June 9, 2026
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Antiwar is the Health of the Anti-State Movement
This was a nomination speech for R. Lee Wrights at the Libertarian National Convention this past weekend.
Less Antman is a long-time activist for the Libewrtarian party and for the cause of peace. He lives in San Diego County, California, and is a CPA.Jill Pyeatt is a small-business owner and jewelry designer from Southern California. She currently serves on the Judicial Committee of the Libertarian Party of CA. She can be found on Facebook and Twitter.
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Sure. Antiwar.com is more narrowly focused than the LP.
They do good single issue work as does MPP, to take another example.
But I think the war mentality and war rhetoric is what is at issue for a broader focused organization such as the LP, more so than shooting wars per se.
Yes, “war” on insecurity is indeed the health of the state, as I said @12.
But as shown by the graphs @40 @55, it would be an invalid bait-and-switch to apply the Bourne shooting-war quote to metaphorical wars and then argue that foreign policy should be our marquee issue.
In Vegas I complimented Less for trying to back up the usually-quite-misleading claim that the LP is the only party of peace. However, I’m skeptical that very many self-described peaceniks would concede they are inconsistent if they don’t favor free trade.
P.S. I would love it if anitwar.com expanded its charter to include the wars on Some Drugs, on Obesity, on Poverty, etc. I suspect they realize this would be a tough sell with their target audience.
Just found the text….I’m not sure Brian has really been rebutting the totality of this thesis, just the headline, as far as I can tell: notice it speaks of a much wider definition of “war” than a strict one involving foreign policy or military action:
Five years ago, almost to the day, the Libertarian movement exploded into the public consciousness. As someone who joined the Libertarian Party more than 32 years ago, when our party and platform already supported marriage equality for gays while the big debate in this country, including the Democratic Party, was over gay imprisonment, I can tell you that the first 27 years were the hardest. We had an appealing message of liberty that for some reason just didn’t catch fire with the public. Until May 15th, 2007. And there is one man we have to thank. Rudolph Giuliani.
On that day, the one-time 1988 Libertarian Party nominee for President, who I believe is still an official member of our party, was attacked by Giuliani for expressing the absurd idea that the 9/11 murderers, and let’s be clear that they are murderers, were motivated to kill Americans because of US military intervention on top of cruel trade sanctions in Muslim countries. Giuliani, as you know, is a foreign policy expert because he lived close to the World Trade Center and wore a hardhat on 9/11. Oddly enough, not only the CIA but the 9/11 Commission, which supposedly included Giuliani, AGREED with the man Giuliani attacked. As for the man he attacked, anyone who is an advocate of peace, whatever disagreements they might have on other issues, should join me in saying, God bless you, Ron Paul.
We have all heard Randolph Bourne’s famous quote “War is the health of the state”. War is the four letter word that lets government officials who are mere mortals, almost as human as you and I, place themselves above the rule of law, above due process, and above habeas corpus because, of course, all’s fair in love and war.
War is such a useful concept to politicians that they declare wars on everything. The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on ignorance, the war on poverty, the war on pornography, and even the war on trans-fats. You see, we can’t afford to respect life, liberty and property… WE’RE AT WAR.
Drowning people in fear is the key to power. But we also learned five years ago that antiwar is the health of the anti-state movement. And even if we do nothing other than end ALL the wars, real as well as metaphorical, we will be well on our way to a free society. And millions are ready to rally around that banner.
But only one party can be the Party of Peace, and it isn’t the Republican Party, which will only nominate a candidate who passes two tests. First, they must be pro-life. Second, they must want to kill lots of foreigners. It isn’t the Democratic Party, which has rallied around a man who now holds the record for most children killed by a Nobel Peace Prize winner. And it isn’t our good friends in the Green and Constitution parties, who understand the importance of military nonintervention but not the equal or greater importance of free trade, which the late libertarian, Joan Kennedy Taylor, called the necessary foundation for world peace. The Libertarian Party is the only Party of Peace.
Libertarians love strategic alliances … between people. Trade, travel, migration and cultural exchange build both prosperity and friendship throughout the world. We oppose strategic alliances between governments. They lead to war, terrorism, and a blind eye toward violations of life, liberty and property by those allied governments. When it comes to politicians, friends don’t tell friends to respect human rights. And with friends like that, we create enemies.
Libertarians believe in humanitarian intervention… by volunteers who are supported by others who volunteer their money. The most positive image of Americans is our personal generosity after natural disasters in other parts of the world. We oppose humanitarian intervention by governments, whose decisions are influenced by what President Eisenhower called a military-industrial complex that profits from finding crises, and whose arrogance causes them to fancy themselves experts about another country and culture simply because they viewed a YouTube video. Of all humanitarians, the US government is the one whose past record of horrible unintended consequences and distorted intelligence has most earned itself a “time out” in its own corner of the world. It’s time for some humanitarian nonintervention. Bring ALL of our troops home from around the world to their families, treat their wounds, and stop creating new ones.
TK@57, you’re entitled to your own opinions, but not to your own facts.
My data @37 is quoted from two separate polls, not from just “one outlier poll”.
You earlier wrote: I’d be surprised if “inside job believers” comprised as much as 1% of the electorate as a whole.
If you had actually read the article, you’d know that
That’s true, and hopefully this year we will capitalize on it – and I believe we will, since it’s already happening.
However, at least in the last seven tries, regardless of whether our candidate has been a “nobody” or a multi-term ex-Congressman, state legislator or financial author, regardless of whether the party had less than 10,000 dues paying members or more than 30,000, regardless of how many other candidates we ran, and so on, regardless of how close or how much of a blowout the D/Roid race was, regardless of how strong other alt parties were, and any other factors you can think of, the end result has always been zero point four plus or minus zero point one percent. Maybe it’s a coincidence that all these factors balanced each other in different ways to keep producing that result. Maybe not.
We’ll see if there’s a breakout this time.
Paulie @ 50 – of course few people heard about Badnarik’s lack of background. His lack of credentials ensured that people would not find out about him.
A candidate with credentials will get more free publicity at least partly because his credentials give journalists something to write about.
Brian Holtz said: “I wonder: am I ‘indeed Evil’? Do you have a graphic image that can ‘prove’ that I am ‘indeed Evil’?”
Reminds me of this song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pKoL7QGVxs
BH@37,
“Did you even read the article?”
Yes. And I looked at all the US numbers in it rather than just assuming the accuracy of one outlier poll.
Definition of a Strawman argument:
A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position. To “set up a straw man” or “set up a straw man argument” is to describe a position that superficially resembles an opponent’s actual view but is easier to refute, then attribute that position to the opponent (for example, deliberately overstating the opponent’s position).
http://strawman.askdefine.com/
I?m not sure if you?re trying to argue that 9/11 did not spur a rather immediate increase in government spending
Definitely not. I’m arguing that the long-term driver of the size and growth of the state in the West since WWII has been economic rent-seeking. I’m also arguing that the recent bailouts caused a sharper increase in the size of the state than 9/11 did. The graphs above make these assertions pretty hard to deny.
In fact, there are two graphs in your Heritage slideshow that are equally dispositive:
Thanks! I would also include the graph from p.45 (“Even Eliminating Vital Defense Spending Completely Would Not
Solve the Entitlement Spending Problem”), but that would be spiking it in the end zone. 🙂
I agree with Paulie @50. Badnarik’s resume was an opportunity cost in terms of potential media reach, but it surely didn’t change the vote totals that much. Badnarik was excellent at presenting the Libertarian message. I would love to combine his messaging with the media reach of a Barr or Johnson.
“Did your reviewers raise any of these issues?”
I don’t remember. The graph was not the focus of the article, which argues that governments are the primary beneficiaries of terrorism. Accordingly, it is predictable rather than remarkable or astounding that governments tend to engage in false-flag-type terrorist activities and/or otherwise trumpet the threat of terrorism where such threats are truly minimal.
Brian: I’m not sure if you’re trying to argue that 9/11 did not spur a rather immediate increase in government spending. If so, the data clearly contradict this. My graph may be imperfectly titled, but it illustrates a trend that others have also illustrated. See this:
http://www.heritage.org/federalbudget/pdf/all-budget-chart-book-2011.pdf
This sounds like you are suggesting the peer reviewers failed to properly vet my outstanding graph … How dare you.
I was trying to be diplomatic. OK, let’s do this.
1) It’s not even labeled accurately. The figure title says “percentage of overall GDP”, but the Y axis is “federal outlays in constant dollars”.
2) Outlays in constant dollars are always naturally rising due to both population growth and increases in productivity. Choosing absolute spending levels instead of GDP share biases the graph with compounded growth (even though you’re just trying to point to a change in the growth rate).
3) If you had used actual %-of-GDP data (like I do @40ff), then the right end of your graph would be lower than the left end — an overall decrease of GDP share during the time of Panama, Bosnia, Iraq I, Afghanistan, and Iraq II.
4) Your graph makes no attempt to break out the war-related components of government spending. It only took a few minutes of Googling to find graphs that did this. For any such graph, adding a 9/11 pointer undercuts your thesis, rather than advancing it.
5) The effect of (4) is re-doubled if you extend the graph back far enough to include America’s previous protracted shooting war (Vietnam).
Did your reviewers raise any of these issues?
or that the Journal of War Crimes, Genocide & Crimes Against Humanity is of questionable credibility
I dropped the name of the journal merely so that readers can form a first-approximation opinion about the extent to which academic economists might be reviewers or contributors.
GB @48
True about Badnarik’s background, but it doesn’t make much difference – few voters were aware of it. Every LP P candidate since 1984 has received between 0.3 and 0.5% of the vote, regardless of background. Even the ballot access shortfall and distinct lack of charisma displayed by the 1984 candidate did not push us below that level.
The funding of the 2004 and 2008 presidential campaigns were roughly equal.
None of the differences in name recognition, money, media access, party strength, etc have pushed the presidential needle more than one tenth of one percent in either direction in the last 30 years.
1980 was significantly better funded. Since then, we’ve found a baseline and more or less stuck with it for better or worse. Our best candidates have not been able to bump it up more than a tenth of a point; our worst could not not bump it down any more than that.
Brian at 45: “Roger, I’m curious whether any of the peer reviewers of your article were economists, or gave you any pushback on your graph. This is the first I’ve heard of the Journal of War Crimes, Genocide & Crimes against Humanity.”
This sounds like you are suggesting the peer reviewers failed to properly vet my outstanding graph, or that the Journal of War Crimes, Genocide & Crimes Against Humanity–one of the most prestigious social-science journals in print, er, online–is of questionable credibility.
How dare you.
BH @ 45 – I have tried to avoid saying this, but Michael Badnarik was not a very impressive candidate.
He completely lacked credentials that would mean anything outside libertarian circles. He had never held elective office, he was not a successful business owner, I am not aware of any public involvement outside the Libertarian Party, and he had no funds for his campaign.
It is a sign of how much disgust there was with the Bush administration that such a candidate would receive 400,000 votes.
Here’s a Jeff Hummel quote on that from The Freeman:
I always thought the point “war is the health of the state” meant war was used to justify expansions in breaches of civil liberties, taxes, regulations, and other spending that were later hard to repeal, not just military spending. At least, that was the Jeff Hummel hypothesis.
Of course defense spending as a percentage of GDP is going to stay stagnant or decrease (even assuming war spending is included, which is separately appropriated from defense department spending). Defending the borders of the U.S. will cost about the same amount whether the U.S. has 200 million people or 400 million people. Invading Iraq will cost about the same amount whether the U.S. has 200 million people or 400 million people. As population rises, GDP rises and you’d expect defense spending as a percentage of GDP to decrease. What is odd is that defense spending hasn’t plummeted a lot more as a percentage of GDP.
Paulie, @41 shows a bigger spike for the bailouts than for Bush’s wars. And @40 and @42 show that non-defense spending (especially entitlements) are responsible for the long-term growth in government.
It looks like it would take about 3 more simultaneous wars to get “defense” spending back to 1960s levels as a % of GDP. Meanwhile, entitlement spending since then has roughly doubled (as a % of GDP).
Roger, I’m curious whether any of the peer reviewers of your article were economists, or gave you any pushback on your graph. This is the first I’ve heard of the Journal of War Crimes, Genocide & Crimes against Humanity.
Gene: Libertarians on the other hand can compete for the votes of antiwar conservatives and moderates, who rarely have the chance to support an antiwar Republican candidate.
Didn’t work for Badnarik in 2004.
Thanks Brian. The fact that the Democrat candidate in your 2006 race was opposed to Bush’s war would clearly depress the antiwar vote for a Green Party candidate.
Libertarians on the other hand can compete for the votes of antiwar conservatives and moderates, who rarely have the chance to support an antiwar Republican candidate.
Of course this would only happen if the Libertarian candidate runs a visible campaign.
Brian, @41 shows spikes and/or more rapid growth of government during war times.
Clearly, entitlements and bailouts are the health of the state:
Even better:
Clearly, the long-term driver of the size and growth of the state in my lifetime has not been war.
Holtz:
Regarding your GDP chart:
What matters is not a 1-shot picture of government spending as a percentage of GDP, but CHANGES in government spending as a percentage of GDP that flow from war. I recently wrote an article entitled “Who Benefits from Terrorism: The Common Interests of Terrorists and Governments of Terrorized Societies.” Here is the link:
http://www.altoona.psu.edu/journals/war-crimes/articles/V5/v5a3.pdf
On page 130 of the article is a graph showing the growth spurt in U.S. gov’t spending as % of GDP after 9/11.
Clearly, war (or “terror”) is the health of the state.
21 jp: I would rather have an IQ of 10 than NOT spend my life trying to expose the EVIL that keeps our globe at war.
me: I’m not sure if this revealing or not. If your wisdom declines as Cowen suggests, through sanctimonious judgmentalism, then it seems obvious that your ability to reverse a dysfunction is hampered. Working oneself into a lather diminishes one’s effectiveness. The “evil” continues and you have given away your ability for nothing.
Why do that?
Did you even read the article?
28% said the government is “mostly lying” about 9/11. 26% said it is “somewhat or very likely” that the government let the attacks happen in order to get a war. 16% said it is “somewhat or very likely” that the WTC was controlled demolition. 12% said is it “somewhat or very likely” that the Pentagon was hit by a missile not an airliner.
These are all data from 2006, when I first ran against that Truther.
BH@35,
Why do you think the polls cited in that Wikipedia article “suggest that she should have done better for her Truthing, not worse?”
Many, maybe even most, Americans have one or more problems with the “offiical narrative,” even if that problem is just a nagging feeling that they aren’t getting the whole truth.
A smaller, but still significant, percentage of Americans may go so far as to think that maybe the government had more advance knowledge than it is admitting to, or even that bad things (shooting down Flight 93, shooting down Flight 77 and putting a cruise missile into the Pentagon to hide that that had happened, or that Larry Silverstein had Building 7 taken down to get it “totaled” for insurance purposes, etc.) may have happened and then been covered up.
But the full-blown “inside job” theory, which most of the above voters associate with the “9/11 Truth Movement,” enjoyed only 7% buy-in even among American Muslims.
I’d be surprised if “inside job believers” comprised as much as 1% of the electorate as a whole. That 1% just happens to include people who are fairly adept at opportunistically portraying the numbers of people who “support a new investigation” or whatever as like themselves.
@33 She was against Bush’s war.
@34 She campaigned on many of the same war/empire/corporate-manufactured-consent themes I hear from you. I take it you’re not a Truther? At any rate, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polls_about_9/11_conspiracy_theories suggest that she should have done better for her Truthing, not worse.
@ Brian, I am pretty sure her “exposure as a leader in the 9/11 Truth movement” was the end of her odds at beating you percentage wise.
BH @ 32 – In your 2006 race, did you face a Democrat or Republican incumbent? What position did the Democrat take on Bush’s war?
JJM: 72% of Americans want us out of Afghanistan now […] we need to market to those people on how we want out too, and we wont get us involved in another one…. ever
The last part is editorializing on your part, and is not part of the poll.
I can’t completely agree with it, because I agreed with Ron Paul when he said: “I voted for the authorization to go into Afghanistan because it told the president to do what he already had the authority to do: go after the ones who directly hit us. I was extremely disappointed that the mission there changed to one of nation-building, and I support immediate withdrawal of our troops from Afghanistan.”
the only other option is to try to sell ourselves as liking the other two parties policies we are just better
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_the_excluded_middle
Gene@31: agree with all your points, except I’ve seen no data that the antiwar message does any better for us in downticket races. I even have a contrary data point.
In my 2006 race for Congress in Silicon Valley, I got more votes than the antiwar Green candidate, despite there being almost twice as many registered Greens in our district as Libertarians, and despite her media exposure as a leader of the 9/11 “Truth” Movement.
I have no problem with downticket Libertarian candidates choosing whatever libertarian message best fits their situation. But I agree with the delegates that antiwar is not the best national campaign theme for the LP in 2012.
Brian @ # – in 2004 most antiwar voters voted for John Kerry in order to defeat the incumbent President who started the war, George W Bush.
It is true that Sen Kerry voted for the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, as did Sen Edwards, Sen Hilary Clinton and other Democrats. And this information should be brought up when you talk with Democrats.
But antiwar voters in 2004 wanted to get rid of the President who started the war, even if the vehicle for doing so was compromised himself.
The wasted vote syndrome is most significant in Presidential races, and even more significant when there is a war that that many people oppose. So Presidential vote totals are not a good way to measure the importance of the antiwar message for Libertarian candidates.
People will more willingly vote for a third party candidate for Congress than for President, and this is reflected in the higher percentage vote totals for LP candidates for Congress. If we had more qualified candidates for Congress, with more resources devoted to their campaigns, the LP could use the antiwar message to reach many voters.
Gee Whiz, war is wrong economically and morally, but, even knowing that, let’s try to communicate on a level Brian should be able to understand.
72% of Americans want us out of Afghanistan now (and that is just the NOW people).
Now regardless of what we do, we need to market to those people on how we want out to, and we wont get us involved in another one…. ever.
I don’t see that being a loser, when the only other option is to try to sell ourselves as liking the other two parties policies we are just better. That isn’t going to fly.
To return to the topic of the thread: “It’s hard to imagine better empirical evidence that foreign policy is not a very effective lever to grow the LP.”
This is the right answer to the wrong question. The goal is not to grow the LP, the goal is to implement libertarian policy. Growing the party is a means to achieving that goal.
A principled stance against wars of aggression may not be the most effective way to increase LP membership, but it IS the most effective way to prevent wars of aggression. Increasing LP membership clearly helps achieve that goal, but it is the means, and not the end.
—–
When Wayne Root decided to become a libertarian media presence, did anyone assume he was “chosen” or “recruited”?
—–
I guess that depends on what you’re talking about.
His “recruitment” into the Libertarian Party was announced before it happened and publicized as it happened.
How his decision to become a libertarian media presence will roll out, should he ever make such a decision, is something we can only speculate about until it actually happens.
Jill says I insulted her in the following exchange. I stand by every word I wrote, and I invite any third party to explain how I insulted Jill.
Root’s Teeth: It might have been better if some outreach had been done to CA LP women before a caucus leader was chosen. They may well have selected Ms. Lieberman, in which case she would have been a true spokesperson. But this is just one example of the widespread top-down-control mentality in today’s LP.
BH: Who says Lieberman was “chosen” by anyone but herself? I can’t think of any recent LP caucus — Radical, Reform, Defense, Grassroots — whose leadership wasn’t self-appointed.
JP: I mean, I get it. I really do. Libertarians need to present a certain image if they want to grow. The woman was truly gorgeous. I heard what she said (and, more importantly, what she didn’t say.) I’ll will be happy to work alongside her if she does start some activism.
Anonymous: The notion that the local male Libertarian leadership, instead of reaching out to the women who are active in the party, recruited by one means or another a photogenic and by your description — I was not there — not business-professional-dressed young woman, tends to say something about why there are so few women active in our party.
BH: Whence all these sexist assumptions that Ms. Lieberman was “chosen” or “recruited” by males? When Wayne Root decided to become a libertarian media presence, did anyone assume he was “chosen” or “recruited”?
Frankly, I don’t consider that my best, but that’s what I did last night.
I chaired a meeting at my local region that lasted beyond the restaurant’s closing. That region has more than doubled its regular attendance since I’ve been chair, and we now need to look for a bigger venue.
I’ll give you a perfect example of what I’m talking about. After the California convention, I talked about Michelle Liberman, the supposed “Chair of the California Libertarian Women’s Caucus”. You IMMEDIATELY told me I was being sexist. How was it sexist to question someone’s credentials? No one EVER came forward, even though it was discussed several times, to point out I was wrong.
So, why was it sexist, and what did you accomplish by telling me that?
We know you’re smart, Brian, trust me, we know it. I think you think these attacks make you look like the superior intellect. Well, for your information, I don’t care if you’re smarter than me. My opinion matters, and I don’t appreciate being insulted over and over again because you disagree with my opinion.
Maybe you haven’t noticed, but most people here on IPR are cordial in their discussions. I would say you’re the main exception to that.
I’m really trying to go forward from the convention in a positive manner, but it would certainly be easier if everyone else was doing their best, also.
I’ll tell you what my best is.
I spent all yesterday evening away from my family, chairing a meeting of the board of the local government agency of which I am President. I created a subcommittee chartered to look into privatizing our agency, and I appointed to it the two of our five board members who are my allies in seeking to control our agency’s costs and subject it to market competition.
That’s my best.
What’s yours?
Root’s Teeth: graphic images are part of every war — including wars of self-defense, independence, and liberation. If graphic images are the trump card in your ethics, then you will be thrall to those who choose what images you see.
I wonder: am I “indeed Evil”? Do you have a graphic image that can “prove” that I am “indeed Evil”?
Jill: It is very wrong that your wife received an email on her private address. I really do understand that it was wrong.
I guess you’ll (rudely?) call this “going bonkers”, but I’ll just keep repeating this until you read it:
As for “insulting” you, I invite you to quote an example of me doing it.
Am I allowed to say I’m insulted by your “bonkers” remark, or by your serial misrepresentations of what my complaint is? Why do you even bother bringing it up in this thread?
In fact, I don’t feel insulted by any of the invective or rudeness aimed at me on IPR. To feel insulted by someone’s behavior, I first have to have the expectation that the behavior isn’t normal for that person.
BH quotes @ 19: “As a simple rule of thumb, just imagine every time you’re telling a good vs. evil story, you’re basically lowering your IQ by ten points or more.”
I would rather have an IQ of 10 than NOT spend my life trying to expose the EVIL that keeps our globe at war.
Which brings me to this: Brian, clearly you and I have a different set of priorities. I’d rather spend time talking about wars and threats to my personal liberties, than, say, trying to figure out how someone’s email address was exposed. Contrary to what you believe, I would NOT be bonkers if I had received a pro-Root piece under the same circumstances. I would have deleted it and proceeded with going through my emails. It’s that ‘”pick-your-battles” thing. It is very wrong that your wife received an email on her private address. I really do understand that it was wrong. But, in the interest of not being a hypocrite, and not “smearing” others, why do you feel the need to insult me every time you disagree with me? It’s rude, off-putting, and boorish. And it’s not just me–you do it to many other people. I’m really trying to go forward from the convention in a positive manner, but it would certainly be easier if everyone else was doing their best, also.
Gee, I wonder what fun and rude graph you’ll come up with now to describe me?
most people in the anti-war movement seem firmly in the grip of the psychopathology that creates wars: hating the Evil Others
Evil Others?
Those who promote war — especially wars of choice, wars of opportunity, wars of profit, wars of imperialism — are indeed Evil.
And if I could post pictures, like Brian can, I’d post the graphic images to prove it.
I too am against occupying other countries and nation-building. Our agreement on this does not mean that anti-war is the health of the liberty movement.
However, I’ll readily concede that anti-war is the self-esteem of the anti-state movement — especially to those who fancy themselves as following in the footsteps of the famous revolutionaries and anti-warriors of the 20th century.
They surely don’t see it, but most people in the anti-war movement seem firmly in the grip of the psychopathology that creates wars: hating the Evil Others who must be stopped at all costs.
As ex-Rothbardian libertarian economist Tyler Cowen said recently: “As a simple rule of thumb, just imagine every time you’re telling a good vs. evil story, you’re basically lowering your IQ by ten points or more.”
Despite all the graphs you post Brian, it still doesn’t justify our involvement in countries that pose no threat to us. And last time I checked, occupying other countries and nation building doesn’t count as ‘defense’.
Nadar [sic] was getting the anti-Bosnia vote? No.
If you believe that antiwar has so little anti-establishment appeal that it can be excused for not attracting all those anti-establishment Nader-2000 voters, then you’ve already conceded the argument.
Micheal Badnarik ran a constitutionalist effort that barely did anything about Iraq
If you’re too above-average to be persuaded by charted data, then this video probably won’t alter your version of reality either:
In 2004, the extent and problem of the Iraq War wasn’t as great
Thanks for vindicating my own position on Iraq. I agree that anti-war can be a good marquee position when a justifiable intervention turns into, say, an unforeseen civil war. But here’s another graph you’ll need to ignore:
In 2004, the extent and problem of the Iraq War wasn’t as great as it is now
Now? Um, it’s 2012. See the graph above.
Charts are so convincing to average folk.
When I grow up I want to think I’m as cool as Eric thinks he is. Then I too can click my heels together and wish data out of existence.
“If anti-war can grow the LP, then Nader’s 3 million voters from 2000 should have been available to the anti-war candidates in 2004, because both major-party candidates favored continuing the war.”
Foolish conditional that ignores important factors.
Nadar was getting the anti-Bosnia vote? No.
In 2004, the extent and problem of the Iraq War wasn’t as great as it is now, after a decade of festering and the toll it has taken in American lives and abroad.
Micheal Badnarik ran a constitutionalist effort that barely did anything about Iraq. He’s also not quite as famous as Nadar.
My neighbor is a good example. All rah and puff for America in 2004. In 2012 sick of American involvement. Anecdotal true, but insightful none the less.
Charts are so convincing to average folk.
Regarding the GDP chart above:
How many are part of NATO?
I think Less’ comments are spot on.
you force me to defend everything I say
That’s true.
Except now it’s false. Or is it?
@ Brian Using past numbers to project forward ignores demographics cycles.
Got a chart with prison population?
Our prisons aren’t full because of our foreign policy. I agree that the War On Some Drugs should be one of our marquee issues.
RPR — got an hour? I generally agree with the take on RP that one finds at Reason magazine. It’s not obvious to me how to translate this into success for the Libertarian brand. Even RP himself is reluctant to promote the small-L brand. Meanwhile, the RPR contains a poison pill of conspiracy-think that makes it tricky to attract Paulians without almost guaranteeing we’ll never attract anyone beyond that crowd.
South Korea
Yep — but it’s not a fundamentally European country, so I didn’t want to be guilty of piling on with what is already a dispositive argument.
Fear is the health of the State
Yes, statism is the choice of security over liberty. The versions of the Nolan Chart that are most fair to our opponents label each dimension as a security-vs-liberty continuum.
So. Korea! Aren’t they – at least technically – still at war with No. Korea? And, yet, the SK government’s GDP% take is the lowest? Niiiiiice!
I like Antman’s improvement: Fear is the health of the State. Increasing fear increases the desire for “security.” A state fertilizer if ever there was one.
What BH’s chart doesn’t and can’t show is blood. Unnecessary death and dismemberment seems especially dysfunctional.
If I haven’t said it before, Brian, you are one of the most enjoyable sparring partners I’ve ever known beause you force me to defend everything I say. I just wish I had the time to keep up with online conversations that often add 100 posts between my visits.
Only if you view government spending as a percentage of GDP as the primary metric of power and, once again, ignore all confounding variables. Got a chart with prison population?
BTW, what is your explanation for the RPR?
The thesis that “war is the health of the state” is easy to refute:
@Brian 3 – The data point you are ignoring is the Ron Paul Revolution, and my speech specifically cited his antiwar message as the spark. All real life examples are confounded by too many variables, but it is hard to argue that ending the Fed was the key to a man raising more money in a month than he had in his entire 3 decade political career before that.
And it isn’t just having the right message, but having it known by the public. Which is why I was only half-joking in my speech when I gave the credit to Rudolph Giuliani.
I’d also note that part of my message is war as the key to maintaining power. We might generalize Bourne’s insight to FEAR is the Health of the State, but war does a better job of creating it than anything else. I don’t want the double meaning of my message to be lost in this discussion.
I’m all for realism: it will be extremely hard for the LP in 2012 to get a lot of votes no matter what we do. But we have a great chance to grow over the next 4 years if the young activists working for Dr. Paul right now decide, after the Republican leadership kicks them in the teeth and he retires, that the LP is a more hospitable home to grow the movement.
I’ll be posting some videos later if no one gets to them first, I already sent a bunch to ipr. Also see Bruce Majors, he has a ton of convention videos.
I embedded the video here, I saw it was just a link.
Digging through a whole lot of email and ipr comments now.
I hope someone can post Gary Johnson’s nomination speech so IPR doesn’t appear unbalanced. I haven’t seen it on You-tube, though. My guess is that it will turn up soon.
Thanks for fixing my error, Brian. I don’t like to make them, but I guess I do once in a while…
I fixed the headline and content from “antiwar movement” to “anti-state” movement.
Recent history provides a natural experiment that rebuts Antman’s thesis.
2004 LP presidential nominee Michael Badnarik ran as an anti-war candidate, but didn’t grow the standard Libertarian vote share at all. If anti-war can grow the LP, then Nader’s 3 million voters from 2000 should have been available to the anti-war candidates in 2004, because both major-party candidates favored continuing the war. Together Nader and Green rival Cobb reclaimed at most 700K of those 3 million, and so with at least 2.3M presumably-anti-war third-party voters up for grabs — and with an actual war in progress — Badnarik increased the 2000 LP presidential vote by only 13K! Thus it seems that an anti-war stance can bring us only about 1% of the non-LP willing-to-vote-third-party anti-war vote, which itself is apparently less than 3% of voters.
It’s hard to imagine better empirical evidence that foreign policy is not a very effective lever to grow the LP.
Another data point: Lee Wrights’ “Million Vote March” to end all wars is currently at 139 votes, after being launched about 11 weeks ago. (And one of the first of those 139 was me.) This means the Million Vote March is on a pace to end up being a 333 Vote March. And that’s not even accounting for the end of the Wrights presidential campaign.
None of this means the LP should change its anti-intervention principles by one iota. It just means that we should be realistic about how we market our principles.
and yet is not known at all in San Diego County …..
[a prophet is not valued in his own land]
Less really knocked it out of the park with that amazing speech! It was truly a pleasure getting to meet and talk with him at the Convention – Less is a truly and incredibly positive person.