Nancy Pelosi may think the purpose of public policy is to pursue the values of Jesus Christ, to make "the word flesh," but, in politics, the word made flesh is the gun. I know the "liberalism" mission statement includes the statement that "views the Democratic Party as the last, best hope for liberty," but as I keep pointing out, the Democratic Establishment does not represent the views of the more socially liberal base. I'm not interested in living in a place where the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Sarah Palin are fighting it out for their vision of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. And frankly, if the so-called "Kingdom of Heaven" is anything like the American empire, I choose Hell.

The most recent FDL Book Salon features Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Jarvious Cotton’s great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Klu Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation; his father was barred by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole.
—FROM THE NEW JIM CROW

Little Alex has text and video transcript of Alexnader's recent appearance on Democracy Now.

In the Salon introduction, Paul Street writes:

Alexander’s argument is deftly developed over six highly readable and richly informed chapters that: review the historical record of racialized social control in North American history from the colonial era through the present (Chapter 1); describe the fundamentally racist structure and operation of the officially “colorblind” contemporary U.S. drug war and mass imprisonment system (Chapters 2 and 3); detail how the new caste system operates on its black victims once they are released (on all too temporary a bases in many cases) from prison (Chapter 4); draw direct historical parallels between the old and the “new” Jim Crow (Chapter 5); and show how and why only a major new social movement (one that among other things “talks [candidly] about race” and “resists the temptation of colorblind advocacy”) can under the new caste order (Chapter 6).

I think Alexander's arguments dovetail with the themes that have been articulated on this blog. Communitarian politics have masked the growth of the new Jim Crow Prison State. Communitarian politics is unable to address the problem. The problem must be addressed by a radical new social movement that redefines the political categories.

Note, if Rand Paul actually was a libertarian, he could have countered the corporate liberal dementia of Rachel Maddow--and her mythology of Federal Power as an instrument of "progressive justice"--with more or less the same argument being made by Alexander, really an argument libertarians have been making for years. Rachel Maddow may be a professed skeptic on th War on Drugs, but she is the one holding contradictory thoughts in her head, existing in her own little la la land, spinning narratives of progressive federal power while refusing to acknowledge that the US Federal criminal Justice System is a thoroughly racist regime. And you can't advocate for ending the war on drugs while holding to the commerce clause as the great instrument of social engineering. You can't address the War on drugs without addressing the applicability of the commerce clause, because it is the legal sanction behind the New Jim crow.

The problem of radical social movements, which the likes of Alexander advocate, is that this is what the National security State is poised to thwart. Radical social movements aren't played out on the talking head squares of cable TV or in the policy rooms of Washington think tanks. They are carried out in the streets. And not politely, I may add. We are all well aware of the extent the federal law enforcement regime tired to infiltrate the social movements in the 60s. Well, now we have an honest to god real national security state apparatus. It is specifically designed to spy and infiltrate "movements," arrest them and parade their arrests on organs of official state media as means to spread fear and to discredit. The likes of Rachel Maddow reveled in promoting the great terrorism and national security threat poised by the "Tea Partiers," even hosted a MSNBC special to hype the threat of violence. Just imagine the terrorist hype that would accompany any radical social movement to protest the War on Drugs. People like Maddow are part of the problem. The National Security State at the service of and as an emergent property of communitarian politics is a thing to be dreaded....

Sorry Rojas, Rand Paul is not on any road to "Galt's Gultch." Indeed, I would would say the more accurate assessment is that he is on the road to Lancaster, PA(headquarters of the Constitutional Party). And Rand didn't "change" his position 24 hours later on the Civil Rights Act because of some epiphany, but rather because he was "advised" to do so by Mitch McConnell and Karl Rove.

Rand Paul:

Paul has lately said he would not leave abortion to the states, he doesn't believe in legalizing drugs like marijuana and cocaine, he'd support federal drug laws, he'd vote to support Kentucky's coal interests and he'd be tough on national security.

"They thought all along that they could call me a libertarian and hang that label around my neck like an albatross, but I'm not a libertarian."
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The younger Paul, who describes himself as “100% pro life,” says “abortion is taking the life of an innocent human being,” “life begins at conception,” and “it is the duty of our government to protect this life.” Toward that end, he supports “any and all legislation that would end abortion or lead us in the direction of ending abortion,” including “a Human Life Amendment and a Life at Conception Act as federal solutions to the abortion issue.”
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Millions crossing our border without our knowledge constitutes a clear threat to our nation’s security. I will work to secure our borders immediately. My plans include an underground electric fence, with helicopter stations to respond quickly to breaches of the border. Instead of closing military bases at home and renting space in Europe, I am open to the construction of bases to protect our border.

Rand Paul on the James Dobson endorsement:

“Enormous. I mean it was a really big thing..."

Here's the Vice-President of Policy at Dobson's Organization, the Family Research Council, on how to deal with the "gay problem:" deport them.

Rand Paul on Christianity and the State:

We Wouldn't Need Laws If Everyone Were Christian...

Paul's most recent flap about immigration and birthright citizenship contained sentiments that he supported these tough laws and massive enforcement mechanisms in part because he viewed immigration as politically aiding the Democratic Party.

Frankly, a clear line that seems to emerge from Rand Paul is that he sees the role of the State primarily as enforcing cultural normality. In that respect he's sees a strong role for the State, even an authoritative role. That's not libertarianism. In fact, it strikes me more along the lines of some variant of Christian Reconstructionism. In analyzing his views, he strikes me as being from some hawkish wing of the Constitution Party. Two years ago, I criticized Chuck Baldwin as a crackpot theocrat, but Rand is worse. This guy is literally off the plantation.

Any narrative that tries to spin Rand Paul as some practical version of his father is flawed. Rand Paul combines the few odious qualities of his father, without any of the redeeming qualities, and synthesizes this with establishment conservativism. He is a disaster to any extent he becomes identified as a libertarian archetype.

And spare me any of the rejoinders along the lines of "ideologocal purism" or "Losertarian." Libertarianism has a rich intellectual history, but let's face it, it is a tradition primarily rooted in dissent, not in the wielding of political power. If you are so starved for some morsel of representation of political power and acceptance that you will overlook the obvious flaws of someone like Rand Paul, then you would probably be well served to re-examine what it means to be a libertarian.

This blog has been discussing "social engineering" as of late. Recently, there have been some articles/posts in the blogosphere attacking the social engineering of radical libertarianism. Much of this discussion stems from David Brooks' recent column, Two Theories of Change, which is his take on the Jefferson v Hamilton debate.

Brooks rightly states that there are two liberal traditions, one English and one French, with the French tradition being more radical. But other than that, he gets little right. Frankly, Hayek's famous essay, "Why I am not a Conservative," addresses the arguments of the likes of Brooks who use Burkean arguments to defend the Status Quo, as if the Status Quo is somehow the result of some natural order, and not actually the consequence of the politicking of the ruling political classes. Recall, two years ago, Brooks championing the emergence of a new establishment elite, and now that there is push back against the obvious consequences of this new order, Brooks wants to resort to some Hayekian counter-argument against the push back. I've got a term for that, it's called "Vulgar Hayekianism"...

If you have been following this blog, you notice there has been much recent effort to clearly delineate between the British liberal tradition and the French liberal tradition, and to articulate why libertarianism derives much more from the French tradition. The British liberal tradition had sort of anarchistic common law tradition behind it, whereas the the French tradition was plagued by a "Norman" feudal order that really really wouldn't be overturned until the end of the 18th century. For France, the violence and corruption that would ensue in 3 revolutions in trying to replace a tradition of aristocracy and bureaucracy with a liberal abstraction would lead to a radical liberal class critique of liberalism itself. This is libertarianism. In the old classical economics, the "Jean-Baptiste Say" school was much more radical than the Scottish school of Adam Smith because the French Liberals had a much more cynical view of the State, that it did not serve to ensure "regularity of markets," but rather to confer artificial privileges and monopolies. This is the contextual origin of the term, "Laissez faire," but that original "meaning" has been lost somewhere in the historical translation. Today it apparently means political capture by the likes of Goldman Sachs to operate with impunity.

The Hamiltonian v Jefferson debate is really a constructivist vs a non-constructivist debate regarding the evolution of a natural social order. It is a grave mistake to conflate the scottish traditon/Hayek with Hamiltonian constructivism; to do so, indicates, frankly, that you really don't know what you are talking about. In Benjamin Tucker's historical postscript to his own political document, "State Socialism and Anarchism," he noted, 3 decades later, that the Hamiltonian rout of Jeffersonianism had become so severe that it would take political action to "tear down" the trusts. It's much worse, today. For radical libertarianism, to the extent it seeks any remedy in politics, this is the objective, to tear down the trusts and the monopolies. This is "libertarian social engineering." Unfortunately, this project has to overcome the communitarian basis of much of today's politics to even begin to have any hope of relevance.

I realize libertarianism has been a central topic of discussion by the mainstream media establishment as of late, with much of the discussion wrapped in derogatory tones, and this perhaps is a source of embarrassment to the "beltway libertarian establishment" which would prefer to maintain its membership amongst the Washington cocktail crowd as well as retain viability as participants in the accepted boundaries of today's polite political discussion, but you can't just make things up as some type of survival, defense mechanism. When the chairman of Cato, Robert Levy, writes:

For starters, libertarians are proponents of limited government. We are not anarchists.

He's being disingenuous. He knows better. Historically, libertarianism very much is rooted in anarchism, both worldwide and in the United States. And it's not a matter of ancient history either. The rebirth of libertarianism in the United States in the late 1960s was very much a revival of it's left-wing anarchist roots. Murray Rothbard wrote the manifesto and Karl Hess delivered it to the masses with his famous Playboy essay, "The Death of Politics." The Koch brothers, despite all their money, can't buy a historically white-washed version of a social/political philosophy. In many ways, Cato, which formed a decade later after the librtarian revival, has been trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again(preserve libertarian-conservative fusionism), but 30 years later, this effort is turning to dust. If the likes of David Boaz are embarrassed by the Tea Parties, and wants to claim that he is unaware of any species of anti-government libertarian, well he's free to shovel that line he wants to, but I'm not sure how many are buying it.

Recently, I've been paying attention to cable news again, just to observe the commentary. The running theme on Hardball being promulgated by Chris Matthews is that libertarianism as a political philosophy is outside the realm of accepted political discourse. Anyone who attempts to make a philosophical argument will be excoriated by the current political reality. This, mind you, was in between the giggles of Howard Fineman who is reporting that the Obama Re-Election organs are chomping at the bits to make "anti-government libertarianism" a central issue in the 2012 campaign. But Chris Matthews, in essence, was validating the arguments being made by the likes of Brad Spangler.

I go back to the recent article by Mark Lilla that blamed libertarianism for the breakdown in political discourse. If anything, I think the recent Rand Paul flap tears holes in Lilla's argument. Even though I'm a huge critic of Rand Paul, he did try to go on "a progressive show" to clarify his position that had been brought up by a political opponent. And, it should be noted, that Rand Paul did announce his original political candidacy on this same show(Rachael Maddow), a rarity in term of politics. Paul ended being excoriated for his effort and the conventional wisdom is that he was an idiot for going on that show. This conventional wisdom is being layered over top the other conventional wisdom being parroted now that libertarianism is too "fundamentalist" to be a part of any political discourse. There is no free market in politics.

Lilla's observation is just the consequence of mixing libertarian culture with communitarian politics. The end result of this is a type of "pink police state."

My rejoinder to Cato, if they are uncomfortable with the term "anti-government libertarian," is to suggest a better term, "anti-political libertarian." There is no such thing as the rule of law. Law is what politics says it is....

As I'm sure everyone here is aware of, Rand Paul has managed to elevate himself above Sarah Palin in terms of being the new object of obsessive derision by the chattering pundit classes. What we are seeing, in essence, is the gleeful tearing down of this nonsense of "constitutional conservatism." Rand can't defend it, and has for all intent and purposes, giving up trying. He has now retreated behind the safety of the GOP establishment, who have suddenly become busy issuing press releases informing us that Robert Byrd was a member of the KKK and that Dixiecrats filibustered the 1964 bill. Judging by Rand's interviews yesterday, he got the talking points.

A couple of days ago, Mitch McConnell was viewed as the big loser, but I suppose he is just licking his cynical chops, now. McConnell, a protege of John Sherman Cooper, is going to save Rand's ass here. The R3volution is dead...

Politically speaking, David Weigel declares this marks the end of liberal-libertarian romance. Brad Spangler meanwhile revels in declaring this should mark the end of any pretense of electoral politics as an effective strategy for libertarians. And, finally leave it to the likes of David Boaz to claim he's never met an anti-government libertarian.

My thoughts. The "newsletter fallout" that we thought would hit with Ron Paul, but never really hit, is hitting Rand Paul in a big way. But the larger problem is that "constitutional conservatism' or "Goldwater Republicanism" is not a coherent critique against the American State. For God sakes, the Shakespeare of "Goldwater Conservatism," Karl Hess, defected from it, becoming a radical anarchist. The simple fact is that the American State today is behaving as it has always behaved. What we are witnessing today inherits directly from the fucking "conservative tradition."

FireDogLake had a recent WaterCooler post asking for a deeper examination of libertarian philosophy in light of the recent Rand Paul flap. I answered with a fairly long comment here. The overall point I was making is that the institutional failure of liberalism vis a vis "the State" is very real, and it is such failure that has spawned a libertarian tradition. A radical libertarian, not a phony libertarian like Rand Paul beholden to his good, Christian Kentucky brethen, could have turned the tables on the likes of Rachel Maddow and forced her to defend the institutional racism of the American criminal justice system(one that is so bad and obvious that the likes of China are now issuing humans rights violations regarding the United States) or defect from the position that federal government is any legitimate enforcer of civil liberties. In the end who is actually living in a juvenile la la land? It's both Rachel Maddow and Rand Paul.

As I discuss in this post, it appears to me the US Supreme Court has formalized an independent federal power of civil detention by simple virtue of "protecting public safety" in the operation of the federal prison system. This isn't a "slippery slope," rather this is flat out having "slipped."

Anyone want to dispute my assessment, or defend that decision, or argue that I'm just being paranoid?

FD had a recent post Marijuana Legalization & The Future Culture War that promoted Chris Bowers' thesis the pot legalization would a boon for the Democratic Party in terms of future culture wars. I dissented in the comments, noting that that the pot legalization movement could backfire on the Dems, because I see a schism between the conservative corporate liberal Dem establishment and the more socially liberal Dem base.

So, I'm not surprised when the NORML Outreach Coordinator uses the pages of the Huffington Post to sound to sound the clarion call that Obama's ONDCP is pursuing a 50 State strategy for the adoption of zero tolerance DUID laws. Driving Under the Influence of Drug laws rely on testing for known drug metabolites in the urine or blood. DUID laws have no scientific merit because the presence of metabolites does not indicate the driver is intoxicated at the time of testing. All recreational drugs, including alcohol, are rapidly metabolized in the liver, meaning there is a relatively short period of "being high;" the particular metabolites for a given drug usually remain detectable in the urine or blood for a period of 24-72 hours. The active ingredient in Pot(THC), however, is fat-soluble, meaning, of course, that some of it is stored in fat tissue. From there, THC is released slowly and metabolized into a metabolite that can be detected by a urine or blood test. This is why even a infrequent user can test positive for up to around two weeks while a frequent user basically has to quit for two months to avoid detection.

For even a moderate pot user, driving in a zero-tolerance State is highly punishable crime, because they are assuredly driving with the presence of the 9-carboxy-THC metabolite in their system.

As someone informed by libertarian class theory and political cynicism, I fully expect the State to take counter-measures to enforce the drug laws, even if indirectly. In many respects, indirect enforcement ends up being more insidious than direct enforcement. Whatever one thinks may come of the "legalization movement," the end result will be an enforcement scheme that will make it impractical for most to use anything not approved by the State. I had previously thought the primary mechanism would be the "mandatory testing" that would gradually creep into any "health care insurance subsidy;" frankly, i hadn't considered zero-tolerance DUID laws as a new weapon in the Fed's Drug war arsenal. The Drug War is not going to go quietly into that good night...

A bit off topic, but I'm reading that Ridley Scott's new movie Robin Hood is being slammed because it departs from the usual myths, instead adopting a narrative that comports very well with the historical narratives that have been discussed here regarding English liberalism and French conservatism. The NY Times review of the movie offers this amusing take:

You may have heard that Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor, but that was just liberal media propaganda. This Robin is no socialist bandit practicing freelance wealth redistribution, but rather a manly libertarian rebel striking out against high taxes and a big government scheme to trample the ancient liberties of property owners and provincial nobles. Don’t tread on him!

The anti-French animus of “Robin Hood” is amusingly over the top — the French monarch is first glimpsed slurping oysters — but also perhaps a little anachronistic, belonging less to 1200 than to 2003, the height of the Freedom Fries era. But somebody has to be the villain, and “Robin Hood” has a pretty good one in Godfrey (Mark Strong), a two-faced courtier whose diabolical scheme is to foment civil war between John and the northern nobles so that the French can conquer England all over again, just as they did in 1066.

Needless to say, there is a bunch of pissed off French media this year at Cannes.

If you want to know what monopoly looks like, click here.