My thoughts exactly, Jefferson seemed to say the right things but more often than not, his revealed preferences made him a hypocrite.
On another topic though, I thought Rothbard spoke well when he was deconstructing what socialism is exactly. A 'quasi-conservative movement' that displaced libertarians on the left. I couldn't stop thinking about the Nolan chart.
I don't consider white-red relations to be genocide. No doubt there were some whites and reds who wanted to annihilate each other, but mostly it was just ordinary war and government meddling. The first white settlers had no way of knowing their diseases had already killed 90% of the natives. They arrived, found a lot of empty land, negotiated "sales" with remaining natives, and the language and cultural problems led to confusion over what it meant to sell property. The French and British paid different tribes to fight on their side, and the winners got the spoils of war, including revenge. The Plains Indians were mostly nomads, as I understand it, and fought each other over communal rights more than they fought the Europeans, as did most peoples, including Europeans.
Still a lot of injustice, but it was not by any means mostly evil greedy whites slaughtering innocent pastural reds. It was just ordinary human greed and misunderstanding by all parties.
When it got to to the point that settlers were trying to kill off all the buffalo/bison in order to starve the natives, that went beyond ordinary war and into regarding it as impossible for the natives to continue living as they had. Still, the wars were multiple and it's hard to say all the conflict was like that.
Killing the buffalo was one way to stop the Indians from claiming the entire Great Plains as their private communal hunting grounds and forcing them to settle down in one place. The Indians were horribly inefficient at harvesting buffalo, killing far more than they ate, and it was only possible when they had the entire Great Plains to themselves. I do not believe killing the Indians was the primary goal, or any goal except for a few nutters. I'd put it in the same category as some farmer homesteading a million acres, farming only 1000 acres, and claiming the rest had to be left alone as fallow lands in recovery.
I don't get the imperative for the national focus of political ideologies. Wasn't early America quite a bit more state-focused than after the Republicans and their war machine took over? That still leaves some 75 years open for experimentation. Weren't states more or less TRUE laboratories of democracy—at least until the feds severely constrained them, privileging the needs of national businesses and war mobilizations over states' rights? Even today, as current events in Minnesota so clearly demonstrate, state policy can differ quite substantially from that of the national government and still win the day on the ground.
So why don't we see ANY flavor of American libertarianism at the state level, strongly influencing if not controlling any state, anywhere, at any time?
Other than killing close to a million people, the worst thing about the American Civil War was that it showed that the federal government could ride roughshod over the states and the political process to solve a problem which had vexed the country for 70 years. From then on, any perceived problem skipped the states and popular campaigning and went straight to the feds -- meat inspections, railroad regulation, you name it -- get the feds involved, smother the states, git 'er done!
I'm talking about the period between independence and the Civil War when the USA was more a collection of sovereign states than a modern nation. Why not state governments run on libertarian (classical liberal) principles then?
You asked why we don't see more state laboratories now, and I believe it is because federal action is so much more effective. Why push hard in 20 states when your opponents are going to push hard in 20 other states, and the 10 remaining states get left alone for being too small or neutral? Better to mount one federal push than 20 state pushes. Even pushing for one state is generally useless except as a stepping stone to the federal push.
As one example, before the Civil War, private banks were state-chartered and could issue their own currency notes. The private sector handled it fine. Then the North needed cash for the war, and mandated something like any private bank issuing its own notes had to leave a 110% deposit with the feds. Naturally all those private bills dried up, and the North issued greenbacks as the only allowed legal tender. I believe the South quickly followed suit.
That kind of heavy-handed federal action was justified due to the rebellion, and naturally never returned to the old paradigm. So much for laboratories.
In the past I would have found your take on the relationship between the American Revolution & slavery to be more plausible (and I recall scoffing at the TV series Sleepy Hollow for making Ichabod Crane both an abolitionist and supporter of that revolution). But since then I've been convinced by Phillip Magness (even though he blocked me on Twitter just a couple days ago arguing about COVID https://entitledtoanopinion.wordpress.com/2026/02/04/blocked-by-phillip-magness/ ) that things are more complicated than that, and that the northern states passed antislavery laws around the time they attained independence, with the two things being linked in their eyes. Slavery persisted longer in Britain's remaining colonies, such as Jamaica, than it did in those northern states, so it's harder to say independence preserved slavery.
Rothbard's articulation of revolutionary history and his cheer leading for libertarian philosophy is about what one might reasonably expect. I find it an interesting perspective but do not consider it dispositive,
--- just as do not consider anyone's version of history dispositive, including professional historians. Still, all accounts of classical liberalism and libertarianism must begin somewhere, and Rothbard's beginning is at least interesting.
The Founders were not angels, of course. But it does seem to me that on the whole, they were far more classically liberal than any other term one might apply.
If you're a perfect libertarian except you are pro-slavery, how libertarian are you? A bad position on one HUGE issue plausibly outweighs everything else.
The same goes to a lesser degree if you are very libertarian, but favor a devastating war (with lots of innocent victims) over minor issues. That's my take on the American Revolution.
You cannot be anything like a libertarian unless you subscribeto and practice what I call The Moral Imperative: do not compel another unjustly. Force, threat of force, and fraud are compulsion.
I agree entirely about war. War is absolutely immoral action, and it is nearly always due the immoral action of single man (and yes, almost always a man) or a small set of men who are clearly immoral actors.
In retrospect, I'm pretty happy that the American Revoution happened, but I think it was unnecessary. The USA could have been birthed without war.
Many of today’s libertarians accept collectivism, not merely the non-aggression axiom. They refuse to criticize racism or antisemitism if it is non-violent, though both of those things have extensive association with coercion. I wouldn’t repress those collectivist beliefs, but like Rand I denounce them. My libertarianism is anti-collectivist, not merely non-violent.
My libertarianism is founded on The Moral Imperative, as I call it, and the logical inferences from it. I do not have an immediate definition of collectivism, but so long as it avoids unjust compulsion, people can be moral actors practicing it. Is there an intersection of libertarians and collectivists? I cannot say.
“Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage — the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.” — Ayn Rand
Which of the founders regarded slavery as a positive good? My understanding is that most thought it was bad, but didn't see a good way of dealing with it now that it existed.
My thoughts exactly, Jefferson seemed to say the right things but more often than not, his revealed preferences made him a hypocrite.
On another topic though, I thought Rothbard spoke well when he was deconstructing what socialism is exactly. A 'quasi-conservative movement' that displaced libertarians on the left. I couldn't stop thinking about the Nolan chart.
I don't consider white-red relations to be genocide. No doubt there were some whites and reds who wanted to annihilate each other, but mostly it was just ordinary war and government meddling. The first white settlers had no way of knowing their diseases had already killed 90% of the natives. They arrived, found a lot of empty land, negotiated "sales" with remaining natives, and the language and cultural problems led to confusion over what it meant to sell property. The French and British paid different tribes to fight on their side, and the winners got the spoils of war, including revenge. The Plains Indians were mostly nomads, as I understand it, and fought each other over communal rights more than they fought the Europeans, as did most peoples, including Europeans.
Still a lot of injustice, but it was not by any means mostly evil greedy whites slaughtering innocent pastural reds. It was just ordinary human greed and misunderstanding by all parties.
When it got to to the point that settlers were trying to kill off all the buffalo/bison in order to starve the natives, that went beyond ordinary war and into regarding it as impossible for the natives to continue living as they had. Still, the wars were multiple and it's hard to say all the conflict was like that.
Killing the buffalo was one way to stop the Indians from claiming the entire Great Plains as their private communal hunting grounds and forcing them to settle down in one place. The Indians were horribly inefficient at harvesting buffalo, killing far more than they ate, and it was only possible when they had the entire Great Plains to themselves. I do not believe killing the Indians was the primary goal, or any goal except for a few nutters. I'd put it in the same category as some farmer homesteading a million acres, farming only 1000 acres, and claiming the rest had to be left alone as fallow lands in recovery.
I don't get the imperative for the national focus of political ideologies. Wasn't early America quite a bit more state-focused than after the Republicans and their war machine took over? That still leaves some 75 years open for experimentation. Weren't states more or less TRUE laboratories of democracy—at least until the feds severely constrained them, privileging the needs of national businesses and war mobilizations over states' rights? Even today, as current events in Minnesota so clearly demonstrate, state policy can differ quite substantially from that of the national government and still win the day on the ground.
So why don't we see ANY flavor of American libertarianism at the state level, strongly influencing if not controlling any state, anywhere, at any time?
Other than killing close to a million people, the worst thing about the American Civil War was that it showed that the federal government could ride roughshod over the states and the political process to solve a problem which had vexed the country for 70 years. From then on, any perceived problem skipped the states and popular campaigning and went straight to the feds -- meat inspections, railroad regulation, you name it -- get the feds involved, smother the states, git 'er done!
I'm talking about the period between independence and the Civil War when the USA was more a collection of sovereign states than a modern nation. Why not state governments run on libertarian (classical liberal) principles then?
You asked why we don't see more state laboratories now, and I believe it is because federal action is so much more effective. Why push hard in 20 states when your opponents are going to push hard in 20 other states, and the 10 remaining states get left alone for being too small or neutral? Better to mount one federal push than 20 state pushes. Even pushing for one state is generally useless except as a stepping stone to the federal push.
As one example, before the Civil War, private banks were state-chartered and could issue their own currency notes. The private sector handled it fine. Then the North needed cash for the war, and mandated something like any private bank issuing its own notes had to leave a 110% deposit with the feds. Naturally all those private bills dried up, and the North issued greenbacks as the only allowed legal tender. I believe the South quickly followed suit.
That kind of heavy-handed federal action was justified due to the rebellion, and naturally never returned to the old paradigm. So much for laboratories.
In the past I would have found your take on the relationship between the American Revolution & slavery to be more plausible (and I recall scoffing at the TV series Sleepy Hollow for making Ichabod Crane both an abolitionist and supporter of that revolution). But since then I've been convinced by Phillip Magness (even though he blocked me on Twitter just a couple days ago arguing about COVID https://entitledtoanopinion.wordpress.com/2026/02/04/blocked-by-phillip-magness/ ) that things are more complicated than that, and that the northern states passed antislavery laws around the time they attained independence, with the two things being linked in their eyes. Slavery persisted longer in Britain's remaining colonies, such as Jamaica, than it did in those northern states, so it's harder to say independence preserved slavery.
Rothbard's articulation of revolutionary history and his cheer leading for libertarian philosophy is about what one might reasonably expect. I find it an interesting perspective but do not consider it dispositive,
--- just as do not consider anyone's version of history dispositive, including professional historians. Still, all accounts of classical liberalism and libertarianism must begin somewhere, and Rothbard's beginning is at least interesting.
The Founders were not angels, of course. But it does seem to me that on the whole, they were far more classically liberal than any other term one might apply.
If you're a perfect libertarian except you are pro-slavery, how libertarian are you? A bad position on one HUGE issue plausibly outweighs everything else.
The same goes to a lesser degree if you are very libertarian, but favor a devastating war (with lots of innocent victims) over minor issues. That's my take on the American Revolution.
You cannot be anything like a libertarian unless you subscribeto and practice what I call The Moral Imperative: do not compel another unjustly. Force, threat of force, and fraud are compulsion.
I agree entirely about war. War is absolutely immoral action, and it is nearly always due the immoral action of single man (and yes, almost always a man) or a small set of men who are clearly immoral actors.
In retrospect, I'm pretty happy that the American Revoution happened, but I think it was unnecessary. The USA could have been birthed without war.
Many of today’s libertarians accept collectivism, not merely the non-aggression axiom. They refuse to criticize racism or antisemitism if it is non-violent, though both of those things have extensive association with coercion. I wouldn’t repress those collectivist beliefs, but like Rand I denounce them. My libertarianism is anti-collectivist, not merely non-violent.
My libertarianism is founded on The Moral Imperative, as I call it, and the logical inferences from it. I do not have an immediate definition of collectivism, but so long as it avoids unjust compulsion, people can be moral actors practicing it. Is there an intersection of libertarians and collectivists? I cannot say.
Are racists collectivists?
“Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage — the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.” — Ayn Rand
Which of the founders regarded slavery as a positive good? My understanding is that most thought it was bad, but didn't see a good way of dealing with it now that it existed.
We ignore that they were also troubled by the prospect of losing valuable property?