March 2023

There are such things as victims.

Regarding the Iraq war, for example, the Iraqis were victims. So were the U.S. soldiers who died in battle. So were the American people who suffered tyranny unleashed after 9/11.

But see, these victims are unofficial. They are also non-disgusting. And that’s a no-no among our “elites.”

The transsexuals, on the other hand, are a glorious new oppressed class, and we must all suck their cocks, if they had any.

Thus, Christ’s true teaching, “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first,” was misinterpreted and bore bitter fruit. He did not aim to turn the world upside down.

I do not like the anarchist “private protection agencies.”

I think we can privatize the judicial branch of the government fully, the legislative branch partially, and the executive branch not at all.

Can the minimal state be justified according to “utilitarianism of rights” or minimization of rights violations?

If it is expected that the violations of rights, randomly distributed among the populace, under state + criminals will be smaller than under criminals alone + anarchy, doesn’t it make sense to create the state?

Wolff gives the following example:

Suppose, for example, I am a kleptomaniac whose condition can be controlled only by the use of drugs. If I do not take my medicine today, I will commit many acts of theft tomorrow. Suppose also that I have run out of medicine, and the only accessible supply is owned by you. You refuse to part with any. Should I (non-compulsively) steal some of your medicine today, so that I will not (compulsively) steal a great many other things tomorrow?

If you steal the medicine, you’ll mess with fewer people and have less guilt. This is a fanciful scenario, but it is not obvious to me that you should not steal the drug.

In his discussion of Nozick, Jonathan Wolff mentions the idea that libertarian natural rights are necessary for the most meaningful life.

It seems to me that this kind of defense of libertarianism is excessively ambitious.

What is undoubtedly true is that socialism makes life meaningless. So what is necessary for a meaningful life is not to be repressed, and not to labor within an irrational economy, i.e., to live under capitalism, to have a reasonable amount of liberty.

But that does not preclude interventionism or welfare state. It is possible to find the meaning in life in our current regime.

There is no obvious connection, for example, between tax rates and life with meaning, though it may be argued that the greater the burdens and restrictions the state places on you, the less scope there is for exercise of creative power, enterprise, initiative, the harder it is to advance by personal effort, etc.

The vaxx is not just a scam for “profit,” though it is that.

If you want to scam people, you sell them snake oil, an ineffective but harmless substance. Pfizer et al. could have done that. They’d still have raked in the money without doing any damage and causing a worldwide crisis.

This stuff is not harmless but deadly. There is no point in selling it other than purposely to kill people.

In America today, “minorities,” and blacks especially, oppress the people from below just as much as the state oppresses them from above. Anarcho-tyranny is an apt term for this regime.

Race issues should therefore interest every libertarian.

In war, Rothbard wrote, “Society becomes a herd, seeking to kill its alleged enemies, rooting out and suppressing all dissent from the official war effort, happily betraying truth for the supposed public interest.”

The same happened in the Covid vaxx campaign. And just as in wars, the “public interest” was never secured.

The new social contract, the black version:

There’s only one thing that would stop our children from busting into these liquor stores; there’s only one thing that would stop our kids from busting into these jewelry stores, stealing watches and jewelry, and that’s reparations.

Move over, Rawls.

Steve Sailer argues:

The New York Times began its listing of Penn law professor Amy Wax’s speechcrimes with:

Amy Wax, a law professor, has said publicly that “on average, Blacks have lower cognitive ability than whites…”

Now, you know and I know that’s likely the most thoroughly documented fact in all of American social science.

It’s not a good society where stating what is both obvious and consensus science at the same time requires heroic self-sacrifice.

Cupit extends his analysis of promising to requesting and argues that a mere request can generate obligations for the same inner reason that promising can.

His idea is that the requestor trusts that the requestee is not “cold, uncaring, indifferent, unloving, disregardful.” If that trust is disappointed, the requestee makes the requestor into a dupe for trusting him.

The implausibility of this should have been a warning to Cupit, but he is eager to unify his theory. The disanlogy is that there is a natural and perfect duty to keep promises; there is at most only an imperfect matter of Christian charity to grant requests. No one has to honor any particular request. Every man, including a Christian, is perfectly at liberty to refuse to grant any request.

The perfect duty to keep promises generates a right to have the promises kept; the imperfect duty of charity does not generate any rights to be assisted.

Even if the requestor’s trust is correct, and the requestee is warm, caring, etc., no felt charity must result in any particular work of mercy. The trust is not broken by virtue of the requestee declining to help.

Something is broken indeed, but it is not faith (or trust) but hope. The requestor is hoping to get what he wants. But if he doesn’t, he is not by that fact made into a dupe, he is not degraded.

God is perfectly charitable, but He is not a genie and does not satisfy all prayers. If God does not help, it is a wrong response to lose one’s faith in Him. Again, what is disappointed is your hope, and not even hope in general as a theological virtue but hope in this particular thing. Hope is an imperfect virtue, its consummation is possession of the good hoped for. In the case of a request I merely hope that you will grant it, in the case of a promise I own your compliance by right. Failure to honor a request, unlike failure to keep a promise, is not a rights violation.

Cupit argues that it’s true that the requestor can abstain from making a request, but if he does so on the ground that he thinks the request will be denied, he is being unjust to the requestee by assuming him to be cold, uncaring, etc. But this entails that if one wants to make a request, he is morally required on pain of injustice to do so, and that is absurd.