As usual, dave420 make claims without even an attempt at citations... Judging by the stalking following him with reminders of other past arguments dave420 lost in disgrace, that's just how the man is.

That the flag of USSR remains available in a variety of sizes and designs — including the face of Stalin — does not bother him one iota... Nor is the dreadful "Hammer & Sickle" printed on every bottle of a various brands of vodka a problem. Che Guevara T-shirts? He has them in a different colours (and sizes). No, it is the battle flag of a long-vanquished foe, that he must continue kicking even if takes making shit up to justify it. A real gentleman.

The end, as you noted elsewhere, is to compel Reason

Of course, this was the end. It is just, as I noted elsewhere, not a particularly worthy end...

what good is power unless you flaunt it every now and then?

Ok, at least, we agree, Statists are wrong...

The typical libertarian argument against government posits it as an all or nothing deal.

No, that's not true at all. The Libertarians do recognize the government as necessary — we just want its role to be as limited, as it was during the times of Jefferson and Franklin. It is to only play the roles given to it by the Constitution they wrote. And given explicitly — not the carte blanche, that Statists try to derive from the "General Welfare" and the "Commerce" bits. Namely:

1. Defend the country from enemies without
2. Maintain law and order within

Nothing else. No spending tax-monies on benevolence; no telling us, who we can hire; what we can smoke, what we must consider "marriage", how we can build our houses or what sort of appliances we can place into them, et cætera ad infinitum et nauseam.

the beast must be tractable to, at a minimum, the rule of law and the will of the people

First of all, take the "will of the people" part off — that's just a better-sounding spin on the "mob rule". If it is not prohibited by some law, it is legal even if most everybody else hates it (as was the case with Larry Flynt, for a well-publicized example). "Lynching" is an ultimate manifestation of the "will of the people" — stop bringing it up...

Second, the bigger the beast, the less tractable it is — and that's the point of the Libertarian teaching in general and the already cited Jefferson's quote in particular.

Or corporation for that matter.

Yes, "corporations" are the scary bogey-man of all Statists these days. But its nonsense — corporations compete with each other and are thus automatically less powerful than the government — which, by definition, is a monopoly. Sorry, I'm repeating myself (and others) here...

no one is forcing strip clubs to hire anyone, period

That's only because the entertainers are not, formally, employees, but are all "independent" and "renting" space in the joint. This legal dodge has been in place for ever and it is only a matter of time before some future Eric Holder or Elliot Spitzer puts an end to it.

a bigoted asshole like you.

Now that's fresh... We are done here.

I thoroughly loathe and despise your views.

Thank you, sergeant Painfully Obvious. I wonder, what happened to the "Please, don't hate" sentiment, though...

I have some wonderful arguments against them.

No, you don't. At most, you have something tortured, or else you would posted it here. Your best was to try the hair-splitting over striptease dancers — and even that failed. But now that you called me "asshole", it is too late to even try again.

Dragging in bigotry against gays, blacks, transgender persons

I, actually, did nothing of the kind, but with over half of Americans being less-than-proficient readers, I'm not surprised, you misunderstood me... Hop along.

The part of your argument that everyone else finds silly is that you think that the power to throw someone in jail or shoot them goes away if the government doesn't have it.

But it does have it — and ought to retain it. It just must be made to wield that power less — much less. That is the Libertarian argument.

We wrote the Constitution — and, in particular, the Bill of Rights — to limit the government's power, but (and this was predicted) the Statists have been eroding the limits since then. Even the right explicitly declared in the Second Amendment as such is now considered a mere privilege, for example.

violent government is the only solution to violent anarchy

Strawman.

The fundamental conceit of libertarianism is treating individual rights as being more powerful and having greater primacy than the rights dictated by collective force.

Yes. Because the Collectivism is the direct cause of Fascism and/or Communism. Once you subjugate the silly, selfish, cantankerous Individual to the Glorious Collective, any and all human rights abuses become immediately possible. From forcing you to pay for somebody else's education, to forcibly changing your opinion on what the word "marriage" means, to the outright killing fields. As long as it is done for The Greater Good (a.k.a. General Welfare, as the Statists like to intrerpret US Constitution), it all becomes justifiable.

In this world, there will always be some group of people with guns telling you what to do. Deal with it.

I am dealing with it — by arguing for the reduction of this group's size and power. Both have grown alarmingly since the inception of our Republic. But I see, that you have picked your side already.

Rule of Law vs. The End Justifies the Means

But there is no particularly deserving end in this case. Nothing to justify the means with... Torture, at least, was claimed to prevent some acts of terror and even capture bin Laden.

Welcome to Police State 2.0.

Contrary to the "not really" you began with, Statism is the problem:

"If your government is big enough to give you everything you want, it is big enough to take away everything you have."

— Thomas Jefferson

In other words, if you want Federal government to give you "free" public schools, you'll have to accept Department of Education Police — along with the (not-) SWAT teams.

There isn't a great deal of difference to me between a government or a multitude of corporations making themselves privy to an increasing share of our personal lives

Actually, the difference is vast: for a corporation to compel either you or another corporation to reveal any data, it has to win legal case — or, a least, convince a judge to issue a subpoena. The government has been gradually lowering this bar for itself over the years — recall the "National Security Letters" (and how easy they are for the government to obtain).

And that's when it bothers with the legal process at all — often it can simply just bust in and take your stuff (without warrant), seize any property on mere accusation of it being used in a crime, and confiscate bank accounts without even an accusation, only suspicion , or, as was the case with Reason.com, demand your "voluntary" cooperation or else...

But my point was not, that the government ought not to investigate legitimate threats against judges and public officials — even hard-core Libertarians would agree, that this is, actually, a proper role of the government. The point is, this particular investigation was patently illegitimate — the "threats" were bogus and hyperbolic and DoJ could not possible have hoped to ever win a conviction.

Their intention was to simply harass the dissenters by hitting them with subpoenas and giving them threatening "talking-tos". The prosecution, in other words, was malicious. That's the disgusting part.

The aspects of Libertarianism that relate to being largely left alone to pursue our lives appeal to me [...] The eagerness of Libertarians to remove regulations on corporate behavior

But there is no difference! What's good for the goose, is good for the chicken as well:

• If a corporation can not discriminate on race or age in hiring a secretary, then you can not discriminate on same in hiring a babysitter.
• If a corporation's employees can vote to obligate their employer to only hire from the same union they just joined, by what logic should your local supermarket be unable to vote itself into becoming the sole legal source of groceries for you?
• If a strip-club can not turn away a transgender entertainer, then you can not be averting your eyes from "her" either — and it would be manifestly bigoted of you to not stick your dollar-bills right next to "her" penis.

Even more obvious examples abound. For example, the EPA considers any billabong in the US to be under its control and protection — so both private citizens and corporations alike now need a Federal Government's approval to build anything on their property, if it happens to have a lake, a stream, or a swamp, however small...

A lot of people thought that enslaving even inferior people was wrong

From what I read, the abolitionism was a fringe movement... While, neither my "fringe" nor your "a lot" are quantifiable, it was perfectly normal, for example (according to the tale of "The Man Put Up At Gadsby's"), to bring household slaves to Washington D.C. — and even sell them there — all without any fear of them running away and finding an anti-slavery shelter.

The North wasn't actually attacking slavery where it was legal, but trying to limit its expansion.

Thank you for confirming, the North did not go to war to free the slaves.

Didn't want to put this partisanship into the submission, so here it goes. In my opinion, this is yet another battle in war of Statists against Libertarians — and all the rest of us.

Pick your side...

It would be outright un-scientific and render this a false study.

Which would not surprise me either, actually.

The Americas, yes, not the United States of America, which is what we're talking about.

Are we? I thought, we are talking about eating vs. not eating fats and sugars.

But, fine, let's talk about Mexico — the actual source of tomatoes (actually, that may have been in modern-day Ohio), chili peppers, and chocolate. Their obesity levels are even higher than the US'... You were saying?

Finland was firmly anti-communist

So was Estonia, and Latvia, and Lithuania — and Poland, even Ukraine. But that didn't help most of them retain their independence, when the Red Army blasted in.

Finland survived, while its nearly-identical twin Estonia did not — and the two became part of the "experiment" I mentioned.

Today there is no Estonian Torvalds, which is not surprising, but no Estonian Nokia either... I wanted to know Mr. Torvalds' — the most prominent Finn in today's world — opinion on that, but some asshole has already modded me down as "off-topic"...

The Blacks were considered inferior throughout the entire country. The North's attacks on slavery were motivated not by feelings of fairness, but to simply destroy the enemy's economic base.

So, the GP is right stating, that this was not "about slavery" in today's meaning of the concept — the war was not waged to restore fairness and bring about equal rights. You are right in that it was about slavery because it was that tactics of the Federal government, that pushed the rebels over the edge.

Secession was popular in flat states, where large plantations were viable. It was less popular in mountainous areas, where slaves were less common

Yes, were somebody to try to outlaw, say, airplane-building today (such as on account of their pollution), we might see Washington trying to secede. History will then claim, the bigots objected to clean air.

And while you are at it, move the Egyptian pyramids to a museum and away from prominence. For they too are monuments of a long dead slave-owning country.

But don't worry, if you don't, ISIS will blast them when they get to Egypt.