Archive for June, 2002

Disputing Narveson - Round 2

Jun 27, 02 | 5:39 pm by John T. Kennedy

After the publication of my recent article at anti-state.com, disagreeing with Jan Narveson on a point tangential to his excellent piece on Pure Libertarianism, Gene Callahan asserted in the ASC forum that a thief or robber was the kind of public goods defaulter which Narveson was talking about coercing and he offered this passage from an earlier piece by Narveson:

“The classic example of the public good in question is nonviolence. The assassin, the robber, the rapist, collect benefits from others without paying for them; the cost all is borne by the victim.”.

It had not occurred to me that Narveson was considering a robber or thief to be a defaulter in the context of a public good, but after reading the article that Callahan had pointed out it was clear to me that he was. I disagree that a thief can properly be considered to be a public good defaulter, but the dispute has been reduced from what might have been a disagreement in principle to a disagreement over how certain terms should used.

I emailed Narveson on this point, saying I did not see how a thief is a defaulter in a public goods problem. Narveson was kind enough to send me a thorough reply. I felt the issue still boiled down to one crucial statement he made in the email, he said that a public good a case where the producer of the good isn’t the one who gets it. I replied to Narveson:

“I would say that this is not what a public good is. A public good is a case where the producer of the good can’t control who gets it. But if we say that a thief is “producing peace” by not stealing from you, we recognize that he certainly has control over who gets the peace he is producing. The bad he produces when he steals from you is not a public bad, it is your private bad. And the good he would produce by not stealing from you is your private good.”

(I would not normally speak of a bad as opposed to a good, but Narveson had in is email so I followed his lead.)

Narveson was kind enough to reply again; he said that he didn’t see any difference between his characterization of a public good and mine. That doesn’t seem quite right to me, but I didn’t see any point in bothering him about it by email again.

I stand my my assertion that those who steal produce private bads for their victims, and therefore any good they produce when they don’t steal is a private good, not a public good. Narveson said to me that the victim of violence is unable to control the benefit of nonviolence, which is within the control of the aggressor. I’d point out that many producers of goods don’t get what they produce. The masseuse doesn’t get the massage she produces and the surgeon doesn’t get the operation he produces. But these are private goods because the producer determines who gets them. And I would say that the producers of non-violence certainly determine who gets any non-violence they produce - the people they choose not to aggress against.

Thus I think that Narveson is wrong about a thief being a defaulter in the context of a public good, and thus the argument in my article stands intact against what he said about public goods defaulters. But he was actually talking about something other than public goods; so our dispute is not a disagreement over principle.

Charlie Anderson Takes On The Feds

Jun 26, 02 | 3:26 am by John T. Kennedy

Last week I quoted a scene from Shenandoah where anarcho-capitalist Charlie Anderson (played by Jimmy Stewart) stood up to a Confederate officer who came to enlist his sons. There’s another fine scene later when the feds show up to “buy” Anderson’s horses for the war effort. They arrive as delegation of about ten men, headed by a federal representative of some sort named Carroll who is being advised by a man named Tinkum. Anderson recognizes Tinkum as a horse thief, it’s little wonder the feds have hired him to find the best horses. The feds just start looking over the horses and talking between themselves as Anderson looks on with increasing dissatisfaction. Soon the feds start making decisions.

Carroll: We’ll take these…

Anderson: (forcefully) What do you mean take ‘em?

Charlie and his eldest son Jacob approach the feds.

Tinkum: Well howdy Mr. Anderson, I ain’t seen you in quite a spell.

Anderson: I don’t get around to visiting jails much Tinkum.

Tinkum: This here is Mr. Carroll, Mr. Osbourne, and Mr. Marshall. They’re our federal purchasing agents.

Carroll: That’s right Mr. Anderson. Although we’ve got a set price that we can pay, I’d like to hear what you think these animals are worth.

Jacob: The horses aren’t for sale.

Anderson: Now what my son tells you is the gospel truth gentlemen, and you can carve his words in stone if you’ve a mind to. The horses are not for sale.

Carroll: Now that may be, but I just think I oughta tell you we’re authorized to confiscate anything we can’t buy.

Anderson’s youngest boy has never heard the word…

Boy: What’s confiscate mean Pa?

Anderson: Steal.

Anderson identifies it without hesitation.

Carroll: You know, I don’t think you quite understand…

Jacob: You’re not gonna take one horse off this farm mister, so you might as well forget it.

Carroll: I thought you said these were reasonable people.

Tinkum: Everybody in the county knows they’re just sitting out the war.

Carroll: I, I think what Mr. Tinkum means is that he figured anybody who’s uh, too yellow to fight wouldn’t mind making a few dollars off of the war…

Jacob: Yellow?

He lunges for Carroll but Charlie Anderson intercepts his son.

Anderson: I apologize for my son’s manners Mr. Carroll, he was taught to have more respect for his elders.

Carroll: I accept your apology sir.

Anderson: Jacob, I don’t know what gets into you every once in a while. You know you shouldn’t hit this gentleman…while I’m around!

Charlie pops Carroll squarely on the chin, and a brawl breaks out between the Andersons and the feds. It goes on for a bit in the old comic movie style until Carroll has had enough and pulls out a pistol to shoot Charlie in the back. Instead Charlie’s daughter Jenny shoots the gun from his hand with a rifle. She orders the feds off the farm; they pick themselves up and leave.

Anderson: That fellow Tinkum is the the only man I know who started at the bottom and went down. He used to steal horses for nothing, now he gets paid for it.

Jacob. Pa? First it was Johnson. Then it was on our land. And now they come driving right up into our yard. Aren’t we gonna do something about it?

Anderson: Now, I must be getting old. Seems to me we just did.

Shenandoah: A Terrific Anarcho-Capitalist Film

Jun 17, 02 | 8:46 am by John T. Kennedy

I saw this terrific anti-state film starring Jimmy Stewart over the weekend. Stewart has long been one of my favorite Hollywood actors but I had missed this film, which I now gather is his last great role.

Stewart plays Charlie Anderson, a Virginian patriarch in the Shenandoah Valley during the civil war. The film opens with a skirmish between Union and Confederate troops. Two of Anderson’s sons witness it and the eldest son Jacob reports back to Anderson, who can hear the cannons clearly:

Jacob: They come closer every day, Pa.

Anderson: They on our land?

Jacob: No sir.

Anderson: Well, then it doesn’t concern us. (Pause.) Does it?

Charlie Anderson is a widower still deeply in love with his wife who has been dead for sixteen years. He promised her on her deathbed that he would raise their children as Christians but it is clear that Charlie himself is not by nature a religious man. He begins each meal by leading the family in saying grace. Charlie Anderson doesn’t have much to say to God, but if he has to speak to him then God’s going to hear what’s on his mind:

“Lord, we cleared this land. We plowed it, sowed it, and harvested. We cooked the harvest. It wouldn’t be here, we wouldn’t be eating it if we hadn’t of done it all ourselves. We worked dog bone hard for every crumb and morsel, but we thank you just the same anyway Lord for this food we’re about to eat, Amen.”

A great anti-state scene comes early in the film. A confederate officer named Johnson arrives with a handful of soldiers and asks Anderson if they can drink from his well. Anderson recognizes Johnson, and gives his permission. Their conversation begins politely enough but quickly turns sour:

Johnson: When are you gonna take this war seriously, Mr. Anderson?

Anderson: Now let me tell you something Johnson, ‘fore you get on my wrong side. My corn I take serious because it’s my corn. And my potatoes and my tomatoes and my fences I take note of because they’re mine. But this war is not mine and I take no note of it.

Johnson: Well…, maybe you’ll take note of it when the Yankees drop a cannonball in your front parlor.

Anderson: Well I might as well tell you right now that I can’t think of another thing I want to hear you say.

Johnson: You have six sons, don’t you Mr. Anderson?

Anderson: What, does the size of my family have some special interest for you?

Johnson: Matter of fact it does. We need men. Now two of these men here are no more than sixteen. It seems strange to quite a few people around here that none of your sons are in the army.

Anderson: Well it don’t seem strange to me, with all the work there is around here.

Johnson: I’ll come right to the point Mr. Anderson. Came out here to get ‘em.

Anderson’s eyes narrow. He has not enjoyed talking to Johnson, but now he begins to contemplate the ways he could kill Johnson, if need be. Then he laughs in the officer’s face. Johnson has not brought enough men, not nearly enough.

Johnson: I say something funny?

Anderson: I think so… You came all the way out here to get my boys, huh?

Charlie Anderson calls out his six sons and invites Johnson to say his piece to them.

Johnson: There’s a Yankee army breathing down your neck Mr. Anderson, I don’t think you realize…

Anderson: You’re town bred, aren’t ya?

Johnson: I don’t see what that has to do…

Anderson: I’ve got five hundred acres of good rich dirt here. As long as the rains come and the sun shines it’ll grow anything I have a mind to plant. And we’ve pulled every stump, we’ve cleared every field, and we done it ourselves, without the sweat of one slave.

Johnson: So?

Anderson: So? Can you give me one good reason why I should send my family, that took me a lifetime to raise, down that road like a bunch of damn fools to do somebody else’s fightin’?

Johnson: Virginia needs all of her sons Mr. Anderson.

Anderson: That might be so Johnson, but these are my sons! They don’t belong to the state. When they were babies I never saw the state comin’ around with a spare tit. We never asked anything of the state and never expected anything. We do our own living and thanks to no man for the right.

Atlas Shrugged Has Been Updated

Jun 04, 02 | 5:14 am by John T. Kennedy


I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never kill a man with my belt for the sake of another man, nor ask another man, to kill yet ANOTHER man with his belt, for my sake.

War Is Not Criminal Justice

Jun 01, 02 | 9:49 pm by admin

One of the things I’ve been wanting to do for a long time is bash the idiocies about the current war and previous ones coming from the regular columnists of Lew Rockwell’s web site. Gene Callahan has kindly provided a target of opportunity in a recent article.

In it, he makes the mistake of treating the military prosecution of Japan in WWII as if it were a matter of whether the Japanese people, as distinct from the Japanese military or government, were necessarily to blame for their government and military’s war against the USA. Of course they weren’t. But, because of the total economic mobilization of the Japanese economy, and the preparations for total military mobilization of the Japanese people in the event of US ground invasion of Japan, they still contributed to the Japanese military threat to the USA. While this wouldn’t include those Japanese who were not engaged in war production or in the militia, military technology of the time wasn’t accurate enough to enable the US to only attack those who were engaged in war production or in the militia. Those in war production or the militia were fair game, the rest were collateral damage whose deaths and wounding are properly the fault of the Japanese government/military, not the US.

Callahan’s comments would be applicable if, after Japan’s surrender, the US had put the Japanese people as a whole on trial and then inflicted some sort of collective punishment, such as the aerial bombardment of the whole country. But, in fact, US conduct after Japan’s surrender shows that US intent was quite different. Truman accepted the first surrender terms formally offered by Japan, even though they weren’t the unconditional surrender FDR had been pushing for, and MacArthur called for massive famine relief to prevent widespread starvation due to the destruction of the Japanese merchant marine and railroad networks during the war. Starvation was prevented, land was redistributed from the feudal aristocracy and given to the peasants as private property, women were given the right to vote, a liberal constitution was imposed on Japan, free elections were allowed to take place, and the foundations were laid for one of the freest and richest countries in Asia and the world. Those actions were hardly consistent with the idea of collective punishment.

Interested readers are recommended to read Richard Frank’s "Downfall" about the atomic bombing of Japan and the question of Japanese surrender to the USA. Also see Thomas Fleming’s "The New Dealer’s War" for additional criticism of FDR’s policy of unconditional surrender.

I see that Callahan has also joined the chorus protesting the detention of Jose Padilla. I really wish those who criticize the War on Terror on civil-libertarian grounds would make up their minds. First, they criticize the detention of Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorist at Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, arguing that they ought to be treated as POWs, even though POW status is a privilege to be earned by obeying such laws of war as wearing uniforms, insignia, having a recognized chain of command, bearing arms openly, etc. Then they criticize the detention of Jose Padilla for his terrorist activities, arguing that he ought to be either charged with a crime or released. If he actually were a lawful enemy combatant, the US would be under no obligation to do either, they could simply hold him as a POW until the end of the war, at which point he could be repatriated - or tried for war crimes.

Padilla certainly isn’t a lawful combatant, as he wasn’t in uniform, openly bearing arms, etc., when he was caught. But in detaining him for the duration of the war to question him and ensure he never actually succeeded in any terrorist conspiracy, the US is well within its legal and moral rights to treat him as a POW in this respect. The Bush administration has already said that if it does decide to charge him with a crime, he will then be turned over to the civil court system.

Rothbardian libertarians like Callahan don’t seem to understand the international laws of war. They make much of the distinction between combatants and non-combatants when criticizing the killing of non-combatants, but they don’t seem to recognize that it is the responsibility of combatants to distinguish themselves from non-combatants so their enemies may attack them without endangering non-combatants. That means no using non-combatants as human shields, no hiding in civilian hospitals, churches, mosques, refugee camps, etc. It means wearing uniforms to distinguish yourself from non-combatants and insignia to distinguish yourself from enemy combatants. It also means restricting your choice of targets to enemy combatants. Terrorists, by any reasonable definition, break all of these rules. That puts them in the category of unlawful combatants, just like spies and saboteurs. Ever see one of those great WWII movies about Allied commandos operating behind enemy lines, like "The Guns of Navarrone"? A standard bit of dialogue in them is about how they can be shot as spies once they’ve been captured by the Germans. Those lines are usually assigned to the German characters, but they reflected the same international laws of war that were observed by the Allies, too. Enemy spies are subject to summary execution under the laws of war. That’s one of the things that makes espionage so risky and exciting.

Realizing that the US would be within its legal rights to simply line up Padilla against a wall and shoot him as an enemy spy puts his treatment into perspective. He’s being treated very leniently, all things considered. So are the detainees at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.