Good thing I didn’t say that alcohol should be made illegal in order to end the Drug War, then. What I did say, I believe is pretty well backed up by history. If the courts decided that certain types of drug users could not be treated differently from others, the drug war would end.

G.E.,

What i SHOULD have said to satisfy you and your kind, is that “in order to pass George’s litmus tests, you must…” That is implicit, of course,

That’s just not true (that it’s implicit). What you say up top, explicitly, is that the Libertarian Centrist Manifesto says such and such. It explicitly does not. Your “in order to pass George’s litmus tests, you must…” rephrasing is a much, much more narrow claim than your misstatement about the Manifesto. (Simply because the Manifesto includes not just the litmus tests, but a broadly-worded emphasis that they are not mandatory prerequisites.)

There would be no need for the word “must” at all in an objective story about this, since there are no mandatory requirements in Phillies Manifesto. You said “must” in order to falsely portray Phillies initiative as being less open and inclusive than it actually is, because you disagree with it.

According to Lance Brown’s logic, if someone is breaking into your neighbor’s house, but you aren’t aware of it, the best way to stop the robbery is for you to start taking stuff from their house as well. When the neighbors see that you’re robbing their stuff, they’ll realize that the other person is robbing them as well.

For the record, I consider marriage to be how the dictionary defines it, “the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a contractual relationship “. However, I wouldn’t prohibit gay couples from considering themselves to be married, I would just refuse to recognize it personally. That doesn’t mean that I would prohibit others with more liberal definitions than myself from recognizing it.

In fact, if the state had gotten out of the marriage business back then, we wouldn’t be having this argument about gay marriage today. As long as marriage is treated as a privilege doled out by the state, we will continue to have these problems.

As for saying alcohol should be made illegal in order to end the Drug War, that makes about as much sense as Charles Rangel’s claim that we need to bring back the draft in order to end the War in Iraq. Hey, I’ve got an idea! As the first step to ending affirmative action, let’s expand it, so that in addition to having to hire a certain number of blacks and a certain number of women, firms also have to hire a certain number of transsexuals, a certain number of Buddhists, etc. Eventually, every firm could be like a little microcosm of society.

Sure, it would be coercive, and it would certainly lead to losses in productivity as more qualified candidates were passed over, but hey, that’s a small price to pay for equality and diversity in the workplace, right? Who needs liberty, anyway? Not me. Not when we can have feel-good identity politics instead.

Decentralizing marriage control is one of the few avenues left for anti-gay folks to protect their precious tradition of heterosexual marriage. If the franchise of state-sanctioned marriage is extended to gays (especially under a human rights banner), the only way “out”, so to speak, for traditionalists is to invest in church-sanctioned marriages, and abandon the “tainted waters” of government-backed marriage. In other words, to recreate the marriage franchise in private society. The Libertarian goal. Keep gays out of that club, and you remove 100% of the motivation for the folks currently in the club to consider disbanding it. It’s ugly but true. (Not that all married folks would be upset by the inclusion of gay marriage, but the ones who cherish and protect the heterosexual tradition will be/are).

That path is the one that is being decided right now, in this decade. If gay rights prevail, the likelihood of privatizing marriage overall goes way up. Great for everyone – equality under the law, and no government involvement. If gay rights fails, the franchise of state-sanctioned marriages will not just remain, but be all the stronger (and uglier).

Someone asked if I think we should equalize drug prohibition before ending it. I don’t spend time advocating that, though I absolutely do argue for equality under the law for drug users. (And though I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, I think the drug war would be a lot more fair and make more sense if it included all drugs, or at least all psychoactive drugs. At least then it would be true to its mission, and not insanely hypocritical. And the fact that alcohol users get a free pass while marijuana users get the shaft is beyond crazy.) The asker has his minority mixed up, though, in terms of a comparison to gay marriage. I’m talking about ending government discrimination against selected minorities. Equalizing treatment under the drug laws would mean including the minority (users of the small list of banned drugs) into the much much larger benefited group of people who are allowed to ingest what they want. (And also extending the “franchise” to allow individuals – rather than doctors or regulators- to also choose how much they want, and when, and why.) However, it should be self-evident that extending drug prohibition equally to all drug users (say, for example a court decision recognizing the “rights” of currently-discriminated-against drug user groups) would bring the drug war to a complete end in a matter of moments. If the government had to either ban them all or allow them all, it would resolve the situation a lot more quickly than the segregated arrangement we have today. If all were allowed, problem solved. If all were banned, problem solved in few months, once the constitutional amendment banning drug prohibition (backed by the elderly, the alcohol and tobacco companies, and beer drinkers) was passed.

Medicare is age discrimination, and that is a problem, but it’s not discrimination against a hated minority, it’s discrimination in favor of a beloved one. The “injured party” in that discrimination case is the power-holding majority. So, while social engineering sucks and Medicare should be ended for that reason as much as welfare-state concerns, it’s pretty hard to compare it to gay rights or the drug war, where the powerful majority is denying rights and benefits that most people are allowed to have to a few select, persecuted minorities.

People can have their own order of priorities, but I think it is just as libertarian to argue for equal treatment under the law as it is to argue for ending some form of government “treatment” altogether. Ideally, libertarians should argue both points. Which one to lead with should, in my view, depend largely on who is getting discriminated against. If it’s the minority, then it’s an equality under the law issue, and if it’s the majority, it’s almost certainly a welfare issue of some sort. Most government handouts are for the minority, from the majority. (Though all those minorities together are of course a majority as a combined bloc.) Marriage, however, is currently for the majority, at least broadly speaking, and against a few select minorities, who are blocked from taking part in it in the way that everyone else is allowed to do. In terms of gay rights, if you want to be part of the current debate as it exists, leading with equality under the law makes more sense to me. It’s what the debate is about.

I’m curious whether those who decline to argue for gay marriage rights today would also have declined to speak up for the right of people of different races to marry, back when that was the discrimination du jour.

—-

G.E.,

If you don’t want what you write to be read, don’t publish it.

If you don’t want folks to react to it, then don’t allow comments.

If you don’t want me here, kick me out. (Or attack and insult me enough; it might work.)

When is a litmus test not a “must”? When the person listing the “litmus tests” prefaces it by specifically saying that folks can still be part of the group without having to agree with all of them – and in fact many won’t agree with all of them. In other words, when “litmus test” is a poor choice of words whose intent is contradicted by their author.

In other other words, when saying you “must believe these things to be a George Phillies ‘centrist’” is totally not true, because Phillies explicitly explains that it’s not true.

Phillies hates the South not because it was racist — he himself is racist against Mexicans and the Chinese, etc. (he should join VDARE) — but because it was for free trade. Phillies is a mercantilist. So am I a neoconfederate because I hate Lincoln, centralism, and mercantilism? By Phillies’ definition, YES. Anyone who questions the statist school system’s (which Phillis supports and is supported by, by the way) simplistic account of the so-called Civil War is to be “shunned.”

I don’t know. I see no need to label decentralization as “state’s rights,” since on many issues, I, and I’d imagine you, want control handled even more locally than state government (which is often just as corrupt as the feds). It’s not about being P.C., it’s about using more precise language. The less-divisiveness is an added bonus.

I agree. And I think it’s a very poor choice of words that should be avoided. There is the literal statist meaning, the original (and good) Jeffersonian meaning, and the “code” (racist) meaning. When it can be used in specific audiences to conjure up the Jeffersonian meaning, then I guess it has value. If I write it, I always put it in quotes. But the point of “states’ rights” is not that the states should have more power, but that the central government should have less; and that it’s preferable to have local government when compared to national or global government.

Phillies is a Maoist democratic centralist. He uses the term “states’ rights” because of the literal and racist code meanings of the word, but what he really hates — just like Hitler — is the Jeffersonian meaning of the term. How ridiculous that this man uses Jefferson as an argument for statism, and then rejects Jeffersonianism in his pro-fiat currency, anti-decentralist, anti-secession planks. He invokes Jefferson, a slaveholder who sold his own children into slavery, and then calls slavery the “American Holocaust.”

George Phillies is a holocaust denier in that he denies the holocaust of wars perpetrated by central bankers, and the holocaust that was the War of Northern Aggression. Phillies has antipathy for economics and thus rejects the objective reality that slaves could have had their freedom purchased for less than merely the financial cost of the Civil War. No, as an arch-aggressor, he wanted bloodshed!

I don’t know. I see no need to label decentralization as “state’s rights,” since on many issues, I, and I’d imagine you, want control handled even more locally than state government (which is often just as corrupt as the feds). It’s not about being P.C., it’s about using more precise language. The less-divisiveness is an added bonus.

***

Sean,

So… Libertarians should be welcoming to neo-Confederates now because we need more crazy, racist non-libertarians bastardizing everything libertarianism is supposed to fundamentally stand for within our ranks? LOTSers, Stormfront and VDARE already have Ron Paul.

I think this announcement tells one more about George Phillies’ phobias more than anything else.

Thanks for saving me the $15

Hugh – It won’t be Barr and Phillies who drive me out. It will be the cowards on the LNC who have taken far too long to take action against Barr. If we don’t even have two members willing to bring a removal motion, then the LP is completely worthless and not worthy of support to any degree.

That isn’t really the implication. “States rights” is a garbage term thrown around by conservatives, cranks and bigots. It has nothing to do with libertarianism. I don’t want the federal government sticking their nose into anybody’s business, but “states rights” has nothing to do with it. Libertarians are supposed to care about individual rights, not collective rights.

I just want a libertarianism we can actually sell to real, normal people, you know, rather than calling everyone a statist and expecting them to vote for our guy.

I will give Ron Paul (and C4L) this: his supporters include weirdos from every ideological persuasion. He has essentially united everyone I wouldn’t want near my hypothetical children.

What the fuck do you call a LITMUS TEST if not a “you must.”

Qui dogging my posts and if you don’t like this site, GO AWAY and find something better to do with your time.

Does you anti-states’ rights position mean that you support the federal government on restricting cannabis from people like Steve Kubby and Peter McWilliams? Does it also mean that you support the federal government prohibiting kids between 18 and 21 from drinking the substances they choose? Does it also mean that you support the federal government’s plan for a national identification card (REALID)?

I’m not objecting to your seperation of the centrists from radical libertarians, reformist-right wing “libertarians”, and conspiracy theorists. I am objecting to your branding of centrism as “libertarian”. Clearly someone who prefers the federal government to be meddling in abortion, marriage, adoption, foreign affairs, medical affairs, substance use, identification, prohibition of individual sovereignty, racism, currency, banking, stealing income, immigration, and trade fits in better with the two Republicrat parties than with the Libertarian Party.