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Sunday, July 13, 2008

Oliva on Sandefur and Kinsella

Oliva continues his bizarre, false attacks on me (last one noted here):

My Last Post Ever…

…about Kinsella and Sandefur. To sum up the two divergent poles of “libertarianism”:

Kinsella: True libertarians never take any action to advance liberty.

Sandefur: True libertarians murder every man, woman and child who doesn’t share his worldview.

He is partially right about Sandefur--he's referring here to Sandefur's devotion to mass-murderer Lincoln and war perpetrated by big Western states against bad smaller states. But the way he wrote it is an exaggeration even of quasi-libertarian Tim Sandefur's views (and strange given his recent praise of Sandefur--here, here, and here).

He's wrong about me--I am not opposed to taking action to advance liberty. I don't even oppose suing the states in federal courts to try to vindicate my rights. I would do it. I simply maintain that outsider analysts should be honest. That's all. I might argue for incorporation as a plaintiff, because I want the feds to stop a state from hurting me. My argument might even persuade the court. (As I noted in my last reply to Oliva, "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 bhat does not mean it's honest or correct for a libertarian to say the court's interpretation of the Constitution is accurate, or that that feature is a libertarian one that should be part of any federal constitution.

As for this being his "last post" on me and La Sandefur, well, I remember when he "retired from blogging (2)." Uh, yeah. He has also given up (how does one do that?) "being a libertarian" -- see here.

Oliva's behavior of late is bizarre--attacking me for no reason, after years of friendly interaction. See e.g. here. Pro-Mises Instute, then against, now pro again; pro-Kinsella, now anti-; pro-Sandefur, now anti-; "libertarian", then "no longer". Wow, what a ride.

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