Self Defense

Jim Henley tears apart Randy Barnett’s bizarre op-ed about how some libertarians are gung ho for the Iraq War and have been from the get go. You see, it turns out that the principle of self defense is much more nuanced than I had been led to believe.

If I extrapolate from Barnett’s rather thin exposition of his reasoning, I conclude that I would be perfectly within my rights to kill my neighbors, the Phillipses. I have never met them, but I have intelligence (over the fence gossip) to the effect that they are whack jobs and that they possess firearms. Come to think of it, it seems strange to me that I haven’t met them. They live only three doors down, and we are often on the road walking our dogs. They are quiet people who keep to themselves, and we all know what that means. They’re serial killers waiting to make their moves, if they haven’t already been killing. The Appalachian Trail runs behind our properties, and who would even know if some hikers went missing while crossing Hosner Mountain? Old Man Phillips shot another of my neighbor’s dog some years ago for no apparent reason other than that he is a whack job, or so the story goes.

This is pretty scary stuff. Even if there is only a 1% chance that the Phillipses might come after us, I reckon I shouldn’t have to wait around for them to make their evil plans and get me in their sights before I act in my own self defense. Word on the street is that Mrs Phillips has been making yellow cake. Can I afford not to act to preempt whatever evil plans they might be concocting? That they recently put their house on the market seems to me to heighten the urgency of the matter.