Liberalis in English

How are You feeling?

I’m feeling very pleased with these two days and I thought it went extremely well and the local organisation was superb and Nicolai (Barczentewicz) and You and all the people who worked for the organisation did a great job, so… Everybody I’ve talked to think it was one of the most successful conferences we’ve had, so it’s very good, I’m very pleased.

Thank You. This is Your first time in Poland?

No, no, I’ve been to Poland many times. In the early days after the… the post-Soviet era – ’92-’93, and again more recently, not to Warsaw but to Krakow – so I can see, certainly in Warsaw, how the city has changed between 1992-1993 and today. It’s very spectacular. At the time it was grey, it was drab, it was really… it had the feeling of a very boring place. Today, and today’s not sunny and so on, but it’s certainly a vibrant place full of colour, full of young people in the street, advertising, you know, shops, things like that. No, it’s great, absolutely great. And the old buildings have been redone and the appear in all their glory, it’s wonderful.

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About the cases of Hans Fritzsche and Julius Streicher at the trial of Nazi criminals in Nuremberg.

The trial of the most important leaders of Hitler’s regime in Germany began on November 20th, 1945, in Nuremberg. On the bench of defendant’s at the Palace of Justice – one of the few buildings in the center of Nuremburg, which survived the English and American bombings during the war – served 21 individuals.

After the ten-month long proceedings, the International Military Tribunal rendered the verdict: twelve of the indicted (one of them by default) were sentenced to death by hanging, seven to jail – from ten years to life, three were acquitted. The death sentences were carried out on the night of October 16th, 1946 (Herman Göring escaped the hangman, as, shortly before the execution, he ingested potassium cyanide).

From among the tried and sentenced in Nuremberg high – ranking officers of the Nazi regime, most were accused of crimes such as involvement in the planning of war, the initiation and waging of a war of aggression, but, most of all, the dispensation of criminal orders, the murdering of prisoners of war and of the civilian population, mass deportations, the plunder of property, etc.

Two of the charged appeared before the tribunal not because of what they did, meaning, for example, the dispensation of criminal orders, but for what they said and wrote. They were Hans Fritzsche and Julius Streicher. This note is dedicated to their trials.
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If nobody was willing to work for the state, it would cease to exist at once.

This solution to making a libertarian world happen has a couple of advantages:

1. It is moral.
2. It is bloodless.
3. It is simple.

I find it puzzling that some libertarians (among them prominent scholars) are still on government payroll. While advocating free societies, founded on the non-aggression axiom (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle), they still choose to be rather part of the problem, not the solution.

It could be argued that by holding a post at a prestigious state university you can get the libertarian message to more people – but how true is the message if the messenger denies it by his actions?
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This is a text, which I wrote in 2002 and planned to put it on the American Civil Liberties Union online forum, where discussion about United States Supreme Court decision in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition case had take place. Alas, shortly after I finished this text, mentioned forum was taken off from ACLU internet site. Since this time I almost forget about this text, but recently (in may of 2007) I find it on my computer, and thereafter I decided to put it on my internet site. Because the English is not my mother language, this text can contain some grammatical errors.

Should virtual child pornography be banned?

A defense of the United States Supreme Court decision

Probably no kind of expression is so much hated, as so called “child pornography”. So, it is not strange, that many people were displeased with the U.S. Supreme Court decision holding, that “virtual child pornography” cannot be prohibited. But pejorative term “child pornography” – and emotions connected with this term – should not make us unable to understand decision of the Court, and to quiet consideration of arguments used to support of criminalization of so called “virtual child pornography” in light of free speech and free press clauses of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
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The promotion of the idea of individual liberty is difficult twofold. Mainly it is so because it consists of two equally demanding phases.When we notice someone running out of a store with a stolen bag of candy, we would most likely try to point out the fact to other people in the vicinity. After they would finally believe us, which is not that palpable, we would like to convince these same individuals to stop the thief, with which there might be an even greater issue.

The situation is similar with persuading people to believe in individual liberty, which also constitutes the pointing out to people of evil, unfairness, theft. And in this case, we have to convince people not only of these facts, but also to act against organized state coercion – to catch the candy thief.
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The Western civilization, probably more often called Latin, was created from four basic sources through the combination of Roman law, Greek philosophy, Jewish religion (Christianity) and barbaric honor.

The basis of existence of the ancient Rome was fairness and force. The popular at that time anagram IVS VIS symbolizes this unity. In the Roman law, much was written about what we would today see as natural, how, for instance, “no one can benefit from crime”, that property was separated from ownership, that equality of the opposing sides in a trial was introduced, but behind it all stood legions unified by steel discipline. The initial law of the twelve tables, written by the commission, was an expression of the binding customary law.
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Q: Your site, LewRockwell.com is greatly popular and is still growing. The internet has proven to be an invaluable tool in the hands of libertarians. What has your experience shown you to be the most important for a growing movement: individual blogs, professional sites with an abundance of materials, like Mises.org, or something of a collective effort, like LRC?

A: The movement is growing beyond belief, in all sectors of society and in nearly all countries, so far as I can tell. The web has been important, obviously. Libertarians have always believed that getting the ideas out there is the most important step we can take. Any media that get our message out are thrilling, especially the media that are not highly controlled by government. The government made a mistake with the internet, from its own point of view. It controlled radio, television, and much of the print media by default. But the web took off before the government got its hooks in it.

Q: Now that so many great leaders of the movement, like Hess and Rothbard are gone, what can we, as a movement do to compensate for that loss? Do you see any leaders of such a caliber emerging on the horizon? Or maybe we don’t really need a unifying figure?

A: More often than not, leaders emerge in retrospect. They aren’t something you seek out but rather emerge out of the fabric of a movement. In many ways, I think we are surrounded by them. But it will take time to know what thinkers are the most influential for the long run. Another point to consider is that the leaders of the past are not dead because the most important part of their lives, namely their ideas, thrive now as never before.
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Hello, professor Long. Welcome to Poland. Is this Your first time here?

It Is.

So how’s it been as of yet?

Oh, it’s been great. I’ve been walking around Poland, we went up to the castle today. Yesterday I had my session at the conference. I’ve been just walking around on the streets. It’s really beautiful.

And about the paper. It was on Spooner, right?

Yes, Lysander Spooner, on his theory of natural law and legal interpretation.

You’re known as one of the major exponents of left-libertarianism around the world. So, could You give me a brief description of what left-libertarianism is and how it relates to other tenets of libertarian thought.

Okay, well I guess it represents an integration, or I’d argue, a reintegration of libertarianism with concerns that are traditionally thought of as being concerns of the left. That includes concerns for worker empowerment, worry about plutocracy, concerns about feminism and various kinds of social equality – that kind of thing. And it goes back to – in the nineteenth century, a lot of people like Benjamin Tucker and so on – the individualist anarchists were very much a part of things like the feminist movement, the labour movement, the anti-racist movement – but approached these from a pure free market position and not advocating any kind of State control as a solution – in fact they saw State control as a problem, as something that helped to reinforce these other forms of oppression or was justified by the same kind of (mistakes?) as the other forms of oppression.
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