Last January, I put up these statements from Martin Luther King, Jr. in his book, Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story published in 1957, but they are well worth repeating:

During the Christmas holidays of 1949 I decided to spend my spare time reading Karl Marx to try to understand the appeal of communism for many people. For the first time I carefully scrutinized Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto. I also read some interpretative works on the thinking of Marx and Lenin. In reading such Communist writings I drew certain conclusions that have remained with me as convictions to this day. First, I rejected their materialistic interpretation of history. Communism, avowedly secularistic and materialistic, has no place for God. This I could never accept, for as a Christian, I believe that there is a creative personal power in the universe who is the ground and essence of all reality-a power that cannot be explained in materialistic terms. History is ultimately guided by spirit, not matter. Second, I strongly disagreed with communism's ethical relativism. Since for the Communist there is no divine government, no absolute moral order, there are no fixed, immutable principles; consequently almost anything-force, violence murder, lying-is a justifiable means to the 'millennial' end. This type of relativism was abhorrent to me. Constructive ends can never give absolute moral justification to destructive means, because in the final analysis the end is preexistent in the means.

Third, I opposed communism's political totalitarianism. In communism, the individual ends up in subjection to the state. True, the Marxists would argue that the state is an 'interim' reality which is to be eliminated when the classless society emerges; but the state is the end while it lasts, and man is only a means to that end. And if man's so-called rights and liberties stand in the way of that end, they are simply swept aside. His liberties of expression, his freedom to vote, his freedom to listen to what news he likes or to choose his books are all restricted. Man becomes hardly more, in communism, than a depersonalized cog in the turning wheel of the state.

This deprecation of individual freedom was objectionable to me. I am convinced now, as I was then, that man is an end because he is a child of God. Man is not made for the state; the state is made for man. To deprive man of freedom is to relegate him to the status of a thing, rather than elevate him to the status of a person. Man must never be treated as means to the end of the state; but always as an end within himself."

"Moscow archives show that in the mid-1920s Russia's top animal breeding scientist, Ilya Ivanov, was ordered to turn his skills from horse and animal work [he specialized in interspecies hybridization] to the quest for a super-warrior."

"According to Moscow newspapers, Stalin told the scientist: "I want a new invincible human being, insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat.""

"In 1926 the Politburo in Moscow passed the request to the Academy of Science with the order to build a "living war machine". The order came at a time when the Soviet Union was embarked on a crusade to turn the world upside down, with social engineering seen as a partner to industrialisation: new cities, architecture, and a new egalitarian society were being created."

"The Soviet authorities were struggling to rebuild the Red Army after bruising wars."

"And there was intense pressure to find a new labour force, particularly one that would not complain, with Russia about to embark on its first Five-Year Plan for fast-track industrialisation."

"Mr Ivanov was highly regarded. He had established his reputation under the Tsar when in 1901 he established the world's first centre for the artificial insemination of racehorses."

"Mr Ivanov's ideas were music to the ears of Soviet planners and in 1926 he was dispatched to West Africa with $200,000 to conduct his first experiment in impregnating chimpanzees."

"Meanwhile, a centre for the experiments was set up in Georgia--Stalin's birthplace--for the apes to be raised."

"Mr Ivanov's experiments, unsurprisingly from what we now know, were a total failure. He returned to the Soviet Union, only to see experiments in Georgia to use monkey sperm in human volunteers similarly fail."

"A final attempt to persuade a Cuban heiress to lend some of her monkeys for further experiments reached American ears, with the New York Times reporting on the story, and she dropped the idea amid the uproar."

"Mr Ivanov was now in disgrace. His were not the only experiments going wrong: the plan to collectivise farms ended in the 1932 famine in which at least four million died."

"For his expensive failure, he was sentenced to five years' jail, which was later commuted to five years' exile in the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan in 1931. A year later he died, reportedly after falling sick while standing on a freezing railway platform."

Tim Sandefur, who supported starting the war (and who seems now to support a number of other things that I likewise do not), has replied in this post. Here are some of the highlights; Welch's questions are italicized, while Sandefur's replies are in Roman:

3) Can you imagine a situation in which the government would be justified in waterboarding an American citizen?

Yes. [Update:] I can imagine a lot. Obviously I am opposed to torture, or its simulacrum, in virtually any circumstance. But I cannot categorically rule out the possibility that waterboarding might be justified under some imaginable set of circumstances.

4) Are there American journalists who should be investigated for possible treason? Should Sedition laws be re-introduced?

This is two questions. Yes, there are probably journalists who ought to be investigated for treason. I don’t have anyone in mind, but I don’t categorically deny the possibility. And no, sedition laws should not be revived.

5) Should the CIA be able to legally assassinate people in countries with which the U.S. is not at war?

Yes.

My eyebrows were raised, to say the least. In the same post, he also offered a list of questions for anti-war libertarians. I'd already answered many of them in the interminable pro- versus anti- debates that happen regularly at Positive Liberty, but his questions provoked a spirited discussion all the same, with my reply, Sandefur's objection to it, in which he bristles at the idea that his replies were"unlibertarian," and a recap of the debate so far, in which I question the value of these sorts of questions in the first place: I find the reasons behind them to be much more important than any attempt to score points by answering"yes" or"no" at appropriate moments.

Finally, Sandefur's questions have also brought a set of answers from elsewhere in the blogosphere.