The Jewish Libertarian Blog

A Purim lesson on the nature of government from Megillat Esther

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog

Purim has a lot to say about the nature of government. What immediately comes to mind is that the public head of government, in the Megilla’s case Achashverosh (Xerxes), is almost always an idiot. In modern times it would be the equivalent of a Netanyahu or Obama or Sanders or Cruz or Trump or Hillary Clinton. It doesn’t mean they’re stupid people all around. For example I wouldn’t say Trump is a full blown idiot. But his view of trade is idiotic and extremely dangerous. People trade for mutual benefit, not competition. All of the public figures have issues they are absolutely idiotic about.

The people who really pull the strings of power are almost always behind the scenes. In Purim’s case Haman, or Harvonah (l’havdil), or Esther or Mordechai, or the myriad of advisors that give advice to the king when he’s feeling sexually frustrated because he killed his wife in a drunken rage. Some (Esther, Mordechai, Harvonah) try to steer power in a good direction, others (advisors, Haman) in a bad one.

But there’s a new lesson I spotted tonight. “A law written in the name of the king and signed with the king’s seal cannot be repealed.”

When Esther asks Achashverosh to get rid of a bad law to kill the Jews, the King responds that laws cannot be repealed. So instead he allows Mordechai and Esther to write another law in his name, which is not really a law at all, but a corollary of the non aggression principle. That is, if someone is coming to kill you, you can kill him first.

The lesson is subtle. It’s that government does not shrink. It never shrinks. It only grows. Once a law is passed, it can never be repealed. Even if it can in principle, it almost never is, with very few exceptions. The laws keep piling on and on until the government collapses, and then the process begins again, unless libertarians stop it.

Chillul Hashem: Israel’s Cellebrite Hacks iPhone for FBI

rafifarber Foreign Policy, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

Head in hands pathetic. On Monday the FBI voluntarily postponed its legal hearing on forcing Apple to open its smartphone, because apparently they got help from some unidentified firm helping them hack it.

The firm is Israeli, something called Cellebrite, a company with nothing better to do but be lap dogs to their masters in the United States of America.

From ZeroHedge:

In the aftermath of the FBI’s surprising request on Monday to postpone a hearing in its legal crusade to unlock Apple cellphones, many wondered who it was that had succeeded in penetrating the supposedly unhackable smartphone. Earlier today Reuters provided the answer: the FBI’s effort is being assisted by Israel’s Cellebrite, a provider of mobile forensic software, which is now helping the Feds in their attempt to unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino, California shooters, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported on Wednesday.

It’s poetic really. On the one hand you have the world’s most valuable company, and most beloved by consumers. On the other hand you have the world’s most indebted government that spends money faster than it can steal it, nearly universally hated outside of the United States. And the Jews take sides with the bankrupt thieves.

Bad idea.

On David Duke and Broad vs Narrow Anti Semitism

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

There are anti Semites, and there are anti Semites. Is David Duke an anti Semite? In the broad sense, sure, he has a generally negative opinion of Jews. He has said things that aren’t nice about Jews. Well, so have I.

But is he really an anti Semite in the narrow sense? No, because he does not advocate or commit violence against Jews, not as far as I know. If he has, I invite you to send me evidence. “If President I would kill Jews” would count. Or “People should have the right to murder Jews with impunity” would also count. Or “All Jews should be expelled from their property and placed in prison,” would be anti Semitic. Did he ever say these kinds of things? Maybe, but I couldn’t find anything.

As a “grandmaster” of the Ku Klux Klan, he has accused Jews of being ethnic supremacists, conspiring to wipe out the white race, and other things, all based on minor truths. Ethnic supremacy means Jews consider themselves chosen above other groups. Well, we do. We say it every day. In fact, it’s one of the first things we say in the morning.

While we don’t really have active plans to “wipe out the white race” our eschatology generally puts us at the top of the cultural food chain, with us leading the world when the Moshiach comes, or something close to that. Other people may find that annoying. I find it annoying that Christians assume all Jews will convert to Christianity, but then again I don’t demonize all Christians as having active plans to “wipe out the Jewish race” even though that is ultimately what it amounts to. Every religion believes they will reign supreme over all other people in the End of Days. Big whoop.

I don’t like David Duke. I don’t like holocaust deniers like him. I don’t like the things he says and I do not want to ever speak to him. I would not invite him to my house for Shabbos dinner. I want nothing to do with him. But the important thing is, we need to define anti Semitism extremely narrowly. The definition of an anti Semite in my view is someone who either advocates for or commits violence against Jews who have not personally aggressed against him. That’s it.

An anti Semite is not someone who hates Jews. It’s not someone who says not nice things about Jews, or even someone who lies about Jews, nor someone who believes that other people should hate Jews too. It is not someone who believes Jews should have less political power to influence the lives of others, or even someone who believes there is a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world, unless these beliefs leads him to commit violence against Jews.

An anti Semite is only someone who advocates for or commits actual violence against innocent Jews.

What if David Duke were president? What would he do? Would he put all American Jews in concentration camps and kill them? Maybe someone should ask him. But from what I’ve read of his positions I doubt it. His positions are not so bad. This is what Murray Rothbard wrote about Duke’s political program:

It is fascinating that there was nothing in Duke’s current program or campaign that could not also be embraced by paleoconservatives or paleo-libertarians; lower taxes, dismantling the bureaucracy, slashing the welfare system, attacking affirmative action and racial set-asides, calling for equal rights for all Americans, including whites: what’s wrong with any of that? And of course the mighty anti-Duke coalition did not choose to oppose Duke on any of these issues. Indeed, even the most leftist of his opponents grudgingly admitted that he had a point. Instead, the Establishment concentrated on the very “negative campaigning” that they profess to abhor (especially when directed against them). (Ironic note: TV pundits, who regularly have face lifts twice a year, bitterly attacked Duke for his alleged face lift. And nobody laughed!)

People use this as evidence that Rothbard, a Jew, a very Jew-y Jew at that, was an anti Semite. A cute claim, but it ignores the fact that Rothbard actually accused others of being anti Semites, particularly John Maynard Keynes. I would call Keynes more of a misanthrope than specifically an anti Semite because he advocated violence against everyone and not just Jews, through systematic inflation and other economic policies of mass theft. But anti Semitism would fit as well. Here’s Murray Rothbard on Keynes.

Here’s the full speech in context.

Gold Comes Alive

rafifarber Gold and Silver

Something is brewing. I’ve been long gold since late 2012, gotten crushed, but held on to everything, totally white-knuckled and confident. Gold is up over $30 in the premarket this morning, this while equities are crashing and money supply is still expanding fast.

This tells me that rapid inflation is at the doorstep. I called a bottom earlier, and now I’m as close to 100% positive on the bottom as you can get in market prognostication.

If gold is moving higher with treasuries, just wait until treasury bonds start collapsing along with stocks.

When oil stops falling, gold will move higher even faster than it is now. There is quite a long way to go before getting back to 2011 highs. Plenty of time to get in here.

AWESOME: Haredim Strike Back Against Israeli Government Kidnappers

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , , ,

This is what I absolutely love about Haredim, the Ultra Orthodox. They won’t take any crap from government mafia goons who invade their neighborhoods to kidnap their children into the government army. They are fearless and ready to go to jail. I salute them.

Yesterday in Ashdod, government forces invaded a private neighborhood to abduct children and force them to fight in the army for 3 years. A group of Haredim fought away the would-be kidnappers and flipped one of their cars over with their bare hands.

The riot began once word that military police had arrived in the neighborhood got out. Tens of ultra-Orthodox men came, surrounded the police vehicle, and began to insult them. The rioters then overturned the vehicle.

A large police force was then sent to the scene and they rescued the military police and dispersed the crowd. Several police cars were slightly damaged as a result of stone throwing.

The cowards ran away without taking any of them. They say they will be back with more forces next time.

I dare the government to try again. Go for it guys. See what happens. You won’t win against these guys.

As always, I strongly discourage any active violence against government forces, including flipping any of their cars. It is a very unwise thing to do if you care about maintaining what little freedom you have. If you are about to be taken by the Israeli government into the army and you do not want to go, then the best thing to do is to resist passively and nonviolently, and just sit in jail until they give up and let you go back to your normal life.

And if you want to go, then go, but try to stay out of kravi, or battle, because it is not worth it at all to commit suicide for a state that uses you as cannon fodder.

WOW! Marco Rubio Is a TEXTBOOK Asinine Cartoon Politician

rafifarber Humor, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

The man repeats himself, word for word in a nearly 30 second talking point, three times in a row. As if he is an actual robot.

This is why I love democracy. And voting. Because it gives you, the voter, the opportunity to decide which mindless robot will have the power to control your life.

And that is beautiful.

You’ll also notice that there are indeed very simple answers to these questions, but that neither of their positions or logic makes any sense. It’s all about which one sounds better at spewing BS. Rubio is obviously stupid enough to the point that he can’t even act human or off the cuff anymore. Christie at least is better at spewing nonsense in a more human sounding way. He’s the better AI.

It’s a broken record personified. It mamash sounds like a cartoon. In fact:

Why are so many Jewish libertarians uncomfortable with their Jewishness?

rafifarber Libertarian Halacha , ,

A question from a reader:

I just encountered your website, it looks most interesting. I was curious as to whether you have explored the issue of why so may Jewish libertarians/anarcho-capitalists are uncomfortable with their Jewishness. Two prominent examples would be Ayn Rand (even though she eschewed the libertarian label) and Murray Rothbard. One example of Rand’s refusal to confront her Jewish origins was her treatment of the Kira character in We the Living. The novel’s protagonists was by Rand’s description largely autobiographical, yet she was Russian Orthodox, not Jewish. Rand was able to bravely depict the consequences of the Bolshevik revolution on a “bourgeois” family, but ,apparently, not on a Jewish “bourgeois” family.

Rothbard is a psychologically even more interesting case. He was ,in many ways, the favorite Jew of a number of anti-semites. This was particularly true towards the end of his life when he was closely allied with ,amongst others, Pat Buchanan and Joe Sobran. Rothbard even went so far as to endorse the gubernatorial candidacy of David Duke.
In short many Jewish libertarians ,like many Jewish Marxists, experience extreme discomfort vis a vis their ethnic and religious origins. Any thoughts as to why this is so?
Best wishes,

A Reader

Thanks for asking. First, let me get some stuff out of the way. Murray was not friends with any anti semites. David Duke, Joe Sobran, and Pat Buchanan do not hate Jews. They hate Jewish lobbyist groups, as they hate most other lobbyist groups that advocate spending money in places where they, Duke Sobran and Buchanan, would rather not spend it. All lobbyists hate all other lobbyists, and all libertarians should hate all lobbyists, save the liberty lobby which actually lobbies for less government. The myth that these people are anti Semites is perpetuated by ADL whiners whose incomes are in proportion to how loudly they whine about non-issues. They also hate the Israeli government. So do I, so we’re cool on that.

Second I have no magical answer, but I have some suspicions. Ayn Rand didn’t hate Judaism. She hated religion and the idea of worshipping a deity in an organized way with authority figures telling you how to do it and what to think whey you do the worshipping. She actually was an Israel supporter, a position I don’t tend to vocally take. I have only read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, not We the Living, though someday I may get to it. I would simply say she was obsessed with her ideas of selfishness and objectivism and whatnot that she constantly hammered and just didn’t want to be associated with Judaism. I understand that.

As for Murray, he has many a talk denouncing anti Semites, particularly Keynes. That he was the favorite Jew of a number of anti Semites only proves that those people were not anti Semitic, but only hated Jewish efforts at manipulating government for their own purposes. Murray did in fact hate the State of Israel, with a fiery passion. I’m involved in co-authoring a paper debunking his infamous “War Guilt in the Middle East” article as we speak. His hatred of the State of Israel in particular over other states is far beyond my own. I do hate the State of Israel, but not any more than any other State government. Murray had a special hatred for Israel as a State particularly. I don’t understand exactly why.

I can only really answer as to why I embrace my Jewishness and libertarianism. To be a libertarian and embrace your Jewishness takes a lot of flexibility, not in terms of libertarianism which is not all that flexible, but in terms of Judaism, which is much more flexible. To encounter the economic ignorance and annoying Israel activism of mainstream Jewish people is a lot to take, and if you don’t have a flexible background in Judaism, you’ll leave it because other Jews are so off base and totally confused.

I come from a background of Maimonidean rationalist yeshivishness, hard liberal modern yeshivishness, with several Haredi friends who are classical frummies. I have one main assumption about God and his plan for the Jewish people. I assume that God’s plan is to lead human history to choosing a libertarian path. My reading of Tanach supports this, as I see Abraham as the first activist libertarian as well as the first Jew. Noach was a libertarian but he wasn’t an activist.

So God made a promise to Abraham that his kids would continue his philosophy. I have no evidence this promise was ever made other than the fact that Jews as a distinct entity still exist. I have no evidence that God exists or that Judaism is a definable thing with boundaries. I don’t really care if it is or not. So I am extremely flexible regarding my own Jewishness. I follow Halacha generally because I see some value in it and that’s how I grew up. Without Halacha there would be no Jews, and without Jews there would be no chance at global libertarianism. But when Halacha conflicts with libertarianism I ignore halacha assuming it is simply wrong. I am flexible enough to say that without having a major crisis of religious identity. And since I see all Jews as one family together responsible for converting the world to libertarianism, I can withstand supreme idiocy from within my own family without disowning it and becoming estranged. I see no Rabbi as above me, and look up to nobody but myself.

So to be comfortable with your Jewishness as well as libertarianism, you need to be comfortable with molding Judaism into libertarianism and assuming that the former is meant to reflect the latter.

My end belief is that without the Jewish people, libertarianism on a global scale would be impossible. First it’s us, then it’s the rest of the world, with the Beit HaMikdash at the center.

Read my Manifesto of Torah and Faith for a further breakdown of my philosophy.

Devorah, a Fiery Woman, a Private Court

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

I was reading the Devorah and Barak story to my kids the other week. It was the Haftarah for Parashat Beshalach. She’s in Shoftim 4:4. What struck me about her is that she was the accepted judge for the whole people. She mediated disputes for a living. That was her job. People would have a fight, they’d go to her for arbitration.

Did she have a humongous ostentatious supreme court building with marble statues chiseled with self-righteously “deep” quotes from past dead government heroes? Did she sit on a huge bench 10 feet above the people she pompously looked down on from her high horse? Did her court cost millions of dollars of other people’s money to build?

No. She just sat under a tree and judged cases there. That’s it. The Israeli court system is filled with crony gangsters who sit on high and pontificate about nothing while they determine the course of people’s lives from their posh chairs that somebody else paid for. And then they are paid gargantuan tax-funded pensions when they stop bloviating their nonsense opinions on anything they choose to go off about.

Libertarianism is not All or Nothing

rafifarber Libertarian Halacha, The Jewish Libertarian Blog

This was written almost 6 years ago by a friend of mine, who has allowed me to repost it here. He’s a gentile who knows more about the ideal Torah system of government (anarchy with privately chosen judges) than the average Gadol HaDor. Sometimes it just takes reading the book itself to remember what it actually says.

I agree with the main point of the article. I only disagree with some nomenclature. I would say that libertarianism is not really a political theory at all. It is an antipolitical theory. Every political theory suggests different degrees of force to organize society. Libertarianism eschews all of it.

I would also add that, from a Jewish “chosen people” perspective, my view is that the role of the Jewish people is first to free themselves and the rest of the world will follow. Without the Jews global freedom will never happen. I don’t know how we will free ourselves here exactly, but I trust God will enable it somehow. Just hoping to be a part of it.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

It’s Not All or Nothing

There was a long piece in the Daily Kos this week that ‘exposed’ libertarians and their goofy-subversive-dangerous ideas. Outside of the general snarky patina of the article, it was actually a pretty good survey of libertarian positions on most issues. There were some key, and common, characterizations that were, I felt, wide of the mark. I have chosen to highlight one that I feel is fundamental to the overall misunderstanding of the libertarian philosophy.

I am often accused of being an idealist. Unable to deal with the ‘real world,’ they say, I adhere to an ideology that has no practical application. There is no constituency to abolish the FDA, SSA, CIA, IRS, or DEA. Also, a libertarian society would provide no safety net and people could starve, or be homeless, or die without all these government programs. Imposing the libertarian system on a modern society would require everyone to accept it, and that ain’t going to happen. Idealism never works, they say, which is why all ‘isms’ fail. Libertarianism is no different from Communism. Pie in the sky, impractical, doomed to failure.

Perhaps the critique of Communism is correct. It does seem to require a violent revolution to wipe away the old bourgeois regime and replace it with a worker’s paradise in one fell swoop. If the program is not adopted in its’ entirety, it fails. Let one bourgeois remain in power and he will ruin the Communist stew. Root them out! Kill them all! Purge society of the wreckers so Communism can flourish and create a worker’s paradise. So when critics of Communism say it doesn’t work, and Communists reply that it hasn’t been tried, the Communists have a point. (Forget for a moment that successful small scale communist experiments have been carried out in the U.S. since the early 1800’s, in towns such as New Harmony and New Economy.) Both the critics of Communism and the supporters of Communism agree: what has been tried in various nations around the world has lacked the requisite purity, and they have all failed miserably. Maybe it would work if pure, but we know it won’t work if it is impure.

While Libertarianism tries to be a comprehensive political philosophy, like the Marxist and Communist theories, it does not run afoul of the same purity problem as other ‘isms.’ Impure libertarian societies have existed on a national scale, and they have been highly successful. I’m thinking of the U.S. prior to World War I. The Roman Republic before Caesar crossed the Rubicon. Hong Kong. Even the ancient Hebrews lived in a kind of libertarian world with no kings or rulers (the Jews were warned not to get a king because he would tax their wealth and send their children off to war…oh how prophetic!) In each case, the relative freedom enjoyed by individuals in those societies resulted in stable and wealthy communities. As their freedoms were curtailed, each of those societies experienced a decline in wealth, stability, and vitality (Hong Kong has not yet seen a decline, as it remains one of the freest places on earth despite belonging to a ‘communist’ country). Libertarian theory endorses the idea that more freedom means more wealth, stability, and security, while less freedom means more poverty, discontent, and conflict.

Taken to its’ logical extreme, Libertarianism calls for an entirely voluntary society. A century and a half ago, that might have been imaginable. Today, from the perspective of people who are taxed, licensed, mandated, regulated, and subsidized by a 360 degree government that alternates between kind paternalism and nasty scold, this is a ridiculous thought. Surely the Libertarian ideal is so disconnected with the world as it exists that it is not worthy of serious consideration. Problems today must be fixed with practical solutions, not pie-in-the-sky theories.

Actually, this is where Libertarianism excels. Since Libertarianism does not require perfect execution to generate positive results, it can be taken in small pieces. Example: When the airlines were “deregulated” in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, there was loud complaining that air travel would become more expensive and unsafe. Libertarian theory said it would become more affordable, flexible, and safer (if that was important to consumers). Indeed, that is exactly what happened. Air travel boomed. Over the next ten years fares dropped by some 50% and the number of carriers and routes doubled, making air travel affordable and practical for millions of Americans who otherwise would not have considered flying. The entire economy did not have to be deregulated, just a portion of a portion. More freedom was better, however limited.

The same thing happened with the trucking business at about the same time. The result was lower freight rates for industry and lower merchandise prices for consumers.

Alcohol prohibition in the 1920’s resulted in a wave of violent crime as gangs battled over the black market while doing little to decrease drinking. Making alcohol legal again was another step in the direction of freedom, and the unintended consequences of prohibition disappeared overnight. A similar approach is needed with marijuana, and for the same reasons: it is practical and it is the right thing to do in a free society. Theory says that society would benefit from legalizing all drugs, but it will benefit from just the first small step with marijuana.

Libertarianism is not all or nothing. In general, freedom is good, more freedom is better. It is not necessary to have a pure Libertarian system to experience the benefits of freedom. Libertarian theory can be taken to the extreme…if you want…but it can also be taken in small pieces if that is all your society can handle. No need for a violent revolution. Just the steady drip, drip, drip of ideals and practical compromise. Then, one day, we may all be free. Perfectly free.

And it will seem perfectly reasonable.

Posted by It’s Always Something