To quote from some of those comments to Posner -- who is not a libertarian in my view-- he is an authoritarian whose highest principle is "will this get the secure state I want." He defends, for example, Bush's illegal NSA program and thinks we need to loosen up on civil liberties given the GWOT. (And note he is in a snit over Friedman's rejection of the draft -- Friedman persuaded Nixon to abolish it -- in an "era in which we are still in"; I'm sure Posner would bring back the draft in a heartbeat to fight the IslamoHitlerNaziFascists):

Let's be fair to Hayek (and simply honest) -- Britain abandoned many of the things Hayek most worried about, often _because_ of what Hayek wrote. And it is clear that the British left did listen to Hayek, and did adjust their thinking due to his arguments. (This is also true of America, as the historian Alan Brinkley has pointed out.)

Hayek says he wrote his book _The Road to Serfdom_ to change history and Hayek believes his book did change how history came out -- and a number of historians back Hayek up on this.

Hayek wasn't making a prophecy or a prediction -- he was intervening to change history. Hayek, I shouldn't have to tell you, was not a Marxist. Hayek didn't believe in historical inevitability and he believed arguments and ideas could change history.

I'm wondering if you've actually read Hayek -- your many comments over the years on the ideas of Hayek lead me to believe you haven't read his actual writings, only misleading or false accounts of Hayek's actual thoughts and arguments. Am I right?

And:

Although he was no fan of the welfare state, Hayek never argued that it leads to tyranny. In The Road to Serfdom, Hayek distinguished between government efforts to ensure "limited security" and government efforts to achieve "absolute security." Hayek warned only against efforts to achieve the latter, which he described as "the security of a given standard of life, or of the relative position which one person or group enjoys compared with others." Hayek was correct that such "security" is achievable only by tyranny.

But as for limited security, Hayek wrote that "There is no reason why in a society which has reached the general level of wealth which ours has attained the first kind of security [that is, limited security] should not be guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom…. Nor is there any reason why the state should not assist the individuals in providing for those common hazards of life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individuals can make adequate provision" [pages 133-134].

Relying on Posner to parse Hayek (or Friedman), is like letting James Dobson determine what is pornography.

I can't see how any self-proclaimed libertarian would abide government intrusion in [abortion].

It's very straightforward. Libertarians believe consenting adults should be able to do, alone or with each other, anything they want so long as no other rights-bearing person is thereby directly harmed. So, drugs should be legal. Prostitution as well. Ditto porn and gambling.

But in the case of abortion, it is far from inarguable that there is not a rights-bearing Other being directly harmed -- in this instance having his/her right to live taken. The state properly exists to protect the right to life, but not to stop you from paying Mary or Jim to blow you while you both snort a line.

You may not find that the fetus is such an Other, but not everyone agrees, including not all libertarians who would have all the other things I enumerated be legal. (There are also some pragmatic reasons making the criminalization of early abortion problematic, having to do with simple pills and injections then needing to be prohibited, and thus bringing with such a ban all the horrors of the war on drugs.)

Let's define a human being - is a brain dead person "a human being" under the law? No! Why? Because being human involves mental activity, and a certain kind of mental activity. And definition that does not include that is not "reasonable" but the exact opposite.

A brain dead person is, well, dead. A person in a deep coma who will come out if it in a few days is not, and shoving a pillow over her face is homicide.

A human embryo, if left alone, will awaken. (Yes, I know about spontaneous abortion; but killing toddlers was still a bad idea when 1 in 4 died before age 5.) Newborns are not self-aware, you know (at least that is the consensus of modern neurology, to my understanding.)

Explain to me why a single-cell with some genome that is fairly prototypical for human beings is a human, while a brain-dead person is not. Really, it seems monstrously insane to give rights to protoplasmic blobs

Rather, I will explain to you that when the Ob-Gyn put the ultrasound stethoscope over my uterus at 8 weeks, and I heard the heartbeat of my son, I had an inkling I was not carrying a mere protoplasmic blob. At 4.5 months we got a picture of him moving around and could see the naughty bit that made him a boy. And I was an avowed atheist at the time I realized these things (and still am).

Maybe human beings at those stages do not have rights the state ought to protect. Perhaps a woman's right to be rid of those beings takes priority. But it is not unreasonable to believe otherwise.