Krugman insists that, to co-exist, we must foreswear violence:

We need to have leaders of both parties — or Mr. Obama alone if necessary — declare that both violence and any language hinting at the acceptability of violence are out of bounds. We all want reconciliation, but the road to that goal begins with an agreement that our differences will be settled by the rule of law.

Krugman is audacious, here. For what he tells us is that we must abide by rules that preclude initiating force. That is, the way for “libertarians” (what he calls “right-wingers”) and “liberals” to live together is that we accept the rules that libertarians are insisting be applied up and down the line.

Think about this, a second. Libertarians oppose medical socialism or even more extensive regulation and taxation and subsidy on the grounds that it violates their rights, their liberties. “Liberal” “progressives,” on the other hand, want these new levels of government control. We disagree. So, how do we get along? Not by appealing to the “liberal” or “progressive” line on government, but to the libertarian one.

Stephan Kinsella will correct me if I’m wrong, but Krugman seems to have given us an estoppel reason for ignoring Krugman’s own and much-favored politics — and for re-affirming our own. When disagreement over how to dispose of resources happens, Krugman admits that libertarian principles work, “liberal”/“progressive” principles don’t.

This doesn’t look like Kinsellian estoppel or Hoppean argumentation ethics. The former relies upon someone’s actions precluding him from “coherently complaining” about the same actions being used against him in return, though libertarian estoppel proponents tend to apply this far too loosely and broadly. The latter relies upon, depending on whom you ask and when, the logical requirements of argumentation or actual norms currently held by the actor when said actor starts arguing for unlibertarian policies or actions. Moreover, arguing that respecting libertarian rights is necessary to resolve disputes peacefully or to even have genuine “political” discourse is not even remotely unique to argumentation ethics or estoppel. And, in my view, both of these approaches fail to justify the principles they purport to justify. Rather, what we have here is Krugman being inconsistent and failing to follow the logical implications of his claim to its conclusion. We’ve got him here not because of a performative contradiction or because of aggressive actions, but because he has called for non-violence explicitly when his preferred policies inherently involve violence.