The Problems That Arise When Glenn Reynolds Is Considered A Libertarian

Shorter Jonah Goldberg: Libertarians are actually obliged to ignore the systematic effects of state interventions I favor (like the War (On Some Classes of People Who Use Some) Drugs), as well as policies that the National Review has traditionally supported (like apartheid at home and abroad.)

To add to Holbo’s defense of Wilkinson, allow me to return to one of my favorite quotes in the United States Reports, from Robert Jackson:

“I regard it as a salutary doctrine that cities, states and the Federal Government must exercise their powers so as not to discriminate between their inhabitants except upon some reasonable differentiation fairly related to the object of regulation. This equality is not merely abstract justice. The framers of the Constitution knew, and we should not forget today, that there is no more effective practical guaranty against arbitrary and unreasonable government than to require that the principles of law which officials would impose upon a minority must be imposed generally. Conversely, nothing opens the door to arbitrary action so effectively as to allow those officials to pick and choose only a few to whom they will apply legislation and thus to escape the political retribution that might be visited upon them if larger numbers were affected. Courts can take no better measure to assure that laws will be just than to require that laws be equal in operation.”

The idea that the WO(SCOPWUS)D’s increasing obliteration of the Fourth Amendment would be tolerated if upper-middle-class families were frequently having their doors beaten in, property seized, daughters strip-searched with the approval of future Supreme Court justices, etc. etc. is absurd. Wilkinson is just pointing out the obvious, and libertarians can see the consequences as much as anyone.