Presumably in response to recent posts of mine (The Great Gun Decision: Dissent; To Hell with Heller; Heller and the States; The "deeply dishonest" opponents of the President...; ), Skip (not Dave) Oliva writes:
In Stephan Kinsella’s Libertarianism…Let's take the first four. I presume by "government" Oliva means "state." Now, does he really mean "can"? That just means ability. Certainly, states do steal and murder--and therefore they "can". In my libertarianism, states do not exist since they are widely regarded as criminal.
…the government can take everything you own…
…the police can murder you and your family without consequence…
…religious fanatics can take control of your body and mind…
…regulators can destroy productive capital and plunge the economy into depression…
…and if you do anything to challenge these acts, you will be branded as the enemy of “true” libertarianism.
Perhaps Oliva means "may", as in permission. That is, he is alleging that I believe it is permissible for states to exist, and to rob, murder, and regulate. Where he got the idea that I think it's permissible for states to exist, or commit crime, I do not know, since I'm an anarchist (and Oliva is not even a libertarian).
I suspect what the confused, inarticulate, non-libertarian Mr. Oliva is trying to say is this: if you do not believe that the federal government has (or should have?) the constitutional authority to strike down unlibertarian laws of the several states, then you are in favor of these unlibertarian laws. But when you make plain what he's really saying, it's obviously false.
His last comment is also false. I of course support any victim of any state crime using another state against the offending state. If I were on the receiving end of a bad state law, sure, I'd use every argument in the book to try to persuade a federal judge to strike it down. But there's a difference between advocacy and objective, honest, outside analysis.
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