Can't We All Get Along?

Pre-Zionism and pre-Israel, Arab-Muslims, Arab-Christians, and Arab-Jews (yes!) got along in many places as neighbors and friends. Compare that to Europe. Arab and Jewish nationalism messed it up. See Avi Shlaims's Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew.

TGIF: What Is Self-Determination?

People go on quite a bit about self-determination these days. Some decry the denial of self-determination to "the Palestinians." Others insist that only "the Jewish people" can have the right to self-determination between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Israel passed a law declaring that principle in 2018.

Unfortunately, I see too little thought behind the term self-determination. What is it? What self are we talking about? What is determination?

This and the related issue of nationalism are big topics with an unsurprisingly big literature. I will resist talking about nations and nationalism. Karl Deutsch got it right: "A Nation ... is a group of persons united by a common error [fiction might have been the better word] about their ancestry and a common dislike of their neighbors." I also appreciate Ernest Gellner's insight: "Nationalism begets nations." It's not the other way around. Moreover, individuals, often with power agendas, beget nationalism. Finally, nationalism begets more nationalism because disliked neighbors may feel the need to respond.

Here, I just want to help clarify the terms. If I do my job, I am confident I will offend everyone on some thorny controversies.

Let's start with self. I know what that usually means. Persons are selves. (Persons don't have selves.) Everyone knows what it means to be a self and to be self-conscious The self-evident needs no elaboration.

Determination in one sense refers to the process and outcome of human action. We determined what would happen by doing what we did. Or we tried to. A person can determine an outcome for himself (I determined I would get a haircut today) or for someone else (I determined that you would get a haircut today). We'd want to call only the first example of self-determination. We could also call it self-ownership, a felicitous phrase.

What distresses me as an ethical and methodological individualist -- a libertarian -- is that I don't see the term being used this way. The priority is the group, the nation, the people, and the like. Where are the persons?

A group has no self; it comprises many selves -- as many as it has members. What makes it a group can be a range of common interests or traits and continuing relations; they might have customs, mores, expectations, roles, rules, and more. But none of that keeps the group from being a collection of individuals. When a group decides, we mean that the members decide. The group does not literally decide.

When we say a group is dispossessed of its land or subjected to genocidal aggression, the crimes are against individuals. Individuals should not be reduced to mere members, representatives, or symbols. This is not to minimize genocide. The point is to keep the spotlight where it belongs: on individuals, who can live or die and without whom no group exists. If a group is important, it's because it is important to the individuals who comprise it. They may regard their association as crucial to the lives they wish to live. But they are still individuals. They decide (unless the state or someone else interferes). They value. They are the group.

If individuals, however many, peacefully, freely, and regularly associate, establishing a culture, customs, and rules of governance, we can say as a matter of convenience that the group exercises self-determination. If they are invaded and then drive the invaders away, we can say the group has restored its self-determination. But we must be careful: a group tyrannized by one of "its own" or by a democratic majority is no more self-determined than a group tyrannized by an outsider or a majority of outsiders. What counts are individuals, their values, and the nature of their associations. 

Democracy is not self-determination!

So the principle of self-determination cannot be directly applied to nations or peoples, such as "the Jewish people," "the Palestinian people," etc. -- only to persons. Woodrow Wilson is best associated with the phrase national self-determination though he did not use it in his Fourteen Points speech during World War I. He didn't help things. Strictly speaking, there is no right of national self-determination. (And remember, nation is a political, not a metaphysical, concept.) Only persons -- not states, nations, or "peoples" as such -- have the right to exist.

The need to re-individualize self-determination seems relevant to current controversies. Putting individuals first may produce overlooked approaches to peaceful resolutions.

Methodological individualism seems unassailable -- what is there besides persons, their property, and their relationships? Coercive government interference sows problems. Equally unassailable is ethical individualism. Who would oppose societies of thoroughly free and voluntary associations, starting with respect for individuals and their property? Speak up or forever hold your peace.

Lying Politicians Gonna Lyingly Politick

House Speaker Mike Johnson speaking on Holocaust Remembrance Day:

We remember what happened then [in Nazi Germany], and today, we are witnessing American universities quickly become hostile places for Jewish students and faculty.

The very campuses which were once the envy of the international academy have succumbed to an antisemitic virus. Students who were known for producing academic papers, are now known for stabbing Jewish peers in the eyes with Palestinian flags.

Faculty who once produced cutting-edge research are linking arms with pro-Hamas protestors calling for a “global intifada.”

Administrators who were once lauded by their peers for leadership are barring Jewish faculty and choosing not to protect their Jewish students. Jewish students are physically threatened when they walk on campus, as their peers hold posters repeating the Nazi propaganda and the program: the final solution.

Now is a time for moral clarity – we must put an end to this madness.

The Purpose of the Antisemitism Awareness Act

The point of the House-passed (and misnamed) Antisemitism Awareness Act is not to empower the Education Department to sue and defund colleges under civil rights law. It is to make lawsuits unnecessary by chilling expression.

Zionism versus Judaism

From the start, political Zionists identified their program with Judaism the religion (despite their secularism, even atheism).

Also from the start, Jews -- including the most tradition-bound Jews -- vigorously disavowed that identification. They were shamed as self-hating traitors to "their people." As a consequence, many went silent and eventually acquiesced in the creation of Israel, the self-identified "Jewish state." Some even converted to Zionism.

So don't blame non-Jews for being unclear about the relationship between Zionism and Judaism.

Richman and Woods

Tom Woods and I discuss alleged antisemitism on U.S. college campuses:

TGIF: Another Bogus Antisemitism Scare

I've been watching and thinking about the nationwide campus antiwar demonstrations in support of the suffering Palestinians of Gaza, and the appalling reaction to and "coverage" of those events. Something important needs to be addressed.

I won't be concerned here with the violence committed by anyone, including the police, or by lesser misconduct, such as occupying and damaging buildings and other violations of university rules. It's also irrelevant whether the demonstrations stand any chance of ending Israel's onslaught or ending U.S. and university complicity in it, or whether most of the pro-peace demonstrators share a libertarian orientation. (Not likely.) All that is for another time.

I want to examine the overwhelming depiction of the demonstrations as nothing more than rank antisemitism -- the blind hatred of all Jewish people because and only because they are -- by birth, blood, belief, or practice -- Jewish.

Are the demonstrations antisemitic and hence pro-Hamas, as Spiked magazine and many other observers claim? Are the protestors tapping into what CNN's Dana Bash called "a deep undercurrent of antisemitism"? (The smears know no bounds.)

To sort this out, I thought I might employ one of my areas of expertise. I spend a lot of time watching excellent British television police dramas. I consider myself a student of British detective techniques. (The Brits take their police dramas very seriously.)

Among other things, I've learned that if a crime is alleged to have been committed by a particular person, but you have no damning CCTV or credible witnesses, you begin your investigation by asking if the "person of interest" has a plausible motive for the offense. If not, the chances are good that the person is innocent. People act, which means they have motives.

That's what I want to do here regarding the campus demonstrations, which are on their face objections to Israel's bloody (not just in the British figurative sense) seven-month campaign against the Gaza Palestinians. That campaign has taken at least 34,000 lives, injured and starved countless other people, and destroyed so many homes, hospitals, universities, and other facilities vital to life.

So here's the detective's challenge: why would non-Jewish pro-peace demonstrators on college campuses across the country knowingly, intentionally alienate their clearly Jewish pro-peace co-demonstrators with whom they encamp all day every day, sharing meals, having teach-ins together, and participating in ecumenical outdoor religious events, like Passover seders? Why would antisemites want to do it?

Does that sound remotely plausible? Are the Jewish students idiots who don't recognize antisemitism when they're supposedly drowning in a sea of it? Are the antisemites able to threaten Jewish non-demonstrators and pro-Israel demonstrators while keeping it a secret from Jewish demonstrators standing next to them? That seems unlikely.

What do they take us for -- those pro-Israel alarmists, who see an existential threat to all Jewish people every day around every corner? They assume (or pretend to believe) that anti-Zionism -- that is, opposition to a Jewish supremacist state -- is the same as antisemitism. But a moment's reflection reveals that this is bunk -- no matter how many times Israel's partisans say so. On a variety of grounds, many Jewish people fundamentally oppose Israel as a Jewish state. They have since the time of Theodor Herzl, the reputed founder of Zionism.

As an aside, this is not the first time that America has been subjected to a false antisemitism scare. The boy has cried wolf falsely many times before. Whenever Israel lays waste to Gaza, a sudden spike in antisemitism is reported by the Anti-Defamation League, AIPAC, and their congressional spokesmen. Isn't that interesting? Or is it? Could it be that the Israel lobby weaponizes antisemitism to shut up anyone who would object to Israel's crimes against humanity?  (For a close look at this weaponization, see Norman Finkelstein's Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History.)

Israel's partisans tell us that America's campuses today are indistinguishable from 1930s Nazi Berlin. Jewish students, they say, are routinely harassed, threatened, and assaulted. They can't walk safely to class. The Hitler Youth rule. Really? I can't recall newsreels from the Nazi years showing Jews and non-Jews peacefully celebrating the sabbath and Passover with open-air religious services and meals. Have you ever seen films from Nazi Germany in which Jewish Germans enthusiastically sported tee-shirts emblazoned with sayings like: "Jewish Voice for Peace," "Not in Our Name," "Jews for a Ceasefire Now," and "Jews for Freedom in Palestine." Maybe the memory is suppressed, but I'm pretty sure I haven't.

My policy is to assume good faith in my opponents, but it's tough in this case. I am confident that the alarmists do not believe their own words when they say that terrorists and Nazis control the universities.

So why do they say it? Because it distracts attention from Israel's unending massacre. The apologists' agenda is to support Israel no matter what and to explain away the palpable atrocities. It's also an attempt to continue America's shameful complicity.

If Israel and its supporters were truly concerned about antisemitism (rather than needing it to prevent assimilation and abandonment of Israel), they'd do some soul-searching. Israel identifies itself as the Jewish state and claims to represent “the Jewish people” -- not only Jewish Israelis but Jews everywhere whether they want it or not. Thus Israel’s long mistreatment of the Palestinians encourages, at least tacitly, the relatively few antisemites, who are eager to point to anything they can use to describe “the Jewish people” as bad actors. "The Jewish state equals the Jewish people" — that’s what they’ve been told by the pro-Israel side. It’s not true, but they're happy to believe it.

In other words, Israel’s definition of itself and its abuse of the Palestinians ratify the antisemites’ crazy ideas about the international conspiratorial malevolence and collective guilt of "the Jewish people." Antisemites are encouraged to ignore the overrepresentation of Jewish Americans in the ranks of Israel's opponents.

Israel and its supporters then aggravate matters by strategically equating odious antisemitism with honorable anti-Zionism. That in turn gives cover to the antisemites, who can hide in plain sight among the anti-Zionists.

That amounts to Israel's protection of antisemitism!

You’d think that would be a bad thing. And it is. So why do Israel’s leaders and supporters do it? Because all that matters is the tribal sanctuary, Israel.

My Latest Interviews

Michael Liebowitz, the host of The Rational Egoist, interviewed me about my life in the libertarian movement. Enjoy!

Also have a look at my interview covering my libertarian experience and the Israel-Palestine conflict on the Bob Murphy Show.

Israel's Amazing Feat

Israel has accomplished quite a feat: its crimes against the people of Gaza are of such a large scale that they make Hamas's Oct. 7 crimes look small.

Here's an Idea

If you can't tell the difference between 2024 America and 1930s Germany, let's not have a conversation, okay? 

TGIF: Spooner versus bin Laden

In his 2002 letter to America justifying the savage 9/11 attacks, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden (himself killed in 2011) wrote after listing his grievances against the U.S. government:

You may then dispute that all the above does not justify aggression against civilians, for crimes they did not commit and offenses in which they did not partake:

(a) This argument contradicts your continuous repetition that America is the land of freedom, and its leaders in this world. Therefore, the American people are the ones who choose their government by way of their own free will; a choice which stems from their agreement to its policies. Thus the American people have chosen, consented to, and affirmed their support for the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, the occupation and usurpation of their land, and its continuous killing, torture, punishment and expulsion of the Palestinians. The American people have the ability and choice to refuse the policies of their Government and even to change it if they want.

(b) The American people are the ones who pay the taxes which fund the planes that bomb us in Afghanistan, the tanks that strike and destroy our homes in Palestine, the armies which occupy our lands in the Arabian Gulf, and the fleets which ensure the blockade of Iraq. These tax dollars are given to Israel for it to continue to attack us and penetrate our lands. So the American people are the ones who fund the attacks against us, and they are the ones who oversee the expenditure of these monies in the way they wish, through their elected candidates....

It's a flawed and evil argument, to say the least, but it is clever. He threw the grandiose claims about democratic rule right back in the faces of hypocritical U.S. leaders. (Remember the panic last  year when young TikTok users read the letter for the first time and as a result news sites took it down?)

There's nothing easier than criticizing bin Laden's crackpot theory of popular responsibility for the U.S. government's crimes. What needs to be better understood, however, is that bin Ladenism was not unique to bin Laden. Look at what's happening in Gaza. Look what happened in Vietnam Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and the many other places I'm forgetting just now. The American and Israeli war planners are bin Ladenists! Those officials routinely kill noncombatants, regarding them as active or tacit guilty parties for not rebelling against their rulers. It's cruel to infer consent and approval from acquiescence. Overthrowing a government is no piece of cake, especially when the government has most of the guns.

But there is a difference between bin Laden and the others. The U.S. and Israeli governments devastate populations that don't even get to go through the motions of voting. Those leaders criticize bin Laden, but they should see him when they look in the mirror.

Bin Laden, like the American and Israeli rulers, never read Lysander Spooner (1808-1887), the libertarian anarchist and political/legal scholar who wrote in his short-lived periodical No Treason (nos. 2 and 6) that voting is no indication that the voters support the government. (If that's true of voters who picked the winners, it's surely true of voters who picked the losers and nonvoters.) Voters can have many reasons for voting that don't entail acceptance of the government's many impositions. Since the government will tax and regiment them whether they vote or not, they might vote to try to lessen the tyranny. It's self-defense. It does not imply acceptance of a candidate's plan for foreign intervention.

As Spooner put in No Treason: The Constitution, no. 2, and repeated in No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority, no. 6 (1870):

In truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent, even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having even been asked a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practise this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further, that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave. And he has no other alternative than these two. In self-defence, he attempts the former. His case is analogous to that of a man who has been forced into battle, where he must either kill others, or be killed himself. Because, to save his own life in battle, a man attempts to take the lives of his opponents, it is not to be inferred that the battle is one of his own choosing. Neither in contests with the ballot—which is a mere substitute for a bullet—because, as his only chance of self-preservation, a man uses a ballot, is it to be inferred that the contest is one into which he voluntarily entered; that he voluntarily set up all his own natural rights, as a stake against those of others, to be lost or won by the mere power of numbers. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, in an exigency into which he had been forced by others, and in which no other means of self-defence offered, he, as a matter of necessity, used the only one that was left to him.

Doubtless the most miserable of men, under the most oppressive government in the world, if allowed the ballot, would use it, if they could see any chance of thereby meliorating their condition. But it would not, therefore, be a legitimate inference that the government itself, that crushes them, was one which they had voluntarily set up, or ever consented to....

So lay off the noncombatants, war-makers of all parties. That means no more massacres of essentially powerless people. Even the unintended consequences are foreseeably horrific. You claim you're smart, so find another way.

Class versus Identity Politics?

Parts of the "left" and "right" often lament that class politics has given way to identity politics. I don't get that. Class was the original modern political identity, and state privilege was part of the cause. Libertarians and classical liberals long warned that lethal and impoverishing social disintegration would result from an ideology -- socialism-- based on Marxist class conflict, which pits business people against working people (as if business people don't work).

We need to abolish politics, not reform it because it's toxic. That won't eliminate classes, or useful social categories. We'll always have people who own businesses, people who manage them, and people employed by them. But those are not and won't be pure categories. Owners work. Managers work. And workers own -- shares in corporations. (Check your retirement account.) Ultimately, in the free market everyone has the same boss: the consumers.

What we must strive for is, to coin a phrase, classes without borders. That is, mobility. To get it we need free markets, which would end: occupational licensure, home-bulding restrictions, business permits, the minimum wage, immigration control, and so much more.