They Could've Called it "Rothbardpuram"

Demonstrating yet again the intellectual bankruptcy of the "revolt now, think later (if at all)" basic premise of Libertarianism, a faction of Libertarians recently attempted to borrow a page from the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh's playbook and take over a small rural town, this time in West Texas.

Like Antelope, Oregon, which had a similar population before the Rajneeshes took it over by immigrating en masse into a nearby ranch in the early 1980's, Loving County, and its only town (and county seat), Mentone, are barely populated.

At last count (by [Sheriff Billy Burt] Hopper toting it up in his head), 16 people live in Mentone and 55 more are spread throughout the rest of Loving County's 645 square miles of West Texas grassland.

But Loving County, east of the Pecos River, is blessed with mineral riches: 360 producing gas and oil wells and 18 more being drilled, creating an enviable problem. The county is forced to keep lowering its tax rate.

Unlike Loving County, however, one need not move a bunch of fruitcakes in all at once as the Rajneeshees did in Oregon (or the Libertarians hope to do in New Hampshire) to win an election. The fruitcakes need only swear that they intend to live there.

Hopper, a former Air Force nuclear weapons technician, became the deputy sheriff in 1999 and ran for sheriff in 2004 against a former sheriff's son. The race ended in a tie, 41 to 41; Hopper won the runoff, 51 to 38.

Curiously, both vote totals exceeded the entire population of Loving County, put at 67 by the census in 2000. In 2004, the Census Bureau estimated the population at 52, though Hopper, after a house-to-house count, puts it now at 71.

Easily explainable, the sheriff said. Election time brings family members flocking in from afar or sending in absentee ballots. They may not live here year-round, he said, but as long as they "intend" to make it their home they may keep Loving County as their voting address to swing elections and defeat tax-raising bond issues.

Someone was bound to try to game this system sooner or later. So why not someone who wants to repeal all manner of laws in the name of "liberty" while, presumably, not repealing the voting law that made taking over the town from afar possible in the first place?

[An email to the sheriff] described the plans of a Libertarian faction in its own words "to win most of the elected offices in the county administration." The blueprint, called "Restoring Loving County," said land was hard to come by but that a ranch had been split up and members were buying sections. "The people who are living there will be able to register to vote," it said. "They must swear that they intend to make Loving their home."

The goal, according to e-mail attributed to a group member, was to move in enough Libertarians "to control the local Government and remove oppressive Regulations (such as Planning and Zoning, and Building Code requirements) and stop enforcement of Laws prohibiting Victimless Acts among Consenting Adults such as Dueling, Gambling, Incest, Price-Gouging, Cannibalism and Drug Handling."

Note the typical Libertarian wish list at the end that completely fails to mention individual rights. And note further that the list of objectives, not integrated by this principle, is a laundry list of (1) some items that happen to resemble what would exist in a society that consistently respected individual rights (e.g., no zoning laws), and (2) some items that are entirely contradictory to the concept of individual rights. As an example of the latter, legalized dueling would amount to legalized murder, a blatant violation of the principle of individual rights.

And note further that both this project and the so-called "Free State Project" for New Hampshire illustrate by their method the Libertarian contempt for the intellectual dimension of establishing and maintaining a free society. Each project represents a proposal to establish "freedom" (e.g., legalized murder in the form of dueling) via the ballot box without any attempt to win the battle of ideas. Or, more explicitly, each is an attempt by a mob -- whose members cannot even agree on what constitutes freedom -- to impose "freedom" at the ballot box of a small polity.

The need for the general populace of a free society to understand what freedom means before such a society will have a government that protects their rights thus becomes glaringly obvious when we examine the latest antics of these Libertarians. First, even if the Libertarians did succeed with one of these schemes, some of their proposals show that they would fail to establish, even for an instant, a government that protects individual rights. They will not gain liberty this way because they do not know what it is. And second, by choosing the overstuffed ballot box over the drawing room, the Libertarians have failed here to advance a single argument to sway anyone who disagrees with them to support individual rights. Remembering the maxim, "A republic, if you can keep it," we thus see that the Libertarian approach would be incapable of keeping freedom, even if they could win it in the first place. That is because, even if the Libertarians did know what "freedom" means, one else would learn that from them.

What? A Libertarian society that fails to respect individual rights? In the words of a Libertarian of my past acquaintance, "This is not about individual rights."

Uh-huh.

-- CAV