A hero of Australian liberty: Justice Starke

During World War II, there was one heroic dissenter on the High Court who – unlike the other lapdog justices – thought that government should obey the law even during wartime. Hayden Starke is described in these terms by Brian Galligan in his book Politics of the High Court (p. 127):

Many of the regulations that the court allowed as valid exercises of the defence power were only very indirectly linked to defence. For instance, the Court upheld a national marketing scheme for apples and pears on the basis that the export part of the crop was now subject to war restraint on shipping. Starke, a fairly regular and quite sarcastic dissenter in many of the defence cases concerning economic regulation, claimed that the apple and pear marketing regulations had no relation whatever to the “economic front”, but merely propped up one sector of the economy that had been affected by war. Starke accused the court of accepting arguments that led to the conclusion that “in time of war the Commonwealth had complete power to legislate in respect of the social and economic conditions of Australia”. He reminded his fellow judges that “after all, the government of Australia is dual system based upon a separation of powers”.

The court even went as far as declaring constitutional the restriction of drinking hours in the name of national defence. Starke again disagreed and called this regulation “one of those irritating orders and restrictions upon freedom of action which is arbitrary and capricious, serves no useful purpose, and has no connection whatever with defence”.

Thank goodness for Justice Starke. Because of the dissenting arguments which he placed on the legal record, we now have a hope, however slight, of reversing the warfare state in the future. There are many such heroes of Australian liberty willing to stand against the government’s lies and power grabs during times of war. If only we had a libertarian historian willing to find them and bring their ideas to the fore!

Ron Paulians in Victoria

I’ve had a few Ron Paul supporters emailing me about meet-up groups in Australia. This list of 52 Victorian Paulians might prove useful.

Educate your Australian friends

Many of the fallacies that permeate in Australian circles about America and its imperialist foreign policy stem from ignorance about US history and central banking. The central bank, of course, is the key. It buys Treasury bonds (prints money) to finance all the illegal wars that America engages in. The following videos explain much of the background information you need to know to be a consistent anti-war libertarian. Feel free to share them with your friends.

A Libertarian Gallop Through American History

Why You’ve Never Heard of the Great Depression of 1920

Ignorance is bliss

Academics claim they are impartial and objective in pursuit of “the truth”. Yet wouldn’t someone genuinely interested in the truth deal fairly with all the points of view on a particular issue? So for example, an honest economist would inform themselves about all the schools of thought – Keynesian, monetarist, Austrian, etc. – before coming to a conclusion as to which is most accurate.

But most economists don’t do this. Exhibit A is Gregory Mankiw of Harvard University, who thinks that “[t]hings written more than twenty or thirty years ago are…irrelevant”. Well, if economists who published more than 30 years ago are to be discarded as “irrelevant”, then that rules out Ludwig von Mises – one of the greatest economists of the 20th century. In fact, discarding Mises is precisely what Mankiw has done: apparently Human Action is too old to contain any insights!

Exhibit B is the slavish devotion to Lord Keynes displayed by Paul Krugman and his ilk. Left-wing economists have been busy rubber-stamping government spending sprees, while conveniently ignoring any contrary thinking.

In academia, it seems, ignorance is bliss.

Australia’s Policy of State-Sanctioned Rape

Medical doctor Wendell Rosevear, who works on the front-line of the War on Drugs, explains the hypocrisy of state-sanctioned strip and internal body cavity searches:

When individuals continue to use drugs in prisons, the system feels loss of power and face and with ‘mud on their face’ wants to justify ‘coming down harder’ with strategies such as locking individuals in indefinite solitary confinement after overdoses or drug use (which I see repeatedly) and justifying forced internal body cavity searches, strip searches and observed urine tests which make individuals feel degraded and ‘raped’. To deny someone (prisoner or visitor) a choice in relation to protecting their body is rape even if you use the power of the state to justify it. The ‘Tough on Drugs’ strategy justifies rape, the very crime our society imprisons individuals for committing. To use the same strategies that cause the problem is to discredit oneself. Strip and Internal Body Cavity searches can happen to ordinary citizens coming through an airport as well as people in prison.

I never thought about invasive searches this way until I read Rosevear’s article, but on reflection, it makes a lot of sense. Especially since the courts have always held that rape, in criminal law, does not require penetration of the penis but can also include insertion of any other object into the vagina or anus. In its futile quest to protect people from their own harmful vices, the government is encouraging moral bankruptcy.

Invasive searches are one way of being raped. Another way is to arrest drug users and then send them to prison, where other prisoners and guards have also been known to sexually abuse. Needless to say, this is an ineffective way of helping sick addicts. Would we treat alcoholics the same way? Would you treat your own brother, sister or family member the same way if they had a drug problem? What a shame that when the government does something, otherwise decent people think it’s perfectly acceptable.

Can Ron Paul end the Fed?

The Federal Reserve is running scared. Thanks to the efforts of Ron Paul, they’ve now hired a lobbyist to counter the Campaign for Liberty.

Paul’s “Audit the Fed” bill has been co-sponsored by a majority of the House of Representatives and will soon make its way to the floor for a vote. Can anyone imagine this happening two years ago?

With the release of Paul’s End the Fed book in September (no doubt, another NY Times bestseller), perhaps he can finally put the nail in the coffin of the Fed. Imagine the example that would set for the rest of the world.

Here’s a good interview with Lew Rockwell where he updates us on the progress:

Revisionist history in Australia

I’m struck by how much effort has been expended by libertarians in America at re-working their country’s history from a pro-freedom perspective. All the effort has paid big dividends: Robert Higgs’ Depression, War and Cold War and Murray Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression, for example, are now selling like hotcakes because of the detailed way in which these two scholars have refuted the Big Government policies of the 1930s depression. Obviously, their refutation is highly relevant given the current economic climate!

Unfortunately, Australia lacks in-depth revisionist history dealing with inflationism, foreign policy, and other important topics. A libertarian counter-narrative to the standard mainstream line is essential, but we don’t have it, except briefly in papers and book chapters. The tendency has been to focus only on the current Rudd government, or on the past 10 years. But this narrow focus isn’t as effective when trying to convince people about the viability of radical change.

Of course, Peter Saunders of the CIS has produced excellent historical revisionism dealing with the welfare state, but the urgent need of the hour is to expand the scope of the counter-narrative to include more aspects of society. I would especially like to see some economist tackle the central bank from a free-market perspective and offer us a better understanding of alternative monetary arrangements in Australia’s past. Can we abolish the RBA and move towards the gold standard? Is free banking a good idea? These and other questions call out for Australian answers.

What a coincidence!

This is old news, but I thought I’d point out that both the winners of the IPA and the CIS essay competition are Austro-libertarians. Luke McGrath’s essay is here, and Ben O’Neil’s essay is here. Hopefully Liberty Australia will gain permission to run these fantastic articles on their website, once it’s up and running.

The political bias in favour of low interest rates

One of the reasons for the boom-bust cycle is the bias in favour of low interest rates. Many Keynesians and monetarists pretend that this bias doesn’t exist and that central bank “independence” works as it’s supposed to. But today’s Australian disproves that in spades, with this clear example of political pressure being applied to the banking system. If this is what makes the paper, imagine all the lobbying that happens behind closed doors.

The pressure is always on the banks to inflate, irrespective of the fact that this eats away at people’s savings and causes misallocation of capital.

Why, then, do politicians apply such pressure? Put simply, it’s because voters like paying low interest on their mortgages. Since politicians are always thinking about the next election rather than the long-term consequences of monetary policy, they don’t care if artificially pushing interest rates down creates unsustainable levels of debt and a future recession. They’d rather give the voters a short-term freebie, courtesy of the central bank.

Epic battle between John Quiggin and Robert Murphy

Check it out here.

Was Mises a warmonger?

What did Ludwig von Mises, the greatest economist of the 20th century, think about foreign policy? Was he an interventionist, a pacifist, or somewhere in between? Here’s what his disciple Murray Rothbard had to say:

AEN: Mrs. Mises seems to think you had foreign-policy differences with Mises.

MNR: In all the years I attended his seminar and was with him, he never talked about foreign policy. If he was an interventionist on foreign affairs, I never knew it. This is a violation of Rothbard’s law, which is that people tend to specialize in what they are worst at. Henry George, for example, is great on everything but land, so therefore he writes about land 90% of the time. Friedman is great except on money, so he concentrates on money. Mises, however, and Kirzner too, always did what they were best at.

OK, so Rothbard doesn’t provide much detail in the above quote. However, we have other sources to turn to. In particular, there is Mises’ Liberalism, from which it can be inferred that Mises understood wars were harmful to human progress and should therefore be avoided unless in self-defense. As he writes:

The goal of the domestic policy of liberalism is the same as that of its foreign policy: peace. It aims at peaceful cooperation just as much between nations as within each nation…[T]he demand for peace within each nation was itself an outcome of liberal thinking and attained to prominence only as the liberal ideas of the eighteenth century came to be more widely accepted. Before the liberal philosophy, with its unconditional extolment of peace, gained ascendancy over men’s minds, the waging of war was not confined to conflicts between one country and another. Nations were themselves torn by continual civil strife and sanguinary internal struggles…It is from the fact of the international division of labor that liberalism derives the decisive, irrefutable argument against war.

As Mises goes on to explain, the liberal must work towards peace by promoting free trade and reining in state interventionism – at home and overseas. Thus, Mises was about as far from a neo-conservative interventionist as one could get. Admittedly, he was no Rothbardian, but nevertheless Mises was part of a great intellectual tradition of non-interventionism that also includes Hayek and Milton Friedman. Those who pretend that Mises was a warmonger are experiencing the worst case of cognitive dissonance that I have ever seen. The words he wrote are plainly anti-war.

Was President Harry Truman a war criminal?

The answer is obviously “yes“.

Harry Truman, as some readers may recall, was the American president who authorized the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now imagine if, instead of using the impersonal method of a bomb, Truman had authorized death squads to go and shoot every man, woman and child in those two Japanese cities. How is dropping a nuclear bomb any different from using death squads? Why is one means of mass murder acceptable while the other would no doubt lead to howls of protest among the public?

Join the facebook group

Just to let everyone know – I’ve set up an “Australian Anti-War Libertarians” facebook group. Join and contribute to the interesting forum discussion!

Classical Liberalism and International Organizations

A recent article in Policy magazine by Edwin van de Haar does a good job of explaining the liberal position on international relations. I particularly liked how the author demolishes the myth that organizations like the United Nations and the World Trade Organization are consistent with liberty:

In international affairs… states should be cautious about concluding and ratifying treaties and other forms of positive law. These are often binding commitments that are very hard to change or to get rid of, with a large possible negative impact on individual freedom.

Some international agreements may be useful to smooth the working of the international society of states, or to settle practical matters. But the dangers of overregulation are just as real in world politics as they are in national politics. Besides some specific cross-border issues, the classical liberal rule of thumb is that there is no need for international state action if there is no domestic state task.

Consequently, attempts to build a better world by establishing international organisations and regimes are rejected. Mises and Hayek were strong critics of the League of Nations and its successor the United Nations, and Hayek was a fierce critic of the International Labour Organization. Their main concern was that these and other organisations were taking up tasks they should not perform, just like overactive states in national circumstances. Social constructivism is bad, no matter at what level it is performed.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Ron Paul took on board an anti-UN stance, however this position was received with much hostility. Neo-cons and pseudo-liberals wrongly characterized Paul’s views as isolationism. Yet, as this article by de Haar shows, it’s not such an “extreme” position to want to do away with international organizations. Rather, it’s the logical choice for a true liberal.

(On a related note, here’s an article I wrote about withdrawing from the UN.)

Scott Horton interviews Anthony Gregory

These days, everyone seems to have an opinion on libertarianism. Unlike most people however, Anthony Gregory (of the Independent Institute) actually knows what he’s talking about. In this interview, Anthony argues that being a libertarian means demanding the same moral standards of government as we do of individuals. For example, if it’s wrong for individuals to murder someone, then it should be wrong when the government does it too.

Don’t rely on the United States

The big news in recent weeks is that Australia will boost spending on defense by $70 billion over 20 years. This is peanuts compared to what America spends in a year, however like any compulsory exaction of funds, it should be scrutinized carefully. The plan is tentative, but the assumption appears to be that China’s rise needs to be counter-balanced through an arms-build up by Australia. That seems reasonable to me, although people who want to privatize all defense services would probably disagree.

One assumption which I don’t agree with, however, is that Australia should always ally itself with the US. China is right to question this aspect of the plan. We should remain neutral, until and unless Australian territorial integrity is threatened.

The justification offered is that America provides a protective shield, and that its vast imperial framework should be utilized to defend Australia. But this wrongly assumes that the US will continue to remain the dominant player in the Asia-Pacific region. Sure, the US – which daily romps around the globe killing people at random – is at the present time a behemoth untouchable by any other country. But is their military dominance assured over the long-term? The answer is no.

As Ivan Eland of the Independent Institute points out in his fascinating book, all empires come to an end for economic reasons. Current American supremacy is only possible due to economic wealth developed through an early commitment to the principles of liberty. But America’s commitment to capitalism has long since been abandoned. Since the US is now on the march towards fascism, we can expect its economy to weaken, and as a consequence its military prowess will also be diluted. Therefore, Australia should make policy on the assumption that the US will no longer be a dominant force in the region. We should not rely on the US, but should proceed in our own way, using the libertarian principle of non-interventionism.

Ludwig von Mises once wrote that there is no record of a socialist country defeating a capitalist country. The best defense for Australia is not to latch onto a declining superpower like America, but to move towards the free-market, as it is the only system that can produce sufficient wealth to allow government to defeat foreign aggressors.

I just bought this book

Alright, I’ m putting in a shameless plug for this new Bob Murphy book that I just bought from Amazon.

It should be a good intro to the economics literature on the topic of the Great Depression.

There’s also another free-market perspective on the current economic crisis written by Thomas Woods. It’s called Meltdown, and has been as high as number #11 on the NY Times Bestseller List. I recently persuaded Melbourne University to order a copy of Woods’ book, so readers may wish to do the same with their local libraries if they can’t be bothered spending their after-tax income.

Numbers of Australian Dead

Sudan War – 9

Boer War – 606

Boxer Rebellion – 6

First World War – 61,720

Second World War – 18 000+

Korean War – 339

Malayan Emergency – 36

Confrontation – 15

Vietnam – 520

Peace Operations – 7

Afghanistan and Iraq – Conflicts still not resolved.

Is there a libertarian movement in Australia?

Sadly, the answer is no, as this thread at Andrew Norton’s blog makes clear.

In the comments, I made the point that it’s logically contradictory to favor neo-conservatism and at the same time call yourself a libertarian. Why? Because an aggressive foreign policy invariably leads to Big Government at home. So it’s misleading for anyone to claim that they’re in favour of “small government”, while supporting aggressive wars (such as Afghanistan and Iraq). Where’s my evidence that wars lead to Big Government? Well there’s so much evidence that it’s hard to know where to start. Probably the best place is to begin by reading Bruce Porter’s War and the Rise of the State.

My argument didn’t sit well with local libertarians such as Professor Sinclair Davidson. After all, you can’t have a young upstart arguing that there are few real libertarians in Australia, since that would undermine the whole edifice of respectability and influence that has developed around people such as Davidson! Local libertarians are “Big fish in a small pond” – they have delusions of grandeur about their intellectual capacity. So even though I have reams of evidence to support my contention, it was quickly dismissed.

But the fact remains: you can’t be libertarian and pro-war. As Robert Higgs observes:

Although I generally eschew quarrels with fellow libertarians over doctrinal matters—my crucial dispute is with the government, not with other libertarians—I draw the line at the question of war and peace. In my judgment this issue is fundamental; it well-nigh defines a genuine libertarian ideology. Professed libertarians who support an aggressive warfare state are, in effect, giving up the ship. They are making the same mistake that has long condemned conservatives to serving as de facto buttresses of Leviathan, no matter how much they might complain about high taxes and excessive regulation.

Surely Higgs, an economic historian with a distinguished record of original contributions, should be given greater weight than a Davidson? Surely when Higgs argues that Mises, Hayek and Rothbard saw war as the ultimate evil, he is more likely to be right? Many people who have studied under some of the most brilliant libertarian minds in the world also agree that you can’t be a libertarian unless you’re anti-war.

Unfortunately, Australians have been taught to believe that libertarianism is mostly about low taxes, and a few social freedoms. This suits the limited intellectual range of local academics. However, it’s not the whole story. If you want the real truth about liberty, you have to read work from the Cato Institute, the Independent Institute and the Mises Institute. But reading stuff from overseas, especially that related to foreign policy, appears to be beneath the stature of our local heroes.

As the above graph makes clear, war is hell, and we should be looking for any reasonable chain of reasoning that will minimize the number of dead. The fact that I have encountered so much resistance from the establishment libertarians perhaps shows more about their heart than their head.

Milton Friedman was sceptical of war too

Some evidence has been tracked down by Johan Norberg, who writes:

[Naomi Klein] claims that Friedman was a “neoconservative” and thus in favor of an aggressive American foreign policy, and she argues that Iraq was invaded so that Chicago-style policies could be implemented there. Klein even goes so far as to suggest that Bush administration officials disbanded the Iraqi army and de-Baathified the government because they are neoliberals who dislike the public sector, but nowhere does she mention Friedman’s actual views about the war. Friedman himself said: “I was opposed to going into Iraq from the beginning. I think it was a mistake, for the simple reason that I do not believe the United States of America ought to be involved in aggression.” And this was not just one war that he happened to oppose. In 1995, he described his foreign policy position as “antiinterventionist.” Speaking of the Gulf War, he said it was “more nearly justified than other recent foreign interventions,” but concluded that the arguments for it were “fallacious.”

Friedman’s son, David, is also a peacemonger.