Paul Frankel ("Goldrecordings") wrote to Bruce Cohen:
PF> http://anthonygregory.com/prowarlibertarians.html <PF
Gregory's hyperbolic strawmen are easily diagnosed
<http://blog.360.yahoo.com/knowinghumans?p=244> , and I haven't heard from
him since he failed to answer this
<http://humanknowledge.net/Correspondence/Anthony_Gregory/2005-08-25.htm> .
If you want an anti-war libertarian with the intellectual courage to
directly engage the best <http://blog.360.yahoo.com/knowinghumans&p=428>
liberventionist arguments, you need to skip past Gregory and look to Tom
Knapp <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marketliberal/message/1502> , who has
been known on occasion to eschew Gregory's tedious style of shrill anarchist
question-begging.
BC> Certainly, there is a big split, varying between 1/3-2/3 and 50-50 on
this. <BC
PF> Comes from misdirecting our recruitment efforts for the last
half-century or so: http://mises.org/story/2099 <PF
Note that the LP is only 36 years old, and isn't mentioned in that article.
While it's fascinating that you apparently think that the composition of the
libertarian movement is primarily determined by its "recruitment efforts",
you at least admit what for antiwar singleissuetarians must be the shocking
fact that so many self-identified libertarians supported this liberation.
Instead of going back a "half-century", you need only recur to 2000/2004 for
a natural historical <http://marketliberal.org/FixLP.html#Interventionism>
experiment that almost perfectly falsifies the thesis that antiwar is a
wedge issue that can grow the LP.
PF> Many people have come to agree that the Iraq invasion and occupation are
based on lies, <PF
What "lie" can you quote from Bush's invasion-eve speech as a statement that
Bush knew was false? See the analysis of Bush's invasion-eve speech here
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marketliberal/message/1619> .
PF> and have only made things in Iraq worse. <PF
See the 2004 polls of the Iraqi people cited here
<http://blog.360.yahoo.com/knowinghumans&p=428> . If you have any data
suggesting that the Iraqi people have changed their mind since then, it's
surely because of the brutal civil war that neither they nor the alleged
Iraq <http://blog.360.yahoo.com/knowinghumans&p=418> Cassandras predicted.
PF> Congress has not declared war. <PF
Art I Sec 8 grants Congress the power "to declare war" and "to make all laws
which shall be necessary and proper for carrying [that power] into
execution". Public Law 107-243 (the Iraq War Resolution of Oct 2002) said
"the President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as
he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to [...] enforce all
relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq." In
the text of the resolution, Congress explicitly mentions its "war power"
when discussing its authority to enact this law. Whether Congress believed
it was exercising its Constitutional war power is not even a close question,
and at any rate your position on the war wouldn't be one iota different if
Congress had said your magic words "we declare war".
PF> 2/3 of the general public is now opposed to the Iraq occupation <PF
So am I. My position has tracked more
<http://blog.360.yahoo.com/knowinghumans&p=424> closely to American public
opinion than yours has, but neither I nor "2/3 of the general public" are
remotely close to adopting zero-state anarcholibertarianism just because of
the Sunni-Shia civil war in Iraq.
PF> [...] continue the genocidal rape and plunder of Iraq. <PF
Is this histrionic self-marginalizing hyperbole the sort of language you had
in mind when you recently
<http://www.colliething.com/2007/01/open-letter-to-libertarian-national.html
> urged LNC Chair Bill Redpath to issue an antiwar position paper?
PF> War is the health of the state <PF
Pre-invasion Iraq concentrated the state's power in one man, and according
to the video I saw, this war didn't do much for the health of his neck.
PF> A global, unwinnable undeclared "war" against a religion with billions
of adherents and a timeless tactic of warfare is particularly bad. <PF
That some Americans cannot distinguish Al Qaeda from Islam does not imply
that US foreign policy does not make that distinction. The real problem
here is 1) America's support for Israel's multi-decade occupation of lands
containing over 3 million Palestinians and 2) America's insufficient
opposition to corrupt authoritarianism in Arab states. The latter has
changed a little since 9/11, but unfortunately the former hasn't really
changed at all.
PF> The mass anti war and pro-immigration demontrations are a huge outreach
and recruitment opportunity for us. <PF
I doubt you can point to any significant empirical evidence for your claim
here, let alone evidence on a scale approaching the 2000/2004 natural
experiment mentioned above.
Brian Holtz
2006 California LP Platform Committee Rep
<http://marketliberal.org/FixLP.html> http://marketliberal.org/FixLP.html
2004/6 Libertarian candidate for Congress, CA14 (Silicon Valley)
http://marketliberal.org <http://marketliberal.org/>
blog: http://knowinghumans.net <http://knowinghumans.net/>
