Monthly Archives: September 2021

The most irrelevant lobby in the country today are the libertarians arguing there is no case for lockdowns anywhere of any scale, declared Paul Kelly, the doyen of Australian conservative political commentary, in July.

However, anti-government anger is growing as Australians confront the realities of a dismally slow vaccination rollout and ongoing lockdowns. The right-wing libertarians of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) hope to convert that sentiment into the votes they need to win seats in state and federal parliaments.

Just a few days prior to Kellys declaration, his colleague at Rupert Murdochs conservative broadsheet theAustralian, Janet Albrechtsen, set the hares running. She argued that widespread disaffection with the Liberal Partys pandemic response, both federally and in New South Wales, has led to the rejuvenation of the LDP, the little start-up that never took off. If, Albrectsen argued, they mobilize serious intellectual firepower and keep out the weirdos and gun nuts, the LDP can force the Liberals to remain true to the values they claim to uphold.

Australias low coronavirus case numbers have been the envy of much of the world. These numbers were kept down partly by the strict and lengthy lockdowns that Australians have endured, including a fresh round that are ongoing in NSW, Victoria, and the Australian Capital Territory. Yet lockdown skepticism is on the rise, as are criticisms of the often heavy-handed means with which they are implemented. It remains to be seen whether the LDP can capitalize on this sentiment.

Libertarianism is very much a niche movement in Australian politics. The Liberal Democratic Party was founded in Canberra in 2001 by twenty-two-year-old economics graduate John Humphreys. Then a junior policy analyst in the Commonwealth Treasury, Humphreys despaired that there was no political party that aligned with his libertarian views. Ironically, given the partys anti-statist bent, in its early years it drew support primarily from Canberra public servants.

LDP members and supporters use the terms classical liberal and libertarian interchangeably. Chris Berg, formerly of the free market think tank the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) and author of a book on libertarianism, believes the distinction is insignificant. Both philosophies believe that public policy should be designed to maximise free markets and civil liberties, he wrote in 2018. That is, governments should get out of both the wallet and the bedroom.

However, the differing terms do point to genuine fault lines within the LDP. On one side are the Hayekian classical liberals, who are principally concerned with free markets, low taxation, and property rights. Many of this persuasion find a comfortable home in the Liberal Party for example, Bergs former IPA colleagues James Paterson and Tim Wilson.

On the other side are the social and cultural libertarians, who are more intensely focused on the freedom of the individual to do what he or she pleases, as long as it harms no one else. They strongly support liberalizing drug laws, for example, putting them at odds with the more conservatively inclined wing. Internal divisions like these are common to all political parties, however, and the LDPs factions have had enough in common to keep the party going for twenty years.

In this time, the LDP has only notched up minor electoral successes. Its high watermark came in 2013, when David Leyonhjelm was elected to the federal Senate with 9.5 percent of the vote in NSW. Even so, LDP partisans acknowledge that Leyonhjelm benefited from being placed first on the ballot paper. Additionally, some voters likely confused the LDP with the similarly named Liberal Party. Generally, the LDP tends to win between 1 and 3 percent of the vote.

At the state level, the party achieved successes in 2017 and 2018, with one candidate elected in Western Australia (WA) and two in Victoria. In 2019, however, Leyonhjelm resigned from the Senate to contest a seat in the NSW parliament. He failed. In the federal election that followed shortly after, Leyonhjelms Senate replacement was unable to reclaim his seat.

Just this year, the LDP lost its seat in WA, leaving the two Victorians, David Limbrick and Tim Quilty, as the only LDP members in any Australian parliament. This raises the question: Where can the LDP go from here?

Having stepped down as president of the LDP in 2004, Humphreys reassumed the position in May 2021. For much of the past twenty years, he has played a leading role building Australias libertarian movement, through think tanks and advocacy groups such as the Centre for Independent Studies and the Australian Libertarian Society.

Following Humphreyss return, along with what Albrechtsen described as some serious financial backing, the LDP coordinated a rapid series of announcements that the right-wing media have taken up with relish.

First, the Australian edition of the Spectator broke the not-exactly-bombshell news that the little-known Liberal Party activist John Ruddick had quit the party to run as an LDP candidate. Former Liberal senator (and leader of the failed minor party the Australian Conservatives) Cory Bernardi then used his platform on Sky News to advocate for the LDP. Embracing his inner Lenin, Bernardi argued that Australia needs a vanguard to stick up for the liberty loving citizens who are actually sceptical about an all-powerful government.

The Spectator soon endorsed Bernardi and Albrechtsens argument in an editorial. This was followed by a gushing interview on Sky News Outsiders, hosted by Rowan Dean, who is also the Australian editor of the Spectator.

Next, former Queensland premier Campbell Newman entered the fray. He dropped the news to the Australian that he had quit the Liberal National Party (LNP) and was considering running for the federal Senate as an LDP candidate. As he put it, he wants to apply a blowtorch to people who seek to restrict our liberties and freedoms.

Newman is the son of two former Liberal federal ministers and was a popular mayor of Brisbane before becoming premier of Queensland in a landslide election victory in 2012, in which the LNP won seventy-eight out of eighty-nine seats. However, he managed to squander this enormous advantage in the space of just one three-year term, losing power to the Labor Party in 2015.

Shortly after Newmans tease, former Liberal MP Ross Cameron also announced his defection to the LDP. This may have been bigger news had Cameron not been voted out of parliament in disgrace in 2004 following revelations about multiple extramarital affairs. He has spent much of his post-parliamentary career parading himself on Sky News as a racist, a homophobe, and a moon enthusiast. The serious intellectual firepower that Albrechtsen called for is clearly yet to materialize.

At this point, the conservative old guard at theAustralian felt the need to step in to settle things down. In a typically bombastic editorial, the broadsheet cautioned that Ruddick, Newman, and Camerons treachery would only serve to deliver a disastrous outcome, namely, a Labor-Greens government.

Since then, Newman confirmed his candidacy with the backing of Tim Andrews, an Australian Grover Norquist who spends his days fighting tax increases. The founder of the Australian Taxpayers Alliance, Andrews is the key figure behind the annual Friedman Conference, alongside Humphreys. The Friedman Conference has been instrumental in connecting libertarians across the country. On the day of Newmans statement, Andrews announced that he would be joining the LDP to his more than four thousand Facebook followers, urging them to do the same.

These developments demonstrate that libertarians are agreed about the need to pressure the Liberals. However, it is not entirely clear what strategy the LDP will adopt to win the support of disaffected voters. Those still wedded to neoliberal-era economics Janet Albrechtsen and Campbell Newman, for example want to add opposition to pandemic restrictions to the usual orthodoxies about reining in government spending.

The more radically inclined have taken their cues from recent right-wing populist successes. They want a clearer, simpler message. We will be running an anti-lockdown message like Nigel Farages single-message campaign on Brexit, says Cameron. Ruddick agrees, stating that ending COVID-mania will be the main campaign theme. As he told Sky News,

Come the first of December, once everyones had an opportunity to get vaxxed if they want to get vaxxed we go back to complete normality. No more QR codes, no restrictions in any way.

Vaccination might be the most delicate of all issues for the LDP. Authorities have fined both Ruddick and Limbrick for attending anti-lockdown protests, which are usually populated by high numbers of anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists. The Liberal Democrats have used careful messaging to try to balance an awareness that mass vaccination is our best way out of lockdowns with their desire to appeal to anti-vaxxers. Ruddick told the Guardian that the LDP is neutral on vaccination. Limbrick is on record opposing the possible imposition of travel or other restrictions on unvaccinated people.

Although the LDP is a marginal force, the partys strategy will have major implications for the Liberal-National Coalition. The Coalition performs best when it manages to isolate fringe forces to its right and incorporate their supporters, as former Prime Minister John Howard did with Pauline Hansons far-right insurgency in the late 1990s. Ever since, the Coalition has generally preferred to court hard-right candidates and voters, preferring to keep them inside the tent rather than throwing bombs from outside.

This strategy is not without risks. Liberal MP Craig Kelly quit the party in February after Prime Minister Scott Morrison criticized his quack views on vaccination and alternative therapies. This might have been a relief for Morrison if it werent for the Coalitions razor-thin parliamentary majority. More recently, both sides of parliament united to condemn another government member, George Christensen, for his idiotic comments on masks, lockdowns, and vaccine passports.

It remains to be seen whether the Coalition can continue to appease libertarian and hard-right elements, while maintaining its commitment to managing capitalism and the health crisis, including by authoritarian means. Whether the Coalition can manage this tension will go some way to determining its electoral fortunes in the forthcoming federal election.

Humphreys and his allies once seemed satisfied with the LDPs meager electoral returns and libertarianisms niche status in Australia. Now, however, they have announced a plan to take the Liberal Democrats from a 2 per cent party to a 10 per cent party over coming elections. Can they do it?

Chris Berg believes that increasing anger about some of the most dramatic suppression of civil liberties in living memory presents an enormous opportunity. He believes the LDP can succeed if it can steer clear of anti-vaxxers and the hard-right elements that populate libertarian circles, and instead rely on relatively mainstream figures to sell the partys message.

In 2018, left-wing journalist Guy Rundle wrote that David Leyonhjelms strange neuroses served only to discredit libertarianism as a real political philosophy. Its possible, as Rundle argued, that the crackpot element in the Australian libertarian movement will continue to alienate mainstream voters.

However, this is not certain. To quote twentieth-century Australian intellectual Donald Horne, when times are cracked, the crackpot can become king. The next federal election could be the LDPs chance to make its presence felt in Australian politics.

See the original post:
Australia's Right-Wing Libertarians Are Trying to Capitalize on Anti-Lockdown Sentiment - Jacobin magazine

If there is a Trumpism after Trump, it might look a bit like Thielism or somewhere between the two. Its unclear where one ends and the other begins, though, because, as Max Chafkin says, its unclear whether there actually is a coherent Thielism. Chafkin is a Bloomberg reporter and the author of a recent book on Thiel, The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valleys Pursuit of Power. While there are certainly strains of authoritarianism and libertarianism that run throughout Thiels writing and political activities, Chafkin says, Thielism is riddled with so many contradictions that it remains, at its core, largely a mystery.

I called Chafkin to talk about his book and where Thielism goes from hereif it even exists in the first place.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Katie Fossett: How would you describe Peter Thiels ideology?

Max Chafkin: I think there are real questions about whether or not there even is a coherent ideology. It could just be a collection of random contrarian impulses.

Theres always been a lot of libertarianism in Silicon Valley, but there are aspects of Thiels politics that aren't libertarian at all; theyre closer to authoritarianism. Its super-nationalistic, its a longing for a sort of more powerful chief executive, or, you know, a dictator, in other words.

I will say the speech that Zuckerberg gave at Georgetown in 2019 [where he defended Facebooks decision to publish political ads that contain lies and emphasized the importance of freedom of speech] he articulated a libertarian vision for how Facebook should relate to content; it should allow politicians to lie. And there are obviously counterarguments. Zuckerberg sees Facebook as a platform, but of course, you dont have to see it that way. You can see Facebook as helping to distribute those lies. So I think that speech owes a lot to Thiel and Thiels libertarian instincts.

Fossett: Thiel has poured a lot of money into the campaigns of candidates who have come out swinging hard against Big Tech and Facebook specifically. Im thinking about Josh Hawley, the Missouri senator, Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance and Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters. How long can Thiel keep playing both sides like this?

Chafkin: Thats a theme throughout Thiels life ... At once being a loyal board member to Mark Zuckerberg, and in some ways a really important conservative ally, but also subtly and increasingly not so subtly needling Facebook and putting pressure on the company through these actors, including people like Vance and Hawley and Masters ... and [Texas] Senator Ted Cruz. (Ed. note: Thiel has donated to Cruz in the past.)

From the outside, it feels like Thiels almost daring Zuckerberg to fire him. And Zuckerberg is not. There was a moment I report in the book where they did come to a head. Zuckerberg didnt quite ask Thiel to step aside, but he sort of floated the idea, and Thiel very firmly said, No, youre going to have to fire me. Thiel had leaked correspondence with Netflix CEO Reed Hastings to the New York Times through Chuck Johnson, and Zuckerberg suspected Thiel was behind the leaks. Zuckerberg almost fired Thiel but didnt want to for whatever reason.

And I think you could ask, Well, why isnt Zuckerberg firing him? And I think the answer is that Facebook still really needs Thiel. I mean, Thiel in some ways is a liability to the company. Hes very closely associated with this pretty extreme faction of the Republican Party that I think probably makes Zuckerberg uncomfortable, on a personal level.

On the other hand, he gives Facebook a really great talking point when they're attacked for, quote unquote, suppressing conservative views. Because Zuckerberg can say, Hey, I have this board member, and hes the longest-serving board member, he's my good friend and mentor, Peter Thiel. And its not just that Thiel is a Republican or a conservative. He is a hardcore Trumpist.

I think maybe Thiels future on the board depends to some extent on politics, and on what happens in 2022 and beyond that.

Why is Thiel kind of needling Facebook? I think part of it is that despite being the first investor and all of that, he may have some ethical and moral qualms about Facebook, similar to the feelings that a lot of people have, about it being too powerful, for instance.

But I also think that the work that Vance and Hawley have done is theyve pushed Zuckerberg from the conservative point of view and kept him in line. And so I think you could regard this kind of subtle activism, or this disloyalty, from Thiel as partly an effort to push Zuckerberg to the right. And I think its worked, for now anyway.

Fossett: How much is Thiel shaping his Senate candidates? Is he meeting them where they are already, or are they influenced by him?

Chafkin: Well, I think if you asked any of them, they would say they aren't being influenced. Vance in particular has been asked this a bunch of times and in a bunch of different ways. And he says, Peter and I are friends, but Im not in his pocket, essentially. That said, I think its a combination of things.

I think Thiel has an eye for spotting young talentand this goes beyond politicsboth in young, talented techies like Zuckerberg, but also these kinds of talented political troublemakers like Hawley. And Thiel has kind of a type.

But I also think its pretty clear at this point that Thiel has a lot of money and is interested in donating money to candidates. So I almost think he doesnt even have to tell people to adopt certain views, right? There's going to be a tendency to move towards his politics for any candidate who wants his money. And that's actually happened at various points. [Former presidential candidate] Ron Paul, when he was running for president the second time, embraced this tech-friendly agenda that seemed like an effort to cater to Thiel after he had donated money to the campaign.

This is not true for Hawley, but in the case of Vance and Masters, they both kind of worked for him. Masters literally still works for him; hes the COO of Thiel Capital, and Vance doesnt work for Thiel, but Thiel was a major investor in his venture capital fund. (Ed. note: Vance previously briefly worked at Mithril Capital, a venture capital fund co-founded by Thiel.) His involvement with Vances venture capital fund was very important to that funds viability. And they've invested together in companies, most recently in Rumble, which is a conservative answer to YouTube.

So its not like Thiel is telling them to think things, but I think in some sense they are ideologically just extensions of him. And when you look at their platforms, they're just very, very similar to the Thiel agenda. Vance put out a big statement on crypto. There isnt an obvious reason why an Ohio populist should be embracing crypto, or why that would matter to the average Ohio voter in the Republican primary. But I think it certainly is an issue that people in the tech/libertarian and right-wing tech community care a lot about.

Fossett: Thiel was all in for Trump in 2016he spoke at the Republican National Convention, and he donated more than a million dollars to the Trump campaign that year. But he sat out 2020. What was behind that? Was there any kind of falling-out or did Trump just not look like a good bet anymore?

Max Chafkin: I think there was a falling-out, but it happened earlier. Thiel, obviously, was very close to the White House in 2017, and the early months of the Trump administration. He was on the executive committee of the transition team.

But then he suggested all these people for jobs in the administration [such as Princeton physicist William Happer and Yale computer scientist David Gelernter for science adviser, and Stanford computer science lecturer Balaji Srinivasan for FDA commissioner] and Trump took very few of the suggestions seriously. Thiel was also close to [Trumps former chief strategist] Steve Bannon, and Steve Bannon got pushed out. Thiel had other connections to Trump, but Bannon was a very important one.

But I think he also, to some extent, absented himself, as the Trump administration started to go sideways. And I think the strategy in 2020 was to kind of hedgenot to criticize Trump, but also not to be too closely associated with him. I think from Thiels point of view, Trumpismthe sort of ideology behind Trumpis very good, and it's what Thiel believes in. And I think Thiel wants to find a way forward for that ideology, with or without Donald Trump. And I think his play right now is to be a major backer and a player in that world. Somebody who is going to shape the direction of that part of the electorate.

Fossett: How has Biden being in office changed the way Thiel does business? I'm mostly thinking of Palantir, the software company that does a lot of business with the Defense Department and the CIA, and Anduril, a defense tech startup backed by Thiel.

Chafkin: Palantir is a pretty big company by this point. And it's not like they don't have Democratic lobbyists. They can continue to advocate within the government, under any administration.

We're only nine months into the Biden presidency, so it remains to be seen what the long-term trajectory for these companies will be. But besides whatever influence Thiel was able to wield in the government during the Trump administration, there has been a broader trend towards these kinds of companies, and Palantir has been riding that wave. So I think its totally possible that Palantir will adapt and is adapting to that future. But in the long run, obviously, I think it's better for Thiel's interests if he has political allies in power. And I think thats part of why hes spending way more money in this Senate race than he ever has. I think that's a big reason.

Fossett: Was there anything that you really, really wanted to know about Thiel when you set out to write the book but werent able to answer?

Chafkin: Well, there are a couple of things. One is religion. Thiel has said that he is Christian. His parents were evangelical, and he has at times talked about his Christian faith, but he hasn't really ever explained the nature of his Christian faith.

The other thing is Ive talked to him a handful of times, but I only talked to him off the record for this book. But an on-the-record interview where he is pressed on his actual beliefs would be very interesting. I think it is unfortunate that he hasn't been willing to sit down with a with a journalist who can do that. I think most of the time, most of the access he's given has been to people who are pretty friendly. Most of the times he appears on stage, it's with ideologically aligned people. But he's written some very outrageous things. Hes written that womens suffrage was unfortunate. And hes gotten pretty close to some people who are promoting basically visions of authoritarianism for America. And I think it would be interesting to hear what he actually thinks about that stuff. Because at times, hes sort of walked things back, but not quite. Theres a bit of a sorry-not-sorry quality to these clarifications. With the Cato essay, for instance, he issued a clarification that wasnt quite an apology. It was sort of like, Oh, people are making too big a fuss of this. (Ed. Note: Thiel wrote: It would be absurd to suggest that womens votes will be taken away or that this would solve the political problems that vex us.)

But of course, you know, democracy is really important to me. And I think its really important to a lot of people. And the idea of being skeptical of such a core part of America, I think, is worth scrutinizing, especially when he has proximity to these companies that have probably have more power over lives than any private entities in the history of humanity.

More here:
The Black Box of Peter Thiels Beliefs - POLITICO

Michael Stephens| Guest columnist

If you've spent any time on or observing the political right in America, you probably know that just about the dirtiest thing we Republicans can say aboutsomeone is to call that person a socialist.

The slanderous epithet of "communist" doesn't work too well anymore, because everyone knows that real communism the stuff of Marx, Lenin andMao has vanished from the earth so completely that there are more stuffed dodo birds sitting in museums than there are true communists on the loose.

Socialism, on the other hand, is alive and well and open to competing definition by friends and enemies alike. Suffice it to say that democratic socialism(undemocratic socialism being largely limited today to a few temporarily disaffected children of multimillionaires having some fun playing revolutionary atuniversity) entails a comprehensive social welfare state combined with a great deal of government direction in the economy, all of it planned by freelyelected not to say competent officials.

Social democracy welcomes the welfare state but shuns government planning of the economy, reasoning that if you want to tax the rich heavily, theyactually have to be rich, something bureaucratic meddling tends not to encourage.

To modern orthodox Republicans, all this social this-and-that is just socialism, plain and simple, and socialism rhymes with communism.

The Republican Party in the first half of the 20th century was far different from the economic libertarianism idealized by most of its leaders today.

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Theodore Roosevelt challenged the hegemony of big business during his 1901-1909 presidency, creating a new economically interventionist conservatism, Progressivism. Wendell Willkie,the1940 Republican presidential candidate,took Progressive ideals to their furthest when he ran to the left of FranklinRoosevelton both economic policy and certain social issues, including desegregation.

But perhaps the most unusual distinction involved a Republican not commonly thought of as a Progressive: President Warren Harding (1921-23).

Harding was certainly no socialist. He wasn't even a social democrat. When confronting a particularly thorny tax reform proposal, he confessed, "I can'tmake a thing out of this tax problem. I listen to one side, and they seem right, and then I talk to the other side, and they seem just as right."

Today that would be modesty unbecoming a president. Harding had the rare courage to express the frustration ofnonspecialistleaders down throughthe ages. And eventually he did what good leaders do: He crafted a compromise.

Harding's idealism lay in an uncommon concern for fairness, including toward those whose ideas differed radically from his own. He had long beenowner and editor of a newspaper in the small town of Marion, Ohio, and perhaps it was the need to regularly consider the opinions and feelings of ordinarypeople as people rather than as members of voting blocs that made him more tolerant than most politicians.

The opportunity for an encounter between political worlds came in 1921. In his enthusiasm to make every American a supporter of our involvement inWorld War I, President Woodrow Wilson had in 1918 locked up practically anyone who spoke out against it. That included Socialist Party leader EugeneDebs, who had coincidentally taken an embarrassinglylarge number of votes from Wilson in the 1912 presidential election. Peace came, but Wilson leftDebs in prison.

Debs might have died in prison, but when Harding became president, he not only freed Debs but invited him to the White House. We don't knowwhat theytalked about. They likely discussed economics, on which they differed widely, although both had a real concern for the common people. They mayalsohave discussed civil rights for Black Americans, something Harding and Debs were both pioneers in championing.

Interestingly, Debs was not Harding's only link to American socialism. Norman Thomas, the Socialist Party candidate for president in every electionfrom1928 to 1948, grew up in, of all places, little Marion, Ohio. As a teenager Thomas worked for Harding's newspaper.

How much the small-town pragmatism of Harding may have influenced Thomas is unclear, but in 1938 Leon Trotsky described Thomas sneeringly asa"drawing-room socialist" with no interest in collectivizing American farms or murdering the capitalist elite. Thomas, a Presbyterian minister before enteringpolitics, no doubt took this as a compliment.

Whenever partisan mudslinging seems particularly out of control, we should remember that crisp winter day a century ago when a pro-businessRepublicanpresident of the United States welcomed the persecuted icon of American democratic socialism for an honest chat, and did so in total disregardfor what the press or political opponents might say.

Would that our modern leaders had that sort of courage and humanity.

Michael Stephenslives in Gainesville.

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Excerpt from:
The Republican Party's surprising socialist connection - Gainesville Sun

The Supreme Court Building in Washington D.C., August 5, 2021(Brent Buterbaugh/National Review)

If youre like me, you will have enjoyed reading the legal commentary thats been published ahead of the Supreme Courts oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization on December 1. At issue in the case is Mississippis 2018 Gestational Age Act, which prohibits abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions for medical emergencies and severe fetal abnormality. The scholarship on the issue both in formal amicus briefs and in longer-form essays has been richly educational. That so many constitutional-law professors, advocacy groups, and nonprofits have decided to submit their thoughts for consideration isnt surprising, given that this is perhaps the most consequential case the Court has decided to take up in decades. Mississippis law although modest and broadly popular is self-evidently incompatible with the Courts prior rulings, and therefore threatens the abortion regime thats been constructed over the past half century.

I was surprised, then, when I learned that the Cato Institute the prominent libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C., which boasts a center dedicated to the study of constitutional law has decided not to file with the Court in this case. Surprise quickly turned to confusion when I read Ilya Shapiro, the centers director, on its justification for not doing so.

Cato hasnt and wont be filing in Dobbs, as we havent in any abortion case, for three reasons: (1) libertarians in good standing span the gamut from the staunchest pro-choice to the staunchest pro-life, (2) we have nothing unique to add about what an undue burden is or how it may apply to any particular abortion regulation, and (3) while Cato lawyers may each have our own views on when rights attach see point 1 this is fundamentally a philosophical, theological, and thus ultimately political question, not a legal one.

Lets consider each reason in turn.

First, Ill take Shapiros word for it that libertarians, both at Cato and elsewhere, hold a range of views on abortion. Yet maintaining a wide range of opinions on abortion does not preclude Cato or any of its fellows from opposing Roe and Casey, which they ought to do on constitutional principle alone. Indeed, any pro-choice libertarian in good standing should advocate exactly this position. More on this below.

Next is the admission that they dont have anything unique to add about what constitutes an undue burden the standard established in Planned Parenthood v. Casey for determining whether a state restriction on abortion pre-viability is legitimate. As a constitutional matter, this is fair enough. The undue-burden standard has been sufficiently, even exhaustively, examined. Take, for example, a brilliant new essay from Mary Ann Glendon and O. Carter Snead in National Affairs. In making the case for overturning Roe and Casey, they note that the standard has been an exceedingly vague concept since its creation. The new standard, they write,

doubled down on Roes freewheeling derivation of a constitutional right based on the justices own normative balancing of competing interests: a womans interest in being free to make intimate, personal, and self-defining reproductive choices on the one hand, versus the states interests in defending the unborn, preserving the integrity of the medical profession, and promoting the respect for life more generally, on the other.

It failed, yet again, to ground the Courts abortion jurisprudence in the Constitution. As it so happens, made-up rules tend to beget more made-up rules.

Consider, too, this brief description from Chief Justice John Roberts, on the sort of balancing act that Casey demanded: There is no plausible sense in which anyone, let alone this Court, could objectively assign weight to such imponderable values and no meaningful way to compare them if there were.

So, in short, yes: Casey is well-trodden ground. To posit this as a justification for not filing in this case, however, is unpersuasive. One could write about any number of things unrelated to the undue-burden standard and, indeed, the majority of those filed in support of the state of Mississippi have done just that. But beyond this, the case itself hardly turns on whether the states law constitutes an undue burden prior to viability. Its ban with minimal exceptions at 15 weeks pretty obviously amounts to one. Mississippi does not even argue otherwise; it knows its law violates the Supreme Courtmade standard. Instead, the state put forth a wholesale stare decisis argument against Roe and Casey.

Last is the contention that rights-attachment that is, when the fetus retains the rights attendant to personhood is a philosophical, theological, and political question. Here, too, Shapiro is generally correct. (Some noteworthy conservatives such as Robert P. George and John M. Finnis disagree, advancing the notion that unborn children are constitutional persons entitled to equal protection pursuant to the 14th Amendment; in other words, it is fundamentally a legal question.)

But to maintain that this is expressly political as Cato says that it does is to have sufficient cause to support Mississippis case. That the question of when rights attach is a political matter, without any inferable language in the Constitution, supports the Courts doing away with its precedent that treats it as a constitutional matter, thereby kicking deliberation back to the states, where it belongs. Shapiros comment then is indeed a justification just not in the direction that he imagines it to run.

Finally, some also may suggest that to overturn such precedents would be dangerously political. But the opposite is true: Roe itself was the original political sin, and the Courts removing itself from that sphere would be entirely apolitical. As has been discussed in these pages and elsewhere the Courts abortion jurisprudence has no legitimate grounding in the Constitution. Roe, in the words of pro-choice legal scholar John Hart Ely, was not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be. Its hardly political, then, for the Court to correct a serious mistake that has caused significant negative jurisprudential and real-world consequences. To do so, in fact, would arguably enhance its legitimacy and restore its proper place in our constitutional order.

The opportunity before the justices is grand. So, too, is the one before the Cato Institute. Its unfortunate that Cato has chosen to sit it out and doubly so, that this is its reasoning for doing so. The Court must fight the temptation to do likewise.

See original here:
Cato and the Court - National Review

Utilising reactionary anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine rallies in Melbourne organised this week, police forces have unveiled an array of new weapons and equipment. This includes pepper ball firearms that shoot hard pellets the size of marbles, stinger grenades, and paramilitary-style vehicles and body armour.

As the World Socialist Web Site has previously outlined, the anti-vax protests have no legitimacy whatsoever. A small layer of construction workers appear to have been involved in one of the rallies on Tuesday outside the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) office (see Australian anti-vaccine, extreme right demonstrators target construction industry). Numbers of reports, however, point to the predominantly petty bourgeois layers involved in the other events, including small business owners and contractors.

Politically, the rallies are dominated and led by extreme right-wing libertarian and outright fascist individuals and organisations. Some of the administrators of Telegram accounts promoting and organising the protests have previously been exposed as admirers of Adolf Hitler. Supporters of the fascistic Proud Boys and the now defunct United Patriots Front have been involved in the rallies.

The police are exploiting widespread hostility towards the protests and their homicidal calls for an immediate end to lockdown measures as the pretext for trialling new weaponry and a massive state mobilisation.

Senior police previously expressed concern over how the population would respond to the use of new, so-called non-lethal weaponry.

In 2018, police put on a display of their enhanced firepower for selected journalists. The weapons included VKS Pepper Ball firearms, capable of firing blunt force pellets or dye markers to brand people for later arrest, baton round launchers capable of firing larger rubber or plastic bullets, stinger grenades that release nine rubber projectiles, and sound/flash bombs that release noise, light and smoke. This was accompanied by new body armour and paramilitary-style police vehicles.

An Age journalist noted at the time, we have been given a sneak preview of gear that looks more like Star Wars than regulation police equipment.

Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton declared: It is an ugly look to see police in riot gear in a suburban street. It will be confronting to watch. We now have some equipment that has not been seen before that may alarm people.

The Melbourne Activist Legal Support noted that the new weapons posed severe dangers.

Pepper Ball pellets, the organisation reported, can blind, maim and leave permanent injuries depending where they hit the body, while the baton round launcher has resulted in significant injuries and fatalities around the world, [including last year] a 25-year-old protester [who] was killed by a rubber bullet in Paraguay. In addition: The flash/noise distraction grenades designed to shock and disperse crowds are routinely being used in Israel/Palestine and other conflict zones and have maimed children, can burst ear drums and generate dangerous fear and panic in crowds.

For three years, this equipment has gone unused. Now, however, the anti-vaxxer rallies have provided the police with the hoped-for pretext.

The real target of the repressive build-up is not the extreme rightmany of the fascists enjoy close relations with sections of sympathising policebut the working class.

The state Labor governments bolstering of police powers and weaponry has always been driven by the fear of social unrest and working class and youth protest, fuelled by escalating social inequality and attacks on living standards and democratic rights. Labor Premier Daniel Andrews has boasted of his law and order credentials. In 2016, his state government committed an unprecedented $2 billion in additional spending to expand the police by 20 percent, with 3,100 more officers employed. The government has since boasted that its annual police spending is 35 percent higher than its Liberal predecessor.

The police operations against the anti-vax events represent a warning as to how the state is preparing to respond to a genuine movement of the working class in defence of its independent interests.

Numerous acts of police violence were recorded by witnesses and uploaded to social media. This included the gratuitous use of pepper spray on already restrained people, indiscriminate firing of plastic pellets, and one incident in which a person speaking with officers at Flinders train station was grabbed from behind by another cop without warning and body and head slammed into the concrete floor.

In another incident, a passer-by who was not involved in the right-wing protests recorded three masked men wearing khaki-coloured armour emerge from an unmarked car and aggressively force a person to the ground. These were members of the Special Operations Group police branch, an elite unit usually reserved for counter-terrorist responses and incidents involving firearms or explosives.

The confrontation recalled the police-state operations coordinated by US President Donald Trump in the final weeks of his presidency, including having unidentified police in Portland hauling protestors into unmarked vans for interrogation.

In another precedent-setting move, on Wednesday the police had the Civil Aviation Safety Authority declare central Melbourne a no-fly zone. This aimed at preventing the broadcast of aerial footage of the anti-vax rallies. Police later permitted overhead media coverage, but insisted that video broadcasts from helicopters be delayed by at least an hour so that live police operations were not visible to protestors. The ban on live overhead coverage was subsequently overturned by the Federal Court.

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Australian police exploit extreme right-wing, anti-vax rallies to deploy new repressive weaponry - WSWS