I'm guessing not.

That's my guess, too, James.

I think too many of us have already left in disgust for anything to change.

Point of clarification - a libertarian who joins the 'movement' is a Libertarian. There is no official standard of dogma to qualify one as a Libertarian.

What does capturing the "Libertarian movement" mean?

If someone took over the Dem/Repub party, said someone would control a valuable brand, some bank accounts, some mailing lists, and some property. Oh, and some grease to get candidates on certain ballots. (Some states may also have some patronage positions for party hacks.)

Does the "Libertarian movement" have any assets? (It's somewhat strange that it doesn't.)

I don't understand all this stuff about "Libertarian movement" and "libertarian vs. Libertarian." There is a Libertarian Party. It has minimal assets and influence. (Unfortunately the LP has been co-opted by the perpetual presidential campaign of Harry Browne. Deaniacs are upset because campaign manager Joe Trippi took a 15% cut of advertising spending. The Browne cut appears to be 100%; there were several hundred thousand dollars budgeted for TV ads in the 2000 campaign, but no ads were actually aired.)

People in the LP agree on much but also have their differences. Abortion is a perpetual sore point as about one third of the party is anti-abortion.

But there is no organized "Libertarian movement." There are the magazines Reason and Liberty. There is the Cato Foundation (a think tank). There are individual Libertarians who write books and post to Usenet and keep blogs. Even before the war there was much debate and squabbling over various issues. (And the Libertarian Party is not a player in this arena. No one has been persuaded to be a libertarian by the LP's whiny, passive-aggressive press releases.)

I expect that if you asked ten libertarians to name the libertarian that they most respect, there would be ten different answers.

And this:

"the old-school libertarians who were motivated initially, I think, by a desire not to be seen as taking sides against their leftist friends"

is completely at odds with everything I have seen in my 18 years (gulp) of being a libertarian. You can't be a libertarian without taking sides against leftists on some issue or another. (Hell, you can't even pee in your own toilet without making some leftist mad.)

But there is no organized "Libertarian movement." There are the magazines Reason and Liberty. There is the Cato Foundation (a think tank).

Reason considers non-involvement with the LP to be an official policy of theirs. Liberty is probably closer ideologically to the LP, but they don't get along too well with them either, and I believe they ran some sort of crusade against Harry Browne last year. Cato, meanwhile, is closer to the GOP than any other party, though that hasn't stopped them from routinely castigating certain Republican policies.

To sum it up: no libertarian-leaning organization worth its salt is crazy enough to give its political support to the cooks, anarchists, and halfwits running the LP.

I would be a "big L" libertarian, except the acne cleared up, and I no longer live with mom.

Forget the LP. Freestanding, libertarian-leaning magazines like Reason and think tanks like Cato are important to the war of ideas, but in terms of actual politics what libertarians and libertarian-leaning folks need to do is to get inside the major parties and try to push them in the right direction. How on earth do you suppose the Democrats ended up so far to the left as they are today? If you need a clue (not that I think anyone here does) it _wasn't_ by the socialists pushing their own political party.

"I'm curious to see if the capital-L Libertarian movement can be captured by the small-l newcomers."

Let me clue you in: it ain't gonna happen. You and all your little yuppie "new wave" liberventionists are really just neocons who want to legalize pot. The Libertarian rank-and-file can see through all the slick rationalzations -- Everything's changed! We have to "libertarianize" the Empire! Gay bars in Riyadh! -- and fully realize that you, and Glenn Reynolds, are no more "libertarian" than than the neo-Trotskyites over at the American Enterprise Institute.

Oh, but you've got Neal Boortz on your side. Wow! What a plus that is. But somehow, I think, us "old school" libertarians will manage to retain our ideological (and moral) compass.

You -- take over? Forget it, bub.

Sadly, Reason has had a distinct lack of displaying reason ever since Virginia Postrel left. They most often publish half-truths and opinions by editors and authors that have a poor understanding of their subject matter.

If Reason is an example of Libertarian thinking, then the cause is further gone that I had thought.

Yes, Reason has gone to s*** since Postrel left.

Her blog is far more worth reading than the entire content of the new Reason (well, except for the John Hood articles).

Damn straight. Virginia for President.

Seriously, I subscribed to Reason from 1975 until last year. The incoherent opposition to the war on terror had even more to do with dropping my subscription than the blinding color contrast.

Some seem to be lumping many things together.
1, The War on Terror.
2, The War on Iraq
3, The War on Al Qaida

Those are all *different* things.
The War on Terror is a grab bag of laws that
big government types have pushed for years and years.

The War on Iraq was that invasion of Iraq, remember?

The War on Al Qaida started in Afganistan and is still on going..

Those are THREE policies. All with multiple
sub policies. For example I hope those who
support the War in Iraq were appalled that
Congress never gave a declaration of war.
I know I supported going after Al Qaida and
I'm STILL mad that they never declared war.
In fact I STILL want them to declare war. But the politicians are afraid of doing that.
Why, is left as an exercise for the reader.

By the way.
The big L libertarians opposed 1 and 2 and strongly supported #3.

At first when I started reading the rant I thought it was a Trot parody of Libertarian thinking.

Then I saw the sig.

I publicly resigned my membership a month after 9/11. One of the best decisions I've made in years. Thank you Justin.

Declaration of war? They sure as hell did. They didn't use that phrase, but they authorized the president to take any action against Iraq that he saw fit. That is a declaration of war.

Besides, the declaration of war is as strong as their power of the purse. If the congress objects to the war, all they have to do is take the money away from it.

The second and third items on your list are part of the war on terror. To pretend that we aren't in Iraq to fundamentally affect the culture of radical Islamic culture in the Middle East is very superficial thinking.

As a former "old school" libertarian, I must defend the honor of my old friends by asking that a new label should be used to describe the politics of Boortz, GH Reynolds and the like. Libertarianism used to be a term that described belief in free markets, limited government, and non-aggression. People who support the alleged War on Terror or the Iraq invasion are entitled to their beliefs and may have good defenses for them ( though I've yet to hear one even worth laughing at ) but these beliefs are not compatible with core libertarian doctrine. Given the tortured arguments and evasions employed to defend the war in the wake of the missing WMD, maybe we should call them DeceptiCons.

For folks expressing skepticism about the possibility of reclaiming libertarian/classical liberal traditions and institutions from the anarchists and pacifists, I have to disagree. It is my experience that, contrary to the assumptions of some (and the continued, uninformed ravings of Mr. Raimondo), there is substantial disagreement among free-marketeers about the War on Terror and the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, with at least as many hawks as doves engaged in the (usually but not always cordial) debate.

It's not entirely generational, though I buy to some degree the notion about the '60s holdover problem. The divide is regional and cultural -- the several earlier referenes to Jeffersonian and Jacksonian foreign-policy traditions being apt. It is professional -- academic economists and older historians, particularly of the Austrian variety, often end up on the dovish side while political scientists, those with political or legal careers, younger historians, and journalists tend to be on the hawkish side (please pardon the over-generalizations). Even among those inspired by the Austrian School, Miseians and Hayekians often part company on this issue (as on others involving practical considerations), for example, as do anarcho-capitalists and Randian Objectivists.

What I do find distressing, I guess, is the repeated statements by some L/libertarians that their position on foreign and military policy is not only an inevitable derivation of free-market ideas but is also a great political selling point for libertarianism. No, the oppositie is unfortunately true. By embracing bizarre conspiracy theories, mushy-headed reasoning, impossibly strained readings of history, and grossly over-the-top rhetoric about Bush and other American neo-fascists, these Libertarians are alienating plenty of folks who might otherwise be persuaded on critical issues.

A question for the hawks here: would you support a war against Madagascar? Because they don't have any WMD either.

If there were mass graves in Madagascar, and a tyrant, and we could over throw the tyrant at the cost of less than 2,000 lives lost in battle per 25 million freed I'd support it. Especially if the tyrant was threatening our lines of supply.

I used to be a Libertarian. Now i would classify myself as a militant democrat.

If you read your history you will find that Jefferson had a lot of trouble in his day with militant democrats.

Thankfully neither Jefferson nor "Jefferson is my middle name" are President.

Oh yeah. Down with Ashcroft. End the war on the sick the halt and those in pain.

>Declaration of war? They sure as hell did. >They didn't use that phrase, but they >authorized the president to take any

So why didn't they "use that phrase".
People wanted them to. It would have been
a very powerful statement. I'm still puzzeled
by it.

And why didn't they use that phrase on Iraq? I can tell you that one. Because they
were very afraid that they wouldn't win the
vote on the declaration.

And that might be why they didn't declare war on Al Qaida, because they didn't want to
have to try to declare war on another target.
It's a lot easier to get a watered down
resolution.

And there are handfuls of oppressive countries we could
overthrow quickly and for a similar price
tag. At least the price tag would be low in
the short term. That doesn't make it wise
foreign policy.

There were only two valid reasons to go to
war in Iraq.
1. We could no longer follow the status
quo of periodic bombings and containment.
2. A HUGE gamble to create a peaceful
stable free Arab country in the middle east
as an example to the others.

Of course the administration never really made those arguments. They were made
well by others on the net. But not by the administration.

Probably because they didn't think they
could win them. Because the easy response
to #2 is that "Nation Building" doesn't
really work well. And to give it a good try we'd have to have a massive presence for
many years. I never thought we could sustain that. And it looks like we won't.
The administration wants out quick now.

As for #1 I always said we should just leave
and let Iraq attack Saudia Arabia.

Rover,

First, there were many reasons to go to war with Iraq, and some people thought some were more important than others. You left a few out, most markedly the one that I think was most important. The world learned that we could be bombed fairly easily. Saddam hated us and whether he had WMD or not, he had pilots who could fly planes and it was only a matter of time before he became involved in more attacks on us, if he weren't already involved.

What we learned is that we can no longer tolerate a nation to exist that has the means to attack us and the will to attack us, because it is virtually impossible to stop them if they are so inclined.

Second, nation building works very well. We've done it many times and almost always successfully. Why should Iraq be any different than Japan? Iraq has a stronger tradition of education and technology than the Japanese did.

As for the phrasing of the declaration of war, that's politics. It's unfortunate that the phrase wasn't included, but by not including it, it made the declaration more palatable to some squeamish people in comgress without changing its potency at all.

For all the protests about it, the congress still has the power of the purse and can cut off all funding for any operations in Iraq or anywhere they'd like. You and I both know that if they did that, then the American people would howl in protest. So for all the silly talk about lacking the phrase "declaration of war" in the declaration of war, the will of the people is being done. Our checks and balances are working, and the deliberated will of the people is being done.

The Constitution isn't perfect but it's better than what we have now.

You hit it right when you said they didn't declare war because it wouldn't have been palatable. Shouldn't that give you pause?

Shouldn't that make you think that you wouldn't have the backing of the whole country when people began to realize that "nation building" would take longer than your guy was going to be in the White House?

Furthermore, Japan was FAR more advanced than Iraq. They had a single culture and a history of law abiding citizenry.
They were the first asian country to strive
toward westernization.

We did not build their nation. Their nation
existed before we came. We left their emperor and we left much of the ruling class.

If you look at the names of the big Japanese corporations you'll find they are the names of many of the powerful Samari families from the 19th century.

We changed one thing about them. We stopped their militarization. And we stayed there for years.

We didn't succeed in building a nation in
Haiti, or Serbia or Panama or Grenada or the Philippines. The European powers never succeeded in Africa or the Middle East or
Asia (Hong Kong would be a good exception).

Nation building doesn't have a good
historical record. That's why the administration didn't push that as the reason for the war. Heck it's why GW Bush
complained about it in Serbia during his campaign against Algore.

Don't take me for the lefty opposition.
All they proposed was to maintain the status
quo of sanctions and inspections. That had to end. This war was better than that.

But not as good as just killing Al Qaida and
leaving the middle east.

It doesn't give me pause at all. They knew what they were voting for, they just wanted to be able to weasel out of their commitment if they could. Bush should have held their feet to the fire for political reasons, but it wasn't necessary for legal reasons.

The American voters are clearly in support of what we've done.

Japan has been rebuilt as a prosperous, modern nation only through the grace of our good will. They were only a militaristic feudal society until we transformed them.

At least Iraq has a heritage of being slightly more modern and well educated, chiefly from their British past.

That something takes longer than one presidential term to complete is not a good reason for not doing it.

"What we learned is that we can no longer tolerate a nation to exist that has the means to attack us and the will to attack us."

If all it takes is a few airplane pilots, then virtually every nation on the planet has the means to attack us. As for the will to attack, what's the standard of evidence?

The detail of not actually declaring war does matter, by the way, because it allows John Kerry to vote for the Iraq resolution, then intimate that he didn't expect an actual war. Real declarations of war don't allow Congress to duck responsibility.

A declaration of war was not necessary - that was decided in the Prize Cases. If someone attacks the USA, the President is entitled to recognise the fact that the USA is at war, and to act accordingly. After 11-Sep-01, the President not only recognised that the USA is at war, but defined how he saw the enemy: not only al Qaeda, but all of its allies, anyone who gave it shelter, material support, aid or comfort, wherever they might be. And that category definitely included Saddam Hussein - whether he was involved in planning the specific attacks on the USA is speculation, but there is no doubt that he was involved with al Qaeda, and Colin Powell presented convincing evidence (though not all the evidence) of that in his speech to the Security Council early last year. That alone made him an enemy of the USA, at war with the USA, congressional declaration or no. At least, so say the Prize Cases.

Claiming Japan was primative, uneducated and fuedalistic
and Iraq is well educated and advanced is
deliberate distoration or evidence that you
don't know the past or the present.

Wait right there while I check the literacy
rate:
http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/iraq_statistics.html
Iraq year 2000: 58%

Japan has been harder to find.

Note this:
http://www.jei.org/AJAclass/JEcon20thC.pdf
This shows 99% of 6 to 12 year olds were in school in Japan in 1920.

ALSO I FOUND THIS ON MANY WEB SITES.
In 1850 Japan had a literacy rate that compared with Europe and the US. THEN
they embarked on a massive education
program to catch up to the west:
"Even before the 1868 Meiji Restoration that marked the beginning of Japan’s modern period, the Japanese were well educated by the standards of the time. In 1839 it had at least 300 private academies and approximately 3,000 terakoya, or temple schools. By the early nineteenth century Japanese literacy rates were comparable to those in the UK and the U.S. The Meiji oligarchs established Japan’s first national public school system in the early 1870s, creating centrally controlled schools where ordinary students would receive basic education while exceptional students could proceed to higher education and important positions in government and business."

Oh, Here's a note from the US state department web site about Japans place in the world before WWII:
"In 1898, the last of the "unequal treaties" with Western powers was removed, signaling Japan's new status among the nations of the world. In a few decades, by creating modern social, educational, economic, military, and industrial systems, the Emperor Meiji's "controlled revolution" had transformed a feudal and isolated state into a world power"

Dear Stephen, you are broadly correct to mention Samizdata in the same ranks as that of Glenn R., Boortz, and the rest. We Samizdatans concluded fairly quickly that we had serious problems with the Raimondo wing of the libertarian movement, to such an extent that we easily shrugged off the attacks that came our way for being a bunch of "belligerents"

Let's not forget - if the Raimondos of this world had had their way, the Taliban, Saddam and Slobbo in Serbia would still be in power. I fail to see how lovers of liberty would welcome that.

Ha ha you fell for it! " Justin Raimondo" isn't a real person. He is a cleverly constucted "troll" designed by PNAC to discredit the REAL anti-war rothbardian anarchist Cadre.

His website is run by the 12 neocons that secretly run the world and from there they write nutter insulting pieces of garbage to discredit us true real libertarians. Don't fall for it, "Justin" is a warmongering likkudnik neocon with a Hebrew accent.

rover,

There was no "declaration of war" for the same reason there is no longer a War Department. Plain language is no longer in fashion in either major party. We do have a Defense Department. The Congress declared Defense on Iraq.

Yo Justin,

I think your "compass" is pointing at a refrigerator magnet.

Dick Eagleson writes, "There was no "declaration of war" for the same reason there is no longer a War Department. Plain language is no longer in fashion in either major party."

No, there was no "declaration of war" because following the Constitution is no longer in fashion in either majority party. (And hasn't been for the last ~100 years.)

Iraq did not attack the US. They did not threaten to attack the US.

September 11th can not be used for a rubber stamp answer to all future agression against muslims.

If I come up and punch you, you may defend yourself against me in whatever way you want.
That does not give you free reign to go beat the hell out of any acquantances of mine who have never harmed you nor threatened you.

Bill Blake, you're missing the equation.

September 11 taught us that we can't wait for people to announce their imminent intentions. If they say that they are in a war against us (and Islam has been in a Jihad against us for decades) and they possess the will to attack us, we now assume that they will do so.

If a nation doesn't want us to take their declared war against us seriously, they need to renounce that Jihad and make every indication to us that they want to remain in peace with us. Until then, we fully intend to take them at their word that they consider us the Great Satan and wish to destroy us.

It's very simple, really. I don't know how anyone can object to it.

What I offer here is an involved yet detached look at Justin Raimondo's bait-and-switch tactics. Perhaps time, further study, and more reflection will either modify or enrich the analysis offered here, but Raimondo throws a tantrum every time he doesn't get what he wants. I assume you already know that Raimondo has been, still is, and always will remain more asinine than delusional party animals, but I have something more important to tell you. Will his warped mercenaries delude and often rob those rendered vulnerable and susceptible to his snares because of poverty, illness, or ignorance? Only time will tell. This is not the place to develop that subject. It demands many pages of analysis, which I can't spare in this letter. Instead, I'll just state the key point, which is that we must set the stage so that my next letter will begin from a new and much higher level of influence. If we don't, future generations will not know freedom. Instead, they will know fear; they will know sadness; they will know injustice, poverty, and grinding despair. Most of all, they will realize, albeit far too late, that Raimondo's premise (that he has been robbed of all he does not possess) is his morality disguised as pretended neutrality. Raimondo uses this disguised morality to support his commentaries, thereby making his argument self-refuting.

If I want to adopt a new world-view, that should be my prerogative. I don't need Raimondo forcing me to. To pick an obvious, but often overlooked, example, he will stop at nothing to sidetrack us, so we can't advocate concrete action and specific quantifiable goals. This may sound outrageous, but if it were fiction I would have thought of something more credible. As it stands, it takes more than a mass of vicious power brokers to create a world in which scapegoatism, expansionism, and emotionalism are all but forgotten. It takes a great many thoughtful and semi-thoughtful people who are willing to encourage opportunity, responsibility, and community.

Currently, Raimondo lacks the clout to put increased disruptive powers in the hands of revolting trolls. But before the year is over, he will have enough coadjutors to send the wrong message to children. No matter how close he's come to making me play right into the hands of scornful, brusque dipsomaniacs, he won't be satisfied until he finds a way to instill a general ennui. His plaints are complete drivel. The sooner he comes to grips with that reality, the better for all of us.

You may not be aware of this, but Raimondo says that he can poke someone's eyes out and get away with it. Wow! Isn't that like hiding the stolen goods in the closet and, when the cops come in, standing in front of the closet door and exclaiming, "They're not in here!"? I truly dislike him. Likes or dislikes, however, are irrelevant to observed facts, such as that I don't want to build castles in the air. I don't want to plan things that I can't yet implement. But I do want to restore the ancient traditions that Raimondo has abandoned, because doing so clearly demonstrates how his personal attacks represent a calculated assault on diversity within our community. The best example of this, culled from many, would have to be the time he tried to work hand-in-glove with rash yahoos. As I see it, if this letter did nothing else but serve as a beacon of truth, it would be worthy of reading by all right-thinking people. However, this letter's role is much greater than just to show Raimondo how he is as wrong as wrong can be.

His true goal is to poison the relationship between teacher and student. All the statements that his rank-and-file followers make to justify or downplay that goal are only apologetics; they do nothing to find more constructive contexts in which to work toward resolving conflicts. In keeping with all of their inner intransigent brutality, Raimondo's adulators legitimate irresponsibility, laziness, and infidelity. I mean, really. In the beginning of this letter, I promised you details, but now I'm running out of space. So here's one detail to end with: Justin Raimondo's litigious campaigns run counter to human nature and, as such, are doomed to failure.