Well, at least Danny Boy is not one of those big, bad scary RACISTS.

I’m with Dain on this one.

Is somebody invoking Thomas Sowell here?

How about this:

I, Dain Fitzgerald, with much character and due diligence, commit to resist this form of slavery, and persuade others with similar quality of character and moral certitude to spit in the faces of the recruiting thugs who dare call what they are doing “community”.

(The military is made up of the most inconsiderate, rude, hedonistic drunken assholes who enjoy murdering and raping young girls in far away, exotic places. These are the pricks who are supposed to rescue us from our “nihilism”?)

Besides, it would be character-building and would have a good moral effect, most probably, instilling a sense of community. If you look at the nihilism and rampant anti-social hedonism of modern bourgeois society…

Well, then you best be about repealing the 13th Amendment. You know, the one addressing involuntary servitude?

At the risk of incurring your wrath, I really am opposed in principle to all forms of copyright (at least those that don’t result from voluntary contract).

If it makes you feel any better, I take the same position with regard to my own writing.

And FWIW, I think the older form of literary copyright for a limited term at least did comparatively little harm. So old-fashioned copyright, fair use and all, is pretty low on my list of priorities for things to abolish–the new digital copyright laws, and patent law in general, are other things entirely.

I don’t think you’re a federalist, because a federalist still wants a federation. If you want 50 completely independent states, you’re something else. Nothing wrong with that, mind you.

I’m willing to be corrected on my terminology.

That “something else” would be an anti-federalist, and their papers from the founding-era make interesting reading. A confederation is what they advocated.

I’m in favour of some kind of “national service” for participating communities in which youth are trained as citizen-soldiers and are automatically given fire-arms (much like in Switzerland).

I certainly hope you mean voluntary national service. If not, a pox on thee!

Kevin: If Random House publishes my very popular novel, investing much in editing, promotion, giving me and advance, and royalty rights, do you think anyone here should be able to just reprint the novel and sell it for their own profit, completely cutting out me and my publisher? I should not have ANY right for a reasonable duration to reap the profits of my own, original work product?!

I’m in favour of some kind of “national service” for participating communities in which youth are trained as citizen-soldiers and are automatically given fire-arms (much like in Switzerland).

Sure, there has been, and can be, local tyrrany. But as measured against centralized tyrrany, I’ll take the local variety every day of the week. While it’s still unjust and, well, tyrrany, it is easier to escape. A tyrranical city is relatively easy to move out of. A tyrranical State, less so. A tyrranical nation is fairly hard to move out of, considering all the costs.

As a hardcore de-centralist, I don’t condone local tyrrany. I just recognize that procedurally, it is less likely to persist than centralized tyrrany.

I suggest you read “Hologram of Liberty” by Kenneth W. Royce (aka Boston T. Party) — he shows how the original design of the US government was intended to curtail individual liberty and keep control over the states.

It’s a somewhat erratic book but with some interesting info in it.

I am reluctant to make any “states rights” argument because I don’t think states have any inherent rights–only those that are given to them from below. That holds true for the Federal gov’t and state/local gov’ts. By the same token, I don’t consider myself a “citizen of Pennsylvania”–I consider myself an American citizen (in the legalistic sense).

On a more strategic point, one of the beauties of the system is that you can pit one section of the government against another–which sometimes produces positive effects.

I’m still pretty much what Thoreau would call a federal fundamentalist, at least when it comes to my understanding of the history of the federal system: the federal government was established by the sovereign wills of the separate peoples of the ratifying states, and continues to derive its authority in each state from the consent of the people of that state. I was also one of those rare animals, a consistent federalist: Even when I had become quite radical on labor and anti-corporate stuff, I considered the domestic laws of another American state in the same way I’d consider the domestic laws of the sovereign, independent state of Spain or England.

Of course as an anarchist I don’t place any stock in the sovereign authority of the individual states, but the historical and legal argument for state sovereignty is at least a restraint on federal interventionism. The sovereignty of the state is something to be abolished from below, not from above via libertarian centralism.

I don’t think you’re a federalist, because a federalist still wants a federation. If you want 50 completely independent states, you’re something else. Nothing wrong with that, mind you.

I’m willing to be corrected on my terminology.

First, I agree that federalism is part of our system, and that any legal argument that can make everything a federal matter (e.g. anything that affects interstate commerce in any way is a matter for the feds) is bad. But already we’re getting more specific than just the general idea of federalism, and we’re getting into the state-national division of powers in the US constitution. That’s a particular way of having a federalist system, and a pretty good way.

Second, I didn’t mean that federalism is a sacred cow. I mean that most people who talk about federalism only do so because a federal court ruled against him on his particular favorite issue. Everybody agrees that some policies should be done at the state level and some policies should be handled at the federal level (and some things shouldn’t be a matter of public policy at all). But the issue of which things should be handled at which level is a trickier matter, and most of the people who claim to be arguing from principle are in fact just upset with the verdict of a federal court or a piece of federal legislation.

I know that you and many of the other people here are genuinely committed to federalism (within limits, of course) as something that is both part of our constitutional design and (usually) a worthwhile thing in practice. However, for most people it’s merely an argument of convenience. For me, the test of commitment to federalism is that one must have some circumstances under which he or she will tolerate bad laws in another state. Doesn’t mean one must tolerate violations of the 14th amendment, but there has to be some level of bad legislation that one will tolerate. I know that the people here have that threshold, but most (not all) of the conservatives who bray about federalism will turn on a dime if a state judge allows the removal of a feeding tube in a high profile case. And the liberals who bray about federalism now and then under a GOP administration will turn on a dime when a Dem President wants to expand the authority of regulatory agencies.

I’m not a lawyer, but I do have a favorite (ironic) federalism case: Bush vs. Gore. I was astounded at how 4 liberal justices were deeply concerned about the prerogatives of states while 5 conservative justices were deeply concerned about a creative application of the Equal Protection clause. Say what you will about who was right about which argument, but the way that everybody switched sides pretty much confirmed to me that the Supremes are just as political as any other branch of gov’t. That may be old news to some, but I was 23 at the time and still not sure how deep the rot went.

Yes, among libertarians there is a contingent of genuine federalists who want the advantages of decentralization and recognize the need for compromises (i.e. leaving certain fundamental rights in the federal constitution and hence as federal matters) to check the harms of the local majority.

So if I’m not a genuine federalist by virtue of the fact that I want to abolish the national government altogether, what am I?

Hard cases make bad law. Abolishing Jim Crow was proper per the 14th Amendment, and morally. But invoking the 14th or the Commerce Clause to eviscerate all local control is not proper, even if it means in some jurisdictions there will be laws retained that you, I and everyone reading here would abhor.

I had a very, very difficult deciding what I thought about the 1986 SCOTUS decision in Bowers v. Hardwick that upheld anti-sodomy laws in the context of two gay men, but as had long been true, those laws did not apply only to them. But by the time the state of TX criminalized sodomy only when gays did it, I could see applying the 14th against overt discrimination against an easily identified, despised minority, and think the TX Lawrence case overturning Bowers was therefore correct.

But federalism is a good thing. It allows people to live in those states that most fit their ideals, so long as actual federal proscriptions are not violated. Experimentation with many different legal schemes happens, and those that work, generally are copied; those that don’t are not adopted.

Local control seems to me to be nigh unto Kevin Carson’s local economies of “human scale.” But the right , it turns out, is no better on federalism than the left. And hence my post!

Given that federalism is a practical arrangement with real drawbacks, there’s no reason to regard it as something sacred, just something that’s often good. So it’s no surprise that (1) most people embrace it only selectively and (2) the ones who write the most solemn defenses of it as an allegedly sacred principle tend to be the ones defending tyranny of the local majority and hoping that nobody will notice.

Yes, among libertarians there is a contingent of genuine federalists who want the advantages of decentralization and recognize the need for compromises (i.e. leaving certain fundamental rights in the federal constitution and hence as federal matters) to check the harms of the local majority. But we are few and far between. When somebody talks about how sacred the states are, odds are good that he’s just pissed off about a federal court ruling that stomped on his sacred cow.