Keith Knight and I tag teamed an interview with David D. Friedman about his newest book, “Legal Systems Very Different From Ours.” I asked him some burning questions I had from what I consider to be a Liberty Weekly Classic–“Non-State Justice Systems: A Primer” Episode 36 of the show.
In this episode of the podcast, Drew Cook joins me to share his story of recovery and to explain his first hand account of how the state creates addicts. Drew is the host of The Clean Libertarian and has been a long time listener of the show!
I joined Jose Galison on “No Way Jose” to finish up a belated recap of 2020. We discuss the 2020 campaign trail, allegations of election fraud, Hunter Biden, internet censorship, “trusting the experts,” the capitol occupation, and the dawn of the agorist internet. You won’t want to miss this one.
There are a few rights of passage in law school. Many of them occur in constitutional law.
For instance, constitutional law is where most students will learn for the first time that judicial review, the power to declare laws unconstitutional, was not a power granted to the Supreme Court by the Constitution. It is a power that the Supreme Court declared for itself in Marbury v. Madison, a decision interpreting an act of Congress.
Most law students are also shocked to learn that the Bill of Rights did not originally apply to the states. The Supreme Court merely interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment to mean that select provisions of the Bill of Rights (eventually most of them) applied to the states. The Fourteenth Amendment was drafted and ratified by Congress.
Also among these rights of passage are the abominable cases that your constitutional law professor lectured about in hushed disapproval. These are the cases that are an embarrassment to the bar. My colleague Dean amusingly calls these cases “anti-canon.”
As a very young radical in law school, I struggled—and continue to struggle—to make sense of what the principled view of constitutional law should be, especially given these abominable cases.
Of course, the correct answer is that the State is unfit to exist. This is because every State is necessarily predicated upon an illegitimate monopoly over legalized violence. However, this ethical principle does not always illuminate the correct intellectual path a young libertarian attorney should take. Like it or not, the State exists.
For a libertarian anarchist, it is a difficult, perhaps impossible, juxtaposition to concurrently maintain these three principles: 1) the Federal Government has no right to dictate a states’s own policy; 2) legislatures create illegitimate law by fiat—positive law; and 3) a judge’s duty is to say what the law is, and not what it should be, the latter being a dire violation of separation of powers—this is the sacred federalist axiom.
No better is this conflict exemplified than the contrast between two cases which are universally abhorred by “respectable jurists” throughout the United States.
In 1905’s Lochner v. New York, the Supreme Court struck down a New York state law which limited the number of hours bakers were allowed to work in a week. The Court found, inter alia, that the law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
“Respectable jurists” across the country detest the Lochner Court’s decision because of its conservative activism in creating a “right to contract” that was not enumerated in the Constitution.
There is a problem with the federal government striking down a state’s legislature. The founding ethos of the American system rests upon the theory of popular sovereignty—the idea that a nation’s ultimate source of political power rests with its people. In the American system, the will of the people is (theoretically) expressed through their representatives in the legislature. As fellow anarchist libertarians, many of you likely scoff at this notion. I understand, but it is nothing to shake a stick at. The entirety of the western liberal tradition has culminated with this theory, from the ancient Anglo-Saxons to the Declaration of Independence
On the other hand, as a libertarian anarchist in *the current year,* it is more than apparent that a legislature may trample a man’s rights as utterly as any despot. The ruling in Lochner is satisfying in that the Supreme Court actually intervened on behalf of individual liberty.
That aside, a progressive Supreme Court may endorse a state policy which is completely antithetical to human liberty. The banner case for this is Buck v. Bell, perhaps the Supreme Court’s greatest abomination.
In 1927, the Supreme Court upheld a 1924 Virginia state statute providing for the sterilization of “mental defectives” who would, “become a menace” to society if discharged. Under this ruling, approximately 60,000 American citizens would be forcefully sterilized through the 1970s, when the policy was largely discontinued. The Buck ruling is arguably still binding precedent and could theoretically be used to justify forced vaccination.
I had actually set out to write this article as a deep dive on Buckv. Bell. I intended to lambaste the progressive ideology behind the eugenics movement and the Progressive Era of the Supreme Court. This is forthcoming.
Instead, this article took on a life of its own when I began to research Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., the author of the Buck v. Bell opinion.
Holmes was a eugenicist. However, an honest examination of his judicial philosophy will not allow me to chalk the Buck decision up solely to a progressive-activist Supreme Court. The man was a complex beast.
No, the common thread running through all abominable Supreme Court decisions is not judicial activism, nor even the progressive agenda (although a common culprit). It is positive law.
Black’s Law Dictionary defines “positive law:”
Social perspective of a legal rule’s validity being authorized by law and socially accepted versus being based on natural or moral law. View of man-made law as posited by man for man, rather than being fair.
In Lochner, it was the New York legislature that created an affront to liberty by conjuring up policy by diktat. In Buck, the controversy began when the Virginia legislature passed a law allowing for the involuntary sterilization of the “unfit.”
Of course, if I could wave a wand and disappear the convention of imposed positive law, I would. Perhaps as an end-goal, but not a practical reality.
Instead, this practitioner must view the state of the law with cynical bemusement. Jurists and counselors grapple with mutant precedent borne by legislative fiat. The law is no longer tended, nurtured, and kept, as it was in the canon of English common law. It is synthesized, manufactured, and packaged.
The mire of this bastard jurisprudence beckons. As a practitioner, one must wade in the muck, but always with an eye for what once was and what could become again.
Some libertarian anarchists view even the act of secession as a political act which creates a new, albeit smaller, state. We examine the libertarian principles at play behind secession and examine the libertarian arguments against secession.
Dean is a second year law student at Zoom University, School of Law. He has just finished his Constitutional Law class. He shares his experience in law school. We discuss the SCOTUS cases that your Constitutional Law professor is ashamed to teach. We also discuss the libertarian approach to the major areas on law. This is not one to miss.
Jose Galison invited me on his show, No Way Jose! for a recap of this incredibly crazy year. We covered a host of topics and realized that we didn’t get to half the stuff we wanted to talk about. I guarantee you we covered a bunch of stuff that you haven’t heard on other 2020 recaps!
I was grateful to be joined by Monica Perez and Brad Binkley from The Propaganda Report. We discuss how the media has carefully crafted the narrative surrounding COVID19.
I invited Scott Horton on to the show to talk about two chapters of history where even the established history is too crazy to believe: the Iran-Contra Affair and the CIA’s support for the Mujahideen in 1980s Afghanistan. We also discuss the Iraq Wars, the Iraq-Iran War, Gary Webb, some CIA drug running, and touch on the John Birch Society.
One morning in the early 1980s an 18 year old Carmen Alexe packed her bags for a swim meet in neighboring Yugoslavia. She said goodbye to her parents and her sister. She was the only one who knew she could be saying goodbye for the last time. After the swim meet, Carmen fled to Italy and applied for political asylum. She eventually immigrated to the United States and started her own business. In 2008, she discovered Ron Paul. This is her story.
Episode 143 of the Liberty Weekly Podcast is Brought to you by:
I had the honor of speaking with Scott Spaulding about his experience during his two tours each in Iraq and Afghanistan. Scott gives us insight into what combat veterans feel and experience in war. He also discusses the experiences he had during his deployments that made him antiwar.
Scott is starting an incredible new project called “Why I am Antiwar” where he speaks to other veterans and antiwar activists about the experiences that made them antiwar.
Let’s face it, mask orders are only paving the way for forced or coerced vaccination. In this episode, Keith and I take a look at some of the ways totalitarian regimes have controlled their subjects in the past. We do this with an eye to the dark future.
US News FBI special agent James Hendricks was labeled by his colleagues as a “skilled predator” and the DoJ IG found he sexually harassed at least eight women. After being exposed as a predator, he was allowed to retire with benefits. [Link] Marvin Scott was arrested...
Let's hope Biden will take their advice. MEMORANDUM FOR: The President FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) SUBJECT: Avoiding War in Ukraine Dear President Biden, We last communicated with you on December 20, 2020, when you were President-elect....
By Thomas o Falk at Aljazeera Is their an end in sight for the war in Yemen? Pathway to peace? Meanwhile, the US, United Nations, and regional mediator Oman still see an opportunity for negotiations. With the mediation of Oman, the Houthis have been negotiating with...
The Fite 4 Liberty Show Freedom Hub The Importance of Bitcoin in the Liberty Movement - Rollo and Slappy Thanks to Everyone's Orphan for rounding these up.
If anybody wants to buy wholesale copies of the book to resell or give away, please email wholesale@libertarianinstitute.org to set it up. They're about 6 bucks each after shipping. Minimum order 50 I guess?
Last week, myself and a great group of antiwar veterans, led by BringOurTroopsHome.us testified before a committee of the Texas Senate in favor of new Defend the Guard legislation proposed by Rep. Bryan Slaton. (Admittedly, my statement was not so well received as a...
Danny Sjursen talks about the absurdity of the recent announcement that America is sending special forces troops to Mozambique, a country that he says has basically no strategic relevance to the United States whatsoever. Those who argue that this is only a dozen...
Scott interviews Hassan El-Tayyab from the Friends Committee on National Legislation about the effort to end the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. Although the Biden administration announced an end to support for "offensive operations" in Yemen, thanks to the Saudi...
Scott talks to Jay Schweikert about the promising developments in New Mexico, where a new state-wide law has been enacted that repeals qualified immunity as a legal defense for any public official. This is a similar move, says Schweikert, to legislation adopted...
Scott interviews national security attorney Jesselyn Radack about her work in the protection of whistleblowers. Daniel Hale, the man who leaked the so-called "drone papers" to the Intercept in 2014, has just pleaded guilty to violations of the Espionage Act in what...
60 Minutes NSFW Angela McArdle is the Chair of the Libertarian Party of Los Angeles and is running for national chair at the 2022 convention. Aaron is 1/4 of the TimeLine Earth Podcast. Both join Pete today to talk about the inevitability of vaccine passports and ways...
68 Minutes Safe for Work Scott Horton is director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of Antiwar.com, host of Antiwar Radio on Pacifica, 90.7 FM KPFK in Los Angeles, California and podcasts the Scott Horton Show from ScottHorton.org. He’s the author of...
88 Minutes PG-13 Bird is one-fourth of the hosts of the Timeline Earth podcast. Bird joins Pete to go over the thought of the pre-eminent Post-Marxist in the world, Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Episode 547: Marxism Part 4 - The Utter Brutality of Abimael Guzmán and the...
85 Minutes PG-13 Keith Knight of the "Don't Tread on Anyone" podcast invited Pete and Sal the Agorist to come on his show to about ways to communicate the "self-evident" truths mentioned in the Declaration of Independence to the masses. They also get into ways using...
On COI #92, Will and Kyle discuss the Biden administration's role in developing a flurry of vaccine passport apps alongside tech companies and the implications they will have for human liberty. While the government insists the efforts are fully private, the White...
The US government has preached to its citizens the need to be compliant and accept extreme limitations of freedoms in the name of fighting Covid. However, the government has continued - and even added some new - massive, wasteful spending projects. The US frequently...
On COI #90, Kyle breaks down some good news for Americans’ individual liberty. The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the ‘bump-stock ban’ regulation the DoJ adopted under Trump. The ruling also limits regulators' ability to reinterpret criminal law. New York...
On COI #89, Kyle and Will discuss Joe Biden's plans for the military budget. Recent reports suggest he has no intention to press for any significant cuts and will keep spending around the same level as the Trump administration before him, which itself increased the...
https://youtu.be/UdRaJXs9HbE Capitalist production is the only method by which poverty can be wiped out. ... only freedom allows people to produce in the best and most efficient way possible. Force and violence may “distribute,” but it cannot produce. Intervention...
https://youtu.be/SSX3jlsertI Whenever a third party coercively intervenes in a voluntary exchange, the voluntary parties are both worse off. "Any statute or administrative regulation necessarily makes actions illegal that are not overt initiations of crimes or torts...
https://youtu.be/FfVX4lMm-d0 ... fraud may be considered as theft, because one individual receives the other’s property but does not fulfill his part of the exchange bargain ... Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 176 LBRY /...
https://youtu.be/YTzRi58kbpk The gravest crimes in the State’s lexicon are almost invariably not invasions of private person or property, but dangers to its own contentment, for example, treason, desertion of a soldier to the enemy, failure to register for the draft ,...
https://youtu.be/5uKAzDMvefI Dave of the Law of Liberty Podcast and I dissect Rothbard's specific views on fundamental legal concepts. Dave is a graduating law student and alumnus of Mises University. He is one half of the Law of Liberty Podcast with his cohost...
https://youtu.be/8bnxh5Oe0Qs Jose Galison returns to the show to discuss Agorism in action. We also discuss the Neocon Twitter wars, Tower Gang!, the culture war, and what it means to be a man in today's society. Follow Jose Galison: No Way, Jose! YouTube Channel No...
https://youtu.be/P-RZK0AMX7c I invited Nick Ashley on the show to discuss how the COVID19 dystopia has affected the human condition. We also discuss Nick's his journey from neoconservative to libertarian anarchist. In doing so, we touch on several libertarian topics...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYK-2A5Wo14 I had a great chat with John Odermatt about his work in criminal justice reform. We discuss, for the first time on air, how John became interested in criminal justice reform. We also discuss how we balance liberty activism...
Keith Knight joined Tommy to discuss his introduction to Anarcho-capitalism, playing Devil's Advocate, media, propaganda, and mind control. Donate Keith on Odyssey https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/strangerencounterspodcast/keith_knight.mp3
Spike Cohen joined Tommy to discuss his history, the libertarian party, lockdowns, libertarian infighting, and cancel culture. Donate Spike YouTube https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/strangerencounterspodcast/spike_cohen.mp3
Tommy invited JJ Boogie to come on the podcast and discuss the culture, touring, music, and raising children in 2021. Donate https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/strangerencounterspodcast/jjboogie.mp3
Josh joins Tommy once again. In this episode they look at the news surrounding the southern border and the facilities children are being kept in. Donate Josh's Twitter https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/strangerencounterspodcast/josh_final.mp3