The institutions created then have been modified, augmented, and re-evaluated repeatedly over the years since then. The libertarians stand out in particular for their failure to do this. Instead, they simply wish the whole experience away.

You could not be more mistaken -- but then, most that you write about libertarians is utter horseshit. The cause of the Great Depression has been extensively addressed by libertarian economists; it is not an area in which I hold much expertise, but I can verify that they are deeply critical of the way the stock market was organized and how stocks were purchased, among other things.

What so many of you remind me of are the wingnuts online who just "know" that Kos is a raging far-leftist, a Marxist who probably longs for Stalin's resurrection. Greenwald, too -- utter Maoist, that Greenwald. How do they know this? Because everyone they read says so. You have that same inane dynamic going on where libertarians are concerned, as do many here.

I understand all the philosophical inflorations that cover up this fact. But as a practical matter, collectives exist

Oh for god's sake, yes they do and I never denied it. Group behavior is usefully analyzed. But for purposes of rights and prison and what armed agents of the state should be concerning themselves with, the INDIVIDUAL is the unit of analysis.

"Collectives" may be studied, but have no rights the individuals constituting them lack. Got it? A group name does not transform into a right a claimed right that individuals do not possess.

Take responsibility for your theology in practice. Friedman is as stained by Pinochet as Marx was by Lenin. "Out out damn spot!"

Oh please. Milton Friedman gave Pinochet a very brief bit of advice on economics, not an endorsement of his tyranny. Helping Stalin control polio epidemics would not have been a pro-Stalin crime.

I oppose the embargo we have on Cuba, as well as the travel restrictions, but NOT because I love or approve of Fidel Castro.

So collectives exist but have no legal rights? How do you have a legal entity without rights and duties? Really, what you're saying is that organism do not have any social properties that their constituent cells lack. That is nonsense.

Collectives do not go to prison or get shot in the back of the head. Individual people do. When these are done unfairly, the rights violated are those of the *individual* not the right of the collective, which is an abstraction.

All sorts of rights can be held collectively. Corporations collectively own property. Plaintiffs hold collective rights in class-action lawsuits. Fishery cooperatives hold collective harvest rights. Union members hold collective bargaining rights. Ranchers in open-range settings hold collective grazing rights. There are all sorts of meaningful rights that are not held on

Ephemeral, contractual rights. Those contrived for economic gain and benefit but which are not inalienable. But rights as against the state or depredation of criminals are individually held.

I doubt Jews would consider being Jewish an asbstraction, and many similar examples could be cited. They were killed for their collective identity, not their individual status, even though, yes, each faced death individually.

Being Jewish is an individual characteristic. Gassing Mother Wasserman with her baby killed two people, not a collective.

Please...being Jewish is as much a collective identity as it is an individual one. Being a Jew means identifying with a group of people. No Jew I've ever met claims that they and they alone constitute Judaism. That it may be an abstraction (although I would argue that it is just as concrete as individual identity) makes it no less operative.

When Hitler gassed or otherwise slaughtered the Gypsies, homos, Communists or dissident Xians, his violation of human rights was no worse than when he targeted the entire Jewish race. Each of those human beings, Jew, Pole, Xian or gay, had a right to live and to liberty that was violated at the level of individual.

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

Who has the duty to uphold these rights, and how shall that dut(ies) be enforced?

So, it's no worse to destroy a community than any other equal number of people?

No. Do you care if Hitler is viciously torturing and then killing you because you are Jewish, Stalin because he thinks you side with Trotsky, or Franco because he thinks you are not sufficiently Catholic?

Or do you just want it to stop?

Especially for those of us who participated at Glenn's old blog from the early days when he became tho blogosphere's point man on the NSA scandal, we should recall when it seemed almost no one else was paying attention, and those who insisted Bush was in wholesale violation of a criminal statute were wrong, "radical leftists," pro-terrorist, and anything but right. Imagine, had it been known then that there had been a huge uprising of threatened resignations in the DoJ over the criminality.

Glenn and the few others who saw and proclaimed the truth when doing so was made to seem to be a marginal position held by a fringe group of mindless Bush haters deserve enormous credit.

So, you actually think it was “illegal” for every wartime President to spy on the enemy within our own borders, huh

No, not until 1978, when it became law that they obtain a warrant as required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act passed that year -- including in time of war. That is, if by "enemy" you mean "U.S. persons" as defined by FISA.

Altho, even prior to that such activity may have been unconstitutional; that remains an unsettled question.