Roger Pilon, Cato's chair in constitution studies, is apparently one of that breed of libertarians who believes strongly in unlimited government surveillance powers plus retroactive immunity for lawbreaking telecom firms. Fortunately, we've also got this other breed of libertarianism around. Still, it's a bit hard to take Cato's claims to be sincerely serving a doctrine of small government when its people stake out this kind of position.
« The Un-Decisiveness of Florida | Main | False Populism »
Ah, Liberty
29 Jan 2008 02:16 pm
Comments (27)
So who's gonna tell Jonah that libertarians are really fascists, too?
unlimited government surveillance powers
It is clearly untrue to state that the surveillance powers claimed by the Administration are "unlimited". They are limited to foreign intelligence, not domestic - which is a pretty important limitation.
unlimited government surveillance powers
It is clearly untrue to state that the surveillance powers claimed by the Administration are "unlimited". They are limited to foreign intelligence, not domestic - which is a pretty important limitation.
Posted by Al | January 29, 2008 2:36 PM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
OMG, now everybody is going to feel compelled to start a 50 comment thread setting Al straight. DON'T DO IT!
Al, you missed the memo--McConnell thinks "we" (he) need to listen to pretty much everything going into and out of the tinfoil hat on your head. Get with the program, dude!
Sorry, Steve--my bad!
Please ignore the paid shills. Thanks in advance.
Hmmm. It looks to me as if CATO approachs policy the same way the Republican Supreme Court approachs the Constitution and George Bush approachs intelligence: Decide on the result you want and then cherry-pick the facts/arguments to support it.
I'm shocked. Truly shocked. I thought dishonest sophistry in politics died out with the ancient Greeks.
I admit I'm a little surprised by this. I thought Cato, however delusional and antiempirical, was at least honest.
"Congress insists still on micromanaging the president"? I wonder what Pileon had to say about that in the 2000 publication he edited, "The Rule of Law in the Wake of Clinton." (John Yoo had a chapter).
Well, aren't "Libertarians" supposed to believe in the Almighty Power of Money and all that?...
I'll bet that Pilon believes that the donors who give him the money for his very nice salary are mighty almighty...
Of course, MY's post is a bit overwrought, but the central question stands: how should the federal government collect the information it needs to protect its citizen's interests (such as privacy, defense, expense, etc.) I find this a huge slippery slope of ever-escalating privacy invasions.
As for the telecoms, highly regulated beasts that they are, I couldn't imagine them saying NO to their regulators [post 9/11, but I haven't studied the case in any depth]. I haven't seen mens rea but perhaps a little too much unquestioning assistance to the feds.
Matt, you'll find my rather different take on the subject on Cato's blog here. I haven't found any national newspapers interested in running a piece by me on FISA, but it hasn't been for lack of trying.
Re mike c's comment "As for the telecoms, highly regulated beasts that they are "
-------------
1) Ah, you miss the MAIN motivation for retroactive immunity from lawsuits: The telecoms give a shitload of money to some politicians.
$20 MILLION in 2000 alone. Mostly to the Republicans, but to some Democrats. Less recently but the Repubs would like to restart the gravy train.
See http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.asp?Ind=B08
2) One of the bigger crocks of shit put out by the News Media is that the Clinton Administration ended with a "hi tech stock bubble". It was not a bubble -- the deployment of long haul fiber optics/high speed internet had the chance of giving the USA an enormous competitive advantage.
Instead of flying engineers and executives around the country one could simply set up teleconferences.
Product development could be speeded up by a factor of at least 30 by shipping specifications/designs etc around to customers et al for instant review. Not counting the enormous savings in petroleum.
3)So the Internet was not a bubble -- but it was a huge problem for dinosaur CEOs who couldn't keep up -- their stocks cratered as investors shifted capital to opportunities that could provide huge value -- and hence huge profits. One of the dinosaurs with egg on his face was Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney.
4) So the traditional firms went to war. Silicon Valley suffered rolling blackouts as Enron attacked the California electrical grid. Try running a computer-based business when your server farms crash at random intervals every few hours.
5) Firms who deployed long haul fiber optics had assumed they could get access to customers (households, businesses ) via the final mile -- the Bell switchboards operated as PUBLIC utilities. But the Bells like Verizon fought to keep their monopoly and to expand outward.
A Regulatory problem --which should have been settled in a month in Congress. But both long haul (AT*T, Global Crossing etc) and Bells were throwing tons of money into the political fray -- and the Republicans saw no reason to come to a decision while the gravy train was dumping tons of cash on them.
But such uncertainty kills startup ventures.
Even the Wall Street Journal complained in a Feb 2002 Op Ed about the Bush Administration was sending the computer industry/telecoms industries into a depression by its footdragging.
In the end, the Republicans killed off the innovators/entrepreneurs -- the long haul firms --and handed the golden egg to the Bells (Verizon,etc. ) Who survived and moved leisurely to enjoy the spoils if the Internet while they maintained their semi-monopoly on telephone service.
I myself don't think the Bells should be given retroactive immunity from lawsuits. However, given that the Bells can dump $Millions in campaign contributions onto Congress --and Joe Public doesn't give shit -- the writings on the fucking wall.
But I think the Democrats in Congress should grab the Bell CEOs by the balls and squeeze hard -- to make up for past insults and teach a few necessary lessons.
Hand them the bill: $40 Million.
Some libertarians hate government coercion.
Some libertarians hate formal regulatory process.
So if you propose a formal regulatory process that limits government coercion, expect intra-libertarian conflict.
Plus that would leave the idiots at CATO free to write their stupid fiction about "free markets" and "small government"
"I admit I'm a little surprised by this. I thought Cato, however delusional and antiempirical, was at least honest."
Well, last year Cato held a long and delusional and antiempirical debate between Pilon and Bob Levy, its other delusional and antiempirical legal studies scholar, who holds the opposite view about the surveillance program. So, from a former Cato intern, maybe this is just a delusional and antiempirical way of claiming that Cato remains intellectually honest.
Re Jon's comment "So, from a former Cato intern, maybe this is just a delusional and antiempirical way of claiming that Cato remains intellectually honest"
-------
Thank goodness. I was afraid you were going to argue that we should take CATO seriously because it has people making contradictory recommendations.
Obviously being philosophically incomprehensible means you're intellectually honest.
Don, this might be hard to understand, but there are multiple people at Cato and they have different opinions. Cato scholars don't have marching orders about what positions to take. As a result, you sometimes have two different Cato scholars taking different opinions on the same issue. I don't see why that would make one less likely to take them seriously. I mean, Richard Epstein and Cass Sunstein disagree about all sorts of things, but that doesn't undermine the reputation of the Chicago law school.
Matt, ignorant college boy that he is, still hasn't figured out that the Cato Institute is not universally considered to be "libertarian" (small-L) rather than "Libertarian" (big-L) and in fact tends to resemble a Republican think tank more than a "libertarian" one.
There's a reason Justin Raimondo criticizes the Cato Institute clowns frequently in his columns.
This has been true for decades now. Catch up, Matt.
Tim,
I don't think that analogy holds up. Cato is an advocacy think tank, not a university. No one there is for socialized medicine, or progressive income tax. If one of your leading legal spokespeople is for lawless executive power, we must conclude that you don't think the issue is as important as capital gains tax cuts.
I've heard that almost every single person who works at Cato is embarrassed by Pilon, but he is well-ensconced with the support of some important donors. Cato has done so much truly great work against the war, to preserve civil liberties, etc, that it is really dispiriting for those of us who think highly of the place to see Pilon looking like a second rate shill of the Bush administration.
Don,
I'm not sure how well Cato, or any other think tank, would be served by grounding its credibility on some unspecified level of intellectual consensus. I'm not defending the substance of Pilon's argument. I don't agree with it. I'm defending Cato as an employer of thinkers against the odd and smirking claim that this pulls back the veil cloaking Cato's intellectual bad faith.
and Re MikeJ:
"Obviously being philosophically incomprehensible means you're intellectually honest."
Right, because that's what I'm saying. Nailed me.
Comments closed February 12, 2008.
| 
Heads in the Sand
Matt, speak a little louder into that stapler on the corner of your desk, please?
Posted by steve duncan | January 29, 2008 2:31 PM