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Biased Media • Re: 7 Things About The Mainstream Media That They Do Not Wan
"And until we can break this sick addiction to the mainstream media and get people to start thinking for themselves, we will never see widespread changes in our society. As long as people are being "programmed" by the mainstream media, they will continue to express the opinions, attitudes and beliefs that have been downloaded into their minds."
———————————–
The msm whores are but one brainwashing organ…academia, religion, politics and the myriads of leftist organizations are other propoganda machines.
Statistics: Posted by edward kennedy — Sat May 25, 2013 5:16 pm
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
Biased Media • 7 Things About The Mainstream Media That They Do Not Want Yo
7 Things About The Mainstream Media That They Do Not Want You To Know
By Michael, on May 20th, 2013
Have you ever wondered who controls the mainstream media? In America today, we are more "connected" than ever. The average American watches 153 hours of television a month, and we also spend countless hours watching movies, playing video games, listening to music, reading books and surfing the Internet. If someone could control the production of all of that media, that would make them immensely powerful. They would literally be in a position to tell people what to think. Well, what if I told you that there are just six enormous media conglomerates that combine to produce about 90 percent of all the media that Americans consume. Would that alarm you? It should alarm you. The truth is that our attitudes, opinions and beliefs are greatly shaped by what we allow into our minds. After all, they don’t call it "programming" for no reason. Even those of us that realize that we are connected to "the matrix" probably greatly underestimate the tremendous influence that the media has over us. We live at a time when it is absolutely imperative to think for ourselves, but most Americans are being absolutely overwhelmed with information and seem more than content to let others do their thinking for them. Sadly, this is greatly contributing to the downfall of our society.
And of course the mainstream media desperately does not want you to look at "the man behind the curtain". They just want you to stay plugged into the "programming" that they are feeding you without asking any questions.
Fortunately, a growing minority of Americans are waking up and are starting to reject the mainstream media. An increasing number of people are beginning to recognize that the mainstream media is the mouthpiece of the establishment and that it is promoting the agenda of the establishment.
So why is the mainstream media so bad? The following are 7 things about the mainstream media that they do not want you to know…
#1 The Mainstream Media Has Very Deep Ties To The Establishment
Did you know that the president of CBS and the president of ABC both have brothers that are top officials in the Obama administration?
The big news networks have developed an almost incestuous relationship with the federal government in recent years. But of course the same could be said of the relationship that the media has with the big corporations that own stock in their parent companies and that advertise on their networks.
This is one of the reasons why we very rarely ever see any hard hitting stories on the big networks anymore. The flow of information through the corporate-dominated media is very tightly controlled, and there are a lot of gatekeepers that make sure that the "wrong stories" don’t get put out to the public. As a result, many of the "big stories" that have come out in recent years were originally broken by the alternative media.
#2 The Mainstream Media Gets Things Wrong Very Frequently
Even prominent members of the mainstream media admit that this is the case. For example, during a recent speech at Quinnipiac University CBS anchor Scott Pelley confessed that journalists in the mainstream media "are getting big stories wrong, over and over again"…
"Let me take the first arrow: During our coverage of Newtown, I sat on my set and I reported that Nancy Lanza was a teacher at the school. And that her son had attacked her classroom. It’s a hell of a story, but it was dead wrong. Now, I was the managing editor, I made the decision to go ahead with that and I did, and that’s what I said, and I was absolutely wrong. So let me just take the first arrow here."
#3 The American Public Does Not Consider The Media To Be Very Trustworthy
Trust in the mainstream media has definitely been slipping. In fact, a Gallup poll taken last year found that distrust of the media had reached an all-time high. According to that poll, 60 percent of Americans "have little or no trust" that the media is reporting the news accurately.
A separate Rasmussen Reports survey found that only 6 percent of all Americans consider the news media to be "very trustworthy".
Hopefully this trend will accelerate and a lot more people will stop trusting the media blindly.
#4 The Mainstream Media And The Politicians That They Worship Hate The Fact That They Cannot Control Internet News Sites
In the old days, the mainstream media had a virtual monopoly on the news. But these days, anyone with an Internet connection can put up a news site, and this is driving the establishment absolutely bonkers.
For example, Barack Obama is known to have a great dislike for the alternative media. The following is from a recent WND article…
NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd says President Obama was making it “clear” at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner over the weekend how he feels about the rise of Internet news sites like Politico, Buzzfeed and … well, WND.
“He hates it.”
Appearing on “Meet the Press” Sunday morning following Saturday night’s media, politics and celebrity soiree, Todd explained the president’s disdain for independent online news sources was showing during his speech.
“It did seem … I thought his pot shots, joke-wise, and then the serious stuff about the Internet, the rise of the Internet media and social media and all that stuff – he hates it, OK? He hates this part of the media,” Todd said. “He really thinks that the, sort of, the buzzification – this isn’t just about Buzzfeed or Politico and all this stuff – he thinks that sort of coverage of political media has hurt political discourse. He hates it. And I think he was just trying to make that clear last night.”
#5 The Mainstream Media Is Extremely Liberal
When it comes to politics, the mainstream media is far more liberal than the general population is.
For example, one survey found that 41 percent of American voters believe that the average reporter is more liberal than they are, while only 18 percent believe that the average reporter is more conservative than they are.
A very disturbing UCLA study on media bias discovered that the vast majority of media outlets are "left of center"…
Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS’ “Evening News,” The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.
And even MSNBC has confirmed the liberal bias of the media. According to MSNBC, mainstream journalists are far more likely to donate their own money to Democrats than they are to Republicans…
MSNBC.com identified 143 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 16 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.
#6 Six Mammoth Media Corporations Produce About 90 Percent Of The Media That Americans Consume
As I mentioned at the top of this article, there are six giant media behemoths that control almost all of the media that we consume. These corporate giants own television networks, cable channels, movie studios, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, video game makers, music labels and even many of our favorite websites.
The media ownership chart posted below originally comes from a previous article that I authored entitled "Who Owns The Media? The 6 Monolithic Corporations That Control Almost Everything We Watch, Hear And Read", but it has been updated to reflect some of the latest information. The power that these companies have is so vast that it is hard to put into words…
Time Warner
CNN
Home Box Office (HBO)
Time Inc.
Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
CW Network (partial ownership)
TMZ
New Line Cinema
Time Warner Cable
Cinemax
Cartoon Network
TBS
TNT
America Online
MapQuest
Moviefone
Castle Rock
Sports Illustrated
Fortune
Marie Claire
DC Comics
People Magazine
Walt Disney
ABC Television Network
Disney Publishing
ESPN Inc.
Disney Channel
The History Channel
SOAPnet
A&E
Lifetime
Buena Vista Home Entertainment
Buena Vista Theatrical Productions
Buena Vista Records
Disney Records
Hollywood Records
Miramax Films
Touchstone Pictures
Walt Disney Pictures
Pixar Animation Studios
277 Radio Stations
Buena Vista Games
Hyperion Books
Viacom
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Home Entertainment
Black Entertainment Television (BET)
Comedy Central
Country Music Television (CMT)
Logo
MTV
MTV Canada
MTV2
Nick Magazine
Nick at Nite
Nick Jr.
Nickelodeon
Noggin
Spike TV
The Movie Channel
TV Land
VH1
News Corporation
Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Fox Television Stations
The New York Post
TV Guide
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Beliefnet
Fox Business Network
Fox Kids Europe
Fox News Channel
Fox Sports Net
Fox Television Network
FX
My Network TV
MySpace
News Limited News
Phoenix InfoNews Channel
Phoenix Movies Channel
Sky PerfecTV
Speed Channel
STAR TV India
STAR TV Taiwan
STAR World
Times Higher Education Supplement Magazine
Times Literary Supplement Magazine
Times of London
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
20th Century Fox International
20th Century Fox Studios
20th Century Fox Television
BSkyB
DIRECTV
The Wall Street Journal
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Interactive Media
FOXTEL
HarperCollins Publishers
The National Geographic Channel
National Rugby League
News Interactive
News Outdoor
Radio Veronica
ReganBooks
Sky Italia
Sky Radio Denmark
Sky Radio Germany
Sky Radio Netherlands
STAR
Zondervan
CBS Corporation
CBS News
CBS Sports
CBS Television Network
CNET
Showtime
TV.com
CBS Radio Inc. (130 stations)
CBS Consumer Products
CBS Outdoor
CW Network (50% ownership)
Infinity Broadcasting
Simon & Schuster (Pocket Books, Scribner)
Westwood One Radio Network
Comcast
NBC
Bravo
CNBC
NBC News
MSNBC
NBC Sports
NBC Television Network
Oxygen
SciFi Magazine
Syfy (Sci Fi Channel)
Telemundo
USA Network
Weather Channel
Focus Features
NBC Universal Television Distribution
NBC Universal Television Studio
Paxson Communications (partial ownership)
Hulu
Universal Parks & Resorts
Universal Pictures
Universal Studio Home Video
#7 The American People Are Absolutely Addicted To The Mainstream Media
In a previous article about the media, I noted that the average American watches 153 hours of television a month.
When you allow that much information to be downloaded into your brain, it is going to have a dramatic impact on how you think.
Americans are more "connected" than they ever have been before. This is especially true of our kids. They are constantly on one sort of electronic device or another. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent article by Daniel Taylor…
According to a 2010 LA Times report, young people spend on average 53 hours a week watching TV, playing video games, and sitting at the computer.
Facebook users spend about 15 hours a month on the social networking site.
People are walking – and driving – blindly while texting, sometimes walking into fountains and even falling off cliffs.
If that Los Angeles Times report is true, that means that our young people are spending more than 200 hours a month connected to the media.
But we are only awake for about 480 hours a month.
When it comes to influencing the American people, nobody has more power than the big media companies do.
And until we can break this sick addiction to the mainstream media and get people to start thinking for themselves, we will never see widespread changes in our society. As long as people are being "programmed" by the mainstream media, they will continue to express the opinions, attitudes and beliefs that have been downloaded into their minds.
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/arch … ou-to-know
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Mon May 20, 2013 4:31 pm
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
7 Things About The Mainstream Media That They Do Not Want You To Know
Have you ever wondered who controls the mainstream media? In America today, we are more “connected” than ever. The average American watches 153 hours of television a month, and we also spend countless hours watching movies, playing video games, listening to music, reading books and surfing the Internet. If someone could control the production of all of that media, that would make them immensely powerful. They would literally be in a position to tell people what to think. Well, what if I told you that there are just six enormous media conglomerates that combine to produce about 90 percent of all the media that Americans consume. Would that alarm you? It should alarm you. The truth is that our attitudes, opinions and beliefs are greatly shaped by what we allow into our minds. After all, they don’t call it “programming” for no reason. Even those of us that realize that we are connected to “the matrix” probably greatly underestimate the tremendous influence that the media has over us. We live at a time when it is absolutely imperative to think for ourselves, but most Americans are being absolutely overwhelmed with information and seem more than content to let others do their thinking for them. Sadly, this is greatly contributing to the downfall of our society.
And of course the mainstream media desperately does not want you to look at “the man behind the curtain”. They just want you to stay plugged into the “programming” that they are feeding you without asking any questions.
Fortunately, a growing minority of Americans are waking up and are starting to reject the mainstream media. An increasing number of people are beginning to recognize that the mainstream media is the mouthpiece of the establishment and that it is promoting the agenda of the establishment.
So why is the mainstream media so bad? The following are 7 things about the mainstream media that they do not want you to know…
#1 The Mainstream Media Has Very Deep Ties To The Establishment
Did you know that the president of CBS and the president of ABC both have brothers that are top officials in the Obama administration?
The big news networks have developed an almost incestuous relationship with the federal government in recent years. But of course the same could be said of the relationship that the media has with the big corporations that own stock in their parent companies and that advertise on their networks.
This is one of the reasons why we very rarely ever see any hard hitting stories on the big networks anymore. The flow of information through the corporate-dominated media is very tightly controlled, and there are a lot of gatekeepers that make sure that the “wrong stories” don’t get put out to the public. As a result, many of the “big stories” that have come out in recent years were originally broken by the alternative media.
#2 The Mainstream Media Gets Things Wrong Very Frequently
Even prominent members of the mainstream media admit that this is the case. For example, during a recent speech at Quinnipiac University CBS anchor Scott Pelley confessed that journalists in the mainstream media “are getting big stories wrong, over and over again”…
“Let me take the first arrow: During our coverage of Newtown, I sat on my set and I reported that Nancy Lanza was a teacher at the school. And that her son had attacked her classroom. It’s a hell of a story, but it was dead wrong. Now, I was the managing editor, I made the decision to go ahead with that and I did, and that’s what I said, and I was absolutely wrong. So let me just take the first arrow here.”
#3 The American Public Does Not Consider The Media To Be Very Trustworthy
Trust in the mainstream media has definitely been slipping. In fact, a Gallup poll taken last year found that distrust of the media had reached an all-time high. According to that poll, 60 percent of Americans “have little or no trust” that the media is reporting the news accurately.
A separate Rasmussen Reports survey found that only 6 percent of all Americans consider the news media to be “very trustworthy”.
Hopefully this trend will accelerate and a lot more people will stop trusting the media blindly.
#4 The Mainstream Media And The Politicians That They Worship Hate The Fact That They Cannot Control Internet News Sites
In the old days, the mainstream media had a virtual monopoly on the news. But these days, anyone with an Internet connection can put up a news site, and this is driving the establishment absolutely bonkers.
For example, Barack Obama is known to have a great dislike for the alternative media. The following is from a recent WND article…
NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd says President Obama was making it “clear” at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner over the weekend how he feels about the rise of Internet news sites like Politico, Buzzfeed and … well, WND.
“He hates it.”
Appearing on “Meet the Press” Sunday morning following Saturday night’s media, politics and celebrity soiree, Todd explained the president’s disdain for independent online news sources was showing during his speech.
“It did seem … I thought his pot shots, joke-wise, and then the serious stuff about the Internet, the rise of the Internet media and social media and all that stuff – he hates it, OK? He hates this part of the media,” Todd said. “He really thinks that the, sort of, the buzzification – this isn’t just about Buzzfeed or Politico and all this stuff – he thinks that sort of coverage of political media has hurt political discourse. He hates it. And I think he was just trying to make that clear last night.”
#5 The Mainstream Media Is Extremely Liberal
When it comes to politics, the mainstream media is far more liberal than the general population is.
For example, one survey found that 41 percent of American voters believe that the average reporter is more liberal than they are, while only 18 percent believe that the average reporter is more conservative than they are.
A very disturbing UCLA study on media bias discovered that the vast majority of media outlets are “left of center”…
Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS’ “Evening News,” The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.
And even MSNBC has confirmed the liberal bias of the media. According to MSNBC, mainstream journalists are far more likely to donate their own money to Democrats than they are to Republicans…
MSNBC.com identified 143 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 16 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.
#6 Six Mammoth Media Corporations Produce About 90 Percent Of The Media That Americans Consume
As I mentioned at the top of this article, there are six giant media behemoths that control almost all of the media that we consume. These corporate giants own television networks, cable channels, movie studios, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, video game makers, music labels and even many of our favorite websites.
The media ownership chart posted below originally comes from a previous article that I authored entitled “Who Owns The Media? The 6 Monolithic Corporations That Control Almost Everything We Watch, Hear And Read“, but it has been updated to reflect some of the latest information. The power that these companies have is so vast that it is hard to put into words…
Time Warner
CNN
Home Box Office (HBO)
Time Inc.
Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
CW Network (partial ownership)
TMZ
New Line Cinema
Time Warner Cable
Cinemax
Cartoon Network
TBS
TNT
America Online
MapQuest
Moviefone
Castle Rock
Sports Illustrated
Fortune
Marie Claire
DC Comics
People Magazine
Walt Disney
ABC Television Network
Disney Publishing
ESPN Inc.
Disney Channel
The History Channel
SOAPnet
A&E
Lifetime
Buena Vista Home Entertainment
Buena Vista Theatrical Productions
Buena Vista Records
Disney Records
Hollywood Records
Miramax Films
Touchstone Pictures
Walt Disney Pictures
Pixar Animation Studios
277 Radio Stations
Buena Vista Games
Hyperion Books
Viacom
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Home Entertainment
Black Entertainment Television (BET)
Comedy Central
Country Music Television (CMT)
Logo
MTV
MTV Canada
MTV2
Nick Magazine
Nick at Nite
Nick Jr.
Nickelodeon
Noggin
Spike TV
The Movie Channel
TV Land
VH1
News Corporation
Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Fox Television Stations
The New York Post
TV Guide
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Beliefnet
Fox Business Network
Fox Kids Europe
Fox News Channel
Fox Sports Net
Fox Television Network
FX
My Network TV
MySpace
News Limited News
Phoenix InfoNews Channel
Phoenix Movies Channel
Sky PerfecTV
Speed Channel
STAR TV India
STAR TV Taiwan
STAR World
Times Higher Education Supplement Magazine
Times Literary Supplement Magazine
Times of London
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
20th Century Fox International
20th Century Fox Studios
20th Century Fox Television
BSkyB
DIRECTV
The Wall Street Journal
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Interactive Media
FOXTEL
HarperCollins Publishers
The National Geographic Channel
National Rugby League
News Interactive
News Outdoor
Radio Veronica
ReganBooks
Sky Italia
Sky Radio Denmark
Sky Radio Germany
Sky Radio Netherlands
STAR
Zondervan
CBS Corporation
CBS News
CBS Sports
CBS Television Network
CNET
Showtime
TV.com
CBS Radio Inc. (130 stations)
CBS Consumer Products
CBS Outdoor
CW Network (50% ownership)
Infinity Broadcasting
Simon & Schuster (Pocket Books, Scribner)
Westwood One Radio Network
Comcast
NBC
Bravo
CNBC
NBC News
MSNBC
NBC Sports
NBC Television Network
Oxygen
SciFi Magazine
Syfy (Sci Fi Channel)
Telemundo
USA Network
Weather Channel
Focus Features
NBC Universal Television Distribution
NBC Universal Television Studio
Paxson Communications (partial ownership)
Hulu
Universal Parks & Resorts
Universal Pictures
Universal Studio Home Video
#7 The American People Are Absolutely Addicted To The Mainstream Media
In a previous article about the media, I noted that the average American watches 153 hours of television a month.
When you allow that much information to be downloaded into your brain, it is going to have a dramatic impact on how you think.
Americans are more “connected” than they ever have been before. This is especially true of our kids. They are constantly on one sort of electronic device or another. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent article by Daniel Taylor…
According to a 2010 LA Times report, young people spend on average 53 hours a week watching TV, playing video games, and sitting at the computer.
Facebook users spend about 15 hours a month on the social networking site.
People are walking – and driving – blindly while texting, sometimes walking into fountains and even falling off cliffs.
If that Los Angeles Times report is true, that means that our young people are spending more than 200 hours a month connected to the media.
But we are only awake for about 480 hours a month.
When it comes to influencing the American people, nobody has more power than the big media companies do.
And until we can break this sick addiction to the mainstream media and get people to start thinking for themselves, we will never see widespread changes in our society. As long as people are being “programmed” by the mainstream media, they will continue to express the opinions, attitudes and beliefs that have been downloaded into their minds.
Please share this article with as many people as you can. It is crucial that we wake as many people up as possible while we still can.
View full post on The Economic Collapse
Crony Hollywood really wants the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement, And they don’t want you know about it.
SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, CISPA, the freedom of the Internet is under assault from crony industry and governments. It’s about control. It is about the reining in of information. It is about restricting innovators and protecting dinosaur business models.
Hollywood knows that the way it is built will not survive in the 21st century. The studio model, with heavily unionized work forces just doesn’t make sense when it costs 1/100th of what it used to cost to make a quality film or show. The cronies in Southern California know that their expiration date is up. Their time is over. But they still have a lot of money and with it a lot of political influence. These guy’s desperately want the TPP and the expansion of copyright to go through. They don’t care that it will stifle innovation and make the world a worse place. Hollywood has decided to use the state to protect them from the public rather than innovate.
Thankfully the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and of course many others, is paying attention to the ongoing, and very secret negotiations going on at the Trans Pacific Partnership talks.
By the way there are concurrent talks with Europe about creating a similar “partnership” going on right now too.
(From Black Listed News)
As during the ACTA negotiations, Hollywood and other Big Content industries have a stronghold over international policymakers. As a result, U.S. trade delegates are pushing forth provisions that, if enforced, would have huge chilling effects on everyone including innovators, hackers, makers, students, researchers, and people with reading and learning disabilities. These provisions are designed to limit how anyone can share and interact with digital content so they will impact everyone.
View full post on AgainstCronyCapitalism.org
What’s So Bad about Guantanamo?
The controversy surrounding the Guantanamo Bay detention facility is one that ebbs and flows throughout our national discourse. Going unmentioned for months at a time, some timely issue pertaining to torture or due process or our current war on terror will bring Guantanamo back into the national spotlight for but a few fleeting moments, only to be forgotten again in exchange for more timely issues. Currently, we are a time of more flow than ebb. The recent rash of hunger strikes occurring at Guantanamo—in which as many as 45 detainees are refusing to eat, thirteen of which are being force-fed—has brought the secretive detention facility back into national headlines, if only for a few moments. Given the timeliness, I would like to take the opportunity to explore Guantanamo Bay in a more philosophical manner than is usually done. Most libertarians, I believe, think Guantanamo Bay is somehow morally bad. But even though many libertarians might harbor this disposition (present company included), we might remain unable to articulate why it is we feel this way. In this essay I try to state clearly why I think the Guantanamo Bay detention facility is morally bad.
Here is one reason to believe that Guantanamo is morally bad: it is morally bad because it stands in defiance of both national and international law. Internationally, detention practices at Guantanamo remain in violation of several statutes of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), a multilateral treaty adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 16, 1966, and enforced from March 23, 1976 forward. While there are many statutes composing the ICCPR, it remains a relatively uncontroversial fact that detention practices at Guantanamo stand in defiance of several requirements of the multilateral treaty, namely articles seven, nine, and fourteen. Moreover, it could also be argued that detention practices at Guantanamo stand in defiance of national law as well, particularly the guarantee of due process secured through the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, though this is a much more controversial claim.
But even though the Guantanamo Bay detention center is in defiance of the law, it is not morally bad because so. This is because actions and institutions cannot be morally wrong solely because they are in defiance of the law; such a view would commit us to absurd conclusions. For example, suppose there was a law requiring every parent to kill off their children until they were left with only two offspring. If a parent with six kids refused to kill four of them off—in defiance of our hypothetical law—have they done a morally bad thing? Hardly. We don’t even need to delve into the realm of counterfactuals to prove this point: were the actions of Harriet Tubman and other abolitionists, who sought to free slaves by providing passage to the north in violation of the Fugitive Slave Act, morally wrong? Again, obviously not. As such, we cannot commit ourselves to the position that actions and institutions are morally wrong because they are in defiance of the law. By implication Guantanamo is not morally bad because of its questionable legal status.
It might be true that Guantanamo is morally bad because torture happens within the facility. After an inspection the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) concluded that the institutional infrastructure present within Guantanamo “cannot be considered other than an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture.” Reported practices included humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, and forced positions. Although the U.S. government has denied allegations of torture, released prisoners have corroborated the ICRC report, claiming that beatings, sleep deprivation, prolonged hoodings, along with other torturous practices occurred. It is due to the presence of these inhumane practices within the facility, it might be argued, that gives Guantanamo its suspect moral status.
We cannot say that Guantanamo is bad because of the alleged torture taking place there, even though we might have problems with specific instances of torture occurring. Here is why: most people believe that torture, in some cases, is morally justified. Consider the banal ticking time bomb example: we know that a nuclear bomb is going explode in New York City in one hour, and we also know, without doubt, who planted the bomb. We also do not know where the bomb is located. Would we be justified in torturing our bomber to learn the location of the bomb? Most would say yes. As a result, torture is not always morally wrong (though oftentimes it is). Now consider the relation between this corollary and Guantanamo: suppose it was true we knew for a fact that every instance of torture happening in Guantanamo was of the type that we could confidently predicate as morally just. But even so, torture is still happening in the facility.
Under such circumstances—where only justified torture takes place in Guantanamo—is there still something morally problematic with the detention camp? I think so. If the above counterfactual is too difficult for the reader to imagine, or if the reader believes that torture (as many libertarians do) is never justified, then consider this: imagine that, in some possible world, every fact about Guantanamo remained the same, except no torture whatsoever took place there. There was still the detention camp; still filled with both civilians and those picked up off of the battlefield; and they were still denied basic due process of law, being kept in the facility for years upon years with no chance of defending their innocence in front of a legitimate, unbiased court. Under such conditions, is Guantanamo now morally good, or at the very least not morally bad? Doubtfully. Something still seems off to most of us—suggesting that torture is not the rasion d’être of the moral badness.
It might be true that Guantanamo is morally bad because it refuses to give its detainees the full extent of due process given to other individuals tried within the U.S. criminal justice system. It is not the case that detainees in Guantanamo receive no due process of law; indeed, both Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld did much to improve the legal rights of the accused, requiring that enemy combatants be able to challenge their status in front of military commissions, and also setting certain—though still meager—standards with which these commissions must adhere to. But even so, the military commissions detainees are given access to lack a certain standard of fairness we might want to be present: according to Human Rights First, for instance, the Military Commissions Act of 2009 allows for the introduction of coerced statements in proceedings; the use of evidence derived from statements obtained through torture if “use of such evidence would otherwise be consistent with the interests of justice”; and it allows for defendants to be tried ex-post facto for conduct not considered to constitute a war crime at the time it was committed. This list deficiencies, the reader should be reminded, constitutes a mere proper subset of all the problems inherent within the current military commission system.
Even though detainees at Guantanamo lack access to as robust a conception of due process as we receive in the U.S., it is still not clear why this is such a bad thing. Here is one reason why refusing due process to detainees is morally problematic: due process constitutes an institutional check on the epistemological problems we face when imprisoning individuals. In seeking out terrorists and other enemy combatants to imprison within the detention facility, the U.S. uses specific criteria that certain individuals must satisfy in order to be considered someone who ought to be locked up. We hope that when individuals are sought out to be detained, such a task is done in good faith; that those carrying out such a mission are careful to not wrongfully lock up those who do not deserve to be locked up, and, moreover, before anyone is selected for detainment, it is made sure that they actually do satisfy the relevant criteria. But even so, mistakes can be made.
One of the functions of due process, then, is to help remedy these mistakes—to make sure that detainees actually ought to have been detained, by virtue of them having instantiated the relevant properties. This determination, obviously enough, is litigated in court when determining whether someone is guilty or innocent. When detainees are denied their day in court then these epistemological worries go unaddressed, leaving it indeterminate whether detainees really ought to be in the detention facility or not. As such, denying due process is morally bad.
While due process’ ability to remedy the epistemological problems of justice we face is important, it is not sufficiently important to make the lack of due process morally bad. Consider this example: suppose the U.S. had a policy of locking up in Guantanamo every individual who Googled the term “Islamic extremism.” Also suppose that every such individual put away in the detention facility was given a brief hearing to determine whether they actually did Google the illicit term. Even so, in the trial, the accused were not allowed to challenge the content—that is, the constitutionality or justness—of our hypothetical law. Even with the presence of this non-robust conception of due process, is Guantanamo Bay still morally bad? I think so, though perhaps we are closer to the truth of the matter than we were before.
The problem here is that due process does more than simply remedy potential epistemological problems, though it certainly does that. Due process also allows litigants to challenge the content of specific laws—it allows our detainees to question whether what is being done to them is just, or whether what is being done to them is constitutional. Not merely if laws are being carried out correctly, but if laws that are being carried out should even be carried out in the first place. When this second, substantive feature of due process is present, then we begin fleshing out why due process is so important a thing, and also why the lack of due process in places like Guantanamo is so bad.
When detainees are granted the ability to (1) determine whether they have actually violated specific laws that we claim they have violated and (2) challenge the content of the laws they are being charged with violating, then we begin approaching fairness. Obviously enough, the ability of detainees to exercise these two important features of due process is contingent on their ability to have a day in a fair court, not merely to show up to what seems like a one-sided military commission. By implication, lacking these two essential features is a morally bad thing. Since the Guantanamo Bay detention facility does lack these two features we can thus conclude that it is a morally bad place, answering our original question as to why the detention facility strikes us as morally problematic.
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Three Questions about Government Spying on the Press
Julian Sanchez
It’s heartening to see widespread outrage—both online and from members of Congress—about the news that Justice Department vacuumed up phone records spanning two months from 20 phone lines belonging to the Associated Press or its employees. This may not be a return to the bad old days of J. Edgar Hoover, who kept files of derogatory information about hostile journalists, but surveillance of the press—even in the course of otherwise legitimate investigations—always threatens to impede the vital check on government the Fourth Estate provides. A subpoena covering so many of a major news organization’s phone lines, including shared switchboard and fax numbers used by scores of reporters, for such an extended period, seems especially troubling in the context of this administration’s unprecedented war on whistleblowers. It’s effectively a warning that nobody who speaks to the press without White House approval—whether they’re leaking classified secrets or just saying things the bosses wouldn’t like—can count on anonymity. I’ll have plenty more to say about this soon, but a few key questions reporters and legislators ought to be asking:
- DOJ regulations are supposed to require a careful balancing of investigative needs against First Amendment values before reporter records are sought, with advance notice to the press whenever possible. The AP is fairly certain its records were seized as part of a leak investigation aimed at uncovering the source of a story about a foiled terrorist plot—a story the AP itself sat on until they were convinced publication posed no national security risk. The administration itself was on the verge of announcing the same facts. Given that anonymous sources discussing classified matters with press are a routine and indispensable part of journalism, what made this investigation so urgent that it was necessary to use methods experts agree were far more broad and intrusive than the norm?
- Read hyper-literally, those same DOJ regulations refer only to “subpoenas” directed at journalists themselves or seeking “telephone toll records.” And the DOJ’s own operational guidelines make quite clear that they do read the rules hyper-literally: They apparently are not held to apply to the myriad tools other than grand jury subpoenas at the government’s disposal, such as National Security Letters or administrative subpoenas. Does DOJ employ a similarly literal reading of “telephone toll records,” such that they’re not required to observe these rules when they obtain other electronic records, such as e-mail transactional data? The DOJ, recall, says they often don’t need warrants to read e-mail or Facebook chats, let alone review transactional metadata concerning such communications. So it seems odd that they would pull out all the stops when it comes to phone records, yet ignore the channels by which modern reporters probably conduct the bulk of their correspondence. Even if it would have been infeasible to access logs of AP’s e-mail transactional data without tipping them off (my understanding is they maintain their own e-mail servers), nearly every journalist has potentially revealing Facebook friend lists, personal Gmail accounts, Twitter direct message headers, and so on—some of which would be more targeted than records from phone lines shared by dozens of journalists. Was other data that DOJ believes to be outside the scope of their reporting obligations—either because it wasn’t obtained by “subpoena” or because it wasn’t “telephone toll records”—obtained in this case? More broadly, how much press data is obtained without notification because it falls outside these categories?
- Thanks to a 2010 Inspector General report, we know a bit about the FBI’s use of “community of interest” data requests that sweep up call log data not just on a single target, but all the phones their target is in regular contact with—and maybe even the numbers those phones are calling too. After using this technique for years—sometimes literally by accident—FBI sought an Office of Legal Counsel opinion about whether the press notification rules applied when such requests were likely to indirectly pull in press records. In January 2009, OLC concluded they did—but since they ended up not getting the records in that instance, and the agent making the request apparently hadn’t understood quite what he was requesting, the FBI decided it didn’t need to tell anyone at the time. What, then, is the Justice Department’s current policy when it comes to information about press communications obtained indirectly through “community of interest” requests? Is any attempt made to ascertain when such requests have acquired reporters’ phone records, whether or not that was either intended or foreseen when the request was made? Since records in the FBI database are retained indefinitely for potential future data mining, even records the FBI doesn’t currently know belong to reporters could easily end up revealing patterns of press activity as a result of future analysis. Does DOJ think it must inform reporters when this happens, or is it only at the acquisition stage that the notice obligation applies? Has any broad effort been made to determine how many reporter records are in FBI databases, especially as a result of requests made before 2009?
Of course, whatever the answers to these questions, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is right to point out that the broader problem is that communications metadata isn’t entitled to much protection under either current Fourth Amendment jurisprudence or federal statute. This means the government can typically access metadata with little or no judicial oversight—and if you’re not a reporter there are no special rules requiring the government to ever notify you that your records have been swept up in some investigation. As technological change makes such metadata increasingly revealing—because nearly everything you do online leaves some digital trace, from which ever more detailed inferences can be drawn using sophisticated analytic tools—the problem is not just for press freedom: it’s a privacy problem for all of us.
View full post on Cato @ Liberty
An Interview With Barack Obama About The IRS Scandal, AP Phone Records And Benghazi
Does Barack Obama have any idea what is going on in the government that he is supposedly running? Scandals are erupting all around him, and he supposedly was not aware that any wrongdoing had taken place in any of those instances. It is almost as if every major government agency has gone rogue and Obama has no idea what the heck they are doing. According to Obama, he often doesn’t learn what those under his authority are up to until he sits down and turns on the news. Should we believe him when he claims ignorance over and over again, or is Obama just trying to protect himself? Whether you are a Republican, a Democrat or an Independent, the revelations that have come out in recent days about the IRS, the seizure of AP phone records and Benghazi should be very alarming to you. Taken together, these scandals paint a picture of a federal government that has become drunk with power, and no matter where you may fall on the political spectrum that is something that nobody should want.
Posted below is a fictional interview that I have created between an anonymous reporter and Barack Obama about the IRS scandal, the seizure of AP phone records, Benghazi and other sensitive topics. Yes, this interview is a bit absurd, but so is the notion that Barack Obama is completely ignorant about so many important things that are going on inside his own government…
REPORTER: “President Obama, the IRS has publicly admitted that they were specifically targeting patriot groups and Tea Party organizations for ‘extra scrutiny’. When did you first learn about this?”
REPORTER: “But how is that possible? We have now learned that the targeting of patriots and Tea Party groups began as early as March 2010. The head of the IRS tax-exempt organizations division was informed about this targeting in June 2011, the chief counsel for the IRS knew about this targeting by August 2011, the deputy commissioner for services and enforcement knew about this targeting by March 2012, and IRS Commissioner Steven T. Miller knew about this targeting by May 2012. Throughout this period of time, the IRS repeatedly lied to Congress when they were specifically asked about the targeting of conservative groups. Are you claiming that nobody from your administration ever had any contact with anyone from the IRS about this?”
REPORTER: That is what the IRS was claiming at first. But now the Washington Post is reporting that “IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea-party-affiliated groups.” That would seem to indicate that this was being coordinated on a nationwide level by someone at the IRS. Would you care to comment on that?
REPORTER: But you were just commenting on it. Don’t you think that the American people deserve the truth about this?
REPORTER: Okay, let’s switch gears. Did you know that the Justice Department was spying on AP reporters just months before the 2012 election? Did you know that two months of cellular, office and home telephone records were secretly obtained without any explanation last April and May?
REPORTER: The Associated Press is now the enemy? Without a free and independent media, what would keep us from descending into tyranny?
REPORTER: But shouldn’t we be alarmed when government agencies target specific groups of people for their political beliefs? Breitbart is reporting that the EPA “has routinely charged conservative and watchdog groups fees that the agency has waived for the mainstream media and ‘green’ groups”. Do you know anything about this?
REPORTER: I understand that these are tougher questions than you normally get from the media. But I think that the American people deserve some answers. For example, would you like to discuss Benghazi?
REPORTER: Very funny Mr. President. What about the Fast and Furious scandal? Would you be willing to talk about that?
REPORTER: Are there any difficult subjects that you would be willing to discuss? I have questions here about the Secret Service prostitution scandal, Solyndra, the new NSA spy center out in Utah, government ammunition stockpiling, the NDAA, drone strikes, Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko and Bill Ayers. Would you be willing to answer any of those questions?
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IRS Lied to Congress about Targeting Tea Party
Michael F. Cannon
On Friday, the IRS admitted that when “social welfare” groups with the terms “tea party” or “patriot” in their names applied for 501(c)(4)/tax-exempt status, IRS agents targeted them for extra (and extra-legal) scrutiny to ensure they were not engaged in politicking. The Washington Post reports, “about 75 groups were selected for extra inquiry — including, in some cases, improper requests for the names of donors.” IRS agents did not apply similar scrutiny to groups with “progressive” in their names.
Over the weekend, more details emerged. It now appears the IRS lied to Congress about this practice for more than a year. It also appears the IRS is still targeting tea-party groups today, in part because IRS bureaucrats believe groups that “educat[e] on the Constitution and Bill of Rights” deserve greater scrutiny.
Here’s a rundown.
Senior IRS officials have known about these abuses for nearly two years. The Associated Press reports: “Senior Internal Revenue Service officials knew agents were targeting tea party groups as early as 2011…on June 29, 2011, Lois G. Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, learned at a meeting that groups were being targeted, according to the watchdog’s report. At the meeting, she was told that groups with ‘Tea Party,’ ‘Patriot’ or ‘9/12 Project’ in their names were being flagged for additional and often burdensome scrutiny…Lerner instructed agents to change the criteria for flagging groups ‘immediately’…”. IRS agents also gave extra scrutiny to groups that “criticize how the country is being run.”
The IRS tried to get away with it again. The Washington Post reports:
the agency revised its criteria a week later.
But six months later, the IRS applied a new political test to groups that applied for tax-exempt status as “social welfare” groups, the document says. On Jan. 15, 2012 the agency decided to target “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform movement”…
The agency did not appear to adopt a more neutral test for social welfare groups…until May 17, 2012…
Of course, these revised criteria are not politically neutral either. Tea-party groups are still far more likely to receive extra scrutiny than progressive groups. Lots of right-leaning political groups describe their mission as working to limit government or educate people about the Constitution. Far fewer left-leaning groups emphasize educating people about the Constitution or openly declare their mission is to expand government. And note: the U.S. government treated groups as suspect if they educate the public about the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Let that one sink in.
The IRS lied to Congress for more than a year. The Associated Press reports: “At a congressional hearing March 22, 2012, [then-IRS commissioner Douglas] Shulman was adamant in his denials. ‘There’s absolutely no targeting.’” Senior IRS staff knew that claim was false nine months before Shulman made it. Yet they let Shulman’s false statement to Congress go uncorrected, amid a congressional investigation into whether the IRS was targeting tea-party groups, for another 14 months. According to the Washington Post, “The IRS made no mention of targeting conservative groups in five separate responses to congressional inquiries between Nov. 18, 2011, and June 15, 2012, according to the [inspector general’s] timeline.” Even if we view the facts in the light most favorable to the IRS and assume Shulman did not know he was uttering a falsehood – which, by the way, would mean he is a very poor manager – the IRS’s failure to correct that falsehood pretty much makes it a lie. I don’t mean that in the phony way PolitiFact uses the term. I mean a real lie.
The IRS did not come forward of its own accord. The Associated Press: “The Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration is expected to release the results of a nearly yearlong investigation in the coming week.” House Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) put it, “Before the IG’s report comes to the public or to Congress as required by law, it’s leaked by the IRS to try to spin the output. This mea culpa’s not an honest one.”
IRS officials maintain the targeting of tea-party groups was the work of low-level employees and not politically motivated. Yet the agency has shown a willingness to deceive Congress and the public about its own misconduct. Congress should conduct a thorough investigation.
Even if it is true that low-level IRS bureaucrats were acting on their own, Congress’ investigation should examine the role Obama administration officials played in encouraging those bureaucrats to single out the tea party. As New York Times columnist Ross Douthat explains:
Where might an enterprising, public-spirited I.R.S. agent get the idea that a Tea Party group deserved more scrutiny from the government than the typical band of activists seeking tax-exempt status? Oh, I don’t know: why, maybe from all the prominent voices who spent the first two years of the Obama era worrying that the Tea Party wasn’t just a typically messy expression of citizen activism, but something much darker — an expression of crypto-fascist, crypto-racist rage, part Timothy McVeigh and part Bull Connor, potentially carrying a wave of terrorist violence in its wings.
It would be very bad if senior Obama administration officials ordered the IRS to intimidate the president’s political opponents. It would scarcely be better if administration officials denounced their opponents until IRS bureaucrats took the hint.
People should lose their jobs over this.
View full post on Cato @ Liberty
Wyden, Starr, Other ObamaCare Supporters Worry about Rollout
Michael F. Cannon
From Reuters:
“There is reason to be very concerned about what’s going to happen with young people. If their (insurance) premiums shoot up, I can tell you, that is going to wash into the United States Senate in a hurry,” said Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat…
“Why in late April can’t they show us any of what they’ve got planned? The rollout plan should already be in existence,” an exasperated Democratic Senate aide said separately…
Reform is facing challenges on several fronts. Big insurers appear wary of participating, raising questions about how competitive the exchanges will be. Businesses are mounting a new legal effort to stop the use of federal subsidies in exchanges run by Washington. And most states have balked at the exchanges and the Medicaid expansion…
“I don’t see how what they’re planning to do is going to be adequate. The resources are too limited, the (law’s) penalties are too weak and elite opposition in much of the country will undermine” enrollment, said Paul Starr, a Princeton professor and former health adviser to President Bill Clinton…
An April survey of 1,003 people by HealthPocket, an online company that helps consumers find insurance, also found that the law’s penalty for not buying coverage would not induce most 25-to-34-year-olds or 18-to-24-year-olds to purchase it…
View full post on Cato @ Liberty
What Do Libertarians Believe About the Non-Aggression Principle?
There has, of late, been much debate about the philosophical merit of the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP). See here for a partial summary. Personally, I have been deeply gratified by the quality of argument that debate has elicited—on both sides—and I look forward to watching it continue to unfold. No doubt I will have more to contribute to it myself before long.
But, for now, I want to put to the side the philosophical question of the NAP’s defensibility, and ask instead some questions of a more sociological nature. Just how many libertarians really believe in the NAP, anyway? And for those who do, how does it inform their analysis of practical moral and political questions?
As far as I know, there hasn’t been much empirical work done on the moral and political beliefs of self-identified libertarians. But one always-fascinating source is Liberty’s decennial readers’ survey (No, not that Liberty, and not that one either. This one). First in 1988, then again in 1999, and finally in 2008 (before the magazine’s demise as a print periodical in 2010), Liberty published the results of an extensive survey of their readers and other libertarians. In each of these surveys, respondents were asked to provide demographic information, name their intellectual influences, say whether they agreed or disagreed with various moral, political, and religious beliefs, and analyze a handful of applied moral problems.
The results are fascinating along a number of different dimensions. But one item on the survey is of particular interest for my purposes:
“No person has the right to initiate physical force against another human being.”
Respondents were asked to say whether they agreed or disagreed with this statement – essentially an unlabeled formulation of the NAP. In 1988, a full 90% of respondents said that they agreed. By 1999, however, the percentage expressing agreement had dropped by almost half to 50%. And by 2008, it was down to 39.7%.
It is possible that some of the drop was due to a change of wording in the question between 1988 and 1999—more on this below. But on its face, this is a pretty radical shift away from support of the NAP.
Interestingly, though, there doesn’t seem to have been much of a corresponding change in respondents’ answers to the kind of practical moral questions that would seem to involve the application of the NAP.
For instance, in 1988, the survey asked a pair of questions about a scenario labeled, “How much is that baby in the window?”
Suppose that a parent of a new-born baby places it in front of a picture window and sells tickets to anyone wishing to observe the child starve to death. He makes it clear that the child is free to leave at any time, but that anyone crossing his lawn will be viewed as trespassing.
The questions asked were, 1) Would you cross the lawn and help the child? And 2) Would helping the child violate the parents’ rights?
In 1988, 89% of respondents said they would cross the lawn. 26% said that doing so would violate the parents’ rights. In 1999 those numbers were 87% and 31%, respectively. And in 2008 they were 90.9% and 24.1%. In other words, despite the radical change in the professed belief in the NAP, and despite the fact that crossing the lawn in this case certainly looks like a violation of the owner’s property rights, there was almost no change at all in professed belief about either the question of whether respondents would themselves cross the lawn against the owner’s wishes, or in the question of whether doing so would violate the owner’s rights.
The same is true of another scenario, “Trespass or Die!”
Suppose that you are on a friend’s balcony on the 50th floor of a condominium complex. You trip, stumble and fall over the edge. You catch a flagpole on the next floor down. The owner opens his window and demands you stop trespassing.
In 1988, 84% of respondents said they believed that in such circumstances they should enter the owner’s residence against the owner’s wishes. 2% (one respondent) said that they should let go and fall to their death, and 15% said they should hang on and wait for somebody to throw them a rope. In 1999, the numbers were 86%, 1%, and 13%. In 2008, they were 89.2%, 0.9%, and 9.9%. Once again, change in professed belief about the NAP appears to have had virtually no effect on change in professed belief about the right thing to do in a situation that seems to involve aggression against an innocent person.
A few thoughts:
1. In 1988, respondents were asked whether they believed that “no person has the right” to initiate physical force against another human being. In 1999, the wording was changed, and respondents were asked whether they believed that “it is always wrong” to do so. The 1999 wording was kept in 2008.
Strictly speaking, these questions are asking about two different things. And it is possible to believe that no one has the right to initiate force, while nevertheless believing that in some extreme circumstances it would not be morally wrong to do so. Indeed, this seems to be the position Rothbard himself took in his chapter on “Lifeboat Situations.” It is possible, then, that respondents’ belief in the NAP didn’t really change at all between 1988 and 1999, and that the change in response simply reflected a philosophically sophisticated reaction to the changed wording of the question.
Bill Bradford, the founder and editor of Liberty, writing under the name of Ethan O. Waters, saw things somewhat differently.
To me, the most salient finding of the Poll is that libertarian moral thinking is not very rigorous … Although nearly all libertarians (89%) agree with the non-aggression axiom, a great many are willing to dispense with it when convenient: 89% will trespass to prevent a parent from starving his child for the fun of it; 98% would rather trespass than die in the flagpole question, including 14% who would restrict their trespassing to his flagpole and 84% who would go so far as to enter another’s residence …. It is apparent that many of those willing to dispense with the nonaggression axiom have no clear or consistent criterion for deciding when to dispense with it.
It’s hard to adjudicate between these two interpretations without more information. But one datum of interest is the fact that most respondents did not view crossing the lawn to feed the starving child as a violation of the parents’ rights. This suggests, at least, that respondents were not in this case making the distinction between the moral permissibility of an act and the question of whether that act violated someone else’s rights. And this, in turn, casts at least a bit of doubt on the idea that seeming discrepancies in their answers were undergirded by a sophisticated Rothbardian analysis of the ethics of emergencies.
2. How well do the results of these surveys represent the beliefs of libertarians in general? In each case, the respondents were drawn from attendees at the Libertarian Party National Convention and readers of Liberty magazine. Liberty was a magazine for “movement” libertarians—people who were very clear in their self-identification as libertarians, and enjoyed reading articles about the possibility of privatized roads, gossip about Ayn Rand’s inner circle, and the like. A very different kind of reader than you might expect from an “outreach” publication like Reason, for instance. And, of course, the kind of people who hang out at LP conventions (filling out surveys, no less!) are, well, a “different” breed as well. (As Ed Crane quipped about his experience at the 1971 founding convention in Denver, “As a libertarian, I always knew it was important to be tolerant of alternative lifestyles, but … until I went into that convention hall, I had no idea how many alternatives there were.”)
The respondents, then, were probably significantly more “hard core” than the median libertarian. And it’s probably reasonable to assume that hard core libertarians are generally more likely to agree with the NAP than the less hard core ones. If so, then the survey results probably overstate the extent of agreement with the NAP among libertarians as a whole.
3. I wonder what’s happened since 2008? My sense from conservations online and at various libertarian conferences is that the NAP might be making a comeback. Is this accurate? And, if so, what might explain it? Well, 2008 was the year of Ron Paul’s first campaign for the presidency, and his rise to stardom among libertarian youth. Paul has a long connection to the Ludwig von Mises Institute via Lew Rockwell, and my sense is that the LvMI has used this connection and its incredible web presence to draw a lot of young Ron Paul supporters into its fold. And the NAP is, of course, a central part of the “plumb line” libertarianism that LvMI seeks to defend and spread.
At the same time, 2008 was also the year in which Students for Liberty was created, and it too has enjoyed tremendous growth and success in the last few years. And, compared at least to LvMI, SFL is less closely wedded to the Rothbardian vision of libertarianism, including the NAP.
Both LvMI and SFL are diverse organizations, of course, and there are plenty of individuals in each of them for whom my generalizations will not hold. I’m painting with a broad brush here simply in order to speculate about possible large-scale trends in the libertarian movement. But, in the end, it’s just one guy’s speculation.
Perhaps it’s time for another survey?
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