The Humble Libertarian original

In response to some recent comments on my popular libertarian essay about abortion , it's time for me to mention that my views have shifted. I would argue that for the purpose of discussing law and public policy, the critically relevant issue is not the nature of the fetus as I have argued before, but the nature of the state. Let's come up with a libertarian consensus on abortion that even if a human fetus is a living human being entitled to self-ownership and non-aggression, and even if to abort a human fetus is to murder a human being, that we still don't want to pass a law against it in a monopoly legislature, appoint a standing army of career policethugs, and try to enforce that law with money we take from people against their will and under threat of violence-- because if all that isn't bad enough to begin with, even if protecting human fetuses was the only thing this government did, before long it would end up doing a hundred other unrelated things that make us ...

This dissenting comment left on my libertarian pro-life argument post was so good I had to share it: "What you miss - what you call evasive - is the fact that the fetus lives inside and is entirely dependent on the woman. So, even if the fetus does have rights, this is a clear case of a conflict of rights. Now, it's pretty clear that if we care about equality, we have to address the fact that women can have children. That can be a wonderful thing when you want it, but an oppressive experience otherwise. And this is where the conflict occurs. If you protect the rights of a fetus, you deny women a significant amount of freedom to choose the life she wants to live. This is why science won't help us here. If a fetus is fully a life and endowed with all rights, that just makes the resolution even harder. That's also why it is ridiculous to call it murder. I can't think of anywhere else in the world where you can find such a similar conflict of rights. The thing is,...

You don't need me to tell you that breast cancer foundation Susan G. Komen for the Cure has set off a firestorm over its decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood. Unless you've been living at Walden Pond, you've heard all about the controversy by now. Throughout the news cycle this week, the drama just intensified, with Susan G. Komen for the Cure seemingly backing off its decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood, then revelations emerging that "Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for George W. Bush and prominent right-wing pundit, was secretly involved in the Komen Foundation’s strategy regarding Planned Parenthood," and now reports and speculation are surfacing that Susan G. Komen is switching back to defunding Planned Parenthood, or leaving the door open to do so . They better be careful-- if they flip flop one more time, Mitt Romney might hit them with a trademark infringement suit! But before I get off-topic riffing on the entire Republican presi...

Human Fetus at 10 Weeks - Photo by drsuparna ( CC ) In the following essay I will address the issue of abortion and defend the pro-life position unemotionally, in a tasteful manner, and without reference to religious scripture to support my assertions. Plain reason and the evidence of science make the issue clear enough. My only demand of the reader is that you would also suspend your emotional predispositions and genuinely read and reflect on the validity of the propositions I make. The Argument Outlined My primary argument takes the following syllogistic form: IF: 1. Every human being has the right to live, which should be protected by law, AND: 2. From the moment of conception, the unborn are human beings, THEN: 3. The unborn have the right to live, which should be protected by law. If one accepts the first two premises, then the pro-life position stated in the conclusion is inescapable. Surely, few people will have any qualms about the first premise. Human bein...

Ron Paul is America's leading voice for limited, constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, sound money, and a pro-America foreign policy. And as a pro life libertarian, I absolutely love that Ron Paul is 100% pro life! I cannot believe that the Ron Paul 2012 campaign didn't produce an ad like this weeks ago! Watch: Related: Why I am a pro life libertarian . Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

Following a decision by the Obama Administration's Department of Health and Human Services to require insurance companies to cover abortion pills under ObamaCare, Ron Paul immediately released a statement blasting the Obama Administration for violating the conscience of individual Americans: "The Obama administration’s decision to mandate coverage of birth control and morning-after pills is payback to Planned Parenthood and big pharmaceutical companies for their support of Obamacare. This mandate violates the conscience of millions of pro-life Americans. In Congress, I have introduced H.R. 1099, the Taxpayer Freedom of Conscience Act, which removes all federal funding for domestic and international family planning. As President, I plan to defund Obamacare and all federal programs that use tax money taken from the American people to promote abortion. I pledge also to veto any bill with funding for Planned Parenthood or any other international family planning regimes....

I'm sure this post will delight some of you and really offend some of you. Fellow libertarians are always either pleased to learn that I'm quite pro-life, or very disappointed in me. (If you'd like to know why I am pro-life, this is the best, most rational defense of the pro-life position I've ever read-- yeah I wrote it too: so much for humility.) Now I'm going to do something else waaay out of the ordinary and share with you an excerpt from a transcript of Rush Limbaugh's radio program yesterday. His commentary, while entertaining as usual, was also spot on: "Some of the hosts of the cable news shows, you know, what I don't understand about it is they're all card-carrying liberals. When does the death of a child bother them? I've never seen them get so upset over the death of a child. If the child had died, what, two years earlier in the womb, this woman would be a star, she'd be a hero, and, folks, I don't think that's ...

NBC Bay Area reports : "Apparently parents-to-be, Ellie and Matt Greene's idea to give their unborn child a Facebook page was too much for Facebook. Facebook's terms of service state users must be 13 years of age, but common sense would point out, an unborn fetus PROBABLY isn't really using the Social Network. Boy, those Facebook guys are sticklers to the rules!" LOL. Couldn't pass up sharing The Drudge Report 's funny headline for this story. Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

If there is one reason people are considering supporting former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney for president, it's because he's considered "electable," meaning he has a fair shot to defeat President Obama in 2012. If there was one thing that hampered Romney's 2008 campaign it was the perception that he was a flip-flopper, a role which earned him the nickname "Multiple Choice Mitt." While trying to present himself as a conservative, and even winning the endorsement of National Review, Romney was dogged by a very recent and probably very politically calculated switch from pro-choice on abortion to pro-life. This from a man who minced no words in assuring Massachusetts voters during a 2002 gubernatorial debate that he would "preserve and protect a woman's right to choose." A more pressing issue for the 2012 presidential primaries is the national health care scheme passed by the last Congress. The plan that served as the model for Oba...

Other than being the highest-profile Republican victims of Tea Party candidates, what do Lisa Murkowski, Mike Castle, Charlie Crist and Arlen Specter have in common? Other than being tea party insurgents who routed establishment Republicans in high-profile primaries, what do Joe Miller, Marco Rubio, Christine O’Donnell, Pat Toomey, Sharron Angle in Nevada, Ken Buck in Colorado and Mike Lee in Utah have in common? The answer, writes Tim Carney of The Washington Examiner , is that all the former are pro-choice on abortion, all the latter pro-life. Tea Party types and pro-life conservatives seem to be twins separated at birth. Carney continues: “Almost without fail the strongest advocates of limited government in Congress are pro-life and vice versa. Think of (Jim) DeMint and (Tom) Coburn in the Senate and Ron Paul and Jeff Flake in the House. They top the scorecards of the National Taxpayers’ Union and also have perfect scores from National Right to Life.” Carney’s point: While all Tea P...

'What Americans deserve to know is what NOW really thinks about the use of the word "whore" to describe female political candidates, and what NOW really stands for in general.' Read my entire article at CAIVN . Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

The Tim Tebow ad really brought the abortion issue to the forefront of the American conversation over the past couple weeks. The "pro-choice" lobby showed everyone its true colors by finding that ad outrageous. Why wouldn't they be happy that a woman made a choice? Why wouldn't they appreciate that Tim Tebow was the result of that choice? They are pro- choice , right? Perhaps the ones that had a fit over the Tim Tebow ad are really just pro- abortion ? Grant Davies over at What We Think and Why had another epiphany about the pro-choice lobby in America while watching the Planned Parenthood response to the Tebow ad: For his part, Joyner explains; "My daughter will always be my little girl." He goes on to say; "But I am proud everyday as I watch her grow up to be her own person, a smart, confident young woman. I trust her to take care of herself. We celebrate families by supporting our mothers, by supporting our daughters. By trusting women." Exc...

A reader wrote in to point out this article : Two former professional athletes are calling for the "respect of women's choices" in response to the upcoming Super Bowl advertisement featuring the pro-life birth story of college football standout Tim Tebow... In a statement accompanying the video, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards said Tebow's story was "compelling," but added that every woman must be able to make important medical decisions for herself and her family. "The Tebow story underlines what Planned Parenthood has learned from the millions of women doctors and nurses at its health centers have cared for over nearly a century," Richards' statement read. "Women take decisions about their health very seriously. They consider their doctors’ advice, they talk with their loved ones and people they trust, including religious leaders, and they carefully weigh all considerations before making the best decision for themselves and ...

Skyler Collins asked for my thoughts on this article about "evictionism" -which concedes the pro-life position that a fetus is entitled to rights (i.e. we must not kill them), but also concedes the pro-choice argument that women have a right to their own bodies. The evictionist compromise then, is that a woman cannot kill her fetus, but she can evict it if the doctor does so in a "gentle manner" that is simply intended to remove the fetus rather than to kill it. A central component of this theory is that fetal viability occurs earlier and earlier as technology advances, allowing us to respect the woman's right to choose while simultaneously respecting the baby's right to life. Here is a video in which the theory's foremost proponent Walter Block , explains and defends eviction: Criticisms of Evictionism Here's what I told Skyler: I think subjecting a child to the danger inherent in something like "gentle eviction" is tantamoun...

Let's set the record straight on George Tiller's murder and the reaction of the pro-life movement to it. I contend that the pro-life movement is overwhelmingly peaceful and composed mostly of peace-loving, life-loving, non-violent members who wouldn't even consider using violence to spread their message and who abhor so-called "pro-life" activists who take it upon themselves to shoot abortionist doctors. I also like to use the pro-life movement as a shining example of a movement that does a fantastic job of policing its members and issuing clear, unequivocal condemnations of militant fringe members. All popular political movements have to deal with fringe elements that they are not so proud of, and who do harm to their message and cause by mingling it with hatred, lies, fear-mongering, strange conspiracy theories, or even militancy. Some groups handle it better than others by making it clear where they stand and by going out of their way to distance themselves fro...

A while back I posted the remarkable statistic that Abortion Is The #1 Killer of Black Americans . I want to highlight a part of the debate that took place in the comment thread of that post regarding "a woman's right to choose." One libertarian left this comment : To be against abortion is to deny self-ownership (of the woman over her own body) and is therefore unlibertarian. The "humanness" of the embryo/fetus is irrelevant to the question. Either we have sovereignty over our own bodies or we do not, period. How can you, as a "libertarian", tell a woman who has been a victim of rape and become pregnant, that she has no right to decide what remains inside her body? And I want you to read my response : I agree that human beings have sovereignty over their own bodies and a right to be free from coercion. In the case of rape, it is the rapist who has violated that right by putting the fetus there, not the government which then must act to protect the f...

Margaret Sanger , 1922 By: Heidi Moseley , T H L Contributor Hillary Clinton and other modern liberals have decided they no longer want to be called "liberals." We have finally won a war of words with the left. We have made “liberal” a dirty word. Instead there has been a shift to be called Progressives. I personally think Progressive is a much better and more accurate term for the left. Liberal is what at one time described John Locke, Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith. Classical liberals believed in private property rights, individual freedoms and responsibilities, and free markets. These great thinkers are on the opposite side of the political spectrum from Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama. But who are the Progressives? Wikipedia describes progressivism as a “political and social term that refers to ideologies and movements favoring or advocating changes or reform, usually in a statist or egalitarian direction for economic policies ...

By: Claire, T H L Contributor It is a common misconception that if you’re a Libertarian, you are also pro-choice. Granted, many are. However, that isn’t the way it has to be. In fact, I want to tell you why I believe being pro-life is an obvious Libertarian stance. As Libertarians, we believe in not infringing on the rights of others, whether they are economic or personal rights. We believe in John Locke’s, and then Thomas Jefferson’s adaptation of Locke’s theory in the Declaration of Independence - all humans are entitled to the certain unalienable rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.The first of these is Life – for all humans. I believe that a child is a human at the moment of conception, not just at the moment of birth. This is my scientifically based opinion. A child’s DNA is determined at conception, making them the unique person that they are. Isn’t the basic human right of life then guaranteed to this person? Even before they exit the womb? A child has an adul...