Tim Starr’s latest blog entry here has elicited responses from Jacob Hornberger and Sheldon Richman. Scroll down the entry for their comments.

Naturally I reject the Constitution in the first place as naked usurpation, so constitutional debates are of decidedly limited interest to me. Still, I think all three of these gentlemen are getting things wrong in one way or another.

I find nothing objectionable in what Hornberger says here about the Constitution, but his invocation of the non-aggression principle is moot. I’ll accept the NAP as a moral rule of thumb, though I reject radical notions of it which rule out collateral damage in actions taken against aggressors. There can be no question that the Iraqi regime was an aggressor, if only against it’s own citizens. Overthrowing that aggressive regime is in and of itself no more of a violation of the NAP than subduing a mugger. You may justifiably subdue a mugger even if he has not agressed against you personally, and even if he poses no danger to you. The NAP is moot here, it does not forbid the war in question and people who so invoke it are misconstruing the NAP.

Overthrowing the Iraqi regime is not in principle a violation of the NAP, but compelling American citizens to contribute to such a project is. Yet Starr, Hornberger and Richman all appear to be defending a document which explicitly asserts authority to violate the NAP, since it cannot reasonably be supposed to be a legitimate agreement between “we the people”.

I reject Richman’s assertion that Bush “subverted the democratic process” because a far greater share of the blame lies squarely with Congress which long ago abdicated it’s constitutional responsibilities in such matters. The fact that Congress is writing blank checks for the President is a far fundamental problem than the fact that he is cashing them. And voters have had half a century to rein in Congress, but have failed to do so. The Constitution does not and in principle cannot produce the results the framers sought. Bush is a very mild symptom of the real problem, he’s following a well established precedent; the fundamental problem lies in the very document being defended.

I agree with Hornberger and Richman on the narrow point that what we’re seeing now is contrary to what the framers intended. Under Starr’s interpretation the congressional power to declare war reduces to the power to make an official announcement, it doesn’t bar the president from initiating war at his discretion. I don’t doubt that the framers intended that full blown wars such as those in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq would have to be initiated by Congress.

But that doesn’t get you much, all it really demonstrates in the end is that the supposed checks on government power don’t work. They never will. The delusion that government can be limited through checks and balances is precisely as reasonable as the delusion that one can build a perpetual motion machine.

Sheldon Richman takes constitutionalists who supported Gulf War II to task for allegedly supporting an unconstitutional war. The crux of his argument is:

There is no warrant in the U.S. Constitution for the president of the United States to launch a war in order to liberate people from a brutal government.

Funny, I can’t find any restriction in the Constitution upon the power to declare war that it may not be done “to liberate people from a brutal government.” As far as the Constitution is concerned, war can be declared for any purpose found to be in the common defense of the USA. If that means liberating people from a brutal government, so be it. That leaves the question of whether the President of the United States had the authority to “launch” such a war in the case of Iraq, which I’ll get to in a moment. To continue:

You can look it up. Americans used to know that. In 1821, then-Secretary of State John Quincy Adams famously said, America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

The above statement of the Monroe Doctrine, so-called since John Quincy Adams was Secretary of State in the Monroe administration at the time, is a statement of foreign policy, not a constitutional restriction. While the policy of the Monroe administration may have been to avoid seeking out monsters to destroy, the fact remains that there is no restriction against seeking out monsters and destroying them under the U.S. Constitution. This may or may not be a desirable foreign policy, but it’s not a constitutional question.

This is not the only example of conservatives’ embracing their adversaries’ doctrine. The Constitution clearly says that only Congress can declare war. But Bush never asked Congress to declare war, and it did not do so. Instead, it illegally delegated the war-declaring power to the president.”

Here, Richman repeats a common misinterpretation of the function of the Congressional power to declare war. The fact that only Congress has the power to declare war does not mean that the U.S. can never wage war until and unless Congress declares it. If that were the case, then the soldiers at Pearl Harbor would’ve been acting unconstitutionally in defending themselves against the Japanese on December 7, 1941, and would have had to wait until Congress met the next day before doing so.

The function of a declaration of war is to initiate a state of war between the maker of the declaration and the one against whom war is declared. If there is a state of peace between A and B, and A declares war against B, then there is a state of war between A and B. It is not necessary for B to make a reciprocal declaration of war against A.

A state of war can be initiated by other things besides a declaration of war. It can also be initiated by an act of war, such as the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor. (The Japanese intended the attack to come right after the Japanese ambassador to the US delivered Japan’s declaration of war, but delays in the Japanese embassy in Washington prevented its delivery until after the attack had already occurred.) So, if A commits an act of war against B, then a state of war exists between A and B, without need for any declaration of war by either party.

Alliances can also come into play here. If A is allied with B, and declares that any attack upon B will be considered as an attack on A, then if C commits an act of war against B, C is in a state of war with both A and B - again, without any declaration of war by A, B, or C.

This brings us to Gulf Wars I and II. Kuwait was a US ally, and, towards the end of the Iran-Iraq War the US Navy had recently engaged the Iranian Navy in battle in the Persian Gulf to protect Kuwaiti shipping, thus destroying about half the Iranian Navy in the process. Iraq invaded Kuwait, which was unanimously recognized as an act of aggressive war by the Security Council of the United Nations. Neither Iraq nor Kuwait had declared war upon each other, but they were clearly in a state of war with each other. Since Kuwait was a US ally, Iraq was also in a state of war with the US - again, without any declaration of war by Iraq, Kuwait, or the US. Congressional assent to this was provided in the Congressional Resolution which authorized Bush I to expel Iraq from Kuwait by means of US military power.

However, removal of Iraq from Kuwait wasn’t the only criterion for ending GWI. The UN Security Council specified the complete terms for ending GWI in its resolutions. Iraq never complied with those terms, so Iraq never made peace with Kuwait, the US, or any of Kuwait’s other allies, and thus remained in a state of war with them.

So, by the time GWII came around, Iraq, Kuwait, the US, and the rest of Kuwait’s allies remained in a state of war - again, without any declaration of war by any of them.

Richman then claims that it was illegal for Congress to delegate its power to “declare” war to the President. Actually, Congress did no such thing, it authorized the President to make war upon Iraq, at his discretion, not to declare it.

The whole purpose of Congress having the constitutional power to declare war was to prevent the President from initiating wars upon his own, without the consent of Congress. However, a majority of Congress went along with GWII, so the purpose of assigning that power to Congress is fulfilled. If Congress didn’t want the President to make war upon Iraq, Congress could’ve banned the use of US tax-funded resources in war against Iraq, Congress could’ve impeached Bush II, etc. Congress didn’t do any such thing, of course.

What Richman wants to do is to argue that a war which enjoyed the support of both the President and Congress and the vast majority of the American people was somehow in violation of the provisions of the Constitution which are there to ensure that the US doesn’t go to war without the support of Congress and the vast majority of the American people. He fails miserably. Unfortunately, the argument he makes is quite common amongst libertarian peaceniks.

It’s high time that libertarian peaceniks abandoned such sophistry. If they want to argue that GWII was wrong, fine, but they shouldn’t do so on the grounds that it was unconstitutional, because it wasn’t. Not all things that are constitutional are good - e.g., the Post Office.

It seems as if as soon as I finish one of the many books on my self-assigned reading list, half a dozen more that I want to read are published. For instance, I’ve just recently finished “Charlie Wilson’s War,” an inside-the-scenes book about how the CIA funded the Mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Soviets during the 1980s. It’s a great book, which reads like a non-fiction version of the movie “Spy Game,” and it’s the perfect antidote to those people who couldn’t tell you who Najibullah was but are absolutely certain that Osama Bin Laden was a major CIA asset against the Soviets. The truth is much more complicated and interesting than that, and still leaves plenty of room for criticizing the US for supporting Islamists against the Soviets.

However, as soon as I finish it, what do I see, but a new book about Stalin’s persecution of Jews right before he died, “Stalin’s Last Crime,” “Khruschev: The Man and his Era,” “Gulag: A History,” “Stalin’s Loyal Executioner,” and “A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia” - all this just in Soviet studies!

It’s not fair, there oughta be a law against publishing any new books until I’ve already read all the ones I want to read that have already been published. :-)

Karen De Coster is objecting to female soldiers again. Considering that there seems to be a market for female soldiers, a supply of them and a demand for them, precisely what remedy does a free market libertarian seek?

Perhaps the objection is that there really is no market for female soldiers, that the apparent demand is simply an artifact of government, but I find it hard to believe that women would have zero value as soldiers in a free market.

Everything changed when we reached the Nevada border: the freeway widened, it had been newly-resurfaced, the lower speed limit for trucks vanished, and right at the border was a town with casinos, a roller coaster, retail outlets (prices must be lower in Nevada, due to the fact that the state has no income tax and the employers can thus afford to pay lower wages in order for workers to have the same standard of living), gas stations, restaurants, etc. There was nothing of the kind on the California side of the border.
- Tim Starr “My First Trip to Vegas”

Beautiful Primm, Nevada.

The effect of seeing the anemic attempt at a California business selling overpriced gas and lottery tickets butted pitifully up against the state line at Primm is like watching a wino leaning against the wall near the doorway of a grand hotel lobby entrance in hopes of realizing the occasional bit of generant heat or some spare change tossed his way by exiting patrons.

It’s the ugly face of prohibition and to really slam the point home, approach Primm in the early evening when the barren darkness of the California desert defines a perfectly straight edge at the luminous doorway of the Primm Valley resorts.

During the dark days of WWII, George Orwell once said that to be a pacifist when your country is at war with Fascism is to be objectively pro-Fascist. He later backed off from this, evidently deciding that not all those who were opposed to The War (as Brits still call WWII) were pro-Fascist. It does seem to me that there were two kinds of people opposed to British and American participation in WWII: those who thought it would be bad for Britain and America, and those who thought it would be bad for Germany, Italy, and Japan. I sympathize with the former, but have absolutely no sympathy for the latter.

A similar divide exists for those opposed to the War on Terror: some oppose it because they believe it bad for America, some oppose it because they believe it bad for Al Qaeda and its allies - or, to put the same thing another way, because they believe it good for Al Qaeda’s enemies, Israel, the Saudi rulers, and the rest of the non-Islamist regimes of the Moslem world. Again, I have some sympathy for the former group, even though I believe its members to be mistaken, and I have zero sympathy for the latter.

It seems to me that we need a word for those who hide their support for Islamo-fascists and all other sorts of Fascists behind a rhetoric of pacifism. I propose the neologism: Pacifascists. Their ideology would then be Pacifascism. This would be a kind of crypto-Fascism, which conveys its support for Fascism by selectively applying Pacifist arguments to those potentially or actually at war with Fascism, but not to the Fascists themselves.

What, then, is legislation? It is an assumption by one man, or body of
men, of absolute, irresponsible dominion over all other men whom they
can subject to their power. It is an assumption by one man, or body of
men, of a right to subject all other men to their will and their
service. It is an assumption by one man, or body of men, of a right to
abolish outright all the natural rights, all the natural liberty of all
other men; to make all other men their slaves; to arbitrarily dictate to
all other men what they may, and may not do; what they may, and may not,
have; what they may, and may not, be. It is, in short, the assumption
of a right to banish the principle of human rights, the principle of
justice itself, from off the earth, and set up their own personal will,
pleasure, and interest in its place. All this, and nothing less, is
involved in the very idea that there can be any such thing as
legislation that is obligatory upon those upon whom it is imposed.

I recently had the opportunity to visit Las Vegas, Nevada, for the first time. I live in Berkeley, CA, and had been to Reno before, but never to Vegas. I don’t gamble, I went for a martial arts conference/seminar/tournament and for some of the other kinds of entertainment offered in Vegas.

We drove down I-5 to Bakersfield, then along Highway 58 to I-15, which took us up to Vegas. My Acura Vigor, which I bought last September, performed like a champ, purring away at about 85MPH whenever I had a clear freeway lane ahead of me. Unfortunately, that wasn’t very often on I-5, because it’s only two lanes going each way, and the right lane tends to be dominated by big-rig trucks which have a speed limit of 55MPH. This means that all the car drivers who want to drive faster than the trucks but slower than 85MPH stay in the left lane. It’s even worse when a truck passes another one - then both lanes get blocked. The other thing that was notable about the trip is how the freeways and highways in California all seemed to be badly in need of resurfacing or other maintenance, and yet my girlfriend and I saw all sorts of road construction equipment sitting in construction zones either by the side of the road or in the middle of it, idle in the middle of a weekday, without a worker in sight. It reminded my girlfriend of the abandoned construction projects she saw behind the Iron Curtain back in the early 1960s when she toured Eastern Europe as part of an orchestra.

Everything changed when we reached the Nevada border: the freeway widened, it had been newly-resurfaced, the lower speed limit for trucks vanished, and right at the border was a town with casinos, a roller coaster, retail outlets (prices must be lower in Nevada, due to the fact that the state has no income tax and the employers can thus afford to pay lower wages in order for workers to have the same standard of living), gas stations, restaurants, etc. There was nothing of the kind on the California side of the border.

Things only got more impressive when we got to Vegas. The Strip is about a dozen lanes wide, and they have pedestrian walkways that cross the intersections to keep walkers from disrupting motor vehicle traffic. They can be accessed either by escalator or elevator from the street, or from inside the hotels. Some of the hotels (Excalibur, the Luxor, and Mandalay Bay) are also serviced by a monorail, and we were told that a monorail was being planned for the whole strip. Those pedestrian walkways would be great in a lot of other places, I’m sure, such as downtown Berkeley and downtown San Francisco, but I doubt we’ll see them anywhere else anytime soon. There was also plenty of parking at all of the hotels, unlike in Berkeley or San Francisco.

We stayed at Circus Circus, which is one of the older hotels on the Strip, because that was where my seminar/tournament was being held. It wasn’t very impressive to us, since it caters to families with children instead of adults like us, but it proved to be an adequate base of operations for us. Congestion pricing seems to be the rule for Vegas hotels as we paid about $50/night on Thursday and Sunday nights and about $90/night for Friday and Saturday nights (with a group discount).

When I wasn’t busy with the seminar/tournament, we toured some of the other hotels, and saw as many shows as we could. The first show we saw was Sigfried & Roy, at the Mirage, which is the one with the erupting volcano out front. Inside, they have a huge saltwater aquarium behind the front desk, a jungle area to walk through to get into the main casino floor, a habitat for the white tigers, and another area for animals that was always closed by the time we could’ve gone to see it. The show was impressive, definitely worth seeing once, although not the best one we saw while we were there. The costumes were like something out of a science fiction movie, the dancing and stage sets were very imaginative, but the real stars of the show were the white tigers and lions, which were gorgeous. Siegfried and Roy have a captive breeding program to preserve these endangered species - exemplifying how to preserve endangered species without the State.

The next show we saw was “Skintight,” a topless show featuring a blonde I’d never heard of before who was said to have been a former Playboy Playmate, along with a whole cast of male & female dancers. We enjoyed it, but it still wasn’t the best show we saw. Again, the costumes were quite imaginative, and the dance numbers were, too. One of them was evidently inspired by the musical, “Stomp.” That was at Harrah’s, one of the older hotels.

The last show we saw was the best, Cirque du Soleil’s “Mystere.” Cirque du Soleil has two shows in permanent installations in Vegas, the other being “O” at the Bellagio. We were unable to get tickets to “O”, which is a water show, so we went to Mystere instead. We weren’t disappointed at all. The theme of the show was about two babies being born into and exploring a world filled with strange and wonderful creatures, which gave them a lot of leeway with their acts. They had quite an assortment of those - a guy who spun a cube-frame around himself with his hands and feet while suspended by a wire from the ceiling, pole-climbers who’d jump from one pole to the other, doing flips and twists in mid-air, trapeze artists, acrobats who used trampolines set at different angles to jump and flip over and past each other, performers who were suspended from something like long bungee cords from the ceiling who would do spins and flips and soar through the air, etc. All in time to the wonderful live music, of course, with truly fantastic costumes. And clowns to provide some comic relief, like the one wearing a suit with an Einstein hairdo who pretended to be an usher before the show and led audience-members on wild goose-chases instead of to their seats, walking over rows of seats, going from one side of the theater to the other, then back, finally giving up in disgust and throwing their tickets up in to the air. He even pretended that two audience members were in the wrong seats and made them leave so he could seat two others in their place. Luckily, this joke was rectified so no one had to miss the show. We loved “Mystere” so much that we bought the soundtrack and can’t wait to go back and see “O” - but we’ll make sure to get tickets first, as they’re sold out way in advance.

We also toured some of the other hotels - the Bellagio, Caesar’s Palace, New York New York, Paris, the Venetian, Excalibur, the Luxor, Mandalay Bay, and Treasure Island. Unfortunately, it was too windy for either the outdoor fountain show at the Bellagio or the Pirate show at Treasure Island, but we still got to see the flower atrium at the Bellagio, which was fantastic. It smelled wonderful, which was a nice change from the usual smell of cigarette smoke from the casino floors upon entering most hotels. It seems to be a popular place for wedding parties, too. They had those fountains which shoot a solid stream of water, giant fake butterflies, some real butterflies in a gazebo enclosed by netting, lots of tulips, and all sorts of other flowers. Caesar’s has reproductions of classical and neo-classical statues out front, and employees that wear costumes in the style of ancient Rome. New York New York is in the shape of a miniature reproduction of the NYC skyline, and has a roller coaster. Paris has a miniature Eiffel Tower, the Venetian has a canal on which you can take gondola rides, Excalibur has a dinner show that’s a jousting tournament, the Luxor has reproductions of artifacts from King Tut’s tomb on exhibit - almost every casino/hotel had its own attraction, consistent with its theme. Some were difficult to connect with the theme, though. Mandalay Bay has a bar called “Red Square,” which is Russian-styled, with a giant headless statue of Lenin outside, complete with pigeon-droppings. That doesn’t fit in too well with Mandalay Bay’s Burmese theme, but we didn’t complain, we just had our picture taken in front of the Headless Lenin.

We had a wonderful time, can’t wait to go back, and recommend it highly. Next time, we’re going to see if we can get a good deal on rooms at the Luxor. We loved the buffet there.

The Nike swoosh logo has been rescued from terrorist trademark infringement.

Link via Radley Balko.

Would it surprise you to hear that a statist warrior is honored this weekend at anti-state/anti-war lewrockwell.com? Of course it’s Robert E. Lee.

This dovetails nicely with Rockwell’s recent talk at a Costs Of War conference. Rockwell paints the confederates as victims of economic exploitation and champions of economic freedom:

Free trade, Calhoun believed, represented the ultimate safeguard of political rights. Without such trade, the South would become a captive nation, enserfed for a cabal of Northern industrialists tied to and dependent upon government power.

That may be true enough as far as it goes, but at some point don’t you have to acknowledge that slaving statists cede the moral high ground with regard to economic exploitation? From Calhoun’s speech to the Senate Slavery, A Positive Good:

But I take higher ground. I hold that in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good ďż˝ a positive good. I feel myself called upon to speak freely upon the subject where the honor and interests of those I represent are involved. I hold then, that there never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other. Broad and general as is this assertion, it is fully borne out by history. This is not the proper occasion, but, if it were, it would not be difficult to trace the various devices by which the wealth of all civilized communities has been so unequally divided, and to show by what means so small a share has been allotted to those by whose labor it was produced, and so large a share given to the non-producing classes. The devices are almost innumerable, from the brute force and gross superstition of ancient times, to the subtle and artful fiscal contrivances of modern. I might well challenge a comparison between them and the more direct, simple, and patriarchal mode by which the labor of the African race is, among us, commanded by the European. I may say with truth, that in few countries so much is left to the share of the laborer, and so little exacted from him, or where there is more kind attention paid to him in sickness or infirmities of age. Compare his condition with the tenants of the poor houses in the more civilized portions of Europe ďż˝ look at the sick, and the old and infirm slave, on one hand, in the midst of his family and friends, under the kind superintending care of his master and mistress, and compare it with the forlorn and wretched condition of the pauper in the poorhouse. But I will not dwell on this aspect of the question; I turn to the political; and here I fearlessly assert that the existing relation between the two races in the South, against which these blind fanatics are waging war, forms the most solid and durable foundation on which to rear free and stable political institutions. It is useless to disguise the fact. There is and always has been in an advanced stage of wealth and civilization, a conflict between labor and capital. The condition of society in the South exempts us from the disorders and dangers resulting from this conflict; and which explains why it is that the political condition of the slaveholding States has been so much more stable and quiet than that of the North.

Let that sink in.

I’ll grant that the Civil War wasn’t fought by the North to free the slaves, but isn’t it clear that the threat of abolition was of the gravest concern to this supposed champion of free trade?

This fetish for the Confederacy at LRC is regrettable.

The sideshow continues at LewRockwell.Com. Among this weekend’s offerings, Libertarian Jacob Hornberger nails tiresome, flag-waving veterans with his pithy proposal to send them in to pinch hit for youthful service personnel overseas.

In “Old Patriots Suicide Brigade,” Hornberger outlines his plan to yank those leathery old duffs off VFW barstools across the nation to rally to the battlefield for one more go for Old Glory:

“If old American men support the idea of waging wars thousands of miles away to free foreigners from tyranny, what would be wrong with the oldsters voluntarily sacrificing themselves in those faraway lands so that more young American men and women can live out their lives here at home, as the elderly have been able to do?”

Nice plan, except that there already is a force of of war-supporting volunteers stationed in faraway lands. It’s called the Armed Forces of the United States.

But how’s this for a modest proposal?

It’s called the P.T.M.B., an invitation for dishonest, begrudging cluckheads - who have whinged non-stop for the past 100 days - to wrap themselves in burlap shrouds. Yes, just wrap your palid little pacifist asses up and assume the fetal position at the bottom of a 15 foot deep sand trap in the middle of the Iraqi desert while a backhoe slowly shovels you in. It’s for a worthy cause. After all, you’d be sacrificing yourselves in the places of some perfectly non-irritating, buried alive Iraqi schmuck whose only crime may have been mouthing off at the wrong Ba’ath Party snitch.

More terrifying Japanese girl action.

What would you do if your girlfriend made a sudden confession one night and tells you she had butchered a woman you were having an affair with, sliced up her body and then systematically disposed of her chopped up remains in the trash?

You may contact police immediately, or may cut ties with her and hide, fearing that you will be the next target of her deadly vengeance…