War, State, Economics, and Hypocrisy

0:00I'm going to start off with a joke. It might be seen as inappropriate, but if Mel Brooks can have springtime, excuse me, for Hitler, I can have a joke about invasions. In any case, George Bush is thinking of invading New Orleans. Why? We have weapons of mass destruction, chemical weapons, Tabasco sauce, gumbo, cooking spices. And a moderate member of his administration says, no, George, don't invade, send inspectors. And George says, well, we already tried that, and they came back drunk and 20 pounds heavier, so that won't work.

0:40What I want to do is to very briefly run over what libertarianism is and try to apply it to war and peace and international relations. Now, the way I see libertarianism, it starts with the basic premise of the non-aggression axiom and property rights. And suppose I were to attack Tom DiLorenzo on the back. He's surly. He's bigger than me. He's got weapons of mass destruction. He's got fists. He outweighs me. He's a nasty guy. I mean, look what he did to Honest Abe Lincoln in his book. So what I think I'll do is next time he turns his back, I'll just sort of stick a knife in there because he might attack me. now anyone would know that this is preposterous and nonsensical and if it's true for individual relationships it's true also of of Iraq I mean the odds of Iraq attacking the United States are pretty much the odds of Tom hauling off and attacking me it's just silly now the way many people measure

1:50whether you're a libertarian or not as they have this Nolan chart we're on the On the one hand you have economics and you know do you favor you know minimum wage or this or that or tariffs and on the other hand they do civil liberties like legalizing pornography or prostitution and then they leave it at that but this is highly problematic because there's really a third element it's not just economics nor civil liberties but it's also international relations and this is I think why there's such a gigantic bifurcation in the libertarian movement the so-called libertarian in the libertarian movement because some people who consider themselves libertarians are pro-war. I mean, there is this concept out there called pro-war libertarianism, which in my way of thinking is sort of a contradiction.

2:38So I think that if we want to revise this, we have to have three axes, not just the economics and civil liberties, but also war. So what I want to do is apply libertarianism to this area. And the way I will apply it is I take my notions from George Washington, who in his farewell address, warned us about entangling alliances. John Quincy Adams has this magnificent quote, We are the friend of liberty everywhere, but the custodian of none but our own. Let me read that again, because it's very short and pithy and very much to the point, and I think very libertarian. We are the friend of liberty everywhere, but the custodian of none but our own.

3:27So I think that's very important. We should be able to have relations with any country, but we should not be protecting U.S. citizens abroad. One of the problems with protecting U.S. citizens abroad is you have overlapping countries. In other words, if a person from the United States goes to Canada and we feel that the U.S. government has to protect the person in Canada, then you have overlapping sovereignty. It's unclear as to who is the sovereign there, and this is just a recipe for war. How far have we deviated from John Quincy Adams and George Washington and this non-overlapping sovereignty and peace and prosperity? Well, we've been deviating quite a bit.

4:14Cuba in 1963, we've been blockading that island for 39 years. Australia in 73, the CIA interferes and manipulates a free election process. Chile in 1973, CIA backed who elected president. Now, I'm no big fan of Allende. Please, don't think I'm an Allende fan. But still, we have to, if we're going to do a clear assessment of what the United States is doing, we have to list this as a foreign intervention. Allende wasn't going to attack us. Portugal in 1974, Angola in 1976 through 1992, Afghanistan, the U.S. supports, arms and trains, Muhadin rebels, including rebel leader Osama Bin Laden, he was our boy, we were supporting him against the Russians, El Salvador in 1980, U.S. AIDS government condemned for gross human rights violations, Nicaragua in 1981, Chad in 1982, Libya in 1982, Honduras U.S. in 1982, Lebanon in 1982, Grenada in 1983, Iraq in 1987, U.S. supports an armed Saddam Hussein's Iraq, of course we think he's got weapons of mass destruction, we gave it to him, you know, he probably just lost them though, he's so inept.

5:29Iran in 1998, U.S. shoots down an Iranian passenger airline, Libya in 1989, Philippines 1989, Panama 1989, we invade and deal with Nureaga, Kuwait 1991, Iraq 1990, 10,000 people die monthly as a result of our blockade, Bulgaria 1991, Somalia 1992, Peru 1992, Colombia 1992, Bosnia, Haiti 1994, Sudan 1998, Afghanistan 1998, Yugoslavia 1999. In addition, we've had several assassination attempts. Iraq's Abdul Karim Qasseem, Francois Duvalier in Haiti, Patrice Malumba, Congo, Rafael Trujillo, Dominican Republic, Diem in South Vietnam, Fidel, Raul in Cuba, Francisco Camano in Dominican Republic, I've got this long page, but I'm not going to keep reading this. We've deviated a long, long way from the libertarian view on foreign policy.

6:36In fact, I might even claim that we've deviated, the government has deviated more from the libertarian position in foreign policy than it has, God help me for saying this, than an economic policy or civil liberties, or at least it's a horse race. At the very least it's a horse race. Groucho Marx famously said, I wouldn't join any country club that would have me as a member. Bin Laden says, in this spirit, I'm not quoting him now, we must all take up arms against anyone with the moral depravity it takes to provide arms to people like me. Well, who had the moral depravity to give him arms? It's us. The US is the world's policeman who appointed us, it's certainly incompatible with Washington and Quincy, why is it any business, the US government, why these hooligans are killing each other?

7:40They haven't defended us, they've made us helpless before box cutters, they're gadding about all over the world poking sticks in Hornet's Nest Making us not only feel less safe, but making us actually less safe. Well, what are the causes of terror? Before I go into the causes of terror, I must quote from this so-called Liberty Magazine, and I quote, unquote, It's time to forget rude causes. Who did what to whom? Because nothing the U.S. government has done justifies this mad dog attack on America. Now, isn't that a kick in the pants? Or isn't that an intellectual way to look at it? Forget about root causes. We don't have to understand what's going on. Let's just kick butt. This is Liberty Magazine. This is a fraud. I mean, that's not liberty.

8:25Here is Bin Laden, an actual quote as opposed to a made-up quote. The people of Islam have suffered from aggression, iniquity and injustice imposed by the Zionist Crusader alliance. That's us and their collaborators. It is now the duty of every tribe in the Arabian Peninsula to fight jihad and cleanse the land from these crusader occupiers. Their wealth is booty to those who kill them. My Muslim brothers, your brothers in Palestine and the land of the two holy places, that's Saudi Arabia, are calling upon your help and asking you to take part in the fight against the enemy, the Americans and the Israelis. They're asking you to do whatever you can to expel the enemies out of the sanctities of Islam. Okay, that's root causes. I mean, we have no reason to disbelieve him. He's an honest terrorist. He's telling us what it is.

9:12It's not that we're rich. People are trying to say, well, there are other root causes. Well, it's because we're rich, he's attacking us. He's rich, too. There are plenty of other rich people. We believe in free enterprise. That's why he's attacking us. No, it's not that. According to some research that I've been part of with Gortney and Lawson, we're only the fifth most free, economically speaking, country in the world. So if it's economic freedom that he hates, he should attack the other four before us. Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand and Switzerland are freer than we are, so why isn't he attacking them? Ditto with democracy, he's not attacking us with democracy. Other people have got democracy. Another theory is that they're Muslims, they're Arabs, they're islamics, therefore they're intrinsically evil. We're western, we have civil liberties, freedom for gays, miniskirts, things like that, but other countries have got that too.

10:01So why aren't we, why isn't he attacking other countries? It's the fault of immigrants is another theory. Well, we have our own home-grown terrorists. Tim McVeigh, Janet Reno, names is American. Tim McVeigh and Janet Reno are American as apple pie. Here's Madeleine Albright, who is another American. Leslie Stahl asks her on TV in 60 minutes, We have heard that half a million children have died as a result of sanctions against Iraq. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima, and you know, is the price worth it? And here's our Madeleine, our Madeleine. I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it.

10:47This is our Madeleine terrorist. Look, suppose there was a Martian equipped with very heavy binoculars, and so heavy that he could, or so accurate that he could see the uniforms on various soldiers. And he noticed that 130 countries had U.S. soldiers in them, and that no other country had other foreign soldiers. In other words, the foreign soldiers of any other country were not in any other countries. They stuck in their own country, whereas the U.S. had its soldiers in 130 other countries. What would the Martian, I picked Martian because, you know, you get a sort of a perspective, what would he say? Who is the aggressor? They're aggressing against us? Come on. It's obviously untenable. Who has done the most foreign invasions and bomb droppings and assassinations of presidents?

11:38Who has dropped bombs on Dresden and Hiroshima and Nagasaki? It's us. We're the international bad guys. Now, there is no moral equivalence. We're the bad guys. Now, the U.S. may be the best country in which to live and we voted with our feet and we're here. If we didn't think it was the best country, we wouldn't be here. But just because it's the best country in some ways doesn't mean that it's not an international bully. It doesn't mean it's not a good country in other ways. It's not because of trade, McDonald's, movies, that they're killing innocent people. If we just stop those things that he is complaining about, I think we would do very well. Osama never mentions capitalism, freedom, wealth, western culture as reason for jihad.

12:24Well, I now have a list of things that we should do if we are to reorient our foreign policy toward a libertarian foreign policy ideal. One is pull out the troops out of Saudi Arabia. Two is stop killing Iraqis. Three is stop foreign aid for Israel and every other country, and pull out of every country, not just Arabia. we're not doing it because he said it we're doing it in spite of him saying it I mean just because he said look if Hitler said two plus two is four we wouldn't renounce two plus two is four if Osama says you know something that's libertarian well we do it because it's libertarian not because we're Osama aides or anything like that I I'm not really against the Homeland Security Department. But I thought that was the Defense Department. So I don't see why we have to have two departments that are supposed to be doing the same thing. Now obviously the Defense Department is not really a Defense Department, it's an Offense Department. We should close all military bases. Don't worry about unemployment. There's plenty of work and if you don't believe that, read Henry Hazlitt or the Lump of Labor Fallacy. We should shut down all foreign embassies. They're just targets. They're unneeded in an era of fax and phone and email. They're

13:49Costly, kick the UN out of New York and you know they're just a bunch of trough feeding socialists. The one thing that I think is compatible that the US government has done with libertarianism, I'm now a minarchist or a limited government libertarian, I'm not an anarcho-capitalist, I'm wearing these shoes just for argument's sake, is Star Wars. Say what you will about Star Wars, at least it was defensive. Shooting enemy bombs as they come into the country is is defense, that's okay. Libertarianism is compatible with defense, not offense. A formal declaration of war, as we heard last night from Ron Paul, is compatible with the Constitutional Republic that we're supposedly upholding. And without it, we're just violating our principles.

14:38Okay, how about economic policy? Well, one thing on economic policy we could do is realize that it's a failure of government monopoly protection. If a private defense agency did as badly as the FAA, we would, they would go broke. See, I'm not against the FAA making mistakes or people making mistakes, to err is human. People always make mistakes, but the benefit of a market is that when you make a mistake, you lose money. And if you make a mistake too much, you lose too much money, you go broke. Whereas in the government sphere, you don't have any of that sort of thing. You can make mistakes from now until the cows come home, to be in touch with my Arkansas roots here, and you never go broke.

15:25So the big problem is not so much a specific mistake of which they've made more than their fair share, but the fact is that we don't have this automatic feedback mechanism in place in the government area as we do have in the private area. The reason we have good wristwatches and pizza and ties is not because capitalists don't make mistakes, they do. It's just that we have this weeding out process. That's why the capitalist system is such a miracle. And we don't have that in the government sector. And if we did, then those areas would be much improved. Okay, so what are these guys doing? You know, who packed your suitcase, put your seat in the upright position, tray tables down, no nail clippers, I mean, this is sort of like Soviet central planning, the economic orders that they've got, it's sort of like they've got to do something, and even if it's irrelevant, I mean, nail clippers, come on, it's just crazy.

16:21Also, there should be armed pilots, because the alternative next time there's a plane taken over by someone is you shoot down the bloody plane. Better to have a pilot, most of those are ex-Navy or Army or Air Force people, who are perfectly trained and capable. I mean, what I'm now doing is stepping out of my role as economist and into my role as entrepreneur. I'm trying to predict what would a market do in terms of safety? And it's not what the FAA is doing. Their motto seems to be, do something, anything, as long as it's irrelevant, which is... Here's a quote from Jean Garvey, the head of the FAA. Guns on planes is an idea two weeks ago I never would have even considered.

17:07Well, this is the head lady in charge of our safety and she's not even considering anything. There are, suppose the Secret Service that guards the president or Tiffany Jewelers said they wouldn't even consider guns. You know, we'd say, what are you, a lunatic? You know, you just fire them. Look, here are three places where the feds ban guns. Post Office, Public Schools and Airplanes. You feel safe now? There was this wonderful case in Kennesaw, Georgia, where there was a bunch of rapes, and they passed the law. It was not a libertarian law, but the law was compulsory. You had to have a gun. And not only did you have to have a gun, but you had to have training in guns. So many women, for the first time, had guns in their pocketbooks, and they were taking gun lessons and shooting at targets and stuff like that.

17:58You'll never guess what happened to the rape rate in genocide. You'll be shocked. I mean, most rapists are, you know, amiable guys. They just don't want to get shot and they go elsewhere with, you know, putting a sign on your door. This is a gun-free area. It's like an invitation. We've got, where I teach now at Loyola University, New Orleans, they've got these, you know, gun and then a slash across. This is a gun-free zone. It's just an invitation. It's crazy. Another thing that we can do on an economic front to make sure that things are good is to allow oil exploration. The people who are opposing this are the watermelons. Those are the guys who are green on the outside and red on the inside.

18:46You know, never should we touch any oil because, you know, oil is evil or something. Although it's interesting, the Rainey Preserve, a wildlife sanctuary, they found natural gas on it. And the hypocrisy was that there you could develop it because they realized that if they could develop the natural gas, they could then buy other natural preserves. But on your land, forget about it. Their land, it's okay. It's different. We should end the war on drugs. The war on drugs keeps the prices of drugs high. And drugs are produced by bad guys, other than us bad guys, and this finances their evil doing. So, I mean, there are other reasons for legalizing drugs, but this is one international reason for doing it.

19:32Racial profiling is the next issue. Look, there's no racial profiling. When there's racial profiling, the cops are going to hassle black grandmothers. They don't hassle black grandmothers or black babies or people like that. What we have is not racial profiling. What we have is anti-criminal profiling. Blacks of a certain age, I don't know, 15 to 25, are overrepresented in the crime statistics. So when they pay special attention to this group, they're trying to stop crime. Now, I hate to say anything good about government police, but, you know, fair is fair. Well, similarly with Arabs. All of these tourist activities have been done by Arab males of age, I don't know what, 21 to 35, something like that. So why are they hassling black people, oriental people, white grandmothers, you know, the whole thing is silly.

20:30What I've done is I've developed two techniques for dealing with my friends on the left and my friends on the right. With regards to my friends on the left who love things like the minimum wage and rent control and welfare and affirmative action, what I say is, look, you know who's giving you these programs? The evil George Bush, the same guy who's giving you the war that you hate, he's giving you these domestic policies. So why are you so non-suspicious and so friendly to evil government here when you see government with its cloven foot here? Be consistent. And I say a similar thing to my friends on the right. I say, look, you people realize the evils of government in minimum wage, rent control, tariff, welfare. Don't you realize that the same people are doing this war stuff? How can you be so schizophrenic?

21:20How can you be so bifurcated to accept government in the one area and sort of hate government in the other area? In my title, I've got hypocrisy. It's part of my title. And where is the hypocrisy? Well, the interesting thing is that the US does not mess with China or Russia or even starving North Korea because they've got nukes. Whereas, you know, Iraq doesn't have them, so they go in there. Well, this sends a message. If you want to be free from Uncle Sam, get nukes. Get them quickly. This is not exactly the message that we want. The other bit of hypocrisy is our friends, the neoconservatives, who don't go into the army themselves and then call for the blood of other people.

22:05Thank you for your attention.