Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
All four of the Positive Liberty crew - me, Tim Sandefur, Jon Rowe and Jason Kuznicki - are libertarian-minded. Some more than others, of course, and we do have our disagreements on things, but we all advocate basic libertarian ideas. At the same time, we are all often appalled by many of the other folks who call themselves libertarians, especially some of the assorted weirdos and flakes the Libertarian Party manages to run for office around the country. Exhibit A: Kevin Craig, a candidate for the House of Representatives from Missouri.
Kuznicki has been having a little back-and-forth with Craig (first post here, second one here). Craig claims to be that peculiar breed of thinker known (to themselves, at least) as Christian libertarians. Now, there are genuine Christian libertarians out there, meaning people who are both Christian and libertarian; my friend Jim Babka is a good example of one. But the ones like Craig who call themselves Christian libertarians seem to be occupying an entirely different reality than the ones the rest of us inhabit.
The first shot was fired by Craig in a blog posting where he uttered the following nonsense:
As Jefferson put it, "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; (and) that His justice cannot sleep forever." I believe homosexuality is a sin, and under the U.S. Constitution, the states are free to make it a crime. I agree with Jefferson, that capital punishment is not appropriate for the crime of homosexuality (Jefferson advocated castration). But a society that tolerates homosexuality is headed away from civilization into barbarism.
Standard religious right rhetoric, entirely unsupported by any evidence at all. Has American society become more "barbaric" as we have become more tolerant of homosexuals? Of course not. Have those nations around the world who are far more tolerant of homosexuality than America become barbaric? Of course not. Tolerance is, in fact, antithetical to barbarism. Kuznicki responds:
I must say that this vision of libertarianism is radically different from my own. It's worth remembering that the Libertarian Party was the first national political party that called for an end to state sodomy laws. This is because no government of any type belongs in the bedroom of consenting adults. The LP should be proud of having taken such a bold stance back in the 1970s, when sodomy laws were everywhere. And it should be ashamed of Kevin Craig today.
Quite so. In the second post, we find out that Craig actually thinks that child molestation should be legal and that the government should not punish it:
As a radical libertarian, I believe child molestation should be "legal." Whatever you do in your bedroom is no business of jackbooted thugs from Washington D.C. But I'm also a Christian, and as a Christian libertarian, I believe I have the right to evict a child molester if he's renting the bedroom from me. That could well be illegal under current "anti-discrimination" statutes, which prohibit landlords from "discrimination" against tenants based on "sexual preference."...In a Christian libertarian Theocracy, child molestation will be unacceptable. But violence will also be an unacceptable response to child molestation, which is why it will be "legal" -- that is, no government violence will be meted out against perpetrators. But segregation of child molesters and children will be acceptable, so there will be ways to accomplish this. Child molesters will be boycotted.
First of all, the phrase "Christian libertarian Theocracy" is an oxymoron; libertarianism and theocracy are absolute opposites and cannot possibly exist at the same time. Second of all, this is not merely "radical libertarianism" it is absolute madness. Under no reasonable standard of the legitimate role of government can one justify the notion that government should not have the authority to punish those who victimize children. Kuznicki responds:
I believe that every adult has rights to interact freely with other consenting adults. I believe that these interactions can be of virtually any nature, and that what they do is none of my business, provided only that there is informed consent, and that no one else is involved.I do not believe that a child can give meaningful consent to sex, and I believe that children are limited in their rights simply because they are limited in their ability to understand what they are doing.
I also believe that rapists forfeit their rights to a significant degree: It's okay to punish rapists. It's deserved and therefore it's right. Indeed, under an anarcho-capitalist system, I would probably choose to pay a protection agency to make all the neighborhood rapists suffer. And, although I know not all libertarians agree, I tend to believe that this would be -- by another name -- a government.
I suppose that that makes me a bad libertarian in Mr. Craig's eyes. I can live with that. Really, I can.
I can live with it too. Given the batshit crazy ideas that Craig advocates on his website, I can more than live with not being his kind of libertarian; indeed, the fact that this nut disagrees makes me feel more secure in those views. Take a look at his essay entitled Why Christians Ought to Hate Homosexuals, which begins:
Congress should* Hate homosexuality and homosexuals
* Follow God's Commandments with respect to them
That's right. Not only does he hate homosexuals, he believes Congress should too and that Congress should follow Biblical law with respect to them. Bizarrely, he says he does not support the death penalty for homosexuals, which is precisely what God commanded be done with them, but that's a theological matter that I don't much care about. But look at the rest of his loony essay, which he begins by comparing homosexuals to embezzlers and thieves:
Imagine that one of your employees embezzles $10,000 from your company. You don't find out about it until it's too late: it throws your small business into turmoil. Your creditors have been stiffed. Your competitors use this information to their advantage. Like the domino effect, like the snowball effect, you eventually have to close your business and declare bankruptcy. Your entire life is turned upside down.Your unethical employee feels no remorse. He says he needed the money. He says he was "worth more than you paid me." He is a Darwinist and says he can't be held responsible for the collapse of your business, which was worth nearly a million dollars, since he only took $10,000. "Survival of the fittest," he says. He doesn't even say "I'm sorry." He never offers to pay you back or make restitution in any form. The thought of trying to undo the damage he did never crosses his mind.
He is, as the Bible would describe him, "unrepentant."
What is your attitude toward this employee?
You hate him.
And so, he says, you should hate homosexuals. Never mind the analogy is mind-numbingly idiotic. He then goes on to quote the Bible to justify this lunacy:
You're a Christian, so you leave vengeance to God (Romans 12:19ff.). You do not steal from him, attempt to seduce his wife away from him, or poison his water. You believe the Bible:Romans 13:8 Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
9 The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet"; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, "Love your neighbor as yourself."
10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.
I'll take rank hypocrisy for $1000, Alex. He's quoting the commandment to love your neighbor as a justification for hating your neighbor (if your neighbor is gay, that is). And why hate them? Because they love someone you don't approve of, a love that does no wrong to any neighbor. The gay couple next door, in the act of loving one another, does no harm to Kevin Craig whatsoever. According to the passage he cites, he is supposed to love them. And he uses that to justify hating them. Oh, and wait till you see how he justifies his analogy:
Homosexuals attempt to embezzle sexual satisfaction from God's business.The entire creation is God's enterprise.
God is the Boss.
Homosexuals are disobedient employees.
God hates them.
I've said it before, I'll say it again: stupidity really should be painful.
Comments
Thanks, Ed. My giggling just woke the wife up.
I did ok the first time through, but lost it while trying to reread Mr. Craig's last five sentences for comprehension.
Posted by: Sean | June 12, 2007 9:28 AM
I think John Wayne said it best: "Life's hard, and it's even harder if you're stupid."
I'm hoping that the intelligent citizens of the state of Missouri will not give this guy more than a handful (from like-minded batshit crazies) of votes. As long as the light continues to shine on him, which will not require Woodward and Bernstein, this should happen.
Posted by: fan of the duke | June 12, 2007 10:00 AM
Kevin Craig said: "Homosexuals attempt to embezzle sexual satisfaction from God's business."
And as everyone knows, God don't like no homosexuals all up in his business.
Posted by: Dono | June 12, 2007 10:17 AM
Darwin is responsible for your embezzling employee?
I dink I hurb my bain tying to fadum dat un.
Posted by: dogmeatib | June 12, 2007 10:20 AM
At the very least you got to give the guy credit for not using "hate the sin, not the sinner" line.
disobedient employee of god? heh
Posted by: yoshi | June 12, 2007 10:21 AM
Whew! I'd heard that the LP was being taken over in the midwest by religious nuts, but this guy takes the cake.
That's the danger of any political party, or any group with power. Someone will try to use it against you. I thought Bush was fruity, but his religion is just daffy, not stupid. Look how much damage he's caused, though!
Posted by: Don | June 12, 2007 10:21 AM
WTF?
How can one brain simultaneously hold the belief that "... child molestation should be legal. Whatever you do in your bedroom is no business of jackbooted thugs from Washington D.C." AND think homosexuality should be a crime?
This guy's going to give Libertarians a bad name.
Posted by: The Mad Patriot | June 12, 2007 10:32 AM
Sadly, the LP itself is an illustration of an important libertarian idea, the tragedy of the commons. No one owns the LP, so anyone is free to come in and use it and abuse it.
Posted by: Perry Willis | June 12, 2007 10:38 AM
I would probably choose to pay a protection agency to make all the neighborhood rapists suffer.
What does Kuznicki mean here? If he just means put rapists in jail, I'm fine with that. It sounds more arbitrary though, more like vigilantism.
Posted by: Don | June 12, 2007 10:41 AM
I'm hoping that the intelligent citizens of the state of Missouri will not give this guy more than a handful (from like-minded batshit crazies) of votes.
Contrary to popular belief, the people of Missouri are highly enlightened. When John Ashcroft's opponent died a few weeks before election, we carefully weighed our options and decided we'd rather have the dead guy.
Posted by: CJ Croy | June 12, 2007 10:42 AM
I'm trying to take notes here, so help me out: What about same-sex child molesters? Are they in or out? And what if you don't enjoy the sex, are you still embezzling from God?
Posted by: kehrsam | June 12, 2007 10:52 AM
If I didn't know this was real, I would think it was a stand-up skit at some comedy show! I can't stop laughing! Every time I think of this craziness I start laughing again. How in the hell do these people actually survive to adulthood (a term I use to represent years of age, not maturity level). My God, what a sorry state this country is in if this guy gets any real political attention.
Posted by: Scott Reese | June 12, 2007 10:57 AM
Basically, for this guy it is fine to have non-consensual sex, as long as it is with kids. Not fine with adults, though, as he says
Isn't rape, by definition, non-consensual sex?? So, isn't he advocating for two opposite things at the same time?
What a nutjob!
Posted by: steppen wolf | June 12, 2007 11:16 AM
Steppen wolf, I think you've got your quotes mixed up.
You've got the line "As a radical libertarian, I believe child molestation should be "legal." from Craigs's remarks, and the rest of that paragraph,"I do not believe that a child can give meaningful consent to sex, and I believe that children are limited in their rights simply because they are limited in their ability to understand what they are doing.", from Jason's reply.
Not sure how you conflated sentences from two different, widely spaced paragraphs, but you did. Jason may or may not be a nut job, but he's not the particular type of nut job you propose.
Posted by: Lorri Talley | June 12, 2007 11:40 AM
Don wrote:
He is referring to what would happen under an Anarcho-Capitalist system. Anarcho-Capitalism is a very radical form of libertarianism (read: patently absurd) that proposes that even the police should be privatized, that citizens should hire private law enforcement organizations to protect their rights. Jason is saying that even under that system, he would pay for such an organization to punish child molesters. And he correctly notes the core disconnect of anarcho-capitalism: what that private law enforcement company did would be government action under another name.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | June 12, 2007 11:44 AM
Stupidity is painful - just not for the stupid.
Posted by: Russell Miller | June 12, 2007 11:47 AM
We seem to have a segment of the populatiion that is evolving in the wrong directiion. These nut jobs would like nothing better than to go back what was called the dark ages when the church ran everything and the world basically stood still. This is a very scary thought.
Posted by: Ex Patriot | June 12, 2007 12:27 PM
Given his pot-shots at "Darwinists", is this guy also a creationist?
Posted by: Skemono | June 12, 2007 12:29 PM
Ed, I see. Thanks for the clarafication.
Posted by: Don | June 12, 2007 12:33 PM
This guy used to post in the old AOL forums as Kevin4VFT, with a homepage that referred to a "Vine and Fig Tree Foundation," based on a George Washington quote referring to a Biblical verse that suggested true peace would be achieved when each man (and his subservient family) had a vine an fig tree of their own on their own land.
Absolutely, completely and totally, this guy's a creationist.
That was the sanest thing he said.
Craig appears to have graduated from a law program in California, and he may have passed the bar -- but he refused to take the California Bar oath, instead trying to substitute one of his own. The bar refused, and he pushed it at least as far as the California Supreme Court. He lost.
At the time, Kevin Craig was very fond of Rushdooney and the other Reconstructionists. He started out holding fast to all of David Barton's wildest and most inaccurate claims, even refusing for a while believe the bizarre errata sheet Barton put out disavowing the dozen or so quotes he finally admitted weren't exactly right (they were whole cloth fictions; getting Barton to admit they were even partly wrong only took a decade or so). Among those things Craig wrote fondly of were the claims that, in the new theocracy in America, "magistrates" (generally white, males) would be able to accuse, try, convict and execute people who strayed from "Christian law." Kevin was the guy who tried to convince me that it would be okay, that unruly children would be happy to be stoned to death since they would, by that point, accept Christian "dominion."
I noticed a year or so ago he'd moved to Missouri -- don't know why, I've kept him out of my mailbox for a couple of years now.
This man's been on a long and strange trip. That may qualify him to play blues in a seedy St. Louis bar, but it's no qualification for Congress.
People of Missouri, wake up! It is extremely unlikely this guy would have a constituent services crew that could spring a lost Social Security check from the government. God forbid, he might determine he's become a "magistrate," and who knows what he might try to do?
Posted by: Ed Darrell | June 12, 2007 12:47 PM
WTF? WTFingF? You owe real batshit crazy people an apology, Ed.
Posted by: Pieter B | June 12, 2007 2:02 PM
Well, I sort of like this guy! Nowhere in the quoted text did I see anything about bestiality. I mean, you know if that guy was a regular xian nutjob he'd have brought up the gay/animal thing within the first paragraph.
Posted by: EdgyB | June 12, 2007 5:17 PM
Fortunately the Missouri Libertarian Party has a fine tradition of denying nominations to batshit crazy candidates. I don't see how Craig reflects on the Libertarian Party any more than David Duke represents Republicans or Lyndon LaRouche defines Democrats. While I am not empowered to speak for my employer, I can tell you that as the guy who runs the LP's Candidate Tracker, Craig will get zero resources, support or publicity from me beyond this comment. It's pretty safe to say most every Libertarian and most every Christian would find his views at least as repugnant as y'all do.
Posted by: Sean Haugh | June 12, 2007 6:40 PM
Sean-
Well, you have to admit that the LP does seem to attract a lot of nuts like this. And I say that as a guy who votes libertarian and even voted for Badnarik last time even though I thought he was a complete whacko.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | June 12, 2007 6:47 PM
Nothing really productive to contribute other than that I once tangled with an anarcho-capitalist. Scary stuff, man.
Posted by: Bachalon | June 12, 2007 8:12 PM
Okay, so the first embezzler is bad because he stole $10,000 and thus put some guy's million dollar (100 times that value) out of business.
It all becomes clear! God's business is sexual satisfaction! He can only provide 100 times the value of a single homosexual encounter! It's not clear whether this limitation is per day or at one time, but it IS clear that the survival of the human species is at stake! With such limited amounts of sex available, God is quite right to restrict sexuality to reproducing couples. Each homosexual embezzler is sucking opportunities to reproduce out of humanity! Poor heterosexual couples, desperate to continue the human race, are incapable of doing so because homosexuals have sucked up the sexual energy from God's business.
Worse, with God's sexual pleasure provider services so taxed, they could go OUT OF BUSINESS like that guy in the first example. Homosexuals must be stopped before sex is destroyed forever!
I suppose we could just go with the competition...
Posted by: Michael Suttkus, II | June 12, 2007 8:49 PM
This guy is a libertarian in the same sense that war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.
Posted by: Sadie | June 12, 2007 11:05 PM
It seems like more of these types join the Constitution Party than the LP. We have one of those CP loons in the state legislature here (Montana).
Posted by: JeffB | June 12, 2007 11:36 PM
In a Christian libertarian Theocracy...
Apparently if you string enough contradictory terms together, right after the other, they're supposed to make sense.
This guy is a libertarian in the same sense that war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.
I love it!
Posted by: THobbes | June 13, 2007 12:59 AM
JeffB wrote:
The difference between the Libertarian party and the Constitution Party is that everyone in the Constitution party is more or less like this nut.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | June 13, 2007 4:25 AM
It appears that this Kevin has never read the New Testament, at least whilst paying attention to it. Christ outright refused every attempt at governmental reign offered Him, because although ordained by God, government is a prized tool of the evil one.. He also frequently hung out with those thought to be too sinful for a Rabbi's company, encouraging them and healing both thier bodies and souls. He also demonstrated His complete authority in, well, everything He did. Those that wanted to emulate Him did so not by demanding that the government make life easy to be a Christian, but forming themselves to be His representatives in whatever situation they were in. So clearly, Kevin is not trying to look like Jesus, Who defends His creation; leaving only the accuser, the evil one for a role model.
Posted by: Encarnacion | June 13, 2007 4:56 AM
Okay, obviously I'm going to have to hang out here more often. This is the most polite, well-written, and reasonable set of comments on an article I've ever seen. Particular thanks to kehrsam, Russell Miller, and Michael Suttkus, II, for the chuckles. I hope comments in the other posts are up to this standard. Oh, and the article itself is well worth reading, too - and I ALREADY know THAT isn't a fluke.
And yes, Kevin Craig is evidently batshit, and a danger to others. I would say "himself and others," but as a good Darwinist, I'd just as soon see him high and dry, well away from the gene pool. Accordingly, his own danger to himself is not something that disturbs me.
Posted by: BobApril | June 13, 2007 1:58 PM
Gee - if the totality of gay sex represents 1% of the total value of god's sexual business, then gay sex must be fan-fucking-tastic. If masturbation is part of that business (probably accounts for 75-80% of the total value) then gay sex is really valuable by crazy-Craig's analogy!
Posted by: cserpent | June 13, 2007 6:34 PM
I like Kevin Craig. He has the courage to say it like it is, even if you don't like it and NOBODY else does that. He make not be right on EVERYTHING, but he is RIGHT on MOST things. I think the effort of Brayton to slander this guy indicates something more is going on with Brayton than just explaining away his objections to Kevin Craig's position on issues.
Posted by: Michael Smith | December 25, 2010 12:03 AM
Michael Smith "He has the courage to say it like it is, even if you don't like it and NOBODY else does that."
Lies! There are a bunch of people like that. Virtually all of them are assholes.
"I think the effort of Brayton to slander this guy indicates something more is going on with Brayton than just explaining away his objections to Kevin Craig's position on issues."
{citation needed}
Note: this page has citations (although the first link is down); links to Craig's own words on his own sites.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | December 25, 2010 12:17 AM