R.I.P. Daniel Heller

It appears that Phoenix Libertarian Examiner Dan Heller, or at least the Heller who was an intelligent commentator and a joy to read, died recently of circle-jerk related injuries.

The strongest evidence to date: an article entitled "Don’t be a jerk: Vote Libertarian or Don’t Vote at All"

I'll let it speak for itself first:

If you vote for increased taxes (or for the existence of taxes at all), you’re voting for strong, scary-looking men with badges and guns (who take their jobs way too seriously) to collect private property—through violent means—from your neighbor. That’s not cool, even if it’s for a “good cause” (i.e.; for whatever righteous redistributionist cause—probably involving children— you support).

If you vote to ban or prohibit a substance you don’t like (such as tobacco or alcohol or any other narcotic), you’re supporting the use of violence against other people because you think you know what’s best for them. Come on. Don’t be an jerk. Don’t use or endorse the use of violence because you think you know what’s best for other people. Instead, if you’re going to take a risk by voting, without being a jerk, vote with the Golden Rule in mind—vote unto others as you would have them vote unto you.

Would you walk to your next door neighbor’s house, point a gun at him and demand that he gives you some money because you don’t like his “immoral” habits, like smoking? Would you point a gun at your neighbor and demand that he pays you money so you can give it to some homeless children you think deserve it more than he does? Would you say, “Pay up, buddy! I need to buy your health insurance and create a retirement savings account for you. Do it now, or I pull the trigger!”

More than likely, no, you wouldn’t, because that’s sociopathic behavior. But why vote like a sociopath then? There’s no reason to. Just stay home. Open a bottle of wine. Relax.

Taxation is or sometimes can be similar to a shakedown. And a sink is or sometimes can be similar to a toilet. Nevertheless, if you really cannot tell the difference you are not welcome in most homes, including mine. And similarly the popularity of Heller's viewpoint--none of the ideas are new, and they were indeed quite old by the time I believed them as an 18-year-old punk--among the soi-disant "hard core" of the Libertarian Party explains why libertarians are in general unwelcome. It isn't quite shitting in the sink, but the sort of false moral clarity that has one telling people not to vote their conscience, and condemning all candidates and by extension the people who vote for them as engaging in sociopathic behavior is rude and antisocial--if not a signal of some kind of sociopathy!

Rather than tackle this ab initio I turn to one of the best respected libertarian philosophers of our time, Loren Lomasky, best known as the author of Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community. In "Libertarianism as if (the other 99% of) people mattered", an essay appearing in Social Philosophy and Policy 15 (e-mail me if you cannot find a copy--an essay containing the phrase "Libertarians ought not be required by their principles to lead geyserless lives" is almost certain to be fun):

If I have adopted the cooperationist rather than the rejectionist attitude toward the society in which I live, then I am thereby committed to acknowledging that although my fellow citizens' views concerning the ethics of taxation are, as I see it, mistaken, the perspective from which they adopt those views is not so unreasonable or so uncivil as to disqualify them from moral respect. ... It is, therefore, not only misleading but also an exercise in borderline incivility to equate taxation with theft, for if it is taken in its straightforward sense, that pronouncement denies the legitimacy of the social order and announces that I regard myself as authorized unilaterally to override its dictates as I would the depredations of the thief. It says to my neighbors that I regard them as, if not themselves thieves, then confederates or willing accomplices in thievery.

One is left to wonder why Heller neither drops out of society nor engages in war on his neighbors and colleagues. Moreover the equation of taxation with theft is a circular argument and a patently obvious one at that.

This isn't to say that there is no ethical component to voting. One is probably compelled by common decency to vote out of office recidivist violators of guaranteed liberties, such as Joe Arpaio, and we shun from polite company at least outright Sheriff Joe supporters. It is likewise for global warming denialists--all other things being equal, candidates who support policies that prevent us from fouling our shared nest receive the vote of moral people, and those who deliberately or negligently spread falsehoods--especially scientists who make silly arguments for ideological reasons--to enhance the short-term profits of the Koch brothers or merely because they think they are spiting Al Gore are shunned. "Not our kind, dear." It isn't war, but we don't simultaneously accuse people of being thieves and sociopaths or in league with thieves and sociopaths yet treat them as friends or welcome neighbors.

What makes this all the more amusing is the total falsehood of Heller's newfound moral clarity. Every serious libertarian thinker recognized far more subtlety to these questions--to choose two "accessible" examples, Friedman and Hayek both supported guaranteed minimum incomes for very solidly classical-liberal reasons. If it wasn't done before, Nozick in Anarchy, State, and Utopia made the equation of liberty with a lack of coercion intellectually off-limits: the arguments against it substitute for true rebuttal a merely more strident repetition of the old Spooner/Rand/Rothbard position.

By now I'm boring my readers. Let me just finish up by saying that to date I have been able to find force (Oh no, force!!!!!!) in the positions held by every "libertarian" who like Heller categorically condemns force and condemns all who do not vote as he would like for being supporters of force. So yes, your moral clarity is fake. And yours too. And, when I'm guilty of it, mine.

For reasons I might get to, at least a few third-party candidates receive my personal endorsement this season, at the very least: Libertarians Joe Cobb and Thane Eichenauer, independent Ted Downing, and, with reservations, Libertarians Nick Coons and Steve Stoltz. Rick Fowlkes would get my endorsement, too, but he's not on the ballot. And for now the link to Heller will remain. His back-catalog--before what must have been a blow to the head (perhaps from a Rothbard book?) had him repeating 1970s cliches in his columns and, we see, unable to distinguish the sink and the toilet--is interesting and his recent output cannot detract from it. Moreover we can expect false moral clarity to be a mere phase he's going through. It happens to most self-identifying "libertarians" and the more intelligent ones get over it eventually.

Why "third parties" are third.

Cheering for the underdog is an American pastime, but what if one finds out that the underdog isn't hapless, but instead is fumbling deliberately, and being a bit of a jerk, too. That's not a 100% unfair description of the Arizona Libertarian Party.

Now I happen to be what could be called a libertarian and someone who'd like to see a libertarian party succeed. And there are quite a few people--including my co-'blogger--doing a lot of work to get that libertarian party to succeed. But that libertarian party is so culturally out of whack, one sometimes wonders if it would be best to simply let the elderly ideologues have their way and turn it into the Cult of Noninitiation of Force. Let us proclaim the Mystery of Faith: we can have property without force and liberty without law, forever and ever, Amen.

So what's really on my mind? Greater than two thirds of one percent of registered voters must be registered Libertarian, that is to say, must be members of the Arizona Libertarian Party, for the Libertarian Party to have ballot access. So far, the LP hasn't used that ballot access for much in Arizona, but one can't help but think that credible, intelligent, realistic candidates like Nick Coons, Rick Fowlkes (before and after he switched to the Republicans), and Joe Cobb at least change the tone of the public discourse for the better, and their campaigns help to build an organization which can start taking more votes from Democrats and Republicans at the margin.

The Arizona Libertarian Party has been spending thousands of dollars of contributors' money and directing activists' time to maintaining registrations. Yet the chairman of the Pima County Libertarian Party, David F. Nolan, goes on record once again showing most members of the party the door. To quote:

No, the most important principle, for libertarians, is the principle of self-ownership, as set forth in the Preamble to our Platform, and our Statement of Principles. These are the standards by which every policy statement and every campaign must be judged. Anyone who is uncomfortable with this yardstick probably ought to be in another party -- one where "the most important principle is winning."

To be comfortable with the Libertarian Party Statement of Principles, one would have to believe in individual sovereignty ("sole dominion" over one's life), a total end to all taxation, and that there exists in American political life a "cult of the omnipotent State". At best that Libertarian Party's Statement of Principles is a relic of the time before the "free minds and free markets" position was back on solid intellectual ground, protected by an unfortunate 7/8 supermajority requirement.

But back to Arizona matters: in recommending that what amounts to all non-anarchists leave the Libertarian Party, Nolan is working against his Party's efforts to maintain ballot status. And perhaps because the Libertarian Party was founded in his living room back in the Nixon era (when the Statement of Principles might even have been respectable), nobody in the Party organization has the cojones to tell him that he is, once again, undermining his cause.

Full disclosure: This 'blog is nonpartisan, but I remain a Libertarian Party precinct committeeman.

Mickey Mouse Club

Among Arizona's official write-in candidates for President of the United States is one Charles Jay, of the "Boston Tea Party", a sort of joke political party--"joke" in the sense that it doesn't aspire to elect people to office--formed by disgruntled members of the Libertarian Party.

I have it on good information that Jay's running mate for Arizona purposes is none other than snake-oil huckster turned Jesus Junk huckster turned Man who Runs for Things Barry Hess. Figures. Jay was put on the ballot by the small-party wing of the Arizona Libertarian Party, annoyed by the National party's adoption of a sensible platform and nomination of someone who has but recently come around to the libertarian way of seeing things, former Congressman Bob Barr.

Some people are voting for Bob Barr to help build (or rebuild) a party for America's politically homeless libertarian (market liberal) movement, and to signal the major parties that more must be done to earn their votes in the future. Others are writing in Charles Jay to send a signal to...the Libertarian National Committee? To tell them that anyone who isn't a lifelong libertarian is unwelcome on the party's ticket? Or maybe to the Libertarian Reform Caucus, to tell them that a platform more in step with the broader libertarian movement is unacceptable and that further moves away from Rothbardian nuttery will cause them to leave to form a libertarian-er-est party for glib anarchists that runs its own candidates?

Either way, there's but one thing to say about it, and that is that it's a "Mickey Mouse" move if there ever was one.

A few more words on Arizona Libertarian Party v. Brewer

My "official" opinion as the 1st Vice Chairman of the Pima County Libertarian Party on the recent Arizona Libertarian Party v. Brewer decision is posted on the Pima County Libertarian Party weblog, however, there are a few things that I ought to say speaking for myself.

While the proximate effect of the decision is to prevent outsiders from hijacking the Libertarian ballot line, the case has much more significance as election law than it will in boosting the fortunes of the AZLP, for the simple purpose that the AZLP does not use its ballot line for anything of significance.

The AZLP does run candidates, usually underqualified ones who don't take campaigning seriously. (I was, self-consciously, one of those in 2004.) It rarely has contested primaries, and has yet to have a serious impact in a partisan race. Even moving the Overton Window, or otherwise changing the terms of debate, doesn't happen as often as it could because the Party fields candidates like Ernie Hancock or Barry Hess, clueless on the publicly relevant issues pertinent to the office sought, seemingly without reservation.

Yuri Downing was a mere gnat compared to the swarm of bees that is self-defeat. Back in 1990, Rick Tompkins, acquiring the voter list by less than ethical means, sent a mailer to every Libertarian in the state recommending they change their registrations and vote for Prescott slimeball Sam Steiger. The number of people driven off by Ernie Hancock's boorish populism is something we'll probably never know (although I've heard enough ex-Libertarians' anecdotes to put the number at more than a handful), but we do know that his war with members who merely insisted that the organizing law be followed hurt both state registrations and the the National party, causing Harry Browne to fall short of 50-state ballot access.

Libertarians have stopped suing each other, but keep shooting themselves in the foot. Mike Renzulli's motion to deny any Party support (including sales of the voter list!) to candidates who participate in Clean Elections did not receive a vote at the shambles that was the last State Convention, but the ensuing discussion was enough to drive Rick Fowlkes, our best candidate in the last two elections, over to the Republicans. Furthermore, this year, the State board made the decision for the Libertarian electorate that no Presidential primary would be held in 2008. (I'm still hoping that George Phillies or Wayne Root will have the cojones to say "we don't care".) There are better uses for my time (as a grad student working more-than-full-time) than to try to unseat the corrupt ideologues behind the decision. Hancock, for his part, is busy doing as Tompkins did, encouraging libertarians to change their registrations to vote for the paleoconservative Congressman Ron Paul in the Republican primary.

Libertarian policy solutions can succeed in Arizona, with last year's Prop. 207 being the most salient example. Libertarian candidates have no trouble getting more than their share of press when they're actually newsworthy. What's holding Libertarians back in this state is not election law, it's Libertarians. If the Party wants to advance a libertarian agenda at all--and after the 2007 State Convention, that itself is debatable--it needs to get serious about using its ballot status to run strong candidates, for appropriate offices, who threaten to take votes from the major party candidates or, even worse, get elected. Imagine that? Hold public office? How very un-Libertarian!

And how ironic it is, that the most significant policy change effected by the AZ LP is not a great advancement of liberty; it's ALP v. Brewer.