Killer App

Ace of Spades has a quote from Ron Paul about how we should have been more nuanced about going after Bin Laden.

The one thing the Libertarians miss, over and over, is War is the killer app of the state.

Hate to break it to you, Ron, but we'd been working with the Pakistanis for years and they kept tipping him off and we kept missing him.  Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Did we violate Osama's civil rights?

No.

Let me say that again: NO!

Foreign nationals on foreign soil do not have any constitutionally protected rights.  Foreign nationals on US soil without a visa likewise have no protected rights.  US citizens regardless of where they are have protected rights.  Foreign nationals with a visa AND on US soil have them too.

This is only with regards to the United States government.

The entire nation state model was not planned, it happened through centuries of trial and error.  It also worked for centuries.  Shall we call the experiment in multi-nationalism done and reboot to the last known good "state"?

PS: Libertarians have a lot of trouble with the idea of a nation state too.  I remind you that libertarianism is too damn simple to have never been tried in the wild.  It does not seem to have left a history anywhere, therefore it must not work in the real world.  Part of me is sad about that, there's a lot of admirable bits to the philosophy, but I demand a social contract that will survive contact with reality.