Blog 422 | The Libertarian Institute

Deep State? Why, That’s Just Crazy

by Scott Horton | Apr 29, 2019 | Blog

Just a little old aside in a profile of John Bolton:

Mattis declined to comment for the record, but a former senior national-security official told me, without confirming any incidents, that a strategy had evolved. “The President thinks out loud,” he said. “Do you treat it like an order? Or do you treat it as part of a longer conversation? We treated it as part of a longer conversation.” By allowing Trump to talk without acting, he said, “we prevented a lot of bad things from happening.” In 2017, Mattis and his staff helped forestall a complete withdrawal of American forces from both Afghanistan and Syria.

War in Afghanistan?

by Scott Horton | Apr 29, 2019 | Blog

Is that still going on? wonder the American people.

Man. How self-centered can the members of this society get?

Most of our ancestors fled from the Old World to come here to be free, to live life, to mind their own business. I get that. That’s what we’re all fighting for, right?

But it’s the USA government that’s the greatest purveyor of violence in the [old] world today.

And Americans don’t even have to know that it’s happening?

John Bolton On The Warpath

by Steven Woskow | Apr 29, 2019 | Blog

Can Trumps National-Security adviser sell the isolationist President on military force?

Dexter Filkins at The New Yorker, an in-depth profile of the most dangerous man in the world.

But WHY is Trump Committing Genocide in Yemen?

by Scott Horton | Apr 29, 2019 | Blog

For the money of course. Boy and that completely fake $110 billion deal just keeps growing in the president’s imagination, huh?

Jane Eisner of The Forward: Time to Get Rid of the First and Second Amendments

by Scott Horton | Apr 28, 2019 | Blog

America has betrayed her, she says.

The Cancer of Absolutism

by Ryan Burgett | Apr 28, 2019 | Blog

At its heart, Agorism is a pragmatic philosophy. It is about doing what is best for you and your family. It doesn’t waste time worrying about the silly people who try and hold us back. But, even though we try and live outside of the system, it is possible for even an agorist to get stuck. One cancer that pops up in agorism is the cancer of absolutism.

Agorists say that we are all about freedom and doing what we want, but then too many turn around and begin making absolute statements about what we can and cannot do. For example, they might say that agorists DON’T vote. Or, agorists ONLY buy locally sourced food. Some go so far as to say that agorists DON’T join religions or take part in anything that involves vertical hierarchies and power structures. You might agree with some or all of these, but the problem comes when we insist that these apply to ALL agorists. That just isn’t how agorism works. You don’t tell me what I can and cannot do, or what I must and must not do. Those are my decisions to make for me, and your decisions to make for you.

Unlike many other agorists, I sometimes vote. Does this make me a bad agorist? Some would say that this is anti-agorist, but to me, it is an expression of the pragmatic nature of agorism. I own my home, but unfortunately, my city insists that I pay a property tax which is essential feudal land rent. If I don’t pay, then the city will seize my home. As much as I hate paying it, I still do it because I don’t want to lose my home. I make a pragmatic value judgment. Is it worth more to me not to pay the tax and lose my home? Or, is it worth more to me to keep my home by paying taxes? As I said earlier, I do the latter. Despite hating taxation, I pay because the consequences are even more undesirable.

Now, if I see that there is a measure on the ballot to raise property taxes, I have a couple of options. First, I could thumb my nose at voting, sit on my moral high horse, and then feel good about myself as I pay higher property taxes. Or, I could make a pragmatic value judgment, hold my nose, and vote not to raise property taxes and then enjoy potentially not having to pay more property taxes… at least for that year.

If I were an absolutist on not voting, then I would be creating an artificial barrier between myself and potential benefits for my life. I don’t want to pay my city any more than I have to, and if I have to pull a lever to lessen the load, it is ultimately a small price to pay.

When we become absolutists, we put artificial limits on our lives. We essentially do the government’s job for them. Agorism has a lot more gray area than other ideologies, and I like that. Life is not black and white, and when we force life into those categories, we ultimately make life worse for ourselves.

So, embrace the gray. Don’t be afraid of pragmatism. Do what is best for you and your family. We can agree that you shouldn’t hurt people or take their stuff. Outside of that, anything goes. It’s your choice to make.

Originally posted at: https://technoagorist.com/5

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Good Rand Paul: US Out of Afghanistan

by Scott Horton | Apr 28, 2019 | Blog

A great answer from the senator to Matt Welch of Reason:

Welch: [A]lmost from the beginning [of your Senate career], you have used the formulation in speeches and also in bills of, “Hey, it’s time to declare victory in Afghanistan and bring our troops home.” Can you give a sense of how the progress of that concept…has evolved over time?

Paul: Well, you know, it’s too slow for my taste—I think we should have been gone years ago. And I think that there is some progress, but it’s very, very slow.

There are two important pieces to the puzzle that are improvements. We have a president—the first president, really—to say that the war has long been over, there is no military solution, he’s bringing the troops home. And President Trump has said that several times. The problem is that several of his advisors that he has appointed don’t necessarily agree with him. So they either countermand his sentiments or talk him into delaying actually ending the war.

The other thing that I think has happened over time—and this is sort of both positive but also sad at the same time—is that you can’t meet a general anywhere in the Pentagon who believes there is a military solution to the Afghan war. That’s the main question I harangue them with when they come up to Capitol Hill to testify before our committees: I say, “Is there a military solution?” And they all admit there is none. There’s been mission creep that’s now nation-building, but they all admit no military solution.

My follow-up question is, “Then I don’t want to send my kid, your kid, or my nephew to Afghanistan, because if there is no military solution, what is one more death going to do over there?” But there are still a number of people who are of what I call the Vietnam village strategy—take one more village and we’ll get a better negotiated settlement.

I’m of the belief we need to declare victory and come home, because…it’s a mess now, but it will be a mess when we come home, too. And we just need to acknowledge that our original mission was to go after those who plotted or attacked us on 9/11, and there’s frankly none of them left. I asked the secretary of state this not too long ago, “Tell me who’s left. Tell me their names, and then we’ll talk about whether you have permission to stay there to get a certain person.” There’s no name left….We’re talking about forces that are associated with forces that are associated with forces that are associated with somebody else. It’s so tangential to have any link to 9/11 that it really doesn’t exist.

More here.