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To: Mary Cluney who wrote (2999)	11/27/2007 1:41:57 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 42652

OT All 5 of your points are irrelevant. Rusmsfeld shook hands with him. At the most that reflects poorly on Rusmsfeld, its says nothing about either the war, or libertarians. But it doesn't even really reflect poorly on Rumsfeld. Stalin was even worse than Saddam, but FDR dealt with him, and rightfully so. Sometimes dealing with dictators is on the net beneficial. You could try to argue that dealing with, rather than overthrowing Saddam would have been beneficial in 2003, but again that would be irrelevant. The issue you raised was not one of practical benefit, but of compatibility with libertarian and conservative ideals. Neither libertarian nor conservative ideals have at their core, the idea that you have to let foreign dictators continue in power, if the alternative is war. Certain versions of both probably would say that, but the common denominator with the whole of libertarianism, or within the whole of conservatism certainly does not. He dismantled his own WMD infrastructure under pressure, but kept plans for restoring it after he got out from under the sanctions regime. In any case it again isn't relevant to the point you where trying to make. It might be relevant to other arguments about the war, but that doesn't make it relevant to your point about "true conservatives" and "true libertarians" No ties to AQ, isn't solidly established, but "at most limitied ties" might be, and "no ties" could be argued. Of course he had ties to other terrorists, but I digress. Again your point is relevant to the debate about whether the war should have been started (although its much less relevant to the question of what we should do now), but it doesn't support your contention that "true libertarians and or conservatives are against war". Now they properly should consider war to be a costly and risky thing, with many negative consequences, but that doesn't mean they should be universally against all war. So your left with analyzing the particular merits of each particular war. "True Conservatives", and "True libertarians", can disagree about those merits just as much as anyone else can, so they can, and do, come down on both sides of the question. My answer to #4 is covered by my response to point number 3. As for number 5 - The idea that war might be justified doesn't mean all wars are automatically justified. And even if you consider their to be proper moral justification for war, that doesn't mean you will always decided that its practically a good idea. Or to put it simply, supporting or accepting a war, doesn't mean that you have to support or accept other wars. Supporting a war in order to overthrow a specific dictator, doesn't require you to wage war against all dictators.

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (2999)	11/27/2007 9:12:03 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 42652

OT More on "No true conservative" or "no true libertarian" or for that matter "no true liberal" type arguments. ---- A Surprising Comment For a Libertarian Blog: Once in a while a commenter will criticize a VC post on grounds that it is inconsistent with libertarianism. The argument usually goes something like this: "I am surprised to see Position X at a libertarian blog. Position X is far from the correct libertarian view." I find myself puzzled by these sorts of comments. Sure, most of us tend to lean libertarian. We tend to like free markets, and we tend to like limited government. But we're human beings, not robots: We don't get our marching orders from a book or a website that tells us the "correct" way to think. To borrow from Holmes (at the risk of annoying David), "The Volokh Conspiracy does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social Statics." So tell us when we're wrong, and tell us when we're being inconsistent. But no need to tell us when we're not being libertarian. volokh.com One comment to that post "I tell my kids they should eat healthy, but they know better than to get between me and a cheeseburger. There is nothing more annoying than nitpickers that constantly on the alert for inconsistent behavior. The total of ones policy preferences are not a ready made suit of clothes, sometimes you end up with brown shoes, bermuda shorts and a dinner jacket. It is what you feel comfortable with." volokh.com --- My own take. Big tent political ideas like conservatism, liberalism, and to a slightly lesser extent libertarianism, are complex collections of many different ideas. Libertarianism maybe can be boiled down to a simple core a bit easier, but that simple core only covers so much and can be applied in many ways. Conservatism, and liberalism are even wider collections of ideas. Also people don't have to have one overall ideology that covers every single decision. Someone who is generally libertarian doesn't have to oppose every bit of government regulation that can't reasonably be considered a response to force or fraud or to maintain the peace. And in any case the idea that "government should only use force in response to force or fraud" is in some ways a simple idea, but when your applying it in the real world it get complex and fuzzy. In addition to that more non-hardcore libertarians often see a larger role for government action (say building roads to give just one example).