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What say you?
Wow. That is cataclysmicly stupid. Unreal.
Yep. This is what's considered political discourse in America today.
This might be the most dishonest piece I've ever read in my life. It doesn't even come close to faithfully representing Boaz's argument. Some of the quotes you have up there are so truncated and stitched together that you may as well have him saying "All libertarians should be executed" (I'm sure he's spoken each of those words at least once in his life!).
His argument is that some libertarians like to pretend that the 18th century was an age of limitless freedom in America. It was for a small minority, but not for huge masses of people and it's foolish to ignore that. We're a lot freer today than we were two centuries (or even 50 years) ago. In others, we're much less free. But given the choice between income tax and slavery, I'll take income tax. Contrary to your dishonest argument, Boaz never presents it as though it's either or - it's clear that what he means is that the present has its good points, just like the past has its bad points.
Anyone who reads this post, please read the original piece in full. Judge for yourself whether it even vaguely resembles what's described above.
Here is Boaz's full response to American Spectator's R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. quote.
Ridiculous accusation.
It's good that you're acknowledging the entire quote, because the truncation above makes it sound like "libertarians and conservatives who celebrate the freedom of early America, and deplore our decline from those halcyon days" are the ones that Boaz is saying want to be slave owners.
I certainly don't read that portion of the text the way you do. I see it as a semi-sarcastic "be careful what you wish for" - i.e., you shouldn't go around wishing that you were an 18th century tobacco farmer because that would make you a slave owner.
I maintain that you are completely misrepresenting Boaz's argument. Nowhere does he say anything resembling "if you advocate for a constitutionally limited government, you therefore advocate for slavery." Why on Earth would a man who's worked so hard to advance the libertarian cause make such a claim?
To give you a concrete example of what Boaz is talking about, I just read your November 2008 post about Che Guevara. In it, you say that George Washington "actually established social justice." But what about slavery? What about women? What about Jews? What about Natives? Those aren't some lefty, touchy-feely, culture studies questions. They're actual groups of people who were actually deeply oppressed by the state that Washington helped create.
This is NOT NOT NOT to say that Washington was a misogynist, racist, anti-Semetic, etc. monster. Not at all. From what I know about him, he was a truly excellent human being and a role model we could learn a lot from today. He was a product of his time and in any case, it's not like he designed American policy from start to finish on each issue. What I mean is that you're casually saying that Washington "actually established social justice" when you know that the young Republic was rife with state-sponsored repression that doesn't exist today.
Just to make it even clearer, there's no comparison at all between Washington and Che - the former was a great man who refused absolute power when it was thrust upon him, the latter was a wicked mass-murderer and enslaver of his fellow human beings.
My point (and Boaz's) is simply that libertarians tend to throw around statements like you did when there are some massive, enormous, gigantic red flags that should qualify them.
Being that it's the year 2010, when any halfway educated person clearly understands the atrocity of slavery, the only reason to add qualifiers is to appease the feeble politically correct mind.
Limited government does not equal slavery. Period. Nor does it mean travel by horse and not have a refrigerator. To imply otherwise, as Boaz did, is quite frankly, stupid.
Have you ever read Sowell's "Black Rednecks and White Liberals?" It sheds a lot of light on the subject.
That straw man objection seems to come up a lot in the Hit & Run thread. There are plenty of people who, when they hear "lost liberties from 1776" think, "I guess you must only care about rich WASPs." The H&R thread also has comments from people who seem to think that caring about gay rights or racism means you must be a leftist stooge. The libertarian movement would be a lot more successful if libertarians were more concerned with communicating the immense harm that statism does to the powerless and the oppressed.
You can't speak without someone taking it wrong. Look, you think I'm taking David Boaz wrong, so maybe he should have qualified his argument too. Do you see what I'm getting at?
This blog focuses all the time on the immense harm that statism does. It gets me in trouble with everyone. But hey, I speak my mind and do what I do. Can't please everyone. And I'm certainly not going to place a disclaimer on every post.
I think a lot of people see the obvious straw man argument but miss what Boaz is really doing here.
If you notice the comments of his fans over at Reason, many of whom must also have found their niche after realizing they couldn't openly be Bush/Cheney supporters and remain credible, were echoing the sentiment that things are WAY better now than back then. "Yeah, what HE said!"
Boaz is pretty clever. He's speaking to the people who don't WANT to open their eyes to what is going on yet still want to enjoy the label "libertarian".
They want to believe that things are getting better and that libertarian ideals are to be merely debated. As long as no real "change" occurs, Boaz and his followers are content. But when people start advocating fundamental change that strikes at the root of the beltway gravy train, that's when things get dicey.
In fact I was thinking I heard Kumbaya playing in the background as I read the first page.
On the other hand, I realize that everyone thinks Hornberger is a great guy now but he's no greenhorn when it comes to attacking other libertarians. The treatment he gave Harry Browne in 2000 makes Boaz look like a puppy.