Libertarians shout at each other


Columnist looks at the divisions over the Iraq war
Via Coyote Blog comes this Megan McArdle piece about libertarian attitudes about the Iraq War.

If you are not willing to posit that Americans should stay home even when millions are being senselessly slaughtered, then you end up in sticky pragmatic arguments about the possibilities of inherently untrustworthy state power to counteract even more noxious state power, and how much in the way of cost we can reasonably be expected to bear in order to advance liberty. I don't think there's an inherently libertarian answer to those questions. Libertarians should be inherently more suspicious of the American government's ability to make things better than other groups--but by the same token, it seems to me that they should be inherently more suspicious of repulsive states such as the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.

Great piece. Here is something similar I posted a while back. And since I am quoting myself, I get the Technopagan Green.

This is THE question of the American 21st Century. How can we uphold our honor if the other guy doesn't play by the rules?

Now I am not going to get into a long discussion on the things that America has done wrong. I will say that the current mess in the Middle East and in Central America and South America were brought on in part because we propped up tyrants to "be nice" until they wouldn't do what we said anymore. It happened, we can't change it, we can only go forward.

But by being "nice" all the time (at least to our "friends), we invited the abuse.

The answer may surprise you. I wish it were mine. It's a long one, and you really should read it for yourself.

When all your choices are bad ones, you pick the least destructive.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Wed - November 28, 2007 at 05:17 AM  Tag


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