To say that where the weapons came from is irrelevant, is to say that handing a psycho an automatic weapon is irrelevant.

Everything in the “real” world is relevant, if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be real. Nukes are a product and a tool of war. Without wars, there would never be nukes.

“…Russ, it is war not Iran that created nukes.”

So what? The military, unlike us armchair philosophers, have to deal with the real world. Three aspect of the real world are 1) nukes are out there; 2) crazy people are out there; 3) crazy people plus nukes is a bad combination. Where those nukes originally came from is irrelevant.

No, but I am thankful I don’t live in North Korea (yet).

No. My point is, because of the stigma of slavery, using the antebellum south and the Civil War as ‘good’ and ‘bad’, respectively, to promote libertarianism will always be a political and emotional loser in any argument other then the most academic. If one of the goals of this blog and the Mises Institute is to affect a change toward liberty in America, then using this example is, at best, wasting time, at worst, counter productive.

Russ, it is war not Iran that created nukes.

“…How can we pretend that the military can disarm every rogue in the world any more than the police can disarm every rogue in the country?”

According to this logic, we should not try to fight crime, even with ancap PDAs. After all, they can’t stop them all, right? This would seem to be a reductio ad absurdem to me.

Also, regarding gun control. I’m opposed to gun control in general, but we don’t give guns to those in prisons or mental institutions. If, say, Iranians, are crazy for believing that starting Armageddon would be good because it would accelerate the coming of the Mahdi, then maybe we should take away their nukes just like we make sure that psychotics don’t have guns.

What ? You think you are not a slave of the US government ?

Try not paying taxes, try buying military weapons, try smoking a joint in front of a police officer, try withdrawing more than $10,000 in cash, try to deposit $10,000 or more in cash, try saying exactly what you think of the government or the president.
Try making major home improvements on your property without a permit.

We give almost half our incomes to the government and we have almost no freedoms.

I’m sorry but Abraham Lincoln failed, there is NOW 300,000,000 slaves in the USA and about 6 Billion slaves in the world !

(I meant NOW)

What ? You think you are not a slave of the US government ?

Try not paying taxes, try buying military weapons, try smoking a joint in front of a police officer, try withdrawing more than $10,000 in cash, try to deposit $10,000 or more in cash, try saying exactly what you think of the government or the president.
Try making major home improvements on your property without a permit.

We give almost half our incomes to the government and we have almost no freedoms.

I’m sorry but Abraham Lincoln failed, there are not 300,000,000 slaves in the USA and about 6 Billion slaves in the world !

Arguing this counter-factual (slavery would have ended without the war) is pointless. There is plenty of slavery in the world still today. You’ve heard of North Korea. Was to population of the Soviet Union enslaved? If the chains are held by a government instead of a single individual, does that make you any less enslaved? There is no evidence that slavery will automatically disappear on it’s own.

Lincoln’s war might have been started for all of the wrong reasons, been horrific and costly (as all wars are), and started us down the path to the imperial federal government we have today, but it did free the slaves.

Using the antebellum south to promote libertarianism will always be a losing argument because of one word, slavery. All of the other advantages of that society pale to insignificance against this single blemish. Trying to use collective cost-benefit analysis will rarely be persuasive.

Military preemption — the “Bush Doctrine” — is nothing but global gun control. The Commander in Chief has turned the U.S. military into Handgun Control, Int. and intends to use it to disarm every rogue nation out there: first, Afghanistan; now, Iraq; next, Iran, North Korea, and God knows where else. And what about all the terrorist cells that don’t provide us with an identifiable “Japan” to target? How will any of this prevent a monster from walking across our border and unstopping a jar of anthrax in a major city? How can we pretend that the military can disarm every rogue in the world any more than the police can disarm every rogue in the country?

FROM HERE

When all the roads were heading favorably in their direction, imperialism suddenly became passe and late comers to the trough weren’t going to be tolerated, especially if it tipped the scales in someone else’s favor. It is why WWI was fought, which led head on to WWII (and Korea and Vietnam). Of course I think that there was also an element that aggression in Asia or Africa was one thing, but to do it in Europe itself was intolerable – “really bad form old boy, don’t you know”.

If there were any “principled” reason for fighting WWII it was by those who were communistic or some other highly left socialist concept. The remainder were fascistic statists in their own right, fighting for rank within the ever burgeoning nationalistic statism. Of course the cannon fodder, as in all wars, are those who are fighting for Mom, Suzie, apple pie, and God.

I also read a book by Buchanan which pointed out that the two world wars that Churchill was so excited to pursue resulted in England’s loss of empire and permanent relegation to the role of a minor state–with socialism turning it into a dystopia. A pair of pyhrric victories indeed…

As we permanently prop up puppet governments in Afghanistan and Iraq with the full blessing of the media, republican, and democrat parties (including a president who campaigned on the promise of ending war), its hard to imagine a time more ripe for pondering the tragic dysfunction of our own cultural and political institutions.