This will invoke a lot of whining about “freedom of the press” and “chilling effects,” but “due process of law” won’t get a mention:
Judge Holds Reporter in Contempt in Leak Probe
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A federal judge held a New York Times reporter in contempt on Thursday for refusing to testify in the investigation of whether the Bush administration illegally leaked a covert CIA officer’s name to the media….
The emphasis is mine, all mine.
But it’s too much for a university professor to handle, accustomed as he must be to the cozy confines of academic speech codes. I’m thinking of the University of Utah’s David Hailey, whose ill-begotten effort to salvage the Rathergate memos was thoroughly debunked by Paul at Wizbang. Paul’s posts triggered an avalanche of ridicule and e-mail abuse aimed at Hailey. Wired carries a somewhat balanced story by Staci D. Kramer about the whole business:
David Hailey says he didn’t know much about blogs before he flipped on his office computer one late September morning and watched hate mail flood into his inbox.
Author of a report (.pdf) claiming that the controversial CBS News Texas Air National Guard memos could have been produced on a typewriter, the Utah State University associate professor of technical communications didn’t know he had become fodder for vigilant political blogs and discussion boards. To liberals, the report was proof that CBS was in the clear — making it another claim for conservatives to debunk.
But the debunking quickly turned into name-calling, with a guest blogger at Wizbang, a conservative political blog, leading his detailed critique with the since-retracted accusation that Hailey was a “liar, fraud and charlatan.” It escalated as Hailey updated what he calls a work in progress and his critics declared a cover-up.
The result was what Howard Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, calls “a semi-organized swarming.” It is but one of a spate of recent incidents that underscores the power of a rapidly mobilized group online to accomplish a goal — and the potential for harm when online mobs form [like Democrats beating up Republicans at rallies, destroying lawn signs, and damaging Republican offices — only not as bad.]….
“For political figures, it’s fair game,” said Rheingold. “For people expressing political opinions, it’s scary. If some researcher does something you don’t agree with and you go after him personally, that’s scary.”…
At first, Hailey thought it was funny that his type-matching exercise ticked people off enough for them to write. By the second day, he was far from amused. By the end of the week, the tenured academic literally cried in relief when university officials called him to a meeting to express their support; many of them had received numerous e-mails demanding his dismissal and calling him a liar or a fraud [not surprising, given the sloppiness of Hailey’s work].
“It’s one thing to go to a university and point out that there are these problems,” Hailey said. “It’s another thing to start character assassination.”
Wizbang owner Kevin Aylward says that was never the intention but admits the language used in postings got out of hand.
“People are trying to make this into ‘we’re out to get him,'” Aylward said. “We were out to discredit the report.”
The guest blogger on Wizbang was spurred by a post on another blog suggesting that the Boston Globe was working on a story; the thread is called “Fact Checking the Boston Globe in Advance.”
Aylward apologized for the name-calling, which he retracted from his guest blogger’s post.
“It was a bad idea to use those words, they didn’t further the story. They were opinion, not news.” Still, he asked, “don’t you think when you inject yourself into that debate you’re stepping onto a national stage?”
He points to a Sept. 16 message from Hailey at liberal weblog Take Back the Media linking to the post. Hailey, a Democrat who contributed $250 to Kerry’s campaign, also posted a link at Democrats.com.
Asked if he hoped as a Democrat to redeem the memos, Hailey replied, “I’m a complete person. I’m a liberal. I’m a Democrat. I felt Dan Rather was being totally abused … [so he tried, ineptly, to salvage the forged memos] but mostly it’s like a crossword puzzle.”…
For Aylward, the matter’s already moved to the back burner. He shut the comments down in the main Hailey thread. Guest blogger Paul wrote a coda, expressing dismay about the personal attacks that followed his first post.
“I was admittedly rude with my first post. With the benefit of hindsight, it was not my finest hour,” he wrote. “But some of the things you people are doing is just beyond the pale.”
Utah State Counsel Craig Simper, who has been monitoring Hailey’s situation for the university, was struck by leaps to conspiracy theories and assumptions that a downed server meant Hailey was being fired.
“One of the bloggers claimed it’s not the crime; it’s the cover-up. This conspiratorial mentality is absolutely scary. It’s incredible,” Simper said, adding, “It’s very chilling.” [not like being shot at]…
Hailey credits the questions from Wizbang and others for spurring him to make the report stronger and encouraging him to mark works in progress as drafts. He’s even enthralled by the possibility of blogs.
But he’s still feeling the effects of the last few days.
“It doesn’t matter if you vindicate yourself, you’re stained,” he said. “(The university) can support me and that stain won’t rub off. I can sue the pants off these guys…. That doesn’t change anything because everybody else only sees what is out on the internet.”
If you can’t stand the consequences of true academic freedom, perhaps you shouldn’t be an academic. The Wired story omits two critical facts: Wizbang‘s Paul was absolutely on target in his debunking of Hailey’s work. And that debunking has been underscored by Joseph Newcomer, a professor at Carnegie-Mellon University. Newcomer’s detailed and devastating review of Hailey’s work is here, and Newcomer’s resume is here. Hailey should have sought expert peer review before exposing his half-baked and perhaps politically motivated work to the wonderful world of the web.
There’s much ado about a bill now before the Senate that would, in the words of Ryan Singel at Wired News,
let government counter-terrorist investigators instantly query a massive system of interconnected commercial and government databases that hold billions of records on Americans.
Some background (from the article):
The proposed network is based on the Markle Foundation Task Force’s December 2003 report, which envisioned a system that would allow FBI and CIA agents, as well as police officers and some companies, to quickly search intelligence, criminal and commercial databases. The proposal is so radical, the bill allocates $50 million just to fund the system’s specifications and privacy policies.
However,
[t]o prevent abuses of the system, the Markle task force recommended anonymized technology, graduated levels of permission-based access and automated auditing software constantly hunting for abuses.
An appendix to the report went so far as to suggest that the system should “identify known associates of the terrorist suspect, within 30 seconds, using shared addressees, records of phone calls to and from the suspect’s phone, e-mails to and from the suspect’s accounts, financial transactions, travel history and reservations, and common memberships in organizations, including (with appropriate safeguards) religious and expressive organizations.”
But task force member James X. Dempsey, director of the Center for Democracy & Technology, says the commercial records involved are more limited public records, such as home ownership data, not information about what mosque someone belongs to.
He said he believes it’s “absurd” to prohibit the FBI from using a commercial database like ChoicePoint to find a suspected terrorist’s home address (though the FBI currently can and does do this). On the other hand, he asked, “Should they be able to go to ChoicePoint and ask for all the subscribers to Gun Owners Monthly? No, I don’t think so.”
The proposed network would not look for patterns in data warehouses to attempt to detect terrorist activities, Dempsey said. Instead, an investigator would start with a name and the system would try to see what information is known about that person.
Seems to me that’s in keeping with the letter and spirit of the Constitution. But
critics say the Senate is moving too fast and the network could infringe on civil liberties. Lawmakers are taking a “boil the ocean” approach, according to Robert Griffin, president of Knowledge Computing. His company runs Coplink, a widely used system for linking law enforcement databases. Despite being a supporter of increased information sharing, Griffin criticized the proposal for trying too much too soon and relying too heavily on commercial data.
“The next Mohammed Atta is not going to be found in commercial databases,” Griffin said, referring to the tactical leader of the 9/11 attacks. “We are going to stop him running a red light somewhere, and we are going to run relationships associations with this guy and we are going to say, gee, you have things in common with guys on watch lists. That’s how you are going to find the guy — not because he has bad credit.”
Civil liberties lawyer Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation accused Congress of “institutional laziness” for not holding hearings on the proposal to hear the perspectives of advocates for consumers or battered women. Tien also argued that a widespread lack of privacy and due process protections would make data sharing dangerous.
“If someone transfers your credit report or medical history, you have no way of knowing,” Tien said. “The natural feedback we expect in the physical world just doesn’t work in the area of information. You have to be careful.”
Tien is not alone in his concern. On Monday, more than 40 organizations, ranging from the American Association of Law Libraries to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, signed on to an open letter (.pdf) to Congress asking members to include adequate civil liberties safeguards in the pending legislation.
However,
technology professor Dave Farber said that his work on the task force convinced him the task force’s model was a “critical” tool in the fight against terrorists.
“A lot of (task force members) were very uncomfortable about data sharing,” Farber said. “But all of us at the end felt confident that if the recommendations were followed, it was as good as it was going to get relative to privacy protections.”
Let’s get this right, folks. We don’t know how the next Mohammed Atta will be found (if he is) before he commits an atrocity. How in the hell do you know, a priori, how you’re going to find him?
We’re talking about public records, right? If you don’t want to create a public record, don’t drive a car, own a house, open a public library account, borrow money from a regulated financial institution, and on and on. Look, do you think the government is going to slam you in jail because you live in Detroit, read Popular Mechanics, and give money to the Green Party? That’s a big waste of time. What the government needs is a better insight into the goings on of people who might, for other reasons, be suspected of implication in terrorist plots. It’s called “process of elimination”.
Get a grip on yourselves, folks. If 1984 is coming, it’s coming at your local university, where you can’t call say anything that might be construed as offensive to anyone who isn’t a white, Christian male.
Here are my questions for the hysterical, knee-jerk opponents of government data-mining: Are you (a) completely in favor of letting terrorists operate with impunity, (b) completely devoid of concern for the fate of your fellow Americans, (c) completely paranoid, (d) just waiting for a Democrat administration to propose the same legislation, when you’ll be for it, or (e) all of the above?
If you really think the proposal is a threat to your privacy and civil liberties, consider Dave Farber’s credentials. The man is a walking, talking, fire-breathing civil libertarian and Democrat. If he can live with, why can’t the rest of you?
On October 22, the Cato Institute will host a conference on the subject of “Lessons from the Iraq War: Reconciling Liberty and Security.” Much of it will be a re-hash of the war in Iraq. But Panel III — “The Principles Guiding Military Intervention” — might offer some useful libertarian insights for and against pre-emptive war.
For some of my neolibertarian views on the subject, try these posts:
Libertarian Nay-Saying on Foreign and Defense Policy
Libertarian Nay-Saying on Foreign and Defense Policy, Revisited
Libertarianism and Pre-emptive War: Part I
Right On! For Libertarian Hawks Only
Understanding Libertarian Hawks
The U.S. Supreme Court has “let stand a lower-court ruling that telemarketers’ rights to free speech are not violated by the government’s nationwide do-not-call list,” according to a Reuters report at MSNBC. The report continues:
Without comment, the justices rejected an appeal by commercial telemarketers against the lower-court ruling, which upheld as constitutional the popular program in which consumers can put their names on a list if they do not want to be called by telemarketers.
“We hold that the do-not-call registry is a valid commercial speech regulation because it directly advances the government’s important interests in safeguarding personal privacy and reducing the danger of telemarketing abuse without burdening an excessive amount of speech,” the appeals court said.
It’s all too nuanced for me. Here was my take on the issue, back on June 29:
It’s my phone and my house, dammit. There’s no free speech issue. Does freedom of speech give anyone the right to burst into your house at dinner time and shout “Joe Schmoe for dogcatcher!”? I don’t think so.
Anyway, let’s celebrate a victory for property rights, even if the courts can’t bring themselves to call it that.
A point worth pondering, from a review by John B. Judis of Fareed Zakaria’s The Future of Freedom:
…Zakaria argues that the United States suffers from an excess of democracy, which is threatening liberty. The analysis appears to come full circle — liberty leads to democracy and democracy ends up undermining liberty, prompting him to call for “a restoration of balance” between them….
A return to constitutional principles would do the trick. But how to get there?
Tom G. Palmer of the Cato Institute — neither being at the top of my libertarian hit parade — actually says something I can endorse:
…Libertarians recognize the inevitable pluralism of the modern world and for that reason assert that individual liberty is at least part of the common good. They also understand the absolute necessity of cooperation for the attainment of one’s ends; a solitary individual could never actually be “self-sufficient,” which is precisely why we must have rules–governing property and contracts, for example–to make peaceful cooperation possible and we institute government to enforce those rules. The common good is a system of justice that allows all to live together in harmony and peace; a common good more extensive than that tends to be, not a common good for “all of us,” but a common good for some of us at the expense of others of us….
The issue of the common good is related to the beliefs of communitarians regarding the personality or the separate existence of groups. Both are part and parcel of a fundamentally unscientific and irrational view of politics that tends to personalize institutions and groups, such as the state or nation or society….
Group personification obscures, rather than illuminates, important political questions. Those questions, centering mostly around the explanation of complex political phenomena and moral responsibility, simply cannot be addressed within the confines of group personification, which drapes a cloak of mysticism around the actions of policymakers, thus allowing some to use “philosophy”–and mystical philosophy, at that–to harm others.
Libertarians are separated from communitarians by differences on important issues, notably whether coercion is necessary to maintain community, solidarity, friendship, love, and the other things that make life worth living and that can be enjoyed only in common with others. Those differences cannot be swept away a priori; their resolution is not furthered by shameless distortion, absurd characterizations, or petty name-calling.
The Traditional View: Defense Must Be Produced by Government
Defense usually is considered a public good, which Wikipedia defines thus:
In economics, a public good is one that cannot or will not be produced for individual profit, since it is difficult to get people to pay for its large beneficial externalities. A public good is defined as an economic good which possesses two properties:
• …once it has been produced, each person can benefit from it without diminishing anyone else’s enjoyment.
• …once it has been created, it is impossible to prevent people from gaining access to the good….
The public goods problem is that a free market is unlikely to produce the theoretically optimum amount of any public good: such important goods as national defense will be underproduced due to the free-rider problem….
A free-rider is an individual who is extremely individualistic, considering benefits and costs that affect only him or her. Suppose this individual thinks about exerting some extra effort to defend the nation. The benefits to the individual of this effort would be very low, since the benefits would be distributed among all of the millions of other people in the country. Further, the free rider knows that he or she cannot be excluded from the benefits of national defense. There is also no way that these benefits can be split up and distributed as individual parcels to people. But just because one person refuses to defend the country does not mean that the nation is not going to be defended. So this person would not voluntarily exert any extra effort, unless there is some inherent pleasure in doing so….
If voluntary provision of public goods will not work, then the obvious solution is making their provision involuntary. (Each of us is saved from our own individualistic short-sightedness.) One general solution to the problem is for governments or states to impose taxation to fund the production of public goods….
Defense as a Marketable Good: The Anarcho-Capitalist View
Anarcho-capitalists take an entirely different view. They see the state as illegitimate. Defense, therefore, is something that individuals should provide for themselves. How would that work? To find out, we turn to the Mises Institute, which in 2003 published a book of essays with the title The Myth of National Defense: Essays on the Theory and History of Security Production. The Mises Review (Vol. 10, No. 1; Spring 2004) carries an incestuous and, therefore, sycophantic and faithful review of that tome. Here are excerpts of the review, with my comments interspersed:
…History shows that no civilized community of substantial size can exist without a state; and arguments from political theory and economics show that the state is a necessity for adequate defense. The state may be evil, but it is a necessary evil.
The contributors to the Myth of National Defense dissent entirely from the line of thought just sketched. They raise a host of objections to the conventional view….
Jeffrey Hummel succinctly presents the argument that history shows the necessity of the state: “If private defense is better than government defense, why has government kept winning over the centuries? Indeed, the State’s military prowess has more than seemingly precluded the modern emergence of any anarcho-capitalist society….How can [radical libertarians such as Rothbard] attribute the origins of government to successful conquest and simultaneously maintain that a completely free society, without government, could prevent such conquest”…?
Both Hummel and the team of Luigi Marco Bassani and Carlo Lottieri endeavor in differing ways to respond to the argument just posed. According to Hummel,…”The free-rider problem, long presented by economists as a normative justification of the State, is in reality a positive explanation for why the State first arose and persisted”….
[D]oes not his very explanation render impossible successful resistance to the contemporary state? Will not the free-rider problem once more explain the persistence of the state?
Hummel has an ingenious response. Since the Industrial Revolution, wealth has become much more important than before in military conflict. This gives stateless groups a better chance of success than before, given the undoubted fact that the free market promotes economic growth more efficiently than a state-controlled society.
Aha! Things are different now. We’re in a “new economy” — just as we were before the stock market bubble burst in 2000. Well, when are the stateless groups going to get off their duffs and provide their own defense? We have stateless groups providing “offense” against which we must defend. Why haven’t the wealthy investment bankers who were victimized on 9/11 (and who might well be victimized again) raised mercenary armies to track down terrorists?
But what about the free-rider problem? Hummel maintains that this does not totally rule out collective action. It can be overcome if people have a strong enough commitment to the rightness of their cause….
If, if, if! The magic word. The world would be perfect only if it weren’t imperfect
Bassani and Lottieri respond in a different way. They reject the conquest theory of the state, as well as other accounts that postulate for the state a vast antiquity. Quite the contrary, they contend that the state began only when the Middle Ages came to an end. Not until then did people suffer from that baleful development, a centralized authority holding a monopoly of force over a national territory….
Once we grasp the modern origins of the state, is not our task of resistance to it made easier? No longer need we view the state as a fixed and irremovable presence. If the state did not always exist, may we not hope to remove it?…
Bad logic. It won’t work unless you can remove the conditions that arose at the end of the Middle Ages. That is, it won’t work unless you have a time-reversal machine.
Hobbes argued that without a state, individuals would find themselves in constant conflict. In order to avoid the “war of all against all,” must not everyone surrender his arms to the sovereign, who will then protect us? Hans Hoppe finds this argument less than convincing. Hobbes maintains that “in order to institute peaceful cooperation among themselves, two individuals, A and B, require a third independent party, S, as ultimate judge and peacemaker….To be sure, S will make peace between A and B, but only so that he himself can rob both of them more profitably. Surely S is better protected, but the more he is protected, the less A and B are protected against attacks by S”….Hobbes fails to show that the sovereign improves on the state of nature….
Well, by that example the sovereign doesn’t do worse than the state of nature. But there’s more:
[T]he question raised earlier recurs. Even if the state acts as a predator, is it not needed for defense against other states? But why should we accept this contention?
Here we must turn to arguments from economic theory. It is often alleged that national defense is a “public good” that the market cannot supply in adequate quantity. Both Larry Sechrest and Walter Block dissent from this all-too-prevalent orthodoxy. Why should we think that defense is a single good that must be supplied on an equal basis to everyone resident in a nation? “It is neither impossible to exclude nonpayers nor is it true that bringing in an additional person under the safety umbrella costs no additional resources”….With his customary imaginative flair, Block offers numerous ingenious examples to support his challenge to the standard view….
Well, here’s a counter-example for you: How would you have excluded non-payers who happened to be working in the World Trade Center on 9/11? And, if the Air Force had arrived on the scene in time to shoot down the hijacked airliners before they struck the World Trade Center, how would it have cost more to shoot them down if, say, one more non-payer had been present in the World Trade Center?
Joseph Stromberg strengthens the case with a vital point. It by no means follows that a free society must match the bloated expenditures of the Leviathan state in order to defend itself effectively. “I assume that minimal states and anarchies can do without nuclear bombs, cruise missiles, stealth bombers, and expensive ‘systems’ suited to world conquest or universal meddling.
This is merely an assertion that a people who “mind their own business” don’t’ need to be ready to defend themselves of their overseas interests against potential aggressors. It’s head-in-the-sand isolationism of the most naïve sort. It assumes that aggressors act only when provoked and not for their own reasons.
As for the ‘force structure’ of mere defense, I believe we would see some rough combination of militias and ‘insurance companies’—perhaps not as mutually exclusive as we think—with resort to mass-based guerrilla war, however and by whomever organized, in extremis”….
Right! Our overseas economic interests won’t be attacked if we lack offensive weapons and we can protect our domestic interests solely with militias and “insurance companies”. How would that work? The militias would rise up on the spot to protect…whom? subscribers?. What happens when those who underwrite the militias get tired of paying for protection when nothing’s happening? Do they just drop out of the syndicate? And what happens when enough of them do it and the militias are practically disarmed? Aha! That’s when terrorists strike. And what do “insurance companies” do, sell protection? How do the bad guys discriminate between policy-holders and free-riders? They can’t, unless you believe that terrorists will go door-to-do and attack only those who don’t have a policy. And there’s the problem of what happens when people tire of paying premiums when things have been calm for a long while.
The state, like it or not, is less likely to lose interest in what’s going on. The state isn’t perfect, certainly, but it has an incentive to make things look bad so that it can maintain large, standing armed forces and intelligence systems. Now, that may seem like a damaging admission on my part, but it isn’t. There are things it’s better to have too much of than too little of. Too much defense is expensive — but it’s likely to save your neck. Too little defense is cheap — but fatal. And anyone who thinks he can prescribe just the right amount and kind of defense must also think he knows, now, when the next stock market bubble will form and burst.
And so we approach the finale:
The argument for libertarian defense rests on two points. First, a libertarian society would have a much less ambitious agenda than states in the contemporary world.
Oh really? No overseas economic interests? And what about predators who don’t care about our agenda?
Murray Rothbard, with characteristic incisiveness, makes clear the drastically limited circumstances in which war is justified. Specifically, there is no universal mandate to impose a good society all over the world: nations must mind their own business….
That is, the United States must mind its own business. And if other nations — or independent operators — decide not to mind their own business, they’ll simply leave us alone because of the purity of our motives. There’s more of that, but it’s just nonsense:
…Democracies, swollen with self-righteousness, tend to wage unlimited wars that ignore humane restraints….
As opposed to fanatical totalitarian regimes?
[T]here is good reason to think that if a libertarian society found itself the victim of invasion, guerrilla warfare would prove a successful response…”We start from the truism that defense has the advantage….And once people are driven to guerrilla tactics defeating them raises the ratio of attackers to defenders to somewhere between 4-to-1 and 6-to-1 or higher. Successful ‘pacification’ and occupation may require a 10-to-1 superiority”….
These guys have been watching too many movies. (Red Dawn comes immediately to mind.)
Conclusion
The merry band of anarcho-capitalists at the Mises Institute must believe that Laden and his ilk wouldn’t bother us if we were retreat to within our borders, though that would mean abandoning vital economic interests overseas. (I guess those are of no interest to anarcho-capitalists, who are free to assume oil wells in every yard.) The critical assumption, of course, is that we would be left alone. Is that a reasonable assumption to make? I don’t think so. Bin Laden and his ilk are religious fanatics, bent on avenging the past failures of Islam, which they attribute wrongly to infidels.
Anarcho-capitalists also must believe that by effectively disarming we wouldn’t be inviting other nation-states to arm and fill the power void. That belief flies in the face of human nature. Greed and power-lust are self-generating; they aren’t brought into existence by provocation. If these anarcho-capitalists believe that Hitler only wanted “lebensraum” and Stalin only wanted a buffer zone around his “utopia”, then these anarcho-capitalists are bigger fools than Neville Chamberlain, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Jimmy Carter.
Finally — resorting to the logic that “my client isn’t guilty, but if he is guilty he only acted in self-defense” — anarcho-capitalists admit that we might be attacked by terrorists or nation-states even if we were to withdraw within our borders and effectively disarm, as a nation. Then, they assert, some of us could resort to guerrilla warfare, for which militias and “insurance companies” would be well prepared. Now there’s a strategy for you: Wait until the enemy attacks us, then hope that he only attacks those who haven’t paid for protection. Or hope that enough of us have voluntarily paid someone to have stockpiled the right kinds of weapons and trained properly — for a guerrilla war against weapons of mass destruction. I’d laugh if it weren’t suicidally stupid.
Anarcho-capitalists, meet Alice. I’m sure you’ll all be very happy together in Wonderland.
P.S. Notice how I got through all that without invoking images of competing ganglords, gunbattles in the streets, innocent bystanders being shot, and other innocents being forced to pay protection money at gunpoint? Well, I couldn’t resist adding this P.S. about those, the penultimate consequences of anarcho-capitalism — before an outside enemy would swoop in and bring “peace” to our troubled shores.
In a post about Richard Epstein and his book, Skepticism and Freedom, Tim Sandefur of Freespace says:
The title comes from Epstein’s belief that we ought to be highly skeptical of the idea that an outside party has better knowledge about the choices (and the benefits from them) that a person makes. The person making the deal is in the best position to know whether the deal meets his desires or not, and unless the bystander is directly injured, he shouldn’t be able to substitute his choices.
But Sandefur later says:
A related element of Epstein’s argument — indeed, I think it’s the real thesis of the book — is that he believes the state may force exchanges between parties, without their consent, so long as these exchanges leave no party worse off, and leaves at least one party better off. The principle of eminent domain — about which Epstein wrote extensively in his book Takings — embodies this idea, ideally. Epstein acknowledges that this element of his thought makes him pretty unique among libertarians, who probably would not accept it. But Epstein believes that it is a necessary element of society; there are many collective agreements which would leave everyone better off, but which, due to some transaction cost, cannot be enforced. The law can then serve to enforce these agreements. This principle allows Epstein to (in theory) escape some of the more complicated problems of political philosophy, since it allows society to evolve in a direction that accommodates liberty in a practical manner[.]
Which leads me to ask:
1. In light of Epstein’s belief that we ought to be highly skeptical of the idea that an outside party has better knowledge about the choices (and the benefits from them) that a person makes, how does Epstein reckon that the state, as an outside party, is able to determine that the parties to a forced exchange will be better off as a result of the exchange?
2. What happens to the transactions costs that (presumably) keep the parties from undertaking an exchange that the state decides to force? Do the costs simply vanish or does the state (that is, taxpayers) defray them?
3. Is Epstein’s concept of forced exchange a justification of the integration of commerce (e.g., forcing whites to accommodate blacks at hotels, restaurants, etc., and forcing whites to offer houses to black as well as white buyers)?
4. If Epstein’s concept of forced exchange justifies the integration of commerce, how does the state account for the preference of whites not to trade with blacks, or does the state simply regard that preference as illegitimate?
5. If the state chooses to treat the preference of whites as illegitimate, by what criterion does the state judge the legitimacy of the preferences of parties to a forced exchange being contemplated by the state?
Favorite Posts: Affirmative Action and Race
A few weeks ago I posted about a piece by Max Borders, “Flying with Libertarian Hawks.” Comments by a reader led me to do a followup post.
Borders, too, has been getting mail, so he has followed up with “Sparring with Libertarian Doves.” He makes some points that I’ve made in various posts on libertarianism and war, but he makes them so compellingly that I can’t resist the urge to quote:
…It is by virtue of both security and the rule of law that we are both free and united as a people. Sometimes these forces — i.e. national security and the rule of law — appear, at times, to come into conflict — much like human cells and the immune system. But one can’t exist without the other.
That is why I find it even more curious that some libertarians advocate a private, decentralized protective apparatus. When such a system is worked out properly, I might be convinced. Until then, I’ll pay my taxes and pray that my leaders keep me safe to the best of their judgment, using the best available information….
Now, at the strategic level, critics may be right in saying that the Iraqis may not be able to sustain a liberal democracy. But it will be worth it to find out (despite the bellyaching of anarcho-capitalists who don’t want to underwrite such measures). A long term strategy to plant the seeds of liberal democracy in places where serious threats would otherwise fester in the status quo is a necessary evil — and I should add doesn’t require “wholly remaking the social and political order.” (I believe that all people prefer freedom to tyranny and the process emergent order can follow after they get some momentum.) And while it may seem un-libertarian to use tax revenues for adventures that some people just don’t get is, well, the nature of the beast — that is, the actions of an imperfect nation-state, doing what it has to do in an age of deadly weapons proliferation and terrorism.
Finally, other libertarians believe that invasions like Iraq run afoul of the rights of those we would attack. Indeed, some critics of my article claimed that my brand of libertarianism “denies a right not to be killed to people who are not liberal democrats or who do not live in liberal democracies.” Ultimately, I think rights — as such — are conferred by constitutions at home and to a lesser degree by international alliances abroad. Beyond that, human rights are just words we can afford to use when we’re certain about our safety. To think otherwise is to be willing to die and expect fellow citizens to die for what are little more than libertarian flights of fancy [emphasis mine: ED].
Zing! Ouch!
I am working on a piece about the viability of the kind of “private, decentralized protective apparatus” espoused by anarcho-capitalists. It will be a doozy. Stay tuned.
An article (“How religion divides the Democrats”) at The Boston Globe site, boston.com, includes this statement:
Libertarians and social conservatives are locked in a do-or-die battle for the soul of the Republican Party.
Sadly untrue. Most libertarians, being too pure of mind for the likes of Republicans, have gone off into their own never-never land, crying “peace at any price” and having no influence whatever on anything.
Instead of trying to shape Republicanism from within — which is my long-standing advice to the Libertarian Party — the party goes off on its own and nominates kooks like Michael Badnarik. The Libertarian Party would make a lot more progress toward its goals if it were to align itself with the Republican Party. It wouldn’t get them a half-loaf of bread — more like a slice. But a slice of bread is still better than no bread at all.
Hard-core, card-carrying, upper-case Libertarians won’t do that. Well, it’s their money, let ’em waste it. That’s my neolibertarianism speaking.
Gene Healy — a traditional libertarian — points to a depression test. I took it and scored 5 (low is good), which means:
You show absolutely no signs of depression. Indeed, you seem like one of the happiest people around. This is most likely a result of a positive attitude, high self-esteem and well-developed coping skills and strategies. Wonderful! Keep your spirits up!
Gene scored well, also, with a 15. But 5 is a lot better than 15. It must be because I’m a neolibertarian.
Yesterday I noted that QandO bills itself as neolibertarian, a term that seems to describe me. Today QandO has written more about neolibertarianism and linked to its previous posts on the subject. Here are some excerpts of the best posts (here, here, and here):
I consider myself a Neolibertarian for two main reasons:
1: Utility
Libertarians have no sense of pragmatism; no concept of “degrees of freedom”. While their goal is liberty, when they are actually faced with a choice between 80% liberty and 50% liberty, they invariably allow 50% liberty because they’re unwilling to vote for anything less than 100% liberty….2: Foreign policy:
As Dale Franks wrote of Libertarian foreign policy…..they really don’t have one. To them the foreigners are suspiciously heathen, and the best thing we can do is ignore them ’til they go away. […] So, I’m a libertarian, sure. Right up to the water’s edge. Then, all the sudden, I morph into Teddy Roosevelt.
Well, that’s where I am, too. Teddy Roosevelt’s foreign policy was Wilsonian Internationalism without all the naive faith in idealism and collectivism….
Meanwhile, in the real world, people who disavow the use of force to accomplish political ends will never be a match for people who are quite comfortable thankyouverymuch with using force to accomplish their ends.
To put it in simpler terms: human nature being what it is, a Party which promises just the right degree of bread and circuses will almost always beat a Party which promises no bread or circuses at all. Always, in the long term.
So, what’s the point in being a libertarian at all if we can’t “win”?…
Neolibertarianism is, essentially, a more pragmatic, results-oriented, version of libertarianism. It is not as ideologically rigid, to the exclusion of effectiveness. I believe that, if we truly want more liberty, then it is encumbent upon us to act in ways that actually work towards increasing liberty, rather than simply running off the cliff, flag flying high….then bitching about the fact that the world didn’t see things our way and repeal the laws of gravity out of respect for our strongly held views.
To be more specific: in my case, at least, I believe the concept of “Natural rights”–i.e., “rights” that people have as a function of their very nature–is silly. We have no more “natural rights” than does any given animal. And you see how well that works out for them. (or, at least, I did last night over a steak)
The universe makes no normative judgements on “right and wrong”. It’s simply matter and energy.
“Rights” are only “rights” insofar as they are enforceable. Which means “power” is the absolute, and not “rights”.
That’s the way I see the world. So, from now on I’m a neolibertarian who espouses neolibertarianism.
Lee at verbum ipsum takes issue with my recent post about Libertarian hawks. In that post I took a shot at a point he had made:
Libertarian hawks want an all-powerful State that can preemptively crush its enemies abroad but will leave us in peace and freedom at home. The idea that foreign policy and domestic liberty can exist in hermetically sealed compartments seems willfully naïve given historical precedent.
About which I said:
I’m not sure about the historical precedent, but there’s plenty of peace and freedom abroad in the U.S. today, in spite of the present emergency. Just look at what went on in New York City during the Republican convention and what goes on daily in the media and across the internet. The crushing of dissent is confined almost exclusively to liberal-run academia. Moreover, Lee…chooses to overlook completely the strategic advantage of foreign intervention, which is to take the fight to the enemy and, in combination with other (clandestine) means, to distract him, to disrupt his plans, and to deny his access to resources. Perhaps Lee would rather fight it out in his living room.
Lee has responded thoughtfully, and so I will quote him at length:
First off, unlike some, I have never claimed that dissent is being “crushed” in present-day America. Of course, there’s still freedom in America. The relevant question is whether war is a threat to freedom. I merely pointed out that, as a matter of historical fact, war tends to increase the power, prestige and role of the State in people’s everyday lives. As James Madison put it:
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.
Whether it’s been justified on balance, it’s pretty hard to deny that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have resulted in at least two items on Madison’s list, the increase of debt and the increase in the discretionary power of the Executive.
Now, I’m not saying that this shows war is always unjustified, but for libertarians I would think that, other things being equal, measures that tend to increase the power of the State are to be avoided whenever possible. At the very least, libertarians should not be eager to go to war. War will always require a shift from a relatively free liberal order to a more highly centralized one; resources must be allocated, troops must be marshaled, and lives and freedom will be lost.
Secondly,…who is “the enemy” here? As I stated before, I have no problem with “taking the fight” to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and elsewhere if necessary. But I don’t see how this offers any justification for the invasion of Iraq, which it now seems safe to say, posed little or no threat to the U.S. Are libertarians of all people going to give the government a blank check to invade anyplace they think “the enemy” might be?
Look, I’m not a libertarian…but I am mystified at self-proclaimed libertarians who are so eager to embrace military interventionism. After all, what is this but another big-government program? Barring a clear and present threat, I would think they would want the government to show restraint. Isn’t that the whole point of their creed?
I’m not going to argue with Lee. I’m simply going to say how I, as a libertarian, can take positions that he, as a non-libertarian, seems to find inimical to libertarianism.
I’ll begin with my libertarian view of the state: The existence of the state is justified solely by its role as the protector of its citizens from predators, within and without, so that those citizens may be secure in their persons and in their enjoyment of the fruits of liberty. Defense isn’t just “another big-government program” — it’s one of the few government programs that’s consistent with libertarian principles. (Beware of “libertarians” who think that defense can be privatized. They’re actually anarcho-capitalists who reflexively reject the legitimacy of the state’s existence for any purpose.)
Thus the question for a libertarian is not whether the state should defend liberty and safety, but when and how it becomes necessary to defend liberty and safety. How much it costs depends on the when and how; there’s no arbitrary upper limit on defense spending.
Before I go any further, I must emphasize that I’m talking about the liberty and safety of Americans. We’re not a nation for nothing. In fact we’re a nation because the Founders fought for our liberty and safety. I am not a moral relativist when it comes to American’s liberty and safety. They take precedence over the liberty and safety of other nations. American’s liberty and safety may be served by the liberty and safety of other nations, but the liberty and safety of other nations are secondary to the liberty and safety of Americans.
The defense of liberty and safety sometimes requires us to relinquish some of the fruits of liberty, as in World War II, when soldiers were drafted, goods were rationed, and there was a wall of secrecy around much of what the government was doing. The present war is, by comparison, almost benign in its effects on Americans. But the real question isn’t whether we now have more or less liberty and (apparent) safety than we had on September 10, 2001, but how to maximize our liberty and safety in light of the threat that became blindingly visible to us on September 11, 2001.
For that’s when the war on terror began in earnest — when we were struck. The question then facing us was not whether to go to war but how to fight the war.
War can be fought defensively or offensively. Defensive war-fighting is like defensive football — it cedes the initiative to the opponent. You’re always trying to figure out what he’s going to do next instead of turning the tables on him and forcing him to figure out what you’re going to do next. A state that chooses to fight a defensive war is, in my view, a state that inadequately defends its citizens’ liberty and safety. Thus the preference of libertarian hawks for an offensive war on terror doesn’t arise from an eagerness for war but from an understanding of war and from a fundamental tenet of libertarianism: The state’s legitimate role is to protect its citizens from predators.
Fighting an offensive war on terror is a lot harder than fighting an offensive war against a nation-state with well-defined armed forces. There’s much less certainty about where the enemy is, where he’s going to strike next, and where to strike him — financially, and diplomatically, and through the courts, as well as militarily. But the state must proceed in the face of uncertainty, sometimes making mistakes and sometimes making progress toward defeating the enemy — or at least diminishing his ability to strike at us.
The uncertainty involved in fighting terrorism requires giving the government some degree of latitude, but that latitude hardly amounts to a blank check. The invasion of Iraq, for example, was specifically authorized by Congress and is constantly questioned in Congress and the media. There’s no blank check there, simply a reasonable degree of deference to the commander-in-chief whose responsibility it is to prosecute the war. That deference will end if and when Congress decides to end it.
Was the invasion of Iraq a mistake or a strategic move that — although costly — will in the end repay its cost? I believe that it was a good strategic move, but I’m willing to concede that it’s too soon to tell. And we’ll never know if we cut and run, as libertarian doves (among others) would have us do.
If we were to cut and run, what signal would that send to terrorists? And what signal would it send to other regimes — notably Syria and Iran — that support terrorists and have aggressive ambitions of their own? If history teaches us anything, it is that an aggressor moves quickly to fill a perceived vacuum.
Another thing that history teaches us is the resiliency of American’s civil liberties. They have advanced markedly during the past 228 years, in spite of wars. Our economic liberties haven’t fared as well, but the regulatory-welfare state that shackles those liberties arose and has grown independently of the guardian state that strives to defend all of our liberties. In fact, the proponents of the regulatory-welfare state have generally viewed the guardian state as a rival for resources.
Libertarians — even libertarian doves — would rather have some sort of guardian state than any sort of regulatory-welfare state. The argument within libertarian circles, insofar as I can tell, is an argument about just what the guardian state should do to protect our safety and liberty.
That thought must have crossed the minds of some highly placed Democrat sympathizers in the “mainstream” media when the blogosphere started shredding the threadbare remnants of Dan Rather’s reputation for honest reporting. But the blogosphere is protected by the First Amendment, isn’t it?
There’s stark evidence that the blogosphere can be regulated, if the feds want to do it. Look at the airwaves, which the feds seized long ago, and which the feds censor by intimidation. Look at the ever-tightening federal control of political speech, which has brought us to McCain-Feingold. It’s all in the name of protecting us, of course.
Here’s how the blogosphere might come under the “protection” of a regulatory body: Major blogging service providers (Blogspot, TypePad, etc.) and major internet service providers (SBC, AT&T, etc.) become the targets of a class-action lawsuit brought by the “victims” of a blogospheric assault — a group of persons more savory than Bill Burkett (suspected author of the forged National Guard documents used by Rather). The targets cut a deal with the FCC — protection in return for regulation. The FCC justifies the regulation of content on the same grounds that it justifies the regulation of the content of radio and TV transmissions — the transmissions are a “commodity” in interstate commerce, not “speech”. The FCC then begins monitoring blogospheric emissions (random monitoring would be sufficiently chilling) and entertaining complaints from offended readers of blogs (lefties who don’t like what righties write, and vice versa). You can guess the rest.
Of course, it might not happen with Congress and the White House in Republican hands. But look at who was in charge when McCain-Feingold became law.
Favorite Posts: Academic Freedom and Freedom of Speech
I hadn’t seen the term before. QandO is about to relaunch, in a new, expanded incarnation. The term comes up in QandO‘s prospectus for its new venture:
A few notes on what we’re hoping to do:
* Neolibertarianism: we’d like to use this portal as a chance to explore the concept of Neolibertarianism further. To create a bit of an identity for the philosophy, and a website/blog for Neolibertarian thought. Ideally — and down the road, of course — we’d like QandO.net to be an intellectual alternative and counterpoint to Paleolibertarian sites like antiwar.com and lewrockwell.com.
* Blog: obviously, the blog will, essentially, be the same great writing (Dale), keen analysis (McQ) and assorted other nonsense. (hi!)
* Discussion forums: for those of you who would like to continue your own conversations, invite friends to discussion groups, etc. (I’d also like to create a chat room, but that may involve a bit more than we can do currently)
* Our articles: from time to time, we’ll post larger column-length articles, or turn a blog post into something more column-friendly.
* Contributors: at some point, we plan to solicit and/or accept column contributions from readers and interested writers. We’d like to build a real library of Neolibertarian thought, comparable to what the National Review does for Conservatism.
Does that sound like too much? Perhaps. But it’s become very apparent that blogs have a very important contribution to make to the national discourse, and I want QandO to be an important part of that for our fellow Neolibertarians.
Now I know what I am — a neolibertarian. I guess that’s a libertarian who thinks that self-defense doesn’t stop at the water’s edge. Or, don’t wait until you see the whites of their eyes.
REVISED AND RE-DATED
I’ll begin with a standard definition of libertarianism, from Wikipedia:
Libertarianism…advocates individual rights and a limited government. Libertarians believe that individuals should be free to do anything they want, so long as they do not infringe upon what they believe to be the equal rights of others…For libertarians, there are no “positive rights” (such as to food or shelter or health care), only “negative rights” (such as to not be assaulted, abused, robbed or censored), including the right to personal property. Libertarians further believe that the only legitimate use of force, whether public or private, is to protect these rights.
I must add that the creation of positive rights amounts to a violation of negative rights, because the enforcement of positive rights involves taking from some persons in order to give to others.
Whence negative rights? Negative rights arise from experience and are the distilled lessons of that experience. Experience teaches those who seek to learn from it that the preservation of personal and economic freedoms serves the general good.
In particular, as John Stuart Mill understood, personal freedoms should be preserved because through them we become more knowledgeable, more self-reliant, and more productive. Friedrich A. Hayek elaborated on Mill’s insight by making the case that the personal and the economic are inseparable: We engage in economic activity to serve personal values and our personal values are reflected in our economic activity.
Moreover, as Hayek also tried to tell us, the state cannot make personal and economic decisions more effectively than individuals operating freely within an ever-evolving societal network. When the state intervenes in our lives it damages that network, to our detriment.
Thus, the general good — the increase of our knowledge, abilities, and wealth — is served best when the state recognizes our negative rights and acts to defend us and those rights from predators — without and within — and nothing more.
And that is the essence of modern libertarianism.
(This post is based on three earlier ones: here, here, and here. I should also acknowledge the foreshadowing of libertarianism in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations:
As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it. [Source: Wikipedia.]
Smith was describing the kind of learning from experience that is distilled in the tenets of libertarianism. Smith’s “invisible hand” is really the following mechanism at work: As long as A is left alone to discover how to make a good living (without harming, stealing from, or deceiving anyone), A will discover what he is capable of producing that is most desired by B. B will be made happier for being able to buy it from A, and A will be happier because B pays him a good price for it.
The visible and heavy hand of the state can never replicate the degree of happiness that results when free markets — operating through the invisible hand of self-interest — integrate the ever-changing knowledge, desires, and abilities of hundreds of millions of As and Bs.)
Are rights, such as those enumerated in the Bill of Rights, a creation of Nature (God, if you will) or a creation of humans?
Wikipedia‘s article on natural law explains that
natural law is the doctrine that just laws are immanent in nature (that can be claimed as discovered but not created by such things as a bill of rights) and/or that they can emerge by [the] natural process of resolving conflicts (as embodied by common law). These two aspects are actually very different, and can sometimes oppose or complement each other, although they share the common trait that they rely on immanence as opposed to design in finding just laws. In either case, law seeks more to discover a truth that is considered to exist independent and outside of the legal process itself, rather than simply to declare or apply a principle whose origin is inside the legal system.
The concept of natural law was very important in the development of Anglo-American common law. In the struggles between Parliament and the monarchy, Parliament often made reference to the Fundamental Laws of England which embodied natural law since time immemorial and set limits on the power of the monarchy. The concept of natural law was expressed in the English Bill of Rights and the United States Declaration of Independence — and by 19th-century anarchist and legal theorist, Lysander Spooner….
The article later refers to anarcho-capitalism and legal positivism. Regarding anarcho-capitalism, Wikipedia says that
Libertarians in general, and anarcho-capitalists in particular, have developed two different approaches to their theories, from a utilitarian point of view, or from a point of view of natural law. Some of them defend one approach and dismiss the other, whereas some of them, like Bastiat, claim an inherent harmony or correspondence between the two complementary approaches.
The Natural Law approach…argues that the existence of the state is immoral, and that unlimited capitalism is the only ethical political system, or rather anti-political system. The Utilitarian approach…argues that abolition of the state in favour of private businesses is economically more efficient. The Harmonic approach argues both as equivalent statements….
Then, there’s Wikipedia‘s take on legal positivism:
The principal claims of legal positivism are:
• that laws are rules made by human beings; and
• that there is no inherent or necessary connection between law and morality.Stated this way, it may surprise some that this is a controversial concept. Legal positivism stands in opposition to various contrary ideas that call themselves the tradition of natural law, a body of legal theory asserting that there is an essential connection between law and justice. Legal positivism…incorporates the separation thesis: the idea that legal validity has no essential connection with morality or justice…
I agree with legal positivists that “legal validity has no essential connection with morality or justice.” There’s abundant evidence of the truth of that statement. Much law, today, is a creature of special interests and political correctness — avarice and prejudice masquerading as morality.
However, when it comes to finding the source of rights, I favor the kernel of truth to be found in this statement of the Utilitarian theory of anarcho-capitalism: “abolition of the state in favour of private businesses is economically more efficient.” The kernel of truth is that rights (including, but not limited to, property rights) ought to exist because their existence and enforcement make us better off than we would be in their absence or non-enforcement. Anarcho-capitalists simply go overboard when they assert that rights can exist without the protection of the state. (Whose rights? I must ask.) Unfortunately, of course, the state that recognizes and protects rights is the same state that denies and suppresses them.
A complementary truth about rights lies in the version of the natural law doctrine which says that just laws (the embodiment of rights) “emerge by [the] natural process of resolving conflicts.”
In sum, rights arise out of the process of resolving conflicts because they serve the general good. The role of the state in all of this is (or should be) to recognize our rights and to defend us and those rights from predators, without and within.*
__________
*Another way of arriving at this conclusion can be found in my earlier posts on the origins of modern libertarianism in the philosophies of John Stuart Mill and Friedrich A. Hayek (here and here), where I said:
Mill instructs us that personal freedoms should be preserved because through them we become more knowledgeable and more capable; therefore, the state should intervene in our lives only to protect us from physical harm. Hayek then makes the case that the personal and the economic are inseparable: We engage in economic activity to serve personal values and our personal values are reflected in our economic activity. Moreover, the state cannot make personal and economic decisions more effectively than individuals operating freely within an ever-evolving societal network, and when the state intervenes in our lives it damages that network, to our detriment. That is the essence of modern libertarianism.
Just look at what happened to the “60 Minutes” story about Bush’s National Guard service. James Lileks (The Bleat) explains:
In retrospect, TV looks like a big smothering quilt: it killed the afternoon papers, forced the survivors to consolidate; it reshaped the news cycle to fit its needs, shifted the emphasis to the visual. It fed off the Times and the Post and other surviving papers, which had institutionalized the Watergate and Vietnam templates as the means by which we understand events. The old-line media, like its Boomer components, got old, and like the Boomers, it preferred self-congratulation to self-reflection. And so the Internet had it for lunch, because the Internet does not have to schedule 17 meetings to develop a strategy for impactfully maximizing brand leverage in emerging markets; the Internet does not have to worry about how a decision will affect one’s management trajectory; the Internet smells blood and leaps, and that has turned the game around, for better or worse….
Not having school-age children I didn’t know about forced mental screening. Now that I do know about it, I’m outraged.
A WorldNetDaily Exclusive:
Forced mental screening hits roadblock in House
Rep. Ron Paul seeks to yank program, decries use of drugs on children
Posted: September 9, 2004
1:00 a.m. EasternBy Ron Strom
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.comRep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, plans to offer an amendment in the House of Representatives today that would remove from an appropriations bill a new mandatory mental-health screening program for America’s children.
“The American tradition of parents deciding what is best for their children is, yet again, under attack,” writes Kent Snyder of the Paul-founded Liberty Committee. “The pharmaceutical industry has convinced President Bush to support mandatory mental-health screening for every child in America, including preschool children, and the industry is now working to convince Congress as well.”
As WorldNetDaily reported, the New Freedom Initiative recommends screening not only for children but eventually for every American. The initiative came out of the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, which President Bush established in 2002.
Critics of the plan say it is a thinly veiled attempt by drug companies to provide a wider market for high-priced antidepressants and antipsychotic medication, and puts government in areas of Americans’ lives where it does not belong.
Writes Snyder: “The real payoff for the drug companies is the forced drugging of children that will result – as we learned tragically with Ritalin – even when parents refuse.”
Paul’s amendment to the Labor, HHS and Education Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2005 would take the new program out of the funding bill.
The congressman…wrote in a letter to his colleagues: “As you know, psychotropic drugs are increasingly prescribed for children who show nothing more than children’s typical rambunctious behavior. Many children have suffered harmful effects from these drugs. Yet some parents have even been charged with child abuse for refusing to drug their children. The federal government should not promote national mental-health screening programs that will force the use of these psychotropic drugs such as Ritalin.”
The New Freedom Commission found that “despite their prevalence, mental disorders often go undiagnosed” and recommended comprehensive mental-health screening for “consumers of all ages,” including preschool children….
The state of Illinois has already approved its own mental-health screening program, the Children’s Mental Health Act of 2003, which will provide screening for “all children ages 0-18” and “ensure appropriate and culturally relevant assessment of your children’s social and emotional development with the use of standardized tools.”
Members of the Illinois Children’s Mental Health Partnership have held several public hearings on the program in recent months, hearing from parents and others who oppose the mandatory screening.
Karen R. Effrem, M.D., is a physician and leading opponent of mandatory screening. She is on the board of directors of EdWatch, an organization that actively opposes federal control of education.
“I am concerned, especially in the schools, that mental health could be used as a wedge for diagnosis based on attitudes, values, beliefs and political stances – things like perceived homophobia,” Effrem told WorldNetDaily.
“There are several violence-prevention programs that do say if a person is homophobic, they could be considered potentially violent.”
Continued Effrem: “This mental-health program could be used as an enforcement tool to impose a very politically correct, anti-American curriculum.”
Effrem emphasized the new program has no guarantees of parental rights, noting some children have died because parents were coerced to put their kids on psychiatric medications.
Snyder says the following groups have come out in opposition to the screening program: Eagle Forum, Gun Owners of America, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Concerned Women of America, Freedom 21, the Alliance for Human Research Protection, and the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology.
A screening program in Paul’s home state began nearly ten years ago. The Texas Medication Algorithm Project, or TMAP, was held up by the New Freedom Commission as a “model” medication treatment plan that “illustrates an evidence-based practice that results in better consumer outcomes.”
The TMAP – started in 1995 as an alliance of individuals from the pharmaceutical industry, the University of Texas and the mental health and corrections systems of Texas – also was praised by the American Psychiatric Association, which called for increased funding to implement the overall plan.
But the Texas project sparked controversy when a Pennsylvania government employee revealed state officials with influence over the plan had received money and perks from drug companies who stand to gain from it.
Allen Jones, an employee of the Pennsylvania Office of the Inspector General says in his whistleblower report the “political/pharmaceutical alliance” that developed the Texas project, which promotes the use of newer, more expensive antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs, was behind the recommendations of the New Freedom Commission, which were “poised to consolidate the TMAP effort into a comprehensive national policy to treat mental illness with expensive, patented medications of questionable benefit and deadly side effects, and to force private insurers to pick up more of the tab.”
Jones points out, according to a British Medical Journal report, companies that helped start the Texas project are major contributors to Bush’s re-election. Also, some members of the New Freedom Commission have served on advisory boards for these same companies, while others have direct ties to TMAP.
This isn’t a case that cries out for campaign-finance reform, it’s a case that cries out for restricting the scope of government to the powers enumerated in federal and State constitutions. If a particular State’s constitution allows such a program to exist, the voters of that State ought to march on its capitol.
(Thanks to my daughter-in-law for the tip.)
Politics and Prosperity 