If there is one thing people seem to be good at in contemporary society, it's fake outrage. You know, the kind of outrage where you are really not mad, but you find it either politically or morally imperative to at least act outraged. Yeah, that.
People on the left within the blogosphere are in one of their characteristic anti-Kate McMillan fake tizzies. Predictably, Warren Kinsella and Jason Cherniak are fake outraged.
Now, I don't doubt that these people are mad. But they are not mad about what they portray. They are mad about something else, all together. They're really mad that Kate McMilllan exists at all. But that's another story.
What did Kate McMillan say? Well she said: "Nazis didn't carry out the holocaust. The german state did that".
She was making a philosophical point. That, without the powers of the state, the ability of the Nazis to carry out the holocaust would have been slim-to-none. Their ability to wage war against the rest of the world would have also been slim-to-none. But you see, you're not allowed to make philosophical points like this. Why? Well, because it's insensitive.
Now, I'm not sure if Kate McMillan is an anarcho-libertarian. . I could probably e-mail her and ask her, but it's not really material to the discussion. But here's how James Bow breaks down her logic over at Cherniak's:
All of this argument is turning on the suggestion that you can ascribe a moral value to a thing rather than a person, because that's what the State is: it is a tool, and in my opinion the responsibility for evil rests not with the tool, but the intentions of the people using or misusing the tool. Nothing we create is good or evil until we use it.
But let's take Kate's argument, as reiterated here, to its logical extension:
1. the Nazis were evil, but their evil could not have been implemented if they did not have the apparatus of the state to enact there evil.
2. therefore, the state apparatus is inherently dangerous to leave in place because it enables people to enact great evils.
3. ban the state apparatus, and thus block the Nazis' abilities to enact evil.
Fair enough.
1. Murderers are evil, but their evil could not have been implemented if they did not have guns available to enact that evil.
2. therefore guns are inherently dangerous things to have around, because it enables people to enact great evils.
3. ban guns, and thus block the murderers' abilities to enact evil.
So, based on this analogy, I welcome Kate McMillan's support for stricter gun controls.
Now, James Bow has been very reasonable in the past. But his logic is not exactly on-game here.
This logic is at best, a hasty generalization, and at worst, a straw man. It consummates in a false anology. Given James seems to be honest fellow, it's more likely he has a very poor understanding libertarian ethics. So let's educate him.
This is the crux of his argument: if a person thinks something is bad and should be considered immoral, that all bad things should be considered immoral. Therefore if a person who thinks one thing is bad and immoral, and another bad thing is not immoral, that person is a hypocrite.
It's a circular argument, and a formal syllogistic fallacy in logic to make an argument like that. We might also call it begging the question. Another example of this type of logical error would be saying "Everyone thinks Andy is a good guy. Therefore, everything Andy does is a good thing". This one is more simple than James' argument. But it's actually the same logical error.
You see, libertarians believe that government is a generally bad thing. But they don't think everything bad should be banned—actually James, it's socialists and Warren Kinsella that think that.
Your gun analogy is particularly poor, because how could a libertarian simultaneously be against government intervention and for government intervention? It doesn't work. James, libertarians are not hypocrites for viewing one bad thing immoral and the other not. It's a philosophical position, of which has many adherents, and a system of ethics based on that philosophy.
From a libertarian position of ethics: it is unethical for the state to interfere in the matters of the person, if that person is not interfering with another person. Therefore, if a person owns a gun, but is not using it to interfere with the liberty of another person, gun ownership constitutes a legal practice. Libertarian ethics dictate this.
Also, libertarians don't generally believe that anything should be banned simply on it's potential to do harm. To this extent, they are also generally against: laws restricting recreational drug use, compulsory car seatbelt use, compulsory helmet use, etc.
To a libertarian, the fundamental precept of morality is that: the person is sovereign unto themselves, and free of external coercive force. From both government and other persons. If a government is directly exercising physical, coercive force against a person, who is not, directly exercising physical, coercive force against others, libertarian ethics would deem this: unethical, and therefore bad.
Libertarians are generally against governments even having the legal ability to initiate force against it's people, because the government is viewed as accountable to individuals, not to the majority. When the majority of people in a democracy, use their majority in government to initiate force against a minority, we call that: tyranny of the majority. In Libertarian ethics, this is unethical and bad.
Libertarian ethics also hold freedom of expression in the highest regard. Something like hate speech, does not qualify as physical, coercive force. Therefore, libertarians are against any laws limiting freedom of expression.
So libertarians generally prefer a government which is based around strong constitutional law with negative rights. Meaning, where all rights are assumed, except for those explicitly removed.
So when James Bow and others, find hypocrisy in this statement from Kate, it is only when viewed through the lens of their own ethics, using spurious logic. There is nothing hypocritical or illogical in her position insofar as it is a philosophical statement. Most libertarians and anarchists would actually agree with her sentiment. So, save the fake outrage.
Is Kate "The Nazis Didn't Carry Out The Holocaust" McMillan in deep dippity doo doo today with Stephen Taylor and the Blogging Tories?
Sadly, the creeping anti-semitism in the Right is nothing new, as we progressives have been pointing out for years now. Maybe this incident will inspire some introspection.
Here's what really interests me (and maybe no one else):
Why do we have these political blogrolls anyway? Let's be honest: they are mostly a circle jerk slice of code we use to game our rankings on Truth Laid Bear. If they "need" to exist, they certainly shouldn't display official party logos if they (the blogrolls) are "unofficial" to begin with.
You can't blame an ordinary, non-political-junkie browser from assuming that these blogrolls are wholly owned subsidiaries of their respective parties. Why not reduce the chance of confusion by stripping out logos and/or calling these sites the Blogging Conservatives or Socialists? Just askin'. Do whatever the hell you want with your stuff, dudes.
Good post. You might also want to point out the fact that a gun is an inanimate object and a state is an organization of people who exert power. Not exactly a fair comparison.
Frankly, what Kate wrote is actually a historical fact.
In fact, when one considers the sheer number of people -- both German and otherwise -- who willfully participated in the Holocaust who didn't have any Nazi party allegiances, it becomes obvious that to attribute the Holocaust simply to the Nazis is an oversimplification that obscures historical fact.
For example, the role of slavs tasked with eliminating jews -- none of them were eligible for Nazi party membership because they were slavs, and thus viewed by Hitler and his cronies as "sub human".
Or the role of the Order Police -- the militarized police units whose responsibility it was to move into newly conquered territory and ensure compliance with German rule -- who were integral to the Holocaust.
It is a historical fact that Hitler and the Nazis were the driving force behind the Holocaust. But to reject the idea that the German state was the formal perpetrator of the Holocaust is to pretend that Nazis alone committed the atrocity, and let a lot of its other perpetrators off the hook.
I don't think Kate's argument works unless she is advocating for a stateless society or AC. I understand that the Libertarian POV is generally that government should only exist as a very limited sort of thing providing the protection of individual rights from the instigation of force against them, either from other individuals OR from outside parties in the case of national defence. As such, I don't think you can claim that the German State after the Riechstag Fire was in fact a legitimate government any longer.
I would further argue that if the Nazis did not have the machinery of the State to enact their atrocities, they would have invented a "government" that was up to the task.
I've never seen Kate advocate a David Friedman or Roy Childs type position in the past. In fact if Kate has a problem with the existence of government it's that Government isn't doing what she wants with it's monopoly on the use of instigatory force. For one example, she is a war-blogger and the Iraq war could simply not occur without the power of the State taxing people in the US to the tune of Billions of dollars to pay for it. For another example, McMillan was happy to cheerlead for the extradition of Marc Emery and has never advocated for an end to the War on Drugs... You need the State to have a "war on drugs", or to extradite somebody like Emery for selling marijuana seeds.
Now unless Kate has made some leaps of logic in the past couple of days that has her embracing the AC POV, I can't buy her argument. If she is now advocating for AC, then I think she would need to repudiate a number of her positions taken in the past. I could buy that she had come to an AC point of view, but then people who make this kind of argument have generally had to reverse themselves on many many points that they have previously thought correct. It's simply part of the process.
Without the Libertatian position, her suggestion simply doesn't hold water, or it's a really lame point to make. Yes, government can and will do evil things when evil people are running it. Stalin, Mao, Polpot and Hitler - none of these tyrants would have been able to so effeciently and horrifically engage in atrocities unless they had the resources that come with a predatory government in place and thousands upon thousands of government organs to carry out the bidding of the leaders, coupled with the idea of legitimating government tyranny. This post of hers begs the question...
"So what?"
The german government before the Riechstag fire did have checks and balances on the power of the government. That's why Hitler felt a Riechstag fire was required in order to usurp the role of the State in the affairs of it's citizens, in the first place.
The question becomes 1) Was the German Government under the Nazis a legitimate government? And if it was, what does that say about government? AND 2) Is government a nesseccary evil?
The problem is, we don't know if Kate was making that point because her post leaves all of this hanging out there.
"Sadly, the creeping anti-semitism in the Right is nothing new, as we progressives have been pointing out for years now. Maybe this incident will inspire some introspection."
Zorpheous That statement is laughable. Google around a little and you see most antisemitism is coming from the left. Bob Rae's wife was told at the Liberal leadership convention not to vote for Rae because his wife was Jewish, the man did not know who she was. B'nai Brith says anti-semitic attacks always increase when hostilities between Israel and Palestine are at their worst and I can almost guarantee it's not conservatives who are involved. These are just two examples from hundreds available. In fact, I think you will find that people on the right don't care much about race, they just want to be left alone and to let others pursue their happiness as well.
I can't remember where exactly I saw it but I recently read a comment from Ian McEwan that summed up 'progressives' perfectly: "Well-meaning intellectual movements, from communism to post-structuralism, have a poor history of absorbing inconvenient facts or challenges to fundamental precepts."
Pretending that anti-semitism is the exclusive domain of left- or right-wing thinkers is precisely the kind of demagoguery that any rational-thinking individual should find utterly embarassing.
Great comment Patrick.
You should note that I've expanded on my point here.
It seems to me that Kate's point was directed toward the notion of free speech rather than small government. Maybe I'm missing something. She certainly stressed the idea that the Nazis could not have perpetrated the Holocaust without the apparatus of state, but I don't see anywhere in her posting an advocacy for anarchy. It seems to me her main point was that the state apparatus is always susceptible to misuse, and that the right to freely express our opposition to a particular ideology that may be attempting to use the state for its own purposes is our best hope for preventing such misuse. She states:
"No political ideology can transform the citizenry into accomplices in murder without their permission. So long as we protect the right to object, to offend, to criticize above all else, reasonable people have a fighting chance to halt extremism and expose agendas, wherever the arise, and whatever they may be, through the force of reason and argument.
We must resist any erosion of that right, because we know not what comes down the road towards us. Change the names and faces, pass through a few election cycles, and today's objective criticism is tomorrow's thought crime.
Yet, there are some who want to destroy that safeguard, to pre-emptively surrender it to faceless bureaucrats and unaccountable tribunals, in the suicidal belief that those who inherit a state apparatus armed with the authority to silence the individual and narrow the rules of discourse, will forever limit the application to our percieved enemies - and that should we change our minds and demand our right restored, that they will surrender it back."
Frankly I don't think Kate is a libertarian in any event.
Libertarians don't favour the outright abolition of government. Otherwise, they'd be anarchists.