Via Instapundit, I found this article explaining why Libertarians are happy. All in all, I don’t disagree with much of it, though there are a few points I’d like to address.

First, the reason Ron Paul’s numbers are so low is because he’s nuts. There. I said it. Unfortunately, he’s one of the “programmatically antiwar”, as the article puts it, and it shows. It’s one thing to have a rational, ethical dislike of the Iraq war. It’s quite another when you make it clear that you never see a reason to use force, a position which most of America doesn’t agree with. It has nothing to do with him being a Libertarian. It has everything to do with the moonbat Libertarian foreign policy platform that pretends everything from 1915 on never happened.

Second, I know that hindsight is 20/20, and I wasn’t around to see the ’60s (thank goodness). However, I took exception to this:

The civil-rights movement is an instructive case. Mr. Lindsey includes it in his list of libertarian victories, but it is a perfect example of the inability of libertarians to find a political and moral framework suitable to the big questions of American public life. If people ought to be able to do what they want, then certainly hating blacks–either by oneself or in the company of like-minded souls–is nobody else’s business, including the federal government’s. To the extent that libertarians are remembered at all for their role in the civil-rights era, it is not for marching on Selma but rather for their enthusiastic support of states’ rights and the freedom of white racists to associate with one another.

The solution to this problem is easily revealed in an earlier paragraph:

…the libertarian vision of personal morality–described by Mr. Doherty as “People ought to be free to do whatever the hell they want, mostly, as long as they aren’t hurting anyone else…”

Put another way, as far as Libertarians are concerned, yes, you’re free to hate blacks, but you’re not morally allowed to use that hatred to hurt them or restrict their ability to do the same (and vice-versa). Since many states at the time had laws that hurt blacks, federal intervention was necessary to rectify this. In short:

Individual rights > State rights > Federal rights

That said, federal rights can be used to override state rights on occasions when state rights are infringing on individual rights. That’s why we have the constitution we have - it enumerates what powers are available to the federal government, explicitly restricts them to those powers, and then commands it to defend the liberties of the people covered by it.

Other than that - good article.

Before I launch into today’s post, I’ll be one of the many to point out that Iran pledged to release the British hostages today. It’s good news in that the hostages will come back, of course, though I do find it very interesting that Iran is calling it a “gift”. I’m about 100% certain that we will be seeing much more of this in the future. The only question will become whether Iran continues to kidnap British sailors or if they dare to kidnap American troops, and if they do the latter, what will happen?

Today’s post is inspired about an article on Alternet, titled Will Vermont Secede from the Union?:

The winds of secession are blowing in the Green Mountain State.

Vermont was once an independent republic, and it can be one again. We think the time to make that happen is now. Over the past 50 years, the U.S. government has grown too big, too corrupt and too aggressive toward the world, toward its own citizens and toward local democratic institutions. It has abandoned the democratic vision of its founders and eroded Americans’ fundamental freedoms.

Vermont did not join the Union to become part of an empire.

Some of us therefore seek permission to leave.

Vermont isn’t the only strain with strong(er than usual, anyways) anti-federalist leanings; Nevada has a tradition over the past 30 years or so of being the genesis of various movements fighting against increased Federal rule, including the Sagebrush Rebellion and the Jarbidge Shovel Brigade. There’s also a fair amount of resistance in Nevada to the Yucca Mountain Project, which will almost certainly bring a cask a week through the second-largest metropolitan area in Nevada (that’s code for “Reno”).

The problem here, of course, is the broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause. However, the Supreme Court is the one responsible for this broad interpretation and has only recently begun to rescind some of its farther reaching verdicts, which means that, in order to revive state’s rights, some discipline will need to be held in the other two branches of government. This is actually good because, from where I’m sitting, the Legislative and Executive branches shouldn’t be pushing the envelope as far as the Judicial branch will allow anyways.

So, what would I like to see in support of state’s rights?

1. The removal of clauses to funding of federal projects that are only peripherally related to the project at hand (think tying federal highway funding to legal drinking ages and BACs, for example).
2. Removing unfunded mandates.
3. Removing the BLM and handing the land held by the BLM to the states. If land needs to be protected, then it either needs to be a National Park or it can be managed by the states.

I could come up with more, and I probably will, but I think this is a decent start.