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.

Good point. I like to tell liberals that the way they feel about Trump is the same way I feel about every president. I'll say "remember all that Executive authority you allowed Obama to seize without any objection? Can you now understand why us libertarians have wanted to limit State power? A guy you consider to be unhinged and dangerous is now able to act as a would-be dictator because of a precedent you are responsible for." I hope they learn this lesson, but I don't have high hopes. I never claimed there aren't silver linings and opportunities made available by Trump's win, but he is not even close to a libertarian so I think it is a significant mistake to explicitly support him as Stefan Molyneux and Alex Jones have done.

I think what Robert Higgs is saying is that it is tempting to think that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" when this is not necessarily the case. I think you'd agree that Trump is non-ideological. He doesn't really have any fixed and consistent principles. Nor is he well read on economics or foreign affairs. His talents lie in self-promotion, in media and in advertising. I do think he is a master-persuader as Scott Adams says. He masterfully played the media and got around the gatekeepers and did something unprecedented in beating the Establishment. The establishments of both parties, the media and the Intelligence community were going apoplectic about Trump. This made for entertaining television but I maintain that Trump's win does not represent a win for Liberty. For this to be the case I'd expect Trump to espouse pro-liberty positions which (apart from a few small exceptions) he does not. Furthermore, the fact that he has no fixed ideology and constantly contradicts himself means that we should take his good statements with a great deal of suspicion. I'm a big fan of libertarian radio host (and co-creator of The Libertarian Institute) Scott Horton. He has a rule he likes to call "Horton's Law". Basically it states that you can forget about any politician keeping the good promises they make when they are elected but you can bet on them following through on every one of their bad promises from a libertarian perspective. This is only a silly aphorism but I think it is quite insightful. The only way this would not be the case is if you were voting for a man of tremendous principle and ideological commitment like Ron Paul. I never said that Muslim terrorists were justified in killing innocent people. What I am saying is that the anger and resentment that motivates many of them to commit these attacks, and that increases recruitment and radicalization is understandable and entirely reasonable. The terrorist problem that the United States is dealing with is a product nearly entirely of US military intervention into the Middle East. They hate us for our foreign policy. ISIS and Al Qaeda recruitment propaganda is littered with images and videos of dead children due to cluster bombs or economic sanctions which caused starvation conditions (Iraq in the 1990s). If you look at nearly every single terrorist attack against Americans you will find that the perpetrator(s) of those attacks have made lout and vociferous statements to the effect of "we are doing this because your government is waging unprovoked war against the Muslim world". This is classic Blowback. Robert Higgs, who I'm not sure you are familiar with, is one of the greatest living libertarian scholars. He was a student of Rothbard's and probably his greatest (or most well known) published work was "Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government". In it he speaks about a "Ratchet Effect". Government creates crisis conditions where it can expand it's size and power over society. After the crisis passes, the government recedes a little but never to the size it was before the crisis. The biggest crisis that States use to expand their power is, of course, war. That is why our government always needs to have a perpetual enemy to scare the people with. The entire War on Terror was a farce and a scam from the very beginning. There is no more important issue for libertarians to get right than the issue of war and peace. Okay, Trump says he doesn't support Nation Building, but he supports the continuing bombing of Muslim nations and many of the same anti-Terror policies that Bush and Obama put into place. He stated an explicit endorsement for torture for fuck's sake! He refrained from using the palliative euphemism "enhanced interrogation" either. He has maintained that this entire war is an ideological war against the religion of Islam. Islam "hates us" so we must go and kill every last terrorist not realizing that we are creating two new terrorists for every one we kill. I'd suggest that if your entire family was killed by a Chinese done bomb you'd want revenge against those who perpetrated such attacks. You don't seem to be familiar with the work of Robert Pape who I mentioned previously. His work in studying the motivations for suicide terrorism has been exhaustive. He compiled a list of every suicide terrorist attack in the world since 1980. He summed up this exhaustive empirical study in his book "Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism". https://www.amazon.com/Dying-Win-Strategic-Suicide-Terrorism/dp/0812973380 Ron Paul has cited Pape many times and understanding his work is essential if we want to reduce the number of terrorist attacks. They hate us for our military occupation and foreign policy. The largest single group who committed the most terrorist attacks over the last 37 years were NOT Muslims. It was the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, a Secular Marxist group. This is not a religious war. Portraying it as a war against Islam as Trump and his cabinet have done will only boost recruitment and increase terrorist attacks against us. Even with all our foolish military intervention into the Middle East, what is the true terrorist threat for ordinary American civilians? If you discount attacks on military bases (which themselves. As David Stockman has said: http://www.newsmax.com/Finance/DavidStockman/fear-monger-politiciams-terrorism/2015/12/08/id/705019/ If we were to cease our military interventions into the Muslim world the already minuscule threat of terrorism would almost surely vanish nearly entirely. Donald Trump and his cabinet of Generals seems to think that it is absolutely imperative that our government pour a massive amount of money and resources into combating a nearly fictitious threat that is almost entirely the creation of the US government. The last thing I'll say is that I don't think it's true that the entire Deep State is opposed to Trump. The CIA, who overwhelmingly supported Hillary and want to escalate tensions with Russia, oppose Trump. And I hope Trump stands up to them and maintains his promise to improve relations with Putin. But other elements of the Deep State are supportive of him. Elements of the FBI support Donald Trump. As has been speculated, the likely reason Comey re-opened the investigation of Clinton's emails a couple weeks before the election had to do with internal pressure from inside the FBI. People knew how corrupt she was. Furthermore, elements of the Military clearly support Trump. Trump has surrounded himself with military men who are clearly pro-war. The dynamics at play here boil down to an internal Deep State battle. It's the Military versus the Intelligence community. Both are bad in different respects. The Intelligence community want to overthrow Assad in Syria and provoke a new Cold War with Russia. The Military (at least those supporting Trump) want to work with Russia and Assad to kill ISIS and build and maintain "Safe Zones". They also want to tear up the Iran Nuclear Deal and start a war with that country! Both factions are terrible in different ways. I fail to see why libertarians should align ourselves with the Military pro-war faction of this Deep State squabble. I thought we were the pro-peace, anti-Empire non interventionists? This isn't our fight.

I don't understand this comment. I'm not trying to be a troll nor do I intend to just post topics critical of Stefan and his followers. Rather I just think this division within libertarianism needs to be resolved if we are to move forward and achieve our goals of a Stateless society. Freedomain Radio, Stefan and his followers seem to represent one of the larger contingents of pro-Trump libertarians within the movement. I don't really understand it so I'm trying to have a conversation about the topic. I'm hoping this is permitted? If anywhere, I'd expect open and vigorous debate to be welcomed in the FDR forums.

The candidacy and resulting election of Donald Trump has caused evident chaos and confusion among many in the libertarian movement. I've always maintained that support for Donald Trump from libertarians is a mistake and explicitly aligning ourselves with the emerging Alt-Right represents both a strategic and ideological betrayal of our supposed principles. I voted third party as I always do yet I could appreciate some libertarians offering an extremely qualified preference for Donald over Hillary. I am thinking of people like Walter Block and the late, great Ralph Raico. The pre-election rhetoric coming from the Clinton campaign against Russia was extremely frightening. Substantial elements of the Deep State (in particular the CIA) and many Neo-Cons threw their support behind Clinton because they were desperate to continue arming the Al-Nusra front and other terrorist groups in Syria in order to overthrow Assad. Clinton and her handlers supported imposing a No-Fly Zone in Syria which would have required the shooting down of Russia airplanes. She could have bungled us into a Nuclear War and that is no exaggeration. The best reason to prefer Trump to Clinton in my mind was the former's supposed desire to improve relations with Russia and tamp down the new cold war hysteria. This was the main argument offered by Walter Block and can respect that though I think he was far too generous in his praise. What I cannot respect, especially after the first month of Trump's presidency, is the more explicit and in many cases enthusiastic endorsement coming from people like Alex Jones, Chris Cantwell and, yes, Stefan Molyneux. Consider this video posted right after the election results came in: I find it extremely hard to understand how a supposed anarchist could be so euphoric over the democratic victory of a character like Trump without abandoning any lingering fealty to libertarian and anarchist principles. I subscribe to a similar position as the one elucidated by Robert Higgs recently on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/robert.higgs.568/posts/10154923867869400?pnref=story.unseen-section To preempt the inevitable, my citation above is not a fallacious "appeal to authority". I've got plenty of arguments of my own so I've no need for such appeals. I'm only using this quote to demonstrate what ought to be the plum-line, and correct, libertarian and anarchist position. My concern is that some libertarians, including Stefan, appear to have thrown in their lot with the Alt-Right. Yet the Alt-Right represents it's own unique brand of authoritarianism. Or perhaps Stefan, since he is reliant on donations and YouTube views, has a monetary incentive for making appeals to Trump supporters since there are certainly more of them than there are of us. The worst crime the State commits is to wage aggressive war. Trump's cabinet picks show that despite his alleged desire to improve relations with Russia, he clearly wants to wage war against "terrorists" using every unethical tool that Bush and Obama provided for him. Nearly indiscriminate drone strikes have been continuing constantly. A recent attack in Yemen included the murder of Anwar Al-Awlaki's 8 year old daughter and more than a dozen additional civilians. I'm sure this wasn't intentional, but this murder is extra concerning in the wake of Trump's campaign promise to "go after the families" of alleged terrorists. https://www.libertarianinstitute.org/2017/02/her-name-was-nora/ https://theintercept.com/2017/01/30/obama-killed-a-16-year-old-american-in-yemen-trump-just-killed-his-8-year-old-sister/ He seems to want to provide so-called "safe" zones in Syria for refugees which could have a practical effect similar to the imposition of a no-fly zone. And with the ouster of Michael Flynn, the CIA may yet goad Trump into escalating tensions with Russia despite his campaign rhetoric! http://tomwoods.com/meanwhile-the-real-trump-disaster-goes-unnoticed/ To top that off Donald has spoken belligerently against Iran and may rip up the Nuclear Deal which would again pave the way for a war against that nation. This is something that Hillary would have been unlikely to do. Obama's single best accomplishment as president was the Iran Nucleal Deal in my view. The threat of launching a preemptive war against Iran was ever-present and this ostensibly took this option off the table. Trump may well undo all that. The effect of such a move would mean that, even if he himself does not launch a war against that country during his tenure, he will bear a good deal of responsibility should his successor wage aggressive war against that nation. He doesn't understand the motivations for suicide terrorism in the least. He, like Bush, thinks they "hate us for our freedom". He has no knowledge of the research of Robert Pape who conclusively demonstrated through empirical study what should be obvious to any thinking person, that Muslim terrorists hate us for our foreign policy and our military and CIA's meddling in their affairs. http://www.antiwar.com/orig/horton.php?articleid=6720 His penchant for writing Executive Orders like they are autographs show he has no appreciation for our Constitutional separation of powers. His actions reveal him to be an authoritarian through and through. His advocacy for Protectionist Tariffs and could start a Trade War against China in addition to the military wars he intends to continue and start. He seems intent to make belligerent demands of private businesses who are threatened to comply with government edicts concerning where they may build and maintain their factories lest they face retribution and harassment So what aspects of his presidency could possibly appeal to a libertarian that could even remotely excuse the above? His desire to build a Border Wall and control immigration? The border wall project will undoubtedly violate the private property rights of thousands who will have their land seized through Eminent Domain. Aggressive Border Patrol agents and local law enforcement will doubtless be given carte blanche to harass employers and peaceful immigrants. The Border Wall project is likely to end up as one of the most infamous boondoggle infrastructure projects ever undertaken by our Federal Government. https://www.libertarianinstitute.org/2017/01/isolationism-without-peace/ There are a few (very few!) silver linings. His Supreme Court selection was likely better than anyone Hillary would have chosen. Doubtless there is nuance to Stefan's argument in support of the Donald that I have missed. I know many, if not most, members of this forum are supporters to one degree or another of this president. I don't often have substantive debates with libertarians, so I'd like to see what ya'll think. My hope, echoing Higgs, is that libertarians soon snap out of it. I'd rather we put forward plum-line libertarian anarchism.

Now we know that Trump won. I didn't vote for Donald Trump, but I admit to taking great pleasure in seeing the pollsters, the media, the political establishment and the entertainment world being thoroughly repudiated and exposed. That aspect of election night was fun. It bodes well for our future that the political and media gate-keepers can't decide elections anymore. Now that the American people have given the middle finger to the political establishment and once everyone comes down from that cathartic high, I suggest we gear up to oppose nearly everything Trump does as president because I'm confident nearly all of it will be terrible. I wonder how people like Stefan and Alex Jones feel now that Trump has actually been elected? Unlike most libertarians who opposed Trump or offered extremely qualified statements that Trump was "less bad" than Hillary, both these gentlemen really stuck their neck out in support of Donald Trump and encouraged their listeners to vote for him. I don't listen to all of Stefan's videos, but my impression was that his endorsement hinged on considerably more than simply demographics. I got the impression that Stefan believes that Donald will promote at least a moderately pro-liberty platform on a number of different issues. With regards to demographics, I think this is an extremely flawed argument. If I understand you correctly, the argument is that non-whites according to surveys believe in larger government than do white voters and foreign born people believe in even larger government. Therefore, in the interest of liberty in the long-run, we should strive to restrict immigration and keep our nation largely white. Have I got this right? By that logic, libertarians should be supporting the most anti-immigrant candidate in every election cycle. Should libertarians have supported Tom Tancredo regardless of all his other atrocious views simply because he wanted to limit immigration dramatically? I actually favor generally free immigration, but I understand completely the Milton Friedman argument that, so long as we have a Welfare State, we cannot simultaneously have open borders. I think it's a compelling argument even if I don't agree. However, I have to push back against both the notion that the future of liberty is predicated on restricting immigration and that whites have generally been in support of limited government. As we know from the presidential election, polling information can be extremely flawed and misleading. Personally, I don't care one whit what a person claims to believe in. I care when they vote for a politician who takes my liberty or property against my will. "Small government" has been a slogan for the Republican Party for decades. The (largely white) conservative base may claim they believe in limited government and the Constitution, but they repeatedly vote for politicians that do precisely the opposite. So their words mean nothing to me. Furthermore, throughout the 20th century we have seen a largely unimpeded expansion of State power even though for most of that century the demographics were far more white and less diverse than they are now. A majority white population voted for Woodrow Wilson and supported World War 1. A majority white population voted for Franklin Roosevelt (four times!) and supported the Social Security Act and Keynesian central planning. A majority white population voted for Lyndon Johnson and supported his "War on Poverty". Whites largely supported the War on Drugs and the mass incarceration of non-violent criminals. Whites overwhelmingly voted for George W. Bush and supported the Iraq War, the Patriot Act and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, among other expansions of State power. And the White working class who voted for Donald Trump in this election voted for him because they believe in protectionism instead of free trade, and they are so sick of the political class that they'd vote for anyone threatening to challenge that corrupt system. I don't think anyone thinks that a vote for Trump is a vote for smaller government. It may be an anti-globalist vote, but don't forget that a lot of economic ignorance is wrapped up in that. Trump wants to slap a 35-50% import tariff on goods imported by companies that outsource their factories. This is about as anti-libertarian as it comes, yet this is primarily the message that the working-class whites in Michigan, Pennsylvania and the other states that won the election for him were responding to. Is Stefan suggesting that keeping THESE white voters as a slim majority of the electorate will be good for liberty?! The argument doesn't make any sense. Where were these people when Ron Paul was running in 2012? The cold reality is that there are probably 2-4 million libertarians in this country. I think Ron Paul got about 2 million votes in 2012, if I remember correctly. I'm sure that number has grown somewhat and many libertarians don't vote out of principle. I simply don't think there is any indication that a Trump presidency will be good for liberty or that the Trump voters even care about liberty. The demographics argument doesn't make much sense to me, but feel free to educate me on what I'm missing.

No one has any comments on my OP? Try as I might, I cannot understand libertarian support for Trump. I can understand coming to the conclusion that he may be slightly less bad than Hillary, but that is a low bar if there ever was one. And, frankly, I'm inclined to think that this election really is a crap-shoot. Even with the assumption that Trump will be less militaristic and willing to negotiate and work with Putin, I'm less and less confident that he will truly be less of a hawk as president. Just look at his foreign policy advisers. His lack of knowledge means he would be heavily reliant upon advisers to steer his policy and he has not been seeking the council of non-interventionist libertarians on foreign policy matters. I've always seen Stefan as a fairly principled anarchist libertarian, but his apparent full-throated endorsement of Donald Trump belies these principles. Stefan makes most of his money from donations, which is admirable in one sense. On the other hand, the emerging alt-right is clearly a far larger group of people than are libertarians. It would make sense from a financial point of view to make broader appeals to that demographic in order to attract more viewers and receive more donations. It would be a betrayal of principle however. Do you think that Stefan's support for Trump is consistent with libertarian principles?

I've been generally opposed to the notion that libertarians ought to be supporting Donald Trump. However, I concede that he is less dangerous than Hillary Clinton particularly because he wants to de-escalate tensions with Russia. He doesn't want to overthrow the government in Syria and considering that attempting to impose a no fly zone in Syria could lead to war with Russia, this is a profound difference. If electing Hillary Clinton ultimately leads to Nuclear War and electing Donald Trump doesn't, then the choice is clear. However, this qualified preference for Trump over Hillary seems a far cry from the type of endorsement that Stefan is offering. Because of his differences on foreign policy, Trump may be "less bad" than Hillary, but would a Trump presidency be good for liberty? I think there is a sharp distinction between the type of "endorsement" that Walter Block offered for Donald Trump and the sort of enthusiastic support that Stefan Molyneux and Alex Jones have offered. Block's stated preference for Trump over Hillary is based upon the judgment that Donald is less likely to lead us into World War 3. Like Block's support for Obama over McCain or Obama over Romney, the candidate who is less of a hawk militarily (even if it is just a little bit) is generally to be preferred over the more militaristic candidate from a libertarian perspective. I understand this perspective and I share it. Living in California, I don't have to wrestle with this dilemma too much. I am free to either vote third party or not vote at all. If I did live in an important battleground state and had reason to think my vote for either Donald or Hillary would make a difference, I would have to carefully consider voting for the lesser of two evils. Hillary is foolish or evil enough to bungle us into a nuclear war with Russia. This unique danger would likely compel me to cast an anti-Hillary vote for Donald Trump based on my desire to survive and little else. I don't watch every video Stefan produces so I apologize if I am missing some nuance in his endorsement of Donald over Hillary. In my opinion, being "anti-establishment" or "the enemy of my enemy" is not sufficient to warrant a libertarian endorsement. I've enjoyed watching the havoc and terror that Trump has unleashed upon the media, the Republican Party leadership and the establishment in general and I hope that some good comes from the populist revolt that he has inspired. Yet Trump is not a very principled person and doesn't seem to be a reader or learner in any respect. His ignorance of economics and foreign policy means that he'll be heavily reliant upon advisers to shape his policies as president. Will his stated preference for diplomacy with Russia stand once he gets into office and has to oversee actual military policy? Will he start to "make deals" (as is his wont) with the establishment once they realize they are stuck with him? Were he a man of character with a track record of consistency and adherence to principles like Ron Paul, I wouldn't have reason to worry. But Trump? He's the guy who's been spouting the neo-con canard about the supposed need to say the words "Islamic terrorism". He thinks the terrorism problem stems from the fact that Mohammed over in Syria has been reading his Quran and, on page 223, it says his the Islamic duty is to strap on a bomb and blow up some freedom-loving Americans so he can get 72 virgins in paradise. Absolute stupidity. It couldn't have anything to do with our constant occupation, bombing, sanctions, drone strikes and interference in their internal affairs, right? Molyneux is the guy who has excoriated libertarians with, in my view, unimpeachable credentials such as Walter Block for accepting positions in government universities yet he is urging libertarians to vote for Donald Trump, whose violations of libertarian principles are far too numerous to list?! Doesn't make much sense to me. Unlike most of his statements, Donald Trump's position on Russia has been pretty consistent. This is why I maintain that Trump, by a small margin, is the lesser of the two evils as compared to Hillary Clinton. But I don't expect for a second that he is a friend of liberty, broadly speaking. Nor do I necessarily consider the alt-Right to be friends of liberty. I watched Stefan's recent video "Why I Was Wrong About Libertarians" and he spent the first thirty-five minutes or so criticizing libertarians for failing to adhere to their stated principles and the next ten minutes criticizing them for not supporting Donald Trump. Again he got a few digs in at Walter Block and other libertarian professors who accept positions at State Universities. I don't think this violates libertarian principles in the least, but I leave that discussion for later. As I've said, I can see the rationale for casting a reluctant vote for Trump in a swing-State as an anti-Hillary vote but why should the rest of us be supporting the Donald en masse? People who fail to demonstrate that they have integrity and principles are easily co-opted and corrupted when they enter government. Trump's big advantage is that he hasn't been in government his entire life. I submit that his personal character and demonstrated lack of principles don't give us a lot of assurance that he won't make peace with the military-industrial-complex and preside over government policies that are as anti-libertarian (or close to it) as Hillary or any other cookie-cutter politician. Am I wrong?

I'm not jumping to conclusions without facts. We have facts to form judgments with, we just don't have all the facts. This would be true even if the case went to trial. I explicitly stated that I reached my conclusions based on an honest appraisal of the facts and that if and when new information comes to light, I will change my conclusions if necessary. Let me give some clear facts that I think are relevant to this discussion that Stefan has failed to mention: 1. The officer who shot Philando Castile, Jeronimo Yanez, attended a seminar called the "The Bulletproof Warrior". This program has been heavily criticized by many journalists, including libertarians, as imparting a militaristic mindset to police. They are taught to view the public as the enemy and especially that hesitation can kill you. The program explicitly advocates the use of lethal force if the officer involved fears for his safety. Critics of the program contend that this sort of training encourages the use of excessive force when it was not necessary. I haven't heard Stefan mention this bit of information, but it certainly seems relevant. The central question in this entire debate is whether or not Mr Yanez had reason to fear for his life and to shoot and kill Mr Castile. The fact that he attended training courses that have been roundly criticized for encourages premature use of force is about the most relevant fact one could bring up. Sources: http://www.startribune.com/officer-in-castile-case-attended-bulletproof-warrior-training/386717431/ http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cop-castile-bulletproof-warrior-training/ A short excerpt from the above link: So, when I claim that the officers involved in these recent shootings likely reacted prematurely and used lethal force for no legitimate defensive reason, it is not based on "emotional hysteria/bias" as you have claimed. 2. The other reason I believe that Mr Yanez used excessive and unnecessary force is how he behaved in the video that Diamond Reynolds streamed onto Facebook. If you listen to his tone of voice and behavior following the lethal shooting, he sounds hysterical and irrational. He sounds like a man who is not in a reasonable state of mind to make a rational judgment. Listen for yourself: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/07/485066807/police-stop-ends-in-black-mans-death-aftermath-is-livestreamed-online-video 3. It turns out that Philando DID have a valid legal carry permit. Granted, that this information was probably not available when Stefan released his initial video, but now that it is an important factor to consider. http://abcnews.go.com/US/philando-castiles-family-releases-copy-gun-permit/story?id=40555856 4. There is considerable controversy over what constitutes a "reasonable suspicion" to pull someone over and detain them if they are suspected of a crime. A broken taillight would provide a valid pretext for detaining someone, but it seems that the taillight was not broken and the sole reason they were pulled over was because Jeronimo thought Philando matched the robbery suspect. The audio of the police revealed the following statements: “The two occupants just look like people who have been involved in a robbery,” the man continued. “The driver looked more like one of our suspects, just ’cause of the wide-set nose.” Clarence Castile, Philando's uncle, responded with what I think is a fairly reasonable impression of this pretext: “I just thought it was kind of insane to pull somebody over saying they matched a robbery suspect by having flared nostrils,” he said. “It is kind of hard to see flared nostrils from a car.” Having seen the video of the robbery, the suspect is wearing baggy clothes, a hat and sunglasses. While Philando looks somewhat similar, it would be extremely difficult to make an accurate assessment if you are in a moving vehicle and you are looking into another moving vehicle. 5. I think it's important to consider motive. What motive would Philando have to reach for his gun with an armed officer at his window? Philando didn't have any history of violence. The obvious reason that Stefan spends time looking over the history and criminal record of people like Philando and Sterling is that establishing a history of behavior can indicate whether or not they were likely to react in a manner that would reasonably cause the police officer to fear for his life, thus excusing the use of lethal force. By that standard, the lack of a violent history from Philando would lend credibility to the notion that he didn't reach for his gun and he wouldn't pull a gun on a police officer. On the other hand, everything we know about "The Bulletproof Warrior" training seminar that Mr Yanez attended would indicate that there is a reasonable likelihood that he would react in haste, using unnecessary lethal force. This is not proof of course. But many credible commentators have stated that this, and other similar police training programs actively encourage such behavior. As for Sterling, his past behavior clearly indicates that we WOULD use lethal force against a police officer. I don't have as emphatic an opinion about this shooting as I do with the Philando shooting, but from the videos I have seen, the multiple officers who were trying to subdue Sterling seem to be capable of subduing him to the point where he wouldn't have the capacity of reaching his gun or actually harming the officers. Again, based on what we know of the training procedures that police go through, there is reason to suspect that police took lethal force before it was genuinely necessary. The question again needs to be raised: Why are police training to use lethal force in situations like this? A non-lethal shot could have subdued Sterling, or a Taser. Police officers know that there is very little chance of them facing any real punishment for using lethal force, so they don't hesitate when common sense might dictate that they should. https://mises.org/blog/consequences-militarized-police-forces http://www.wsj.com/articles/police-rarely-criminally-charged-for-on-duty-shootings-1416874955 I may be wrong in my conclusions, but I don't think you can fairly say that I am "jumping to conclusions without facts" or that I am succumbing to "emotional hysteria and bias". It is one thing to say "don't jump to rash conclusions without all the facts". But the content of Stef's videos on these recent police shootings encourage just that. I've laid out a number of facts in this post that are relevant to how we ought to judge these shooting incidents. How is it that statistics about the un-accountability for police officers in general, "The Bulletproof Warrior" training program which encourages certain behavior patterns, and many of the other points I raised here any less relevant to this discussion than musings on Philando's minor traffic violations, his marijuana consumption and the fact that he once made a pro-Crip statement on his Facebook page?

You're right. There isn't a lack of police criticism, but most of it falls into the category of "emotional hysteria" and I am partial to the well-reasoned, level-headed criticism that I read from good libertarian reporters like Will Grigg and Radley Balko. Just so I am clear on who I am speaking to, you work with Stefan on the show? I try hard not to succumb to emotional hysteria. My views on the Alton Sterling and Philando Castile shootings are based on my best attempts at judging the facts that we have available and forming a conclusion based upon those facts. I concede that under current law, the officers who fired the fatal bullets will probably not face criminal prosecution even if they are indicted and charged in a court of law. Current precedent is that if an officer is believed to be legitimately in fear for his or her life, then their use of lethal force is legitimate. I'm not arguing current precedent or even current law. I am arguing what is ethical. I understand that Stefan cannot cover all topics all the time. I also understand if he is focusing on tamping down the anti-police emotional hysteria and race-baiting tactics of the Left which might preclude him focusing on police misconduct and other takes on this issue that I might prefer. But I reject the idea that Stefan shouldn't voice an opinion because it is a popular opinion. Many communities are getting fed up with the conduct of police and I think they are largely right to feel this way. The way the police are trained is flawed. The mindset of police (Balko calls it the "warrior cop" mentality") is problematic to put it mildly. I think it's perfectly valid to offer the unpopular opinion as a counter-argument to the prevailing wisdom. I recall when the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman shooting was in the news and the media was portraying Martin as a perfect boyscout and model citizen, which was clearly not true. I don't mind having these fabrications refuted. Shedding light on the lies told by the media is always a noble endeavor. But I admit to feeling a bit angry hearing Stefan comb through the past of Philando Castile and Diamond Reynolds. The purported purpose of detailing the criminal history of shooting victims and assessing their character based on their past actions is to establish whether they were likely to have reacted in such a way as to cause an officer to fear for his life, which would make the lethal shooting defense and thus lawful. But by the same token, can't you look into the record of the police officer and form judgments based on recent trends in policing behavior? I don't see the same care and diligence being taken to shine the light of criticism at the boys in blue. We don't have a full video of the actual shooting of Philando Castile, so we have to fill in the gaps with (hopefully) informed speculation. The evidence in this case leads me to believe that, as with so many recent events, the police over-reacted to the revelation that the suspect had a gun and used lethal force in haste. In both the Philando Castile and Alton Sterling shootings, could the police have used non-lethal force? Supposing that a reasonable person would judge Mr Castile and Mr Sterling to be reaching for their gun to unload at the officer(s), why could they not have shot them in the leg or in the arm? Did they really have to shoot five times at point blank range in the chest, shooting to kill? To my mind, it seems like all this is ripe for criticism, especially from a libertarian perspective. You said "If being pro-facts and believing that people are innocent until proven guilty is being pro police - you don't understand anything about philosophy". I am certainly pro-facts, but I take issue with your second statement. I agree with Stephan Kinsella when he said that "innocent until proven guilty" is merely a legal standard that is required of the State before they lock a person up or impose legal punishment upon that person. It is not a standard that the rest of us are bound by. We don't have to claim that O.J. Simpson is innocent of murder because a jury's interpretation of the facts judged him to be innocent. We would all say that the preponderance of the facts in that case indicate that O.J. murdered Nicole Brown-Simpson. We are completely within our rights to regard O.J. Simpson as a murderer who happened to get away with it. We should go where the facts lead us, and not journey into wild speculation. But that hardly means that we have to judge these police officers to be innocent until a jury convicts them of a crime. That is a burden of proof that is rightly required of the State, but it doesn't bind the rest of us. If we honestly believe that the preponderance of facts indicate that a person committed an immoral action, we shouldn't be afraid to say so. I haven't read Heather McDonald's book but it seems like you're beating up a straw man. I never said that there isn't a danger to anti-police hysteria. I know full-well how the Left can intimidate and harass people into not doing what they ought to be doing. I don't want to conflate the hysteria of Black Lives Matter and Social Justice Warriors with the sort of legitimate police criticism that comes from principled libertarians. If we must have State-monopolized police, then their sole mission should be to protect person and property from aggression. To the extent that police are afraid to do this due to intimidation and/or threats from the Left, that is unconscionable and I don't support any of it. The fact remains however that there is a great deal of justifiable anger towards law enforcement in many communities that is informed by actual experience dealing with the police. I'd like to explain to these people that they ought to be opposing the State. If people start to realize in a visceral way that their experiences with police harassment exemplify the very nature of the State, then they could start to view the world in a more libertarian way. What I don't want these people to do is to buy into the nonsense of the Left, join Black Lives Matter, advocate for nationalization of our local police and then vote for Hillary Clinton! Talk about a wasted opportunity. Not that it necessarily need be said, but it might be worth remembering that I agree with Stef on 90-95% of what he says. I'm just vigorously arguing over the remaining 5% to better refine my own thinking.

Can you point me to a single video Stef has done within the last year where he specifically criticizes police misconduct, militarization, the legal double-standards that police are subjected to and so forth? I don't mean comments made in passing on other videos, but specific videos dedicated to criticizing police. I don't listen to all of Stef's videos, but I keep an eye on the type of content he is putting out. I haven't seen such a commentary. Personally, the primary purpose for a philosopher should be to seek truth and disseminate that truth. Therefore, Stef's commentaries should reflect an honest attempt at getting to the truth of a subject. Getting to the truth regarding police shootings, and addressing the broader resentment that many feel towards law enforcement is not possible without adequate time being spent criticizing the militarization of the police, the grotesque un-accountability for improper actions, and the undue power of the law enforcement lobby. Will Grigg does a brilliant job critiquing law enforcement and documenting police abuses. Focusing solely on the Alton Sterling and Philando Castille shootings, especially when we don't have all the facts, is only part of the problem. Since I started this post, another prominent incident was captured on film: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/07/21/fla-police-shoot-black-man-with-his-hands-up-as-he-tries-to-help-autistic-patient/ Charles Kinsey was a black man who worked at a care facility which helps people with mental disabilities. He was in the middle of helping an autistic kid who was sitting in the middle of the street with nothing but a toy truck. Spectators presumably called police because they noticed the kid sitting in the street and were unfamiliar with the symptoms of autism. When police arrived, Mr. Kinsey calmly identified himself, told the officers that the kid had only a toy truck, lay on the ground with his hands raised. One of the officers fired three shots, with at least one hitting Charles in the leg. Fortunately he survived the incident but each of these individual incidents have to be viewed in a larger context. The relationship between civilians and police has fundamentally changed over the past decade. We have to recognize that there is an inherently problem in the way police are being trained to respond to incidents like this and accountability is lacking. The officer who fired the shots is being placed on administrative leave, which means he's getting a paid vacation at the moment. We'll see if there is ANY criminal penalty for his actions. If the past is any indication, he won't be charged. So if we are to accept the notion that we have to view these police shootings with the understanding that blacks commit more crimes, have lower I.Q.s, and this makes police suspicion towards them rational, by the same token we have to view police action with at least as much suspicion if we look at the number of recent incidents of police misconduct. Here are some of the titles of Stefan's recent videos that are in any way related to this subject over the past month, from most recent to least recent: Inside the Black Community: What They Won't Tell You Black Lives Matter: Aftermath Black Lives Matter: Truth and Consequences All Lives Matter: Interview with Trump supporters Diamond and Silk The Truth About the Alton Sterling and Philando Castile Shootings An Honest Conversation About Race: Interview with Jared Taylor Race, Genetics and Intelligence: Interview with Richard Lynn An Honest Conversation with a Police Officer Genetics and Crime: Interview with Kevin M. Beaver The commentary contained in recent videos is almost entirely pro-police and critical of blacks. I'm not saying that each individual argument contained in these videos is invalid, but a lie by omission is still a lie. A person who only got his news about recent incidents from Stefan Molyneux would be considerably misinformed because so much important information is being withheld. My personal view is that the recent tone and focus of FDR seems geared towards appealing to the alt-right. I have serious mis-givings about the alt-right and I don't think that we can expect Donald Trump to be significantly better as president than Hillary Clinton. I side with Jeffrey Tucker, who has warned about the dangers of right-wing authoritarianism. Your response was detailed and well-written, which I appreciate, but I think you miss the point. We don't have all the evidence for either case so both of our analyses and impressions of the event involve some degree of speculation. What I want is for an independent agency unaffiliated with the police station where the officer worked to be tasked with overseeing any incident of officer-involved shootings. I want the officer in question to have a high burden of proof to overcome to prove that the shooting was justified. Another course of action would be to require ALL police officers to maintain $500,000 in private liability insurance. This would incentive police officers to use discretion when doling out lethal force, since it would hurt them greatly financially. This is one recommendation of Will Grigg: http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2015/04/does-fantasy-cop-package-include.html It's also important to distinguish between what a cop has the legal right to do, and what he SHOULD do. Police may have had the right to stop a person in their car if they matched the description of a suspect, but should they with a women and young girl in the car? Police have the right to shoot, under current law, if they "fear for their life" or if the suspect reaches for their waste-band, but this doesn't mean they should. Police are trained to protect officer safety at all cost. This means that if there is even a 5% chance that a police officer could be injured, police will often use force, even deadly force, to ameliorate even that small risk to officer safety.