The Most Illiberal Living Thinkers

0:00When I mention illiberal thinkers, I'm of course using illiberal in the, not in the modern sense, I mean by liberal, classical liberal, meaning one who defends individual liberty and wants to drastically limit or do away with government, not as it's used today as a defender of government programs. When I talk about most illiberal thinkers, I mean those who were most opposed to individual liberty. Now, there's a good deal of competition for the most illiberal thinkers, but the ones I'm going to be talking about today, we heard yesterday evening from Judge Napolitano and Professor Higgs, we heard a very cogent indictment of the war policies of the current administration, how the policy is destroying individual liberty.

1:12Now when we have a government that's assaulting liberty, there must be, there almost always Those intellectuals who are defending the government, who are offering a justification for the government's policies, for these illiberal policies, these policies destructive of liberty. Murray Rothbard liked to call these people the court intellectuals, he was here I think influenced by the historian Harry Elmer Barnes, who after World War I criticized what he called Court Historians, people who were supporting the official line on war propaganda.

2:01So the court intellectuals I have in mind are principally certain neoconservative writers such as Norman Podoritz, Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan and others who were supporting very and the very aggressive foreign policy and also certain lawyers and legal theorists such as Judge Robert Posner and John C. U. who have come up with justifications for the very severe limits on civil liberties that have been imposed by the current administration in its policy. Now, we find, for example, in Norman Padoritz's recent book, World War Four, which I just reviewed with somewhat less than complete enthusiasm, we find here what are the ways that the neoconservatives in his attempt to justify President Bush's invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and his other very aggressive foreign policy move.

3:25Well, one of the main points that is raised is they will take various threats or various of Dangers Facing the United States and lump them all together as if they were part of a single threat against us, a single entity that is threatening us. For example, Fedorits in his book starts off with a description of various terrorist incidents going back to in the 1970s, such as the bombing of the Munich Olympics and the hijacking of planes. Some of these were by the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO. There was some Libyan government was involved in, although the extent to which they were involved in some of these There are various terrorist attacks, of course, culminating in the World Trade Center and Pentagon assaults of 9-11.

4:33Now, to Podoritz and those who think like him, these are all part of a single plot against us. He doesn't give any evidence for it. What he does is he takes these various assaults by different groups, each one of which had its own purposes behind it, and he said, well, this is all part of a war on terror being directed at us. So we have this United War on Terror. Now, that would be bad enough, but he says it's even worse because we have the large parts of the Muslim religion, the large parts of Islam, which at least numbers hundreds of millions of adherents, have a radical ideology by which they want to destroy the Western world.

5:38They Believe in Holy War Against the West. Now, it's certainly true, and I don't mean to minimize any danger from radical Islam. It's certainly the case that there are some Muslims who believe that their religion is going to dominate the world and that eventually everyone is going to be converted to that religion. The Theory of Money and Credit

6:37how again linked to various terrorist incidents we have now ideology supported by hundreds of millions of people that is now going to destroy us so we have he's conjured up a whole threat to us of gigantic proportions it's not only there are a few terrorist groups that have had incidents at various times in the past that have damaged us, but there are now hundreds of millions of people supporting these terrorists. He doesn't provide any evidence for that and neither do any of the other conservatives.

7:23Now, this is further connected with the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. It's odd that the neoconservatives do this because the Saddam Hussein regime was a largely secular regime. Saddam Hussein was himself, of course, a Muslim, but this was perhaps the countries of the Middle East, the Muslim countries. in Western Countries. This was the one in which there was the sharpest separation between religion and state. But nevertheless, according to Podoritz and the other neoconservatives, Saddam Hussein was connected with this radical Islamic threat to us, which is also connected to the terrorists.

8:21So we have, we get from this what Hedoric considers World War Four, World War Three was the Cold War, World War Four is this big terrorist plot against us embracing millions of people and the invasion of Iraq was a counter move on our part against this radical threat. So even though Saddam Hussein had nothing in particular to do with the radical Islamic system of belief, it's alleged to be the threat against us, somehow the attack on him was supposed to be part of this whole endeavor.

9:13Now, of course, he refers to how did he get around this point that Saddam Hussein didn't believe in the radical Islamic ideology and had no connection to the 9-11 attacks. He said, this is just a two-headed monster, so by his metaphor, he is supposed to answer to the case, the whole case that he's constructed an artificial entity and sort of this radical threat to us, Saddam Hussein is included, It's really a whole series of different things that are just being lumped together, and this is called, and he further calls this Islamo-fascism, even though it has, the Islamic countries have no particular connection with the fascists and the Nazis, What's the Ba'ath Party that rules in both Syria and also Iraq under Saddam Hussein was influenced by the Nazis in the 1940s, but that has nothing to do with radical Islam today.

10:41Now, supposing then we, let's put this aside, supposing we do have this gigantic threat against us, what are we supposed to do about it? According to the neoconservatives, what we need to do is to establish democracy in all the countries of the Middle East. If we did that, then these countries wouldn't threaten us. Now there's an obvious problem here is that according to the way that the neoconservatives set up and portrayed events in the mid-east in these countries, there are millions of people who accept this radical Islamic ideology and they're wanting to destroy us.

11:36Now what would happen if we established democracies in these countries, then wouldn't be likely that these millions of people would vote for governments that promoted that ideology, so it's not immediately obvious why establishing democracies in these countries would help to help us out, how would that aid us in countering this alleged threat that radical Islam is supported by millions of people. So the remedy of the neoconservatives is, well, we establish a democracy in which we then have these millions of people vote for governments that support their ink. Now, perhaps the argument is supposed to be, well, if we had this radical ideology flourishes only under undemocratic conditions, if we had people voting, then they would become converted immediately to a pro-Western way of thinking, but there's no argument presented to think that's true.

12:50There is another argument that is often advanced in favor of having worldwide democracies imposed on these countries of the mid-east. The argument is that democracies don't go to war with each other, so that if we were The best thing we can do then if we want to promote world peace is to overthrow all the dictatorial governments and have democratic governments replace them.

13:36Now, well, for one thing we can ask, is it the case that democracies don't go to war with each other? How well supported is that generalization? The problem with it is that, of course it depends on how one defines a democracy, there weren't all that many democracies around until fairly recently, So it's not clear even if the generalization is true, it's supported by very much, very many examples. Now, it's not clear even though if we just restrict ourselves to a few examples, it's not clear that the generalization is true.

14:25for example, in the American Civil War, there was arguably both sides were reasonably democratic, at least by the standards of the time, but it was one of the largest wars of the 19th century was the American Civil War, so democracy didn't prevent them from being a war in that circumstance. And then in the 20th century, again, depending on how we define democracy, certainly in World War I, Germany had a voting system, it wasn't the government was, to some extent, could act independently of the diet of the parliament, but still we had voting in franchise, so Germany was certainly at war with other countries and even World War II we very often will see references to the Japanese military dictatorship but the Japanese government wasn't a military dictatorship it was the parliamentary system and the prime minister was replaced in I think in 1943 because he was out he couldn't get a majority in parliament so here certainly We have another case where a democratic regime, at least if we define democracy as one where

15:57we have the government is put in by voting, then that would be another case where we don't have democracies leading to peace. There are many other problems with the argument such as supposing it were true that there There's various, it's always been the case that democracies don't go to war with each other, that wouldn't be, make it into a scientific law, because remember scientific law is one that has so-called counterfactual forces, it isn't just the case, say, that if I drop this glass of water, it'll fall, it isn't just the case that this has happened a number of times in the past, if it's based on scientific If I were to drop it, then it would fall. I'm not going to try it. That would create more trouble than it was worth.

16:54If the democratic peace theory, for it to have any basis, would have to be safe, not only is the case that democracies haven't gone to war with each other in the past, that if it would be the case in the future, if we were to establish democracy, they wouldn't go to war with each other. And that doesn't fall at all just from the fact that we have the generalizations that have held in the past, even though, of course, they haven't held in the past, so this theory is really no good. And, of course, one thing I believe when one's attacking theory, it's not enough just to give an objection. You have to just keep stomping the theory until you've really driven it completely, killed it completely.

17:49Yes, I'll, but let's see, you know, further problem is that even if the democracies don't go to war with each other, they certainly go to war with non-democratic states with great, you know, regularity, they're democracies by no means peace-loving, and I'd say the worst problem for the last, if in order to get to this state of universal peace, where we have all democratic states, and Peace, where we have all democratic systems. The proposal is to have all sorts of wars to overthrow the non-democratic regime. So we would have what Charles Beard, I think, called Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace.

18:34That was the title of a very valuable anthology of essays on World War II edited by Harry Elmer Barnes. for Perpetual War, for Perpetual Peace, and the little time remaining, I want to turn to justifications for attacks on civil liberties that were very well described last night by Judge Napolitano. As you know, the Bush administration has claimed quite radical powers such that in order, since we're facing this war, this big war, universal plot against us, this radical Islamic terrorist plot against us, well, isn't the government justified in taking any measures at all to To counter it, we're facing an existential threat so the normal civil liberties don't apply and the Bush administration has claimed that in pursuit of this policy, it can detain anyone at once, even American citizens, as an enemy combatant and if someone is detained and that way they don't have to be subject to the normal court procedures, they can be, they can just be held by the military and also the military when it takes prisoners

20:10isn't bound to the Geneva Convention but can engage in very harsh methods of interrogation that certainly fulfill many definitions of torture. Pedora, in his book, bemoans effort to define torture down so that we couldn't get the information we need. It seems to be a problem with this sort of argument is it's assuming that if one is, is, again, assuming that the neoconservative portrayal of threat is right, and it's assuming that if one's acting in defense, one can do anything morally one wants to stop that threat, but this seems like a false principle.

21:07I'm supposing I had good reason to think that someone in this room intended to shoot me during the lecture I hope that's not true, but let's assume my lecture is not that bad, but let's assume that's true, it wouldn't follow that I could simply take out a machine gun and annihilate the entire audience just because I had good reason to think someone was going to kill me, so you see, this is exactly the rationale of the administration supporters that they say, such as Judge Posner, they say, well, Since we have a threat against us, we can act with any measures we need to counter that threat.

22:01Posers gone further, he said, well, supposing we're not that convinced there's a threat, but there's only a small probability of a threat against us. We shouldn't disregard small probabilities. We should do what we can, because after all, sometimes very unlikely events could turn out to be true, so we're justifying there's just a small probability of a terrorist attack, we can suspend civil liberty. Now, I think what he's disregarded here is the very real assault that, or not just small probability, the very real assault on actual civil liberties that have been enacted. And further, his own argument would apply against him in that he would have to admit there's a small probability that the policies he favors could lead to a totalitarian dictatorship.

23:27and I ask that certain talents and we don't deserve those, therefore we don't deserve anything we produce. It seems to me that it's these neoconservatives who pose the main threat to us today, they're the most illiterate thinkers. Thank you very much.