even know where to start. For example, "when others, who were Democratic partisans severy affected with BDS, thought...".
My point is exactly that not that many Americans are concerned with what you call torture and suspension of habeas corpus. Are those things bad? Yes. Are they a "major political issue"? Opinions appear to vary.
Max, Rationally Ignorant -- I just don't understand you at all. You seem to be saying that libertarianism is freedom, so that anyone who claims to be a libertarian can believe and advocate anything that they want, and that no one can criticizes their choice. Anyone who says their a libertarian is one. That sounds more like the definition of a Juggalo.
I've never been too enthusiastic about libertarians, but I've always assumed that they were vigilant about state authoritarianism and also fierce defenders of private property rights. I often agree with them about civil liberties but seldom about taxation, regulation, social spending, etc.
A civil-liberties-neutral liertarian is unintelligible to me.
Max, Jesus. Is it unreasonable to expect that libertarians be on the forefront on habeas corpus issues? True, most Americans don't care much, but I'd expect libertarians (like many others) to be among those who do care. Is there a problem with that?
I guess, Conor, that clarity is in the eye of the beholder. Any definition of "mainstream" that excludes a winner of the presidency seems unhelpful to me. And any definition of "right-wing" that excludes George W. Bush seems pretty meaningless to me, too.
But I do see your point. I have always thought, for example, that it is unambiguously torture to deprive people of sleep for days, or force them to lie wet and naked in cold rooms, or force them to adopt static physical positions for extremely long periods. And to minimize or obfuscate the suffering of people treated in this fashion has always seemed grotesque to me.
That is to say, I accurately thought of myself as occupying a place in the broad center in this country. My opinions haven't changed, but I think in 2007 it would be misleading if I described myself as a centrist.
One can't be on the forefront of all issues. What I am saying is that it is not at all obvious that this is an issue with a large potential of implications for the personal liberty of the average American. You can argue about slippery slope and might even be right in doing that, but fact remains that there is an almost infinite multitude of threats to liberty that are, first, closer to home and, second, less ambiguous. Using the habeas corpus issue as a litmus test for libertarians in current political atmosphere appears laughable to me because the whole debate around it is so overwhelmingly partisan.
You are impermeable, Max. I resign.
One can both think that they're important issues and feel like there are already enough extremely smart people thinking about and trying to fix them. At the ACLU, for instance.
There really are other things for libertarians to be thinking about. NSA surveillance. The Drug War. Abortion restrictions. No-knock raids. If one of those were your pet issue, I'd tell you the same thing: you're not the Keeper of the Litmus Test. Libertarian is a label, but it's not a very specific one. If Rudy ever tries to call himself a libertarian, the only appropriate response will be to laugh.
Argue your point. Argue why people who care about x issue should care about y related issue. But nothing comes of arguing who's a "real" libertarian, or conservative, or progressive. "Schmibertarian" was cute for about ten minutes; it's time to get over it.
See, Megan, what happens when you drift somewhat closer to the left bank: you risk polluting your cool fresh stream with the likes of Emerson.
[expletives edited. The subject is not worth the effort of describing in appropriate terms]
Best of luck in your new digs!
You're also impermeable, RI. Read up on habeas corpus.
My impermeability may well come from the fact that I have lived for a goodly part of my life in the country governed "from the left isle". Liberty, it ain't. So don't expect me to side with the left on any issue that's short of being crystal clear.
No, it's ignorance.
Love ya, Tat!
K.O.!
(curtsey)
Quit whining, RI.You and Max make no sense.
Libertarians who are indifferent to increased spending and taxation, nationalization of large segments of the economy and 2nd Amendment are [insert your favorite slur].
[Not libertarians on those issues.] Duh.
Do you really think it's a slur to say that someone is not a libertarian? Do you really think that libertarianism, as it applies to spending, taxes, industry nationalization or gun control is consistent with indifference to those issues?
John Emerson writes: Libertarians who are indifferent to torture and the nullification of habeas corpus are frauds and probably morons. Perhaps I've missed a turn the conversation has taken -- apologies if so -- but I hope we're not still talking about Megan? For it is certainly inaccurate to say that she is "indifferent to torture and the nullification of habeas corpus," seeing as how she is on record as favoring the illegality and asserting the immorality of the former... and is certainly against the latter.
Are you perhaps leaping from the fact that Megan hasn't posted on the Padilla case to the conclusion that she wouldn't mind the nullification of habeas corpus? If so I find that leap unjustified.
Political football writes: Any definition of "mainstream" that excludes a winner of the presidency seems unhelpful to me. And any definition of "right-wing" that excludes George W. Bush seems pretty meaningless to me, too.
I agree that "mainstream" must include the winner of a presidential election (assuming that the candidate hasn't fooled the electorate about his position, and that a three or four way race hasn't resulted in a president elected by a plurality that doesn't represent the mainstream).
With regard to George W. Bush, consider these points:
1) FDR violated the civil liberties of Japanese Americans in a way far more profound and extreme than anything George W. Bush has done. But it would be nonsense to label him a "right-wing" president. This is so for two reasons: a) violating civil liberties isn't an issue that's useful to discuss on a right-left spectrum because those on the far-left, the far-right and even centrists (think gun control, campaign finance reform, eminent domain) all favor certain civil liberties restrictions when those restrictions further their right, left or centrist ends; b) the position a person takes on a single issue doesn't itself define that person's place on the political spectrum.
2) George W. Bush ,i>isn't right-wing on many issues. On education, for example, the right-wing position is that the Department of Education ought to be abolished, whereas the Bush Administration passed a bill that significantly expanded federal power over education. On foreign policy a right-wing policy could either be isolationism or muscular realism, but it certainly isn't nation building (even though elements of the Bush foreign policy, like it's unnecessary antagonism and initial extreme unwillingness to work with international organizations, are more extreme).
Overall I think it's very difficult to make the case that Bush is a right-wing president, though it is certainly easy to make the case that he is a deeply flawed, incompetent president who favored -- though didn't really implement -- a few right-wing policies.
But again, maybe all this goes to why right-wing is a term more likely to mislead than to clarify.
No. "Fraud" and "moron" do qualify as slurs in my book though.
As my kids would say, "Shun the unbeliever! Shun! Shuuuuuuuuunnnn!
yours/
peter.
Reasonably sure nobody would mistake you for Jackie Mackie Passey Gassie. You're smarter, more attractive, and don't have the preening ego.
"And any definition of "right-wing" that excludes George W. Bush seems pretty meaningless to me, too."
Because apparently the term right-wing to you means "people who disagree with me on a couple of things" GWB has has, will and never been a right wing. Megan sees some things in grey, you see them in black and white. In the number of years she has been posting I doubt it would be difficult for anyone of any political persuasion to pull a quote from the archive to support either side of an issue, ignoring the body of work as a whole or rejecting the context in which the comment was made.
The wingers who supported Bush all along are ditching him now that he's a liability. Bush is right wing.
No. "Fraud" and "moron" do qualify as slurs in my book though.
True, but those words were not used here to complain that someone holds non-libertarian positions.
Those words were used in connection with people who hold non-libertarian positions and characterize their worldview as libertarian nonetheless. Surely, if someone subscribed to the positions you described and called his or her self a libertarian, you would agree that this person is a fraud and/or a moron, no?
Surely, if someone subscribed to the positions you described and called his or her self a libertarian, you would agree that this person is a fraud and/or a moron, no?
So there's no such thing as a left-libertarian then? Silly me...
I gotta tell ya, if Bush ain't rightwing, then he sure has Dobson, Gringrich, Delay and millions of others fooled - not only after serving as Texas governor, but after four years of the presidency.
Or are Dobson, Gingrich et al also not rightwing by your reckoning?
Gosh, Max, I don't hang with the libertarian crowd, so maybe I don't know these things, but here are the conditions you described: Libertarians who are indifferent to increased spending and taxation, nationalization of large segments of the economy and 2nd Amendment
Can you describe a person who holds those views and describes him or her self as a libertarian?
I gotta tell ya, if Bush ain't rightwing, then he sure has Dobson, Gringrich, Delay and millions of others fooled - not only after serving as Texas governor, but after four years of the presidency.
I agree that George W. Bush fooled lots of conservative voters into thinking he was more "right-wing" than he actually is -- for example, all the talk about amending the constitution to prevent courts from granting a right to gay marriage, which as far as I can tell was just talk to fire up the base by convincing them that gay marriage was a bigger priority than it actually was for the administration, and that they were willing to take more radical measures against it than they in fact were. (And thank goodness for that.)
He also pretended to be a fiscal conservative while spending like a drunken Texas air national guardsman, and ran in 2000 on a non-interventionist foreign policy platform.
But I don't think he fooled Delay -- rather, I think Delay is first and foremost a Republican partisan, not an ideological or principled creature of any type, and that if Delay thought that someone to the left of George W. Bush would advance Tom Delay's agenda and help Tom Delay and the people Tom Delay likes within the GOP win elections and accrue power he'd support that candidate.
I should note that another reason it's not very useful to label someone as "right-wing" is that even if you're right, which is certainly not assured, that someone is on the right flank of an issue or many issues says nothing about whether they are correct or incorrect.
For example, let's imagine that you are against the Iraq War. The right-wing position on that war is arguable the isolationism of Pat Buchanan, whereas the decision to invade was backed at the time by a majority of Americans and many on the left.
I don't understand why people are lecturing the host on what to blog about, and why people who hate everything written here want to comment fifty times per post.
If torture isn't obsolete, it's about to be. In the trail of 9/11, serious money was put into security. So get ready for interrogation with holographic MRIs and such toys. They'll get all of the information they want without breaking a sweat.
I'll respond to the 'they've got your family' scenario. I'd be tempted, but there are alternative approaches that might be just as effective. If I thought it was necessary, I would do it myself. I wouldn't enjoy it, but I'd think of my ten year old daughter.
Where I think torture might be required and justified, is if somebody has a WMD and I believe, to a certainty, that the goal is to kill 25 million of my fellow citizens. In that case, the President has adequate military powers to order whatever is necessary. Those powers are granted directly by the Constitution when the country is under attack, and no law other than a constitutional amendment can circumscribe them.
Megan:
LB notes the right thread. I took
to be responsive to Padilla. As a comment in a discussion of civil liberties, I read that as "Punt." It's not much of stretch to see "Punt" as "OK with Padilla" (which is, after all, a cautious characterization of your position as acceptance, not affirmative approval).I took "Hamdi's renouncing his citizenship moves me very little; he certainly doesn't seem to have valued it." to be responsive to Hamdi. Interpreting "Moves me very little" as "OK with Hamdi" seems like even less of a stretch.
As I said at Henley's place, I think you're horrifically wrong about this. But it doesn't really matter. There have always been differing understandings of what it means to be an American, and, looking at the map, we as country seem to be settling into an old set of disagreements about the same. I like my side and, increasingly, my side seems to like itself as well. That's enough for me.
I do apologize for the "scmib" stuff, though. I'm not a libertarian, Henley is, and I'm happy to treat him as King of the Libertarians. I'd thought his positions were driven straight out of libertarian ideology, but maybe there's some X factor as well. (Shared, to their great credit (in my mind), and my surprise, by Cato.) Don't know, don't care, happy he's on our side, whatever his reasons. And I'll leave "libertarian" policing to him and his.
They'll get all of the information they want without breaking a sweat.
Maybe so, but that won't render torture obsolete. There will always be a need to force confessions, and there will always be plenty of folks who just like to abuse people.
An MRI won't do those jobs. If the goal with Padilla was to gain information, I think one has to assume they could have stopped torturing him after a year or two.