Deranged and unhinged

For 6 months I’ve been telling people that Trump is a lunatic, and my commenters keep insisting that I’m “deranged”, or “unhinged”, or off my meds.

If so, my condition is getting worse:

. . .  if Hillary Clinton defeats Trump in 2016, one of the Republican nominee’s former campaign advisers predicts there will be protests.

“I mean civil disobedience, not violence, but it will be a bloodbath,” Roger Stone told Breitbart News in a recent interview. “The government will be shut down if they attempt to steal this and swear Hillary in.”

Stone left Trump’s immediate orbit last year, but the veteran GOP consultant told Yahoo News last month that he keeps in touch with his former boss.

On Monday, Trump, who is currently trailing Clinton in national polls, told supporters at a rally in Ohio that the fix is coming.

“The election is going to be rigged,” he said.

So what does Trump consider to be a stolen election?  Perhaps something like 1960, with the controversies about voting irregularities in Texas and Illinois?  An election narrowly won by Kennedy.  Nope, it’s the 2012 election that was stolen. No, Obama did not easily beat Romney by millions of votes, it was all rigged:

Screen Shot 2016-08-03 at 10.21.21 PM
And then there are reports and more reports that he’s contemplating ending the US practice of no first use of nukes.

But no worries, the man us not a lunatic, it’s just that I’m deranged and unhinged. Obviously his advisors are patriots, and they’d warn us if Trump was becoming mentally unstable.

Oh wait .  .  . 

Donald Trump is getting “nuttier and nuttier,” according to those within the tycoon’s presidential campaign, who say they are increasingly frustrated by his outrageous comments and behavior.

The Republican candidate has been engaged in a prolonged war of words with Khizr and Ghazala Khan — whose son, a US Army officer, was killed in Iraq in 2004 — which many inside the presidential campaign see as, at the very least, a total distraction.

“I did not think he’d be great in a general election, and thought there’d be episodes of paranoia/irrationality, but this is surprising for me,” one Trump operative told The Post.

“Trump is getting nuttier and nuttier,” the person added.

Campaign chairman Paul Manafort and other staffers “feel like they are wasting their time,” CNN reported Wednesday. . . .

And CNBC’s John Harwood quoted a source as saying: “Manafort not challenging Trump anymore. Mailing it in. Staff suicidal.”

Nuttier and nuttier . . . paranoia . . . irrationality . . . staff suicidal . . . the world is laughing at us . . . first use of nukes . . . stolen elections . . . total sham and travesty . . . we are not a democracy . . . bloodbath . . .

I guess you Trumpistas were right; I’m just being hysterical.  What could go wrong with a 70 year old President who seems a bit . . . eccentric?

Screen Shot 2016-08-03 at 10.32.55 PM

By the way, military officers who control nuclear weapons must pass a battery of psychological tests.  How about the President?

HT:  Tom Brown


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251 Responses to “Deranged and unhinged”

  1. Gravatar of E. Harding E. Harding
    3. August 2016 at 19:50

    If you call me mentally ill for pointing out the simple fact that there are no differences between Trump’s and Romney’s stated China policies during their respective presidential campaigns, I wonder what Trump, who’ve you’ve abused much more over these past few months, must be.

    I saw Trump during his Jacksonville rally and he looked fine. Certainly more sane than Her (what’s going on with Her?).

    You know full well Trump uses overheated political rhetoric. So does every other politician.

    Enough stupidity.

    Let’s Make America Great Again!

  2. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    3. August 2016 at 19:58

    If the point of this post was to convince your readers you are not deranged or unhinged, then, um…

  3. Gravatar of Benjamin Cole Benjamin Cole
    3. August 2016 at 20:00

    Some might say the 2000 election, with the Supreme Kangaroo Court decision right down party lines, was a “rigged” election.

    Then Robert Kennedy Jr. wrote a long, long piece for the Rolling Stone that the 2004 presidential election had rigged results in many states.

    Kennedy wrote in part:

    “Indeed, the extent of the GOP’s effort to rig the vote shocked even the most experienced observers of American elections. ‘Ohio was as dirty an election as America has ever seen,’ Lou Harris, the father of modern political polling, told me. ‘You look at the turnout and votes in individual precincts, compared to the historic patterns in those counties, and you can tell where the discrepancies are. They stand out like a sore thumb.”’

    http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0601-34.htm

    As Tyler Cowen says, “Do read the whole thing.”

    Trump is Trump, and he has alienated me, and I had high hopes for the guy. The GOP is a collection of plutocratic warmongers, tied to rural subsidies and anything that will undercut the employee class. And tight money too, just to make a full house of stupidities.

    That crowd has migrated into the Hillary camp.

    But Trump, or anyone else, is right to ponder if elections are clean in the USA. Robert F. Kennedy’s Rolling Stone article is compelling.

  4. Gravatar of E. Harding E. Harding
    3. August 2016 at 20:01

    Sumner: get off the ledge. Stop taking these crazy pills. The more you call people lunatics, the more likely it is you are becoming one. And your calling people lunatics has soared over the past year.

    “But no worries, the man us not a lunatic, it’s just that I’m deranged and unhinged.”

    “I guess you Trumpistas were right; I’m just being hysterical.”

    -Sumner, this is the first time I’ve genuinely started to fear for your mental health. We have your written confessions right here. Though I despise your Trump-hatred, I am deeply concerned about your intellectual abilities. Would you like to get treatment? I’m not being sarcastic. I’m concerned.

    A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

  5. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    3. August 2016 at 20:04

    Sometimes I get the impression that people are very vocal in their anti-Trumpness (and anti-Clintonness for that matter) so that they can hope to derive a self-serving psychological fix of “I called it folks!”, like they have an empty and hollow personality that they can only think to fill with the impossible task of being a mystic sage who can predict the future. To be the man who foresaw it all, and to be viewed as a spiritual being by the masses. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but it just feels creepy and disturbing to watch.

  6. Gravatar of E. Harding E. Harding
    3. August 2016 at 20:15

    Also, Sumner is arguing from fictional evidence. Scott, what’s going on?

  7. Gravatar of Bill Ellis Bill Ellis
    3. August 2016 at 20:17

    a Lot Trumpers ( esp. “american race” trumpers )did’t mind when trump asked the Russians to hack our government to uncover hill’s evil evilness, because they saw the Russians as doing good work…anything to keep the devil from getting away with it… again !!! …and winning the white house on top …

    the trump cultist that believe it was fine to ask the Russians to hack hill…and believe that hill is stealing the election….why wouldn’t they be fine with the Russians hacking our election ???

  8. Gravatar of Bill Ellis Bill Ellis
    3. August 2016 at 20:20

    2020..trump runs against hill as an independent… He calls his party National capitalist party… or The NACI Party…

    none of his followers see the irony…

  9. Gravatar of Bill Ellis Bill Ellis
    3. August 2016 at 20:35

    Major.Freedom wonders…” Sometimes I get the impression that people are very vocal in their anti-Trumpness (and anti-Clintonness for that matter) so that they can hope to derive a self-serving psychological fix of “I called it folks!”

    I think for most folks that true in away.. For most folks once they land on a choice, that choice becomes part of their identity… From that point discussing that choice becomes about defending THEIR identity…they become far more biased and unable to see fairly..

    this effects us all to one degree or an other…especially if you aren’t aware that it will effect you to one degree or another…

    Not me of course… Im a super intelligent house cat …

  10. Gravatar of Bill Ellis Bill Ellis
    3. August 2016 at 20:37

    No tests for the prez..

  11. Gravatar of Bill Ellis Bill Ellis
    3. August 2016 at 20:43

    E harding
    Trump Has a China policy ? Let me guess …Only Trump can Fix China !!!

  12. Gravatar of Craig Craig
    3. August 2016 at 21:04

    Trump is so obviously crazy that commenters who think otherwise should get their own heads checked. If he is elected, he will screw up this country in every single way possible within the first 90 days.

  13. Gravatar of JonathanH JonathanH
    3. August 2016 at 21:17

    Trump appears crazy and unhinged to me. Also, I was surprised to see he supports spending double what Hillary wants to spend on infrastructure. Min wage, protectionism, now a big stimulous.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-08-02/trump-says-he-ll-spend-more-than-half-trillion-dollars-on-infrastructure

  14. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    3. August 2016 at 21:49

    By the way, military officers who control nuclear weapons must pass a battery of psychological tests. How about the President?

    I guess it’s up to the parties: our two major ones should enforce such a rule, to be paid for by the candidate, but with the tests done by party approved (not candidate approved) psychologists. Anyone who fails shouldn’t even be allowed to participate in the primary.

    If the fringe parties (American Nazi, Traditional Workers, Maoists, etc) don’t want to institute such tests, fine. Let fringe candidates run in fringe parties if they’re bound and determined to run.

    The two major parties much take steps (assuming Trump loses) to immunize themselves in future elections from malignant invasive organisms such as Trump (and Sanders).

  15. Gravatar of Benjamin Cole Benjamin Cole
    3. August 2016 at 23:28

    Regarding Trumpism:

    “Tax on Foreign Home Buyers Shakes Up Vancouver Market”

    “The house market in Greater Vancouver in west Canada is in chaos as an extra 15-percent tax on foreign buyers takes effect on Tuesday.

    It is still unknown how many deals have already collapsed, but Fraser Valley realtors in Greater Vancouver said foreign buyers are indeed backing out of agreements because of the tax….”

    –30–

    The same thing is happening in Australia, that is taxes on foreign home buyers, and many Aussie banks will not even extend a loan to a foreign homebuyer.

    Those Canucks and Aussies are making Trump look tame! Yes, they are all Luddite xenophobes too. And racists.

    In truth, the globalists do have to come up with a better answer for the middle class of Western developed nations. Huge and chronic trade deficits mean either borrowing, or selling assets. When an assets are sold offshore, then the encumbrance is perpetual. There is a lot of ruin in a nation, but this stuff adds up after a while…

    Sell enough assets to wealthy foreigners, and the locals begin to wonder if they are being priced out of their homelands. Toss in open immigration along one of the longest borders in the world….

    I do not wonder that Trump is popular in many circles.

    The real wonder is Trump is such a boor….if Trump was a good campaigner with some solid policy proposals, he would win in a landslide…

  16. Gravatar of Postkey Postkey
    3. August 2016 at 23:30

    D.J.T. may be “Deranged and unhinged”

    These were some of the policies that were actually ‘implemented’?

    “ . . . So, those Hillary Clinton emails, they connect together with the cables that we have published of Hillary Clinton, creating a rich picture of how Hillary Clinton performs in office, but, more broadly, how the U.S. Department of State operates. So, for example, the disastrous, absolutely disastrous intervention in Libya, the destruction of the Gaddafi government, which led to the occupation of ISIS of large segments of that country, weapons flows going over to Syria, being pushed by Hillary Clinton, into jihadists within Syria, including ISIS, that’s there in those emails. There’s more than 1,700 emails in Hillary Clinton’s collection, that we have released, just about Libya alone. “
    http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/07/julian-assange-hacked-emails-include-info-hillarys-arming-jihadists-including-isis-syria/

  17. Gravatar of Ray Lopez Ray Lopez
    4. August 2016 at 01:06

    I’m pretty sure there are voting machine irregularities caused by the Diebold machines that resulted in candidates getting more votes than they should, but I agree with Sumner that to systematically call the 2012 elections as fraudulent is crazy.

    A larger issue is whether a crazy person carrying the nuclear football is rational and how to stop a nuclear disaster. All the more reason the USA should drop their ‘first strike’ doctrine. Hence, if the US president were to call for a first strike, it would, under this scenario, be illegal, and not carried out. But the USA believes in first strike. Sumner, get on the bully pulpit and advocate against first strike. It’s a more vital issue than your oversupply of beavers story from a while ago (are you over that now?)

  18. Gravatar of foosion foosion
    4. August 2016 at 02:01

    Scott, you’re not going to convince the Trumpkins of anything, but so long as you’re enjoying this, it’s all good.

    “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,” Trump said at a campaign rally here. http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/23/politics/donald-trump-shoot-somebody-support/

  19. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    4. August 2016 at 02:16

    he contemplating ending the US practice of no first use of nukes.

    When was there any such practice? ‘No first use’ was a slogan of dippy street demonstrators ca. 1983 because NATO policy had since about 1957 incorporated responding to a conventional invasion of western Europe with tactical nuclear weapons. I’m not sure George McGovern ever embraced ‘no first use’ and European governments were antagonistic to such a declaration.

  20. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    4. August 2016 at 02:19

    Meanwhile, back in the real world, ballot security has grown to be an enormous worry with the excess use of information technology and especially postal voting. There’s a reason Democratic operatives are upset by Voter ID laws, by the way.

  21. Gravatar of foosion foosion
    4. August 2016 at 04:00

    Your amusement of the day:

    Melania Trump an illegal immigrant?

    http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/melania-trump-immigration-donald-226648

  22. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    4. August 2016 at 04:04


    By the way, military officers who control nuclear weapons must pass a battery of psychological tests. How about the President?

    Sure you could do that. But most likely even Hitler would have passed such tests. Goering would have failed because of his very heavy drug abuse. But Goebbels, Hitler, Himmler? They would have made it. And so would Trump. So it’s actually pretty useless.

    I also think there are already other good measures at hand. Like the ability of the Vice President and the cabinet to declare the incapacity of the President. Or an impeachment by Congress. You don’t need to execute Presidential orders that are illegal anyway. And so on.

    There are also serious studies out there that about half (!) of all US presidents had at least one mental illness. Lincoln for example had a serious depression and Kennedy was addicted to painkillers. Basically the whole Kennedy presidency was a very bad drug trip. Was this good or bad for the Cuban Missile Crisis that nearly led to WW3? I’m not sure.

  23. Gravatar of rayward rayward
    4. August 2016 at 04:11

    Peter Sellers’ classics, Dr. Strangelove (Sumner’s photo is from that film) and Being There, capture American culture in a way that few would like to admit, the first movie capturing the lunacy of nuclear weapons and the second movie capturing the idiocy that often passes as wisdom.

  24. Gravatar of Justin Justin
    4. August 2016 at 04:41

    There’s simply no proof Trump said what is claimed about the nukes. The media are throwing every lie and insinuation at him they think they can get away with. It’s pathetic.

  25. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    4. August 2016 at 04:46

    Sterling Hayden is one of my favorite not so well-known actors. Him, Scott, Sellers (in 3 different roles), Kubrick and Gilbert Taylor all in one movie could be one of the best casts ever.

  26. Gravatar of Benjamin Cole Benjamin Cole
    4. August 2016 at 04:47

    Ray Lopez:

    As far as I am concerned, if the USA had 20 nukes, that would be deterrence enough. Read up on Tsar Bomba.

    Trump is nuts, and I am not voting for him, but there is an deep, persistent orthodox insanity loose on the world as well.

  27. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    4. August 2016 at 04:51

    There are also serious studies out there that about half (!) of all US presidents had at least one mental illness. Lincoln for example had a serious depression and Kennedy was addicted to painkillers.

    Only if you define ‘mental illness’ so haphazardly that it encompasses nearly the entire population (more fees for head shrinkers, woo hoo!). We’ve never had a president addled by schizophreniform disorders or given to manic-depressive cycles or manifestly demented (Reagan’s senility, per his daughter, was not noticeable one-on-one until mid-1993).

    As for our recent chief executives, Clinton, Johnson, and Kennedy were grotesques (each in his own way) and Nixon certainly had a complicated inner life. Dan Quayle had insufficient intellect to be a national politician and Joseph Biden adds clownishness to intellectual deficits. The Canadians have put Justin Trudeau in the prime minister’s chair, and act of frivolity which can scarcely be topped.

  28. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    4. August 2016 at 04:53

    I think Trump’s craziness is closer to George C. Scott in Patton than to Sterling Hayden in Dr. Strangelove. The first character resembles narcissism and megalomania, the second one paranoid schizophrenia.

  29. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    4. August 2016 at 06:00

    Jonathan, Thanks, I did a post at Econlog.

    Foosion, You said:

    “Scott, you’re not going to convince the Trumpkins of anything, but so long as you’re enjoying this, it’s all good.”

    Oh, I am enjoying this immensely, and if Trump wins the enjoyment will reach stratospheric levels. These posts just write themselves (as you can probably tell). This is like a Stanley Kubrick film coming to life.

    Christian, You said:

    “I also think there are already other good measures at hand. Like the ability of the Vice President and the cabinet to declare the incapacity of the President. Or an impeachment by Congress. You don’t need to execute Presidential orders that are illegal anyway. And so on.”

    Well thanks for reassuring me. Seriously, our nuclear force is designed to respond very quickly to Presidential orders, so there would no be time for an “intervention”

    Justin, I link to a Chris Matthews interview. Just give up.

    Christian, Agree about Dr. Strangelove and Hayden. This film was the career best performance by Hayden, Sellers, George C Scott and Slim Pickens. (Scott’s performance in Patton doesn’t even come close.) That doesn’t happen unless you have the right director.

    I actually wavered as to whether to include a picture of Scott, Sellers or Hayden. I was thinking of Showing Sellers as Trump’s next Secretary of State. Scott could be Secretary of Defense.

  30. Gravatar of Ray Lopez Ray Lopez
    4. August 2016 at 06:01

    @Benjamin Cole – “As far as I am concerned, if the USA had 20 nukes, that would be deterrence enough. Read up on Tsar Bomba.” – no, I think 20 is too few. It’s like having 20 bullets. Maybe 200 is enough. Keep in mind the US doctrine on nuclear targeting is precision, and very few H-bombs to produce 100 MT yields that wipe out a 50 km radius (just from the blast) as in Tsar Bomba. By contrast, the USSR/RU uses crude, no precision “Kalashnikov” style targeting, relying on nasty radiation fallout to achieve the aim since their precision is awful. Thus the USSR/RU probably would lose in a nuclear war with the USA (which is survivable BTW, the human body is remarkably resistant to radiation). And that’s how I learned to love The Bomb.

    As for first strike, what are your thoughts? I think the USA should have a “no first strike” policy for all of the Big Five UN Security Council members, and for rogue states with the bomb (Pak, India, Israel, N.Korea) the US should reserve the right to a first strike.

  31. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    4. August 2016 at 06:24

    @Art Deco

    Only if you define ‘mental illness’ so haphazardly that it encompasses nearly the entire population.

    That might be true to some degree. But the other side of the coin is that mental illnesses are in fact very common and that it’s all about stigma. Not to mention that someone like Kennedy was very ill even if you apply very strict rules.

  32. Gravatar of Bob Murphy Bob Murphy
    4. August 2016 at 06:45

    Meanwhile, Scott’s choice of Gary Johnson is just the kind of principled libertarian we should all support. No incoherent appeals to the masses in his campaign.

    (No, I’m not a Trump supporter, give me a break. I’m just laughing at people who try to justify why voting for their candidate is cool and pragmatic, but other people are deranged lunatics and/or moral monsters for their own choices.)

  33. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    4. August 2016 at 06:57

    Bob, That’s all you got? The horror of not being allowed to discriminate against gay people? Even if you are right, I’m laughing at people who don’t understand the difference between a candidate having one or two flaws, and 1 or 2 thousand flaws.

    I believe that you are more libertarian than I am. How you can look at this picture, with 4 candidates, and not conclude that Johnson is light years ahead of the other three, is beyond my comprehension. Perhaps you only vote for perfect people—I guess that would save time.

  34. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    4. August 2016 at 07:35

    I guess if you throw your vote away for a third party candidate you want at least somebody who is close to perfect. That’s why Gary Johnson’s opinion about baking cakes is so hair-raising. This baking cake issue would be perfect to explain libertarian principles but instead Johnson does the opposite and takes the mainstream PC position.

    So if forcing people to bake cakes is just fine (in Johnson’s opinion) than people start to ask the legitimate question why they should elect Johnson in the first place. So that he can flip-flop to the mainstream position every time it counts?

  35. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    4. August 2016 at 07:52

    Politico article asks if Melania might be an illegal:
    http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/melania-trump-immigration-donald-226648

  36. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    4. August 2016 at 09:16

    Scott, responsible, empathetic, good hearted Americans need to start planning now for the possibility of a Trump defeat. Ann Coulter says it’s ¡Adios America! should that happen. So where will non-cucks like Ann & her tribe go? Obviously it needs to be a cuck-free environment that they’re comfortable with where they can practice good racial hygiene in accordance with their beliefs. This is a matter that requires great cultural sensitivity. Perhaps a crowd funding resettlement project (#AdiosAnn)? But where to? Will Iceland work? Finland? Russia? [1-way] Mission to Mars? There are several options, but the point is we need to start discussing it now.

  37. Gravatar of E. Harding E. Harding
    4. August 2016 at 10:06

    “I’m laughing at people who don’t understand the difference between a candidate having one or two flaws, and 1 or 2 thousand flaws.”

    -Name me five flaws (that actually have some bearing on policy) Trump has that Johnson doesn’t.

    Johnson is a dime-store Trump without the 50% chance of winning.

    Mike Pence>>>>>>>>Bill Weld

  38. Gravatar of Postkey Postkey
    4. August 2016 at 10:42

    “Documents obtained by several journalistic investigations reveal that Lafarge has paid taxes to the terror group to operate its cement plant in Syria, and even bought Isis oil for years…
    Lafarge also has close ties to Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Apart from being a regular donor to the Clinton Foundation, Clinton herself was a director of Lafarge in the early 1990s, and did legal work for the firm in the 1980s. During her connection to Lafarge, the firm was implicated in facilitating a CIA-backed covert arms export network to Saddam Hussein.”
    https://geopolitics.co/2016/08/04/wikileaks-drops-most-devastating-bombshell-vs-hillary-clinton/

  39. Gravatar of Steve Steve
    4. August 2016 at 11:41

    Terrifying
    Ridiculous
    Unhinged
    Maniacal
    Paranoid
    !

  40. Gravatar of msgkings msgkings
    4. August 2016 at 11:42

    @Harding: it is unfair of Sumner to call you mentally ill. The more accepted term is ‘on the spectrum’. You also have NPD but not as virulent as Trump himself, and are far more harmless. And having an IQ of 96 is nothing to be ashamed of.

  41. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    4. August 2016 at 12:10

    Bob, That’s all you got? The horror of not being allowed to discriminate against gay people?

    It’s called ‘freedom of contract’ and ‘freedom of association’ and it’s something non-spurious adult libertarians used to care a great deal about. The phrase ‘libertarian’ has been appropriated by stoners and professor-poseurs, of course. The ‘discrimination’ in question has concerned the avocational activities of businessmen who’ve contributed to the National Organization for Marriage and like associations and small merchants who don’t work ‘gay’ ‘weddings’. You’d think Adam and Steve might just find another baker, another B & B operator, or a hall operator other than the Knights of Columbus – someone who wants their business and lives by a different set of principles. In the asinine world in which we live, Adam and Steve make themselves straw plaintiffs for predatory lawyers, and soi-disant ‘libertarians’ side with them.

  42. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    4. August 2016 at 12:18

    is that mental illnesses are in fact very common and that it’s all about stigma. Not to mention that someone like Kennedy was very ill even if you apply very strict rules.

    1. No, mental illness are not ‘very common’. People who’ve had a schizopreniform breakdown amount to about 0.7% of the population at any one time.

    2. Of course it’s stigmatized.

    3. Kennedy had Addison’s disease, chronic pain from a war injury (for which he received shots from a quack named Max “Dr. Feelgood” Jacobson).

    4. Kennedy had a ferocious one-for-the-books case of satyriasis. His stupefying sexual gluttony was accommodated by the women around him (ever hear of a story of JFK being turned down?), by his staff, and by the Secret Service. That’s not ‘mental illness’. Its just grossness.

  43. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    4. August 2016 at 12:19

    Scott, responsible, empathetic, good hearted Americans

    Why would anyone think you knew many?

  44. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    4. August 2016 at 12:21

    The first character resembles narcissism and megalomania, the second one paranoid schizophrenia.

    That’s not what schizophrenics are like.

  45. Gravatar of msgkings msgkings
    4. August 2016 at 12:27

    “That’s not what schizophrenics are like.”

    You would know. And so would you.

    🙂

  46. Gravatar of Bob Murphy Bob Murphy
    4. August 2016 at 12:50

    Oh Scott, it would be nice to live in your world, where anyone who challenges you on your blog must be citing something that is old news.

    But no, this is a new GJ clip. In the 17 seconds he manages to:

    (1) Say he is just citing the current law, but then goes on to express what he thinks the law ought to be.

    (2) Say he thinks bakers should be forced to sell a wedding cake to gay people, even if this violates the religious views of the bakers.

    (3) Say that it would be wrong to force the baker to decorate the cake concerning the gay wedding.

    I know this strikes you as harmless, but that’s because you only seem to care about the principles when it comes to Trump. So try this:

    Trump says, “Yes I think Muslims should be forced to sell bacon sandwiches to customers. I mean, I don’t think they should have to take a bite! That would be wrong.”

    What’s the big deal? Only a wacko would see something odd here.

    And by the same token, why are people flipping out about Trump wanting Muslims to register? Are we supposed to extrapolate? Only whiners do that.

  47. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    4. August 2016 at 12:58

    One impressive NowCast:
    http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/#now

  48. Gravatar of Steve Steve
    4. August 2016 at 13:14

    The gay wedding cake issue is annoying bc it gets mischaracterized by both sides.

    A Muslim (or Jewish) deli wouldn’t sell bacon to anyone. That’s the business model. Therefore they don’t have to sell bacon to a redneck. However, I am free to buy a Muslim (or Jewish) sandwich and defile it by adding my own bacon. Yummmmm.

    A bakery selling wedding cakes should have to sell a wedding cake to anyone. That includes a fatty with a binge eating problem, who isn’t getting married. Or a gay couple who agree to decorate the cake themselves.

    However, the bakery shouldn’t be compelled into speech (gay decorations) or performance (gay ceremony) if they have religious objections. Otherwise we should also be able to compel Bryan Adams to perform a concert in front of transphobic North Carolinians.

    These issues shouldn’t be that hard but it often isn’t even clear where people stand because the views get misrepresented in order to score cheap political points.

  49. Gravatar of Bababooey Bababooey
    4. August 2016 at 13:30

    I plan on hosting a party for the debates, with everyone placing $1 in a bowl when they raise their voice, interrupt, diagnose medical and psychological conditions, use profanity, stick a finger in someone’s face, or question good faith motives. One bowl for Trumpsters and one for HRHers (binary choice, no hiding at the fringes).

    Which group will pay more?

    (Of course, HRH is ruining my fun by insisting that all debates schedule against the top rated TV show in America 10 years running (NFL), just like her primaries. C’mon! ).

  50. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    4. August 2016 at 13:31

    @ArtDeco
    You know better what a mental illness is than physicians. You should call Trump maybe he makes you Secretary of Health and Human Services.

  51. Gravatar of E. Harding E. Harding
    4. August 2016 at 13:31

    “One impressive NowCast:”

    -Yeh! Mitt Rmoney would have been so much higher…. and was, by .2 (not 2! .2!) percentage points’ worth of chance this time of the election cycle. So, so much better than that troublesome Trump!

    Steve, you’re a hack. Any true libertarian should be in favor of liberty!

    Art, you are right on freedom of contract.

  52. Gravatar of Gordon Gordon
    4. August 2016 at 13:37

    Scott, I’ll be surprised if you make any headway against the Trumpistas. I suspect that most people when backing a politician have a psychological need to go “all in” so to speak and thus are able to come up with all sorts of rationalizations to defend them. You’d run into the same resistance trying to convince Bernie supporters that he’s economically incompetent or convincing Obama supporters that he has trampled all over civil liberties. Or take a look at all the ardent Erdogan supporters in Turkey. They loudly denounce the attempted coup as anti-democratic while refusing to recognize how Erdogan is undermining democracy with his suppression of freedom of speech and the press.

  53. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    4. August 2016 at 13:49

    You know better what a mental illness is than physicians.

    I’m quoting Dr. Fuller Torrey. One of Dr. Torrey’s complaints over many decades has been that psychiatry abandoned the mentally ill in favor of congenial office practice talking to the ‘worried well’. Per Torrey, the ‘worried well’ “need counseling, not therapy, and counseling is a department of education, not medicine”

  54. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    4. August 2016 at 13:52


    A bakery selling wedding cakes should have to sell a wedding cake to anyone.

    And why exactly?

    I also think you are mischaracterizing the case. The bakery did not have gay wedding cakes to sell. This business is all about commissional work and the bakery said, no thank you, we won’t take this commission, go to another bakery.


    A Muslim (or Jewish) deli wouldn’t sell bacon to anyone. That’s the business model.

    Exactly. The business model of this bakery is not selling gay wedding cakes to anyone. Your example proves how hypocritical and irrational the ruling against the bakery is. The PC world has gone mad.

  55. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    4. August 2016 at 13:53

    A bakery selling wedding cakes should have to sell a wedding cake to anyone.

    Why?

  56. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    4. August 2016 at 13:54

    I suspect that most people when backing a politician have a psychological need to go “all in” so to speak and thus are able to come up with all sorts of rationalizations to defend them.

    You can find a sterling example of path dependency of this sort by reviewing the utterances of the moderator over the last several months.

  57. Gravatar of msgkings msgkings
    4. August 2016 at 14:06

    “You can find a sterling example of path dependency of this sort by reviewing the utterances of the moderator over the last several months.”

    Something Art Deco would never do. What a hypocrite.

  58. Gravatar of Steve Steve
    4. August 2016 at 14:16

    The problem with Libertarianism is you wouldn’t need any laws if two rights were never in conflict, e.g., my right to shoot my gun into the air in a crowd,vs your right not to get murdered.

    The “gay wedding” issue is tricky because it depends on this nuance:
    * rejecting the gay couple because of WHO they are (violating equal protection)
    * rejecting the gay couple because of WHAT they want (a symbol of gay marriage, violating religious freedom)

    I respect people who take either side of that argument, as long as they understand what they are arguing.

    These issues present in many similar circumstances
    * renting a public venue
    * renting a private secular venue
    * renting a private denominational venue
    * asking a public agent for a service (marriage license)
    * asking a private agent for a service (gay vows or whatever)

    The nuance is real. Screaming gay rights vs religious liberty is usually tribal w/o discussing the issues.

  59. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    4. August 2016 at 14:35

    On a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 being highest, here’s how two issues stand out to me in importance:

    1) gay wedding cakes: 0.1

    2) avoiding unnecessary (possibly nuclear) major wars and other extinction level global crises: 100

    IMO, here’s how the candidates stack up:

    Gay wedding cakes: I literally don’t care. It’s in the noise. Trump can have this one though… I’ll give him 60% confidence of doing the right thing, and HRC 30%.

    War, etc: My confidence that Trump will do the right thing is running at about 15%. A person selected at random off the street is running at an average of about 75% for me. Any of the other major party candidates that have ever been since nuclear weapons were invented are all running north of 75%, including Goldwater (but excluding Carson, cause he’s rapture-iffic). All presidents, and secretaries of state, defense and energy in that same time period are running north of 90%.

    Now I just need to compute a weighted cost function and make my decision.

  60. Gravatar of Steve Steve
    4. August 2016 at 14:37

    Circumstantial evidence of intent matters a lot.

    Is a bakery a generic place that happens to be owned by Christians?
    Or is the bakery branded as a Christian Wedding Cake Bakery?

    Also, is the cake a generic wedding cake, with the words “Kelly and Sam Forever” printed on top?
    Or is the cake decorated with rainbows, kissing men, and squirting penises?

    I agree with Art about straw lawsuits and pc trolling.

  61. Gravatar of Scott Freelander Scott Freelander
    4. August 2016 at 14:40

    Trump is so out of control that even his brainwashed supporters will be embarrassed they ever mentioned his name in a positive light. I don’t expect them to be honest with others or even themselves about their stupidity in supporting him.

  62. Gravatar of Scott Freelander Scott Freelander
    4. August 2016 at 14:43

    When it comes to anarcho-capitalists, I don’t expect any logic or rationality from them at all, unless it’s David Friedman. Friedman’s actually a bright, thoughtful person who at least tries to follow the scientific method and root his perspectives in reality.

  63. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    4. August 2016 at 14:52

    @Steve
    I think the nuance about the commission is key here. It’s not fair to bake a cake, offer it in your store and then take the exact cake back just because a gay couple wants to buy it. I still think something like this should be totally legal but it’s definitely very disrespectful and stupid.

    The whole situation turns around when a commission is involved, as in this case. A gay couple that insists that a baker has to bake a cake for them according to their wishes even though the baker replies he has no interest in doing so is just being very disrespectful and has no decency what so ever. Would you do something like this? How extremist and stupid do you have to be to force something like this? That’s just heavy.

  64. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    4. August 2016 at 14:58

    @Tom Brown
    I don’t get your point. Johnson is competing against Trump and Hillary, not just against Trump. So he needs to be close to perfect to get some votes, otherwise most people won’t throw their vote away by voting for him.

  65. Gravatar of E. Harding E. Harding
    4. August 2016 at 14:59

    War, etc: My confidence that Trump will do the right thing is running at about 15%.

    Why? What in Trump’s statements and mannerisms could make you believe such idiocy? Trump is running on getting the U.S. out of unnecessary agreements and not intervening in unnecessary wars, as well as reducing tensions and improving relations with Russia, the world’s second-largest nuclear power. That’s a very strong signal that he’ll decrease the risk of nuclear (as well as conventional) war greatly, not increase it. Would Putin be for Trump if he thought nuclear confrontation was even slightly likely under him? No! He’s supporting Trump because such a thing is far, far more likely under Clinton! Trump had the best stated foreign policy of any candidate in either the Democratic or Republican primaries. He owns lots of assets overseas, and wants their value preserved. That’s why I voted for him. I trust Trump on this much better than I do Hillary Rotten Clinton (who was a disaster of Secretary of State, by the way, though not as much as Kerry, who would have been a disaster of a president, much worse than Bush II.

    In short, don’t be fooled by political style. Look at substance. And make up your goddamned minds!

  66. Gravatar of E. Harding E. Harding
    4. August 2016 at 15:02

    Also, societies can recover from nuclear war (look at Japan!). They usually don’t recover from bad institutions (look at Haiti!). Federal interference in freedom of contract is a style of policy that holds very, very dangerous precedent, which is why I rate its importance higher than Tom Brown does.

    Americans First!

    Make America Great Again!

  67. Gravatar of E. Harding E. Harding
    4. August 2016 at 15:03

    I hope Trump wins, BTW. So far, he’s holding up better than Rmoney in FiveThirtyEight’s NowCast, but not the Polls-Only model.

  68. Gravatar of Benny Lava Benny Lava
    4. August 2016 at 15:26

    “A Muslim (or Jewish) deli wouldn’t sell bacon to anyone. That’s the business model.

    Exactly. The business model of this bakery is not selling gay wedding cakes to anyone. Your example proves how hypocritical and irrational the ruling against the bakery is. The PC world has gone mad.”

    Interesting how libertarians on an Econ blog can’t see the fundamental difference between the two examples. Apparently there is no difference between a product and a customer. They are exactly the same thing to libertarians. Funny how libertarians are so quick to support the right of people to discriminate but where were they for equal access to things like marriage?

    It isn’t that all Republicans are racist. It is that all racists are Republicans. And it is no surprise that such an ideology like libertarianism is just another veneer of conservatism and is a haven for so many racists.

  69. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    4. August 2016 at 15:48

    –Why? What in Trump’s statements and mannerisms could make you believe such idiocy?

    For the same reason I wouldn’t trust L. Ron Hubbard (whom I’d actually trust more with nuclear weapons than Trump actually). So it’s some of that distrust, mixed with the distrust I feel for the competence and emotional stability of a filthy homeless man on the street corner yelling at the voices in his head and shaking his grimy fist at passers-bye. That homeless man is very un-PC, but that matters very very little to me in terms of assigning him trust. I guess that’s somehow more impressive to other people.

    All people (including politicians) lie. That doesn’t mean they’re all equally honest. Trump is off the charts dishonest, and doesn’t seem to have the mental faculties to remember what outrageous lies he told just 10 minutes ago. To ask me to believe anything he bellows at face value is an insult to our intelligence. If he’s just playing the part of a mentally deficient 3rd rate obvious huckster, con man, and mental midget with the vindictive personality of an overweight red haired beaten-by-his-racist-step-dad elementary school bully, then I agree, it’s a genius performance he’s putting on. Very convincing! In my estimation though, it’s no act.

    I wouldn’t loan the man $20 (no matter how much he swore up and down he was good for it, and that he just needed it to buy medicine for his sick mother) let alone trust him with the presidency. I can’t think of another politician I’ve encountered anytime in my life, running for any office in any party that I would say that about, except Trump.

  70. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    4. August 2016 at 15:54

    Here’s just a few of the reasons I have such a low opinion of Mr. Trump:
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/03/22/all-of-donald-trumps-four-pinocchio-ratings-in-one-place/

  71. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    4. August 2016 at 16:09

    … BTW, you arguing that countries can bounce back from nuclear war (just look at Japan!) is the first time I’ve actually had the feeling that you’ve just been trolling us with this pro-Trump nonsense the whole time.

  72. Gravatar of E. Harding E. Harding
    4. August 2016 at 16:53

    [Sigh.] Tom, Tom, Tom. Those so-called “fact-checks” are merely the sign of a dishonest media biased against an outspoken Republican front-runner (now nominee). Don’t you get it? The system’s rigged. The entire establishment is against Trump. Why? Because he threatens to expose them for what they are: ivory-tower provocateurs who don’t care about everyday Americans, don’t care about how many people they kill (whether directly or not), and don’t care about whether what they write is true.

    Yes, Trump lies. But, as I’ve said, there’s a Donald Trump standard in the media, and then there’s a standard for everybody else. The hour after Trump’s convention speech, NYT had a fact-checking section for it on its home page. The hour after Clinton’s speech -nothing but praise for Clinton and the Democrats, as well as some more neutral coverage. No “dark”, no “fact-checking”. The media is biased. It’s nuts. It’s in the tank for someone who would flood America with 120 million Mexicans, make Washington DC a state, and presumably make this country’s capital Mexico City.

    Now, look how much Clinton lies:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/08/04/recidivism-watch-clintons-repeated-claim-that-the-fbi-said-her-answers-were-truthful/?postshare=8931470338250258&tid=ss_tw

    She’s totally dishonest when it suits her. Same for Trump. Yet, “fact-checking” organizations are much harder on Trump than on Clinton. Why? ‘Cause they’re Democratic hacks. Hacks that deserve to be replaced by truly worthy men and women.

    Trump has been the captain behind the ship that is the Trump Organization for over 40 years. That’s a better standard than the Clintons have set for anything. He’s not a homeless man- he’s a real-estate developer! Homes are his business! He’s very rich, richer than you, richer than me, and richer than our no-longer-that-esteemed host. He’s as far from a homeless man as you can conceivably imagine! And he shows expert ability to manipulate and feel the pulse of public opinion, much superior to that of Rmoney, who only showed expert ability to manipulate and feel the pulse of money. And Trump is richer than Rmoney.

    “Trump is off the charts dishonest, and doesn’t seem to have the mental faculties to remember what outrageous lies he told just 10 minutes ago.”

    -What Trump said 20 or 30 years ago is exactly stuff he can say today. Yes, Trump doesn’t have the best memory. So what? His unchanging instincts compensate for it.

    He may not be honest and trustworthy. But he’s the only man who had the courage to say they’re bringing drugs, crime, and rapists. He’s the only man who had the courage to stand up to filthy Russophobia -and TRiUMPh. He’s the only man who had the courage to say George W. Bush didn’t keep us safe and (truthfully!) that George W. Bush lied America into the costly and unworthy Iraq War! None of the other candidates had the courage to do that! None of the other candidates had the courage to campaign on a shoestring budget (only Kasich campaigned on a more shoestring one) and TRiUMPh not just in his home state, but in dozens of others, from New Hampshire to Louisiana. He may not be honest and trustworthy -but he sees the nakedness of the emperor when the emperor parades before the world. Trump says the fact of his nakedness for all the world to hear! That is liberating. That is a sign of a man who is able to both bend reality to his will and let his will be bent by reality. This is a man who does not think the same thing today he did in 2011, without regard for what happened in 2014! This is a man who takes the facts of the real world into account more than any political dogma, more than any shibboleth of the mainstream media, more than any seductive tricks of the money power -and also just makes stuff up to make them look better for him.

    Now, if the establishment was doing a stellar job, if it had any logical consistency to it whatsoever, if it did not have a much, much shorter attention span Trump has regarding any issue, then perhaps it might be reasonable for it to condemn Trump as unworthy. But it’s not. The media does not remember Rmoney polled just as badly a week after the Democratic convention. The media does not remember its own reaction to a mother of a victim of a Muslim attack. The media does not remember Trump was not President when the Islamic State “emerged”, but Obama. The media doesn’t even remember the last Muslim terrorist attack, especially if it didn’t involve guns Hillary wants to ban! If that is the standard of the media, Trump’s attention span is positively amazing! He can remember Her vote for the Iraq War -which the media treats as a “meh”. He can remember how peaceful the Middle East was before Obama -which the media has not the least regard for. He can remember a period when America did not have any Muslim terrorist attacks, because there were no Muslims in the United States to commit them. He can remember a period when America had not only much stronger job growth than today, but actual productivity growth! The media forgets. Trump is a winner. A total winner who can restore America to its former glory, who can get it off its knees, and who can make America Great Again!

    Trump: he may not be the man we want. But he is the man we need.

    Make America Great Again!

    “… BTW, you arguing that countries can bounce back from nuclear war (just look at Japan!) is the first time I’ve actually had the feeling that you’ve just been trolling us with this pro-Trump nonsense the whole time.”

    -I’m not trolling, kidding, or joking. I am fully serious, in every way.

  73. Gravatar of Saturos Saturos
    4. August 2016 at 18:41

    Folks, I gotta tell ya, they’re coming for our fluids. Many people have been saying this, believe me.

  74. Gravatar of msgkings msgkings
    4. August 2016 at 19:04

    @Tom Brown: yeah he’s not joking, man. He’s got issues, and a 96 IQ. But before the internet all he could do is write letters, that would never get published.

  75. Gravatar of E. Harding E. Harding
    4. August 2016 at 19:11

    And msgkings has issues with trolling and impersonating people. My IQ is in the upper 120s, as I’ve said, and I was a child when the Internet emerged. I’ve never felt a need to write paper letters. Who reads those?

  76. Gravatar of E. Harding E. Harding
    4. August 2016 at 19:13

    BTW, what Russia policy does Sumner want? He never explained, just went after Trump while giving no details. Nuts!

  77. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    4. August 2016 at 19:19

    Trump vs Romney:
    https://twitter.com/TheFix/status/761388292231364608

  78. Gravatar of E. Harding E. Harding
    4. August 2016 at 20:11

    One week ago, Trump was polling better in FiveThirtyEight’s NowCast than Mitt Rmoney ever was, at any point in his loser campaign. Now, Trump’s polling in the NowCast a tad better than Mitt Rmoney was one week after the last day of the 2012 Democratic convention. Rmoneyplosion?

    BTW, Dukakis was polling similarly as Hillary Rotten Clinton one week after the last day of the Democratic convention. Bushplosion?

  79. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    4. August 2016 at 20:19

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6hpgrwGIww

  80. Gravatar of E. Harding E. Harding
    4. August 2016 at 20:37

    “Billionaire liberation front” and “candidate owned by the Top Ten Thousand” is hardly a good look for your woman -Crooked Hillary Rotten Clinton. Trump donated to Her. He knows how corrupt Her is.

  81. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    4. August 2016 at 20:41

    If you’re going to pick a billionaire to be your savior, why Trump? So many better choices. How about an actual billionaire for example? How many actual billionaires go around blathering and bellowing about how rich they are?

  82. Gravatar of Steve Steve
    4. August 2016 at 21:10

    “BTW, Dukakis was polling similarly as Hillary Rotten Clinton one week after the last day of the Democratic convention.”

    If Hillary decides to ride around in a tank as a campaign ploy, and then forgive the rapist and murderer of Bill Clinton, we can talk 😉

  83. Gravatar of Carl Carl
    4. August 2016 at 22:04

    Steve:

    You said: The problem with Libertarianism is you wouldn’t need any laws if two rights were never in conflict, e.g., my right to shoot my gun into the air in a crowd vs your right not to get murdered.

    What do you mean? Are you assuming that Libertarians don’t believe in a hierarchy of rights? Have you met a lot of Libertarians who have a problem figuring out which right takes precedence: the right to shoot a gun in a crowd or the right to exist.

  84. Gravatar of athreya athreya
    4. August 2016 at 22:30

    Scott, have you considered the possibility that Trumpistas are victims of water fluoridation?

  85. Gravatar of Postkey Postkey
    5. August 2016 at 01:01

    “Because there’s one Trump story the mainstream media isn’t talking about – how surprisingly well organized his campaign has become. And it’s showing up in his ballooning fundraising numbers.

    Trump raised $80 million in donations for his campaign and the GOP in July, his campaign announced Wednesday. The funds consist of $64 million through digital and direct-mail solicitations and $16 million through fundraising events hosted by Trump and the RNC.

    Maintaining his promise to fund his own campaign, Trump has donated another $2 million of his own money, bringing his total personal investment to $56 million, according to his aides.
    An increase in small dollar donations hint at a possibly huge voter turnout for Trump come November.”

  86. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    5. August 2016 at 01:13

    @Postkey
    People often say that Trump is a “con man”. But a con man is usually somebody who plays a confidence trick to steal a lot of money. Trump on the other hand is losing millions. If he’s really a con man he must be the worst con man ever.

  87. Gravatar of Ray Lopez Ray Lopez
    5. August 2016 at 02:54

    OT – I thought I was the first person to think of this, but a quick Google search shows: “Make America Grate Again | Facebook”

    Somebody has a Facebook page on this phrase.

  88. Gravatar of Bob Murphy Bob Murphy
    5. August 2016 at 04:19

    For the record, I am not defending Trump. I also think E. Harding is half trolling you guys, for what it’s worth.

    But some of your guys’ comments about the cake stuff are revealing. For example, Benny Lava wrote:

    Interesting how libertarians on an Econ blog can’t see the fundamental difference between the two examples. Apparently there is no difference between a product and a customer. They are exactly the same thing to libertarians.

    Guys, think back to the last time you went into a bakery, and just pointed to something ALREADY MADE and sitting in the case. You were like, “Hmm, I’ll take one of those blueberry muffins, and…how about that sticky bun?” And then, did the cashier say, “I bet you want to smear that on your gay lover, huh?!?!”

    Of course not, you guys. The issue here is not about Christian bakers refusing to sell standard products to homosexual customers. Indeed, I have even seen news interviews with distraught bakers (a young woman in her mid 20s I’d guess) saying, “We have plenty of gay customers. We have no problem with that. But we don’t want to be forced to participate in a ceremony that violates our deepest religious beliefs.”

    Also, when you guys think that it solves the problem to let the gay customers buy a plain cake and decorate it themselves: How many wedding cakes have you decorated in your kitchen? Are you serious? What about saying, “Black people can buy cars from Ford just like anybody else, but they have to assemble the parts in their garage”?

    Gary Johnson’s answer, and some of the commentary here, is totally missing the point, and doesn’t even make sense if you think about it for 2 minutes.

    Last thing on the alleged singling out of this particular sin (from a Biblical literalist’s POV): I agree that a lot of Bible-believing Christians emphasize homosexuality rather than other sins, and you can draw what you will from that. But do you think if a guy went into a Christian bakery and said, “I want a cake celebrating the one-year anniversary of my affair with my secretary,” that they’d be cool with that? THAT is the analog to a gay wedding cake, not “Selling pastries to an adulterer.”

  89. Gravatar of Bob Murphy Bob Murphy
    5. August 2016 at 04:20

    Also, some of you (including our host) are really concerned about the evil Trump who is considered the first use of nuclear weapons. Did you guys know that Gary Johnson also approves of the first-use of atomic weapons, even if it means melting thousands of children?

    It must be that you didn’t realize that. Now that I have pointed it out, I am sure Scott will stop supporting Johnson, after getting up from his swooning couch.

  90. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    5. August 2016 at 04:27

    Trump, the comedian, strikes again:

    “I’m not confident that we can trust the Russians and Vladimir Putin. You’ve got to go in there with some skepticism.”

    Maybe Putin is untrustworthy, maybe he’s Mother Teresa. After all these years you cannot be sure. The same is true for Erdogan, I guess. Maybe these guys are dictators, maybe they are flawless democrats. How should we know? It’s so hard to decide.

    And:

    Trump also forcibly denied that the US paid ransom to Iran after delivering $400 million on the same day that four US prisoners were freed in January.

    “We do not pay ransom. We didn’t here and we won’t in the future.”

    It’s like in a world of Orwell or Monty Python.

    Let’s not call ransom ransom anymore. Let’s call it “not-ransom”.

    http://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/04/politics/obama-trump-pentagon-isis/

  91. Gravatar of Philip Crawford Philip Crawford
    5. August 2016 at 05:19

    Scott, you’re going up against a very determined foe. Like this guy.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjEcj8KpuJw

  92. Gravatar of Winning Hearts and Minds at Sumner’s Blog Winning Hearts and Minds at Sumner’s Blog
    5. August 2016 at 05:19

    […] people in the comments at Sumner’s blog, is me doing so without you guys knowing about it. On this thread, Scott engaged in his shock, shock routine because Trump is proposing the first-use of nuclear […]

  93. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    5. August 2016 at 05:37

    Last thing on the alleged singling out of this particular sin (from a Biblical literalist’s POV): I agree that a lot of Bible-believing Christians emphasize homosexuality rather than other sins,

    Bob, practitioners of the other sins aren’t infiltrating their faculties and student bodies and trying to undermine the institutional mission of their schools, are not showing up at their speaking engagements and trying to shut them down, are not suing them, don’t have the judiciary in their pocket, and aren’t importuning legislatures to enfranchise the judiciary to harass them further. People antagonistic to the gay lobby soon discover that academic tenure doesn’t matter and that multi-year employment contracts don’t matter. Sodomy and it’s practitioners take up more space in the heads of evangelicals because those people are aggressive and narcissitic and readily suborn what should be common institutions. The churches get the brunt of it.

  94. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    5. August 2016 at 05:43

    Gay wedding cakes: I literally don’t care.

    Yeah, well somebody cares, Tom. That’s why, instead of doing the simple thing and calling up a different bakery, they hire a sleazy lawyer to kvetch in front of a sleazy judge. It’s unseemly and should require almost no thought at all for anyone outside our odious legal profession and outside the gay lobby itself to see that its unseemly, particularly people who fancy themselves devoted to ‘liberty’. Ayn Rand is dead. Gottfried Dietze is dead. Milton Friedman is dead. Richard Epstein is 73 years old. You’re left alone with with Thomas Woods, because ‘libertarianism’ in anyone else’s hands is humbug.

  95. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    5. August 2016 at 05:56

    Everyone, Thanks for confirming I’m on the right track with Johnson. We live in a country where 400,000 rot in prison because of an insane war on drugs. We live in a country where many thousands die each year due to bans on organ sales. And the worst you can come up with is Johnson’s views on wedding cakes? Is this a joke? Are you trolling me?

    Christian, You said:

    “I guess if you throw your vote away for a third party candidate you want at least somebody who is close to perfect.”

    Why is this so difficult to understand? Compared to Trump (or Hillary), Johnson is close to perfect.

    Bob, You said:

    “Trump says, “Yes I think Muslims should be forced to sell bacon sandwiches to customers. I mean, I don’t think they should have to take a bite! That would be wrong.””

    That’s a silly analogy and you must know it. It doesn’t apply at all to the case you sent me. Johnson doesn’t want to force anyone to sell bacon or wedding cakes. But he does think that if you do sell those things you should not tell gay or black people (or Muslims) that they are not able to shop in your store. If you feel otherwise about discrimination against gay or black people, then say so. Is there some “principle” here that says the 1964 Civil Rights law should be repealed? Do stores have unlimited rights as to who they serve?

    In addition, you didn’t even address my response, about the difference between one or two flaws, and one or two thousand flaws. Sorry, but bigots having their feelings hurt is not high on my list of problems—look up top on this comment to see what is.

    Bababooey, Wait, I thought some sort of independent commission set the times of the debate? Are you saying that commission is “rigged” by Hillary? 🙂

  96. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    5. August 2016 at 06:00

    Christian, I’m not sure what your last comment refers to. Are you discussing the tape that Trump says he watched, but everyone now agrees does not in fact exist? The one that shows he’s delusional, and just makes up stories? (as if we didn’t know) Or is it a different tape you are referring to?

  97. Gravatar of David R. Henderson David R. Henderson
    5. August 2016 at 06:06

    @Scott,
    Do stores have unlimited rights as to who they serve?
    Yes.
    But, by the way, you’re ignoring Bob Murphy’s argument.

  98. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    5. August 2016 at 06:48

    Johnson doesn’t want to force anyone to sell bacon or wedding cakes. But he does think that if you do sell those things you should not tell gay or black people (or Muslims) that they are not able to shop in your store. If you feel otherwise about discrimination against gay or black people, then say so. Is there some “principle” here that says the 1964 Civil Rights law should be repealed? Do stores have unlimited rights as to who they serve?

    See both Gottfried Dietze’s critique of anti-discrimination law and Richard Epstein’s. Bakery’s are not monopolies. They do not monopolize a niche market either.

    You might argue, in some haphazard way, that anti-discrimination law could be justified by reasons of state given the state of affairs in Mississippi in 1948. The trouble with that is that homosexuals are, if anything, an affluent group, and they certainly have official favor; there’s no sort of intellectual dishonesty the legal profession and slices of academe will not engage in to benefit them (though there are individual members of the bar and the faculty who might be straight up). A messy argument derived from reasons of state would only apply were the clients blacks in the Deep South and some adjacent areas, or perhaps aboriginals here, there, and the next place. You’d be hard put to find any ascribed group subject to official harassment in the manner that Southern blacks were in 1948 (and the worst feature of that had largely dissipated by that time).

  99. Gravatar of Scott Freelander Scott Freelander
    5. August 2016 at 06:53

    It’s amazing to me that in the 21st century, there are still people arguing against the limits of businesses discriminating against customers. Yes, it must be important enough to move heaven and earth to allow bigots to deny the occasional wedding cake to gay customers.

    You can tell a lot about a person’s understanding of issues by what they bother to focus their attention on, especially in the midst of much larger issues of much greater importance.

  100. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    5. August 2016 at 06:53

    We live in a country where 400,000 rot in prison because of an insane war on drugs.

    Spoken like a man who’s confident that every social cost associated with free trade in stupefacients will be levied on no one about whom he cares.

    The vast majority of the people sitting in the clink are cogs in the commercial traffick in street drugs – i.e. they’re associated with organized crime. That’s not a vocation which attracts sweet and lovable characters. The old Sicilianate mafia earned good coin before and after prohibition (and was never at home with the drug trade).

  101. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    5. August 2016 at 06:55

    It’s amazing to me that in the 21st century, there are still people arguing against the limits of businesses discriminating against customers. Yes, it must be important enough to move heaven and earth to allow big

    It’s only amazing to you because you have not one unconventional thought in your static filled head.

  102. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    5. August 2016 at 06:59


    Why is this so difficult to understand? Compared to Trump (or Hillary), Johnson is close to perfect.

    I assume you live in the battleground state called Virginia. I also assume you want to prevent Trump. So in your case voting for Johnson instead of Hillary wouldn’t be very smart, not to say stupid. Of course I totally support you in this case: Go on and vote for Johnson.


    Christian, I’m not sure what your last comment refers to.

    No, I’m referring to Obama. If Trump would say things like that the media outlets would hang, draw and quarter him. If Obama says it, they nearly became unconscious out of adoration. That’s extreme bias.


    Are you discussing the tape that Trump says he watched

    Another example of media bias. Instead of focusing on the story that Obama might pay ransom to Iran, the media focuses on the totally unimportant detail that Trump saw the wrong plane. They do this all the time. When the scandal around the DNC and Debbie Wasserman Schultz emerged, they focused on the detail that the emails might have been hacked by Russia (also known as shooting the messenger), instead of focusing on the actual scandal.

  103. Gravatar of Scott Freelander Scott Freelander
    5. August 2016 at 07:00

    David Henderson,

    Stores clearly do not have unlimited rights to decide who they serve, and shouldn’t. You’re a bright guy, but your strange libertarian purity has no place in modern society. This is a perfect (pun intended)example of perfectionism toward no good purpose run amok.

    Would you support allowing government employees to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, race, or religion in the provision of government services? If not, then it makes since to also forbid discrimination in the private provision of products and services, since there is no option to order a government-made wedding cake, for example.

    Yes, there is no monopoly on wedding cake baking in most towns in the US, but in some there very well may be.

  104. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    5. August 2016 at 07:01


    Do stores have unlimited rights as to who they serve?

    Yes they should have. But this is not even the point in this case.

    The bakery did not have gay wedding cakes to sell. The gay couple wanted to force the bakery into a
    commissional work and the judges supported them so far which is just so wrong on so many levels. If Johnson does not see this, he’s the wrong leader of the Libertarian party.


    is not high on my list of problems

    especially in the midst of much larger issues of much greater importance

    That’s just weak. “Arguments” like these are just red herrings. You can always point to issues that are supposedly more important. So what? That’s a classical red herring, a fallacy of relative privation, typically used when you have no real argument.

  105. Gravatar of Scott Freelander Scott Freelander
    5. August 2016 at 07:04

    Art,

    Honestly, you’re an idiotic loser, supporting an idiotic loser candidate who’s now rapidly sinking in the polls. If Trump ends up costing Republicans both houses of Congress due to his stupidity and general incompetence, you’ll either go silent about it or blame others.

    I hope you’ve donated money to his campaign, so that it’s going right to the bottom of the ocean where it belongs.

  106. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    5. August 2016 at 07:11


    Honestly, you’re an idiotic loser, supporting an idiotic loser

    A lovely argumentum ad hominem. Go on like this and you might make all fallacies out there in just one thread.

  107. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    5. August 2016 at 07:19


    Stores clearly do not have unlimited rights to decide who they serve, and shouldn’t.

    There’s no need to regulate this issue in the way it is regulated today. Stores that discriminate against customers are hurting themselves. Stores that don’t discriminate benefit. There’s really no need for the current overregulation.


    there is no monopoly on wedding cake baking in most towns in the US, but in some there very well may be.

    This poor couple. They could travel from Colorado to Massachusetts several times for their wedding and other things. But they weren’t able to go to another bakery in the very same city, most likely only a few blocks away. I’m really moved to tears.

  108. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    5. August 2016 at 07:22

    Stores clearly do not have unlimited rights to decide who they serve, and shouldn’t.

    Let’s hear it, Scott. A commercial establishment is not the water authority. It’s private property. Why does someone have a cause of action because I do not wish to do business with him? Where’s the tort?

    Honestly, you’re an idiotic loser, supporting an idiotic loser candidate who’s now rapidly sinking in the polls.

    C’mon Scott. Think outside that box you’ve climbed into. This isn’t some esoteric question of epistemology or philosophy of science. Tell me where the tort is. Why do your preferred clientele get to hire lawyers to boss merchants around on their property?

  109. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    5. August 2016 at 07:29

    Yes, there is no monopoly on wedding cake baking in most towns in the US, but in some there very well may be.

    I lived in a town with 3,600 people in it. It was able to support two pharmacies, two outlets for baked goods, and a confectionary store to boot. People who live in the countryside have quite different commuting and shopping patterns than people who live in town and will drive to multiple small centers for their shopping. So, your concern would be valid for the tiny sliver of the population who live in service villages or in towns with fewer than 3,600 people in them. That same town also had scads of people who routinely drove to suburban grocery emporia 30 miles away. So, freedom of contract and freedom of association have to be trashed to please dykes who live in small towns and do not drive. Sounds perfectly sensible.

  110. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    5. August 2016 at 07:34

    Would you support allowing government employees to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, race, or religion in the provision of government services?

    Conscientious civil servants do nothing not a function of the enabling legislation which erects the agency for which they work.

    If not, then it makes since to also forbid discrimination in the private provision of products and services, since there is no option to order a government-made wedding cake, for example.

    I see you have a taste for the non sequitur.

  111. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    5. August 2016 at 07:46

    The more you think about this case the funnier it gets. The couple apparently took no issue in traveling all they way from Colorado to Massachusetts because the state of Colorado refused to marry them.

    But when a little bakery refused to make gay weddings cakes for them they flipped. I assume it was the final straw that broke their backs. The icing on the gay wedding cake, if you will.

  112. Gravatar of Jim S. Jim S.
    5. August 2016 at 07:49

    I’ve been waiting for Mankiw to come out against Trump. He did this morning in his blog.

  113. Gravatar of Steve Steve
    5. August 2016 at 08:02

    “We live in a country where 400,000 rot in prison because of an insane war on drugs. We live in a country where many thousands die each year due to bans on organ sales. And the worst you can come up with is Johnson’s views on wedding cakes?”

    China has solved this problem by mass incarcerating Falun Gong, then executing them and harvesting their organs. Oh wait, I got that in the wrong order: they harvest the organs first, then let the Falun Gong die.

    Unfortunately for the US for-profit prison sector, this wouldn’t work in America. Most of the prisoners’ addictions have already destroyed their organs. A ‘poison pill’ so to speak. Oh, it also wouldn’t work because we have (some) morals.

    As for gay wedding cakes, I couldn’t care less if it were just about cake. The problem is that these issues are being used to subvert the 14th amendment. In time, the 14th will be used for men peeing in the little girls room, mandatory voter registration and mandatory mailing of early ballots, equal school funding, affirmative action and finally equal protection of outcomes for race and gender income averages at private enterprises. Every manner of social redistribution could theoretically be adjudicated under equal protection.

  114. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    5. August 2016 at 08:03

    If things carry on like this, Trump might get so frustrated that he actually quits. Maybe that’s the arrangement with Hillary since the very beginning. Destroy the GOP and then be the very first to leave the sinking ship.

  115. Gravatar of Carl Carl
    5. August 2016 at 08:17

    Bob Murphy:

    Gary Johnson also approves of the first-use of atomic weapons, even if it means melting thousands of children?

    That’s a stretch. He said he won’t engage in second-guessing the Hiroshima decision and that, given the time it occurred, he wouldn’t apologize now. That’s a far sight from your claim that he supports first use today.

  116. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    5. August 2016 at 08:23

    the worst you can come up with is Johnson’s views on wedding cakes? Is this a joke? Are you trolling me?

    Hahaha!… Now you know how I felt when Harding argued to me that countries (Japan) can bounce back after nuclear war, (so why all the worry?)

  117. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    5. August 2016 at 08:45

    And the worst you can come up with is Johnson’s views on wedding cakes? Is this a joke? Are you trolling me?

    Johnson’s views on wedding cakes indicate that he doesn’t subscribe to principles such as ‘freedom of contract’ and ‘freedom of association’. Just why I would vote for a soi-disant libertarian who sides with predatory ‘public interest’ lawyers and narcissists who hire them over merchants minding their own business?

  118. Gravatar of msgkings msgkings
    5. August 2016 at 08:57

    “Just why I would vote for a soi-disant libertarian who sides with predatory ‘public interest’ lawyers and narcissists who hire them over merchants minding their own business?”

    Because he’s still better than the alternatives, especially on issues of far greater import? I honestly don’t know Trump’s position on Nazi/gay wedding cakes. Does it really matter?

    For the record I actually agree with you and others on this one, I’m a centrist pragmatist, pretty much anti-ideological. I don’t think it’s right to force a baker to do commissioned work for someone they don’t want to. Go to another baker.

  119. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    5. August 2016 at 08:58

    I’ve been waiting for Mankiw to come out against Trump. He did this morning in his blog.

    Mankiw put his John Henry on this missive:

    http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1727

    Now read it and tell everyone their conception of what optimal immigration levels are.

    No clue why you’d have expected him to support Trump.

  120. Gravatar of E. Harding E. Harding
    5. August 2016 at 09:03

    “Compared to Trump (or Hillary), Johnson is close to perfect.”

    -No, it’s abundantly clear that he’s not, except to left-leaning academics. He’s a dime-store Donald Trump without any chance of winning. Thus, he is not even remotely worthy to waste one’s vote on.

    Bob Murphy, David Henderson, and Art Deco are right; Scott Sumner is wrong.

    “I also think E. Harding is half trolling you guys, for what it’s worth.”

    -That would be explicitly contradicted by my statement

    “I’m not trolling, kidding, or joking. I am fully serious, in every way.”

  121. Gravatar of E. Harding E. Harding
    5. August 2016 at 09:08

    BTW, Trump has the same chance of quitting Mitt Rmoney did in 2012.

    I still say he’ll probably win.

  122. Gravatar of Edward Edward
    5. August 2016 at 10:04

    E Harding

    Trump is a monster. A tyrant loving, bigoted jingoistic, mercantilist, corrupt thieving ( how he stiffs contractors) demagogue. It speaks to your deplorabl mental faculties how you would support this man

  123. Gravatar of dirk dirk
    5. August 2016 at 10:20

    Longtime reader. Scott, a number of years back you argued on a post here that who wins the presidency doesn’t really matter. You argued that it probably didn’t make any difference that Bush instead of Gore won the presidency in 2000, because Gore would probably have also invaded Iraq. Because the US behaves as the US behaves, so the person who is president doesn’t matter much.

    Have you changed your view on this matter?

  124. Gravatar of Philip Crawford Philip Crawford
    5. August 2016 at 10:40

    Trump fans in this thread pointing out the spec in one guy’s eye, ignoring the log in another.

    Also, Mankiw? That guy is a hack! His opinion means nothing! It’s only a flesh wound!!

  125. Gravatar of E. Harding E. Harding
    5. August 2016 at 10:46

    “A tyrant loving, bigoted jingoistic, mercantilist, corrupt thieving ( how he stiffs contractors) demagogue.”

    -Word-thinker.

    “Trump fans in this thread pointing out the spec in one guy’s eye, ignoring the log in another.”

    -You mean Johnson and Clinton fans, right?

  126. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    5. August 2016 at 11:27

    This is what happens when you trust Donald J. Trump:
    http://www.redstate.com/streiff/2016/08/05/donald-trump-really-ripping-small-donors/
    Trump’s favorite business model. Cheat the little guy out of his money, even small dollar amount campaign contributors!

  127. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    5. August 2016 at 11:33

    Trump fans in this thread pointing out the spec in one guy’s eye, ignoring the log in another.

    If I’m being asked to cast a protest vote, what’s the content of that vote? Gary Johnson’s a tedious business Republican who has the same reflexes as any business-as-usual Republican in his class and age group. I may wish to protest, but when I do, I do not say that. Gary Johnson doesn’t give a rip about people like me any more than Scott Freelander does.

    Also, Mankiw? That guy is a hack! His opinion means nothing! It’s only a flesh wound!!

    Mankiw was Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers a dozen years ago. I’m not a policy-maker and I have no need of his counsel in these regards. He’s not my dissertation adviser. He’s not my brother. Why would I pay him any mind? He does not share my interests or convictions, and he never did. Were Peter Kreeft to endorse Hilligula I’d be poleaxed. Mankiw’s just telling me he values open borders uber alles, just like Cowen / Tabarrok / Caplan. I don’t care about that. I’m against it.

  128. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    5. August 2016 at 11:40

    Scott, what’s you opinion of Trump’s economic team:
    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CpGLrngXgAUpYdC.jpg:large

  129. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    5. August 2016 at 11:48

    This is what happens when you trust Donald J. Trump:
    http://www.redstate.com/streiff/2016/08/05/donald-trump-really-ripping-small-donors/
    Trump’s favorite business model. Cheat the little guy out of his money, even small dollar amount campaign contributors!

    It doesn’t seem to have occurred to either Erick Erikson or Tom Brown just to call your card issuer and stop the transactions.

    http://time.com/money/4440656/cancel-donald-trump-recurring-contribution/

  130. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    5. August 2016 at 11:54

    Trump & Coulter at cross purposes: dueling endorsements and rallies tonight (Trump endorses Ryan while Ann rallies with Nehlen against Ryan):
    http://www.redstate.com/streiff/2016/08/05/breaking-trump-will-reportedly-make-endorsement-paul-ryanpaul-nehlen-race-tonight/

  131. Gravatar of Patrick R. Sullivan Patrick R. Sullivan
    5. August 2016 at 12:53

    Nobody does it better;

    http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2016-08-03.html

    ————–quote————
    If the U.S. Constitution required us to admit more than 100,000 Muslims a year — as we do — we’d already be living in Pakistan, and Khan wouldn’t have had to move to get that nice feeling of home. So the “argument” part of Khan’s point is gibberish.

    Luckily, Khan had Part Two: His son died in Iraq, whereas Donald Trump does not have a son who died in Iraq, so he can’t say anything.

    Yes, a candidate for president of the United States is supposed to be prohibited from discussing a dangerous immigration program because Khan’s son was one of fourteen (14!) Muslim servicemen killed by other Muslims in our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s why we’re obligated to import yet more Muslims – including, undoubtedly, some just like the ones who killed his son. Q.E.D.!

    If you think that doesn’t make any sense, keep your yap shut, unless you lost a child in Iraq, too.

    …. After Trump somehow got the crazy idea that a presidential candidate was allowed to discuss government policies and proposed a temporary ban on Muslim immigration — which, by the way, is perfectly constitutional — the entire media and political class erupted in a sputtering rage.

    …. Does anyone know what Khan thinks of gays? How about miniskirts? Alcohol? Because I gather we’re going to have to turn all our policies over to him, too. What have you sacrificed, Barney Frank??

    …. But as long as they brought it up, if only people who lost children in our wars may discuss public policy, then only they should vote, not only on how many more Muslim immigrants this country needs, but on all government policies. What has Chuck Todd sacrificed? Have any current members of The New York Times editorial board ever lost a son in war? (Fighting on the American side.)

    The inevitable conclusion to the hysteria over Khan is that only those who have worn the uniform and heard shots fired in anger can vote in our elections. Hello, media? Hey — where’d everybody go?
    —————-endquote—————

  132. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    5. August 2016 at 13:35

    Mankiw on Trump:
    https://twitter.com/JohnJHarwood/status/761546863417761792?lang=en

  133. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    5. August 2016 at 13:38

    It doesn’t seem to have occurred to either Erick Erikson or Tom Brown just to call your card issuer and stop the transactions.

    Art, you’re absolutely right: that’s what I’d do, but it did occur to me. However, why is it like that? That’s how a shady outfit does things. Just got to expect that kind of thing from Trump? Should’ve known better? If a company treats me like that, I never do business with them again.

  134. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    5. August 2016 at 13:42

    -That would be explicitly contradicted by my statement

    “I’m not trolling, kidding, or joking. I am fully serious, in every way.”

    Exactly what a troll would write! ;^)

  135. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    5. August 2016 at 14:28

    However, why is it like that?

    Because they hired a careless contractor to do the work or assigned it to a careless employee.

  136. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    5. August 2016 at 14:39

    Because they hired a careless contractor to do the work or assigned it to a careless employee.

    But I thought Trump promises to only hire “the best people!” If this was one of two or three similar things on his record, I’d be inclined cut him some slack, but this seems like a long term pattern with him. Again, I wouldn’t loan the man $20 bucks. You just gotta expect you’ll never see it again.

    BTW, is there any hard evidence he followed through on his claim that he converted his $50 million loan to his campaign into a contribution? Last I checked he claimed he did (like he claims to contribute to charities), yet there was no evidence he actually followed through. If that’s the case then a good portion of those ~$25 contributions will be going right back into his personal coffers, won’t they?

  137. Gravatar of msgkings msgkings
    5. August 2016 at 15:13

    @Patrick Sullivan: all that verbiage obscures the fact that if Trump had just ignored Khan’s DNC speech then none of this would be discussed and the media wouldn’t be bloviating about it.

    I just read the article in the New Yorker about the ghostwriter of The Art of The Deal, and it’s just so obvious what Trump is about. He’s not complicated, he’s not clever, he’s very obviously what he is. There are some people who just aren’t meant to be political leaders, he’s one of them. We can aim higher.

    Clinton is almost as bad. But that’s the choice isn’t it?

  138. Gravatar of Bob Murphy Bob Murphy
    5. August 2016 at 16:21

    Scott, I realize you are fighting an n-front battle and it might be hard to keep track of each person’s particular stance. I AGREE with you that Gary Johnson would have much better policies, by light years, than Trump or Clinton.

    However, I think Alex Tabarrok would be better still. So why am I going to spend time telling people about Johnson? He’s not going to win.

    And, he’s not even a coherent expositor of libertarianism. His stuff on the cake issue is truly incoherent. Furthermore, he can’t even bring himself to criticize the first use of atomic weapons that killed thousands of children.

    So that’s why I bring up this stuff, since you think your opponents are moral monsters and/or idiots, when it’s really a matter of degree. Some people think Trump is better than Clinton and make excuses for him just the way you do for Johnson.

  139. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    5. August 2016 at 16:57


    he can’t even bring himself to criticize the first use of atomic weapons that killed thousands of children.

    Think of the children! You could not write “humans” or “people”, you had to write “children”, didn’t you? That’s an argumentum ad passiones. We are making good progress on our list.

    Johnson gave exactly the right answer by the way: “Given that so many lives were lost and we were at war, and this brought an end, I certainly don’t want to engage in second guessing.”

    It’s also so weird that people are always talking about Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Japan was heavily bombed during the whole war. Tokyo alone was bombed a dozen times. The bombing of Tokyo in one night in March 1945 was the single deadliest air raid in world history, surpassing Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki easily. Think of the children!

  140. Gravatar of E. Harding E. Harding
    5. August 2016 at 17:45

    “all that verbiage obscures the fact that if Trump had just ignored Khan’s DNC speech then none of this would be discussed and the media wouldn’t be bloviating about it.”

    -Not true. The media would be using the Khans to condemn Trump. Trump didn’t let that happen unanswered. He should have been much, much tougher on the Khans! He was too soft!

    Also, Sumner here just proved he is more pothead-lover than libertarian.

  141. Gravatar of Bob Murphy Bob Murphy
    5. August 2016 at 17:51

    Christian List, Scott has gone berserk over Donald Trump for saying he could imagine circumstances in which it would be OK to use nuclear weapons first, and for wanting to kill the families of terrorists.

    So, you don’t think it the least bit odd that Scott’s own preferred candidate is OK with first-use of atomic weapons to kill thousands of children? And that Scott didn’t even bother to address that, such was the triviality of this issue? (In fairness maybe he didn’t see me mention it above.)

    I understand if people are OK with a-bombing Nagasaki, and I understand if people go nuts and call it a war crime. What I am not OK with is people saying anyone who supports Trump for liking first-use of nukes is a moral monster, but having no problem with Johnson liking first-use of the A-bomb.

  142. Gravatar of Patrick R. Sullivan Patrick R. Sullivan
    6. August 2016 at 04:23

    ‘@Patrick Sullivan: all that verbiage obscures the fact that if Trump had just ignored Khan’s DNC speech then none of this would be discussed and the media wouldn’t be bloviating about it.’

    The Nattering Nabobs of Negativism?

    Do you remember who won that confrontation, on election day?

  143. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    6. August 2016 at 04:43

    I agree with you. We see this kind of hypocrisy oftentimes. If Trump is saying certain things certain people (especially in the media) hang, draw and quarter him. If politicians like Obama or Hillary or Johnson are saying similar things the very same people react very differently.

    On Facebook I like to use quotes by Obama and claim Trump said it. The comments usually turn very negative (“What an idiot, what a monster!”). Then I reveal my “mistake” and that’s usually the point were the very same people pull out all kinds of weird explanations why the quote isn’t that bad after all.

    Nuclear weapons are a good example how Obama is ruling by the way. He loves to talk about extremely unrealistic goals like a nuclear-free world. But he never takes any actual steps that are pragmatic and achievable like adopting the NFU policy for example. That’s hypocrisy at its very best.

  144. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    6. August 2016 at 06:49

    Everyone, I actually don’t have firm views on exactly which civil rights laws are appropriate. I’m a pragmatist, and favor the laws where they make things better. There is no such thing as natural rights, just pragmatic policies. Is it possible that civil rights laws occasionally make things worse, as Epstein and others sometimes suggest? Of course it’s possible. But that has no bearing on whether the presidential election should be fought over wedding cakes.

    Here’a a typical (white) right wing commenter on my blog:

    “Wedding cake laws are a horrible infringement on freedom, a monstrous crime. Jefferson owned slaves? A minor flaw in an otherwise sterling libertarian career.”

    And no, I’m not making that up. Less than a month ago multiple libertarians were making exactly that argument about Jefferson, in the comment sections over here.

    David, I don’t agree. For instance, stores cannot refuse to serve blacks.

    And how did I ignore Bob?

    Christian, No I live in Massachusetts. And Virginia is a blue state, it’s not a battleground state.

    You said:

    “That’s just weak. “Arguments” like these are just red herrings. You can always point to issues that are supposedly more important. So what? That’s a classical red herring, a fallacy of relative privation, typically used when you have no real argument.”

    Actually just the opposite is true. Wise people understand that politics is about the relative merits of different candidates, different parties, different ideologies. In politics, perfection does not exist. To obsess over one trivial issue while ignoring monstrous crimes in other areas is to show a lack of wisdom.

    dirk, I said that presidents have relatively little impact, and I still believe that. The main reason I’ve opposed Trump all along is that I see him trying to transform the GOP into France’s National Front. I’m very worried about that transformation.

    I would also say that Trump’s mind-boggling level of incompetence, far outside the mainstream, makes this election at least somewhat more consequential. Although even with Trump I think the probability of extreme outcomes like starting a nuclear war or expelling 11 million people from America, is quite small.

    Tom, I don’t know most of those people. Thus I have no opinion.

    Bob, I have no problem with Johnson’s position on Hiroshima. First use may have made sense in 1945; it makes no sense today. We live in a very different world from the one we lived in in 1945. As an analogy, I would have opposed all gun control laws in 1800. Today I just oppose most gun control laws, and favor those that restrict extremely dangerous guns. Context matters.

    You said:

    “So that’s why I bring up this stuff, since you think your opponents are moral monsters and/or idiots, when it’s really a matter of degree. Some people think Trump is better than Clinton and make excuses for him just the way you do for Johnson.”

    That’s inaccurate. I think people (including some of my commenters) who support Trump as their first choice are bullies, morons, and bigots. I would never make that claim about people who find Trump the lesser of evils in comparison to Hillary. Lots of smart people feel that way.

  145. Gravatar of E. Harding E. Harding
    6. August 2016 at 10:00

    “And Virginia is a blue state, it’s not a battleground state.”

    -It was Jefferson’s home state. What kind of blue state is that? Yes, all of its elected statewide officials are Democrats. But it has a Republican (66-34) state House, a Republican (21 to 19) state Senate, and out 8 of its 11 U.S. House members are Republicans.

    Now, sure, you could say pretty much the same thing about Michigan. But Michigan didn’t vote Republican in every election between 1968 and 2004. From that point of view, Virginia looks more like Indiana than Michigan. I suspect it’s in-between, and if it’s in-between, it’s a battleground. In any case, a smaller percentage of Virginia Whites than Indiana Whites voted for Obama in 2012.

    “who support Trump as their first choice are bullies, morons, and bigots”

    -Whoa, whoa, whoa, who said Trump was my first choice? I’d much prefer an Amash, a Labrador, or a Massie. Even a Lee would do. But they didn’t run! Instead, we got a whole batch of cookie-cutter generic Republican. Trump was clearly superior to all of them.

    “Wedding cake laws are a horrible infringement on freedom, a monstrous crime. Jefferson owned slaves? A minor flaw in an otherwise sterling libertarian career.”

    -That is an exaggeration of what we said, you know? Jefferson did not have a sterling libertarian career (though he was a libertarian of sorts), and wedding cake restrictions might be a pretty bad infringement on business owners’ freedom, but nobody called them a “monstrous crime”.

    “But that has no bearing on whether the presidential election should be fought over wedding cakes.”

    -It’s not. It’s being fought between stupid foreign policy and smart foreign policy, between judges that actually read what words say and apply them and those who overlay their will onto them. This election is a no-brainer.

    “First use may have made sense in 1945; it makes no sense today. We live in a very different world from the one we lived in in 1945.”

    -What kind of reasoning is that? Concretely, how is today’s situation different from that of 1945?

    “I would also say that Trump’s mind-boggling level of incompetence, far outside the mainstream, makes this election at least somewhat more consequential.”

    -Every single incompetent thing Trump did pales in comparison to Hillary’s foreign policy, Her lack of results in the Senate, Her terrible handling of healthcare reform in the 1990s, and Her shockingly incompetent handling of classified information. If Hillary Rotten Clinton isn’t competent enough to handle classified information, she’s not competent enough to handle nuclear weapons. The former probably didn’t get anyone killed. The latter could.

    “Although even with Trump I think the probability of extreme outcomes like starting a nuclear war or expelling 11 million people from America, is quite small.”

    -What’s “extreme” about kicking out the illegals? Nothing! They weren’t invited here in the first place! The risk of nuclear war with Trump is much smaller than that with all those other GOP politicos, especially Rubio and Christie.

    “I’m very worried about that transformation.”

    -Muslim terrorist attacks? Meh. GOP actually starting to care about the American people? “I’m very worried about that”.

    Pathetic.

    “To obsess over one trivial issue while ignoring monstrous crimes in other areas is to show a lack of wisdom.”

    -My, my, my, my, my. And you, Scott, have shown a great lack of wisdom over this past year.

  146. Gravatar of E. Harding E. Harding
    6. August 2016 at 10:02

    “For instance, stores cannot refuse to serve blacks.”

    -Why not?

  147. Gravatar of msgkings msgkings
    6. August 2016 at 10:06

    @E. Harding: typical 96 IQ post. I wish Trump hit back at the Khans harder too, he’d be even lower in the polls.

  148. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    6. August 2016 at 10:18

    I’m a pragmatist, and favor the laws where they make things better. There is no such thing as natural rights, just pragmatic policies.

    At this point, you’re begging for Major Freedom to take a verbal howitzer to you.

  149. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    6. August 2016 at 10:21

    And Virginia is a blue state, it’s not a battleground state.

    Have you informed the Republican majorities in the upper house and the lower house of the Virginia legislature of this?

  150. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    6. August 2016 at 10:22

    David, I don’t agree. For instance, stores cannot refuse to serve blacks.

    You’re confounding the positive law with the principles which should animate the positive law. In a free society, you don’t have a cause of action when someone declines to do business with you and tells you to get off his property. It’s his property.

  151. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    6. August 2016 at 10:24

    Actually just the opposite is true. Wise people understand that politics is about the relative merits of different candidates, different parties, different ideologies. In politics, perfection does not exist. To obsess over one trivial issue while ignoring monstrous crimes in other areas is to show a lack of wisdom.

    You’re suggesting a protest vote, not a ballot for a candidate who could ever be elected. Unless Trump and Hilligula are both run over by trucks, the Johnson campaign is trolling for protest votes.

  152. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    6. August 2016 at 10:26

    I would also say that Trump’s mind-boggling level of incompetence, far outside the mainstream, makes this election at least somewhat more consequential.

    His holdings are worth $4.5 bn per Forbes. Satisfactory performance for an incompetent.

  153. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    6. August 2016 at 10:32

    “Wedding cake laws are a horrible infringement on freedom, a monstrous crime. Jefferson owned slaves? A minor flaw in an otherwise sterling libertarian career.”

    And no, I’m not making that up.

    You’re supplying a tendentious paraphrase rather than quoting an actual person, so, yes you are making it up.

  154. Gravatar of msgkings msgkings
    6. August 2016 at 11:36

    @Art Deco:

    Wealth = competence for presidency? Steve Ballmer for President! After all he’s worth many times more than Trump, and he’s younger.

    For a guy who spams others’ comboxes as much as you do, you sure are terrible at it.

  155. Gravatar of msgkings msgkings
    6. August 2016 at 11:38

    “You’re supplying a tendentious paraphrase rather than quoting an actual person, so, yes you are making it up.”

    You do this all the time. Typical hypocrisy.

  156. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    6. August 2016 at 12:46

    I have no problem with Johnson’s position on Hiroshima. First use may have made sense in 1945; it makes no sense today. We live in a very different world from the one we lived in in 1945. As an analogy, I would have opposed all gun control laws in 1800. Today I just oppose most gun control laws, and favor those that restrict extremely dangerous guns. Context matters.

    This ladies and gentlemen is what is called a cop out.

    Instead of admitting one is making an inconsistent argument concerning “first use” nuclear weapons, we are instead told that the inconsistency is not an inconsistency at all, because of what year it is.

    Nuclear weapon first usage in 1945? Justified.

    Nuclear weapon first usage in 1945 + 71 years? Who is advocating it again? Is it Trump or Johnson? Johnson? Justified. Trump? Not justified.

    Innocent people’s safety from nuclear weapons matters more or less depending on Sumner’s politics.

    I think it is justified to start calling this blog “gross”. Like disgusting gross.

  157. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    6. August 2016 at 13:00

    Japan was not a mortal threat to America in 1945.

    If Sumner actually believes that melting the skins off of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilian lives with nuclear weapons is morally justified, then he is worse than Trump.

  158. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    6. August 2016 at 13:02

    At least until Trump says he supports such a thing as well,which won’t surprise me.

  159. Gravatar of Benny Lava Benny Lava
    6. August 2016 at 13:58

    Bob Murphy you are a liar. You said “The issue here is not about Christian bakers refusing to sell standard products to homosexual customers.”

    Wrong! That is exactly the issue. Someone walks into a bakery and asks “do you sell wedding cakes” and the baker says “yes”. Then the baker refuses to bake it because the customer is gay. This is discrimination no different than a whites only counter and you know it. No one is telling a baker they have to make a different product than the one they already make. Why is why your analogy about a halal deli (halal was the word you were looking for by the way) is mendacious at best and retarded at worst.

    Like I said not all libertarians are racists but boy do racists have a lot of libertarian principles.

  160. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    6. August 2016 at 14:01

    This is discrimination no different than a whites only counter and you know it.

    You’re on the baker’s property. You’re asking to do business with the baker. Why is he not free to refuse and tell you to leave?

  161. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    6. August 2016 at 15:41

    Benny Lava:

    You are being very dishonest. The issue and is not what you say it is. Murphy quoted the bakery saying “We have plenty of gay customers. We have no problem with that. But we don’t want to be forced to participate in a ceremony that violates our deepest religious beliefs.”

    Contrary to your lies and deceit, it is not about selling or not selling cakes to gay people. It is about being forced to participate in certain activities in which creating cakes is a part.

    There is absolutely nothing wrong in choosing to not interact with anyone else for any reason whatsoever. Your body is your own.

    The only reason why you are using racism as a card is because it is permitted in the peaceful form within the ethic of individual liberty which is what you hate and wish to destroy to satisfy your own egoism.

    Orange hairists, small tittyists, big assists, ugly facists, stupid mindedists, every “ist” of the peaceful form is permitted in libertarianism.

    But you only choose race because you cannot refute libertarianism argumentatively so you latch onto what you hope will be a popular mob rule way to suppress it.

    You’re just a hack.

  162. Gravatar of Benny Lava Benny Lava
    6. August 2016 at 16:14

    And Art Deco proves my point. Thank you.

    “Orange hairists, small tittyists, big assists, ugly facists, stupid mindedists, every “ist” of the peaceful form is permitted in libertarianism.”

    Major Moron can’t even write coherent sentences anymore. I remember when he wrote long coherent crap without typos. Now this deconstructionist gibberish? Sad isn’t it?

  163. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    6. August 2016 at 17:18

    Benny Lava just confirmed he is a hack.

    And a whiner too.

  164. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    6. August 2016 at 17:26

    According to SJW wannabe hack Benny Lava, it is immoral for men to discriminate against men when choosing women as marriage partners, and immoral for women to discriminate against women when choosing men as marriage partners.

    Benny wakes up each morning full of hate and anger because most men and women in the world are sexist.

    Oh the horrors of individuals being the deciders of who those individuals deal with. It would be much better if these decisions were forced on some individuals by other individuals.

  165. Gravatar of Benny Lava Benny Lava
    6. August 2016 at 18:42

    So Major Freedumb thinks romantic relationships are the exact same thing as a commercial transaction? How very telling. You must be very lonely.

  166. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    6. August 2016 at 19:13

    So Major Freedumb thinks romantic relationships are the exact same thing as a commercial transaction? How very telling. You must be very lonely.

    The nature of the ‘relationship’ is immaterial. The question at hand is the liberty to refuse to transact. It’s pretty straightforward. Sumner the soi-disant libertarian has switched gears and now invokes some sort of utilitarian calculus wherein the law makes things ‘better’ or ‘worse’ (which raises the question of what’s one or the other).

    What the last several years have done is to make manifest what seemed rather abstract bloodless when Dietze was critiquing anti-discrimination law back in 1968: that compelling person A to associate with person B could not help but be an ugly business. The ugliness was partially concealed when the supposed beneficiary had taken a great deal of abuse from law enforcement and the courts and from local bullies who knew that law enforcement and the courts were not impartial. It was concealed as well because for more than eighty years caste regulations had been written into statutory law which had introduced a mess of petty coercion into the warp and woof of everyday life.

    What the last several years have also done is demonstrated that anti-discrimination law is yet another opportunity for lawyers to rape businessmen, as if there were not enough such opportunities as is.

  167. Gravatar of Benny Lava Benny Lava
    6. August 2016 at 19:19

    It is interesting that guys like Bob Murphy and Major Freedom think it is okay to discriminate against gay marriage but think it is not okay to discriminate against miscegenation even though the jurisprudence for the former stems directly from the latter. And, to try and argue their case they make a lot of apples to oranges comparisons.

    I suspect that what is really going on is that the Major and Mr Murphy think gay marriage in general is bad and should have no formal legal existence, and thus think gay wedding cakes are bad and should be unenforceable by law.

    At least some people like Art have the decency to admit they think discriminination should be legal.

  168. Gravatar of Bob Murphy Bob Murphy
    7. August 2016 at 05:46

    Benny Lava, of course MF and I think discrimination should be legal. We believe people should have the right to do with their property want they want. Is this really so difficult?

    When Scott above asked by what “principle” (his quotation marks) this would be justified, the answer is “the non-aggression principle,” which literally at least one million self-described libertarians around the world would say is the foundation of their philosophy.

    Look, suppose I said I believed in freedom of the press. Would you and Scott say, “Oh, so I guess it’s okay for people to print copies of *Mein Kampf*?!! Do you know how many people Hitler killed? I can’t believe the nutjobs you find on the internet these days!” ?

    Last thing, for the record, for those who are lurking: It is completely inaccurate to say the wedding cake thing is about “denying sales to gay people.” Have any of you ever in your life been in a bakery, seen a guy trying to buy a pastry, and heard the cashier ask, “Just double-checking: You like girls, right?”

    Of course not. There are Bible-believing Christians who sincerely believe (and you can think they’re nuts if you want) that marriage, by definition, is between a man and a woman.

    Look, suppose a brother and a sister have for years been buying pastries from a bakery. Then one day they say, “We are marrying each other, and want you to bake a cake for us to celebrate the event.” The owner says, “Yikes, uh, sorry I just am not comfortable doing that, please ask someone else to do this.”

    According to Benny Lava, this baker refuses to sell to siblings, and anyone commenter who supported this anti-sibling stance would be described as racist. (Really, go look above at his comments, that is how he has been handling himself on this discussion.)

    I understand most people reading this don’t agree with my conclusions, but I hope you can at least appreciate that it has been difficult for me to argue with Scott and Benny Lava, when they apparently have no interest in even correctly framing my position.

  169. Gravatar of Philippe Philippe
    7. August 2016 at 06:00

    No one is forced to bake a cake for anyone. No one is ever forced to become a baker and forced to open a bakery. People choose to open bakeries. If they feel unable to abide by the basic standards required of commercial bakers, such as not engaging in racist and homophobic discrimination against the public, then they are free to do something else.

  170. Gravatar of Bob Murphy Bob Murphy
    7. August 2016 at 10:11

    Interesting way to frame it, Philippe. By the same token, those 400,000 people Scott worries about should’ve just not smoked weed. They put themselves in prison, if you think about it.

  171. Gravatar of Benny Lava Benny Lava
    7. August 2016 at 10:25

    Wow Bob, talk about dishonest. You made the claim that this wasn’t about having the right to discriminate. You said “The issue here is not about Christian bakers refusing to sell standard products to homosexual customers”. Then you admitted “I think discrimination should be legal”. Why split hairs if you think people should be able to say no gays allowed in their stores? It seems rather dishonest to me.

  172. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    7. August 2016 at 10:35

    By the same token, those 400,000 people Scott worries about should’ve just not smoked weed. They put themselves in prison, if you think about it.

    I’ll wager you that with few exceptions, inmates convicted of ‘possession’ agreed to that as part of a plea bargain wherein trafficking charges were dropped, or, alternatively, are recidivist offenders (and haven’t got just drug charges on their rap sheet).

  173. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    7. August 2016 at 10:37

    If they feel unable to abide by the basic standards required of commercial bakers, such as not engaging in racist and homophobic discrimination against the public,

    The ‘standard’ in question was dreamed up by alinskyite pests and has not a whit to do with producing baked goods.

  174. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    7. August 2016 at 10:41

    I suspect that what is really going on is that the Major and Mr Murphy think gay marriage in general is bad and should have no formal legal existence, and thus think gay wedding cakes are bad and should be unenforceable by law.

    At least some people like Art have the decency to admit they think discriminination should be legal.

    Homosexual pseudogamy is bad, and no commercial vendor should be compelled to participate in it. The issue at hand is not, however, so particular. The issue at hand is freedom of contract and freedom of association.

  175. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    7. August 2016 at 10:50

    Benny Lava:

    “romantic relationships are the exact same thing as a commercial transaction?

    No they are not “the exact same thing”. They are based on the exact same principle. It is the principle of voluntary association.

    While most of us adhere (mostly unintentional) to deep rooted premises that are not consistent, some of us, as in your case, have massively and easily identified inconsistent premises. This is evidenced by your only reply which is ” B-b-but they’re different scenarios!”.

    Libertarianism is not about telling people exactly who they ought and ought not have a relationship with. It is about the PRINCIPLE of the individual rather than “society” deciding for the individual who they have relationships with, provided their actions concerning their choices are not in aggression against anyone else’s rights to their person or property.

    While you feel compelled to virtue signal that racism is wrong, which both Murphy and I will agree with, where the difference is, is with the principle that while racism is wrong, there is no justification to use violence or coercion against any person who is not themselves introducing violence or coercion.

    The principle of voluntary association is the exact same between the case of a person baking a cake and choosing who to enter into a relationship concerning the disposition of the cake, and the case of a person making their bodies and minds available for a romantic relationship and choosing who to enter into such a relationship.

    Now from a superficial and crude analysis, you can say baking a cake is not the same as romantic relationships. Well duh, nobody is saying they are in content the same thing. But they are linked and there is a common connection, and for libertarianism that means the individual has absolute freedom to decide both cases. In libertarianism the individual can decide who to sell their cake to, AND who to enter into a relationship with. This means that yes, a baker can refuse to sell their production to anyone for any reason, and any reason includes what the buyer looks like, and it means that yes, a would be partner or would be spouse can refuse to sell their time and availability to anyone for any reason, and again any reason includes what other people look like.

    Your premises are inconsistent because you actually favor discrimination, provided the discriminations are of a certain class or type, but you also say discrimination is wrong.

    You believe no coercion and no force is to be used against a person for discriminating against others based on race, gender, religion, when that person is engaged in an act of buying a product, or choosing an employer, or choosing a romantic partner, or choosing friends, or choosing which authors to read, or which movies to watch. Here, discrimination is not to be met with coercion or violence, because the person is not themselves introducing coercion or violence. They are just making a choice about who they will deal with.

    On the other hand, your inconsistent application of discrimination WOULD call for and advocate coercion and force to be introduced against a person while engaged in the act of selling a good or service. Here you contradict your other premise that discrimination should not be met with coercion and violence, and now it should be so met.

    The question then is why? Why are you…DISCRIMINATING…against people when they are selling goods and services? Why should sellers be met with coercion for making a choice but buyers should not? I will tell you. It is because you have without even realizing it, adopted and become a faith based believer in what amounts to nothing but anti-capitalist bigotry. It is nothing but a socialist motivated attack. Owners of means of production are not individuals who truly own their means of production, but are barely tolerated “stewards” of the means of production that are really owned by “society”. Thus, if a steward were to commit the egregious crime of choosing to use their own capitals in ways that you or the mob or the popular social justice warrior attack of the month do not approve, then they are to be met with coercion and violence.

    You are a bigot against people who own means of production. The only defense you have of this is the repeating mantra of “B-b-but that’s different!”

    Different. End of story. Everything else you could ever say would be nothing but twisting and distorting of rights, concepts and justice which invariably, INVARIABLY, would imply that buyers, would be romantic partners, would be workers, are also all discriminating “unjustly”.

    To the socialist minded like you, if a person discriminates against another on the basis of their race, you don’t even know whether a crime punishable by fines or some other coercion has been committed until you have identified that person according to their economic role, namely, they have to be a “capitalist”, like an employer or seller of goods. If they are a buyer, or a would be laborer, then of course to save face you’ll say it is ” immoral” but not punishable by coercion or fines. Which is ironically the position of libertarianism when it comes to the employer!

    Libertarianism doesn’t sit well with you because it legally permits what you only want to legally permit for “the proletariat” by law. Proletariats can be racist, bigoted, hateful people who refuse to exchange with others, and they would not be committing any crime. They would at best be acting “immorally”. You pay lip service to this racism.

    Libertarianism is not bigoted against or in favor of any economic class or group. It is an ethic for ALL INDIVIDUALS. Any and all ethical proposals must as a formal criterion at least pass the universalizable test. If it cannot, then it will not fit in libertarianism.

    Libertarianism will take any premise you advance and test it for universalizability. If it is not, then there is something wrong in your premises. If your ethics result in different rules for different people according to their job or whatever, then it fails.

    What you find legally permissible for proletariats when it comes to freedom of association, libertarians find legally permissible for capitalists.

    If this irks you, it is only because your own bigotry and discrimination is coming into the fore and being questioned. You are not actually anti-racism when it comes to the law. You are anti-capitalist first and foremost and you are only using racism as a pretext, as a cover. Anything and everything to keep the individual owners of capital in line and obedient to “society”. Everyone else has actual liberty and freedom of association.

  176. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    7. August 2016 at 11:01

    Benny Lava:

    “…it is okay to discriminate against gay marriage but think it is not okay to discriminate against miscegenation even though the jurisprudence for the former stems directly from the latter. And, to try and argue their case they make a lot of apples to oranges comparisons.”

    Libertarianism protects freedom of association. Freedom of association cannot be had unless there is freedom to disassociate.

    You say “think it is OK” as if we’re just talking about personal preferences. It is much more serious than that. We’re talking about the use of physical force against people. If you are going to be “OK” with physical force being used against people, you had better have a justifiable reason. Being singled out and targeted because you are a capitalist is not a rational justification.

    “I suspect that what is really going on is that the Major and Mr Murphy think gay marriage in general is bad and should have no formal legal existence, and thus think gay wedding cakes are bad and should be unenforceable by law.”

    This is just you being a bigot again. No, I do not wish coercion or violence against anyone because they married someone of the same gender as them. This is not about my personal preferences. This is about the law. Libertarianism is the law of protecting individual rights to person and property. That logically implies and includes the right to marry who one wants.

    You want to talk bigotry? If I thought like you did, then I would blithely assume and shame you into having to publicly defend incest. If people can marry whoever they want, then you must right here and now say you are in your own mind and body totally comfortable with brothers marrying their sisters, and mothers marrying their sons, and even some marrying their dads. This may make you feel uncomfortable to think about and talk about and write about, but guess what? If marriage “is different”, then you should be shouting from the rooftops about legalizing incest. Or are you again going to play the “B-b-but that’s different!” card?

    “At least some people like Art have the decency to admit they think discriminination should be legal.”

    You have no decency in the very way you describe. Where is your decency to admit that you believe incest is good, morally right, and something to encourage and protect? Where is your decency to admit that you think discrimination is to be legally protected as long as you’re not a capital owner exercising your property rights in freedom of association and disassociation?

    You are morally repugnant, not me

  177. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    7. August 2016 at 11:12

    Phillips:

    It is truly sad that after all these years you still cling to refuted, antiquated ideology.

    “No one is forced to bake a cake for anyone. No one is ever forced to become a baker and forced to open a bakery. People choose to open bakeries. If they feel unable to abide by the basic standards required of commercial bakers, such as not engaging in racist and homophobic discrimination against the public, then they are free to do something else.”

    The premise in your mantra here is still wrong. No, the owners of the bodies and capital to produce cakes is not the state. It is the individual owners of the means to produce cakes.

    Nobody forces the state to take the earnings of the cake makers. Nobody forces the state to impose heterogeneous laws on people based on the economic role they perform.

    If one person or a group of people threaten another person with coercion if they do a peaceful action X, then they have not “consented” to that coercion by doing X. X is their right to do as owners of their body and property.

    The obligation to stand down and retreat, whenever there is disagreement, is on the part of the non-owners, not the owners. If a person decides to use their home, or another building they own, to bake a cake, then they have not by virtue of that action become duty bound to obey a third party with a badge. That badge wearer does not own the cake shop.

    You have no argument to defend what you believe nor to refute anything in libertarian theory. “Your obedience or else” and “Your money or else” coming from non-owners are not arguments that appeal to reason, logic, or science. They are threats of force.

  178. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    7. August 2016 at 11:27

    Harding, You said:

    “It was Jefferson’s home state. What kind of blue state is that?”

    One where Hillary is ahead 17 points in the latest poll?

    Art, See my response to Harding.

    Bob, That’s fine, but then I’d have more respect for libertarian purists if they framed the debate in terms of blacks, not gays. The horror that Gary Johnson does not believe that Delta Airlines and your local cable TV company should be “free” to deny services to black customers!

    As I said, there are utilitarian arguments against civil rights laws, I’ve seen Epstein make them. But do you really expect someone running for President to take that extreme a position on this issue? The gay wedding example makes the “liberty” position seem see less outrageous, because it doesn’t come with all the historical memories associated with our treatment of blacks.

    In any case, Johnson is like Milton Friedman and Hayek, a pragmatic libertarian who favors some policies that deviate from the society envisioned by the libertarian natural rights purists. I’m fine with that, as I’m also a pragmatist.

  179. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    7. August 2016 at 11:49

    Bob, That’s fine, but then I’d have more respect for libertarian purists if they framed the debate in terms of blacks, not gays. The horror that Gary Johnson does not believe that Delta Airlines and your local cable TV company should be “free” to deny services to black customers!

    I’m wondering if you’re capable of offering a non-manipulative response.

    Cable companies, until recently, were public utilities. Airlines are common carriers. There’s a certain amount of competition among airlines, but inter-city bus service and rail service have one market-dominant producer. Airlines and cable companies are public traded corporations to boot. Some of the principles enunciated would apply in these cases, but the vast bulk of commercial vendors do not resemble these enterprises.

    I’m not concerned with your ‘respect’. Blacks in the Southern United States in 1948 were a subaltern population. Their situation varied from place to place. Ann Wortham, who wasn’t bitter about the era, described her father’s view of white people thus: “white people were ‘the guv’mint’, and you did not trust the ‘guv’mint”.

    The latter-day situation of homosexuals bears no resemblance to this. Homosexuals are an officially favored group and attitudes toward them define in-groups and out-groups among the professional managerial bourgeoisie. Right in your own bailiwick, a urologist associated with Beth Israel Hospital was fired from his job for criticizing homosexuality in an inter-office memorandum; the pomposity of the official who signed his letter of dismissal is one of the foul little prizes of our age. The raft of litigation and court decisions isn’t difficult to understand: it’s lawyers abusing small merchants. They do that, because they’re a predatory occupational group. The protection small merchants have is the liberty to tell preditory ‘public interest lawyers’ and their repellent straw plaintiffs that ‘I’m not your bitch’. Your slide into marginally coherent utilitiarian chatter is a function of you being unable to care about the interests of people who you don’t socialize with.

  180. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    7. August 2016 at 11:53

    One where Hillary is ahead 17 points in the latest poll?

    There have been four polls taken in Virginia in the last month. The median distance between them is 8 points.

    I’m still waiting for your explanation re how a state with a Republican legislature counts as a ‘blue’ state.

  181. Gravatar of E. Harding E. Harding
    7. August 2016 at 12:02

    “where Hillary is ahead 17 points in the latest poll?”

    -Sumner believes that “the latest poll” is superior to election returns! LOL! Stupidity on a stick. Man, Brexit surely had no chance, given all those “latest polls” showing Remain solidly in the lead! And Virginia’s Eric Cantor is still House Majority Leader and the Democrats still hold the Senate, eh, Sumner? “The latest poll” is always so super-reliable!

    I cited actual election results, Sumner. You cited some garbage. Please apologize to me and to all your readers. Don’t you feel sorry about yourself when you write such crap?

    “In any case, Johnson is like Milton Friedman and Hayek, a pragmatic libertarian who favors some policies that deviate from the society envisioned by the libertarian natural rights purists.”

    -So is Donald Trump, if you want to stretch the definition of “libertarian” to include Republicans like Johnson and Weld. After all, Trump once said he liked libertarianism!

    “The horror that Gary Johnson does not believe that Delta Airlines and your local cable TV company should be “free” to deny services to black customers!”

    -Yes, it is horrible, Sumner. It’s just as bad as you being forced to marry some Black woman because of the lack of suitable men willing to even consider Black women as marriage material. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

    “because it doesn’t come with all the historical memories associated with our treatment of blacks.”

    -Who, me? I’ve only been the victim of Blacks. I’ve victimized none. Heck, I wasn’t even born in this country!

  182. Gravatar of Philippe Philippe
    7. August 2016 at 13:02

    Bob Murphy, you’re getting things backwards.

    The claim is that people are forced (by the state) to bake cakes for others. That’s clearly false, as no one is forced to become a baker or to open a commercial bakery. People choose to do so. And if they choose to do so, they are required to abide by certain legal standards. This is the same for any business.

    Similarly no one is forced (by the state) to smoke pot.

    In both cases the law says what you are not allowed to do. You’re not allowed to smoke pot, and you’re not allowed to operate a commercial bakery offering services to the public that discriminates against the public on the basis of race, sexual orientation etc. But in neither case are you forced to smoke pot or forced to bake cakes for others.

  183. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    7. August 2016 at 14:00

    Philippe you keep making the same fallacious argument.

    First, the libertarian argument is not that the state is forcing people to enter the caking business. The argument is that the state is forcing those who chose to enter the caking business to sell cakes to those they otherwise would not agree to sell to.

    The fallacious argument you are making is conflating the decision to enter the cake selling business, with being duty bound and oblgiated to obey the state in who to sell cakes to.

    What you call “certain legal standards” is the very violation of individual rights that libertarians are identifying to you as unjust.

    If tomorrow the state enacted a law that said “Everyone who chooses to remain residing in the country by the end of the month shall be raped”, then rapes would suddenly not become “voluntary” if people for whatever reason chose to remain residing in their homes. It would be as equally absurd to tell the victims “Nobody forced you to stay in the country. It was your choice!”

    The mere fact that a person has the option to “move away” from the aggression, does not justify the aggression. The fact that there is a threat in the first place, is what is unjust.

    A person has the right to open a cake shop or any other business and sell or not sell to whoever they want, period. No state law can refute this right. It doesn’t matter what the law happens to be. Laws are not just or unjust by virtue of their mere enforcement by a state. They are just and unjust on the basis of a foundation other than status quo.

    You are not even engaging the libertarian argument, let alone challenging it, by pointing out what just happens to be against the current state law. Libertarianism is its own set of laws.

  184. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    7. August 2016 at 14:14

    “That’s fine, but then I’d have more respect for libertarian purists if they framed the debate in terms of blacks, not gays. The horror that Gary Johnson does not believe that Delta Airlines and your local cable TV company should be “free” to deny services to black customers!”

    That’s a bunch of malarky, because then you would just paint them as racist and stop there.

    You don’t have any public respect for libertarian purists. You smear them as “ideologues”.

    Pragmatism? Utilitarianism? These ideologies necessarily lead to a gradual growth of the state and encroachment of individual liberties. For they do not safeguard the individual against the mob. They are also used quite often to excuse logical errors and inconsistent application of professed principles.

    For those who consider themselves utilitarian “free market” economists, you ought to be willing to learn the problems with it:

    https://mises.org/library/utilitarian-free-market-economics

  185. Gravatar of Philippe Philippe
    7. August 2016 at 15:32

    If discrimination by businesses didn’t negatively affect anyone then it wouldn’t be an issue. But it does negatively affect people. This is clearly demonstrated by the extreme case of racial segregation in the US, but less systematic discrimination also has a negative effect. People who are subject to discrimination are basically treated as second class citizens, as not being equal to other members of the public, by businesses operating in the public sphere. And if this discrimination is legalized then the state is legally obliged to become the enforcer of racism, homophobia, etc against its own citizens.

    So the question is why businesses should be allowed to operate in a society whilst treating members of that society in such a way and requiring the state to enforce racism, homophobia etc against its citizens.

    Your assertion is that those who are legally defined as property owners have some moral right to impose such negative effects on other parts of society if they feel like it. But you have no real argument for why that should be the case. You simply assert it and then spout empty question-begging rhetoric about how anyone who disagrees with you is being ‘aggressive’.

  186. Gravatar of Benny Lava Benny Lava
    7. August 2016 at 17:08

    Scott Sumner get it. The whole canard about this being about a wedding cake in particular and not about discrimination in general is dishonest. All the parties arguing in favor of the bakery have admitted that they are in favor of parties being able to discriminate. So why say it isn’t about gays in particular but the wedding specifically? They would turn around and then defend someone discriminating against gay people in general and turning away gay customers, and said so. Or black people.

    Like I said, at least Art Deco has a logically consistent argument to make instead of trying to play dishonest semantic games like The Major and Mr. Murphy (they open for the Captain and Tennille show). If I were Bob I’d be ashamed to hold court with these people, but lie with the dogs I guess.

    Oh and the Major, he still does not understand what words mean. So sad! He says “Where is your decency to admit that you believe incest is good, morally right, and something to encourage and protect?”

    What is legal is not always moral. What is good does not always need protecting. Why confuse three separate states? Legal, moral, and good are not interchangeable. I would have thought you knew what words mean by now.

    I know that the Major thinks he has me in some sort of rhetorical trap. Little does he know that gay marriage is legal and incest is illegal. Amazing, isn’t it?

  187. Gravatar of Bob Murphy Bob Murphy
    7. August 2016 at 18:19

    OK this needs to be my last post.

    Benny Lava, let me apologize. (You weren’t expecting THAT, I bet.) I now see that you really didn’t know what the standard libertarian position was on matters like this, and so my earlier interactions with you were unhelpful. I was not trying to be evasive, I honestly thought everybody knew what the default libertarian view on this type of thing was.

    OK watch this and (I hope) you will see how I am being perfectly coherent. You might think it’s a horrendous type of coherence, to be sure, but let’s at least make sure you see the logic behind it:

    (1) The standard libertarian position says, “Hey, I may not personally endorse using heroin, but a heroin user isn’t violating anybody’s property rights and so it would be wrong to imprison or fine someone for heroin use.”

    (2) The standard libertarian position says, “Hey, I may not personally like racists, but if they want to print literature talking about white supremacy, that isn’t violating anybody’s property rights and so it would be wrong to imprison or fine someone for publishing white supremacy literature.”

    (3) The standard libertarian position says, “Hey, I may not personally like pacifists, but if they don’t want to volunteer for the Army even if we’re being invaded, it would be wrong to institute a draft and force them to fight against their will. The draft is tantamount to slavery. Slavery isn’t OK just because you endorse the ends to which it is put.”

    And pertinent to our discussion this week:

    (4) The standard libertarian position says, “Hey, I may not personally like evangelical Christians who think marriage is between a man and a woman, but it would be wrong to force them to participate in such ceremonies against their will. If bakers refrain from baking a cake for a lesbian couple, that is certainly not violating anybody’s property rights and so it is absurd to fine the bakers $135,000 for exercising discretion over their own labor and materials. To force people to bake a cake against their will is forced servitude, even if we approve of the end.”

    I’m not expecting you to agree with the above positions, but I hope you can admit that they are consistent.

  188. Gravatar of The Sad State of Libertarian Discourse, and the Total Misunderstanding of Christianity The Sad State of Libertarian Discourse, and the Total Misunderstanding of Christianity
    7. August 2016 at 18:31

    […] disappointed in the Gary Johnson campaign is that his remarks on the wedding cake controversy lead Scott Sumner to say this: “Sorry, but bigots having their feelings hurt is not high on my list of […]

  189. Gravatar of Philippe Philippe
    7. August 2016 at 19:28

    Bob Murphy,

    Despite being a christian of an apparently evangelical persuasion, I can assure you that no one will ever come to your home and press gang you into a gay cake-baking slave army. You will never be abducted on your way home from church and repeatedly forced to participate in gay cake-decorating ceremonies. In fact you will never be forced to bake for gay cake-consuming overlords ever in your entire life.

  190. Gravatar of Benny Lava Benny Lava
    7. August 2016 at 19:59

    Bob, that’s very consistent. Now I just need you to add the following and I will say that you are not mendacious and I will apologize. All you need to say is this:

    The standard libertarian position has nothing to do with religious freedom as previously implied. Instead the standard libertarian position is that discrimination in all form is fine include the right to discriminate against miscegenation and racial segregation for whatever capricious reason. It isn’t that libertarians are racist, it is that libertarians support the right of racists to be racist.

    If I understand you clearly you wouldn’t object to this, right?

  191. Gravatar of Philippe Philippe
    7. August 2016 at 20:12

    Why do you insist on calling your ideology ‘libertarian’ when it’s obvious that your only real concern is with a particular conception of property rights and not with liberty per se. You couldn’t care less whether discrimination massively reduces the liberty of those who are subjected to it, for example. I mean it should be pretty obvious that segregation greatly reduced the liberty of black people, but you have no problem with that in principle. Why not call yourself a propertarian or something like that instead, so people don’t mistakenly get the impression that you particularly care about liberty.

  192. Gravatar of Philippe Philippe
    7. August 2016 at 20:12

    ^ Bob Murphy.

  193. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    7. August 2016 at 21:16

    Phillipe:

    “If discrimination by businesses didn’t negatively affect anyone then it wouldn’t be an issue.”

    That is a very weak premise, because by that logic, discriminating against would be rapists who stop their attackers SHOULD be an issue because it negatively affects rapists.

    Nobody claimed people being free from coercion doesn’t negatively effect anyone. It of course negatively affects people, at least in the short run. It negatively affects the people who would have otherwise violated the rights of others, or benefitted from threats and coercion against the rights of others.

    A buyer or worker being racist towards an employer “negatively affects” that employer, for it deprives the employer of the gains that could have been made through exchange of value from the buyer or worker. Again by your logic, that should be an issue. But you don’t make an issue of this, because you are not motivated by the negative aspect of racism per se, you are only using racism as pretext for your attack on private ownership and control of the means of production.

    “This is clearly demonstrated by the extreme case of racial segregation in the US”

    Racial segregation based on voluntary association and disassociation is not a violation of anyone’s property rights. Nobody has an ex ante right to the wealth of others. If someone refuses to trade with you because of what you look like, then you have no rational justification to introduce aggression against them. You can exercise your right to free speech and communicate that the person is racist, and you can try to convince others not to trade with them.

    “People who are subject to discrimination are basically treated as second class citizens, as not being equal to other members of the public, by businesses operating in the public sphere.”

    Then why do you discriminate against individuals based on their economic role? Why do you support the legality of buyers and workers and everyone NOT employers and sellers, being racist and homophobic? This legalization of racism and homophobia by your own virtue signalling logic would imply that, and I quote you:

    “…the state is legally obliged to become the enforcer of racism, homophobia, etc against its own citizens.”

    Again you are not actually against legal racism and homophobia. You are only targeting, discriminating against if you will, certain individuals who happen to belong to a certain economic class.

    “So the question is why businesses should be allowed to operate in a society whilst treating members of that society in such a way and requiring the state to enforce racism, homophobia etc against its citizens.”

    You do realize that “businesses” are actually composed of sellers AND buyers? Businesses are not just the stores and the owners. Businesses are exchanges between sellers and buyers.

    What you are saying is not whether or not businesses should be free to discriminate, but rather, you want to keep legalized the business discrimination from the buyers. The sellers cannot legally discriminate, but the buyers can.

    You see two people, trading with each other, or not trading with each other, and you want different laws to apply to the two people. The one person selling goods cannot legally discriminate. The one person selling money can legally discriminate.

    Interestingly and not coincidentally you as a non-business owner would be favored by the ethics you profess. Do you believe that is a coincidence? That you do not favor laws against discrimination from buyers and workers, because that would infringe on YOUR liberty?

    “Your assertion is that those who are legally defined as property owners have some moral right to impose such negative effects on other parts of society if they feel like it. But you have no real argument for why that should be the case. You simply assert it and then spout empty question-begging rhetoric about how anyone who disagrees with you is being ‘aggressive’.”

    No, it is not simply asserted. It follows from libertarian theory. Perhaps you have heard of it?

  194. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    7. August 2016 at 21:28

    Benny Lava:

    “The whole canard about this being about a wedding cake in particular and not about discrimination in general is dishonest. All the parties arguing in favor of the bakery have admitted that they are in favor of parties being able to discriminate. So why say it isn’t about gays in particular but the wedding specifically? They would turn around and then defend someone discriminating against gay people in general and turning away gay customers, and said so. Or black people.”

    The reason it is about the wedding and not gays is because selling cakes to gay people is different from being forced by the state to participate in gay weddings by virtue of writing on the cakes “Congratulations Ace and Gary” or whatever. Selling an already made cake is one thing. You can do so and not have to visually or emotionally involve yourself in the buyer’s private sexual and romantic lives.

    To some people they do not want to be involved in people’s romantic lives to that degree. Libertarian ethics protects this choice because it is not an aggression against anyone. Refusing to trade is not an aggression.

    “Like I said, at least Art Deco has a logically consistent argument to make instead of trying to play dishonest semantic games like The Major and Mr. Murphy (they open for the Captain and Tennille show). If I were Bob I’d be ashamed to hold court with these people, but lie with the dogs I guess.”

    You have not shown any logical inconsistency. Ironically it is you who is advancing an inconsistent theory. Racism and homophobia are legal when you are a buyer. Racism and homophobia are illegal for the seller.

    “He says “Where is your decency to admit that you believe incest is good, morally right, and something to encourage and protect?”

    “What is legal is not always moral. What is good does not always need protecting. Why confuse three separate states? Legal, moral, and good are not interchangeable. I would have thought you knew what words mean by now.”

    This ladies and gentlemen is called an evasion. Benny brings a cheque he cannot cash.

    Now try again Benny. This time actually subjecting your own professed morality onto your own beliefs.

    Playing semantics is a cop out.

    “I know that the Major thinks he has me in some sort of rhetorical trap. Little does he know that gay marriage is legal and incest is illegal. Amazing, isn’t it?”

    Thanks for proving my point. One is illegal and the other is not. Yet by your own statements thus far, they should both be legal and you should be publicly stating that you believe incest should be legal. But you won’t, because your premises are inconsistent. Rhetorical trap? No, it is called basic logic. When a logical inconsistency is exposed in what you believe, that is not me playing any rhetorical trick or trap. That is me showing you your premises are problematic.

  195. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    7. August 2016 at 21:36

    Benny Lava:

    “The standard libertarian position has nothing to do with religious freedom as previously implied. Instead the standard libertarian position is that discrimination in all form is fine include the right to discriminate against miscegenation and racial segregation for whatever capricious reason. It isn’t that libertarians are racist, it is that libertarians support the right of racists to be racist.”

    Why do you want freedom of religion to be presented as condoning discrimination against homosexuals?

    If you pracitaed what you preached, then you would have to be willing to right here and now on this blog, write that you support, in the LEGAL sense, buyers and workers discriminating against sellers and employers on the basis of their sexual preference. That you Benny Lava, when you talk about personal preferences and individual right to association and disassociation as a buyer or worker, you are “really” just talking about your support of racist and homophobic people being legally permitted to discriminate against people on the basis of race and sexual preference.

    Until you do this, according to your own professed ethics, you are just covering your support for racism and homophobia.

  196. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    7. August 2016 at 21:58

    Phillipe:

    “Why do you insist on calling your ideology ‘libertarian’ when it’s obvious that your only real concern is with a particular conception of property rights and not with liberty per se.”

    Why do you continue to push the fallacy that individual rights are completely distinct and from property rights?

    An individual cannot have individual rights without property rights.

    Individual rights cannot exist without property rights, and property rights are a necessary extension of individual rights.

    “You couldn’t care less whether discrimination massively reduces the liberty of those who are subjected to it, for example.”

    You are equivocating the concept of liberty.

    Your liberty is not infringed upon when someone refuses to trade with you. For you do not have a right to their wealth ex ante.

    It is no different in principle than a seller refusing to sell a good to you at your asking price because it is too low. Here too you are being refused an exchange. Your liberty here is also not being infringed upon.

    Your liberty does not extend BEYOND where another person’s liberty starts. Libertarianism is not about your liberty only and screw everyone else. Libertarianism is about EVERYONE’S liberty, yes, even racists and homophobes and bigots. To protect individual liberty, we have to defend what we might find morally objectionable. For with individual liberty, people may do things we don’tlike to see or hear about. A person killing themselves with heroin? It may be revolting to me, but I will defend that person against uses of force because they are not themselves aggressing against anyone in the act of taking heroin.

    A person choosing not to marry another based on their gender or race or intelligence or income or job? I may find some decisions revolting, but I will defend that person from force because they are exercising their individual liberty without aggressing against anyone.

    “I mean it should be pretty obvious that segregation greatly reduced the liberty of black people”

    Not when it is based on individuals exercising their property rights.

    Your liberty is not infringed upon by me choosing to not let you into my home. Again your conception of liberty is an equivocation. Libertarianism is not “The individual can go wherever they want and consume whatever they want, without regard to other people’s property rights.”

    Also, you do realize that within the overall segregation concept, black people also imposed segregation against whites, right? I have been subjected to this many times in the city I grew up in. And I am not even white, I am Jewish. I am pale, so I was discriminated against as a white. But I never once believed my liberty was being violated, because I was never aggressed against my person or property by that “get the hell out of here whitey” standards. I respected the property rights of the racist bar owner. I did not like it obviously, but it was their bar, not mine. They lost my dollars. That was a cost they were willing to incur. Fine.

    Thankfully I have many black friends who do not play the victim card. Those are people I like. Gay people too who don’t play the victim card and make a good life for themselves.

    I cannot stand whiners and race baiting racists.

    All lives matter.

    “but you have no problem with that in principle. Why not call yourself a propertarian or something like that instead, so people don’t mistakenly get the impression that you particularly care about liberty.”

    Individual liberty cannot exist without property liberty.

  197. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    8. August 2016 at 01:11

    Scott, you might like this cartoon:
    https://twitter.com/mch7576/status/762482124586835969

  198. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    8. August 2016 at 05:02

    The claim is that people are forced (by the state) to bake cakes for others. That’s clearly false, as no one is forced to become a baker or to open a commercial bakery. People choose to do so. And if they choose to do so, they are required to abide by certain legal standards. This is the same for any business.

    You’re under the illusion that the existence of ‘legal standards’ (often manufactured by lawyers with daisy-chain reasoning) justifies the ‘standards’. It does not and cannot if you’re anyone this side of Thomas Hobbes.

  199. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    8. August 2016 at 05:19

    You couldn’t care less whether discrimination massively reduces the liberty of those who are subjected to it, for example. I mean it should be pretty obvious that segregation greatly reduced the liberty of black people, but you have no problem with that in principle.

    You’re just hopeless. You’ve confounded liberty with publicly allocated benefits and with social recognition. It is neither.

    Segregation laws mandated that commercial proprietors allocate their in-door real estate a certain way. Eleanor Roosevelt got slapped with citations for sitting on the wrong side of restaurants, something she did on principle.

    The segregation regime also induced pubic agencies to allocate resources in a certain way. This implicates fair dealing, not liberty. A selection of Southern politicians (e.g. James Byrnes) wanted allocation by public agencies by the book, but it was nearly impossible to get it right.

    Segregation practiced in mundane life is an exercise in liberty. The liberty due blacks is infringed only when social practice incorporates an effective franchise to private parties to abuse blacks because law enforcement and the courts look the other way or when civil courts enforce contracts which have the properties of civil ordinances (e.g. restrictive covenants on real estate).

    A libertarian regime was not present in the South between 1877 and 1971, nor did federal authorities ever attempt to introduce one.

  200. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    8. August 2016 at 05:24

    If discrimination by businesses didn’t negatively affect anyone then it wouldn’t be an issue. But it does negatively affect people.

    I was negatively affected by all the girls who turned me down for dates when I was 20. Their obligations to me – legal and otherwise – were nil.

  201. Gravatar of Philippe Philippe
    8. August 2016 at 07:20

    Art Deco,

    “You’re under the illusion that the existence of ‘legal standards’ (often manufactured by lawyers with daisy-chain reasoning) justifies the ‘standards’”

    No, in this case the legal standards are justified by the fact legalized discrimination by businesses against members of the public on the basis of personal characteristics such as race or sexuality is harmful and unjustified.

  202. Gravatar of Benny Lava Benny Lava
    8. August 2016 at 07:34

    Boy Major, you really should try reading a book on the basics of philosophy and logic. You write “Yet by your own statements thus far, they should both be legal”. Nope. Sorry. There is nothing in anything I’ve written to suggest such a thing. And it is telling that you present no evidence for such a thing. You just make heated cries into the Internet.

    My premise is pretty consistent. My premise is the following: you and Bob have tried to frame your position in a way that is dishonest because you two consistently try to frame this as a religious issue. You pretend that you are defending these bakers on the grounds of religious consciousness. But what you have both admitted is that it isn’t about religious freedom at all, it is about the libertarian principle of association.

    This is why I keep saying that you and Bob are being dishonest and Art is being honest here. Art says discrimination should be legal whereas you two keep evading the logical conclusion that racial discrimination would be legal as well. Instead you two keep making these apples to oranges comparisons to try and obfuscate.

    This is the Internet. Why not have the courage of your convictions like Art? By making these poorly thought out analogies you make yourself look foolish.

    I won’t comment on Art’s position because it is a logically coherent argument devoid of the solipsistic drivel you write. Do you really think writing on a cake is so fundamentally intrinsic to religious freedom? I don’t believe you at all. There is nothing more participatory about a cake with writing versus a cake without. I know this because I’ve seen many wedding cakes without writing. Does a cake without writing somehow make it non participatory? Nonsense.

  203. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    8. August 2016 at 07:41

    No, in this case the legal standards are justified by the fact legalized discrimination by businesses against members of the public on the basis of personal characteristics such as race or sexuality is harmful and unjustified.

    You mean they’re justified because they contradict behavior that is ‘unjustified’? Thanks for the education.

    Anyone who hires employees, fires employees, elects on a line of business, sets standards in his establishment, or sets standards in his workplace ‘discriminates’. Discriminating is what people do. Making actuarial calculations is what people do. In your attempt to constrain what is ‘unjustified’, you do a jim-dandy job of handing tools to lawyers and the terminally contentious to make life difficult for people going on about their business.

    What’s ‘harmful’? I’ve been turned down for scads of jobs over the years. I had no legal recourse even if I wanted one. The nubbin of employment discrimination law is that a mess of lawyers determine that employer x’s rules of thumb and vendor x’s rules of thumb are ‘harmful’ and some other vendor’s and some other employer’s are not. And that’s your business just why?

    And, you can see what’s happened in our own time. You have an implicit hierarchy of people who merit recognition in the view of the legal profession and the academic apparat. So, both law and social custom will be folded, spindled, and mutilated until they’re treated with the deference that the legal profession and the academic apparat fancies their mascots deserve. So, we have the bizarre instance of federal judges slapping six-figure fines on a commercial vendor for refusing a commission to someone they had no contractual relationship with, and doing so because one of the legal profession’s mascot groups has been granted a franchise to insist that disfavored cultural groups (e.g. evangelicals) kow tow.

    There was never much of an attempt on the part of the legal or academic apparat to administer ‘anti-discrimination law’ in a non-sectarian manner. Now I can ask how that’s been working out for everyone, and the answer is obvious. It is, however, a status marker in our society to deny the obvious and double-down.

  204. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    8. August 2016 at 07:44

    you and Bob have tried to frame your position in a way that is dishonest because you two consistently try to frame this as a religious issue

    Benny, they refused the commission because they don’t participate in travesty. They understand it to be travesty because they’re Christian adherents. That’s one reason among several they might exercise the discretion that is properly their’s and not participate. It’s one of the more compelling one’s, btw, and has explicit recognition in law with a long pedigree.

  205. Gravatar of Philippe Philippe
    8. August 2016 at 07:55

    Art Deco,

    Segregation clearly reduced the liberty of black people to live freely as equal citizens. They were instead treated as inferiors, who were greatly restricted in what they could and couldn’t do in comparison to white people. The point you completely missed is that Bob Murphy and others like yourself would have absolutely no problem if this situation was entirely recreated by the actions of private owners, backed by the force of the law/ the state, rather than being directly imposed as an explicit public policy. In other words you don’t really care about liberty, you care about the authority of those who are legally defined as property owners. So ‘propertarian’ would be a much better term for you than ‘libertarian’, which is a completely dishonest misnomer.

  206. Gravatar of Philippe Philippe
    8. August 2016 at 08:07

    Art Deco

    “You mean they’re justified because they contradict behavior that is ‘unjustified’?

    As I clearly said, that discrimination by businesses is harmful. It imposes harms, both directly and indirectly, on those individuals and stigmatised groups who are subjected to it. Those who want to permit such harms to be imposed on others have not provided valid justifications for doing so.

  207. Gravatar of Philippe Philippe
    8. August 2016 at 08:19

    *(valid or adequate justifications for doing so).

  208. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    8. August 2016 at 08:30

    Segregation clearly reduced the liberty of black people to live freely as equal citizens. They were instead treated as inferiors, who were greatly restricted in what they could and couldn’t do in comparison to white people. The point you completely missed is that Bob Murphy and others like yourself would have absolutely no problem if this situation was entirely recreated by the actions of private owners, backed by the force of the law/ the state, rather than being directly imposed as an explicit public policy. In other words you don’t really care about liberty, you care about the authority of those who are legally defined as property owners. So ‘propertarian’ would be a much better term for you than ‘libertarian’, which is a completely dishonest misnomer.

    The fallacies incorporated into this paragraph I have addressed above. I can explain something to you. I cannot comprehend in for you.

  209. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    8. August 2016 at 08:34

    As I clearly said, that discrimination by businesses is harmful. It imposes harms, both directly and indirectly, on those individuals and stigmatised groups who are subjected to it. Those who want to permit such harms to be imposed on others have not provided valid justifications for doing so.

    The ‘harms’ to which you are referring would be that people told they will not be served will be embarrassed and vexed. Sometimes that’s poignant and sometimes that is not. You’re not going to create a world where people are free from irritation and embarrassment, and you pile up social costs attempting to do so.

  210. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    8. August 2016 at 08:43

    Remember those famous clips of John Kerry sail boarding?

  211. Gravatar of Philippe Philippe
    8. August 2016 at 08:50

    “The fallacies incorporated into this paragraph I have addressed above.”

    No, you haven’t addressed them at all. All you’ve done is make the unfounded assertion that “Segregation practiced in mundane life is an exercise in liberty”. I explained why this is not the case: segregation reduces people’s liberty to live freely as equal citizens.

    I can’t help you to be more honest though.

  212. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    8. August 2016 at 09:04

    So Stein too? Nothing on Johnson yet I guess:
    http://www.redstate.com/streiff/2016/08/08/already-know-will-win-november-answer-ugly/

  213. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    8. August 2016 at 09:24

    Scott, do you suppose the rumors are true that Trump donated money to NAMBLA and that’s the real reason he won’t release his tax returns? Trump/NAMBLA/tax returns, tax returns/NAMBLA/Trump? Yeah, neither do I, but wouldn’t it be a pity if Trump, NAMBLA and his failure to release his tax returns somehow started trending? (OK, yeah, that’s pretty evil, but still, it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy)

  214. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    8. August 2016 at 09:26

    … plus, he could easily put those nasty rumors to rest by simply releasing his tax returns.

  215. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    8. August 2016 at 09:35

    No, you haven’t addressed them

    Regrettable it went over your head, Phillippe, but it went over your head. A free individual is at liberty to elect with whom he associates and with whom he does not. That applies to corporate bodies as well. The principle is not that difficult to grasp.

  216. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    8. August 2016 at 09:35

    Scott, do you suppose the rumors are true that Trump donated money to NAMBLA

    Now you’re beginning to parody yourself.

  217. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    8. August 2016 at 09:40

    Scott, do you suppose the rumors are true that Trump donated money to NAMBLA [and thus doesn’t want us to see that on his tax returns]

    Now you’re beginning to parody yourself.

    Whatever, just keep bringing it up.

  218. Gravatar of Dan Dan
    8. August 2016 at 11:46

    “Bob, That’s fine, but then I’d have more respect for libertarian purists if they framed the debate in terms of blacks, not gays. The horror that Gary Johnson does not believe that Delta Airlines and your local cable TV company should be “free” to deny services to black customers!”

    Scott, that’s fine, but I’d have more respect for you libertarian-lites if you made clear where you are deviating from standard libertarian positions instead of trying to pass off your pick and choose philosophy as ours. I’d also have more respect if you didn’t cowardly try to paint principled libertarians as racists instead of dealing with our actual views. But maybe when you attack Trump for his tactics you’re simply projecting.

  219. Gravatar of Goose Goose
    8. August 2016 at 13:37

    Alright, I’ll bite: The first use of nukes today has far greater moral implications than in 1945, due to the fact that more than one nation now has nukes and the delivery mechanisms are far more efficient (ICBMs, submarine launches, “second-strike capability”, etc). *Global* nuclear war is thus a more likely result of first-use in the present time, whereas it was impossible in 1945. Putting half the human population on earth at risk is now a real possibility; thus advocating a first-strike in this context is more “unacceptable” than advocating pre-1949. (This isn’t meant to absolve the US of any moral culpability for Nagasaki/Hiroshima, only to argue that the position “first use pre-1949 justified, post-1949 not justified” is coherent and consistent.)

    That being said, it should be noted that the US has never formally declared a no-first-use policy: http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2016/07/06/once_again_why_a_no-first-use_policy_is_a_bad_very_bad_idea_109520.html

  220. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    8. August 2016 at 14:32

    Art, A nice utilitarian argument on civil rights, so where is the “principle” at stake?

    And a blue state for purposes of the presidential election is a state that (based on recent elections and recent polls) is likely to go blue in a tie election. Actually Virginia was only 0.02% blue in the previous election, but it’s steadily trending blue over time, and is almost certainly blue in this election. My prediction is that Trump will do worse in Virginia than nationally, whatever the outcome.

    That’s the standard definition.

    Virginia is a blue state.

  221. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    8. August 2016 at 15:31

    Philippe:

    “No, in this case the legal standards are justified by the fact legalized discrimination by businesses against members of the public on the basis of personal characteristics such as race or sexuality is harmful and unjustified.”

    This is a useless tautology. All you are saying here is that you believe the legal standards are justified because they are stopping what you believe is unjustified.

    But the question is about whether it is in fact unjustified for me to refuse to trade with another person. The answer is of course it is not unjustified. It is justified. It is justified for an individual to exercise their own individuals rights with respect to their persons and property.

    You assert that me refusing to trade with another person “harms” them. This is a confusion of the concept of harm. Harm is not in relation to some possible hypothetical world that assumes the very “justified” activity of A being forced to trade with B. Harm is in relation to an individual’s actual person and property at the time of the action of A. If I decide to not trade with you, I am not at all “harming” anything you own and I am not “harming” your person. Denying you my wealth is not harming you. It is neutral. The FEELING you may have, the sensation of discomfort or distress, is not caused by me. It is caused by the fact that you want what you currently do not have. We all experience this. By coercing me into trading with you, I am indeed harmed, because I am being stripped of my property.

    By your “logic”, a would be rapist or would be murder victim is “harming” their attacker by denying them the pleasure of doing with the would he victim’s bodies that the attacker wants. By your “logic”, you as a buyer are “harming” the owners of Wal-Mart by refusing to make an exchange in any of their stores. You are “harming” millions if not billions of people all around the world, by choosing to not trade with those sellers willing to sell to you if you agreed to buy.

    Your logic is extremely poor Philippe. The tragedy is that educated you tears ago on this very topic, and yet here you are repeating the same fallacies as if your brain is broken.

    FIX IT.

  222. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    8. August 2016 at 15:48

    Art, A nice utilitarian argument on civil rights, so where is the “principle” at stake?

    Not my argument. You’re confusing a social principle with a critique of the games you’re playing.

    Virginia is a blue state

    Virginia is spinach. I have it on the word of someone in Massachusetts who fancies Martin Creed an artist.

  223. Gravatar of E. Harding E. Harding
    8. August 2016 at 15:50

    “And a blue state for purposes of the presidential election is a state that (based on recent elections and recent polls) is likely to go blue in a tie election.”

    -That’s a pretty idiosyncratic definition of a blue state, and contradicts your explicit statement above that “it’s not a battleground state”. By your definition here, a blue state can be a battleground state. If that’s your definition of a blue state, I still doubt it, as the felons have been re-disenfranchised.

    Simply put, the DC suburbs aren’t growing as fast as they once used to, due to traffic. People are moving into the inner city. So it’s unlikely VA’s much more blue today than in 2012

  224. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    8. August 2016 at 16:08

    Benny Lava:

    “Boy Major, you really should try reading a book on the basics of philosophy and logic.”

    That’s funny, seeing as how I am correcting your flawed philosophy and logic.

    “You write “Yet by your own statements thus far, they should both be legal”. Nope. Sorry. There is nothing in anything I’ve written to suggest such a thing.”

    Yup, sorry, what you wrote indeed implies that. The evidence is in your own statements. The very arguments you used against the “discrimination against gay marriage” apply equally to “discrimination against incestual marriage”.

    The reason why you don’t see it is because you have not subjected your claims to self-referential analysis. You have not kept asking why and how.

    “My premise is pretty consistent. My premise is the following: you and Bob have tried to frame your position in a way that is dishonest because you two consistently try to frame this as a religious issue. You pretend that you are defending these bakers on the grounds of religious consciousness. But what you have both admitted is that it isn’t about religious freedom at all, it is about the libertarian principle of association.”

    Your alleged premise is not a premise at all, but a claim of disagreement fully dependent on my arguments.

    An actual premise would be “Here is the premise for why I believe X is correct in the positive sense”. But we all know you’re too scared to make a positive argument because you know you’ll get schooled again.

    I already told you that you are not refuting any argument of anyone by merely changing the way it is said.

    You falsely believe that a “religious issue”, and all other practical issues, can be stripped away from what must be a concomitsnt and presupposed ethics, such that someone who argued from religious grounds, somehow cannot be presupposing any ethics whatsoever, such that your linking of the issue at stake with a property right presupposition, somehow makes you a discoverer of some deceitful representation of the argument. That the person is lying because they framed it in terms of religion instead of the necessary ethic presupposed.

    The reason why your whole approach is flawed is because ANY practical “issue”, including your “bakers must be forced to make gay oriented cakes when demanded”, presupposes an ethic. In the case of baking cakes, the implicit and tacit ethic is that the property of the cake bakers is not fully in their control, that they are not permitted to use their own means of production in ways they see fit. And by who? By the state. The tacit property based ethic in your “issue” then is that that the state ought to retain some positive amount of control over the disposition of the means of producing cakes. That the cake makers ought to refrain from exercising full and final control over those means.

    Now if I were to believe in as confused ideas you are, then I would accuse you of being dishonest and lying and and so on, because you are framing the issue in terms of gay rights when “really” you are just promoting a property ethic of soft economic Fascism. Of state control over the means of production to some positive degree.

    But I won’t accuse you of being dishonest because unlike you I am fully cognizant of the fact that ALL practical issues and claims of what is “the right thing to do” in a specific case always presuppose SOME property ethic.

    So tell me then. Why do you continue to “frame” the debate in terms of gay marriage freedom (the argumentative analogue of religious freedom), instead of what you are “really” advocating which is a soft Fascism property right? Hmm??

    “This is why I keep saying that you and Bob are being dishonest and Art is being honest here.”

    YOU FAIL TO LOOK IN THE MIRROR.

    Seriously, would it kill you to engage in at least SOME self-referential analysis and practising what you preach? You are such hypocrites.

    “Art says discrimination should be legal whereas you two keep evading the logical conclusion that racial discrimination would be legal as well.”

    Are you blind? I have said here and I have said numerous times in the past, that peaceful discrimination not only should be universally legal, but is already legal to a large degree which you support! You agree with and fully support legal discrimination against sellers, and employers, on the basis of their race or gender or sexual orientation. You want to keep legal the freedom of individuals to racially discriminate against sellers and employers.

    The only difference between you and me about this particular “issue”, is that I want to end discrimination in the law itself. Right now the law permits buyers and workers to discriminate, but makes illegal sellers and employers to discriminate.

    I am arguing that the reason buyers and workers should be protected by law to discriminate against sellers and employers, is the same reason sellers and employers should be protected by law to discriminate against buyers and workers. I am ma!interested explicit the ethics here. Whereas you keep your fascism tacit and unstated, I make my libertarianism loud and clear. By your own logic you are being dishonest by refusing to frame your “issue” in terms of property rights.

    I believe you should not be intiated with coercion for choosing a female over a male for a romantic partner, or for choosing not to buy products from a seller on the basis of their skin color or gender. Your body and your property are yours, not mine and not any sellers or employers.

    Similarly, and for the exact same reason – which by the way your bigoted anti-capitalist ideology muddles in your thoughts – the sellers bodies and property are their own, and they have just as much an individual right to refuse to trade, as you fully support on the part of buyers and workers. See, you view the world as good versus evil in the form of the proletariat versus the capitalist. The proletariat can be racist, bigoted, sexist, against capitalists, but capitalists cannot be racist, bigoted or sexist against the proletariat. After all, the proletariat is already being “exploited” by virtue of them being a laborer as such. To add insult to injury, to be told that a capitalist not only owns a means of production but DENIES the proletariat any portion of the output? That is exploitation made manifest isn’t it?

    Why don’t you write “honestly” and just admit that your ethics are derived from socialist property rights propaganda?

    Why do yuo instead, and to quote you back at yourself:

    “…keep making these apples to oranges comparisons to try and obfuscate”?

  225. Gravatar of Benny Lava Benny Lava
    8. August 2016 at 19:04

    Major Major Major… so sad to see you desperately try and goad me into revealing to you my own political philosophy. I am but an internet troll, you don’t deserve such things from me. You haven’t yet earned it.

    You say “The very arguments you used against the “discrimination against gay marriage” apply equally to “discrimination against incestual marriage”.” But I already demonstrated the false equivalence of such a sad apples to oranges comparison. People don’t have to participate in things that are illegal. People have to participate in things that are legal but of questionable morals. I would think you would understand that, which is why your claims that I have to find incest moral is immensely retarded. I’d be ashamed to have made such a foolish line of attack.

    “Your alleged premise is not a premise at all, but a claim of disagreement fully dependent on my arguments.”

    The fact that you tried to avoid taking a position that would promote racial discrimination by covering it in the veneer of religion. Just admit it, and then we can move on. You tried to say that bringing up the issue of racial discrimination was some sort of bad faith argument on my part, implying the obvious that one sort of discrimination is okay and the other is not.

    “But do you think if a guy went into a Christian bakery and said, “I want a cake celebrating the one-year anniversary of my affair with my secretary,” that they’d be cool with that?”

    See the references to religion kept on rolling. And I have to point out to you dimwits that slavery was a religious belief too. Do people have the right to own slaves because of their freedom of religion? Of course not.

    Then you try and obfuscate again. So sad. Just admit it. Be a big boy about it. Just say it.

    “Contrary to your lies and deceit, it is not about selling or not selling cakes to gay people. But you only choose race because you cannot refute libertarianism argumentatively”

    See you try and suggest that the issue of race is not pertinent at all. But you argue for legalized discrimination, which of course is hugely important to the issue of race and terribly dishonest of you to suggest otherwise. You and Bob argued dishonestly, trying to veil the issue of discrimination and the greater implications of racial discrimination.

    Just be a man and say you support allowing people to discriminate against black people and I will drop the whole argument. Just be a man about things. Just say the following “I was deceptive in my line of arguments by focusing on religion when in truth I think all forms of discrimination including racial should be tolerated”. I mean that is what you in fact just argued, so don’t be ashamed. Write that out and I would put forth a positive proposition for you of my political philosophy for you to examine.

  226. Gravatar of Tom Brown Tom Brown
    8. August 2016 at 19:27

    Benny Lava, you write:

    Major Major Major…

    Just one more and you’d have this guy!

  227. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    8. August 2016 at 19:47

    Benny Lava,

    I cannot say I am surprised at your lack of intellectual and moral integrity. You fail to practise what you preach. Hopefully at some point you will improve.

    “You say “The very arguments you used against the “discrimination against gay marriage” apply equally to “discrimination against incestual marriage”.” But I already demonstrated the false equivalence of such a sad apples to oranges comparison.”

    No, you have not at all “demonstrated” that. On the contrary, you have demonstrated that you cannot reconcile the two, because your premises prevent you from doing so. All you have is “B-b-but they are different!” As I said you would.

    “People don’t have to participate in things that are illegal. People have to participate in things that are legal but of questionable morals. I would think you would understand that, which is why your claims that I have to find incest moral is immensely retarded. I’d be ashamed to have made such a foolish line of attack.”

    This rebuttal is pathetically obtuse. Nobody said the argument was that you “must participate in that which is illegal.” What you continually are evading is that by your own premises, you must support the legality of prohibition against discriminating against incestual marriage. That if a brother and sister walked into a cake store, and asked for a cake to be made that said “Congrats on your marriage brother and sister!” that the baker MUST by law be forced to participate in this by making such a cake.

    And if you were consistent again, which you are not, you would have to support the legality of forcing cake makers to make a cake that said “Congrats on hating your 100th [N-word]!”.

    Anything less would “discrimination” against buyers.

    “Your alleged premise is not a premise at all, but a claim of disagreement fully dependent on my arguments.”

    “The fact that you tried to avoid taking a position that would promote racial discrimination by covering it in the veneer of religion.”

    Evasion again. This is also not a premise.

    And I have already said many times that I do not avoid taking the position that legalizes PEACEFUL discrimination.

    You on the other hand keep avoiding admitting that you fully support the legality of racial and sexist discrimination against sellers and employers. The hilarity of your continual evasion on this score only highlights the hypocritical foundation of your entire immature worldview.

    Just admit it Benny. Just admit that you want to keep legal the racist, sexist, and all other discriminations against sellers and employers. You cherish these legal rights. Just admit it! Or are you going to be continually dishonest and pretend you don’t support this legality?

    You are dishonest, a liar, a bigot, and a spewer of contradictory nonsense.

  228. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    8. August 2016 at 19:53

    Benny,

    Your own “issues” by your own account are nothing but “veneers” for your property rights ethics, which is soft Fascism. You keep pretending that I am not ma!ing my ethics explicit. But I am. I fully accept and recognize that ALL practical “issues” and claims what ought to take place, presuppose some property ethics.

    You on the other hand are dishonest and refuse to admit that your own advocacoes presuppose a property rights ethics of soft Fascism, of government control over the means of production. According to your own blabbering, all YOU are promoting is a fascist property ethic.

    Just admit it or be as dishonest as your own statements imply.

  229. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    8. August 2016 at 20:06

    Art Deco:

    “I’m a pragmatist, and favor the laws where they make things better. There is no such thing as natural rights, just pragmatic policies.”

    “At this point, you’re begging for Major Freedom to take a verbal howitzer to you.”

    There are a number of writers who have thankfully already done this.

    I will only point out one of Etienne Gilson’s most trenchant comments:

    “The natural law always buries its undertakers.”

    What he meant can be explicated by Kenneth Hesselberg:

    “the social […] order is an indispensable prerequisite to man’s well-being and happiness: and that this is a statement of fact.”

    and

    “But a social order is not possible unless man is able to conceive what it is, and what its advantages are, and also conceive those norms of conduct which are necessary to its establishment and preservation, namely, respect for another’s person and for his rightful possessions, which is the substance of justice … But justice is the product of reason, not the passions. And justice is the necessary support of the social order; and the social order is necessary to man’s well-being and happiness. If this is so, the norms of justice must control and regulate the passions, and not vice versa.”

    David Hume, perhaps the most influential critic of natural rights, eventually had to admit:

    “…nature provides a remedy in the judgment and understanding for what is irregular and uncommodious in the affections”

    In other words, reason can be superior to the passions.

  230. Gravatar of JNCU JNCU
    8. August 2016 at 20:27

    @Sumner,

    Yes, non discrimination legislation should be abolish. All legisaltion should be abolish and only private property rights upheld. That’s the libertarian view. Like unlimited private travel or immigration is the libertarian view. Legislation against them are tyranny.

    And Johnosn is better than Trump.

  231. Gravatar of JNCU JNCU
    8. August 2016 at 20:29

    @ Sumner, is not about feelings, but about $135k fines for not baking a cake. Pure tyranny and we shouodmreject it.

    And Johnson is better than Trump.

  232. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    8. August 2016 at 20:31

    This ladies and gentlemen is proof positive of Benny’s intellectual dishonesty:

    “so sad to see you desperately try and goad me into revealing to you my own political philosophy.”

    So cowardly, and yet so oblivious to his own transparent ideology. Refusing to positively state what he believes, yet hilariously exposing it all for the world to see anyway. Critique this? Well, then advocate the obverse.

    There was a German philosophical movement in the mid to late 19th century that viewed criticism as such, against anything and everything, to be a self-contained philosophy that did not need any positive foundation or structure. This is a pattern of thought that has remained popular with the parasites and cowards of society. Benny is an example. Maybe one day he’ll join the big boy’s club of being willing to lay down one’s convictions in a positive manner and subject them to the risk of demolition and refutation. I shall dub his ideology chickens%&t Bennyism.

  233. Gravatar of JNCU JNCU
    8. August 2016 at 20:52

    I hate I can’t comeback to change spelling errors.

  234. Gravatar of JNCU JNCU
    8. August 2016 at 20:54

    @Phillipe, freedom can only be defined as the right to your property, the most basic property been your body. That is why slavery is wrong.

  235. Gravatar of Philippe Philippe
    9. August 2016 at 00:11

    Art deco,

    It didn’t go over my head at all. You simply made an unfounded assertion which was clearly false.

    “A free individual is at liberty to elect with whom he associates and with whom he does not.”

    You are deceitfully conflating individuals with things (resources, etc) that are controlled by individuals. If a discriminated-against group in society is denied access to resources, goods, places, facilities, services, etc, that others in that society can freely access, and are treated as inferiors (etc) by those who control those things, simply because of characteristics such as race or sexual orientation, then they have demonstrably less liberty to live freely than others within that society. They are in effect second-class citizens, subjected to offensive, demeaning and harmful treatment, restrictions, constraints and deprivations that others are not subjected to. And all of this is sanctioned and enforced by the state. This is obviously anti-liberty, and you support it because your ideology is really about defending and advancing a particular kind of absolutist authority, not liberty.

  236. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    9. August 2016 at 06:03

    JNCU, I’m not denying that Johnson is not a pure libertarian. Almost no one is a pure anything. Castro was not a pure communist, would a libertarian object if I called Castro a “communist”? I doubt it. Political terms have fuzzy meaning. That’s actually useful.

    ‘Even if you are right about anti-discrimination laws, my point was that it’s a small issue, in comparison with many other public policy issues. Yes, important to some bakers, but not very important compared to taxes, the war on terror, the war on drugs, etc.

  237. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    9. August 2016 at 06:26

    You are deceitfully conflating individuals with things (resources, etc) that are controlled by individuals.

    The word ‘deceitful’ does not mean what you fancy it means.

    The ‘things’ I ‘control’ are the means to my ends. My liberty is infringed if a mess of predatory lawyers insist that they dictate how my ‘things’ are used.

    If a discriminated-against group in society is denied access to resources, goods, places, facilities, services, etc, that others in that society can freely access,

    Is that your argument, M. Proudhomme? That property is theft?

    and are treated as inferiors (etc) by those who control those things, simply because of characteristics such as race or sexual orientation,

    Now it’s your argument that person A is entitled to the good opinion of person B as a matter of law, but you’re telling me that person A’s liberty is not infringed by being compelled to pay obeisance to person B. Get it through your head: there are no orders in this society. A component of dismantling state-administered segregation was the understanding that there are, properly, no orders in this society. Mr. Vanderbilt and Mr. Tomaselli and Mr. Jefferson are, in French revolutionary parlance, Citizen Vanderbilt, Citizen Tomaselli, and Citizen Jefferson (which is what they were in 30 of the 48 states prior to 1954). In Britain across the pond, there are some residual courtesies which adhere to the Peerage and gentry (and the Royal Family), but no orders to speak of either.

    then they have demonstrably less liberty to live freely than others within that society. They are in effect second-class citizens, subjected to offensive, demeaning and harmful treatment, restrictions, constraints and deprivations that others are not subjected to. And all of this is sanctioned and enforced by the state. This is obviously anti-liberty, and you support it because your ideology is really about defending and advancing a particular kind of absolutist authority, not liberty.

    Your addled conception is that they are less at liberty because they do not have the use of my property.

    You are also quite persistent (while maintaining, fallaciously, that you know what you are talking about) in confounding liberty with recognition. Recognition and respect are distinct from liberty, and the extension of them cannot be compelled in any free society (nay, any sane society).

    As for your bleating about ‘offensive, demeaning, and harmful treatment’ that’s a laugh riot to anyone who has lived in any city in the northern United States in the postwar period. Norman Podhoretz was subject to a verbal flaying in 1963 for his description of race relations as he experienced them in New York City twenty years prior to that. Podhoretz is now 86 years old. Navigating these problems in urban environments has been a feature of the common life in most of the country for as long as just about anyone can remember (bar in odd loci like Boston). Fanny Lou Hamer is dead, and people who spent any part of their life living and working in similar circumstances are rapidly being dispatched by the actuarial tables.

  238. Gravatar of JNCU JNCU
    9. August 2016 at 10:05

    @ Sumner, that makes more sense. It was still a huge mistake on the part of JG because the never trump republicans were deliver right into our libertarian hands, and they would have support us to end the war on drugs just as long as we let them abstain from doing commerce when single gender ceremonies are involved.

  239. Gravatar of Philippe Philippe
    9. August 2016 at 12:31

    Art Deco,

    The logical conclusion of your reasoning is that segregation in the south did not reduce the liberty of black people compared to white people.

    That is what you are essentially arguing, as you’re insisting that being denied access to things that the rest of the population can access, and being treated as inferior to the rest of the population, does not in any way reduce your liberty compared to others.

  240. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    9. August 2016 at 13:49

    The logical conclusion of your reasoning is that segregation in the south did not reduce the liberty of black people compared to white people. That is what you are essentially arguing,

    No, I’m arguing that a proprietor limiting his custom does not reduce the liberty of blacks.

    Segregation in the South varied in it’s properties, but commonly included commercial law which required vendors of all types have separate facilities, general ordinances which required public parks &c. be segregated, education law which required that primary and secondary schools be segregated, debarred blacks from state universities, and limited them to small state colleges &c; and real estate law which permitted restrictive covenants on deeds to be enforced. Blacks were not altogether debarred from public employment, but there was bias in civil service recruitment and promotion. All of this took place in a matrix wherein law enforcement and the courts were not impartial and it was generally understood they were not impartial. There is no aspect of the foregoing which does not implicate agents of the state.

  241. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    9. August 2016 at 15:18

    Philippe:

    An individual cannot have personal liberty without property liberty. Humans are not atoms, islands, separated from the material world. The material world is the source of the means of life.

    Since the material world is scarce, meaning the amount of available stuff out there is always less than the possible and potential wants and desires from all humans in using and consuming that stuff – as human wants are for all intents and purposes infinite – it is necessary that “exclusionary” practises, i.e. property ethics, are carried out. You are “excluding” from the rest of the entire human race a positive portion of the scarce material world.

    The crucial question is how much of the scarce material world OUGHT each individual have for themselves. From the religious origins of communism, the answer is none, as humans would all be free spirits completely detached from the material world and independent from it, signing praises to God everyday instead of going to work. From the egalitarian perspective, everyone ought to have exactly equal. From a libertarian perspective, the individual ought to have as much as they want and can get through peaceful homesteading and free trade.

    ALL economic systems are exclusionary. All economic systems have property. Humans wants and needs, human reason, does not become capped by changing rules of property ownership. Scarcity is ubiquitous.

    In your ethics, you want the domain of exclusionary property rules to be determined not by individual merit and effort, but by a hierarchical oppression whereby the oppressors are selected by who has the most verbal votes of support from the masses, even if only 10% of the people actually vote. If only 100 people vote, and the largest vote getter got 25 votes, then that person is to effectively own and control all property even if it was produced by billions of individuals in free trade. That is your ethic. A master slave society where the slaves are free range chicken like slaves. And if any chattle don’t like it, they can move to another location ruled by another non-homesteader non-free trader master. That is your ethic.

    Every, and I mean every criticism you have of the “unfairness” of libertarianism, is not only present in your ethic, but WORSE. Egalitarianism? That requires a dictator ruler to impose their plan on what is naturally a diverse population.

  242. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    9. August 2016 at 15:29

    If refusing to trade with someone based on their race infringes upon their liberty, then refusing to trade with that someone because their bid price is too low, is also infringing upon their liberty.

    “He refused to trade with me.”

    “Oh my gosh, your liberty was infringed upon.”

    “Actually I don’t know that yet until I learn of his reason for refusing.”

    “You mean your liberty depends not on his actions towards your person or property, but on his thoughts?”

    “Uhhh”

    “Your liberty has nothing to do with how people treat you, but what they think of you?”

    “But MUH feels!”

  243. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    9. August 2016 at 15:30

    Philippe’ ethics are Orwellian thought police ethics.

  244. Gravatar of Philippe Philippe
    9. August 2016 at 16:07

    Art Deco,

    Imagine, for the sake of argument, that all of the segregation restrictions you listed were imposed by racist proprietors, legally, without being explicitly required by state law.

    Those restrictions would still be sanctioned and enforced by the state, and they would still have the same effect on the lives of black people.

    But according to your reasoning the resulting segregation – which would be functionally identical to segregation as it actually existed – would not reduce the liberty of the black people subjected to it, even though they would be subjected to exactly the same restrictions as they were under the state-required segregation regime.

    There’s an obvious contradiction here in your reasoning.

    It makes no difference whether the restrictions are imposed by proprietors (who are backed by the state), or if they are explicitly required by the state, if the outcome is identical.

  245. Gravatar of Art Deco Art Deco
    9. August 2016 at 16:25

    There’s an obvious contradiction here in your reasoning.

    No, there isn’t. You’re attempting to refute my argument with a thought experiment wherein commercial proprietors behave spontaneously as if they’d formed a cartel, a phenomenon which nestles in your head but not in everyday life. It’s difficult to imagine such a phenomenon unless the two populations are so averse to each other that their aversion is manifest in social geography. That’s not a description of Mississippi in 1948, when blacks and whites were juxtaposed as a matter of routine. Segregation laws directed that commercial establishments sort their customers because they had both black and white customers. Of course, some establishments only served whites and some were located in black sections of town which whites avoided.

  246. Gravatar of Philippe Philippe
    9. August 2016 at 16:56

    “You’re attempting to refute my argument with a thought experiment wherein commercial proprietors behave spontaneously as if they’d formed a cartel”

    No, I am simply using the thought experiment to show that there is no substantive difference between discrimination explicitly imposed by state policy and discrimination imposed by proprietors which is sanctioned and enforced by the state. The effects can be identical.

    It follows that if you are opposed to a state-imposed policies of segregation or discrimination – because of the obvious harms, reductions in liberty, etc, that are imposed on those who are subjected to it – you should also be opposed to functionally identical forms of segregation/discrimination that are imposed by private entities (which are sanctioned and enforced by the state), as they have the same effects.

  247. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    9. August 2016 at 18:07

    Philippe:

    “It follows that if you are opposed to a state-imposed policies of segregation or discrimination – because of the obvious harms, reductions in liberty, etc, that are imposed on those who are subjected to it – you should also be opposed to functionally identical forms of segregation/discrimination that are imposed by private entities (which are sanctioned and enforced by the state), as they have the same effects.”

    You literally just gave a textbook example of the informal version of the fallacy of appealing to consequences.

    It is not true that if A and B have the same effect, that we have to regard A and B as equally moral or immoral.

    This is easy to see if you actually did some critical analysis on your own premises. Remember that? I told you to do this. Do it already.

    An example:

    The effects of a person being pushed off a cliff are the same as the effects of a person voluntarily jumping off a cliff, i.e. a human pancake. But that doesn’t mean that being against the former means you have to be against the latter.

    Or,

    The effects of A stealing from B, are the same as the effects of B giving charity to A, i.e. B has less wealth and A has more. But that doesn’t mean that being against the former means you have to be against the latter.

    If a state imposed racial segregation on my friends and I, who would otherwise want to not segregate, then one can be against this on the basis of its aggression and violation of individual rights to free association, and still not have to be against my friends and I wanting to segregate ourselves, or one wanting to segregate themselves from others. This is because the exercise of judgment rests with the individuals themselves, their own persons, not some external third party telling them what to do with their own persons and property.

  248. Gravatar of Major.Freedom Major.Freedom
    9. August 2016 at 18:29

    Philippe,

    Moreover, if we dig even further, in the scenario you describe (and in all of my examples for that matter, but I used those examples only to show your errors) the effects are not actually the same in the two cases.

    You are not taking into account the utilities of the individuals.

    In the scenario of a state imposing segregation on my friends and I, and segregation based on my friends and my choices for our own persons, may appear on the surface to be the same, i.e. people physically distant from each other, but when we include the subjective valuations of the individuals, the two scenarios are not in fact the same. In the former case of state imposed segregation, the utilities are different as compared to the utilities in individuals deciding to segregate. It is like the difference in utilities between being told what to eat at the threat of force, and eating what you want.

    Only if individuals actually had preferences exactly identical to that which the state is “enforcing”, which by tye way is absurd because the whole point of a state law is to change people’s actions compared to the absence of that state law, only then will the effects of voluntary stateless actions be the same as the effects of actions in an environment of state laws and threats.

    In short, the very existence and enforcement of state law is sufficient to conclude that people otherwise would have acted differently, and thus experienced different subjective utilities. Thus your claim that the effects of state imposed segregation and voluntary segregation are the same, is refuted.

    Your error is that you are only focusing on one person – probably yourself as most socialists are narcissistic – and concluding that because you can experience observing someone NOT trading with you, the fact you are being refused is the important factor, that it doesn’t matter whether that other person is forced by the state to say no to you, or if they choose to say no to you. What matters is your feelings. And your feelings only. This egocentrism is blinding you to the preferences of your fellow human beings. You do not seem to want to recognize other people as sovereign and autonomous individuals in charge of their own persons and property. You view the world in accordance with how you feel, and if you feel the same in two different scenarios, then those two different scenarios are equally immoral or moral.

    Lord help you.

  249. Gravatar of Philippe Philippe
    16. August 2016 at 16:15

    MF

    you really are a deeply illogical, dishonest and delusional individual.

    I advise you to seek professional psychological help as soon as possible.

    But of course you won’t take my advice, because you’re basically mentally ill. You’re living in a weird bubble of your own creation, completely impervious to any information coming in from the outside world which doesn’t conform to your delusional mindset.

    I actually feel quite sorry for you, despite the fact that you’re obviously an asshole.

  250. Gravatar of Philippe Philippe
    16. August 2016 at 16:18

    Cue demented ranting about ‘violence’…

  251. Gravatar of Gene Callahan Gene Callahan
    18. August 2016 at 12:55

    “Sorry, but bigots having their feelings hurt is not high on my list of problems—look up top on this comment to see what is.”

    Funny thing to say, while your anti-religious bigotry is being shouted from the mountaintop!

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