From: mike@gordian.com (Michael A. Thomas)
Subject: Re: Libertarians in WW2
Organization: Gordian; Costa Mesa, CA
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 01:30:12 GMT

In article <1992Nov15.233206.18833@midway.uchicago.edu>, thf2@ellis.uchicago.edu (Ted Frank) writes:
> In article <1992Nov15.212647.17847@gordian.com> mike@gordian.com (Michael A. Thomas) writes:
> Wait, you just said that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor because
> they were afraid that the US would get involved in the fighting!
> 
> You can't have it both ways -- the Japanese would no more have attacked
> a Libertarian States of America than the Nazis would have attacked
> Switzerland.

  Nonsense. Germany certainly invaded plenty of other "neutral"
states. Also, they were putting a good deal our ships to the
bottom of the ocean at the time too. We, even under a lib
state, had a good deal to fear and the right to defend ourselves.
  In retrospect, Japan bombing Pearl Harbor had to be its
single largest mistake. Had we entered the war at all, it would
have been against Germany, and we would have probably ignored the
autrocities that the Japanese were performing in the Pacific.
It made no sense for Japan to incite us; though, from Hitler's
standpoint, it made a good deal of sense -- the Japanese were
suckers.
  We would have probably been drug into the conflict no matter
what though. In fact, the isolationist tendencies at the time were
probably as strong if not stronger than any lib government.
FDR, though he wanted to enter the war, was very much hamstrung
by public opinion.
  Just as a note, I don't necessarily buy into the non-agression
*ever* unless clearly agressed upon theory. I think that we do
have a right to defend ourselves, even when we haven't had war
declared on us. This is not the same thing as the being the
world cop though.

> >  Has it occurred to you that the Great Depression wouldn't have
> >happened under a Lib system? Everything about the Great Depression
> >points to governmental meddling as the root cause. 
> 
> Smoot-Hawley.  Perhaps that.  But that didn't change what happened
> in Europe.  It was a global depression and the LSA would have been
> swept right along with it just as easily as the USA.  

  Certainly, there would have been a downturn in the US economy
following WWI. But at that point, the US was *the* dominant economic
force in the world. It was the US going down the shithole which killed
off the rest of the world, not the other way around. Pumping up the money
supply and all the rest of the nasty things that happened in the 20's
took a probable normal recession and made it into a catastrophe.

> >That being said, FDR's New Deal did little to help the ecomony.
> 
> It did much more than Hoover's laissez-faire.  Plus, it prevented
> a revolution.

  Oh, puleeze. Hoover the laissez-faire capitalist? It was Hoover's
meddling with the Federal Reserve etc, which caused the collapse.
Laissez-faire economies don't have Fed's screwing with the printing
presses. This is so typical of how "laissez-faire" capitalism gets
the rap for boneheaded acts which are completely statist.
 
> >  Besides, if a lib government had been effect at that time there
> >would have had to been a substantial amount of support for their
> >positions. Huey Long and his ilk are *so* far to the authoritarian/left
> >side the country would have to be in two armed camps for such an
> >event to take place. What you are conjecturing here is civil war.
> 
> Yes, we would have had either a civil war or a revolution under
> a Libertarian government.  And ended up with a system far worse than
> what we have now, while Nazi Germany reigned supreme.

  Bzzt. This doesn't follow at all. But of course this is all part of
your inane strawman about blaming a supposed lib government when in 
fact there was none at the time.
-- 

		Michael Thomas	(mike@gordian.com)
	"I don't think Bambi Eyes will get you that flame thrower..."  
		-- Hobbes to Calvin
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