An unfortunate side effect of the Rush Limbaugh-St. Louis Rams debacle is that we have to suffer through another onslaught of conservative victimology. Michael Ledeen writes at National Review’s The Corner:
If we had serious libel laws, these attacks would be more difficult. It should be possible for a person to defend himself in court by proving that public attacks against him are false and damaging. As things stand, he has to show that his libeler deliberately and knowingly spread false and damaging stories.
Second, the attack on Rush is an attack on everyone, on all of us. Because it shows that the moment any of us becomes a forceful and credible voice for anything “they” don’t like, they will hunt us down. And yes, “they” come in different political colors, but at the moment “they” are massed on the left.
Yes, a multimillionaire broadcaster was victimized because the law doesn’t make it easy enough for him to deploy the state against his critics. Coming from Michael Ledeen — a man who said the U.S. government needs to “pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall” every ten years or so — that’s quite a lesson.
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I agree with the complaint about conservatives wanting more state power, but the relevant point in this incident is that libertarians are considered even more radical than Rush. It’s a bit like the King of France watching the American Revolution with amusement.
This was a social event with no state involvement. You can shrink the state all you want, and this will still happen. What do you think will happen to Ron Paul or any other libertarian candidate who happens to become a threat? Fantasize all you want that you’re not in the same camp as Limbaugh and other conservatives such as Palin, but to the mainstream of America, its all the same.
It’s just Michael Ledeen being Michael Ledeen. No surprise. Why expect any sense, logic, or ethics?
I’m not exactly sure what the point of this article is.
It seems to argue a kind of guilt-by-association, in that the implicit assertion is that anything Michael Ladeen says can not possibly have merit.
As such, it avoids the fundamental question at the core of this issue: how does somebody who does not have the media power of Limbaugh defend against a campaign of bald-faced lies, repeated and amplified into a crescendo of illegitimate approbrium?
Or, should such defamation be legal? Should we simply accept that people have the unlimited freedom to say anything about anybody else, with no limit, no requirement of veracity, and no ramifications whatsoever?
In a world of perfect people, perhaps that would work–and those who are found to be willful purveyors of falsehood would be shunned by the rational majority.
My observation is that this is not the world that we live in, however.
Given that, should some mechanism exist in human society where someone is required to demonstrate in some fashion the accuracy of statements which are harmful to the commercial activity and/or reputation of others? If so, what form should that mechanism take, and what should be its reach and scope?
It seems to me that these are reasonable questions that should be addressed seriously by people who adhere to the ideas of a man who wrote a book called “Human Action.”
“Given that, should some mechanism exist in human society where someone is required to demonstrate in some fashion the accuracy of statements which are harmful to the commercial activity and/or reputation of others? If so, what form should that mechanism take, and what should be its reach and scope?”
How about we privatize the public airwaves and repeal the laws dictating the frequencies televisions have to carry, then let nature takes its course. Why build a new mechanism to offset a misbehaving mechanism?
Never fix a problem if you can just abolish it.
Given a world where there were no legal repercussions for disparaging statements, even blatantly false statements, people would adjust the credibility that they grant to people. As it is now, people give a lot more credit to a vicious rumor because they assume the person who is besmirched would have taken legal action if it were false. Therefore, any statement that is not legally challenged is granted a default ‘truth’ status.
In a world where you could not take legal action at all, that presumption would not apply, and people could not assume that accusations are likely to be true.
Surely, making false and damaging statements has to have consequences as it a type of fraud. Saying “freedom of speech” should be totally unlimited and without consequences is sheer idiocy.
It seems to me that these are reasonable questions that should be addressed seriously by people who adhere to the ideas of a man who wrote a book called “Human Action.”
Nah, they’d rather just bitch about Rush Limbaugh a bit more, a man who’s done more for advancing capitalist ideas than all the bloggers on this site combined.
“Yes, a multimillionaire broadcaster was victimized because the law doesn’t make it easy enough for him to deploy the state against his critics.”
I don’t know much about the history of such laws, but isn’t it possible that they would have come about first through common law? It’s hard for modern Americans to understand, but reputation used to be form of property that was very important to people. People used to kill to maintain their reputation and honor. If Limbaugh could show material damage in court from false accusations, why shouldn’t he be compensated, regardless of what positive law says?
I don’t understand the hostility of many libertarians against libel laws.The logical consequence of that is really that fraud should be legal too since the expected properties of the good and service people bought by a con artist was “only in their mind”. When people like in this case affect business decisions through lies then that is really a case of fraud.
The problem as I see it is in two basic observations of human nature:
1) People will lie if they believe it will advance their interests further than telling the truth would, and
2) People tend to believe things which fit into their particular worldview, and tend to disbelieve things which do not fit into that worldview. This means that there will always be some segment of the population willing to believe any lie that can be conceived. The entire profession of stage magic is built upon this aspect of human nature. It is also interesting that many prominent “skeptics” are also professional magicians.
The combination of 1) and 2) is what results in the assault on a person’s reputation that “fundamentalist” refers to.
The difficulty we see in this incident is that the lies about Limbaugh fit so comfortably into the worldview of so many people that they apparently do not require verification.
It seems to me that, as “mike” notes, a lie can be viewed as a type of fraud.
Further, it seems to me that given my observation #2 above, the lassez-faire recourse of shunning the liar(s) is inadequate to deal with the issue.
Mises wrote “Man has only one tool to fight error: reason.” The question I pose is: what is the most appropriate and effective venue (or venues) in which to deploy reason in opposition to error, given the world as it exists today?
I’m attempting to envision a solution in the real world to this question that does not involve some measure of state power–if just some formal adjudication process such as a court of law. I admit that I am having extreme difficulty coming to that vision, given the reality of human nature.
Libel is part of the Anglo Saxon law and was thus designed for a time before centralized states. You should read up and post about how it was handled in the olde times.
“An unfortunate side effect of the Rush Limbaugh-St. Louis Rams debacle is that we have to suffer through another onslaught of conservative victimology.”
I would rather tolerate a little valid whining from the right than let the leftist slanderers off scot-free. The conservatives may not be perfect from a libertarian point of view but they are most certainly more intellectually allied with the LP view than the modern left is.
Libertarians would do well to keep things in perspective and understand that the left would become much more focused on taking them out were it not for their conservative allies. And, if they do not realize that they would be the next victims in line then what does that really say about the libertarian grasp of reality in general.
I have many gripes with the conservatives moralist/protectionist/imperialist tendencies too but to dismiss these nasty attacks, by the left, as affecting only the conservatives is at best fool hardy in the end.
If the left takes out the conservatives in this country then the left will eat the libertarians as a small after dinner dessert, and I personally do not intend to be one of those who only realize the importance of supporting such allies when kneeling with a gun pointed at the back of my head.
I don’t agree with most of Limbaugh’s views. But the lefts attacks on him are just stupid — Borderline insane. Debate issues, don’t interfere with a mans personal business life.
Tracy
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