Norman Singleton is Rep. Ron Paul’s Legislative Director. He has worked for Dr. Paul since 1997. Once a month, Norm and I meet at Bailey’s Pub & Grill in Arlington, Virginia to discuss two subjects—pro wrestling and libertarian politics.

The first is the primary reason for our meetings. Bailey’s offers monthly WWE pay-per-views which we enjoy thoroughly over cold beer and chicken wings. It is by far the most serious subject we discuss.

Our discussions of libertarianism, or the Ron Paul-inspired “liberty movement,” to which Norm and I both belong, are always interesting. Norm is a diehard libertarian. I am more traditionally conservative. How radical we are in our politics sometimes differs. How practical we are in advancing what some might consider “radical” politics does not.

Austrian economist Murray Rothbard was one of the most brilliant libertarian minds of all time. Rothbard was also considered one of the most radical libertarians of his time. Today, Rothbard’s pure, unadulterated anti-statist philosophy is celebrated by libertarians as heroic and unequaled.

But Rothbard was also very practical about politics. Based on a recent discussion we’d had about the inevitable tensions that come with moving the liberty movement into the mainstream, Norm brought to my attention some old Rothbard columns from his personal collection.

While some radical libertarians eschew politics altogether, believing it compromises their philosophical purity, or that education alone will eventually bring a majority of people to the philosophy of liberty, Rothbard disagreed. He wrote in 1981:

I see no other conceivable strategy for the achievement of liberty than political action. Religious or philosophical conversion of each man and woman is simply not going to work; that strategy ignores the problem of power, the fact that millions of people have a vested interest in statism and are not likely to give it up… Education in liberty is of course vital, but it is not enough; action must also be taken to roll back the State...

The above quote should be of no surprise to anyone remotely familiar with Rothbard. My favorite aspect of Rothbard is that for his entire life, it was never enough to simply be more radical than his fellow libertarian—Rothbard wanted to take political action.

Read the full article at The American Conservative.

While strolling through news sources today I couldn't help but notice the New York Times column calling for people in my age bracket to be conscripted. Author Thomas Riggs puts forth his case as to why we need to re-institute the draft and some methods for doing so. Like many who have called for a draft in recent years, he uses that same concept of "building citizenship" and "shared sacrifice" ideas advocated by those who see the military as a sacrosanct institution. Taking some pointers from some of the "anti-war" draft promoters he even mentions that this would be a good driving force against war (because that obviously worked really well last time [eye roll]).

Too libertarian for being shackled into either military or "civil service" jobs? Don't worry -- you can opt out. Riggs writes:

...libertarians who object to a draft could opt out. Those who declined to help Uncle Sam would in return pledge to ask nothing from him — no Medicare, no subsidized college loans and no mortgage guarantees. Those who want minimal government can have it.

That part actually sounds good -- but only if that means I get to keep my taxes that pay for these services as well. It only seems fair that if I ask nothing from Uncle Sam, then Uncle Same should ask nothing of me, but of course Riggs doesn't even hint at this compromise.

With all this talk the a new draft hitting the New York Times it raises a question that I've had ever since my Constitutional Law classes in college. What about the Thirteenth Amendment? Just so we're clear on what it says, the full text of the amendment is:

Amendment XIII

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

You see, it's that whole "involuntary servitude" language that tells me that the draft is, besides being immoral, simply unconstitutional. The draft is nothing more than forcing through legal statute individuals into service. As we all know, the draft is not optional once instituted -- just ask Muhammad Ali, who lost the heavyweight championship because he refused to be drafted.

"We do not consider whether the Act embodies sound policies.  That judgment is entrusted to the Nation’s elected leaders.  We ask only whether Congress has the power under the Constitution to enact the challenged provisions." This has been the primary function of the Supreme Court since Chief Justice John Marshall recognized the court’s check on legislative authority in Marbury v. Madison (1803). This much our current Chief Justice understands. But as so often happens, it is not the power of constitutional review itself but the philosophy of those who wield it that failed the United States last week.

But before lambasting Chief Justice Roberts any more than he has already been – him moreso than those he joined, as he was held to a higher standard to begin with – let us examine his ruling. Though there is certainly discussion to be had about other portions of the opinion – some of them valuable – the primary concern here is the Court’s decision to uphold the individual mandate, and so too Obamacare.

With regards to the government’s argument that the individual mandate could not be upheld under the Commerce Clause (Article I, §8, cl. 3), Roberts deserves credit for rejecting this argument.

Richard Pipes’ eighty-four page book Three "Whys" of the Russian Revolution -- based on a series of lectures delivered at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna in 1995 -- is a controversial work that reveals much about the early years of the Soviet Union, disproving a number of popular statist notions of Soviet history. 

The book seeks to answer three often-asked questions regarding the 1917 revolution in Russia: (1) Why did tsarism fall? (2) Why did the Bolsheviks triumph over other revolutionary parties? and (3) Why did Stalin succeeded Lenin?  Though the book takes on a tone quite biased against the Bolsheviks (and seemingly against Marxism in general), other histories told of the USSR, as well as previously classified documents, confirm Pipes’ suspicions and validate his theories on the Russian revolution, its causes, and its outcome.

Pipes’ bias against the Soviet Union and the Bolshevik Party (later the Communist Party of the USSR) stems from his Polish background, having lived in a post-First World War Poland in which the effects of Poland’s war against Red Russia (Russian Civil War) were still widely felt in his motherland.  Though biased against the Bolsheviks and the Soviet Union in general, Pipes’ theories, statements, and generalizations (summaries of points from his books The Russian Revolution and Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime) are substantiated by his research of formerly top-secret documents from Russia’s Presidential Archive and the Centre for the Preservation of the Study of Documents of Recent History.