Have you ever had trouble explaining to someone why libertarians are neither a funny sub-species of conservatives nor an odd sort of neo-liberal? People are so stuck in the Left/Right paradigm you can hardly get through to them about a different direction, one that is not left or right but…. up. [Apologies to Flatland!]
I have tried pointing out issues on which any libertarian will disagree with a conservative; and then of like issues on the other side. I have tried showing my “World’s Smallest Political Quiz” card with the Nolan chart on it. That helps a little, but you still rarely see the light of real understanding.
A week ago, in conversation with a very liberal friend in New York, I found a parable that rewarded me with a look of sudden comprehension. I again tried it with someone on the airplane back to Belfast and was similarly rewarded. It was a parable-ized form of something which happened to me about twenty years ago in the Skibo Hall student union building at CMU:
If you put a Democrat, a Republican, and a Libertarian alone in a room together, the Republican and Democrat will eventually team up against the Libertarian. This is because both of them believe the power of government could be used for enormous good… if only they were the one controlling it.
The libertarian wants to destroy the machine.
I think this makes it clear why, in the end, both Democrats and Republicans are our ‘enemies’. They like the machine, they believe in the machine… and they both will defend it to the death. Make no mistake: if we become powerful enough to be a real political threat, they will both turn on us.
Corporatists and communitarians get called ‘neo-liberals’ as a term of abuse by left-wingers who actualy share their paternalistic impulse. But I’m not sure myself where neo-liberalism proper leaves off and libertarianism begins.
Dale,
Good parable.
I have tried showing my “World’s Smallest Political Quiz” card with the Nolan chart on it.
Try the “WHO SHOULD DECIDE?” versions on THIS page.
I don’t think posters on this site attack conservative social values enough. Though you are all keen to attack the left, which pleases me greatly, you end up siding with the right in an embarrassing way. Many people posting on Samizdata appear libertarian only when it comes to economics. Can you point me to a site where the real libertarians hang out?
By the way, what’s all the gun fetishism about? Guns are sexy, but don’t seem intrinsic to libertarianism any more than, say, skateboards, which equally well be construed as a symbol of freedom, and would have a similarly offputting effect on potential new libertarians, who would rightly associate guns (or skateboards for that matter) with a really rather unpleasant subculture that has nothing to do with libertarianism and a lot to do with being boring about a fetishised object.
A few inspiring words for a monday morning;
“You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream — the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order — or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, ‘The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.’ ”
— Ronald Reagan, October 27, 1964
These mini-quizzes are amusing and thought-provoking but not serious.
For instance concerning the sex between consulting adults question – it’s fine by me as long as it is qualified as being in private. Do I think it’s OK for humans to fcuk in a public park? Nope.
By their nature they leave out lots of difficult issues. An example might be my rights concerning my own life. Should I be allowed to have myself killed? A libertarian will instinctively think yes but I contend there are difficult ethical issues concerning this.
I agree the gun issue is a somewhat strange obsession mainly for Americans. I wonder if the originator of this thread believes that every person in Belfast/Northern Ireland should have a gun?
Sebbo
Problem lies with the ‘destroy the machine’ ending.This connotes in many minds, Anarchy.I too am confused where libertarians actually reside.I am told you can be an anarchist libertarian or a communist libertarian.Someone perhaps correctly has referred to libertarianism being the’ perversion of liberty’.
Whatever the case ‘libertarian’ seems to be a vague catchall phrase for almost any political persuasion.At least with the ‘crazed Ayn Rand’ there is less (if any) ambivalence.
sebbo,
More explanation, please. I think I may be on the other side of several questions from you here, but just saying “Nope.” or asserting there are “difficult ethical issues”, without outlining them, doesn’t help us much.
I’ve found this site helpful in the past. It’s proved a discussion starter with friends. Not all the questions are beyond criticism, I think, but that in itself made for a good discussion point.
Anarchism is just as unsustainable as socialism. What are going to do, ban ‘association’ to achieve utopia.
I can never understand many Libertarians’ belief in the Iraq project.
Wanting to free a country using the State is an anathema to the Libertarian. Especially when, as we are seeing perfectly well, the US is more interested in bases, Oil and Israel – than Freedom for Iraqi’s.
Surely the absolute opposite of the Libertarian is the Imperialist?
Why should we? I have nothing against many conservatiove social values (hard work, family, civility). It is conservative political values I have a problem with.
As you do not explain what you mean, I really cannot answer you… and what makes you think we care about embarrassing you?
Feel free to hang out elsewhere but you really have not read many articles here if you think we are only robust on economics.
Sorry but it is you who are embarrassing yourself now. If you cannot see why the right to own the means to defend your life is a great deal more emblematic of liberty that a skateboard, well, might I suggest you have a strange idea of what liberty is then. Sexy has nothing to do with anything. If you do not ‘get’ the ‘gun thing’ (i.e. the right to defend your life and property yourself) then I suggest you give up any notion of hanging out with ‘real libertarians’ as I doubt you will much like what they say and what their motivations are.
Tyger-You forget your Machiavelli, that sometimes lesser evils must be endured in order to prevent a greater one. If Libertarians(big L) had their way, they would have stayed out of WW2 and left Europe to the tender mercies of the statist murderers, both breeds of them. I’m sure you would have liked to stay out of it.
I’m sure present-day liberals would be screaming of American imperialism back in those days. And if I’m not mistaken, they did too.
And that would be the absolutely wrong stance to take. And it was. Principles are fine, but never forget that the principles/beliefs we live by are in service to certain values we hold dear… and if those principles betray our values, we should know when to abandon/adapt them.
While the Nolan chart is nice, there’s another one I find even more fun, with 3 axis instead of 2, adding in the political dimension in addition to economic and social freedom.
When you think about it, it’s perfectly possible to have complete social and economic freedom… but you can’t vote on anything at all-benevolent dictatorship/despotism. Or the ultimate nightmare of total political freedom coupled with zero social and economic freedom-tyranny by the majority.
TWG
Not so hard to understand really. The underpinning notion is that the lesser evil overthrows the greater evil and there is a net reduction in tyranny. Plus it did seem like the WMD issue was legitimate at the time.
So by that logic would fighting in the US or British armies in WWII against Nazi Germany have been the wrong thing to do? Magnitide matters. The notion that as all states and evil therefore all states are equal is rather like saying colds and the plague are the same because they are diseases. No, there are huge differences between North Korea or Baathist Iraq and the USA or Italy and in the here-and-now, we often have to choose to support one against the other. If you actually lived in a truly totalitarian state, the differences would not be hard to understand.
With apologies for being marginally off-topic, this has just swum into my ken.
One to watch I think.
On the substantive topic, I remember well a case in point: elections were being held for the President of the University Student Union. The usual slates of trots (on the one side) and unreconstructed William Hague clones (on the other) appeared, but both were thrown into turmoil by the appearance of a very well-liked independent candidate.
The trots and tories allied to try to prevent him from being elected as they all knew he would shake up their cosy political chat shop. As news of this filtered out, it rather quickly became counter-productive. The independent romped home by a WIDE margin…..
The Wobbly Guy,
Good intentions are not enough.
WW2 was in defence of a threat to our freedoms. You have a seriously bizarre logic top believe Saddam was a threat to our freedoms (the chimera that we all believed the 45-min claim is nonsense, many people objected to it at the time). If you want to get involved in other peoples quarrels you better get it right, and you better have a plan.
I utterly agree that Saddam was loathsome and deserved to be usurped, but just because something is morally right doesn’t mean it’s right in practice. ME experts were constantly arguing that the sectarian factions in Iraq would explode.
The kick-off post is right; this is not a right and left thing. I completely agree with the principles of removing Saddam, but I completely disagree that we should.
“Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.” ~ Thomas Jefferson.
I accept that most modern Party ‘conservatives’ are keen to use the power of the state. But these are merely people so inured to selling their principles for the pottage mess of power that they don’t deserve any name other than ‘opportunist’.
Surely a real conservative is easily reconciled to a libertarian, thus: both believe, at their, ahem, irreducible core, that notions of the perfectability of man (by outside intervention) is distasteful, undesirable, harmful, etc.
This is a point where temperament meets rational thought. And never confuse libertarianism with libertinism.
If you think explaining libertarianism to a left-right type is difficult, try explaining why objectivism is different from libertarianism – to a libertarian. And Saddam was certainly a threat to anyone who believes he might be vulnerable to terrorism, not just Israelis but anyone else who doesn’t want to live the rest of his life under shari’a law. For that’s where the rule of the Saddamite and Arafatuous “heroes of the Arab world” inevitably leads. You can’t have “peace, commerce and honest friendship” with tyrants who despise you and want only to kill you and your children so they can go to Paradise. Clear?
By the way, if your principles and your practice don’t agree, check your premises.
Perry,
Well my partner is Russian, who grew up in Soviet Estonia, so I have an idea; hence why I read and support your blog.
My argument was a little weak and you spotted the flaw. But I don’t accept I’m fundamentally wrong.
We were either deliberately misled (which according to Powell we were), or we were guilty of ‘group think’, there was little evidence he had any weapons. That’s the point. But this is immaterial.
In WW2 we had little choice against a real threat, and acquiescence had become almost impossible against such aggression – what we do after was of little consequence to the motives for getting involved. In Iraq we had to have a plan, as we took the initiative.
I’m not suggesting leaving Saddam in power; but we should have not rushed to war without a plan. I read that the state dept. had a 600-page post-invasion plan, which Rummy promptly binned. So maybe we did have the plan, and I’m wrong, but we just failed to follow it.
Tyger: Would you agree with removing Saddam if all it took was an assassin’s bullet rather than an all-out war?
Robert Spiers
Saddam was a secularist. He had a Christian in his cabinet.
He smoked, drank, and had concubines. He was no Sharia Muslim, do not let his pious performances in court convince you otherwise. He was an ally who gassed and murdered his people (and Iranians) before his expansionism actually threatened out interests.
I don’t buy any link between Saddam and Al Qaida. And we certainly didn’t have any links in 2003.
So how, by your logic, has our safety been increased by the invasion? How have the people of Iraq gained any freedom (other than the Kurding people, who had almost autonomy under a sanctioned Saddam anyway)?
It seems to me that we have replaced a totalitarian dictatorship with a totalitarian theocracy, and we have handed influence to Iran.
Like I said good intentions are not enough. Reality must temper ideology.
I agree the gun issue is a somewhat strange obsession mainly for Americans. I wonder if the originator of this thread believes that every person in Belfast/Northern Ireland should have a gun?
Sebbo
I certainly do. I would argue that “gun control” lead directly to the Troubles. The only reason the Catholics turned to the IRA for protection was that they had guns, and would defend them from Protestant mobs which the RUC refused to control.
Yobbo,
Yes. As long as the subsequent political rupture does not create chaos.
But how can you ever know this. Saddam would probably have been replaced by the nutter Uday. So we would have been worse off.
Better to use support for dissident networks and allow the people to choose their own path.
But like I said, whatever you do, you must get it right. I opposed the war on practical grounds, I couldn’t see us pulling it off.
I wonder if the Danish cartoon episode has perhaps enhanced the dim perception that there may in fact be a third way of looking at things. On Indymedia for example you can often see the battle between the anti-cartoon left and the free-speechers who are almost always sidelined by the left into the familiar ‘right-wing apologist’ label.
Saddam was a secularist.
That is true only up to a point. There is in fact quite a bit of evidence that he was happy to invoke religion when it suited, and some have claimed, like the U.S. journalist Stephen Hayes, that he was prepared to cut deals with terror groups from time to time. I would not push your point too far, though it obviously has some truth in it.
RE The Guns Issue.
Firearms ownership is for me at least an indicator of the other views that a person holds.
If someone is against personal ownership of firearms then they are by and large in favor of a lot of other government control over our lives.
Those who support personal ownership of firearms then to also tend to have a view that support less government control and much more trust in the individual.
The other reason gun control is such an indicator is that the supposed reasons given for increased gun control very, very rarely ever match the facts. Look at the growth in gun crime in the UK. Disarming those who had legal handguns does nothing to influence gun crime, which has continued to rise.
So a politicians stand on the issue is as testament to how much they let facts guide them.
I can’t think of another issue off the top of my head that exposes the mind of a politician so well. It is much less about the “gun” part than it is about the “control” part.
Tyger
You really do need to think a bit more.
1. There’s a large and growing body of evidence for Saddam Hussein’s WMD programmes. Because the BBC doesn’t bring it to you like a dog retrieving a ball doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Likewise with his links to terrorist groups, Zarqawi and ansar al-islam in particular.
2. On the war you state:
And
Including time laid up for a sandstorm, it was a three week destruction of a sizeable enemy. It was even achieved with the hindrance of the Turks going all French on us and backing out of letting us use NATO bases to attack from the north. It wasn’t textbook stuff, it rewrote them.
3. You state:
Because if hadn’t the Communist Party of Iraq would be in charge by now.
4. Your ‘partner’ (per-lease) isn’t Russian because you don’t have a ‘partner’. She’s either your bird, girlfriend, fiancee or wife. Please, drop this ‘partner’ bollocks.
What’s a WMD? Several grams of anthrax? Sarin? The definition of WMD was never very clear to me right from the start, but I didn’t care. The goalposts keep shifting, but the fact that they found intact laboratory facilities and precursor compounds capable of WMD manufacture was enough to clinch the argument for me.
Saddam was responsible for quite a bit of death in his time, and would have killed even more. He had to go, and if it took lying and trumped up charges to get the US in, fine, then that’s what it took.
True, there are more murdering assholes around the world… but one thing at a time.
“So how, by your logic, has our safety been increased by the invasion?”
Are you stuck on stupid? How many attacks in the US in recent months? It says something about being able to wage a more-or-less strategically/ideologically/politically offensive campaign than a defensive one on US soil that would probably wreck more valuable resources than in Iraq. There’re many very good reasons for fighting there, and keeping the fight centered there.
“How have the people of Iraq gained any freedom (other than the Kurding people, who had almost autonomy under a sanctioned Saddam anyway)?”
They have gained the freedom to fuck themselves by electing religious ideologues as their leaders, if they so choose. And then they would have nobody else to blame. But I don’t think they’ll go down that path. But it was important to note that they didn’t choose Saddam at all in the first place; he placed his big fat butt there.
“Better to use support for dissident networks and allow the people to choose their own path.”
Sure… AK-47s and IEDs against tanks and organized state armies without the strict engagement rules the US military is fighting under…
I find whatever you’re smoking to be extremely potent.
“I opposed the war on practical grounds, I couldn’t see us pulling it off.”
I quote Theodore Roosevelt, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
I’m not the man in the arena. The soldiers of the US are. For that, we can only wish them the best and offer them our moral support.
TWG
Dale may have a point; however I have never met a small goverment Democrat and I have met plenty of small goverment Republicans. I think its safe to say that Republicans and Democrats (ditto Tories vs Labour) argue over the size of the state and libertarians debate the value of the state at all (or at least large chunks of it no Republican/Tory would every think of getting rid of).
Tyger; well at least the Kurds think we “pulled it off” they now live in damn near relative peice (read Michael Totten for proof) and are probably perfectly happy to see Sunni and Shia killing each other instead of trying to kill them.
Dale’s post clearly fits the facts.
Dale’s posting clearly fits the facts.
Pete,
Really? You assume I get my news from the BBC, and you assume your ‘body of evidence’ is more accurate than mine. Value judgement not fact.
On the three-week war: Ah! The beauty of being pedantic. I suppose British and American forces are no longer in conflict then? If so we have no reason for full removal of troops then?
Really? How did you come to this conclusion? And it’s splitting hairs to see the difference between a totalitarian Theocracy and a communist state. Either way we have screwed it up.
How I address my ‘partner’ is no business of yours.
I think a more cogent argument would make me ‘think a bit more.’
Why is it that libertarians these days are so keen to not just repudiate the left-right spectrum (which is indeed useless) but also to separate themselves from the liberal and conservative movements?
I’ll grant that many people calling themselves “conservative” and “liberal” are anything but. This is no reason to disavow either intellectual tradition. Why, after all, should libertarians be shy of the word “liberal”? We should be fighting to take the word back!
And why should libertarians be shy of conservatism? There are many types of conservatism that fit libertarians quite well — in fact, they can be quite complementary — because libertarians are in fact quite conservative when it comes to everyone else’s business.
Like Michael Oakeshott said, we are conservatives in government because we are liberals in everything else.
Some libertarians choose to believe that the best way to limit the negative influence of government in our lives is to attack that power directly, to limit the powers of government in the absolute sense.
I am a libertarian-type myself, but I believe this is a pipe dream. No statist am I, but I recognize what happens when government is weak and blind: it fails to keep order, markets fail (because it’s easier to cheat someone or club them over the head for their possessions than to produce something they desire and trade), and in the fall of its legitimacy, it’s usually replaced by something far worse.
Examples: 1788 France, 1917 Russia, 1926 Italy, 1933 Germany, 1936 Spain, 1948 China… libertarians don’t tend to be fans of what came next in each of those situations.
So, what do I propose?
Playing accumulations of power against one another. Direct assaults against cabals of power are not only self-defeating for the cause of liberty, but also extremely difficult: these juggernauts are built to withstand such attacks. That’s how they became powerful in the first place. And I’m not just talking about governments here. Government is not the only undue accumulation of power we liberty-loving people need to worry about. The defense of freedom requires that all power be subject to accountability (and, I would further argue, you can only create accountability through transparency). Some of the most effective accountability machines in the world are things we libertarians all love: markets. So why lose faith in accountability when it comes to government?
As long as every powerful body is accountable to other powerful bodies, nobody can abuse the liberties of the others for long.
I won’t get into specifics just yet; I just wanted to show that libertarianism is not necessarily exclusive of the existence of state power, nor of liberal or conservative ideas. Libertarians would do much better for themselves if they weren’t so doggedly determined to build a smaller and smaller tent, kicking out anyone who had lingering appreciation for the good that can be accomplished by specific roles of government.
Dale, you show profound misunderstanding of current US politics. Your dichotomy is oversimplistic and an inaccurate description of American conservative thought. Although I do agree that there are many (too many) Republicans that believe in the power of the government, this is neither the consensus view of Republicans nor of conservatives.
There is a fight going on within the Republican party about the proper size of government. Indeed, there is a strong libertarian strain within the Republican party that is becoming stronger, at least among the grass roots, each passing year. Libertarians in the party (yes there are some) are allied with many conservatives who also believe in small government, maybe not as small as die-hard libertarians would prefer, but definately much smaller than the liberals would permit.
Granted that there are many issues (particularly social issues) on which consevatives and libertarians disagree, there are also many issues on which the two groups are in agreement. Most, if not all, conservatives support libertarian ideas such as the free market, private property rights, less regulations, and gun rights. On these issues conservatives and libertarians are natural allies.
In fact, there is no clear dividing line between who is a conservative and who is a libertarian. American conservative though has always been strongly influence by libertarian ideas.
The problem within the Republican party is not a conflict between conservative and libertarian ideas, it is one between the party leadership and the grass roots of the party. While most Republicans want to reduce the size of governement, the party leadership becomes intoxinated with power once they gain control of the machinery of government. The grass roots of the party is trying work on ways to address this problem with varying degrees of success. The power of the internet is forcing the party leadership to become more responsive to the party base and hopefully this trend will continue.
Neither the Republican party nor conservatives are ‘enemies’ of libertarians, but rather a potential ally on issues of common intererst. Closer contacts between conservatives and libertarians could even persuade conservatives to broaden their already strong small government approach into other areas on which the two sides still differ.
TWG
I can see each and every comment will lead to insults.
False dichotomy. Increased security and intelligence are more likely the reasons there have been no attacks on American soil. If anything Iraq has created more prospective terrorists. Afghanistan disrupted AQ operations, Iraq has not.
I’m British we had an attack in July.
Freedom to ‘fuck themselves up’. Great, no problem, can’t argue there. Was it worth it though? For us that is?
Andrew Ian Dodge
Clearly you think it was worth it. That’s fine, can’t argue with that. I don’t, never did.
I would have been delighted to have been proved wrong.
Tyger
You can address your missus how you like, just leave the English language alone.
Nope, we have ‘no reason for full removal of troops’.
State Dept/Communist Party of Iraq – that was humour.
I’ve been dying to put my two pennies into the WMD and 45 min claim debate. Blair & Dubya conspired to mislead their electorates into a war against Saddam, not so much on the basis of lying but on the basis of things like the completely irrelevant 45min claim. The truth of the matter is it wouldn’t of mattered if it had been 45 hours to launch a strike because we wouldn’tve been in a position to know the order had been given (Saddam had by then switched to giving sensitive commands to trusted couriers to deliver in person – undetectable to US sigint assets). And there is another issue, WMD would most likely have been deployed by Saddam from truck mounted missiles. As was seen during Desert Storm these proved a nightmare to locate in a country the size of Iraq.
Now friend Saddam had bugger all in the way of nuke technology, but very unpleasant chemical weapons are not high-tech. Nerve gas was developed by the Nazi’s during WWII. Any nation with a moderate chemical industry can produce these in quantity very easily. Biological weapons can be knocked-up in a lab the size of a large kitchen using relatively cheap equipment of the sort that any reasonably equipped medical research facility has anyway.
You see the problem. A tyrant like Saddam doesn’t need a massive military-industrial complex or a hidden base in an extinct volcano to pose a significant threat. All he requires is the desire to pose a threat. This is a relatively new situation. The Nazi’s dreamed of hitting New York with a devastating blow to persuade America to keep out of the war. They never got anywhere close depite their massive military machine. 19 Islamists managed to do it with box-cutters. I’m sure post 9/11 the US DoD must’ve been bouncing up and down at this new idea that dedicated people using pretty low-rent gear can do such a stupendous amount of damage.
Saddam had the potential with, essentially WWII hardware, to do something hideous. Blair and Bush built him up to be some kind of Bond villian because they didn’t want the public to realise quite how technically easy it is for someone as evil and bloodyminded to be that dangerous and also, quite how impotent our Cold War focussed military was to prevent it. It would have been an admission that NATO (paid for at huge expense) was completely unsuited to fighting the “War on Terror”.
Did Saddam pose a threat? Yes. Was it the threat we were told about? Not exactly. Was it right to take him down? Yes. Did we botch it? Yes. Could we have done it better? Yes, with more troops on the ground and more “shock and awe”. That would’ve cost more initially, but would’ve worked out much better value in blood, treasure and diplomatic status in the long-haul.
I am not saying we should not work with ‘fellow travellers’ in those cases in which they are going our way. Conservatives agree with us on a number of areas, but are profoundly different in others. To name a few: gay marriage and in fact any newly invented form of marriage is none of the State’s business; stem cell research is a private research and industrial matter and is none of the State’s business; use or abuse of assorted substances is a personal matter and none of the State’s business; taxation is theft, but perhaps we could live with the excise tax the Constitution allowed; we do not want to decrease the size of most government departments: we want to eliminate them.
The best use of say, the Departments of Energy, Education, Interior and others is the sale of their properties and other assets to be applied against the national debt.
We do not want to talk about small government. We want to cut the Feds off at the knees and wrap their balls around their neck.
Pete_London, lose the chip. This is Samizdata. Whatever agenda you’re pushing with your demands that Tyger conform to your terminology is in the wrong site.
The norm here is to respect people’s privacy and their right of free association. And they can call that relationship anything they want.
You’re trying to enforce an non-existant rule of your own authorship. Your discomfort zone is your own problem.
Nick,
I tentatively agree. And I accept much of your reasoning.
But how could we have gotten it right? We have seen democracy in Islamic nations leads to Islamofacist parties winning power.
A pre-2003 knowledge of Egyptian politics and the Muslim Brotherhood would lead you to this conclusion.
As I said I completely agree with much of your reasoning re. Saddam as a threat.
Also, if Republicans had a true affinity to libertarians, the McCain-Feingold act would have gotten no votes from that side of the bench. That law is anathema to libertarians and could well see many of us go to prison for intentional civil disobedience.
Which brings up John McCain… should he run for President, I think I will endorse the Democratic candidate even if his name is Lucifer S Beelzebub. That man is *EVIL*.
Pardon me for cutting against your grain, Mr. Amon, but your agenda is patently unpragmatic. I’m no fan of many departments of the federal government, but nobody’s going to get into power saying they “want to cut the Feds off at the knees and wrap their balls around their neck.” That’s a very colorful phrase, but it’s also a plan for starry-eyed revolutionaries who haven’t thought as far as Step Two. If you think that the federal government is the root of all evil, try living without law and order. See whether markets endure when people can more easily kill you and steal all your property than trade you something for it. See whether your rights matter for a damn when you’re outgunned by people who share no contract of rights with you, who are not accountable to others under the Constitution. And see whether the Constitution continues to hold sway when the military is no longer able to defend those who believe in the US Constitution against the thugs and dictators who would certainly take advantage. Global free trade? Buh-bye.
The ratifiers of the Constitution had experience with a federal government devoid of power. It wasn’t pleasant. That’s why they met and decided to scrap the Articles of Confederation. And what they came up with was a system where the government had the enumerated powers required to preserve civil society, but aso the protections afforded by the Bill of Rights to maximize our negative rights — a bulwark against encroachments on our liberties. The system was designed to split the pillars of government power against one another, so that they might hold each other accountable. States mutually accountable to the feds, the branches of government mutually accountable to each other, the government accountable in republican manner to the people, citizens accountable to each other — when necessary, through government enforcement.
“We” don’t want any such thing as to dissolve government entirely. That’s the ranting of anarchists, not pragmatic lovers of liberty.
I’d rather make government accountable again, to get them to take the Ninth and Tenth Amendments at their word — the way Madison and others intended. That’s really all that’s necessary to defend our liberties against the undue encroachment of government power.
Pragmatism is a matter of short term tactics in an over all strategy of cutting federal power back to at least a pre-Civil War level. For a start. Sure, we will be happy to work with anyone assisting us in the downward trajectory of State power. And we will abandon them as soon as they stop going our direction.
As I pointed out, libertarians and conservatives are different. I think you have exemplified some of the differences quite nicely.
Dale, A country without the machine of government falls prey to a feudal system of groups where stronger groups can always force their aims on the weaker groups. A machine of government that, thru the threat of force, evens out the playing field and acts as a balance of fairness is what republicans and democrats both (in essence) seek thru different means. Their aims go awry when they include utopian ideals in their planning.
When a libertarian says that this balance system must be completely removed to “enable freedom” they are just selling another form of Utopianism and completely overlooking what will happen to the freedoms of weaker groups; because any freedoms weaker groups have will cease under the pressure of violence from stronger groups.
Libertarians should be seeking to establish a system of greatest liberties for all, rather than going down the dangerous ideologies of utopianism… and this effectively means incorporating some form of strong government.
tyger,
I’m not saying we could’ve got it “right”, we could’ve done better though. We made (I think) a mistake in absolutely sticking to the idea tha a post-Saddam Iraq had to remain a single country. Secondly, we’ve stuck to this plan and allowed the Iraqi’s to stick Islam into the constitution. That is never going to work because it obviously begs the question “Sunni or Shia?” This is a recipe for disaster. We have been (especially the Brits in the South) far too lenient with the likes of al Sadr and that really isn’t helping. We also should’ve been much tighter about allowing neighbouring states, especially our old pals in Iran from meddling in Iraq. The fact that we neglected these things is the main reason we’re in the mess we are.
Dale, I don’t disagree that there are differences between conservatives and libertarians, but to cast them as ‘enemies’ goes much too far. How can you effectively work with people with whom you share common interests if you hold them in such disdain?
I believe that there is much more in common than in difference between conservatives and libertarians. Most conservatives would agree with you in eliminating many of the current departments and selling off most federal public lands not used by the military and a few national parks.
Your last line is dramatic rhetoric, but what does it mean? Do you want to eliminate the Federal government? Why refer to the Feds and not all government? Do you want to eliminate state governments as well? If not, then you are indeed talking about small government and your debate with conservatives is on how small it should be.
That is not to deny there are strong differences. Conservatives, by their nature, are reluctant to make radical changes to social norms that have worked for centuries. But it not true that they want everything to remain static, just that any changes be slow and deliberately thought out. They fear the unintended consequences of revolutionary changes.
Also, not all of the issues you list as differences are as simple as you imply. Take the gay marriage issue for example. Yes many, if not most, conservatives are against changing an institution that has existed as only a union between a man and woman for at least two millenium. But there was just as much anger at the way is was being done, by activist judges clearly going beyond their mandates and shoving it down the throats of everyone else.
Conservatives have long had a problem with judges usurping the legislative process. According to these judges, a free people apparently have no right to debate and decide among themselves how to change their institutions. Instead of allowing this debate to proceed in the normal political process, they intervened and invented new constitutional rights that had not been there for two hundred years to impose their own prefered outcome.
If you give judges the right to unilaterally legislate in the direction you prefer, you are also giving them the right to move in the opposite direction. Changes may be necessary, but how you change is just as important as what you change. You cannot impose liberty through tyranny.
Midwesterner
Taking your name as a clue to where you are, I have no idea if you’ve heard the term ‘partner’ used in lieu of perfectly sensible words such as ‘girlfriend’, ‘fiancee’ and ‘wife’. If not, you won’t be aware that ‘partner’ doesn’t mean ‘partner’. It’s a liberal affectation which means “I’m so damn liberal I believe that ‘girlfriend’, ‘fiancee’ and ‘wife’ are terms which reinforce gender stereotyping and, hence, female submission.” The use of ‘partner’ is yet another corruption of the English language by the Left (‘peace’ movement’, ‘social justice’ and ‘fair trade’ anyone?) and I’ll mock it whenever I hear it.
I look forward to seeing you jump to it in defence of Christians’ right to privacy and free association the next time they’re the subject of discussion in here.
By framing the issue as even a matter for debate and judges, you take the position that marriage is a State issue. I disagree. If I get a group of people together and we invent a new form of marriage (say the Line Marriage of Robert Hienlien) and set up our own procedures… then the only outside entity required is a civil court to adjudicate breach of contract. Contract law exists. You need nothing else but that and a private institution (say a Church) to define a form of marriage.
It is not a State issue. It is not an issue for debate. It is something that free individuals freely associate and freely define amongst themselve without asking permission or paying notice to any outside group… or contrariwise, to by any means attempt to enforce their way on anyone else.
The only place for government in marriage would be if one group tries to use violence to enforce its model on someone else. Then you put them in jail just like any other violent criminal.
You talk of the power of the State and our desire to cut it off at the knees. Read up on pre-Civil War america. Before Lincoln and his Hamiltonian ideals effed it up, this was a pretty free country. Things worked quite well and I see no reason why they would not work just as well. Government is simply not needed for anything except policing against the use of force and coercion and the enforcement of freely made contracts if private arbitration fails. It is also needed for border defense. Beyond that, I see no point in it’s existence at any level. And even on those levels the majority of it can occur at the State or Local level.
We need a government in which has so little power that you can drop in for tea and the President will be so bored he’ll make it for you and be glad to have someone to discuss the weather with.
How many Libertarians does it take to change a lightbulb?
One. But you’ve got to get him to show up…
Joe – A country without the machine of government falls prey to a feudal system of groups where stronger groups can always force their aims on the weaker groups. A machine of government that, thru the threat of force, evens out the playing field and acts as a balance of fairness is what republicans and democrats both (in essence) seek thru different means. Their aims go awry when they include utopian ideals in their planning.
The essence of the corporatist state that envelops both Britain and, to a lesser extent, the US, is that different groups impose their will on others via a mechanism that is essentially feudal i.e.: your status as member of an identified client group determines your due in life, as planned for by the government. Utopianism is certainly key to this, but you’re fooling yourself if you think the current corporatist arrangement sare anything other than mediaeval in their fundaments.
No, no, you have got it all wrong. The correct answer is “none”. The market takes care of it for us!
How about asymmetrical information? Government prevents all kinds of things going wrong in the market — “snake oil,” the principal agent problem, adverse selection, moral hazard… private forces are not always enough to ensure proper transparency.
How about the times when the real world doesn’t match up perfectly to classical models of economics? Are you going to argue that market failures don’t ever happen?
I can lead you much further down this path.
Is there nothing to be gained from having a sort of “trampoline” in place (as opposed to a safety net) when rational expectations are trashed by some unpredictable catastrophe? I mean, systematic risk can be a real b**ch sometimes.
How about defending global free trade? Is that an appropriate task for our government, and a fitting one for a capitalist society like our own? Or will that also resolve itself once the feds have been cut down at the knees?
Some things work much much better today than they did before the Civil War. And while I may be in favor of a much greater degree of freedom, I’m also realistic about how we got to where we are. We don’t have to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Why is it that when people talk of ‘market failures’ they use this as an excuse to bring in government intervention (which apparently isn’t throwing out the baby with the bathwater), but when government regulation goes wrong no one says “let’s try the market instead” (which of course would be throwing out the baby with the bathwater???
Edward ,…but you’re fooling yourself if you think the current corporatist arrangement sare anything other than mediaeval in their fundaments.
All depends on the individual and whether or not they are incorporated in the checks and balances of the law and government.
The greater the responsibility taken on by the individual – as an individual – the less group input is able to warp the process of government.
Dale, I am not the one who framed the issue as one of debate and judges, the courts did that. The gay marriage issue is not one of gays creating civil contracts that they want enforced by civil court or of the right of gays to freely associating among themseleves, it one of gays demanding the official sanction of the State for their marriages. Gays are not looking to establish the right for civil contracts enforced by the courts. It would be much simplier if it were an issue of contract law, but this isn’t where the debate is.
The question of whether marriage should or should not be a State issue is an interesting philosophical one on which you raise a good argument. Nonetheless, at present it IS a State issue regardless of your desire that it would be otherwise. To move from the present state of affairs to your preferred state must involve not only the end state but also how we get there.
As for your desire to return to a pre-Civil War level of government, you probably would be surprized by the number of conservatives that agree with you on this. You appear to be trying create a larger wedge between conservatives and libertarians than actually exists. I am not saying to ignore the differences, but at the same time don’t ignore the similarities.
Joe – “All depends on the individual and whether or not they are incorporated in the checks and balances of the law and government.”
I’m afraid I have no idea what this means.
“The greater the responsibility taken on by the individual – as an individual – the less group input is able to warp the process of government.”
One of the points about the corporatist state, or statism generally, is that it criminalises individual responsibility – witness gun control in the UK, or compulsory baby seats, or anything else you care to name, because just about everything is legislated for. Liberties may indeed by taken, not given; but they can certainly be taken away by express legislation.
All seems a bit distant now but..point well made John_K. Sebbo, I live in NI and would dearly love to be legally able to own the means to defend me and my family. Only the terrorists and the representatives of the state are armed here. A disarmed populace means only the “bad guys” have guns. Not a situation that feels particularly comfortable to me.
Btw, I did the Nolan test and it turns out I’m a libertarian, fancy that!
All seems a bit distant now but..point well made John_K. Sebbo, I live in NI and would dearly love to be legally able to own the means to defend me and my family. Only the terrorists and the representatives of the state are armed here. A disarmed populace means only the “bad guys” have guns. Not a situation that feels particularly comfortable to me.
Btw, I did the Nolan test and it turns out I’m a libertarian, fancy that!
Hmmph, didn’t mean to do that twice. Apologies.
Oh well, there goes my only claim to fame of being the only libertarian in Northern Ireland. Darn.
The reasons the gay marriage issue became an issue are due to State interference. The State overrides contracts that have to do with inheritance of the spouse as the State defines what a Spouse is. It should not.
The State also provides lots of stolen money… er I mean benefits to State certified families and spouses.
If it were not for these coercive State measures, no one would give a rat’s arse about going to legislatures or courts to change definitions. They’d just make up their own, sign a contract and be done with it.
Edward Lud,
Actually, I do very often suggest allowing market forces to do their work when government intervention fails (as it often does). When markets fail to provide what people want, because transactions costs make market activity prohibitively expensive, it can make a lot of sense to contract out a service to the government. Preferably, I’d make it a temporary contract, so that when future innovations could allow the market to do an even better job, we could all take advantage.
Pete,
I refer to my ‘partner’ as ‘partner’ because we’re not married, yet have a son. She finds the term girlfriend too casual, and doesn’t like it.
We’re Orthodox Christians so our situation is not ideal, but circumstances are circumstances.
Now you know my personal situation, kindly ‘do one’.
OrneryWP, whence the concern about “when markets fail to provide what people want etc.”?
If the market ‘fails’ to provide something that someone else wants, why should you or I give a toss? What business is it of ours? And by what right do we presume to rope other people into paying for our perception of a third party’s due?
And as for the notion of the government having a temporary contract to ‘correct’ ‘market failures’, this is pure fantasy: when did you last hear of a government relinquishing control over that which it had appropriated to itself? Even privatisations come with their government-mandated regulators.
For me it is not just about how little government there is, but how to get there without total chaos, for anarchy and revolution destroys more than it creates and will require a new generation untained by its poison to rebuild.
In Britain we have a useful ‘water mark’ of where a sensible State extent might be determined – the Royal/”HM” entities – Armed Forces, Police, Prisons, Customs…School Inspectors….
Well, to answer your last question: in this country, the government is invested with the power to do what is necessary and proper to carry out their enumerated powers. So long as that is constraned by the Bill of Rights, I don’t have a problem with that.
And I’m talking about something that everyone basically wants, but which is very difficult to impossible in the acquisition. For example, cleaning up glass and other assorted materials from the street and bike lane. Coordinating this through private parties would be an absolute nightmare. Who’s responsible for what? Should I charge a toll for the 20 feet of paved street in front of my home? And then my neighbors each charge a toll of their own for the maintenance of their section of the street? The transaction costs would quickly spiral out of control. So we make it easy: we grant a monopoly over specific services to some firm. The service gets done at extremely low costs compared to what we’d otherwise be paying, and we don’t have to threaten our neighbor with eminent domain if he decides to place a toll for his 20 feet of maintenance right in the middle of the block.
That’s why we “give a toss.”
Government can’t appropriate something to itself which is only loaned out, and all of its power is loaned to it by the people respectively. If the people voting for such a contract make it temporary and hold government accountable (we can argue about how best to do that), they’ll achieve a better result in my opinion than if they let government go out of their enumerated-power bounds.
With respect, Ornery, I don’t think that does answer my question. I appreciate that in the States the government is (marvellously, in my view) constitutionally-constrained in what it can appropriate to itself as a proper function, by contrast with this country where the government can go whatever it bloody well likes. But simply to say “I don’t have a problem with that” merely reiterates what was already clear: that you don’t have a problem with the government intervening in ‘market failures’.
My question, however, was different. I won’t repeat it, but I’m sure you can scroll up the page.
So far as litter collection goes, one of things that strikes benighted Britons on visiting the US is just how clean most of it is. The roadsides, the streets, everywhere is gleaming. I am told by my father in law, who resides in Potomac, that snow-clearance and roadside litter duties are indeed the responsibility of the home-owner. Cause and effect? I can only say for sure that Blighty’s collectivist approach (communal land, no one’s responsibility) means that many people, even in quite salubrious areas, live in roads resembling dumps.
As for the notion that the government cannot appropriate something which is only loaned out, I refer the honourable gent. to the recent Kelo judgment of his own fair Supreme Court.
Oh, and one last thing: since when did the costs of monopolies not “spiral out of control”?
Dale, I did not intend this to exchange to devolve into a debate over gay marriage. I only wished to refute your point that conservatives and libertarians are ‘enemies’. I also wanted point out that how we get to a desirable end state is just as important as is what is that end state. Too often I hear libertarians explain, often very convincingly, on how society should be organized, but with no discussion of how we get there. There are dangers if we take the wrong road to utopia, as Hayek pointed out.
You’ve heard libertarians explain how society should be organised?
Were they North Korean libertarians?
Perhaps I should have said self-organized.
Perry,
OK. What I had in mind was the idea of libertarians being economically right-wing and socially left-wing – I mean in terms of how the law relates to things like sex and drugs and abortion and marriage. (Right-wing and left-wing are misinterpretable terms, it’s true, but they’ll do.)
Social values determine some political values, don’t they? Ugh, “values” isn’t a very good word. Opinions, then. Moral attitudes.
The comments section a while ago that had lots of argument about religion springs to mind, and also somebody who defended traditions on principle, regardless of content. (Not to mention those who say they aren’t really libertarian. I suppose they’re allowed to post here, but it’s another reason that I’d like a pointer to a more thoroughly libertarian site.)
I want to point other people to libertarianism, that’s why. And libertarianism has a nasty caricature, which is something like a very conservative Texan in mirrored shades defending his property with guns, or an isolationist in a bunker. Charming though many Texans are, and much though I support in principle the right to own guns, I’d like to find a site which presents a pretty and enticing face to those of my friends who might be willing to learn about libertarianism, rather than having to make excuses for this misleading weirdness, which you all seem willing to court as an image.
In theory libertarianism ought to be attractive to individualists, of all kinds. Of which there are many, of course. But it seems to be a sub-culture, instead, one which is offputting to those inclined to be fluffy. That’s not good.
Heh. No, really, I wondered where else you’d recommend. For the above-mentioned purpose of enticing latent libertarians to accept it as a label.
It’s just that the gun thing makes it sound as if we regularly find ourselves in situations where we might want to shoot somebody. I don’t find that myself, and I suspect there’s nothing about libertarianism that makes this kind of situation more likely to crop up – except perhaps for those who have actually attempted to found their own isolated libertarian utopias, which is interesting but silly.
In reality, we don’t shoot people much, and I don’t like the libertarian image being tainted with the impression that we do. Besides, skateboards – were they not an icon that’s already emblematic of spotty left-leaning anarchists – are often legislated against in petty ways, and could be used to make a rapid escape from those who might want to restrict our liberty, and though this might not be as fundamental as defending one’s life, it’s surely a more typical thing for a libertarian to want to do? Though, again, I don’t spend a great deal of time running away from oppressors, either. Which of these, guns or skateboards, should be the object that’s emblematic of libertarianism? I suggest neither, they’re both misleading and rubbish. Let’s not have an emblematic object at all, how about that?
Recently there was a post which ripped into some actor – the new Bond, I think – for expressing a dislike of guns. Actually I read the whole of his interview, and he isn’t clear about whether he dislikes them or not; he’s just wooly and vacuous, which is the perogative of a celebrity. That seemed a really irrelevant post, unless this is also a gun blog, and even then it seemed extremely snobbish to sneer at him for expressing his vague opinion just because it was vaguely anti-gun. He didn’t say anything about legislating against them.
Well, my politics have been libertarian for fifteen years or so now. When I was a teenager I used to be quite evangelical and arsey about it, but it’s occurred to me since then that people don’t actually like being told stridently that they’re wrong and are frequently repelled by it, feeble irrational creatures that we are.
So I’ve largely shut up about it now and mention libertarianism only grudgingly when asked what my politics are. Libertarianism seems to have a really bad image, as I mentioned above; and proselatising cliquey arsiness features in this image, too. I wish there was a smiling, polite, self-consistent web page, preferably a forum, which I could point people to when they want to find out about libertarians.
Hmm, perhaps I ask too much, perhaps there’s no such thing as a forum without bickering, snobbery, and confusingly contradictory viewpoints, whatever the subject of the forum is.
Pete_London, I’ve lived and worked on the UW Madison campus. You don’t need to lecture me on liberal speak. I could give you lessons. So your first unwarranted assumption is very, even humorously, wrong.
Firstly, why is it exclusively a liberal thing to not “reinforce gender stereotyping” ? Secondly, you project an awful lot more of your own stereotyping on ‘partner’ than is called for or necessary. And ‘partner’ may just mean ‘someone who is very important to me and why is none of your business’.
What possible legitimate reason could you have for demanding women wear the burka of gender identification? I didn’t know until I had been lurking for quite a while that Verity is a woman. Why does it matter? Am I supposed to qualify what she says because she is a woman? I hope she would be greatly offended by that suggestion. I am.
And what, exactly, business is it of yours, anyway? Are you the ‘moral police’ disguised in your ‘language protection police’ garb?
Maybe I should just be grateful we have people like you to enforce language ‘purity’. Apparently you think individualism and libertarianism aren’t strong enough to survive so great a challenge as non gender specific terminology.
Oh, and one more spectacularly mistaken assumption of yours,
I do, have, and will. Virtually my entire family, immediate and extended, are fundamentalist evangelicals. There are a couple of us that have left the evangelical fundamentalist fold and yet stayed in the family. I defend all of our rights to privacy and free association. Why don’t you?
As to US roadside cleanliness, many main roads have little signs that say, “this road kept clean by XYZ Assoc.”, where XYZ could be a fraternal group, a government bureaucracy or even, yes, often, a private business. It’s considered great advertising to help the place keep looking nice. And very bad PR to let it get dirty.
***If you think that the federal government is the root of all evil, try living without law and order. ***
The Federal Government provides law and order throughout the land? Funny, I thought it was municipal and state authorities, and the Feds afterward if state lines were crossed (or if it is one of the pet enforcements they’ve unconstitutionally alloted to themselves). And the logical reassembly of this statement is that we would not have law and order without a Federal Government? Nonsense.
***The ratifiers of the Constitution had experience with a federal government devoid of power. It wasn’t pleasant. That’s why they met and decided to scrap the Articles of Confederation. And what they came up with was a system where the government had the enumerated powers required to preserve civil society, but aso the protections afforded by the Bill of Rights to maximize our negative rights — a bulwark against encroachments on our liberties. ***
and
***Well, to answer your last question: in this country, the government is invested with the power to do what is necessary and proper to carry out their enumerated powers. So long as that is constraned by the Bill of Rights, I don’t have a problem with that. ***
The Bill of Rights were AMENDMENTS that were necessary because the Constitution as written was too vague, and was only through the efforts of Anti-federalists that it was considered necessary, the forerunners of today’s Libertarian.
Too much of what you say gives the impression that whatever is not covered in the Bill of Rights is fair game to be Federalized. It is that mode of thought that has led to all sorts of distortions maximizing “provide for the GENERAL welfare” and the massive abuse of the Commerce Clause, the two prongs that have allowed huge power grabs, and slide by because they don’t directly challenge the Bill of Rights. It was intended that that which wasn’t explicitely stated was left to the States on down. It is the greatest failure by those who champion liberty, allowing the Feds to reverse the logical polarity and operate that if it isn’t an enumerated Right, they can do as they please.
The very fact that the argument seems to begin and end at the Federal level already has an a priori anti-libertarian stance. To provide a common defense, ok yet debatable. To make basic treaties, and be held as one entity to provide adequate scale at the negotiation table, ok. But the Feds have well moved on from the “humble” beginnings and are now the “tail that wags the dog”, controlling commerce on an unprecedented scale, most evidenced by the $45 trillion debt.
The degree of power, abuse, and self-interest displayed today is beyond even the worst reckoning of the Anti-federalists.
Dale, I know a few more…….
Why the scare quotes?
Do market failures occur or do they not?
And if they do, what is our recourse?
As far as I’m concerned, so long as the government stays within our contract, there’s no problem. You asked me about rights, and I gave you the answer by the only rights that matter.
So far as litter collection goes, one of things that strikes benighted Britons on visiting the US is just how clean most of it is. The roadsides, the streets, everywhere is gleaming. I am told by my father in law, who resides in Potomac, that snow-clearance and roadside litter duties are indeed the responsibility of the home-owner. Cause and effect? I can only say for sure that Blighty’s collectivist approach (communal land, no one’s responsibility) means that many people, even in quite salubrious areas, live in roads resembling dumps. Great. I live in DC. When snow is on its way, the government-funded trucks are out there salting up the pavement. They do not go door to door to each business and organization asking if they want to pay to have their section of the street salted. If they did, and one business said, “No, sorry,” then what happens?
Well, either everyone else puts up with an odd section of M Street loaded up with a foot of snow and ice, or someone else grudgingly decides to pay in their place. In that case, the non-payer is a free rider. Next time a storm’s on its way, how many other businesses and organizations are going to volunteer to have their section of the road cleaned up? I mean, if the nextdoor neighbors will do it instead, why do it yourself?
Now, when it comes to private property, yes, most people pay or manually take care of their own driveways. That’s what you do so you can get to your your car and get your car onto the salted, clear street.
… which many of us still insist was grossly unconstitutional. They’re not as of yet being held accountable for what many consider to be a breach of that contract. “Public use” was abused.
You want to compare profit maximization to a road lined with toll booths? We’re talking orders of magnitude of difference.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
That’s great, where it works… but also note that this project is organized and funded by the government. Most free rider problems, even of the roadside cleanliness sort, are not taken care of this way.
-=-=-=-=-=-
All right, toolkien, yes, state and local authorities do most of the enforcement. (Though states also receive lots of their money from the federal government.) But Mr. Amon made a bogeyman out of the entire “machine”; it’s less than a hop, skip, and a jump from demonizing one level of government to another.
You misunderstood me, then. Madison specifically argued against Article I, Section 8 and other expansive language in the enumerated powers… and that’s why I brought up the solution he proposed within the Bill of Rights. Instead of trying to enumerate the many rights of man, he proposed the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to cover everything else. As I see it, that gives us maximized negative rights against encroachments of power by the government, and particularly the federal government. That limits the government to *just* their enumerated powers, with the checks and balances designed to enforce this structure.
I’m really more on your side than I sounded in my last post.
Pete_London,
And you’re not mocking it. You are demanding that somebody else indulge your sensitivities and alter their behavior so you won’t offended. Just like those miserable lefties you perpetually complain about.
Gravid: More than two? Sounds like an excuse for a good Belfast piss-up to me!
BTW, I do hope people recognized that ‘enemies’ was in ‘scare quotes’. That is, not enemies but political rivals with a different agenda who are likely to double cross and backstab us or try to use us for their own agenda.
Of course we’ll do the same, so the scare quotes work both ways.
Remember: ‘enemies’ go out for a drink together afterwards; enemies do not.
If, after the past 5 years of Republican leadership, a libertarian still says we should work within the Republican party, I have to question that person’s hold on reality (or choice of recreational drugs).
You can’t be for small government, yet support being the world’s policeman. It doesn’t jive.
If the strong will conquer the weak in anarchy, what’s to stop them from doing it with a government. Who runs the government, the strong or the weak?
– Josh
If, after the past 5 years of Republican leadership, a libertarian still says we should work within the Republican party, I have to question that person’s hold on reality (or choice of recreational drugs).
You can’t be for small government, yet support being the world’s policeman. It doesn’t jive.
If the strong will conquer the weak in anarchy, what’s to stop them from doing it with a government. Who runs the government, the strong or the weak?
– Josh
Sorry about the double post. Samizdata and I were having some technical difficulties.
– Josh
Good work, tyger. Nice to see someone finally putting the rhetorical boot into the ‘liberventionists’, who touched the pitch of war– the health of the State, as Randolph Bourne called it– and were defiled.
In the States, libboes are split right down the middle about backing the Krazy Krusade. Or were, till it turned out to be a dud share sold on a false prospectus. Golly, a politician lied to us, what a horrid surprise!
Some US libboes still believe in principle (if that’s the word) that one nation state has the right to rampage around the globe imposing its collective values, or what the current mob of thieves in government claim them to be, on other nations by force. Or that ‘freedom’, such as it is under the government they say they abhor, must be protected by knocking off any foreigner who conceivably might give trouble down the road. They only whine, faintly, about their own civil liberties being infringed in the process, as though it could be any other way in a land of open-doors immigration.
The Founding Fathers, who preached ‘peace and honest friendship’ with other countries and meant ‘defence’ when they said it, were more libertarian in spirit than today’s gun, spaceship and booze fans.
Don’t forget the loud rock and roll. I can’t do without that too you know.
… that one nation state has the right to rampage around the world, imposing it’s collective values….
So do you have the same passion toward those from a non-nation state who rampage around the world to establish a Caliphate? ……… Just wondrin’
Thanks for the plain English, Tyger. I’m sure that wasn’t too painful.
The use of ‘partner’ is yet another corruption of the English language by the Left (‘peace’ movement’, ‘social justice’ and ‘fair trade’ anyone?) and I’ll mock it whenever I hear it.
Around here, ‘partner’ is generally used in situations where ‘girlfriend’, ‘wife’, ‘husband’, or ‘boyfriend’ would not be appropriate for reasons I’m sure you will eventually figure out.
Gotta call ’em something, and the old words for that are generally considered a mite offensive these days.
Tyger:
I think it’s wrong to suggest that when democratised, Arab voters back Islamofascists. In the case of Egypt, Mubarak has spent most of his career (more or less effectively) cutting the moderate, democratic forces of Egyptian politics down to as non-threatening a size as possible. When there’s an election, the Islamic firebrands he’s been too scared to touch have a good deal more resources and political presence than the moderates. The people want a change. Under such circumstances, who do you think they’re most likely to vote for?
Felix
Interesting post. I too share your frustration that a movement (libertarianism) that has so much intellectual and moral superiority over the competition, should be frequently tainted by fanaticism and cultism.
So the job of the state should be to prevent violence and maintain borders? That’s it? No regulation of natural monopolies, no basic safety net, no army etc etc. Sounds like a weak state to me. And someone earlier made the accurate observation that weak states always fall and are replaced by much stronger and nastier alternatives.
These fanatical libertarians seem to me to be making the same basic error as communists – that of ignoring human nature.
I second your post, pommygranite.
A weak state is dangerous to those within and without. We do need, IMHO, a strong and vigorous defensive armed forces, control of the natural monopolies (e.g., “last mile” utility delivery, including roads), police, courts, prisons, A&E (no frisking for credit cards before being scraped off the tarmac).
How we get there is just as vital – how far, how fast and what route we take. Those advocating ‘year zero’ ideals can sit alongside Pol Pot if you ask me.
Tyger: for the Kurds it is patently obvious that it was worth it. However I think it is reasonable to wonder if it is worth it for the rest of Iraq.
Josh: Yeah but the Libertarian Party on its own has been so effective! I mean look at their influence!
Uain wrote: “So do you have the same passion toward those from a non-nation state who rampage around the world to establish a Caliphate? ……… Just wondrin'”
My $0.02 is that anyone who behaves criminally should be hunted down and punished as criminals. Motives are neither here nor there.
But who’s going to punish a hegemonic state which spends as much on defense as the next eight or ten put together?
The US was on the right lines when it invaded Afghanistan since it had good reason to think that the criminal conspirators who perpetrated 9/11 had their HQ there and were being sheltered by the Taliban.
Iraq was quite another can of worms! We now know not only that the case for invading it was phoney but that the invasion had been plotted long before 9/11 by a cabal of foreign policy intriguers who talked the innocent and ignorant new president round. Hence the disillusionment of Americans, which has spilled over into general ‘isolationism’ that even saps their will to deal with al-Qaeda, falsely linked as it was with Saddam Hussein. You no longer hear much about catching Osama, who used to be Public Enemy #1.
Wind back to September 2001. Just imagine if America had recruited a real Coalition from sympathetic UN members of all races and faiths, united in the sole and transparent objective of taming Islamist terrorism– an armed Interpol. Think how much safer the world might now look, and how much more cheaply in blood and taxes the job might have been done.
But that wasn’t what the neoconservatives wanted. They used 9/11 as a pretext for a project to impose American neocolonial rule over a region where they had business interests and ancestral ties to Israel. Their hypocrisy dissuaded most governments from joining in a genuine dragnet against Terror. They didn’t care because they assumed that ‘shock ‘n’ awe’ would not only topple Saddam, it would drive Iraq into the democratic, secular camp.
There was meant to be a benign chain reaction or Domino Effect: Iraq as a beacon to all Mideast Muslims who wanted to get out from under mullahs, kings and military dictators. But the neocons underestimated the clannish and sectarian loyalties of Iraqis who mounted an effective, morale-sapping guerilla resistance.
As a result, America’s relations with the peoples whose oil it desperately needs to prevent brownouts and blackouts are worse than ever; and its forces are about to suffer the most severe humiliation since the Afghan warlords sent the Red Army packing. China is making nice with Iran and the States is having to cosy up to India as a counterweight, letting it off the same nuclear proliferation hook that it is trying to tie Iran down with.
One hypocrisy breeds the next, and the world rolls its eyes at a nation which still claims to be everyone’s friend and shining city on a hill. The diplomatic balance sheet of the past 4-5 years does not show many credits for armed missionary work. George Washington and his buddies got it right.
What is it with this partner thing? Isn’t it obvious that the English language simply has lacked an appropriate word for a voluntary life long association without sanction of church or state? Maybe partner is not the greatest, but it serves as a place holder until something better comes into common usage.
But who’s going to punish a hegemonic state which spends as much on defense as the next eight or ten put together?
Erm, there’s an implicit assumption that 1) having influence over others and 2) spending as much as you like on defense should be punishable.
Both are errors, IMO.
Does anyone know where we can find lefties to debate that don’t suffer from having effed-up premises?
Careful with this one, pommygranate. I got myself backed into an indenfensible position when the person I was debating asked me to ‘name any, ANY’ monopoly that was not through the sanction of the state.
Market share does not equate with absence of competition. A case objectivists may already know is the Alcoa case in the forties. Aluminum is just about one of the most plentiful metals available in the earth’s crust. How could they possibly have a monopoly on it? The did have a near total market share however.
If you can name any ‘natural monopoly’, I would like to know. I tried and was unable to. Had to concede my position.
James Waterton,
It would be a broad and misleading generalisation to suggest that all Arab countries would select an Islamofacist regime. But at the same time I’m struck by examples over the past few years that suggest just that.
Iraq’s elections were fought between sectarian factions, Hamas swept to power in Palestine, Egypt as we have said favoured the MB (which is a relatively moderate group), Saudi localised elections were characterised by clerical victories, and Iran (not Arab, I know) selected a hardliner as president.
Are these electoral victories evidence of a religious regression, or a reaction to perceived western interference? I’m tempted to think that when governments fail to offer representation (as most of the pro-west Arab regimes fail to do), people fall back on other institutions to represent them i.e. religion. In theory this suggests that after the often-tyrannical authoritarian regimes have been vanquished, the people may yet grow tired of religious authority they will truly embrace secular democratic representation. This would, if it comes to pass, legitimise the Iraq adventure. One would still have to assess the cost/benefit of the invasion to future generations who will pick up the bill.
As I have said, time and time again, removing Saddam is a great and just endeavour, I’m just unsure as to whether we will regret it, and whether the hornets nest will ever settle.
Andrew Ian Dodge,
The US had a libertarian Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Our Wisconsin governer, Tommy Thompson, is a libertarian who, for pragmatic realities, ran as Republican. After he was appointed Secy HHS, his brother ran as the (Big L) Libertarian candidate. He was treated as a serious candidate by most media and there were three way debates telecast. Had it been a two way race with either other candidate, he may have won. (Had he been a better candidate, he may have won.) Defensive voting kills most third party candidates.
Gov. Tommy had prototyped many reality checks on welfare in Wisconsin. Things the media dubbed ‘Bridefare’, ‘Workfare’, etc. He went to Washington on the understanding he would do the same there, but was bound hand and foot with the help of the Bush administration. He refused a second term, I think out of disgust.
I should have said ‘former’ government. Oh, could we use him now. His replacement is bought, paid for, and totally in the service of big labor.
Ornery – “Why the scare quotes? Do market failures occur or do they not? And if they do, what is our recourse? ”
I don’t mean to sound dismissive but I am a bit strapped for time at the moment and cannot respond to the rest of your message. However to this this one, quoted section (above), I say as follows:
Not scare quotes. Merely that I find the concept of market failure a bit of a non-concept. It’s rather facetious. Apart from anything else it is predicated on the notion that everything must be provided all the time. That is essentially a collectivist position. When you then say “what is our recourse”, I think that reiterates the point. “Our recourse”? “Ours”? Or “Yours”? You may be content for the collective through its anointed tribunes to act according to what opinion polls or newspapers suggest is the desire du jour. You may even be content for said tribunes so to do when you personally disagree with the proposed collective remedy. But I am left with no answer to the question: why should I or anyone else give a damn what you want and by what right do you presume to use the power of law to make me agree to it?
To put it bluntly: if you want a recourse to a ‘market failure’, sort it out yourself!!!
I can’t remember who said it but market failure happens as often as gravity failure. See
this.
Interesting point. I suspect the market has failed to provide certain things from time to time, but those things weren’t needed or desirable.
Felix –
If you were a supporter of Juche, you could point anyone interested in that concept here for that “smiling, polite, self-consistent web page”.
The type of forum you seek for libertarianism is that of a stale ideology. Libertarianism and the resurgence of classical liberalism is in an embryonic stage in terms of its development for mass acceptance. If a forum for libertarianism is “smiling, polite, self-consistent”, then those who describe themselves as libertarians may as well take their bat and ball and go home.
“If you put a Democrat, a Republican, and a Libertarian alone in a room together, the Republican and Democrat will eventually team up against the Libertarian. This is because both of them believe the power of government could be used for enormous good… if only they were the one controlling it.
“The libertarian wants to destroy the machine.”Dale,
You couldn’t have described the situation more appropriately, vis-a-vis the way libertarians are viewed by others.
When a house is on fire, and two firemen are arguing whether to extinguish the upper or lower floors first, do not expect them to stand idly by while some maniac is cutting the hose.
Like it or not, a system of minimal government defeats dreamy libertarian utopianism by a day’s march. To suggest otherwise is to deny or ignore human nature.
The Founding Fathers, who preached ‘peace and honest friendship’ with other countries and meant ‘defence’ when they said it, were more libertarian in spirit than today’s gun, spaceship and booze fans.
Not so fast. I reckon that B. Franklin, for example, would have loved the spaceship part, and quite possibly the boozing bit as well. He was a real man of science, remember.
Johnathan,
I’ve always viewed the “The Founding Fathers were libertarians!” statement with amusement, because it’s so specious.
Had they really been libertarians, would not their solution to the problems of state-to-state interaction have been the abolition of state governments rather than the creation of an overarching federal one?
Alas, their actions speak (far) louder than modern-day libertarians’ words / wishful thinking.
Dale, a pint or six sometime could prove interesting.
Kim, thankfully you brought up “Human nature”. I think that this is nearly always ignored in debates like this.
Has anyone read “The Lucifer Principle” by Howard Bloom?
Check it out, human nature , being what it is, stamps all over anyones utopian ideals.
I believe that there is a core leftist philosophy, but on the right there are just a group of competing philosophies that are non-leftist but not all in agreement with each other. Libertarianism is a non-leftist philosophy (because leftism can only acomplish it’s goals through government intereference) and thus “rightist” because there is no better word to describe it.
Nick M and sesquipidalien (or whatever) –
Nobody’d call them market failures if they were failing to provide something that nobody wanted.
Some things are near-universally popular, but run into problems that businessmen, financiers, and economists are quite familiar with. It’s healthy for all involved parties, reallly, when transparency exists in markets. But there are considerable incentives to hide information that other people in the market would like to know when making a decision. Bringing every last case of moral hazard or adverse selection to court as a case of mini-fraud would be ridiculous, but it can be avoided if firms and individuals are required to provide certain information about their activities.
That way, everyone in the market makes more informed decisions and people don’t lose their shirt to shady firms quite so much. More rational decisions means more optimal decisions and fewer unexploited profit opportunities.
Can this be done privately? Yes, and in many cases, businesses do keep open books voluntarily. But there’s nothing near a guarantee.
The very fact that things are not transparent means that markets (a very efficient accountability machine) fail a little bit over and over again, every day. Luckily, they succeed much more often than they fail, especially in an age with so much information. That doesn’t make them as reliable as gravity.
Then there are just some things with great payoffs that are far too risky or have incredibly high barriers to entry that prevent markets from tackling them. For example, the space program of the ’60s was downright fascist, but look at the payoffs. Say what you will about the Nazis (I’m not a big fan myself), but look at the incredible levels of technical innovation they got without market mechanisms defining their research and development. And the Russians may have killed tens of millions of people to accomplish it, but they industrialized a massive, backwards peasant country in record time.
So let’s not pretend like there’s only one way to skin a cat. I believe that ultimately, their ideologies and economies were untenable in the long term, but there is more than one way to skin a cat, and there are more ways than free markets to deliver benefits to society and get things done.
… or maybe I’m just being a contrarian.
I have no problem with partner but if you do how about Consort?
MidWesterner
Water.
I don’t think there is yet a competing product and transportation costs restrict consumer choice to the local provider and prohibit overseas competition.
Has any country opened up the water markets to free competition?
When a house is on fire, and two firemen are arguing whether to extinguish the upper or lower floors first, do not expect them to stand idly by while some maniac is cutting the hose.
Like it or not, a system of minimal government defeats dreamy libertarian utopianism by a day’s march. To suggest otherwise is to deny or ignore human nature.
Why Libertarian is currently a difficult term:
Do libertarians prefer smaller government or no government? Private or state-run police? Prisons? Can the libertarian state field an army?
These are not small questions, and 10 different “libertarians” would give you 10 different answers to them.
It seems that the only thing that makes a libertarian is a tendency to want to let individuals make their own choices, rather than impose those choices upon them. Everything else is up for debate.
I don’t think its currently useful to describe oneself as a libertarian without a hyphen: libertarian-anarchist, libertarian-minarchist, libertarian-eagle, etc. It would be useful to have a matrix of commonly disputed issues and a taxonomy of libertarian flavors and how they speak to those issues.
Bombadil, I think that would be a backward step, dragging the libertarian debate back into the old left/right continuum. Libertarianism is about thinking for oneself, not nailing your colours to an arbitary mast. You make it sound like the myriad different groupings malcontents who were involved in the initial stages of the Russian revolution.
Ornery WP:
Well you’re contrary, for sure. The 60s space programs have lost momentum (you seen the plans NASA has now for returning to the moon by 2018? – Buzz Aldrin would look right at home in the ship pictured in the mock-up.) They’ve lost momentum because these massive statist projects (money no object) always fail. The USA exists in its current form because independent Merchant Adventurers from Europe made it profitable to cross the Atlantic. The very big Chinese Imperial project of a few decades earlier got across the Pacific but wasn’t followed up effectively. It was all eggs in one basket and when the Emporer tired of it that was that. The largest fleet, of the largest ships in the World was left to rot in harbour. The European endeavour (initially much lower key) worked because there was a direct financial incentive for individuals not just some nebulous concept of glory for the nation (or, as in the space program “All Mankind”). OK, many people and companies make a packet out of NASA’s bloated budget, but they are not directly betting their own money on the success of their endeavour.
Bombadil, I think that would be a backward step, dragging the libertarian debate back into the old left/right continuum. Libertarianism is about thinking for oneself, not nailing your colours to an arbitary mast. You make it sound like the myriad different groupings malcontents who were involved in the initial stages of the Russian revolution.
There is a reason zoologists, biologists et al. resort to a uniform taxonomy for the universe of living creatures: it makes conversation and correlation simpler.
I am not demanding that anyone who claims to be a libertarian get a tattoo on their forehead proclaming their allegiance to a certain tribe; I am merely pointing out that there are some common groupings that occur under the broad ‘libertarian’ umbrella and it would be useful to have commonly understood names for them. And I don’t see why that would drag us back into a left-right continuum unless we had only two sub-categories. I can think of at least three off the top of my head.
pommygranate, for the second time today, I’m a little confused.
Water? Never since I was eight have I lived in a house that got it’s water from a government sanctioned monopoly. I’ve lived in a house where a developer built about 60 houses, put in a big well and piped it to all the houses. Any one could have started another water company but there wasn’t market for it.
Then I lived on a farm where earlier owners had driven a point by hand to make a well. We didn’t like the water quality or safety so we paid a driller to come to the farm and put in a well about 65 feet deep. I made a hole about the size of a frisbee and he pointed his drilling machine at it. Then he sealed up the old well and signed a certificate that said so. (apparently unscrupulous people use old wells to dump liquid waste. Needless to say, by the time it’s discovered, clean up is almost impossible.)
In the next month or two, I’ll look in the phone book, find a well driller, and pay him to drill another well for my brother’s new house. When he drills it, he’ll report it to the county health department who will record it on a map.
Your constraint on shipping as a means for serving a market is an inappropriate over extension of ‘monopoly’ I don’t think cost of shipping can ever be used as grounds for a monopoly. If you want to make a rice paddy in the Sahara with bottled water, it’s not a monopoly that will keep it from working out. To one extent or another companies will always have different costs to serve any particular region. Are we to create a panel to decide when those costs create a monopoly?
If the cost of shipping prohibits an activity, then that means the market cannot support that activity.
I’m confused. You’ll need to explain this point a little better for me. I just don’t see it. Every single water monopoly I’ve ever encountered is government sustained. Maybe I’m missing something important here. Help me out.
Bombadil,
I’m against taxonomy here. I’m for arriving at decisions via rational debate on individual issues. You might find, that I’m a type A libertation on question x, and a type P on question y. That in itself doess not make my views in any sense wrong or unhelpful. Attempting to “label” people according to a constraining system is emblematic of the failed political projects of the past and creates less, not more, individual freedom.
Names, labels – it’s kinda semantic. The “borad libertarian umbrella” is the best defence against statists pissing on us from a great height.
How’s Goldberry BTW.
Goldberry’s bitchin’.
I’m against taxonomy here. I’m for arriving at decisions via rational debate on individual issues. You might find, that I’m a type A libertation on question x, and a type P on question y. That in itself doess not make my views in any sense wrong or unhelpful. Attempting to “label” people according to a constraining system is emblematic of the failed political projects of the past and creates less, not more, individual freedom.
Wouldn’t that make you a Type AP libertarian ? 😛
I agree that people don’t fit exactly into molds; nevertheless, where groupings exist it is often helpful to label them.
Once I found out the name for objectivism, I was able to search out materials for further study. That objectivist beliefs are named doesn’t make all objectivists zombielike conformists who agree on every single issue.
Likewise, an eager initiate to libertarianism might think, “Well, I don’t want the state telling me whether or not I can take drugs, but I think its sensible to have a national army, and I can’t understand people who want to do away with a central currency. I wonder if there are other people who think like me?” In the current state of affairs, he might decide that he is the only person in the world who thinks along those lines, because Libertarians believe that gold is the only legitimate currency, etc. In the absence of more precise subclasses, people often expect libertarianism to be a more or less coherent set of issue/position pairings.
Why stumble along this way if we can find a half-dozen issues which broadly group the libertarian family into sibling units? We would be better able to cooperate and organize, we would be able to present a more coherent and meaningful picture to the rest of the world.
I am personally convinced that a majority of people in the United States are, in fact, libertarians. But they go to the Libertarian Party website and read about privatizing the police force, and they conclude that they are not libertarians in any way, shape, or form.
Why does libertarianism require its adherents to be tactically stupid?
Bombadil,
Well, point partly taken. I just have a general dislike of -isms. I’m far more in favour of pragmatism 🙂
I certainly take your point that libertarian are frequently shooting themselves in both feet by going on about what are often practically minor points with a phenomonal fervour in order to establish an absolute point of principle. They lose the war in small skirmishes. I think it’s a much better idea to fight on the big fronts (which are likely to be more populist) and attempt to roll back the state by degrees.
I find utterly unrealistic any idea that anyone group or individual can create their desired utopia in a short time scale. It is infact risible, unless you’re Hitler, then it’s contemptible.
This also fits in with my article. I’ve also often said that “if you put two libertarians in a room you get an argument; three and you get factions”.
Libertarians are not clones marching to some Right-Think drum. They are a broad swath of individualists who agree on a central principle of non-coercion and have wide variations in the exact application.
If my article had said there were a Democrat, Republican, an isolationist Rothbard Libertarian anarchist and a minarchist with hawkish tendencies, the two libs would be likewise be sided together against the Democrat and Republican. The Libertarians agree that individual liberty trumps State interests; they argue amongst themselves on whether the state should be small or smaller still; the argue about exactly what constitutes coercion and what constitutes self-defense… but they are arguing with the same framework and that framework is alien to the liberal and conservative.
This is why publications like Samizdata exist. We are here to help communicate by examples that other way of viewing the world. It isn’t inherently less argumentative but in the long run it is a lot freer and more peaceful.
The ‘left-right continuum’ so reviled by libertarians is in fact a marketplace where political ideoligies compete for the consent of voters. Willful disengagement from this market is a self-denying ordinance that reduces libertarianism to a complete irrelevance. If you ain’t in, you can’t win.
Well, we ain’t in. We do not look at the world in the same way as the left/right spectrum and our stands ‘appear’ to fall all over the spectrum from extreme left to extreme right because of it.
Think of the Fourier Transform. Something which appears discrete in the time domain can be spread over the entirety of the frequency domain. Likewise, libertarian ideas spread all over the spectrum when compared to the seating of the first French parliament.
If a political philosophy can only be described by creating an analogy with a complex mathematical theory then maybe you should pass this along to the marketing department.
Too much noise, Dale, not enough signal.
Jaymac has a point. To much noise. I think this is the problem that Dale is addressing.
I insist people choose.
Is their method of measure ‘How much are we doing?’ or ‘Is it working?’
The ones who refuse to consider ‘Is it working?’ a valid question are lost causes. The best use for them is as strawman punching dummies to convince others.
The ones who accept ‘Is it working?’ as the valid measure, are indeed well intentioned and you only need know your material to open their minds. Never insist they change their minds in front of you. Let them go their way on a (personally) adjusted course. If they once accept ‘Is it working?’ as a legitimate question, the debate is ultimately won. But you’ll probably have to forego the pleasure of witnessing the final result of your work unless it’s someone you meet on an ongoing basis.
The Libertarians – We Promise an Integrel Transformation.
Job done.
Libertarians – We’re Fourier Freedom.
Libertarians do it orthoganally
Reclaim your slice of the pi!
Libertarianism – “The Axiom of Choice”
Left or Right – avoid the Di-Lemma!
Jaymac,
It’s a very poor market-place that only has one dimension. Even the proverbial high street has two sides of the road, as well as being able to walk up and down it.
NickM – why “avoid the Di-Lemma”? I thought His Holiness was quite a reasonable gent…
And we thus illustrate an important point: libertarians are not so tightly wound up that they cannot laugh at themselves…
Just as an example of why left/right makes no sense for libertarians, here are policy issues which to the libertarian are the same issue:
A company buys an afterbirth, clones stem cells and sells the resulting drugs and technology.
An individual goes out and buys marijuana and smokes it at home.
A machinist puts out a shingle for modification of semi-auto to full auto on any assault rifle.
Two men decide to set up housekeeping together and sign a life time contract.
If you attempt to analyze them by left/right, they are all different; but to the libertarian they are identical. They are simply matters of noncoercive individual choice, and the libertarians says, “Of COURSE, the individuals in each have the right to do what they want.
That is why we are confusing to left/rightists. They are analyzing us on the wrong axis, in the wrong space.
How many Libertarians does it take to change a light bulb?
They can’t. In order to do it they’d either have to turn it to the right or the left!
Ah! That’s a market opportunity for a non-twistlock bayonet base bulb type!
How many Libertarians does it take to change a light bulb?
Doesn’t matter. They’ll never agree on what to replace it with.
Q:How Many Libertarians does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: What does it matter? You change your bulbs, and they will change theirs.
Keep ’em coming! These are great!
TWG
How many Libertarians does it take to change a light bulb?
We don’t know, yet. Only Democrats and Republicans have been elected to change light bulbs.
Well, guys, despite all the additional candlepower provided by the light bulb changers I’m still left pretty much in the dark. However, it’s reassuring to know that libertarians are capable of indulging in a little light hearted self-mockery. Not exactly the first impression you get when you enter the kingdom of the Illuminati.
Jaymac, over 25+ years of advocating individualist a/o libertarian principles, I found that results based programs are the only reliable foot in the door.
Arguing over philosophy of government seems to more often than not turn into a ‘you just don’t care, you just want to feel good’ from the social program advocates.
But no honest person can deny the absolute, perennial failure of collectivist based programs. By hounding this point, it is possible to turn the ‘you just don’t care, you just want to feel good’ argument around and point it back at the social program advocates.
Once you get them shifted into the real world, acknowledge the failures, change is possible, but not before then.
I thought they were the neocons?
I thought they were the neocons
…the neocons so wish they were.