Issue 5

11/18/2015
Editor: Will Porter

War is mass murder,

conscription is
slavery, taxation is
robbery.
Murray Rothbard

The Abolitionist
The Young Americans for Liberty Campus Newsletter

Paris: No Grave Too Warm for

the Political Class to Dance On
By Thomas L. Knapp
For a columnist or pundit, theres no greater temptation than to get something
writtenQuick! Now! about the latest, greatest, deadliest catastrophe. After all, if
it bleeds it leads.
I felt that urge the night of the Paris terror attacks. For once, I resisted. I wanted
more information. I wanted to see how the usual suspects responded. I wanted to see
whether or not my own immediate assumptions and predictions would hold up before
I held forth.
Unfortunately, my assumptions and predictions turned out to be spot-on. The
American and European political classes didnt bother waiting for the bodies to cool
or, for that matter, to even be counted before commencing their triumphant dance
on the graves. The attacks may have been unexpected, but they certainly werent
unwelcome. The political class immediately pivoted from a pro forma parody of
normal peoples heartfelt condemnation to special pleading for more power.
Within hours, prominent War Party mouthpiece (and former US ambassador to the
United Nations) John Bolton rushed out a piece on four important lessons we must
learn from the attacks. Predictably, never trust John Bolton with any decision more
consequential than ordering pizza, and even then be watchful lest ye end up with
anchovies didnt make the cut.
CIA director John Brennan and his predecessor, James Woolsey, blame
whistleblower Edward Snowden for the attacks. Snowden crashed the US
intelligence communitys illegal surveillance party. If only state apparatchiks had all
the unaccountable and unlimited power state apparatchiks wanted, wed all be safe,
see?
Who should we blame for the murder and mayhem in Paris? Of courseOF
COURSE! the evil individuals who planned and carried out the attacks.
But when the prescriptions of an identifiable American ideological tendency call it
neoconservatism, call it hawkishness, call it interventionism, call it whatever
you like can irrefutably be observed to have culminated in the horror of 9/11, the
quagmire in Afghanistan, the debacle in Iraq, the fiasco in Libya, the rise of the
Islamic State and innumerable other evils, at some point we should stop clapping in
unison with their blood-soaked boogie-woogie and cease trusting to their highly
questionable wisdom for solutions.
Americans and our European cousins face a stark choice: We can stop letting our
political classes try to run the world, or we can keep letting the innocent pay in blood
for our politicians hubris.

[This article originally appeared on Antiwar.com November 17, 2015.]

The Abolitionist | Young Americans for Liberty

About YAL :
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Turkey Notified France About Paris

Suicide Bomber Twice in Past Year
By Jason Ditz
Speaking at the G20 summit, President Obama insisted he was not aware of any
particular intelligence in the lead-up to Fridays ISIS attacks in Paris, saying there
have been concerns periodically but no specific mentions of anything to prove
France ahead of time.
This is just the latest in a series of reports in which US officials say their intelligence
had nothing on the Paris attack, despite a growing number of other countries which
reported providing direct intelligence to France of an impending attack in the days
(and even hours) before the strike.
Turkey reported that theyd also provided intelligence to France relating to one of the
attackers, Omar Mostefai, a 29-year-old Parisian who was identified as one of the
suicide bombers. Turkey says theyd provided France intelligence on him twice in the
past year.
Intelligence officials across the West have emphasized their heavy focus on keeping
tabs on ISIS returnees who had gone to Syria and returned home, though it appears
that this was the case with most if not all of the attackers on Friday, and somehow
the intelligence was still insufficient to stop the attacks.

[This article originally appeared on Antiwar.com November 16, 2015.]

The Intellectual Intolerance

Behind Check Your Privilege
By Gary Galles
A decade ago, no one had ever been told to check your privilege. Now it commands
an appreciable market share in academia and social justice rhetoric. But it does so
despite sharply opposed interpretations of its meaning. In fact, its expanded footprint
is partly because of its ambiguity.
It Could Be an Invitation to Debate
In a sense, check your privilege largely amounts to check your premises behind
your views, and many are willing to recognize that such a reminder can be useful in
advancing conversations about social issues.
However, I question whether people are so bereft of concern for, or understanding of,
one another that they need repetitive check your privileges reminders that imply
they would believe more accurately and act more effectively if only they were more
empathetic. I tend to agree with Adam Smith, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments,
that:

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his
nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness

The Abolitionist | Young Americans for Liberty

necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it
... we often derive sorrow from the sorrows of others.
Further, repeatedly sermonizing to fix people as a way of uplifting them becomes
little more than nagging, and any insight it may add gets crowded out. In the same
way, repeatedly invoking check your privilege tends to destroy its usefulness,
leaving increased irritation and disharmony.
But the Phrase Could Simply Mean Shut Up
And when does check your privilege become code for be quiet rather than
evaluate your premises? Check your privilege is about shutting down discussion
when the user is making the assertion that you are hopelessly confused in your
understanding, and that your opinions amount to aggression (whether micro- or
macro-). This position was well articulated decades ago by Robert Heinlein, in The
Moon is a Harsh Mistress:

Where do you start explaining when a mans words show there isnt anything he
understands about [a] subject, [but] instead is loaded with preconceptions that dont
fit facts and [he] doesnt even know [it]?
The assertion of your hopeless confusion then becomes the basis for claims that,
unless you are a member of some accepted victimized class, you must be part of the
oppressor class. Therefore, as Max Borders put it:

Your rights and opinions are invalid and you have no real complaints or suffering
because you belong to X group. Or, more to the point, you are obligated to pay
because people who look like you in some ways did bad things at some point.
In other words, others assert that they dont need to listen to you, much less respect
your arguments.
The Ad Hominen Attack
That leap involves several logical failings. Included in that list is the idea that any
guilt for what was true of some members of an arbitrarily defined class or group
(rather than treating people as the individuals they are) at some point in time passes
on to every current and future member of that class or group. In addition, it
incorporates the ad hominem fallacy that because you are judged as bad or part of an
oppressor class, your argument is false, while conversely, their self-defined goodness
and non-oppression means theirs must be true, both of which are unrelated to the
logical validity of an argument.
Given that check your privileges could mean either remember to be empathetic, so
we can better understand and help or we can disregard your beliefs and violate
your rights, how can we tell which one is intended?
Where confusion reigns, to better understand and help requires the confusion to be
replaced with clear, accurate understanding. That, in turn, requires a serious,
ongoing give and take conversation.
However, when check your privilege is used to preemptively cut off conversation by
stopping those who disagree from any chance to be heard, much less to rebut their
demonization and targeting, no improvement in either empathy or outcomes can

The Abolitionist | Young Americans for Liberty

YAL Group Schedule:

11/18/2015 General
meeting. 4:00pm-5:30pm in
LA 161.

4
result. So the key to evaluating check your privilege is to ask what would be
entailed if it was intended to advance such a serious conversation.
How Real Dialogue Happens

11/25/2015 General
meeting. 4:00pm-5:30pm in
LA 161.
12/2/2015 General
meeting. 4:00pm-5:30pm in
LA 161.
12/9/2015 General
meeting. 4:00pm-5:30pm in
LA 161.
[Note: This schedule is subject to
change.]

Importantly, any conversation would not stop at watch your privileges. It would
only begin there. By itself, the phrase says you are wrong in your understanding or
views, but it leaves how completely unspecified, beyond having something to do with
membership in some allegedly dominant or privileged group. Stopping the
conversation there leaves check your privileges as an insult, without any ability to
clarify understanding or reduce disagreements or disharmony.
Progress toward better understanding and results would require several more steps.
It would start by precisely specifying what faulty premises, assumptions, or
arguments someone supposedly holds, either included or excluded inappropriately.
Then it would explain why it is inappropriate for the issue being considered. It would
lay out the correct or appropriate premise that would take its place and articulate the
reasons why.
Building on that foundation, it would show how the new and improved premises
would change ones conclusions. Consequently, it would lay out the appropriate
remedy based on the alternative analysis. In the process, it would have to account for
how the proposed remedy cannot be explained solely on a narrowly self-interested
more for me basiscompletely apart from the argument offeredas part of laying
out the new special privileges that would be created for those put forward as victims.
It would also have to explain how others will be affected in order to address the
asserted problem, including whether there would be coercive impositions on members
of the supposedly dominant or victimizer class who had nothing to do with the sins
of the fathers.
When check your privilege means think more carefully about others circumstances,
which may be far different than yours, and to be empathetic, it can be useful in
advancing our potential for mutual understanding. But it has to be only the
beginning of a much farther-reaching discussion to bear fruita discussion which,
carefully and earnestly pursued, would lead us back to the self-ownership and
voluntary arrangements of liberty.
In contrast, when check your privilege is used as a magic phrase to peremptorily
end social justice discussions, it is the assertion of a special privilege for some to be
allowed to define themselves as white hats and those who disagree as black hats,
without ever having to make a real argument. It also allows users to turn it into an
epithet of social demonization to try to impose their solutions, always at the
expense of the supposed black hats. In the process, it undermines social cooperation
by undermining the rights upon which it is built.

[This article originally appeared on Mises.org July 18, 2015.].

The Abolitionist | Young Americans for Liberty

Contact Information :
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with questions, comments,
concerns, or anything else
youd like us to know.
We accept article
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President for WCC and
Abolitionist editor:
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Email WKP.AnCap@Gmail.com
Twitter @WKPAnCap

Americas Papers Brush Aside Israeli Brutality

By Greg Shupak
Editorial statements allow newspapers to articulate their collective position on the
issues of the day and, in the case of major publications, they carry particular
authority. Such articles play an important role in shaping public opinion and
therefore need to be subject to special scrutiny.
Severely flawed editorials on the current uprising throughout Palestine have
appeared in the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and the
Washington Post.
One shortcoming is that they foreground Israeli concerns and sideline those of
Palestinians.
For example, the Globe is worried that the growing sense of hopelessness among
Palestinian youth will continue to threaten Israels future. The paper evidently does
not regard the hopelessness among Palestinian youth, or the causes of that, as
urgent problems in their own right. Rather, it regards them as troubling if they
adversely affect Israel.
Similarly, the Los Angeles Times 20 October editorial opens with the sentence, For
weeks, Israelis have been terrorized by frighteningly random assaults.
The United Nations monitoring group OCHA reports that in the 19 days leading up
to that editorial, 43 Palestinians were killed and 5,100 injured, compared to the
seven Israelis who were slain and the 70 who were injured. But the leading paper of
a major US city does not bother itself with whether those Palestinians felt
terrorized.
For the New York Times, Israel has every right to defend its citizens, and it should.
Yet nothing in its 15 October editorial suggests that Palestinians have any such
right.
What recourse Palestinians have in the face of myriad forms of daily violence is so
low a priority for the paper that it is not mentioned in that editorial. By this
omission, the paper is suggesting that what Palestinians should do is submit to
Israeli brutality of the sort displayed in the days leading up to the editorial.
Such brutality included Israeli forces killing nine Palestinian civilians in Gaza, one of
them a child; the Israeli air force launching missiles ostensibly at a military training
site south of Gaza City and killing a 26-year-old pregnant woman and her 3-year-old
daughter; eight attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians between 6 and 12
October and 29 during the previous week.
Assigning Blame
Meanwhile, the first four paragraphs of the Washington Posts editorial are devoted
to describing and assigning blame for the recent violence. Seven sentences therein
focus on how to stop violence enacted by Palestinians against Israelis.

The Abolitionist | Young Americans for Liberty

6
Of the three that criticize Israel, one does so on the grounds that the extrajudicial
killing of Palestinian minors is counterproductive and another on the grounds that
Israeli state violence is supposedly useful to Palestinian leaders.
The message the Post sends is that Palestinian violence is unjust and must
immediately be halted, whereas Israel should avoid killing Palestinian youth when it
might generate bad PR that could hinder its objectives.
Furthermore, none of the editorials provide their readers with context necessary to
make sense of what has recently happened between Israelis and Palestinians.
To understand the events of this fall, it is necessary to have a sense of their longterm, underlying causes. Endless expansion of Jewish-only settlements in the
occupied West Bank are one such factor that goes unmentioned in the editorials.
There are now at least 600,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank, including East
Jerusalem. The construction and expansion of Israeli settlements violate
international law: the Fourth Geneva Convention forbids an occupying power from
moving its civilian population into the territory that it occupies.
Also absent from these editorials is any mention of Israels demolition of Palestinian
homes. In 2014 alone, this practice displaced 1,177 Palestinians in the West Bank,
including East Jerusalem. More than 500 people have been displaced so far in 2015.
America Brings Calm?
Demolitions are an important part of the dynamics at play, yet the editorials fail to
inform their readers about them.
Israel has reacted to Palestinian protest by attempting to crush it and by resorting to
such tactics as arbitrarily arresting minors, detaining activists without charge or
trail and arresting the family members of activists.
The proliferation of illegal settlements, the demolition of homes and the violent
repression of dissent are features of daily life for the Palestinians at the center of the
current tension in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Overlooking this all amounts to a
lie of omission by these widely-read papers.
Another weakness common to these editorials is the remedies they suggest. The
papers call for further negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority as a
way to reach a solution.
This proposal is hopelessly flawed.
Mahmoud Abbas presidency of the PA lacks a democratic mandate and he cannot
legitimately claim to represent the Palestinian people. The Post knows this: it writes
that Abbas has become irrelevant and notes that he remains in office six years after
his elected term expired.
In the next paragraph, the paper suggests that the US and some other governments
should try to halt the current violence with calming interventions.

The Abolitionist | Young Americans for Liberty

7
Similar arguments are made by the Globe and the Los Angeles Times. This position
is absurd because, as Israels sponsor, the US is a party to the conflict rather than a
neutral arbiter.
The American ruling class and its arms industry have a vested interest in Israels
regime of occupation and apartheid and have supported this regime for decades.
There is no reason whatsoever to think that this policy has significantly changed.
This handling of the fall uprising is only the most recent example in the long and
sorry chronicle of US media coverage of Palestine and it demonstrates that American
media outlets are not simply reporting the news. Rather, they are active participants
in the countrys power elite.
By misleading their readers, these newspapers help maintain consent among the
American public for the US governments crucial support for the oppression of
Palestinians.

Dr. Greg Shupak is a writer and activist who teaches media studies at the University
of Guelph. He lives in Toronto.
[This article originally appeared on ElectronicIntifada.net November 16, 2015.]

The Abolitionist | Young Americans for Liberty