The notion of advancing libertarian principles through litigation – particularly federal civil rights litigation – has a design flaw that’s rarely acknowledged: Lawyers are agents of the state. That applies equally to lawyers who happen to be libertarians. Unlike other regulated professions, attorneys are “officers of the court” in name and fact. Ultimately, their professional self-interest lies in expanding the size and scope of the state’s court system, not in protecting individual rights.
Last year, I criticized Cato Institute chairman Robert Levy, an attorney, for joining a motion seeking $3.5 million in attorney fees related to the Supreme Court’s five-to-four decision in Heller v. District of Columbia, a ruling that affirmed the state’s authority to restrict the right of individual self-defense while preserving only a limited Second Amendment privilege to possess firearms. Levy and his co-counsel claimed they were entitled not just to regular fees but certain “enhancements” based on their level of skill, success in winning a rhetorical victory over the meaning of the Second Amendment, and the risks to their public reputations – even among fellow libertarians – for bringing an unpopular case. This petition for attorney fees remains stalled before a District of Columbia judge.
The delay arises from the Supreme Court’s decision to hear a case involving a similar request for attorney fees. The Heller lawyers can’t collect until the Gang of Nine decides Perdue v. Kenny A. Oral arguments were heard in October, and a ruling can come at any time.
In Perdue, a legal advocacy group, Children’s Rights, Inc., sued the State of Georgia (Sonny Perdue is the governor) over abuses in the state’s foster care system; the class action complaint alleged federal constitutional and civil rights statute violations. Following mediation, the federal court overseeing the case entered a consent decree favoring the CRI plaintiffs. Federal statute permits the plaintiff’s attorneys to recover “reasonable” fees.
The district court reduced the billable time to just over $6 million but “enhanced” that amount 75%, for a total award of over $10.5 million. The court justified the $4.5 million enhancement by citing the “far superior” quality of counsel’s legal services, and the “truly exceptional” relief obtained for their clients in the consent decree. On appeal, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta affirmed the decision and award; one of the judges, however, noted that the $4.5 million “enhancement” appeared inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent, although more recent Eleventh Circuit precedent supported it.
The question now before the Supreme Court is whether
a reasonable attorney’s fee award under a federal fee-shifting statute ever be enhanced based solely on quality of performance and results obtained when these factors already are included in the lodestar calculation?
The “lodestar calculation” simply refers to hours-times-rate. The key word is “reasonable,” since the federal statute (42 U.S.C. § 1988) that authorizes fee awards states:
In any action or proceeding to enforce a provision of sections 1981, 1981a, 1982, 1983, 1985, and 1986 of this title, title IX of Public Law 92-318 [20 U.S.C. 1681 et seq.], the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 [42 U.S.C. 2000bb et seq.], the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 [42 U.S.C. 2000cc et seq.], title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 [42 U.S.C. 2000d et seq.], or section 13981 of this title, the court, in its discretion, may allow the prevailing party, other than the United States, a reasonable attorney’s fee as part of the costs… (Italics added)
So are fee enhancements ever “reasonable”? At first impression, the answer is “no,” because in a normal attorney-client relationship, the attorney is not permitted to arbitrarily multiply a final fee based on the quality or outcome of the work. A client agrees to pay a certain hourly rate and that’s that. Some lawyers, of course, work on contingency, but even there, it’s a previously agreed-upon percentage of the final award.But nothing is ever that simple, especially when you’re dealing with attorneys and their fees. A number of lawyer-based groups filed “friend of the court” briefs in support of the lower courts’ decisions in Perdue. One such brief came from a coalition of seven libertarian-leaning legal groups*, including the Institute for Justice and the Cato Institute. (The Liberty Legal Institute is listed as “counsel of record,” so for simplicity’s sake, I’ll refer to this filing as the “Liberty Brief.”)
The Liberty Brief maintains that fee enhancements are essential “to enforce civil rights guaranteed by the Constitution and by statute,” because it creates a “free market” to attract skilled attorneys:
As the representatives of the American taxpayers, Congress could authorize a massive expansion of the Department of Justice to cover all civil rights cases. It could, alternatively, privatize the system and allow free market principles to encourage private attorneys to undertake the massive effort of private attorneys general, holding government power accountable to the citizen-taxpayers…
…Congress chose to privatize the system, provide market incentives to private attorneys to enforce civil rights, and subject government to the proverbial “invisible hand” of local taxpayers to hold elected representatives responsible for the waste of taxpayer dollars lost in defense of legitimate civil rights violations. See Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations 456 (Roy Hutcheson Campbell et al. eds., Liberty Fund Glasgow 1981) (1776). In short, Congress, by enacting Section 1988, harnessed free market principles to incentivize lawful government behavior, and justifiably so.
According to the Liberty Brief, it’s not enough to simply pay attorneys their regular hours-times-rate:
[A]ttorney fees are not merely about compensating attorneys who undertake the representation of those oppressed and damaged by government, often at significant risk to their regular practice. Just as important, and possibly more so, they provide the incentive for governments, especially with the outcry of local taxpayers upon the media announcement of an attorney fee judgment, to reform their unlawful conduct and refrain from civil rights violations in the future.
Now, the statute only states attorney fees must be “reasonable”; there’s no language about compensating attorneys for “risk to their regular practice” or giving taxpayers “incentive” to rise up against local governments. But the Liberty Brief assures us that “the American taxpayers, through their elected representatives, clearly endorsed attorney fee enhancements when enacting Section 1988.” And to prove it, the brief cites the statement of a single senator – Ted Kennedy:
Even with the enactment of this bill, the lawyer who undertakes to represent a client will face more uncertainty of payment than one involved in a usual contingency fee case. His fee is contingent not only upon his success, but also upon the discretion of the judge before whom he appears.
Even if he wins his case, and the judge decides he has won a fee as well, his rate of compensation is fixed not by a grateful client, but by a disinterested judge.
Nothing in Kennedy’s statement supports fee “enhancements”; furthermore, it contradicts the Liberty Brief’s claim that the “invisible hand” of market forces will set attorney fees. Judges set the fees by fiat, not attorneys and clients entering into voluntary agreements.
Beyond Kennedy’s statement, the Liberty Brief relies heavily on the “legislative history” of Section 1988 contained in the House and Senate committee reports on the original legislation, enacted in 1976. The Senate report is silent on how to define “reasonable.” The House report cited a 1974 case from the Fifth Circuit where the court listed twelve guidelines in deciding attorney fees, including the “ability” of the attorneys and the “undesirability” of the case.
Of course, the Fifth Circuit didn’t fabricate its “guidelines” arbitrarily or capriciously: “These guidelines are consistent with those recommended by the American Bar Association’s Code of Professional Responsibility…” So the court simply adopted the recommendation of the professional bar on how its own members should be paid. Then the House and Senate judiciary committees – bodies generally composed entirely of attorneys – incorporated this self-serving analysis into their own legislation, which was heavily influenced by other professional attorney groups. This is what the Liberty Brief considers “the representatives of the American taxpayers.”
Now let’s pause here and consider a purely constitutional issue. The phrase “private attorney general” frequently describes the role of plaintiff’s counsel in these type of cases. Indeed, the Alliance Defense Fund, one of the seven groups that signed the Liberty Brief, said that its attorneys “function as private attorneys general, representing clients to vindicate their constitutional rights.”
But “private attorney general” is a contradiction. Attorneys are be officers of the court – the judicial branch – but the attorney general is an officer of the executive branch. The Constitution states the president must appoint and commission all “officers of the United States.” Congress cannot simply deputize every attorney in the country as a “private attorney general.”
Among other problems, the compensation for a “private attorney general” isn’t fixed by Congress or the president but by the whim of a federal judge. All Justice Department employees are paid as part of the federal bureaucracy. It’s an awful, parasitic system, but at least the compensation of the attorney general and his deputies are subject to presidential and congressional oversight. Not so with these so-called free-market prosecutors.
Now, the counterargument is that even the government uses private lawyers when defending against civil rights lawsuits, and what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. The Liberty Brief makes this exact point:
There are…thousands of professional civil rights defense attorneys whose firms make millions of dollars defending government entities, and many, if not most, government entities are represented by them. For these attorneys, their entire firm or practice group within the firm is dedicated to defending civil rights cases for government. The more protracted the litigation and the greater the girth of the docket, the greater their economic success. … [T]his has led to a substantial increase in the size of the dockets and records in civil rights cases.
The Liberty Brief argues the remedy is to allow plaintiff’s attorneys the possibility of enhanced fees to discourage defense attorneys from protracting litigation. But there’s an even better remedy: Limit the fees that all attorneys can collect in these cases. This sounds counterintuitive to free-market supporters, but let’s remember, attorneys are agents of the state. Restricting even a “private” attorney’s compensation is no different then fixing the salary of any other government bureaucrat.
Expanding the arms race, as the Liberty Brief recommends, will only lead to more litigation. That’s exactly what the Liberty Brief’s signatories want. They claim their objective is to reduce the cost of litigation by encouraging governments to settle cases quicker; the prospect of enhanced plaintiff’s fees will somehow spur angry taxpayers to revolt and demand accountability:
Most Georgia taxpayers are probably unaware of the facts of this case or the conditions these children were forced to endure. They will, however, be made very aware of the size of the attorney fee award. They will demand answers. They will demand fiscal accountability and that the government behave responsibly. Georgia, in the future, will be somewhat leery of paying $2.4M to outside counsel plus an enhanced attorney fee judgment to defend known civil rights violations merely to avoid paying a fraction of that amount to reform and settle with the victims early on. Georgia, and other government entities, will begin to reconsider the…strategy of government delay and obfuscation and will engage instead in some cost-benefit analysis reminiscent of the private sector. In short, in any future civil rights violations for which Georgia realizes it is responsible and must remedy, it will work to resolve the dispute as early as possible in the litigation to avoid the needless ballooning and possible enhancement of the attorney fee award. This possibility of enhancement will merely serve to realign the incentives for government to approach civil rights violations with the same desire for early resolution as the victims themselves.
This is the second prong of the “market incentives” argument at the Liberty Brief’s core. First we need the prospect of enhanced fees to attract competent plaintiff’s counsel; then we need them to discourage the government from spending money to defend its policies.
This argument is flawed on every level:
1.Since government officials are generally immune from any personal liability for their conduct, there’s no incentive for them not to engage in misconduct. Any costs are born by a third party, the nameless, faceless taxpayers.
2.Governments, at every level, waste taxpayer money every day on projects of dubious value. There’s no reason to believe taxpayers, en masse, will focus on an excessive attorney fee award in a single case and move to hold any particular official accountable. I think the Liberty Brief’s authors know this.
3.The Liberty Brief assumes that taxpayers won’t side with the government on the merits a particular case. Nobody supports abusing foster children, of course, but when a “civil rights” case involves constitutional interpretation, there are always multiple viewpoints. The Liberty Brief’s authors arrogantly assume everyone shares their specific interpretation of a two-century-old document.
4.Settlements – the Liberty Brief’s preferred outcome in all cases – often include high attorney fee awards. And settlements are often done behind closed doors with little, if any, public disclosure or oversight.
5.As the Perdue case itself demonstrates, the possibility of fee “enhancements” means a high probability of ancillary litigation to settle the question of how much to pay attorneys – even when the underlying litigation is settled.
6.The prospect of “enhanced” fees – higher prices – will attract more lawyers to file lawsuits irrespective of their merits, imposing additional costs on taxpayers.
7.Not to reiterate what should be an obvious point, but governments rarely perform true “cost-benefit” analysis, because their resources are acquired through violence or the threat of violence. There are no customers to serve, and government cannot fail like a private business.
What the Liberty Brief’s signatories really seek are not incentives for governments to behave, but punitive damage awards – for lawyers, not clients – under the guise of “enhanced” attorney fees.
Now, that may appeal to some libertarians. After all, any defeat for the state is good for the individual. Well, maybe not. The Liberty Brief itself cites a not-so-hypothetical scenario that doesn’t exactly help their cause:
Citizens raising families, working jobs and paying bills do not watch government as closely as shareholders or stakeholders in private enterprise. A local school district can spend a million dollars fighting a child who wants to hand a candy cane with a religious poem attached to his friends during Christmas, and then hold media events expressing a need for money for education. Few private enterprises would ever spend any amount of money fighting candy canes, and those that did would probably cease to exist. Not so for government.
What this example omits is the likely reason a school district would ban a child from distributing a religious-themed candy cane in the first place: Other lawyers, who also claim to be defenders of the Constitution and civil rights, threatened (or brought) legal action to prevent the school from violating the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. These attorneys promote the exact same legal philosophy as the Liberty Brief’s signatories – the federal Constitution is a license for courts and “civil rights” attorneys to micromanage every state and local government activity. It’s an expensive philosophy.
(As an aside, it’s laughable that the Liberty Brief brings the example of a child being told not to hand out candy canes into a case rooted in the abuse of three thousand children by the State of Georgia; it demonstrates a lack of intellectual depth perception endemic among lawyers, even libertarian lawyers.)
It’s also curious for the Liberty Brief to assert that “few private enterprises would ever spend any amount of money fighting candy canes, and those that did would probably cease to exist.” Most of the private groups that signed the Liberty Brief are themselves in the business of litigation. And they represent just a fraction of the private, nonprofit groups that bring such litigation on a daily basis, some more meritorious than others. Generally, these groups are financed through private donations, which is much closer to a free-market system then the government welfare sought in the Perdue case and its ideological cousins.
And let’s remember, not all of this litigation is against governments. If you look at the fee award statute at issue in Perdue, it authorizes fees in a wide range of cases including “unlawful intentional discrimination” by private parties – i.e., housing and employment – as well as the failure to provide “reasonable accommodations” under the Americans With Disabilities Act. If you allow “enhanced” attorney fees in cases against government entities, you also have to allow them in cases against private parties. Thus, it should be clear that the net effect of the Liberty Brief’s position will be an expansion of state power, not greater respect for the civil rights of individuals.
* The signatory groups are the Liberty Legal Institute, American Center for Law and Justice, Cato Institute, Institute for Justice, Liberty Counsel, Alliance Defend Fund, and the James Madison Center for Free Speech.
{ 24 comments }
POWER is the life of the law. The one with power makes the rules.
The law exist to affirm, in detail, the state’s POWER over our lives.
Whoever has power, no longer needs reason or logic. The law exist to give a false sense of reason to the power of the state. To hide it’s tyranny and deception behind legal smoke.
When lawyers learn the law by heart, they lose the ability to question it’s legitimacy and it’s motive.
They develop an automated reflex to apply the law and obey the law and don’t realize that the “law” is just the devious “justification” for the state’s power.
Just like the “word of God” is a devious “justification” for God’s authority.
I consider myself an atheist libertarian. So for me, law and religion are two of the same bullshit.
You would be surprized at how many people reason along the lines of “It’s the law” without giving any second thought about how stupid and senseless most laws are.
“Just like the “word of God” is a devious “justification” for God’s authority.
I consider myself an atheist libertarian. So for me, law and religion are two of the same bullshit.”
As a catholic libertarian I must say that THIS STATEMENT is bullshit. Canon law is very specific about what it can and cannot rule on. It does not arbitrarily expand it’s domain wherever it chooses. 2nd, the catholic church cannot force me to hand over millions of dollars to it, lock me in prison, or seize my property or work in any other fashion. This power can only be extended to it under privilege of the state.
3rd and most importantly, I can up and leave the church whenever I feel fit. I do not have to continue making payments to it (not so much the case in countries with established churches I admit, but again see the 2nd one above). In fact, the 15% tithe to the church is really only a practice, I will not be excommunicated for choosing not to pay it. So even if I choose not to give it money and partake in services the church will not force me to donate.
Given these facts, I fail to see how they are all the same bullshit.
I do not mean to be disparaging, but I see no reason for you to have even included this statement here given that Oliva’s post had nothing to do with religion at all.
Slim934,
“As a catholic libertarian”
You cannot be catholic and libertarian at the same time. Christianity forbids homosexuality, greed, private property (look at what happened to Ananias who retain a part of the profits from the sale of his land, God killed him).
Either you are not a serious catholic or you are not a serious libertarian.
You cannot be a libertarian and agree with sending most of humanity to hell. Come on man, YOU are full of bullshit !
You are not a catholic, seems to me like you don’t take catholicism or christianity seriously.
So why do you cling to the “catholic” label then ?
I am an atheist libertarian.
Powercrush,
Who are you to say whether or not someone of faith can or cannot legitimately be a libertarian?
I believe that one of the resounding messages in the Bible is to love everyone, regardless of their differences.
Greed was only ever warned against in cases where it led to the temptations of theft or illegalities.
The deaths of Ananias and Sapphira were more an illustration of the consequences of deceit than of the actual withholding of profits. Also, the question of whether or not they were under the grace of God comes into play. Its all a matter of interpretation.
In any case, God gives us life to live how we want and the reasoning to determine what is right and wrong. If you are atheist, more power to you…there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But any person with religious convictions can be just as “libertarian” as anybody else. Remember, “libertarian” is merely a word; a label. The meaning is all that is important and that is Freedom
Powercrush wrote:
“You cannot be catholic and libertarian at the same time. Christianity forbids homosexuality, greed, private property…”
I am also an atheist libertarian, and this is nonsense. For instance, a person can believe, as a libertarian, that a person should be able to choose a homosexual lifestyle, but at the same time, as a Christian, believe that he should not choose this lifestyle. You can also believe that a person who chooses to live a homosexual lifestyle will go to hell without violating any libertarian tenets. There is absolutely no contradiction between the two.
Libertarianism is not necessarily libertinism. The former is a political philosophy; the latter is a lifestyle “philosophy”. You seem to be confusing the two.
As for Christians not believing in private property, even the early primitive Christians did not forsake private property, for the most part. According to your strawman definition of Christianity, there are probably no Christians in existence today at all!
This article confirms for me that I was right in not considering “Liberty Legal Institute, American Center for Law and Justice, Cato Institute, Institute for Justice, Liberty Counsel, Alliance Defend Fund, and the James Madison Center for Free Speech” to be truly free-market institutions.
I am also currently working to become a lawyer, and everyday I fight against the material, noting that problems are almost always due to Monopoly privilege, proffered solutions are usually aggrandizing of the State apparatus, and a good portion of my cohorts are unquestioning of the “greatness” of the system.
The Bar Association is one of the greatest evils in society.
Yeah, i agree with Jacob, that it really is not an either/or proposition Powercrush. You may very well think religion is bullshit, but in that sense, you can reconcile the freedom that a human ought to have in “believing in bullshit”, in a free society. There is no contradiction. So the inverse is true. As a Christian, i can reconcile my disagreement with certain activities, while accepting that others should be allowed to participate in them. This goes for a long list of things such as prostitution, drug use, homosexuality, gambling, not eating certain foods, atheism, apostasy, and so on. That is the beauty of the libertarian thinking; in doesn’t require conformity in action, only in basic, fundamental thinking regarding only the most basic rights. It does not require that all people think religion is bullshit, as you do Powercrush. It couldn’t possibly mean that as, again, the entire principal of libertarian thinking is based on the maximum pursuit of freedom. Freedom in beliefs, actions, thoughts, words.
Not to stray too far from the OP, but perhaps I can elucidate how I took powercrush’s statement:
Talking to “true believers” of either religious or statist faiths is like talking to Plato’s cave emergees. Not any single argument that you can make will be able to allow your ‘foe’ to see the situation from your point of view, while any single “win” on their part is a complete confirmation that you are full of it, and they are fully correct.
Powercrush – you may want to look up Stefan Molyneaux’s take on epistemological discussions to better understand your own gripe. You need to understand that its not just a different POV that you have on these subjects, but when it comes to the subject matter you may be thinking/arguing with an entirely distinct tool-box than your conversation partner. It’s not that you can’t agree on some things, its that you have “pre-agreed” that you can’t agree by using different argumentative subtexts.
Back on topic, though, I do contend that there exists lawyers who can work for liberty and free markets, whether in the current courts or through activism. The vast majority however will never bother to really question authority because they have been given a share of the monopoly privilege of the Bar, and for all the BS rules they are subject to, they can’t bear to think that they could lose the wage protection afforded to them by being the only game in town. All the while the overbearing rules set by the Bar are impossible to enforce except selectively and inefficiently, and the very agency that strives to “protect the image of the profession” is the source of the problem giving lawyers a bad name by creating moral hazards and collectivizing the profession into an indistinguishable mass of pinstripes.
iawai, I’m right there with you, just a few years past your point (recently admitted to the Bar). It is a mind-numbing experience to go through legal education and realize that the vast majority of lawyers and future lawyers do not question the basic structure of our legal system.
I also agree that the fundamental problem is with the monopoly imposed on the practice of law by the government(s). End that monopoly and the rest of the more complicated problems, such as the fee-shifting issues discussed in the article, will be sorted out by the consumers and producers of legal services.
Jacob,
“I believe that one of the resounding messages in the Bible is to love everyone, regardless of their differences.”
I know this debate will be sterile because blind faith is well…BLIND.
But your God sends to hell anyone who rejects or doesn’t know Christ. Some love that is. Aparrently God is like government, above it’s own laws.
God tells us to love but he hates and sends to hell.
This whole fire, brimstone and guilt cannot be compatible with libertarianism as Christians will often have problems with private property, wealth and free market capitalism.
You are either a Christian or a Libertarian, you can’t be both and if you claim to be both then you are a complexed hypocrit.
It’s one thing to read the Bible and to inspire yourself out of the Bible. It’s one thing to take from Christianity and catholocism what you want all the while rejecting what you don’t like.
But it’s a whole other to claim to be a Christian or a Catholic.
From the moment you claim to be a Christian, you can no longer take the “love” part while rejecting the hell part. You have to take it all or leave it all.
If you want to continue to claim to be a libertarian all the while inspiring yourself from the Bible, say it that way, but don’t say you are a christian.
For christians are forced to take it all and Christianity as a whole is incompatible with libertarianism.
Your God condemns free market capitalism, condemns private property rights, condemns self-interest, condemns profit motives, self-pleausres etc.
This whole guilt and accusations against private property and free market capitalism is not compatible with libertarianism.
You can be a libertarian who inspires himself from the teachings of Christianity.
But you cannot be a libertarian and a christian at the same time.
If you want to claim you are a christian or a catholic, you have to take all of christianity, you can’t just cherry pick what you like. You have to take the good and the bad if you want to live under the label of Christian.
And the bad just isn’t compatible with libertarianism.
Iawai,
“Powercrush – you may want to look up Stefan Molyneaux’s take on epistemological discussions to better understand your own gripe. You need to understand that its not just a different POV that you have on these subjects, but when it comes to the subject matter you may be thinking/arguing with an entirely distinct tool-box than your conversation partner”
Actually, I am not debating the existence of God or not and I am not debating the validity of Christanity or not.
I’m just saying that Christianity and Libertarianism DON’T mix.
Having been a Christian myself in the past, I was a Catholic, then Pentecostal then Evangelical, I was exposed to the full spectrum of Christianity.
The Bible and the Christian faith demand that you take this faith seriously, that you fear God and fear Hell, that you condemn homosexuality, private property, self-interest etc.
What I find disingenious is people who claim to be christians but who willfully reject the fire and brimstone part and who act as if Christianity didn’t make any threats or didn’t condemn anything.
Christianity wants you to either accept all of it or reject all of it.
People who claim to be Christian but then evade hell questions and who doesn’t seem to condemn the things that the Bible condemns or who seems to be focussed only on the “love” part while rejecting all the rest, those people strike me as hypocrits.
They are christians by fashion, by looks, by style but their hearts and their faith just isn’t there, they don’t take christianity seriously, they disbelieve the hell threath and they reject the guilt trip.
Those people are christians in name only. It’s this hypocrisy that gets on my nerve.
If a person claims to be a Christianity-inspired libertarian, then I give that person the benefit of the doubt. Because in my mind they are libertarians who take what they want out of christianity and leave what they want and who don’t claim to be christians.
But if you really want to claim to be a christian, you have to take it all, even the bad and the bad part of christianity doesn’t mix with libertarianism.
I’ve been there, I’ve done that, I have been a christian for most part of my life before I walked away from this oppresive faith.
While I was a Christian, I could not have been a libertarian. Christianity robs you of your life, your earnings, your property, your freedom and your dignity. It has nothing to do with libertarianism.
Claiming to be a Christian libertarian is like claiming to be a communist libertarian, they just don’t mix.
And I must admit, I cannot claim to be a libertarian, because I do not abide by the strict non-agression principle.
Most of life is “eat or be eaten” and this is even more true in “civilization” than it is in the jungle. For in civilization, there is a huge political machine geared to “eat” it’s constituents alive.
While I respect life, private property and free market capitalism, while I like all those things about libertarianism, I must reject the strict non-agression principle. I believe that sometimes a good vendetta is well deserved and this just doesn’t mix with libertarianism.
And I believe that sometimes, you have to use whatever powers you have to get ahead, even if it means crushing your fellow citizen or it is he who will crush you on his way to the top.
I exeprienced being crushed, even by my own relatives, so I just cannot accept to relinquish the abillity to crush back.
I am an atheist, but I am not a libertarian.
Fair enough ?
And I stand by my first arguments.
Reason is NOT the life of the law.
POWER is the life of the law. The only way that the law can impose itself is through power, plus most low are not reasonable. Like laws that criminialize victimless behavior.
The law, in the form of written text, really exist just to blow up smoke in an attempt to justify the power of the ruling elite.
If you have to learn the law by heart, you therefore cannot question it. The law is the power of the ruling elite and power is incompatible with reason.
Those with power makes the rules and don’t have to give reasons.
The fact that there exist a lot of victimless “crimes” is the proof that the law exist so that power doesn’t have to justify itself nor give any reasons.
The law is the shortcutting of reason.
Only the weak need to give reasons for their behavior.
But the weak will never be able to reason with the powerful, for the powerful is only interested in his own power and how to further it.
POWER is the life of the law. The day the law loses power is the day it changes.
“Having been a Christian myself in the past, I was a Catholic, then Pentecostal then Evangelical, I was exposed to the full spectrum of Christianity.”
Having watched “I Love Lucy”, “Little House On the Prairie” and “The Cosby Show”, I was exposed to the full spectrum of American culture.
mpolzkill,
Catholic and Pentecostals are at both extremes and evangelical are in the middle.
But no matter what your denomination is. Christianity and the Bible demands that you take it seriously and that you take it all.
Those “christians” who cherry pick the love stuff while throwing away the hell and brimstone stuff are just hypocrits.
And it’s one thing to “watch” television, but it’s another to actually make the show.
You don’t “watch” christianity, you LIVE it, you endure it, you suffer it until you can’t bear it anymore and you leave it in the name of freedom and sanity.
Saying that you are a Christian libertarian is like saying you are a communist libertarian or a law abiding criminal, or a peaceful warrior or a benevolent dictator.
It just doesn’t make sense.
mpolzkill,
Catholic and Pentecostals are at both extremes and evangelical are in the middle.
But no matter what your denomination is. Christianity and the Bible demands that you take it seriously and that you take it all.
Those “christians” who cherry pick the love stuff while throwing away the hell and brimstone stuff are just hypocrits.
And it’s one thing to “watch” television, but it’s another to actually make the show.
You don’t “watch” christianity, you LIVE it, you endure it, you suffer it until you can’t bear it anymore and you leave it in the name of freedom and sanity.
Saying that you are a Christian libertarian is like saying you are a communist libertarian or a law abiding criminal, or a peaceful warrior or a benevolent dictator.
It just doesn’t make sense.
“…christianity, you LIVE it, you endure it, you suffer it until you can’t bear it anymore and you leave it in the name of freedom and sanity.”
Not just then, it seems many ex-Christians endure, suffer and LIVE anti-Christianity (and they post on internet forums until *I* can’t bear it anymore and have to leave in the name of sanity). Your thoughts are controlled as ever, just in the obverse. You think maybe you need to work on yourself so people’s words don’t affect you so? If a Christian isn’t pointing a gun at your head when he tells you to go to church, he *may* be both Christian and libertarian.
mpolzkill,
well, you are not the first one to make me the remark that I am still trapped in the fold. There is some truth to that.
I lived christianity as a form of abuse, the threat of hell fire, the guilt trip, an all angry “loving” God that forbids pleasure, forbids ambition, forbids self-determination.
Even though I left the faith, I am still haunted by the threats and I am still scarred by the abuse.
Sometimes it’s still hard for me to allow myself to believe in myself, to allow myself some pleasures, to allow myself some accomplishment.
Christianity fucks you up real good. I wish I was raised in reason, in trusting yourself, encouraged to have ambition, I wish I was raised in an empowering environment instead of the disempowering christianity.
I basically had to repair all by myself what was destroyed by my parents and christianity. Unfortunately the repair is not perfect as you can see.
It’s been 10 years I walked away, yet it’s still an awful toll on the mind.
It’s a shame that Christianity would short-circuit critical thinking and would disempower people.
Who else than powerful critical thinking individuals can do good in this world ?
By using the guilt concept instead of the responsibility concept, by criminalizing victimless behavior and by short-circuiting critical thinking, Christianity is defeating it’s own purpose.
I am happy I left and I feel born again ever since I left, but still from times to times I get flash backs.
Christianity is a crime against humanity. Religion is a crime against humanity.
I think it is time that mankind starts having faith in itself and starts facing the responsibility of it’s actions instead of always looking after a God.
Think of God as a central planning of morality and justice. Think of reason and critical-thinking as some sort of free “market” justice where each and everyone must be responsible for his actions instead of facing guilt, hell fire and trivial rules.
In a world without God, you are much more responsible for your actions, for there is no God who will come and clean up your mess.
I maintain my position, Christianity cannot mix with Libertarianism.
mpolzkill,
“If a Christian isn’t pointing a gun at your head when he tells you to go to church, he *may* be both Christian and libertarian.”
Libertarian in the sense that he is forcing nobody to go to church and that he willfully chosen to go to church. I can buy that part.
But then, he is not a serious christian, because a choice under duress is not a choice at all.
Christianity points a “gun” on your head if you don’t accept christ. You will burn in hell forever.
How can you willfully choose to go to church under the threat of hellfire ?
Libertarians don’t accept being bullied around with threats and when push comes to shove they respond.
How can you worship this tyrannical God while claiming to be a libertarian ?
As long as the christian is not proselytizing I guess it’s okay but isn’t that Christian kind of lukewarm and not serious about his faith ?
Sometimes, I feel that most christian who claim to be libertarians or who are not passionate about hell fire or homophobia are lukeward hypocrits who only take from Christianity what fits them while leaving the rest.
Why do they claim to be christians if they are not serious about the faith in the first place ?
They look for comfort, for belonging, for relationships. They are like children who need their blanket or their teddy bear all the while knowing the teddy bear is just an imaginary friend.
Like it or not mpolzkill, those are hypocrits.
But I do get your point about those christians not forcing me into the faith or not being forced themselves into the faith. But that only means they don’t take christianity seriously and for me that amounts to hypocrisy.
I guess life is too hard to bear for most people that they need some sort of faith to go along, even though they reject parts of that faith that don’t fit them.
People are lying to themselves much more then they lie to others, I can see that human beings are complexed and complicated beings that can have contradictory faiths and still move along in life as if there were no contradictions.
Like, there are christians who believe in evolution, in alien life and who study science. This is mind boggling.
PC,
I can never understand supposed atheists who are all hot and bothered (tee hee) over “hellfire”. You don’t believe in it, do you?!? You believe in the existence of guns and bullets, right? It isn’t comparable and you admit that; good.
I’m not going to discuss this here any longer, I just want to say that I’ve talked to thousands of anti-Christians (I was raised by Bible fundamentalist parents, had my own hateful period, hence my interest) and I’m very encouraged to see definite signs that you have still retained a bit of perspective; an ability to look inward just a bit, instead of always outward for the source of your problems. That puts you in the top 99 percentile of internet-posting, anti-Christians I’ve read. For-the-love-of-Pete, keep looking in THAT direction. Take care, guy.
Though I have a great deal of respect for Austrian economics, I rarely post here – but the comments above by Powercrush interested me to do so now. Mostly because, coming from a fundamentalist christian background myself, these topics matter to me.
I think he’s DEAD ON in his assertions about religion being incompatible with libertarianism, and I also think that his choice to make these points directly below an article about modern law is also very appropriate.
After all, one is an old system of man made codes that is antithetical to human freedom, and the other is a new version of the same problem: and that problem is false authority over some people by others. The state occupies the same position today as the church did for thousands of years.
Powercrush may strike some of you as angry, and he’s probably got good reason to be, but he’s also correct. The worlds religions ARE pure unadulterated bullshit and, being contrary to justice, are antithetical to freedom and peace. They are, in fact, systems of un-justice.
And the parallels to modern law (not to mention academia) are much deeper than most observe.
I agree 100%. Our privacy must be protected! My Dental Plans company has been taking extra care to protect privacy. So appreciated!
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