To those who would make an argument like Anonymous on the post – Who has decreed that government force should only protect human liberty? Furthermore, how do you define human, and why does an animal have any less interest in being protected by government force than these humans you speak of? Here are refutations of pretty much all possible arguments you could put forth here.

1.) “Animals are not as smart as humans.” – What about a severely mentally retarded infant? What about, for that matter, a newborn baby, which certainly has less of a capacity to think than any factory farmed animal. What about an 80-year-old with Alzheimer’s disease, compared to the great apes or dolphins which have been shown in studies numerous times to have a huge capacity for sentience? What about any cow/dog/pig compared to Terri Schiavo, whose brain had absolutely no function nor hope of it, yet she had the legislative body of the most powerful nation on Earth falling all over itself to protect her right to life?

If the idea of subjecting any of the above-named human groups to a slow, prolonged death gives you a shudder, perhaps you should give a single thought to the literally billions of animals that are more intelligent (and possibly more capable of understanding pain) and put to death every week.

Anonymous, if you would classify a severely mentally disabled person as property, perhaps you can then state that animals should also be declared as such. But otherwise, there is no reason animals should necessarily be treated simply as property, as if they’re a bicycle or a chair.

Secondly, what if, for example, IQ tests showed that men are not as intelligent as women or white people are not as smart as black people? Would that be a sufficient reason to deny rights to men or white people?

2.) God created humans in His image, and they are therefore superior.

If you’re as much of a Jew or a Christian as you imply making this argument, take a look at what actually happens in factory farming and see whether that is part of God’s plan or if that is maybe part of humans’ evil free will that needs to be eradicated. Did God say “He makes me lie down in excrement”? Certainly not. A Christian who makes arguments involving God and animals should, at the very least, be a vegan or vegetarian and have nothing to do with factory farming, which is the antithesis of what happened on Noah’s Ark.

3.) It’s always been that way.

Any libertarian should be justifiably suspicious of something that has always been, and know that this is not a symptom of whether something is correct or not. In fact, it’s probably the opposite.

4.) Humans have “earned” our way to the “top of the food chain” due to evolution.

There are many animals that will eat humans if given the chance. I assume that you are in favor of tearing down all zoo walls and just shrugging any time you hear of a shark “attack”? (we’ll rename it a shark lunch, with the shark just having a delicious human sandwich)

By bringing evolution into the discussion, anyone who tries to use this argument also runs up against a few pesky facts: our DNA is extremely close to other primates, way more than, say, dogs, which are granted special protections by the law.

5.) Humans are different than animals, due to some sort of magic unspecified in the arguments above that I can’t give any arguments for.

Of course, this is the silliest argument of all, and goes straight to the [fill in the blank with random insult] Hall of Fame. It’s right there next to “giving more money to education will increase the graduation rate, although it never has it will still somehow magically happen nationwide next year” and “running the country into unprecedented deficits is really a sign of my fiscal responsibility, trust me it’s just magical, re-elect me and you’ll see”.

In other words, these arguments are all inherently idiotic (the next-to-last, when made by any meat-eating Christian) and unsupported by evidence.

Phoption and Rachel made similar comments: “I took a turkey’s life; you took a plant’s life. What difference does it make? For a human to live, life must die” and “plants are alive, and capable of both stimuli and thought” — these two commenters are missing the point entirely. It does not matter that animals are alive, humans are alive, or plants are alive. It matters that humans and animals are sentient. Plants are not, they do not suffer, (for that matter, they are not subjected to long, excruciating deaths in veal crates and battery cages, why not try that out, Phoption and Rachel?), and therefore they do not deserve to be put on the same plane of consideration as humans. That, above all else, is clear, and these comments were pretty disappointing to me.

Today is a day that many people “celebrate” in America by eating a turkey. Libertarians think about things, and so I’d like you to think about that.

Do you think that taxes are wrong because they are based on aggression and force? Well, what did the turkey ever do to you?

Not only did the turkey do nothing to deserve death at your dinner plate, it probably lived a thankless life stuffed in a cage in a shed, never seeing daylight while it was alive. Our basic rights are life and liberty, along with the pursuit of happiness. A turkey destined to be slaughtered has the chance for none of these things. So if you think you’re a real liberty lover and yet you are eating a living being raised on a factory farm this Thanksgiving, I’m pulling your freedom fighter card. And yes, if you bought it in a grocery store, your turkey was raised on a factory farm.

For those who say that they won’t take part in things that are massively subsidized by the government– that turkey would be pretty expensive if meat producers weren’t directly subsidized and protected by our very own United States government, to the tune of billions of dollars every year in subsidies.

For those who say that food simply must include meat, I used to think the same but I have never eaten a more delicious variety of foods than I have since going vegetarian. This is no argument, and in fact I’ve noticed that while turkeys get the headlines, the foods most people actually rave about on Thanksgiving are vegetarian– cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pies, casseroles, butternut squash.

Ever wonder why people want to drop bombs on third world countries? Why wouldn’t less educated (since I’m going to state for these purposes that non-libertarians are less educated than libertarians) people tyrannize unseen masses thousands of miles away when they are willing to celebrate a holiday by *eating a carcass*? What does it say about libertarians as a group that we are concerned about, say, unprovoked wars, but don’t demonstrate en masse against the government-subsidized, unethical slaughterhouses that are probably providing these Thanksgiving turkeys “red in tooth and claw”?

If you are a libertarian omnivore and I’ve lost you and you never want to read my blog again, I guess that’s just how it is and we’ll part ways agreeing on some things and disagreeing on others. But on libertarian issues, I’ve never minced words, and on this I won’t, either. And I won’t until sentient beings are not killed and suffering, paid for by taxpayer dollars.

And if nothing else, let me put it this way– Sarah Palin is eating a turkey this Thanksgiving. So is George W. Bush. So is Obama. Do you really want to follow that crowd and just do what the masses do?

My future posts might not be all about animals, but they will be about liberty, and animals definitely need some of that. You can help. And it’s something you can do today.

Some libertarians may view Abraham Lincoln as a tyrant or a criminal (even a litmus test for whether or not someone is libertarian!), but I can’t agree. Maybe it’s because I’m from Illinois. At the same time, libertarians might get excited over the ideas of Darwin, and what that might mean for liberty.

I’ll probably save more Lincoln-related libertarian arguments for another day, but I’m shocked when I hear some people talking about Lincoln and drinking this “Lincoln was a tyrant” Kool-Aid. Let’s say that George W. Bush becomes governor of Texas again. The Texas government then decides that it wants to, say, attack Iran. The federal government says they can’t. Texas then announces that it is seceding from the United States effective immediately. Is Bush a hero for states’ rights or libertarian causes, or is he the tyrant?

I believe that the Southern states should have been able to secede if they had wanted to, but only if the matter was put to their citizens by referendum and won by a vast majority. That was not done in the South– and needless to say, they didn’t give the slaves a vote on the matter, either. Some might say that as elected representatives, the Southern legislatures had the right to do what they pleased in representing the people. Again, the slaves hadn’t gotten a vote on those representatives, had they? They seceded as soon as Lincoln became President, not for some liberty-related principle, but because they wanted to continue the system of slavery. That’s nothing for a libertarian to exalt, in any manner, but I see it done continually.

Sure, Lincoln expanded government powers to an unprecedented degree– but almost every President has done that, so why single out Lincoln (compared to, say, Teddy Roosevelt) when Lincoln was obviously well-meaning, freed the slaves, and was assassinated in office (so he certainly was punished for any mistakes he might have committed while in office)? Why disparage Lincoln while exalting those who would have kept slavery in existence, something that is the antithesis of libertarianism and freedom in general?

I don’t believe that the federal government has the right to interfere in state matters unless perhaps when rights under the Bill of Rights are being severely breached. Others may disagree. Who is going to enforce freedom of speech, or the press, or the other rights? Did the slaves have any of these rights? At that time, there wasn’t really a court system to deal with these matters, even for non-slaves. Do I think the DEA should be raiding terminally ill cancer patients, or anyone for that matter in no-knock drug raids? Of course not. Do I think that the federal government should be coming in when an essential freedom such as whether one is kept as a slave or allowed to be free is being breached? Perhaps. As one example of how far the federal government has come from defending these rights, take a look at Heller v. DC last year, when the federal government came down on the side of the District of Columbia’s handgun ban, which was clearly a violation of the Second Amendment.

Lincoln can’t be responsible for what people did after him; he, like all the presidents of the 1800s, would be astonished at the powers the federal government has now claimed for itself. There was no income tax in Lincoln’s day, few federal agencies, and of course, the president just went to the theatre with one security guard, imagine that.

Now, the problem with this is that it can be a slippery slope. Once the federal government got rid of slavery, then it wanted to get rid of other things. Now it wants to get rid of drugs (and even drugs in other countries!), interferes in neighborhood disputes (ex. a local group went to the Department of Housing and Urban Development when it thought the city should provide water services to its neighborhood), gets involved in every aspect of business and almost every aspect of personal life, and I could go on. It has exceeded things that are black and white such as, should people be owned by other people, and has greatly expanded its power beyond almost any comprehension.

I don’t think that Lincoln started that. He may have begun the framework, sure, but he had help– those expanded government powers could have been stopped by the Southerners who insisted on keeping slaves. I’ve even heard otherwise intelligent people refer to Lincoln as a murderer. Sure, maybe there could have been an alternative to the Civil War. Those most in charge of that were the leaders of the South, who seceded as soon as Lincoln came to office.

Anyway, let’s move on to the less controversial subject of Charles Darwin! (“The Great Disturber”??) First of all, local schools should be allowed to teach what they want. Involving entire states in what should be local education leads to problems like those seen in Kansas, Pennsylvania and Texas, where evolution is put on a level with, let’s say, time travel rather than with gravity. Teaching intelligent design in school, by the way, is the same as the governor of a state sending public school kids home with flyers about a kids’ health program (as Rod Blagojevich did in Illinois), teaching that taxes are good because they build roads (as I recently encountered when teaching a public-school approved curriculum to a student I tutor), etc. As Radley Balko once said,

“Intelligent design is to evolutionary biology what socialism is to free-market economics.”

Some Darwin quotes for Darwin Day.

After watching Harold and Maude last night, I found a review that ran in Film Quarterly in 1972 and made me think twice about the movie I just saw: “Maude philosophizes continuously about living life to the fullest, about rebellion and noncomformity, about individualism and spontaneity. Her speeches are in fact a remarkable compendium of libertarian attitudes, ranging from antistatism down to the most personal and immediate independence. That Maude can get away with delivering lofty messages and still remain ‘in character’ is a triumph for the makers of this film. They have designed a character who is both a sympathetic human figure and a mouthpiece for precise cultural criticism. Maude’s social and private radicalism is so integral to her personality that it arouses none of the discomfort that is commonly experienced when a movie character expounds about ‘life.’”

Hmm, this must in fact be easily overlooked if I, Libertarian Girl, had not noticed this while watching Harold and Maude. Maude has some good ideas, but I had not thought of her as a libertarian soothsayer. While the Film Quarterly reviewer may have had an odd idea of what libertarianism is (in the next paragraph, the reviewer says Maude thinks all private property should be liberated from its owners), the misguided reviewer is not the only one who saw elements of libertarianism in the movie; Maude is described as a “social libertarian” by Brown University’s film journal, while law professor Butler Shaffer writes on LewRockwell.com about the value to libertarians of over-obedience, using the movie as an example. Shaffer writes about the scene in which Harold and Maude convince his military uncle that Harold is too eager to join the military and therefore gets out of being forced to join. One viewer believes Harold and Maude succeeds in portraying individualism in a way that Dead Poets Society doesn’t, but still wonders how Maude comes to her particular set of ethics with no framework.

There are some severe problems with these generalizations. Film Quarterly probably first called Maude a “libertarian” because she fits what many see as a “typical libertarian,” or the libertarian stereotype: someone who believes people should do what they want, with no rules, especially when it comes to themselves. Maude steals private property, steals public property, flouts traffic laws and endangers other drivers and pedestrians. She disrespects the families of the dead at funerals and graveside services by attending and striking up conversations during the ceremonies, laughing that death is no big deal, and dancing away with a yellow umbrella, then stealing cars afterwards. Sure, it’s a movie, but these are all things Maude did that may be acceptable in cinema but not in real life. They suited her and her life and goals and philosophy, but they didn’t suit others who were probably highly inconvenienced by them. It’s bad enough that your friend or family member may have died; it’s even worse if your car is stolen after the funeral.

Maude’s justification for stealing cars? “Well, if some people get upset because they feel they have a hold on some things, I’m merely acting as a gentle reminder, ‘Here today, gone tomorrow, so don’t get attached to things.’ With that in mind, I’m not against collecting stuff.” Her stuff, memorabilia she keeps in her house, is not “integral” to her, she says, so if someone took it from her she presumably wouldn’t suffer. Maude drives everywhere and conveniently chooses a new vehicle everywhere she goes. At the same time that she says cars mean too much to people, she’s using those cars all the time for her own transportation, which obviously means something to her. It works well for her purposes, but let’s imagine everyone was “liberated of their possessions” in this way. It wouldn’t really work out that well, would it? No one would want to be the sucker who buys cars that are stolen wherever they’re parked. This is the absolute dead opposite of libertarianism. Libertarianism is not selfishness disguised as altruism.

Maude, then, may not be very libertarian, but she is certainly good for a few laughs and does “privatize” dying trees located on the sidewalk in the city (which handily demonstrates not only her personality but that privatization is usually better for the environment).

Maude “doesn’t believe in” driver’s licenses, but that’s not necessarily libertarian, either, although it might be a commonly held idea out there that libertarians might believe this (i.e., terrible drivers like Maude could drive around with no problem because they just wouldn’t get licenses and would steal police officers’ motorcycles when caught) and could be a leftover from her Holocaust past, as this reviewer alludes to, though it’s more likely just a symptom of her zany personality than any principled personal stance. (An argument could be made that a concentration camp survivor might be less willing to kill themselves for no other reason than “it’s all downhill after you’re 80″ than a “normal” person would, too.)

The license scene does bring us possibly the most libertarian quote of the movie, in which Maude tells the police officer: “Don’t get officious, you’re not yourself when you’re officious. That is the curse of a government job.”

Harold and Maude is a good movie, but it’s not a libertarian movie. Maude is a good character, but she’s not very libertarian, though she has nice sentiments at times. Probably the most libertarian thing about the movie is its theme song, by Cat Stevens:

“Well, if you want to sing out, sing out
And if you want to be free, be free
‘Cause there’s a million things to be
You know that there are

And if you want to live high, live high
And if you want to live low, live low
‘Cause there’s a million ways to go
You know that there are.”

Today I’ll be flying from Venice into Paris, where I don’t think I can escape from seeing the Louvre again. The Louvre has a vast collection, but one of its most famous paintings within pop culture is Liberty Leading the People by Eugene Delacroix.

You can see why.

It’s appropriate, because the Louvre was one of the first state art collections to be opened to the public; the privilege of seeing this artwork was considered to be one of the true benefits of the French Revolution and the more free and open society that resulted in the end.

Liberte, Equalite, Fraternite!

The Stephansdom cathedral is one of the central sights in Vienna. As the center of commerce and home to markets in Wien (German for “Vienna”) for centuries, the cathedral has grooves on its outside surface that served to standardize and regulate measurements throughout the centuries, according to Lonely Planet.

It may seem preposterous to us now, but it worked for centuries. Things can be regulated and standardized voluntarily, without government intervention. What an amazing concept.

Today, I head from two extremes: venturing from the very Eastern-European Bratislava, Slovakia into Vienna, Austria, the capital of the Hapsburg Empire and a former imperial city. Austria is a very socialist country, as Arnold Schwarzenegger let us know.

What’s interesting, then, is that Austria lends its name to one of the most free market-oriented strains of economic thought, the Austrian School of Economics. Wikipedia’s article on the Austrian School is virtually incomprehensible, but what it boils down to is this: as little intervention in “the invisible hand” of the market as possible. I had the delight of listening to Austrian-school economist Bettina Greaves speak at UNC-Chapel Hill last year, and she boiled it down in simple terms: from the time the first caveman made something that another person could use and they bartered services, the market has worked and has also been thwarted from working through government intervention, as it is today.

Two of the most famous Austrian economists are Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises (who was Bettina Greaves’ mentor). Hayek was a Nobel Prize-winning professor at the London School of Economics and the University of Chicago and is one of the key economists able to influence a return to more liberal (liberal as in free) economic policies in the latter half of the 20th century. He was a thorn in the side of John Maynard Keynes, and their debates were legendary and still continue today among their followers.

Of course, there’s still plenty of government intervention and we certainly don’t have a classically liberal economic system at the moment, but what we do have is an improvement from Keynesian policies.

Hayek was a student of Ludwig von Mises at the University of Vienna and during that time, Hayek began to turn away from the socialism he had previously espoused to favor a more libertarian style of economic freedom with little government intervention. It was a good development for not just libertarianism, but for the world, and it is a lesson that Austria has yet to learn.

So today, Libertarian Girl ventures to the land of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek.

Auf wiedersehn.

“But he has now been dead two years. No one can possibly replace him as a centre of gravity for the British libertarian movement. At first or second hand, he inspired every libertarian alive in this country. When the history of British libertarianism is written, it will be seen that all the lines of continuity between the nineteenth and twenty first centuries run through Chris.

Chris is dead. But he is not forgotten; and as time goes by, his memory will be more cherished.”

Tags: Chris Tame, Libertarian Alliance, Sean Gabb

“Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man.”

Why can’t libertarians “brainwash” kids, too?

We’re at a disadvantage. It’s clear that Democrats and Republicans have been actually brainwashing American kids for years, and kids often initially follow the political views of their parents (even Hillary Clinton was a Goldwater Girl!) Any brainwashing on our part is purely self-defense.

This is why I’m so happy to see this young adult/children’s book written by libertarian economics professor Ken Schoolland promoting the free market and detailing the unfortunate side effects of a more collectivist system. We’re certainly competing against indoctrination from all other political viewpoints, so it’s good to start early and often with lessons on the joys of the free market.

I recently saw an example of how this could work in Rolling Stone, in which Jack Johnson’s friends talked up his efforts on behalf of the environment.:

“Also high on Johnson’s priorities is his dedication to the environment, in particular to preserving the natural beauty of the Hawaiian Islands. In 2003, he and [wife] Kim founded the Kokua Hawaii Foundation to support environmental education in schools. When Johnson performs in school gymnasiums, armed with his songs for the 2006 Curious George soundtrack (which features green-friendly tracks such as “The 3 R’s,” about recycling), madness ensues. ‘We don’t even have a curbside recycling program in Hawaii,’ says Mark Cunningham, a North Shore lifeguard and longtime friend. ‘Convincing adults to lobby down at the state capital is an exercise in futility. So Jack and Kim say, “Hey, let’s brainwash the kids,” but in a sincere and logical way. It’s this incredible awareness they’re raising in a generation of school kids.’”

Why can’t libertarians do the exact same thing (especially since a truly successful environmental program requires a libertarian system)? Ken Schoolland is, coincidentally, also from Hawaii. Libertarians have the unique problem of competing with a mass indoctrination of most children from government workers (AKA teachers who would obviously like to keep their jobs)– and while many libertarians of course don’t want to get rid of public schooling tomorrow or even the next day, many of us would like to institute deep changes within the existing system, from outside it. I found out recently that a neighboring county which was pushing for a land transfer tax even sent home pro-tax literature with all county schoolchildren. That type of widespread government access is extremely difficult to compete with.

However, it would be a mistake on our part to not do this. Just as the humans who didn’t particularly care about reproducing have long since left the earth, it’s necessary for any movement that wants to continue in the future to work on building sustainability over time. I wouldn’t even feel bad about “indoctrinating” the kiddies, since we’d simply be letting them in on facts they should be learning in school– and we do have one definite advantage over the D’s and R’s. No libertarian can yet be accused of being a libertarian solely for the sake of gaining power, as many people seek to do within our current party duopoly.

How about it?

Tags: libertarian brainwashing, Democratic brainwashing, Republican brainwashing, brainwashing kids

I present to you The Tree That Owns Itself, in Athens, Georgia.

One unfortunate aspect about The Tree That Owns Itself is that, while it is generally acknowledged to own itself, it is “accepted for care” by municipal authorities, which we all know means that it probably wouldn’t really be all that cared for (check out the trees and wildlife situation in the Soviet Union or Cuba, for extreme examples of this phenomenon). However, the local government has thankfully embraced libertarian ideas and has mostly turned the care of the tree over to locals: “… local government and the owners of the adjacent property jointly serve as ‘stewards’ for the care of the tree, while Athens’ Junior Ladies’ Garden Club serves as its ‘primary advocate.’”

Why would the Junior Ladies’ Garden Club be a better “primary advocate” than the Athens municipal government? This is the very heart of the libertarian views on how to save the environment. The club has a special affinity for and knowledge of gardening, it is a private group that must maintain its reputation in order to maintain membership (and therefore it would be highly unlikely it would let the tree die, for example). In addition, the local homeowners also have an interest in keeping the value of the tree as a tourist attraction that increases the value of their properties and the look of their neighborhood.

The history of the tree is a lesson in libertarianism as well. The marble marker describing the unique history of the tree (which is now the Son of the Tree That Owns Itself), the fence surrounding it, and the soil was donated by a philanthropist in 1906. Despite being in the city’s right of way, in the time between the death of the old tree and the planting of the new tree the lot was not cared for properly by the city– the nearby house at that time was vacant, with no homeowner to attend to the lot’s needs, and the city didn’t care that the lot had fallen into disrepair.

“Privatization” does not necessarily mean “corporations”; it often means private groups and individuals doing what is best for society by doing what they love to do at no cost to the taxpayer, and elements of nature which can be as content as The Tree That Owns Itself appears to be.

The Tree That Owns Itself, Son of the Tree That Owns Itself, libertarian environment, privatization