jrodefeld

I think you also have to consider that supporting someone like Donald Trump, given his polarizing style, may cause a violent pendulum swing in the opposite direction towards a more overt socialist regime. I don't think the average Trump voter is being educated one iota about libertarian ideas this entire time. If the average voter sees libertarianism as a part of Trumpism, they'll be less likely to embrace our movement because they'll be fundamentally confused about what our ideas are. I'm happy to make strategic alliances with groups ranging from the alt-right to the socialist left on issues that move us in a libertarian direction. Yet, we need to be very clear what issues are libertarian and be very selective on what or who we support and why. Trump is doing so many anti-libertarian things that it boggles the mind how any self-proclaimed libertarian or ancap could still support him. Of course, you could narrowly support a particular action he takes, but on balance we ought to be distancing ourselves from him and relentlessly criticizing him for his anti-liberty policies. Yes, peaceful parenting is a very long road towards a libertarian future. I don't think it is sufficient and in the meantime I do think we should have a spokesman in political life. But our representative in the political arena should be much more like Ron Paul and far less like Donald Trump. We should be having representatives who are educated, well-spoken and able to rally a populist movement based on non-interventionism, sound money, and personal liberty. Not nationalism, protectionism, infrastructure spending, and knee-jerk police/military worship that Trumpism represents.

But libertarian theory considers the State to be illegitimate. I also don't know what you mean by a group who has an "obligation to fulfill said rights". The only obligation people have is to refrain from committing aggression against individuals or their property. The only justified use of force is in self defense. What this means is that I should have no right to pre-emptively initiate force against a person because he belongs to a group that is more likely to commit crimes in the future.

1. The modern libertarian movement is very young. It's roots can be traced back centuries, but Austrian economics and libertarian anarchist theory did not reach it's maturity or enter the public consciousness until the 1970s. If you look at where the libertarian movement was in 1970 and where it is today, you'll see that there has been exponential growth in a relatively short period of time. I appreciate that you are curious about AnCap theory, but I really think you should be focused on considering whether the theory is true first and foremost. Given the madness of contemporary times, ideas that are true and virtuous are not necessarily being embraced by the masses. Revolutions take time to catch on. The modern libertarian movement is only a few decades old and we're up against more than a century of deeply ingrained propaganda that we have to dislodge from the public consciousness. 2. I completely agree that the US military empire has spread nothing but death and destruction across the globe. Any notions of "spreading freedom" through government force are nothing but canards to bamboozle the public. It's about military arms sales, mercantilism, and ambitions of global domination. The humanitarian justification for war has always been a shallow and transparent pretext. Yes, many democracies have a bill of rights, but I don't think you could argue that the voluminous writings of our founding generation weren't somewhat unique in that they were informed by Enlightenment-Era classical liberal thinking. School children are still regaled with tales of the Revolutionary War, and how our patriotic forefathers fought for independence against the British because they wanted to be free. There are many countries that have nothing similar to this as a shared heritage. Some cultures have nothing but centuries of brutal warlords and socialist misery to look back on and the ideas of Natural Rights and the market economy are simply foreign to them. I wish you all the best in dealing with your immigration problem in Europe, but I won't be voting for Trump in 2020. I very well may not vote at all, barring an exceptional libertarian candidate who's a lot more impressive than Gary Johnson.

1. Some libertarians feel that way. This is the idea behind the "Free State Project" in New Hampshire and there have been similar efforts to carve out libertarian communities in other countries. I don't think these efforts have gone that well, generally speaking. I have a lot of metrics that I use to judge who I want as my friends and neighbors, and there are many non-libertarians who I'd prefer to live with over and above some self-professed libertarians. Everybody is entitled to their own opinions, but I don't think it's fair to criticize libertarians who don't move out of the country of their birth as being "all talk" or hypocrites. There is a strong argument to make that it makes more sense to concentrate our efforts in areas of the world that are decidedly unfree. If all libertarians move to Lichtenstein or Switzerland, how would that make the world a freer place? Those countries are already fairly libertarian. We need freedom activists in every country. 2. I'm not saying that the United States is a free country now. But we have a tradition in our past that is a shared heritage rooted in liberty. Not every country has a Bill of Rights that they can cite.

Yes, you have the perfect right to discriminate against anyone you wish, on your own property. Any libertarian who supports Trump's immigration agenda though, is asking the Federal Government to discriminate against immigrants, even if there are employers who would hire them, apartment landlords who would rent to them, or private charities who would assist them. Therefore, the State would be interfering with private property owners who want to associate with a person who just doesn't happen to reside within the United States at this moment. I just don't understand how this can be squared with libertarian theory and the non-aggression principle. According to libertarian theory, rights are individual and don't belong to groups. This is the reason we don't accept the identity politics of the Left. We don't believe in gay rights, black rights, transgender rights, etc. We believe in the right of self-ownership and the right to original appropriation of private property or contractual exchange of property. These are the only rights we believe in, and they apply to all members of the human species. Forget immigration for a minute and consider a black kid who lives in the United States at the moment. If I look at him only as a member of his group, I'd make a lot of assumptions. I might make the assumption that he is statistically more likely to be involved in gang activity and violent crime. If I subscribe to the Bell Curve IQ argument, I could assume that he has a lower IQ level than, say, an Asian-American. Personally, I think my conduct towards that person should depend on who he is as an individual. I don't think I should stereotype based on an aggregate metric of the group to which he is a member. Still, according to the argument for State-enforcement against immigration, I could impose all kinds of prior-restraint liberty violations on poor blacks simply because the averages state that they are more likely to commit a crime in the future. This argument could be used to justify stop-and-frisk, it could justify restrictions on the movement of blacks who are citizens within the United States, and so many other acts of aggression against people who have not been convicted of a crime. To be clear, I'm not in favor of unlimited "free" immigration. I'm in favor of property-restricted immigration where each property owner has the right to discriminate against anyone for any reason. I'm certainly not in favor of Trump's immigration policies, and I'm especially not in favor of building a wall on the southern border. I understand that the debate about immigration, culture and demographics is an active debate that's hotly contested among libertarians. I don't claim to have the final answer on these issues and I admit that Hans Hermann Hoppe has altered my thinking on the subject a bit. In the abstract, I can respect the closed-borders libertarian argument. But when libertarians actively support a person like Donald Trump, and I see stories about the conduct of ICE agents every week, I cannot support this position as anything resembling libertarianism.

There are a lot more values that one has to consider when choosing where one lives than simply how much they are taxed, or how onerous are government regulations. People are tied down with connections to friends and family, job opportunities or a shared culture. There is a point at which a State becomes oppressive enough that you'd have to flee, but for many people that would have to be a last resort because they'd have to give up so much in order to do so. Furthermore, if we want to live in a freer world, I think it is wrong for libertarians to collectively emigrate and congregate in some isolated territory where we can be ostensibly free while the rest of the world collapses into Statist chaos. We can't save just ourselves. It's better to associate with people who are not (yet) libertarians and try and move the needle towards liberty as much as possible. Plus, for all the problems with the United States government, there is a liberal tradition in this country that we can appeal to. There is more fertile soil here to spread these ideas than there are in many countries around the world. Of course I support efforts to advance the ideas of Austrian economics and libertarian theory around the globe, but we have to start where we are. To answer your question, where is the most liberty to be found? Probably in countries like Switzerland, Lichtenstein, New Zealand, Hong Kong or Singapore, to varying degrees.

You can cite statistics all you like that compare the use of welfare services by different ethnic groups, but that doesn't mean that a person who happens to belong to a particular ethnic group should have their liberty abridged because we think they are likely to benefit from government programs that we disapprove of in the future. In the ideal anarchist libertarian world, there is no State and all property is either unowned and subject to homesteading or is privately owned. Do you agree with this? In such a world, any person can invite anybody from any part of the world onto their property. The private ports, private airports, and private roads would have to accept people from different parts of the world, but in a territory as large as the continental United States, there will be undoubtedly many, many different areas where immigrants are welcome. Our current government foolishly provides a welfare State which forcefully deprives people of their property in order to redistribute it. Nearly every one of us take advantage of SOME social services. It is unavoidable in a society where the State is so pervasive as a monopoly. Some of us pay far more in taxes than any benefits we receive, while others receive far more benefits than they pay in taxes or in wealth that they produce. A fair accounting of all this is not exactly easy. Yes there are some complete welfare bums who do no productive work and leech off the taxpayer. I'd argue that the most pernicious of these welfare bums are wealthy special interests, big banks, pharmaceutical companies and defense contractors that mooch off the taxpayer to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars each year. But most of us fall somewhere in the middle. We pay a lot in taxes and we are involved in productive work, but we receive (or have received in the past) Medicare, Social Security, Disability or food stamps at some point. The libertarian is against all this, but we have to exist in the society as it is currently constructed. Walter Block argues, and I agree with him, that it is a virtuous act for a libertarian to take advantage of government services since depriving a criminal gang of their stolen wealth, especially when you promote liberty with it, is a noble endeavor. The problem is that the welfare state exists, not that people take advantage of it. As I understand it, immigrants are not eligible for many welfare benefits for a number of years, though they must be taken care of at hospitals and they take advantage of certain benefits regardless. There are many businesses who want to hire the best workers from all around the world. There are private charity groups who want to sponsor refugees or political prisoners. There are communities that value ethnic diversity to an extent that you or I might not personally approve of. Why should a libertarian support a State bureaucracy getting in the way of voluntary association? The end goal is absolutely a Hoppe-ian private property society that doesn't have "free" immigration, since individual private property owners determine who they permit and don't permit on their property. Thus, private property would naturally limit the number of people who could come to our society without violating our rights. But short of this, there are MANY places where immigrants are welcome by employers and different groups of people, and I don't see why any of us should have the right to interfere with this right to free association, whether we're basing it on aggregate IQ levels or predictions on how they might vote. I'll just add that two of the major contemporary problems that the West is facing from immigration are entirely products of our government's actions. In the first place, the migrant crisis plaguing Europe and potentially impacting us is the result of the US Empire's war-making, destabilization and regime-change that they've pursued over the past several decades. Our military has literally displaced millions of people. The second major problem, one that effects the United States more than Europe, is entirely a product of the War on Drugs. The crime, drug smuggling and violence associated with immigration from Mexico and South America is largely, if not nearly entirely, a product of drug prohibition and would drastically decrease if we ended drug prohibition. This would have a two-pronged effect. First, it would put the drug smugglers out of business since legal drugs could be bought and sold legitimately in the United States. This would drastically lower domestic crime, restore our civil liberties and reduce our prison population. But it would also make Mexico and South American countries vastly safer and less corrupt. Therefore less people from those countries would be seeking to flee to the United States. I just don't see how we achieve a libertarian society just by keeping out a couple hundred thousand, or even a couple million, immigrants from the third world. Especially when our government's other policies, specifically the War on Terror and the War on Drugs, are primarily responsible for the immigration problems we are facing. And especially when the obsession on IQ and demographics drive some of us to support right-wing authoritarians who are disastrous for liberty and who support the same horrendous policies that drive the immigration problem in the first place.

We're not facing the prospect of mass immigration from Somalia. If we eliminated the welfare State, then immigrants from any country would come here if they either have a sponsor or the prospect of employment. The majority of our immigration from the third world has come from Mexico and South America. I live in California and I can attest to the fact that there are a lot of manual labor jobs in agriculture, landscaping and construction, among others, that American-born whites simply don't want to do. Suppose I am an employer who has experience working with Mexican laborers. I've noticed a strong work ethic in those that I've employed and I'd like to employ more people from Latin America. But suppose the Federal Government refuses entry to a Mexican immigrant because he is assumed to have a lower than average IQ (even though no IQ test was performed) or it is assumed that he will end up consuming welfare at a higher rate than native-born people or vote for socialist politicians. This is a type of "pre-crime" restriction of a person's liberty, both the liberty of the immigrant who wants to seek employment and the employer who wants to offer a job to the immigrant. By all means strengthen the rights of domestic property owners to exclude or disassociate from immigrants if they choose and ensure that the movement of people does not lead to greater violations of the non-aggression principle, but seeing people only in broad-categories and assaulting their liberties because we ascribe features to them as individuals simply owing to the aggregate statistics of their membership to a particular ethnic group is contrary to the libertarian principle of individualism. The libertarian position as I understand it is that people have the right to associate or disassociate with anybody they want. On your property or in your neighborhood, you can have entry requirements. You may wish to live among people who are culturally and ethnically homogeneous. But the fact remains that other people in society wish to live in a more ethnically and culturally diverse community. There are employers who want to hire immigrants from different parts of the world, and people who would be happy to provide charity for refugees and asylum for political prisoners. Supporting the Federal Government in banning entry of particular people simply because you'd choose not to live near these people is a violation of rights, in particular the freedom of association. If you accept the premise that we can restrict peoples liberty because the ethnic group they belong to is more likely to commit crime, then you open the door to all manner of domestic liberty abuses. What objection could you have to stop-and-frisk policies where police ethnically profile, stop, harass and search blacks in New York? As a group, they are more likely to be involved in gang activity and criminality, so why can't we violate their liberties before there is evidence of a crime? The government should have nothing to do with centrally-planning immigration in the sense that they should not make any attempt to choose the demographic makeup of those they choose to admit or reject. There shouldn't be any Federal policy which officially grants asylum or importation of Islamic refugees, though they shouldn't stop private groups who want to sponsor them. If stopping immigration is of such paramount importance for libertarians, why shouldn't we habitually support any and all right-wing Republicans who are sufficiently anti-immigrant? There have been a large number of them over the years. Remember Tom Tancredo? I'm somewhat sympathetic to the idea that so-called "open borders" is not exactly the correct libertarian position. I've listened to people like Hans Hoppe on the matter, but I still think it is wrong to empower the Federal Government to crack down on immigration, build a wall on the Southern border or support right-wing Authoritarian anti-libertarian politicians like Donald Trump. As I said before, the better solution is to support the principle of subsidiarity and secession into smaller political units. This would include supporting the cities who are so-called "sanctuary cities", even if we wouldn't want to live there. If we are pie-in-the-sky idealists about the government's ability to solve a problem like immigration, even as a second-best measure, I don't see why it's more likely that Trump's Administration will solve the immigration problem in a way that would be satisfying to Stefan than it would be to reform the welfare State such that the property-rights violations that immigrants cause to domestic citizens owing to their higher use of social services is not ameliorated.

This post is partly a response to the recent debate Stef had with Adam Kokesh, though I want to broaden the topic quite a bit so I thought my comments warranted a separate thread. I'm not a regular listener of Stefan's show though I've been a committed libertarian anarchist for a good seven or eight years at this point. I've been firmly on the side that libertarians had/have no reason to support Donald Trump during the last election cycle. Stefan has been decidedly on the other side of this issue and I've been very critical of him for this. I think it was a strategic error and a betrayal of principles to jump aboard the Trump movement in the manner that Stef and (even more so) Alex Jones and his ilk have. I got a bit more information on Stef's current thinking from the Adam Kokesh debate video but I still have many questions. I'm guessing that a fair number of active forum members here were or are somewhat supportive of Trump's agenda, perhaps just on immigration but maybe on other issues as well. I'd like to understand a bit more about your thinking and about Stefan's on these issues. My understanding is that owing in part to his research into the topic of race and IQ, Stefan felt that the most urgent issue of the day is the need to prevent demographic change by permitting supposed low IQ immigrants from the third world into the country. People with low IQs don't support liberty and therefore we have an obligation to support Trump because he will presumably follow through on his promise to drastically curb immigration. Before I give my position on the immigration debate, I'd like to know whether I'm correct in saying that Stef's endorsement of Trump was contingent on this issue nearly exclusively? I know that Walter Block organized the group "Libertarians for Trump" prior to the election but has since largely recanted and admitted that his judgment was in error. After a year in office, do any of you regret your support for Trump? My position on the immigration debate is this: In a free society, all property is privately owned. There is no immigration problem because people can only go where they are invited. Some communities will be very restrictive and discriminate against all kinds of people. Other communities will be very racially diverse and open. Since we are not close to a private property society, we have to imagine second-best government policies which protect property to the greatest extent possible. Any government action will be rife with corruption, inefficiency and unintended consequences and enforcement of immigration laws are no different. In contrast to many other government policies that are more innocuous, immigration enforcement is far more likely to lead to abuse of civil liberties and police state conditions. What would a "libertarian for Trump" be willing to tolerate to prevent immigration from the third world, or deport illegals who currently reside here? Should we empower ICE officials to randomly stop and harass Hispanic-looking people and demand that they prove their citizenship? Should we permit them to intimidate and crackdown on business owners and charities who might employ or provide aid to immigrants? Stories of ICE agents grossly violating civil liberties are rampant. It's just another government police agency with all the attendant violence and intimidation tactics that the State always uses. As for the construction of a border wall, we have to remember that governments will have no compunction about using a beefed-up security presence on the border to crack down on emigration and the free movement of American citizens. In the event of a major crises, some of us may want to withdraw our money from the bank and get out of the country. Why wouldn't we think that a border wall and immigration restrictions that Stefan supports won't be used against us? I completely agree that a person needs a reasonably high IQ to read and comprehend Murray Rothbard and Austrian economics. But if what is required for a free society is a majority of people who think deeply about philosophical issues, value consistency and morality, and spend their free time reading dead economists and classical liberal literature, then we are surely doomed. There is only going to be a small number of people who are willing to do this. For the masses to follow, liberty has to be practical, it has to provide material value to people in a tangible way and it has to be "cool". A healthy economy is always going to be replete with menial tasks that don't require a high IQ. The division of labor is able to accommodate people of varying intelligence levels. Even with the welfare incentive, the levels of legal and illegal immigration from Mexico and South America ebb and flow with the health of the economy. Following the economic crash of 2008, there was a sharp decline in immigration and many immigrants self-deported when there were fewer jobs to be had. I don't think the prospects for liberty turn on whether or not we have a couple million more Hispanic citizens with low IQs in the United States. We didn't give up on the Republic because of third world immigrants. A far less racially diverse, majority white population gave up on a strict interpretation of the Constitution and limited government more than one hundred years ago. Here's a better plan for immigration: Have the Federal Government adopt a relatively hands-off approach but do everything to strengthen the rights of private property owners to discriminate against or disassociate with immigrants if they choose to. Push for further restrictions on eligibility for welfare payments for non-citizens, allowing private organizations to shoulder more of the load for providing charity to immigrants. Finally, start pushing for peaceful secession movements around the country. If California wants to maintain a massive welfare State that is open to all immigrants, let them do it. If they are independent, their fiscal recklessness won't impact citizens of other States. Foolhardy policies will be more readily exposed since people are more able to move to more solvent political units. Yes, immigrants from the third world use welfare at much higher percentages than do immigrants from Norway. But the trouble with generalizations like this is that you have to then figure out whether a particular immigrant is a net parasite or a net producer. Poor people of any stripe use welfare at higher rates than more affluent people. We're not going to avoid fiscal collapse by preventing immigration from the third world. If our paper fiat currency isn't spent on food stamps, it'll be spent on foreign aid, or military spending or bailing out the banks or subsidizing big business. The dollar will fail at some point, taking the welfare state with it. Promoting the principles of decentralization and subsidiarity, while enhancing property-owners right to freedom of association and discrimination against whoever they please are FAR more likely to lead to a libertarian society than is empowering the Federal Government to build a border wall, keep out or deport third world immigrants and unleash ICE agents to violate our civil liberties. These are just my thoughts on the matter and I'd like to get some healthy debate going on the subject and maybe better understand Stef's position.

I listened to your video and I don't think you made a very compelling case. As I suspected, a good deal of your argument centers around the supposed need to restrict immigration to "save Western Civilization". I'll get into why I think this is a poor argument in a minute. I agree with your assessment of Trump's stance towards Russia. I've said many times that his desire to improve relations with Russia constituted the single most compelling reason to have supported him in the election. Again, I want to stress that I'm not at all opposed to a libertarian having a stated preference between two non-libertarian candidates. But usually this turns out to be a complete crap-shoot. The sort of praise heaped out from some libertarian quarters, even now, is what I am objecting to on principled grounds. For your argument about immigration to be coherent, we'd have to assume that the United States was a bastion of liberty and limited government before we started loosening restrictions on immigration from the Third World. Ever since the Progressive Era at the turn of the 20th century, Americans have been willingly giving up their liberty at the alter of their God, the Leviathan State. American blacks were still under the subjugation of Jim Crow laws and wielded very little political power at that time. It was a majority white nation that elected Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and permitted the creation of the Federal Reserve. A far less culturally and ethnically diverse society cheered on our entry into World War 1 and enthusiastically endorsed Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal program. By every metric one could imagine, the intellectual climate by the mid 20th century was more hostile to libertarian ideas than exists today. Actual command-and-control Socialists held sway over academia and popular culture. In the mid-1960s, Murray Rothbard estimated that there were 25 libertarians in the entire world. Today, there are several million in this country and more around the globe. Yes many immigrants vote for Democrats, but this presupposes that a vote for a Democrat is a vote for MORE big government than is a vote for a Republican. History doesn't bear this out. Why are we to suppose that immigrants voting for Nancy Pelosi represent a greater threat to our freedom than white Evangelicals who voted for George W. Bush and never saw a war they didn't jingoistically cheer on? Obviously Democrats would like to change the demographics of the country to allow them to win elections. But Obama's Administration deported more illegal immigrants than any other US president in history and net immigration was less than it was under George W. Bush. Even Trump has acknowledged that Obama deported a huge number of immigrants: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/21/donald-trump/trump-right-deportation-numbers-wrong-talks-about-/ Many studies have been conducted that show that immigrants contribute more to our GDP than they take through welfare benefits. By all means restrict access to welfare for non-citizens. But the suggestion that the most pressing threat to our prospects for a libertarian society are Mexican immigrants seems completely devoid of reality and contraindicated by the facts. You have to remember that libertarianism is still a very small movement. The reason we haven't gained more ground with our movement is simply because most Americans, of all races, don't agree with us or don't understand our arguments. When looking at the growth in government, especially over the past 120 years, scapegoating Third World immigrants seems preposterous. You seem to accept the non-aggression principle, but you are willing to trample on it in order to prevent freedom of association. On the subject of liberty, consider the horrendous Police State abuses and rights-violations that will occur if a Trump Administration unleashes militarized local police forces, border patrol agents, even parts of the military in order to crackdown on immigration and deport undocumented workers. It's already happening and I suspect it will get worse. Even if I were to accept that the changing demographics due to Mexican immigration pose a significant threat to the prospects for liberty, I don't see any reason why Hillary's immigration policy would signify a "tipping point" from which we'd never recover. The last thing I'll say is that Trump managed to secure 29% of the Latino vote. Still a minority to be sure, but the fact that nearly one in three voted for him despite the media attacking him as a racist for a year and a half is pretty astounding. Hearing the rhetoric from the alt-right and certain libertarians, you'd think that Mexican immigrants are voting 95% for Democrats and their only concern is voting themselves more welfare benefits. The reality doesn't comport with this analysis.

You're free to drop out if you'd like, but citing my post history as the reason seems a bit disingenuous. It's not as if I'm a leftist troll posting complete garbage. I'm a Rothbardian Anarchist, so we should be fellow travelers who have congenial disagreements. I'll just say that I tend to post more often when I have a sharp disagreement with someone. It is my opinion that Stefan's FDR followers in addition to several other quasi-libertarian groups seem to have taken a Rightward turn over the past election cycle and I just feel this is a strategic and intellectual mistake. Take this recent video by Stefan as an example: Titled "Did President Trump Just Save Western Civilization?", this video precisely illustrates my point. I'm trying to understand how a self-described anarchist could morph into a Trump partisan without abandoning most of his avowed principles. I don't listen to all of Stefan's videos so I can't claim that Stefan doesn't ever criticize Trump, but from the not-so-small number I have waded through recently his praise of the Donald has been ludicrously excessive. I won't deign to criticize Trump's "competence", as per the video above, but I'll certainly criticize him on the grounds that he is not libertarian. As for the high-minded goal of "saving Western Civilization", here's what I think is behind this and why I think it is misguided. Ever since Stefan started delving into the subject of so-called "Race Realism", I became concerned with where this might lead him. Unless there is another definition that I have missed, "saving Western Civilization" is a high-brow euphemism for "restricting immigration", at least to the Third World. Is this an incorrect assumption? The argument, as best as I can ascertain, is that the shared culture of the "West", which is largely reflected in it's racial composition, is vitally important to any future prospects for liberty. Therefore, the primary goal of the libertarian is to support all efforts to restrict immigration so that we can save our "culture" lest we cross a "tipping point" where there is no longer any potential for human liberty, at least in this part of the world. I don't dispute the validity of human biodiversity, nor that there are differences between groups of people. However, there is a very thin line between objective science that doesn't shy away from acknowledging human differences including with regard to average I.Q., and giving license to baseless bigotry and extremely atrocious policies. I agree wholeheartedly that political correctness has hurt objective, empirical scientific study into human differences. The conundrum though is what conclusions we are to reach if we take it as proven fact that different groups have different average I.Q. levels. Noam Chomsky has made some interesting comments on the Murray/Herrnstein IQ research: http://newlearningonline.com/new-learning/chapter-6/chomsky-on-iq-and-inequality I don't take Chomsky as the definitive voice on this subject, but the quotation above seems reasonable. I am cautious to note that I haven't studied the matter with any depth, and I'm happy to stipulate (as I believe Chomsky does above) that the research is sound for the sake of argument. I'm not an Egalitarian and I oppose the Egalitarian obsession of the Left. Anyone who believes in liberty and understands objective reality knows that human beings are not equal to each other. Yet I think libertarians should be focused on individuals rather than groups. What practical value does it serve for me to know that average black IQs in America are lower than whites (assuming this is valid)? Should I, A Priori, treat people of certain races differently because I assume them to have different levels of intelligence? This seems to feed into a destructive collectivist mindset. Rather, I should treat every person as an individual. It doesn't take long to judge a person's intelligence through basic communication. I write all of the above because I cannot think of any other reason for a person like Stefan to have supported Donald Trump. I think this is a worthy discussion to have among libertarians and sympathetic pro-liberty conservatives and even alt-righters. Pity if you bow out and don't bother to engage further. I would like someone to clarify my assumption that "saving Western Civilization" means "restricting immigration" in practice. And how does the advocacy of such a policy not restrict my right to sponsor an immigrant from, say, Iran? Suppose I'm an employer who is looking to open up a Middle Eastern restaurant and I'd like to employ a cook who's currently an Iranian citizen? Wouldn't Trump's Executive Order trample on my liberty? Isn't the right to free association one of the bedrock rights of libertarian theory?

I don't understand this perspective at all. I can't imagine anything more grandiose than assuming that voting for Donald Trump, of all people, amounts to "saving Western civilization". How are you defining "Western civilization"? That seems to me to be a rather crude and abstract collectivist phrase. I'm guessing that you are euphemistically referring to immigration and changing demographics. Despite campaign rhetoric, Barack Obama deported more illegal immigrants than all other presidents in US history combined. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/obama-deported-record-number-immigrants-trump-claim-article-1.2774180 It's not at all clear that we'd have more illegal immigration under a Democrat than we'd have under a Republican. And I'd argue with the entire premise that having the State restrict immigration is a libertarian position to begin with. Every single election is the "most important election in our lifetime". Had Hillary been elected, she'd be so mired in scandal from day one that there's a good chance she'd face investigation from obstructionist Republicans from the outset. It might be a replay of Bill in the 1990s and, if you remember, Bill Clinton turned out to one of the least bad modern presidents because of this. Least bad is relative because he was still horrendous in an absolute sense. But the debt grew less under his administration than under Reagan, George W. Bush or Obama. Divided government is usually better from a libertarian perspective. Trump won and he's got majorities in the House and Senate. Yes the CIA is giving him some trouble but if he gets past this initial hurdle, he has a lot of power to enact a number of anti-liberty policies with no real threat from an impotent Democratic opposition. Hillary would have been a disaster on so many levels, but I don't think it is at all clear that Trump was a much better choice.

I'm not passing any final judgment on Trump and I hope that he will enact pro-liberty policies. However, I believe that the libertarian and anarchist communities should be extremely skeptical of him and his administration based on everything we know thus far. Sure, it's not the worst thing that Trump is non-ideological. But this makes him extremely susceptible to influence by his handlers. With the exception of Bannon, his cabinet is made up of insiders who have track records. And those records are not good. "Mad Dog" Mattis presided over the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and is certainly no anti-war advocate. Yet he's got Trump's ear. If Trump did have firm principles, he could have staffed his administration with far better people. For broad libertarian support, I'd expect a person to subscribe to libertarian principles. Which major campaign promise are you referring to? He repealed TPP, which I give him credit for. But he wants to replace it with high protectionist tariffs. He's not an advocate of genuine free trade. In fact he supports agreements like these provided they are negotiated differently and the burdensome regulations are imposed on different people. Or are you referring to his travel ban? I can't see how this is remotely a libertarian position. I'm happy to give him credit where he is correct. As I said, I think his Supreme Court nominee was pretty solid from everything I have read. Certainly about the best we could reasonably expect. I'm basing my claim that Trump is not a voracious reader on everything I have read about him from people who have known him over the years and on my observations of him and his statements. He has some good instincts on a few issues but I have yet to see any interview or press conference where he demonstrates any deep knowledge of anything that would be important to the job of President, whether on the subject of economics, foreign policy or whatever. My interpretation of what I have seen is subjective but I'm clearly not the only one who came to this conclusion. As far as Islamic terrorism is concerned, I explicitly said that I am not defending the targeting of innocent civilians. My point is that the anger that gives rise to terrorism is understandable. There is a clear cause-and-effect relationship at work here. If your entire family was murdered at a wedding party and they had nothing to do with terrorism, would you be angry at those who perpetrated the attack? Would you want to seek revenge? Terrorism is a tactic that desperate people use to fight back against an overwhelming power. The goal is to elicit a change in policy from the foreign occupier. The idea is that if the terrorists can sufficiently terrorize the civilian populations of the nation that is occupying their lands, the people will put pressure on their politicians to withdraw the troops and cease the policies that are eliciting the terrorist attacks against them. If you understand human psychology, you can understand how foreign occupation can push moderate people to become more and more radicalized over time. If Trump doesn't understand any of this, then he can be expected to exacerbate the terrorism problem. What I'm saying has nothing to do with what social justice warriors are saying. I believe in the non-aggression principle. But I have to wonder why you are so concerned about terrorist attacks which kill civilians, yet don't seem nearly so bothered that Trump has continued Obama's drone bombing campaigns in Yemen and wants to further escalate the bombings of ISIS? Because, as has been demonstrated time after time, we are killing far more innocent civilians than actual terrorists. And even the "terrorists" are really just suspects since they haven't been convicted of anything. I understand completely that the fact that you have been terrorized by foreigners doesn't give you the right to respond in ANY way, but I can hazard a guess as to how a terrorist sympathizing Muslim would respond. "You condemn us for targeting your civilians, yet you have no problem whatsoever in cavalierly murdering our innocent civilians by the thousands." This type of argument makes the Right go apoplectic since we are supposedly the "indispensable nation" that can do no wrong. But there is somewhat of a moral equivalence here. They shouldn't kill our innocents but we shouldn't be killing theirs either. If you keep kicking a hornets nest you shouldn't protest when you get stung. What I'm arguing for is the exact opposite of moral relativism. I want to apply the exact same moral standard to every person. Nobody has the right to initiate aggression against anybody else. I didn't vote for Gary Johnson, even though you keep assuming I did. I don't even begrudge someone who voted for Trump as a lesser-evils calculation. What I object to is libertarians who support Trump. And there is a difference. I could see a libertarian saying to themselves: "Okay we narrowly avoided Nuclear War by defeating Hillary. Now I'd better gear up to oppose Trump because he is going to be terrible on almost everything."

You're free to keep any Muslim person (or anyone else for that matter) out of any property that you personally own. What you don't have the right to do is keep me from inviting a Muslim person onto my property, or hiring a Muslim employee or sponsoring a Syrian refugee for that matter. Promoting nationalist anti-immigration policies tramples on the right to free association. I agree that there should be no government program to resettle refugees from Syria or anywhere else. But the government should also not forbid a private organization from sponsoring such refugees. I think your conception of Islam is incorrect and based on ignorance. There are 1.5 Billion Muslims in the world and most of them don't hold to the regressive beliefs of those in Saudi Arabia and a handful of third world Middle Eastern nations. I book I can't recommend highly enough is "Who Speaks For Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think": https://www.amazon.com/Who-Speaks-Islam-Billion-Muslims/dp/1595620176 I wholeheartedly agree that accepting in millions of Syrian refugees quickly would cause many problems with assimilation. We are seeing this in Germany. Yet exhaustive studies of what Muslims really think like those outlined in the book I mentioned above show that Muslims who move to Western societies assimilate fairly well and adopt many of our cultural values. The radicalization of certain segments of the Muslim world has much to do with our foreign policy. We cannot separate entirely the regressive regimes in countries like Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia from the geopolitical dynamics of the region. Our government has been intervening into those countries for decades. Our policies have repeatedly emboldened and advantaged the most radical and regressive elements of those societies. I don't think it's reasonable to act as if countries in the middle east have been developing independent of outside interference and conclude that their problems stem from the religion of Islam exclusively. The travel ban (or temporary restriction) was a stupid idea because it creates the illusion that the War on Terror is a religious war between the Christian West and the Islamic world. As I've said many times, this "war" (if we can even call it that) is entirely a product of blowback for our government's foreign policy.

I didn't vote for Johnson, but I want to clarify my position. I don't think it was unreasonable, especially if you lived in a swing state, to have concluded that Trump represents a lesser threat than Hillary. Again, the Russia issue is the most compelling reason to have supported Trump over Hillary. I didn't openly support any candidate in this cycle. I didn't lobby for my friends to vote for any particular candidate nor did I promote anybody online. The only reason I left my house to vote in my home state of California was to vote for various ballot initiatives. I voted for marijuana legalization, against the death penalty, and against all taxes and regulations. Again, I am drawing a sharp distinction between saying that one person is "less bad" as I believe is Walter Block's position, and the full-throated endorsement offered by certain prominent libertarians.