As anarchists, we admire those who resist oppression. The state, on the other hand, uses prisons to confine and brutalize those who resist. Heroic whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning and John Kiriakou are locked up, while the war criminals and corrupt rulers they exposed keep their positions of power and privilege. The state locked up CeCe McDonald, the New Jersey 4, and other queer and trans people in a notoriously transphobic and homophobic prison system, simply as punishment for defending themselves from aggressors. Black liberation revolutionaries are confined in cages and often tortured in solitary confinement, while cops who murder people of color keep their jobs and their power.

One way to mitigate the violence and harm inflicted by the prison state is to support its most immediate victims: prisoners themselves. Since the early 20th century, the Anarchist Black Cross has been doing just that. Their members write letters to political prisoners and prisoners of war. This builds social relationships and community across the divides the state seeks to maintain, it lets prisoners know they’re not alone, and it helps undermine the dehumanization that is core to imprisonment. Anarchist Black Cross groups also raise money for political prisoners and their legal defense funds.

Rather than requesting reforms from the state, Anarchist Black Cross members directly make the world a better place for those the state has brutalized. Their approach is fundamentally entrepreneurial, as it involves using the resources at one’s disposal to directly serve people’s needs. Yet it is fundamentally revolutionary, using this entrepreneurship to support those who have lost their liberty in the struggle against capitalist domination. It’s thus quite fitting that the Center for a Stateless Society’s Entrepreneurial Anti-Capitalism Project has sent funds to two active chapters of the Anarchist Black Cross: the Denver Anarchist Black Cross and the Mexico City Anarchist Black Cross.

We urge you to support their work too. You can donate to the Denver ABC here and you can contact the Mexico City ABC here to find out how to help. You can also help support prisoners by writing to some of the various prisoners these organizations support. Around the world, the Anarchist Black Cross is engaging in vital work to support prisoners, resist violent repression of social movements, and build up mutual aid. Until all are free from the state’s brutal prison system, the work of these Anarchist Black Cross groups and others like them will remain a vital part of the anarchist movement.

To friends I stated that what was morally required is not what is legally required. This post is an exploration of my evolving thought on this issue. In the process of thinking further about it, I discovered a revised train of thought. As Ayn Rand stated:

“Rights” are a moral concept—the concept that provides a logical transition from the principles guiding an individual’s actions to the principles guiding his relationship with others—the concept that preserves and protects individual morality in a social context—the link between the moral code of a man and the legal code of a society, between ethics and politics. Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.

Let me note that I only partially agree with Ayn Rand’s statement above. Legality can relate to morality, but it doesn’t, of necessity, have to. It’s possible for something to be immoral without being a violation of a libertarian law code. This is due to the fact that the only legal obligations one has are to respect the individual rights of others You may have non-consensual moral obligations that are only legitimately enforceable through non-violent means. This would still be eminently libertarian as long as people were being pressured for rational and individualistic pro-liberty reasons. The obligation to help customers without discriminating on grounds of irrational bigotry comes to mind. No one can be ethically forced to help another through legal force, but a person can be non-violently pressured to do so. Other examples include an obligation to engage in contextually justified mutual aid. You can’t rightfully have the product of your labor seized for this purpose, but you still have a moral obligation to do so.

A libertarian law code completely divorced from morality would be a nihilist one. How can you justify the defensive use of force that would be permitted by such a code without invoking a moral reason? You can’t. It would mean that libertarianism was nothing more than a subjective preference with no moral weight. That is no basis for building a substantive legal system. Libertarianism is a value laden ideology and this is preferably reflected in its laws. In the absence of this, it would simply be authorizing a coercion filled subjective brawl among competing wills. That kind of Hobbesian scenario is not conducive to liberty. It’s compatible with a chaotic tyranny. A world where different warlords or feudal lords compete for power and control over others would be created. Do I contradict myself by claiming that non-moral libertarian law is nihilistic and that morality is not of necessity related to legality? No, because I am not claiming that all of morality needs to be the basis of a legal system. I just argue that some moral rules need to inform the legal foundations of a libertarian society.

The final thing to discuss is when things are both moral and legal. This happily resolves the problem of whether to make something ethical mandated by law. The enshrinement of ethics into law allows one to discharge their moral obligations without fearing punishment. It’s precisely valuable for this reason. One example is murder. It’s both immoral and preferably illegal to commit an act of murder. Another example is rape. It’s once again both immoral and preferably illegal. We could multiply these examples further, but I wish to bring this post to a close. I encourage my readers to leave comments and think critically about what I’ve written. It’s always fun to receive feedback and constructive criticism. I only ask that my readers respectfully reply rather than insult me. I look forward to your responses!

On the federal level, the Bureau of Prisons recently allocated $54 million to open the Thomson Correctional Center, a maximum security prison in Illinois. Democrats like Senator Dick Durbin and Illinois Rep. Cheri Bustos have praised the funding, which redirects resources away from production for human needs and towards punishment and state violence. They praise it essentially as a stimulus package. Durbin said, “This is the news we’ve been waiting for. The funding that the Bureau of Prisons reported to Congress today is a significant investment in the economic future of Northern Illinois.” Similarly, Bustos said “This investment by the Bureau of Prisons in Thomson prison means that construction can soon begin, workers can soon compete for good-paying jobs and Northern Illinois will no longer be home to an empty prison.” According to Bustos’ press release, the prison is “expected to provide a major boost to the local economy and create more than 1,100 jobs. Annual operation of the facility is expected to generate more than $122 million in operating expenditures (including salaries), $19 million in labor income, and $61 million in local business sales.”

This tells us a lot about the economics of mass incarceration, but not in the way Bustos and Durbin might want us to think. These Democrats are entranced by Bastiat’s famous “broken window fallacy.” They ignore the opportunity costs of incarceration, from the redirection of resources away from peaceful production of goods and services to the caging of people who could make valuable contributions to communities if they were free. Moreover, this use of public prisons as make-work programs reveals that the perverse incentives at work in prisons operated by profiteers like the Corrections Corporation of America or the Management and Training Corporation also play out in the operation of public prisons. While the opportunity costs and tax costs are dispersed across the general population, and the human costs are concentrated upon people who are systematically disenfranchised, the benefits of prisons are given to concentrated interest groups like prison guards. Thus, public choice theory suggests that those who benefit have more incentive and ability to influence policy than those who bear the costs, so we see a rise in incarceration, regardless of whether it’s good policy for the general public. The perverse incentives are easy to illustrate when ruthless corporate profiteers are the beneficiaries and rent seekers, but local populations that want jobs as prison guards have the same types of incentive problems. This is why we need to push not just against for-profit prisons, but against all prisons. The economic logic of state financed prisons encourages a growing prison state.

In my home state of Utah, we’re seeing similar growth dynamics play out. The legislature recently passed bills to build a new prison and expand the Central Utah Correctional Facility in Gunnison. Bids by private contractors will be taken by the Prison Relocation and Development Authority (PRADA) for the construction of the new prison. This may also provide an opportunity for the prison to be operated by a for-profit contractor like the Corrections Corporation of America or the Management and Training Corporation. But even if only the construction of the prison occurs for profit, this is a clear example of prisons as cronyism, with obscene profits being made to service the exercise of state power. The expansion of the prison in Gunnison is largely being justified based on extrapolations from current prison growth rates. In other words, the state is spending money on the assumption that drug prohibition and other policies that facilitate mass incarceration will and should continue for the foreseeable future.

So far I’ve discussed the economics of prisons as make work programs and crony capitalist rent seeking. But the prison state also thrives and grows based on an ideological commitment to punishment. Center for a Stateless Society senior fellow Roderick Long has argued that libertarians should reject punishment on philosophical grounds, and embrace restitution and defense in its stead. Recent speculation by philosopher Rebecca Roache postulates that in the future, punishment could be exacerbated, with advanced drugs being used to make prisoners feel as though they are suffering for a thousand years over the course of a mere eight hours. This is horrific on multiple levels. The type of trauma that could be caused to whomever the state wants to harm is terrifying to contemplate. Moreover, the basic idea seems to be rooted in a purely punitive mentality. Roache asks, “Is it really OK to lock someone up for the best part of the only life they will ever have, or might it be more humane to tinker with their brains and set them free? When we ask that question, the goal isn’t simply to imagine a bunch of futuristic punishments – the goal is to look at today’s punishments through the lens of the future.” This implies that justice is served by making “criminals” suffer. This method would do nothing to protect people from violence by likely reoffenders, nor would it assist in securing restitution for victims of harms. It would symbolize raw punishment and sadism, providing neither protection nor restitution. It is punishment distilled to its sadistic essence, and it’s sick indeed.

The punitive mentality is running rampant in the operation of America’s immigration system, but immigrants and their allies across the country are resisting the state’s violence and racism. My most recent column discusses the hunger strikes going on in Tacoma, Washington. Eunice Lee of the ACLU has a good blog post about the hunger strikes as well. Meanwhile, in my home state of Utah, immigrants are facing the full brunt of these punitive policies. The Cañenguez family is nearing their deadline to “voluntarily” (as if) self-deport, after which they face direct violence from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. These migrants have not been charged with any crimes, and they are at risk of gang violence if the US government forcibly sends them back to El Salvador. Of course, the violence of the American state is its own form of gang violence. A gang with legal power is plotting to send them back into harms’ way at the hands of gangs that lack state authority. This is what immigration enforcement looks like. Please sign their petition to help this family be left alone by the state’s thugs.

In addition to immigrant resistance, opposition to the prison state continues to build from the radical wing of the transgender liberation movement. The Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a collective and law center led by transgender people of color, continues promoting prison abolitionist politics. The latest issue of In Solidarity, a magazine by their Prisoner Advisory Committee, was just released and was introduced and celebrated by former trans political prisoner CeCe McDonald. I highly recommend the issue, as well as everything else the Sylvia Rivera Law Project puts out.

The punitive state is continuing its growth and violent depredations, but resistance continues to build. Until all are free, let’s fight every day to stop the prison state.

In this Freeman article from 2000, Levy quoted Carlyle’s 1849 Fraser’s Magazine article, “Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question”:

Truly, my philanthropic friends, [anti-slave] Exeter Hall Philanthropy is wonderful; and the Social Science—not a “gay science,” but a rueful [one]—which finds the secret of this universe in “supply-and-demand,” and reduces the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone, is also wonderful. Not a “gay science,” I should say, like some we have heard of; no, a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite abject and distressing one; what we might call, by way of eminence, the dismal science. These two, Exeter Hall Philanthropy and the Dismal Science, led by any sacred cause of Black Emancipation, or the like, to fall in love and make a wedding of it,—will give birth to progenies and prodigies; dark extensive moon-calves, unnameable abortions, wide-coiled monstrosities, such as the world has not seen hitherto!

Levy comments:

Too often soft-pedaled by those who admire his attack on economics, Carlyle was the premier theorist of the idealized slave society. In opposition to the economists’ supply-and-demand model of human society, he put forward the doctrine of obedience to one’s betters. While he had been making such arguments through the 1840s, it wasn’t until the “Negro Question” that he realized that all white people are “better” than all black people. This certainly made the idealized slavery more attractive for white Britons than one in which they might be on the cutting end of the “beneficent whip.” . . .Carlyle idealized slavery in the same way economists idealized markets. To match the economists’ claim of mutual gain from exchange, Carlyle put forward the doctrine of the joys of service to one’s betters. And according to the way things were supposed to work, the common religion would give the details of the hierarchy.

Responding anonymously to Carlyle in Fraser’s in 1850 was John Stuart Mill. In “The Negro Question“ Mill objected to Carlyle’s religious-based claim that black people were put on earth to work for white people. He wrote:

“If ‘the gods’ will this, it is the first duty of human beings to resist such gods. Omnipotent these ‘gods’ are not, for powers which demand human tyranny and injustice cannot accomplish their purpose unless human beings coöperate. The history of human improvement is the record of a struggle by which inch after inch of ground has been wrung from these maleficent powers, and more and more of human life rescued from the iniquitous dominion of the law of might. Much, very much of this work still remains to do; but the progress made in it is the best and greatest achievement yet performed by mankind, and it was hardly to be expected at this period of the world that we should be enjoined, by way of a great reform in human affair, to begin undoing it.”

Mill went on, passionately, satirically, for 4,600 words, praising the anti-slavery movement as a movement for justice and condemning slavery and the slave trade as criminal. He mocked Carlyle all the way:

“That negroes should exist, and enjoy existence, on so little work, is a scandal, in his eyes, worse than their former slavery. It must be put a stop to at any price. He does not ‘wish to see’ them slaves again ‘if it can be avoided ;’ but ‘decidedly’ they ‘will have to be servants,’’ ‘servants to the whites,’ ‘ compelled to labor,’ and ‘not to go idle another minute.’ “

Carlyle presented himself as the benefactor of black people and invoked the “divine right of being compelled, if permitted will not serve, to do what work they are appointed for.” According to Carlyle, whites had this “right” also. “But,” Mill wrote, “he will begin with the blacks, and will make them work for certain whites, those whites not working at all; that so ‘the eternal purpose and supreme will’ may be fulfilled, and ‘injustice,’ which is ‘forever accursed,’ may cease.”

Mill then turned to “the gospel of work,” praised by Carlyle, “which, to my mind, justly deserves the name of a cant.” He attacked the idea that work is an end in itself, rather than merely a means. “While we talk only of work, and not of its object, we are far from the root of the matter; or, if it may be called the root, it is a root without flower or fruit. . . .In opposition to the ‘gospel of work,’ I would assert the gospel of leisure, and maintain that human beings cannot rise to the finer attributes of their nature compatibly with a life filled with labor. . . . the exhausting, stiffening, stupefying toil of many kinds of agricultural and manufacturing laborers. To reduce very greatly the quantity of work required to carry on existence is as needful as to distribute it more equally; and the progress of science, and the increasing ascendency [sic] of justice and good sense, tend to this result.”

Levy sums up

If a student knows the Carlyle-Mill debate, it is impossible to think of the classical economists as taking the reactionary side in the Victorian debate over social organization. The alternative to markets was not socialism. There were socialist experiments, but there were no socialist economies. The alternative to market organization was slavery. Teachers have to work rather hard to hide this fact. For instance, when students in classes in British literature encounter Charles Dickens’s 1854 Hard Times, with its savage attack on markets and market economics, teachers wishing to present Dickens as “progressive” have to be careful. When they explain why it is “inscribed to Thomas Carlyle,” it is probably helpful to their cause if they not mention that in 1853 Carlyle republished an expanded version of his part of the exchange with Mill under the title Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question. What would modern students think if they knew that the attack on market transactions came from those who idealized slavery for black people?

The Carlyle-Mill debate was a theoretical debate. Ideas do have consequences. The issues stopped being purely theoretical in what historians call the “Governor Eyre controversy” of mid-1860s Britain. What ought we to do about those responsible for an administrative massacre of nonwhite Jamaicans? On the side demanding colorblind justice we find the old coalition Carlyle opposed, antislave Evangelicals and economists now joined by Charles Darwin and T. H. Huxley. In opposition we find all the major antimarket voices in Victorian literature—Dickens, John Ruskin, Charles Kingsley, and Alfred Tennyson—joining Carlyle in making the case that it could not be murder to kill Jamaicans of color because one could only murder people. The defeat of the Evangelical-economic coalition was complete. Eyre walked; Mill lost his seat in Parliament; the century of administrative massacre began. And the episode is never mentioned when in English classes the stories of the progressive literary figures and the heartless economists are retold.

More by Levy (and Sandra Peart) here.

Hat tip for the Mill response: Jeff Hummel

Men ID-kontrollerna i tunnelbanan var, tyvärr, endast en aspekt av många i det upptrappade kriget mot papperslösa migranter. REVA plågade icke-vita människor i hela Sverige, i synnerhet dem utan papper. I Skåne hade antalet deportationer stigit med 25 % efter att projektet varit aktivt ett par månader. Många berättelser – exempelvis den om barnen som var för rädda för att gå till den psykolog som höll på att behandla dem för post-traumatisk stress, eftersom att polisen spanade på psykologmottagningen – orsakade häftiga protester bland allmänheten.  Men polisens talespersoner, närhelst de konfronterades med dessa skrämseltaktikers barbari, fortsatte hänvisa till samma trötta mantran – ”Sverige är en rättstat”, ”vi följer bara order från politikerna”, ”demokratiskt uppdrag”.  Budskapet till aktivister och medborgare var klart – ”om du inte gillar det, rösta på en annan härskare vid nästa val”.

I september 2013 kom så avslöjandet att polisen I Skåne hade ett utförligt register av 4 029 romska personer. Dokumentet bar namnet ”resande”; det innehöll inte någon information om de listade personernas kriminella aktivitet; det hade formen av ett stort familjeträd; det inkluderade både personer som länge hade varit döda och över tusen barn; och läckan inom Skåne-polisen bekräftade att registret internt var känt som ”zigenar-registret”. Men trots allt överväldigande bevis för att polisen sysslade med storskalig registrering på etnisk grund avfärdade polisen dessa anklagelser och sa att dokumentet inte var något annat än register av kriminella i Skåne och deras bekanta, med funktionen att bekämpa brott i Skåne. Trots det faktum att många på listan inte hade någon koppling till Skåne, bodde på andra sidan landet, och inte hade något samröre med personer som dömts för brott.  Den enda gemensamma nämnaren för personer på listan var att de var, eller var gifta med, personer med romsk bakgrund.

Filosofen Karim Jebari argumenterar, med stöd I empirisk forskning, att för marginaliserade grupper I Sverige – de fattiga, de hemlösa, icke-vita, brukare av illegala droger, personer med mentalsjukdomar – är Sverige en polisstat, eftersom att vilka dessa gruppers formella demokratiska rättigheter än må vara så har de inga rättigheter i mötet med polisen. Och visst är det slående hur statens representanter i sitt hyckleri hänvisar till ”den demokratiska processen” och ”rättstaten” som de enda legitima medlen för att bekämpa rasism, auktoritära lagar, deportationer, institutionaliserat våld och maktmissbruk, när de samtidigt bryter mot statens egna lagar genom ren och skär etnisk profilering och registrering – överträdelser som sen undantagslöst trollas bort i polisens utredningar av sig själv. Utslaget är alltid detsamma: ”Vi gjorde inget fel”.

Gång på gång anklagas polisen för rasism, brutalitet och maktmissbruk. Och gång på gång blir vi tillsagda att vara tålmodiga och lugna, och att vi ska rösta bort problemen. Som anarkist anser jag att vi bör tillbakavisa idén att staten är den enda legitima kanalen för social påverkan och framsteg. Stater har så länge de existerat visat att de är oförmögna, och saknar incitament, att bekämpa dessa brutala yttringar som går emot allt det vi fått höra att ”demokrati” ska innebära. Vi måste sluta ge dem nya chanser.

Betyder detta att alla reformer är meningslösa? Nej. Ibland sker framsteg, som resultat av starkt socialt tryck och opportunistiska – eller genuint välmenande – politiker, Men alla dessa små steg är försumbara jämfört med de oerhörda fördelar som skulle vinnas på en utveckling mot en kultur där att ringa polisen inte är den självklara lösningen vid en konflikt, där människor själva tar säkerhet och solidaritet i sina egna händer, och där att rösta på en härskare inte ses som det centrala ansvaret vi har mot andra människor; en utveckling, det vill säga, mot anarki.

Det är därför det är så uppfriskande att se de sätt på vilka vanliga människor i Sverige har reagerat på de rasistiska ID-kontrollerna och deportationerna. Otaliga användare på Facebook och Twitter började uppdatera andra om var poliskontrollerna fanns.  Och organisationer som Ingen Människa är Illegal, Aktion mot Deportation, och det feministiska och antirasistiska Ain’t I a Woman? jobbade på i sin aktivism och sitt praktiska arbete, genom att förse papperslösa med bostad och förnödenheter, genom att gömma dem från staten, och genom att föra fram deras berättelser till allmänheten. Som ett resultat av den enorma negativa reaktionen från allmänheten beslutade polisen att tunnelbanans ID-kontroller skulle upphöra.  Men andra aspekter av REVA är fortfarande aktiva. Barn och vuxna blir fortfarande deporterade, ofta till farliga omständigheter. Ibland till länder de aldrig ens besökt. Och poliserna som var ansvariga för registreringen av romer bär fortfarande sina uniformer. Kampen fortsätter.

Notering: vid tiden för den här översättningen tycks stockholmspolisen återupptagit ID-kontrollerna i tunnelbanan, men det är oklart om det sker på samma skala som förut.

Originalartikeln publicerades från början av David Grobgeld.

Översatt från engelska av David Grobgeld.

Woods defines the distinction between “thin” and “thick” libertarians as follows:

Some libertarians say the traditional libertarian principle of nonaggression is insufficient. That is merely “thin” libertarianism, they say. We also need to have left-liberal views on religion, sexual morality, feminism, etc., because reactionary beliefs among the public are also threats to liberty. This is “thick” libertarianism.

This misrepresents the ideas of “thick” and “thin” libertarianism.  Thickness is not defined primarily in terms of “left-liberal views.” Rather, thickness is any broadening of libertarian concerns beyond overt aggression and state power to concern about what cultural and social conditions are most conducive to liberty. As such, right wing views as well as left wing ones can be thickness commitments. As Charles Johnson explains in his essay Libertarianism Through Thick and Thin:

it is important to keep in mind that the issue at hand in these discussions goes beyond the debate over left libertarianism specifically. The debate leads to some strange bedfellows: not only left libertarians defend the claim that libertarianism should be integrated into a comprehensive critique of prevailing social relations; so do paleolibertarians such as Gary North or Hans-Hermann Hoppe, when they make the equal but opposite claim that efforts to build a flourishing free society should be integrated with a rock-ribbed inegalitarian cultural and religious traditionalism. As do Randian Objectivists, when they argue that political freedom can only arise from a culture of secular romantic individualism and an intellectual milieu grounded in widespread, fairly specific agreement with the tenets of Objectivist metaphysics, ethics, and epistemology. Abstracting from the numerous, often mutually exclusive details of specific cultural projects that have been recommended or condemned in the name of libertarianism, the question of general principle has to do with whether libertarianism should be seen as a thin commitment, which can be happily joined to absolutely any non-coercive set of values and projects, or whether it should instead be seen as one strand among others in a thick bundle of intertwined social commitments. These disputes are often intimately connected with other disputes concerning the specifics of libertarian rights theory, or class analysis and the mechanisms of social power. In order to better get a grip on what’s at stake, it will be necessary to make the question more precise, and to tease out the distinctions between some of the different possible relationships between libertarianism and thicker bundles of social, cultural, religious, or philosophical commitments, which might recommend integrating the two on some level or another.

So Woods starts from a misunderstanding of the very meaning of thick libertarianism. From there, he actually goes on to unwittingly describe a way in which he is a thick libertarian. He asks ” if the thickists are concerned that certain cultural attitudes might be dangerous to liberty, why do I never hear them express concern that the hysteria of the cultural Left might be prejudicial to liberty?”

Woods goes on to argue that the “cultural Left” has created a climate in which people are afraid to express opinions, “lest they be banished from polite society by the opinion police.” This concern is an explicitly thick libertarian concern, given it’s a concern not about aggression, but about cultural norms that limit discussion and debate.

Woods expresses doubt that “thickists,” by which I presume he means left-libertarians, have expressed any concern about the issues he raises. In large part this may be because many left-libertarians correctly recognize that racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia have upheld systemic structural violence, and that using non-violent social pressure against those who promulgate these bigotries is therefore worthwhile. In a world where white supremacy has been the ideological basis for campaigns of lynching and terror, for racial profiling by police, for legally mandated exclusion and inequity, responding harshly to white supremacists is justified. In a world where transgender women are regularly murdered for who they are and outing can be a death sentence, we should make transphobia socially unacceptable. And I’ve already written at length about how slut shaming, victim blaming, and misogyny uphold violence and undermine liberty.

However, some of the problems Woods alludes to are real and serious. In particular, I share his concern about how the Southern Poverty Law Center has directly collaborated with and strengthened the police state under the guise of fighting bigotry, hate, and “extremism.” In my view, their collusion with the police state has hypocritically strengthened and provided liberal cover for one of the most racist and oppressive institutions on earth.  Left-libertarian Kevin Carson called out the Southern Poverty Law Center on other grounds in his article Why I Don’t Much Like Liberals.

Other left-libertarians who would generally be considered thick libertarians have also addressed the issues mentioned by Woods. Jeremy Weiland wrote an essay titled A Leftist Critique of Political Correctness. And Anthony Gregory wrote a rather nuanced piece back in 2007 titled Reassessing Political Correctness. So Dr. Woods is wrong to suggest that thick libertarians of a left-libertarian variety have never expressed concerns about how liberal social views can become culturally ingrained as dogma.

The key claim of thick libertarianism is this: culture matters in the fight for a free and peaceful society. I think Dr. Woods and I would probably agree that a culture which demands reverence for war mongers like Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt is destructive to liberty. I contend that a culture riddled with racism, homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny is just as damaging to liberty.  Right libertarians should stop providing ideological cover for these oppressive norms and join us in fighting for a world conducive to liberty for all.

If you’ve been living in a cave, the star of reality television show Duck Dynasty said some unfortunate things about gay people and some really unfortunate things about black people living in the Jim Crow South to GQ magazine. The remarks were homophobic and racist, and he was suspended from his show by A&E.

Somehow Woods ties this to thick libertarianism, and uses it as a jumping off point to critique a movement he dislikes.

First, he describes and takes issue with thick libertarianism. “Some libertarians say the traditional libertarian principle of nonaggression is insufficient.” He says, “If [people] support nonaggression, they are libertarians.”

The position thick libertarians take on the non-aggression principle is that it’s a starting place, not a place to end. The trouble with it is that there are multiple ways to define aggression. As Jason Brennan points out, “What counts as aggression depends upon what rights people have.”

Woods then defines thick libertarianism as requiring people to “have left-liberal views on religion, sexual morality, feminism, etc., because reactionary beliefs among the public are also threats to liberty.”

More accurately, thick libertarianism asks people to oppose racism, sexism, homophobia and other forms of bigotry because bigotry against some is a threat to liberty for all. If Woods disagrees with this idea, it’s not clear how or why.

Speaking of the way thick libertarians see social views that aren’t “left-liberal,” Woods asks, “Why is it only the traditional moral ideas of the bourgeoisie that are supposed to be so threatening?” I didn’t realize the racism, sexism and homophobia thick libertarians critique were the traditional moral ideas of the bourgeoisie. I think it’s more realistic to say, and polling data bears this out, that these kind of socially illiberal attitudes are much more prevalent among the poorly educated than whoever Woods describes as “bourgeoisie.”

While it’s difficult to survey for racism, as most racists don’t self-identify as such, survey data has shown lower IQ scores are associated with not being able to agree with statements such as “I wouldn’t mind working with people from other races.” There’s actually a strong positive correlation between education and approval of interracial marriage. One survey and another study found a negative correlation between parental income and homophobia.

But whether they are bourgeois or uneducated has zero bearing on whether they’re threats to liberty. Again, it would be great for Woods to get into whether or not bigotry constitutes a threat to liberty.

I would argue that denying someone goods or services on the basis of their sex, gender, orientation, religion, etc. is a curtailment of their liberty, at the very least to enjoy those goods and services.

That does not justify legally forcing someone to stop discriminating. However, it does justify calling out the pernicious effects of discrimination. That, in essence, is thick libertarianism. It’s concerned with both kinds of threats to freedom, government-created and cultural. And it proposes voluntary solutions, like education, or reality television show suspensions, to those threats.