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Im not a sports fanIm bored by games in general, including that wordy color-blindness test or whatever it is that everyone online seems to be playing latelybut Im already rooting for the defeat of the newly rechristened Washington Commanders. The name is a clumsy reminder that Washington, DC issues orders and the rest of us are expected to obey. Its as obnoxious in its way as the propagandistic, authoritarian tone of the Olympics opening ceremony.

But sports isnt the real enemy here. For all the brutality, primitivism, sadism, tribalism, and zero-sum win/lose thinking of sportsmade worse by nationalism in the case of the pompous Olympicspolitics is worse. Politics is also involuntary, so long as governments (or other, more anarchic threats of violence) exist. Involuntary, by definition, isnt fun.

Thats why so many political figures devote their time to the pretense of being just like you, as if theres no need to fear their preferences would ever diverge from yours. No divergence, no need to wonder where theyre taking you or what they plan to do to you when you get there. Theyre all competing to see who can get you to a centrally planned economy fastest.

Take the Ohio U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance, with his oscillations between sounding like the populist whos coming to save you from the depredations of capitalism and sounding like the party stalwart wholl save Republicans from further embarrassment by Trump. Its a safe bet that as the primary approaches in May, Carpet-Bagger Vance will sound like he has whatever principles are polling well, likely determined by that months stock market fluctuations but explained via homespun tales about his working-class upbringing.

One of the most positive spins on Vances oscillations was a Simon van Zuylen-Wood piece arguing that Vance is taking care not to let his anti-woke thinking devolve into classical liberalism and is striving to combine Trumpism with the milder reformicon (ostensibly-reformist conservative) tendencies of Ross Douthat circa 2010.

In short, if you squint, you can see Vance working to avoid libertarianism (that is, 19-century-style, small-government, classical liberalism) while also grinding a cultural axe, bashing global trade, and praising the most expensive parts of the welfare statesuch as Social Security and Medicare, the debt-swelling, huge-ticket items that purported reformers such as Douthat are keen to leave intact, since a citizen is afraid to discuss tampering with them.

Whatever that makes the Vance agenda, its not really capitalism. Far from being a fresh set of ideas, its basically a watered-down version of the anti-economic, pro-big-government thinking celebrated in those Chinese ceremonies I mentioned earlier. If conservatives are just milder commies now, dont expect me to get worked up making distinctions between the two philosophies or voting for either.

Vance is far from alone on the right in his bland attack on the market and private property. Floridas Gov. Ron DeSantis, inordinately beloved by some pseudo-libertarians whose anti-regulatory thinking goes little farther than their dislike of anti-Covid rules, crowed on Twitter last Thursday about urging his state legislature to throw another $100 million of taxpayers money at fighting cancer. So much for the heirs to Trumps populist mantle looking to dispel the illusion that government is generous and lifesaving. Unless they explicitly argue for the non-violation of property rights and the drastic and immediate shrinking of government, populist politicians will obviously deliver politics as usual with a few novel freebies tossed in.

I hope paleolibertarian-ish ex-punk Sam Goldman is right to argue the fumbling of the Republicans populist team post-Trump might yet yield a return of the delayed libertarian moment in American politics. If there are any signs of hope in that regard, though, I dont think they take the form of any politicians but rather private-sector phenomena like that shining Castello Cube made of $11.7 million worth of gold that appeared in Central Park last week (likely inspired by the 1990s sci-fi novel Cryptonomicon) heralding the launch of yet another cryptocurrency.

Im not saying this is the coin that will end humanitys reliance on governments arbitrarily-inflated fiat currencies, but governments tyrannical hold over humanity is more likely to be ended by some exogenous phenomenon like that than by any internal reforms government itself endorses or generates. Lately, all the worlds political teamsleftists, liberals, conservatives, moderates, most anarchists, even some libertariansbadmouth or at least rhetorically shy away from unregulated, laissez-faire markets.

In the 20th century, they might all at least have agreed that the USSR was terrible and promised not to replicate its errors. With European Communism gone and Chinese Communism seemingly a taboo topic among obedient Westerners, our political players are free lazily to forget what a society without market mechanisms looks like. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is free to denounce capitalism as irredeemable, as the economically ineducable and inflammatory New York politician said a few days ago on a trip to Austin, TXthe sort of liberal town where she probably hears as many youthful cheers for her extremism as she does back home in New York City, though both places owe their freedom and prosperity to markets.

But its not just quirky post-libertarian right-wingers and left-wing backbenchers who are out to destroy capitalism. Boring old President Biden and his ostensibly centrist pals can do that just fine all by themselves. Among other things, Biden plans to triple the amount of protected (that is, government-controlled and largely unused) land in the U.S. and wants half again as much federal spending as when he took office, though his agenda is notoriously sputtering. And the White House still finds time to tell Spotify it needs to go farther in silencing easygoing non-partisan conversationalist Joe Rogan (Jon Stewart, by contrast, urges people to let Rogan speak).

Make enough mediocre leaps forward like Bidens and it wont much matter if you keep claiming not to be a full-blown socialist. America will be socialist nonetheless. It wont matter one bit that libertarians and conservatives used to complain more explicitly about that threat back in the 1980s, when their principles were clearer and more consistent, back when they didnt always shift around in an embarrassed fashion looking for something else to talk about, like pot, immigration, or sex. Now, every political team of any appreciable size is either silent on econ or battling for the collectivist gold.

Todd Seavey is the author of Libertarianism for Beginners and is on Twitter at @ToddSeavey

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The World Is Always Playing Commie Olympics - Splice Today

Editor:

Its tempting to think of the people of the Bible as idiots; after all, they didnt have modern conveniences like cars, smartphones or deed-restricted housing.

But what they did have was an acute understanding of how to maintain peace in small communities, as that was their core lived experience. Respect must be paid to concepts like Jubilee, because those concepts (such as not coveting your neighbors donkey) helped maintain social order in small communities for centuries. To apply modern labels like libertarian to those concepts is ignorant.

Ive proposed a secular Jubilee, to be implemented by releasing the deed restrictions on housing units owned by private citizens. This would give economic freedom to locals who have served our community for decades (make no mistake: this is payment for services rendered, not some random windfall, and has been earned many times over). And releasing the deed restrictions would immediately bring housing to market, whereas deed-restricted units rarely trade.

But Jubilee is not just about freeing the real estate market. Releasing the deed restrictions would create a new political environment and would free our towns political process from being dominated by the housing issue.

We now have politicians who rule because they control the employee-housing voting bloc, deed restrictions that run with the land forever, class war and government that is literally stuck in traffic because it is captive to the housing issue. Maybe we are the idiots.

Millard Zimet

Aspen

Continued here:
Are we the idiots? | Opinion | aspendailynews.com - Aspen Daily News

Jason Decker Runs for Cook County Commisioner District 5, Libertarian Party Sues Cook County Clerk to Get Candidates on the Ballot (Midlothian, IL) A complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division seeks to compel Cook County Clerk Karen Yarbrough to accept nomination papers from Libertarian candidates for the June 28, 2022 primary election as established party candidates under provisions found in Article 7 of the election code.

Section 7-2 of the election code confirms that a political party which receives more than5% of the vote in the last general election is declared to be an established party. TheLibertarian Party received more than 6% of the vote for Cook County States Attorney inthe election of 2020.

Libertarian Party of Illinois State Chair Steve Suess said, "I wish I could say I wassurprised. Libertarians, independents, and other parties not fitting within the boundariesof the political duopoly are continuously denied equal access to the ballot all around thecountry. Luckily, we have the law on our side this time."

Clerk Yarbrough maintains the candidates for county board do not qualify forestablished party status after redistricting. However, since all commissioner districts fallwithin the borders of Cook County, established party status should extend to allcandidates running for offices where those voting districts are entirely within countyboundaries.

Cook County Libertarian Party Chair Justin Tucker said, This is a true example ofrigging elections through the elimination of choice. Poll after poll shows voters wantmore choices at the polls on Election Day and Clerk Karen Yarbrough is denying votersmore cho. This is another sad instance of Chicago-style politics.

Cook County District 1 candidate James Humay said in a statement, It has been over adecade since the voters of District 1 have had more than one candidate on the ballot. Itappears that the County Clerk is only interested in maintaining and consolidating powerfor her party and political allies, rather than allowing for the free will of the district'sconstituency. I strongly urge Clerk Yarbrough to reconsider her decision and grantestablished party status to Libertarian candidates running for county board."District 5 candidate Jason Ross Decker announced "We must be granted the ballotaccess we deserve, to give the people of Cook County a choice other than the samegroup of people controlling the County's business and our lives for decades. To be denied would be disheartening and make voters lose even more faith in their CountyGovernment."

The complaint is being filed by the Libertarian Party of Illinois, state and local partyexecutive officers, party candidates for county board and concerned citizens. It assertsthat the Cook County Clerk and Board of Election Commissioners are willfully violatingthe First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of the plaintiffs.

While Democrats in Washington D.C. argue for legislation to protect voting rights, inCook County, the Democratic machine has no interest in fair ballot access and isactively working to deny voters from having a choice of candidates. The LibertarianParty of Chicago and Cook County Libertarian Party believe all voices have the right tobe heard in the voting booth and that restrictive ballot access laws inhibit the democraticprocess.

Jason Decker Runs for Cook County Commisioner District 5, Libertarian Party Sues Cook County Clerk to Get Candidates on the Ballot

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Jason Decker Runs for Cook County Commisioner District 5, Libertarian Party Sues Cook County Clerk to Get Candidates on the Ballot - The Southland...

Late last year, El Salvadors president Nayib Bukele announced plans to build Bitcoin City a tax-free territory in the countrys east.

The city will use the cryptocurrency and be powered by the nearby Conchuagua volcano. According to Bukele, there will be:

Residential areas, commercial areas, services, museums, entertainment, bars, restaurants, airport, port, rail [..] [but] no income tax, zero property tax, no contract tax, zero city tax and zero CO2 emissions.

Whether or not Bitcoin City eventuates, it joins a long and bizarre history of libertarian-inspired attempts to start independent cities and countries.

The generous financial incentives in Bitcoin City are aimed at encouraging foreign investment.

However, the plan has quickly been derided by finance commentators as something worthy of a Bond villain. There are doubts construction will ever begin.

As the Australian Financial Review observes, Bitcoin City is likely nothing more than a splashy distraction from Bukeles economic woes.

But Bukele is not the only one to be tempted to set up a new territory, with new (or no) rules.

In a 2009 TED Talk, American economist Paul Romer argued developing nations should partner with foreign countries or corporations to create autonomous model cities.

Under his plan, host states would lease large tracts of undeveloped land to developed states, who would administer the territory according to their own legal system. The citys residents would largely come from the developing state, but the administrators of the city would be appointed by (and accountable to) the developed state. Residents could vote with their feet by either migrating to or from the model city.

Read more: How El Salvador and Nigeria are taking different approaches to digital currencies plus, are we living in a simulation? The Conversation Weekly podcast transcript

Romer argues such cities would attract significant international investment because their legal architecture would insulate them from any political turmoil present in their host state. Notwithstanding the strong neo-colonial or neo-imperial overtones, several states have considered adopting Romers proposition.

In 2011, the Honduran Congress amended its constitution to facilitate the development of Romers idea. Cities built within special development regions would not be subject to Honduran law or taxation. Instead, they would be self-governing under a unique legal framework.

After legal disputes about whether this breached Honduran national sovereignty, the plan was revived in 2015. Under the new plan, an investor that builds infrastructure in a site designated as a zone for employment and economic development (ZEDE) will be granted quasi-sovereign authority. The investor will be permitted to impose and collect income and property taxes, and establish its own education, health, civil service, and social security systems.

Under the ZEDE law, the president appoints a committee to oversee all of the model cities as well as setting the baseline rules and standards investors must follow. Reflecting the ideological backing of the idea, the first committee, announced in 2014, was heavily comprised of libertarians and former advisers to United States President Ronald Reagan. In 2020, the first site was launched, but development does not appear to have commenced.

The Honduran plan involves a country leasing (temporarily or perhaps permanently) sovereign rights over its territory. Other projects have sought to build a new country on the sea.

Since 2008, attention has focused on the California-based Sea Steading Institute.

Founded by American libertarian Patri Friedman (grandson of Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman) and initially financed by billionaire Peter Thiel, the institute sought to build habitable structures on the high seas outside the jurisdiction (and taxation) of any state.

Read more: Why is Australia 'micronation central'? And do you still have to pay tax if you secede?

Although their website suggests sea steading could offer significant benefits to humanity globally, making money free of regulatory burden is the primary motivation. Backers are interested in sea steadings potential to peacefully test new ideas for governance so the most successful can then inspire change in governments around the world.

No city has yet been built. In 2017 negotiations with French Polynesia for the development of floating cities within their territorial waters stalled when community pressure forced the government to withdraw. Many wondered whether facilitating the tax evasion of the worlds greatest fortunes would actually be beneficial for the islands.

Other proposals have not bothered to ask anyone whether they can get started. In the 1960s, several American businessmen sought to establish independent states upon coral reefs off the coasts of California and Florida. Both fell apart under pressure from the US government.

In the early 1970s, US libertarian Michael Oliver tried to finance the construction of a new country - the Republic of Minerva - on a submerged atoll in the Pacific Ocean between Tonga and Fiji. There would be no tax and no social welfare in his laissez-faire paradise.

Over the second half of 1971, Olivers team ferried sand on barges from Fiji to raise the atoll above sea level and commenced basic construction. Oliver envisioned creating 2,500 acres of habitable land elevated around two and a half to three metres above high tide. Floating cities and an ocean resort would also be built.

Progress proved hard going. Only 15 acres of land had been reclaimed by the time Olivers funds were exhausted. Nearby countries were also watching with alarm. In June 1972, King Tupou IV declared Tongan sovereignty over the atoll and ejected Olivers team.

Oliver abandoned Minerva, but in 1982, another group of American libertarians attempted to reassert and restore the republic. After spending three weeks moored in the lagoon, they were expelled by the Tongan military. Today, Minerva has been more or less reclaimed by the sea.

Perhaps they should have invested in Bitcoin.

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'Worthy of a Bond villain': the bizarre history of libertarian attempts to create independent cities - The Conversation AU

After giving a paper about free will at a professional philosophy conference, I was surprised by a questioner asking: When you say I love you to your wife, what does that mean to her? Given my Calvinist view of free will according to which God sovereignly determines everything that comes to pass, the questioner felt I couldnt rescue any meaning in human love relationships.

I quipped that as a Frenchman I could find romance in anything, and that with my view, I could tell my wife she was literally my destiny (I should have added, irresistible!). The audience laughed, but its a serious philosophical question with practical ramifications: how does ones view of free will affect how we see human love? Does God make us love him and love one another?

Lexham Academic. 216 pp.

Evil is a problem for all Christians. When responding to objections that both evil and God can exist, many resort to a free will defense, where God is not the creator of evil but of human freedom, by which evil is possible. This response is so pervasive that it is just as often assumed as it is defended. But is this answer biblically and philosophically defensible?

InGod Reforms Hearts, Thaddeus J. Williams offers a friendly challenge to the central claim of the free will defensethat love is possible only with true (or libertarian) free will. Williams argues that much thinking on free will fails to carve out the necessary distinction between an autonomous will and an unforced will. Scripture presents a God who desires relationship and places moral requirements on his often-rebellious creatures, but does absolute free will follow? Moreover, Gods reforming work on the human heart goes further than libertarian free will would allow.

With clarity, precision, and charity, Williams judges the merits and shortcomings of the relational free will defense while offering a philosophically and biblically robust alternative that draws from theologians of the past to point a way forward.

Lexham Academic. 216 pp.

In trying to explain how an all-good, all-powerful God could exist while there is so much evil in the world, many Christian philosophers have suggested human free will is one important answer. Its argued that God has given humans free will and doesnt determine the outcome of their free choices, which unfortunately means that humans will at times misuse that gift, with all kinds of evil resulting from their bad choices.

On that view of the human will, which is called libertarian free will, our choices are not determined by God, and it would be a contradiction in terms for God to make us freely do anything, much less make us freely love him.

Thaddeus Williams disagrees. In his book God Reforms Hearts: Rethinking Free Will and the Problem of Evil, he reexamines the place that libertarian free will has taken in Christian responses to the problem of evil, and more particularly whether authentic human love requires libertarian free will. Williams, an associate professor of systematic theology at Biola University, doesnt merely suggest that libertarian free will is uncalled for, he argues that its outright incompatible with true love and much of the biblical data. In its place, Williams commends the so-called compatibilist view of free will, according to which human free choices are compatible with their being determined by God. In this view, typically affirmed in the Reformed or Calvinist tradition, it truly is God who reforms hearts and thereby makes us freely love him and love our neighbor as ourselves (55).

It truly is God who reforms hearts and thereby makes us freely love him and love our neighbor as ourselves.

The book, organized into three parts, consists of one long and sustained argument against libertarian free will as a good answer to the problem of evil.

Part 1 clarifies the issue by drawing some of the philosophical distinctions necessary to understand the debate on free will and evil, and offers some philosophical problems with libertarian free will as a condition for authentic love. Part 2 presents three important arguments often raised in favor of libertarianism and offers biblical and philosophical responses. Finally, part 3 makes a biblical and philosophical case for the claim that God indeed reforms hearts, thereby determining the outcome of our choices and securing the existence of true human love.

The biblical and philosophical bi-disciplinary approach gives this book an interesting angle: it contains more biblical exegesis than youd expect from a philosopher and more logical argumentation than youd expect from a biblical theologian. Williams goes deep into the biblical text which he handles carefully (complete with reference to the original languages), including a nice study of human ability in the Gospel of John and a mini biblical theology of divine intervention in human hearts. He interacts with libertarian theologians (like Boyd, Geisler, and Marshall) and yet is also conversant with some of the important libertarian Christian philosophers (like Plantinga, van Inwagen, and Hasker).

The main focus of Williamss argument is the place of free will in genuine human love, but it maps closely onto the debates on free will as a condition for moral responsibility. Therefore, many of the arguments that bear on the matter of love are the usual suspects in debates on free will and moral responsibility: we find coercion cases, manipulation cases, the maxim that ought implies can, and discussion of whether indeterminism would make human choices arbitrary or improperly grounded in human desires.

While Williams offers some of the traditional compatibilist arguments and counterarguments, he often offers his own unique wording of the issues. Theres a risk that the reader may at times be put off by non-standard terminology, but, on the upside, Williamss new wording is often clever and colorful, and may invite libertarians to engage with his fresh formulation of the issues.

For example, I enjoyed his description of five increasing degrees of divine intervention in human hearts: heart persuasion, heart cooperation, heart activation, heart reformation, and heart circumvention (138). Williams argued we need to reject the fifth but affirm nothing short of the first four. It will be interesting to see if libertarians agree with his categories, and if so, what exit they take from this highway of divine intervention. And do they accept the problems Williams lays out for those who wish to exit too early (139144)?

I am mostly sympathetic to the books thesis and many of its supporting arguments, so let me just mention two potential shortcomings or elements readers may wish had been included.

The first is a question that many libertarians will no doubt raise and should be addressed. When facing conceptual arguments against libertarian free will like some of those Williams offersclaims that it makes choices arbitrary or meaningless because one needs to transcend ones own self (41), or act against ones desires, or with a liberty of indifference (5059) or with a freedom from ones own heart (3437)libertarians often punt back to God and say: at least God isnt determined, he has libertarian free will, so that shows that theres no conceptual problem with libertarian free will in itself, and its just a debate on whether humans have it too.

This is a fair retort, and applies equally to the question of authentic love: does God love us authentically? But isnt Gods free will libertarian? And if it is, does this invalidate conceptual arguments against human libertarian free will? And if God doesnt have libertarian free will, does this entail the so-called modal collapse where every truth is necessary and there is only one possible world? And would that modal collapse be a problem?

Compatibilists who use the conceptual arguments against libertarianism (arguments which I myself find generally plausible) would do well to provide elements of answers to these questions.

And finally, I may point out that the book doesnt really offer an actual theodicy in response to the problem of evil. Williamss goal was to make progress against the problem of evil (27), but his project is more a pushback on the wrong answer (libertarian free will) than a proposal of the right answer (like a greater good theodicy, soul-making theodicy, evil as Gods megaphone la C. S. Lewis, or other positive theodicies) to respond to the skeptic.

In the final chapter, Williams does offer a practical application of his positive claim that God reforms hearts and secures human love: when humans are facing moral evil in the real world, they are called upon to pray that God would do exactly what Williams says he does: change hearts.

When humans are facing moral evil in the real world, they are called upon to pray that God would change hearts.

God Reforms Hearts is a serious, academic-level treatment of the topic of free will and its role in love relationships, with a focus on divine involvement in human hearts. While not written at the popular level, the careful lay reader will benefit from it, and proponents (and detractors) of libertarianism will be challenged to think deeply about the place of free will in their response to the problem of evil.

Its a nice complement to recent philosophically robust treatments of free will and evil from a Calvinist perspective like Greg Weltys Why Is There Evil in the World (and So Much of It)? (Christian Focus, 2018), and the multi-author volume Calvinism and the Problem of Evil (Pickwick, 2016). As a Calvinist myself, I rejoice to see another philosophically-informed theological determinist, especially one who teaches at Biola University, a traditional fortress of libertarianism!

Let Williamss voice be heard, and the Reformed view of free will embraced to the glory of God who indeed sovereignly reforms our hearts.

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Review: 'God Reforms Hearts' by Thaddeus Williams - The Gospel Coalition