So shortly after the 2016 election, I pointed out how odd it was that the Reason homepage was dominated by stories either mocking and ridiculing the left for being fearful of what was to come, or articles about how Trump might actually be good for libertarians.
Now, in 2020, we have one party so upset about the election, they’re openly fomenting a crisis of democracy. Here’s the Reason homepage today. There’s one article about all of that. There’s a hell of a lot more about the threat posed by Joe Biden. And more riciduling the left. Image
I’m picking on Reason. And I’ll add that there are people there who have sufficiently grasped the threat the last four years, despite the general editorial direction of the magazine. But it really underscores the disappointment I’ve had with my fellow libertarians in general ...
... in the Trump era. We’re supposed to be the alarmists. Proudly! We’re supposed to the ones who overreact when government overreaches. Because alarmism is a hell of a lot better than complacency. And history tells us that governments tend not to give powers ...
... back once they’ve claimed them. In the Trump era, too many libertarians not only stopped being alarmists, they spent most of their time scolding and ridiculing the people who were. I mean, it’s still bizarre to me that the philosophy that ...
... wants to abolish the FBI, CIA, DEA, BATF, and DHS (among others) generally only had scorn for “defund the police.” The police are never going to be abolished. Yet instead of embracing the momentum, forging alliances, and converting it into useful reform, many libertarians ...
... belittled the activists pushing “defund” as impractical, radical, pie-in-the-sky. *We* are supposed to be radical, impractical, pie-in-the-sky!

A big part of this is that many libertarians still see the left as a bigger threat than the right. I’m baffled by this given...
... the last four years, and what’s happening right now. With the exception I guess of regulation and (sort of) taxes, Trumpism has devoured all the areas in which libertarians are supposed to have common ground with the right.

Part of it is also probably stems from the fact...
... that libertarians disdain politics and Sorkinesque visions of government, and Trump has made a farce of all of that. That’s fine. I get it. We shouldn’t turn to politics to solve all our problems. But we do need to acknowledge that simply choosing to ignore politics comes ...
... from a position of — dare I say it — privilege. If you’re DACA, or have family who is undocumented, or have lived here for 20 years under TPS, you can’t just “live an apolitical life.” We seem to get this when it’s a small business owner worried about Biden’s regulatory ...
... policy. We seem far less able to empathize with people protesting racism in policing, or ICE abuses, or CBP brutality. This administration wants to zero out refugee intake, unleash the military on protesters, and has openly said any election Trump doesn’t win is ...
... fraudulent. (I could go on.) Yet I’ve had Trump supporting libertarians — prominent ones — tell me over the last two years the real threat to liberty right now is Antifa, or a Black Lives Matter leader who once said she’s a Marxist.

I’m glad Biden’s win means libertarians...
... will go back to being alarmists. But given the approach too many libertarians took during the Trump years, I suspect it’s going to be even more difficult to get people to listen.

And I can’t really blame them.

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More from @radleybalko

9 Nov
A few links on the nonsense claim that Benford’s Law proves “irregularities” in the Biden vote tallies.

First, it’s far from clear that Benford’s Law is useful for detecting election fraud:

cambridge.org/core/journals/…
Second, even if it were, district level tallies are likely too fragmented for the law to apply. When you aggregate the data into larger geographical groupings, it’s fine:

alpha-xone.medium.com/do-bidens-vote…
Third, the posts you’ve probably seen on this have manipulated the data.

There’s also lots more discussion of the first two points at the link.

skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4978…
Read 4 tweets
4 Oct
These accounts of utter recklessness among Trump’s inner circle are jaw dropping.

But one thing about them I find puzzling: Trump is a notorious germaphobe. He’s also a coward. And his conversations with Woodward make clear that he knew COVID was both dangerous and airborne.
So I’ve just assumed all along that as he publicly played down the virus for political reasons, he was taking every precaution to protect himself. Like those rallies where everyone around him was required to mask up, but no one else was.

This of course would be consistent...
... with Trump’s general habit of going through life thinking he plays by a different set of rules.

So what happened? The best explanation I can come up with is some combination of him thinking his “great genes” made him impervious to COVID, and that he started to believe his...
Read 5 tweets
25 Sep
When the Hudson v. Michigan decision came down, many of us predicted it would basically unleash cops to render the knock & announce requirement all but meaningless. That's exactly what happened. See Louisville:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
Read 11 tweets
24 Sep
So a few years ago, @ScottGreenfield, @Volokh, @Popehat and others wrote about a case involving Texas magistrate named Dwight Goains.

A woman said DEA agents had beaten her while raiding her sister's store. A friend posted photos and an account on Facebook.

Goains was ...
... in charge of setting the store owner's bail. He granted it, but with crazy conditions: The sister had to get the guy who posted the story on FB to take it all down. She also had to make a public apology in two newspapers, admit the raid was ...

blog.simplejustice.us/2014/05/23/gag…
... legitimate, and state that her sister is the one who assaulted the DEA agents.

So as it turns out, Goains was a defense attorney before he was a magistrate. He represented defendants in capital cases. The problem: He wasn't very good at that, either.

Ready for the kicker?
Read 4 tweets
23 Sep
This is wrong and willfully misleading. It was absolutely a no-knock warrant (and an illegal one at that).

The cops just claimed they changed their mind at the scene. And yes, ONE neighbor said he heard police announce ONE time. 11 other neighbors heard no announcement at all.
If 11 of 12 neighbors in an apartment building didn’t hear an announcement, then the announcement clearly didn’t provide sufficient notice. Notice is the whole point of the knock & announce requirement.

Which means this was indistinguishable from a no-knock raid.
The question is, why would Walker, a registered gun owner who had nothing to hide, knowingly fire on police officers?

The answer is he didn’t. The cops know he didn’t. Cameron knows he didn’t. If they thought otherwise, they wouldn’t have dropped the attempted murder charges.
Read 5 tweets
7 Sep
I mean, I guess we should blame protesters for this sort of thing happening the last 35 years, right?
Just to expand on this a bit: The argument from people like Weinstein is, “See, violent protesters! This is why we need police militarization.” But this misses some important cause and effect. Police were militarized to fight the drug war. And overwhelmingly, the tools ...
Read 15 tweets

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