LISTEN TO TLRS LATEST PODCAST:

By Ian Tartt

As if it didnt already have enough problems, the liberty movement is now divided even more than it was before the last election cycle. This is largely a result of the campaigns of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. While most libertarians reacted in horror to both candidates, some were more concerned about one than the other.

Accordingly, some voted for Clinton to stop Trump, while others did the opposite. At the same time, many of them joined organizations that are not libertarian in nature but agreed with them on a handful of issues brought up during the election. This resulted in some libertarians aligning with right-leaning organizations and others aligning with left-leaning organizations.

The core problem with these associations is that they are based on what those from different sides oppose rather than what they support. That is, those who side with right-leaning organizations do so because those organizations oppose socialism; likewise, those standing with left-leaning organizations have allied with them because of their shared opposition to fascism. But simply opposing socialism or fascism does not a libertarian make. Its the consistent recognition and defense of individual liberty that makes one a libertarian.

Because some libertarians are joining with organizations who are merely enemies of their enemies instead of being their friends, there is great risk involved. Over time, they may adopt some decidedly un-libertarian positions and could even end up leaving libertarianism altogether. Of course, that depends on how heavily theyre involved with the organization and why theyre involved with them in the first place.

Another major drawback is that the libertarians who align with non-libertarian organizations often become divided (that is, those working with right-leaning organizations would see those aligning with left-leaning organizations as their enemies, and vice versa). Since there are also a number of libertarians who reject such alliances entirely, the liberty movement is now further split in several different directions. Some libertarians, whether theyre aligned with those on the left, those on the right, or with neither, refuse to work with those who reject their alliance or lack thereof.

While theres nothing wrong with working with an individual or organization to advance a certain goal (such as standing with a right-leaning group to protect gun rights or helping a left-leaning group push for drug decriminalization), libertarians should avoid strong partnerships with those organizations. And they absolutely shouldnt reject fellow libertarians, with whom they agree more often than not, in favor of working with those with whom they almost never agree. Doing either will only weaken the liberty movement by bringing in people who shouldnt be there in the first place and severing ties among those who are natural allies.

The best thing to do at this point is for those libertarians who are strongly aligned with a left or right organization that doesnt respect individual liberty to break those ties. Once they do that, they should try to rebuild as many bridges between themselves and their fellow libertarians as possible. This will help strengthen the bonds between lovers of liberty as well as prevent those unfamiliar with libertarianism from thinking that its something that it isnt. There is still time to undo the damage that was done from unnatural alliances, but until a serious effort to set things right is made, the liberty movement will continue to struggle while increasingly more freedoms are lost.

Alliancesdivisionleftlibertariansrightstrategy

The rest is here:

The Enemy of Your Enemy is No Friend of Liberty - The Libertarian Republic

"Right-wing Neoliberalism" redirects here. For other uses of the term, see neoliberalism.

Thatcherism describes the conviction politics, economic, social policy and political style of the British Conservative Party politician Margaret Thatcher, who was leader of her party from 1975 to 1990. It has also been used to describe the beliefs of the British government under Thatcher as Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990, and beyond into the governments of John Major, Tony Blair and David Cameron.[1] An exponent or supporter of Thatcherism is regarded as a Thatcherite.

Thatcherism represented a systematic, decisive rejection and reversal of the post-war consensus, whereby the major political parties largely agreed on the central themes of Keynesianism, the welfare state, nationalised industry, and close regulation of the economy. There was one major exception: the National Health Service, which was widely popular. She promised Britons in 1982, the NHS is "safe in our hands".[2]

Both the exact terms of what makes up Thatcherism as well as its specific legacy in terms of British history over the past decades are controversial. In terms of ideology, Thatcherism has been described by Nigel Lawson, Thatcher's Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1983 to 1989, as a political platform emphasising free markets with restrained government spending and tax cuts coupled with British nationalism both at home and abroad.[3]The Daily Telegraph stated in April 2008 that the programme of the next non-conservative British government, Tony Blair's administration with an emphasis on 'New Labour', basically accepted the central reform measures of Thatcherism such as deregulation, privatisation of key national industries, maintaining a flexible labour market, marginalising the trade unions, and centralising power from local authorities to central government.[4]

Thatcherism attempts to promote low inflation, the small state, and free markets through tight control of the money supply, privatisation and constraints on the labour movement. It is often compared with Reaganomics in the United States, Economic Rationalism in Australia and Rogernomics in New Zealand and as a key part of the worldwide economic liberal movement. Nigel Lawson, Thatcher's Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1983 to 1989, listed the Thatcherite ideals as "free markets, financial discipline, firm control over public expenditure, tax cuts, nationalism, 'Victorian values' (of the Samuel Smiles self-help variety), privatisation and a dash of populism".[3]

Thatcherism is thus often compared to neoliberalism. Milton Friedman said that "the thing that people do not recognise is that Margaret Thatcher is not in terms of belief a Tory. She is a nineteenth-century Liberal."[5] Thatcher herself stated in 1983: "I would not mind betting that if Mr Gladstone were alive today he would apply to join the Conservative Party".[6] In the 1996 Keith Joseph memorial lecture Thatcher argued that "The kind of Conservatism which he and I... favoured would be best described as 'liberal', in the old-fashioned sense. And I mean the liberalism of Mr Gladstone, not of the latter day collectivists".[7] However, Thatcher once told Friedrich Hayek: "I know you want me to become a Whig; no, I am a Tory". Hayek believed "she has felt this very clearly".[8]

But the relationship between Thatcherism and liberalism is complicated. Thatcher's former Defence Secretary John Nott claimed that "it is a complete misreading of her beliefs to depict her as a nineteenth-century Liberal".[9] As Ellen Meiksins Wood has argued, Thatcherite capitalism was compatible with traditional British political institutions. As Prime Minister, Thatcher did not challenge ancient institutions such as the monarchy or the House of Lords, but some of the most recent additions: such as the trade unions.[10] Indeed, many leading Thatcherites, including Thatcher herself, went on to join the House of Lords: an honour which Gladstone, for instance, had declined.[11]

Thinkers closely associated with Thatcherism include Keith Joseph, Enoch Powell, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. In an interview with Simon Heffer in 1996 Thatcher stated that the two greatest influences on her as Conservative leader had been Joseph and Powell, who were both "very great men".[12]

A number of commentators have traced the origins of Thatcherism in post-war British politics. The historian Ewen Green claimed there was resentment of the inflation, taxation and the constraints imposed by the labour movement, which was associated with the so-called Buttskellite consensus in the decades before Thatcher came to prominence. Although the Conservative leadership accommodated itself to the Attlee government's post-war reforms, there was continuous right-wing opposition in the lower ranks of the party, in right-wing pressure groups like the Middle Class Alliance and the People's League for the Defence of Freedom, and later in think tanks like the Centre for Policy Studies. For example, in 1945 the Conservative Party chairman Ralph Assheton had wanted 12,000 abridged copies of The Road to Serfdom (a book by the anti-socialist economist Friedrich Hayek later closely associated with Thatcherism),[13] taking up one-and-a-half tons of the party's paper ration, distributed as election propaganda.[14] The historian Dr. Christopher Cooper has also traced the formation of the monetarist economics at the heart of Thatcherism back to the resignation of Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer Peter Thorneycroft in 1958.[15]

Thatcherism is often described as a libertarian ideology. Thatcher saw herself as creating a libertarian movement,[16][17] rejecting traditional Toryism.[18] Thatcherism is associated with libertarianism within the Conservative Party,[19] albeit one of libertarian ends achieved by using strong and sometimes authoritarian leadership.[20] British political commentator Andrew Marr has called libertarianism the "dominant, if unofficial, characteristic of Thatcherism".[21] However, whereas some of her heirs, notably Michael Portillo and Alan Duncan, embraced this libertarianism, others in the Thatcherite movement, such as John Redwood, sought to become more populist.[22][23]

Some commentators have argued that Thatcherism should not be considered properly libertarian. Noting the tendency towards strong central government in matters concerning the trade unions and local authorities, Andrew Gamble summarised Thatcherism as "the free economy and the strong state".[24]Simon Jenkins accused the Thatcher government of carrying out a 'nationalisation' of Britain.[25] Libertarian political theorist Murray Rothbard didn't consider Thatcherism to be libertarian, and heavily criticised Thatcher and Thatcherism stating that: "Thatcherism is all too similar to Reaganism: free-market rhetoric masking statist content."[26]

Another important aspect of Thatcherism is the style of governance. Britain in the 1970s was often referred to as "ungovernable". Thatcher attempted to redress this by centralising a great deal of power to herself, as the Prime Minister, often bypassing traditional cabinet structures (such as cabinet committees). This personal approach also became identified with personal toughness at times such as the Falklands War, the IRA bomb at the Conservative conference and the miners' strike.[citation needed]

Sir Charles Powell, the Foreign Affairs Private Secretary to the Prime Minister (198491 and 1996) described her style thus, "I've always thought there was something Leninist about Mrs Thatcher which came through in the style of government: the absolute determination, the belief that there's a vanguard which is right and if you keep that small, tightly knit team together, they will drive things through... there's no doubt that in the 1980s, No. 10 could beat the bushes of Whitehall pretty violently. They could go out and really confront people, lay down the law, bully a bit".[27]

Thatcherism is associated with the economic theory of monetarism. In contrast to previous government policy, monetarism placed a priority on controlling inflation over controlling unemployment. According to monetarist theory, inflation is the result of there being too much money in the economy. It was claimed that the government should seek to control the money supply to control inflation. However, by 1979 it was not only the Thatcherites who were arguing for stricter control of inflation. The Labour Chancellor Denis Healey had already adopted some monetarist policies, such as reducing public spending and selling off the government's shares in BP.

Moreover, it has been argued that the Thatcherites were not strictly monetarist in practice. A common theme centres on the Medium Term financial Strategy. The Strategy, issued in the 1980 Budget, consisted of targets for reducing the growth of the money supply in the following years. After overshooting many of these targets, the Thatcher government revised the targets upwards in 1982. Analysts have interpreted this as an admission of defeat in the battle to control the money supply. The economist C. F. Pratten claimed that "since 1984, behind a veil of rhetoric, the government has lost any faith it had in technical monetarism. The money supply, as measured by M3, has been allowed to grow erratically, while calculation of the PSBR is held down by the ruse of subtracting the proceeds of privatisation as well as taxes from government expenditure. The principles of monetarism have been abandoned".[28]

Thatcherism is also associated with supply-side economics. Whereas Keynesian economics holds that the government should stimulate economic growth by increasing demand through increased credit and public spending, supply-side economists argue that the government should instead intervene only to create a free market by lowering taxes, privatising state industries and increasing restraints on trade unionism.[citation needed]

Reduction in the power of the trades unions was made gradually, unlike the approach of the Heath Government, and the greatest single confrontation with the unions was the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) strike of 198485, in which the miners' union was eventually defeated. There is evidence that this confrontation with the trade unions was anticipated by both the Conservative party and the NUM. The outcome contributed to the resurgence of the power of capital over labour.[29]

Thatcherism is associated with a conservative stance on morality.[30] The Marxist sociologist and founder of the New Left Review, Stuart Hall, for example, argued that Thatcherism should be viewed as an ideological project promoting "authoritarian populism", since it is known for its reverence of "Victorian values".[31] The Social Democrat Party supporter David Marquand claimed that Thatcher exploited "authoritarian populist" sentiment in 1970s Britain: "Go back, you flower people, back where you came from, wash your hair, get dressed properly, get to work on time and stop all this whingeing and moaning."[32][non-primary source needed]Norman Tebbit, a close ally of Thatcher, laid out in a 1985 lecture what he thought to be the permissive society that conservatives should oppose.[relevant? discuss]

Bad art was as good as good art. Grammar and spelling were no longer important. To be clean was no better than to be filthy. Good manners were no better than bad. Family life was derided as an outdated bourgeois concept. Criminals deserved as much sympathy as their victims. Many homes and classrooms became disorderly; if there was neither right nor wrong there could be no basis for punishment or reward. Violence and soft pornography became accepted in the media. Thus was sown the wind; and we are now reaping the whirlwind.[33]

Examples of this conservative morality in practice include the video nasties scare, where, in reaction to a moral panic over the availability of a number of provocatively named horror films on video cassette, Thatcher introduced state regulation of the British video market for the first time. Despite her association with social conservatism, Thatcher voted in 1966 to legalise homosexuality.[34] That same year, she also voted in support of legal abortion.[35] However, in the 1980s during her time as Prime Minister, Thatcher's government enacted Section 28, a law that opposed promotion of homosexuality by local authorities and the promotion of the teaching of "the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship" in schools. The law was opposed by many gay rights advocates, such as Stonewall and OutRage! and was later repealed by Tony Blair's Labour government in 2003.[36][37]

However, Thatcher was one of only a handful of Conservatives to vote for the Sexual Offences Act 1967.[38]

Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron later issued an official apology for previous Conservative policies on homosexuality, specifically the introduction of the controversial Section 28 laws from the 1980s, viewing past ideological views as "a mistake" with his own ideological direction.[39]

In May 1988 Thatcher gave an address to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. In the address, Thatcher offered a theological justification for her ideas on capitalism and the market economy. She said "Christianity is about spiritual redemption, not social reform" and she quoted St Paul by saying "If a man will not work he shall not eat". 'Choice' played a significant part in Thatcherite reforms, and Thatcher said that 'choice' was also Christian, stating that Christ chose to lay down his life and that all individuals have the God-given right to choose between good and evil.

Whilst Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, she greatly embraced transatlantic relations with the US President Ronald Reagan. She often publicly supported Reagan's policies even when other Western allies were not as vocal. For example, she granted permission for American planes to use British bases for raids on Libya and allowed American cruise missiles and Pershing missiles to be housed on British soil in response to Soviet deployment of SS-20 nuclear missiles targeting Britain and other Western European nations.[40]

Towards the end of the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher (and so Thatcherism) became increasingly vocal in its opposition to allowing the European Community to supersede British sovereignty. In a famous 1988 Bruges speech, Thatcher declared that "We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them reimposed at a European level, with a European superstate exercising a new dominance from Brussels".

While Euroscepticism has for many become a characteristic of Thatcherism, Margaret Thatcher was far from consistent on the issue, only becoming truly Eurosceptic in the last years of her time as Prime Minister. Thatcher supported Britain's entry into the European Economic Community in 1973, campaigned for a yes vote in the 1975 referendum[41] and signed the Single European Act in 1986.[42]

It is often claimed that the word "Thatcherism" was coined by cultural theorist Stuart Hall in a 1979 Marxism Today article,[43] However this is not true as the phrase "Thatcherism" was first used by Tony Heath in an article he wrote that appeared in Tribune on 10 August 1973. Writing as Tribune's Education Correspondent, Heath wrote "It will be argued that teachers are members of a profession which must not be influenced by political considerations. With the blight of Thatcherism spreading across the land that is a luxury that only the complacent can afford".[44][45] although the term had in fact been widely used before then.[46] However, not all social critics have accepted the term as valid, with the High Tory journalist T. E. Utley believing that "There is no such thing as Thatcherism."[47] Utley contended that the term was a creation of Mrs Thatcher's enemies who wished to damage her by claiming that she had an inflexible devotion to a certain set of principles and also by some of her friends who, "for cultural and sometimes ethnic reasons" had little sympathy with what he described as the "English political tradition." Thatcher was not an ideologue, Utley argued, but a pragmatic politician; and he gave the examples of her refusal to radically reform the welfare state, and her avoidance of a miners' strike in 1981 at a time when the Government was not ready to handle it.

Some leftist critics such as Anthony Giddens claim that Thatcherism was purely an ideology, and argue that her policies marked a change which was dictated more by political interests than economic reasons:

Rather than by any specific logic of capitalism, the reversal was brought about by voluntary reductions in social expenditures, higher taxes on low incomes and the lowering of taxes on higher incomes. This is the reason why in Great Britain in the mid 1980s the members of the top decile possessed more than a half of all the wealth.[48] To justify this by means of economic "objectivities" would be an ideology. What is at play here are interests and power.[49]

The Conservative historian of Peterhouse, Maurice Cowling, also questioned the uniqueness of "Thatcherism". Cowling claimed that Mrs Thatcher used "radical variations on that patriotic conjunction of freedom, authority, inequality, individualism and average decency and respectability, which had been the Conservative Party's theme since at least 1886." Cowling further contended that the "Conservative Party under Mrs Thatcher has used a radical rhetoric to give intellectual respectability to what the Conservative Party has always wanted."[50]

Critics of Thatcherism claim that its successes were obtained only at the expense of great social costs to the British population.[how?] There were nearly 3.3million unemployed in Britain in 1984, compared to 1.5million when she first came to power in 1979, though that figure had reverted to some 1.6million by the end of 1990.

While credited with reviving Britain's economy, Thatcher also was blamed for spurring a doubling in the relative poverty rate. Britain's childhood-poverty rate in 1997 was the highest in Europe.[51] When she resigned in 1990, 28% of the children in Great Britain were considered to be below the poverty line, a number that kept rising to reach a peak of nearly 30% during the government of Thatcher's successor, John Major.[51] During her government Britain's Gini coefficient reflected this growing difference, going from 0.25 in 1979 to 0.34 in 1990, at about which value it remained for the next 20 years, under both Conservative and Labour governments.[52]

The extent to which one can say Thatcherism has a continuing influence on British political and economic life is unclear. In 2002, Peter Mandelson, a member of parliament belonging to the British Labour Party closely associated with Tony Blair, famously declared that "we are all Thatcherites now."[54]

In reference to modern British political culture, it could be said that a "post-Thatcherite consensus" exists, especially in regards to economic policy. In the 1980s, the now defunct Social Democratic Party adhered to a "tough and tender" approach in which Thatcherite reforms were coupled with extra welfare provision. Neil Kinnock, leader of the Labour Party from 1983 to 1992, initiated Labour's rightward shift across the political spectrum by largely concurring with the economic policies of the Thatcher governments. The New Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were described as "neo-Thatcherite" by some on the left, since many of their economic policies mimicked those of Thatcher.[55]

Most of the major British political parties today accept the trade union legislation, privatisations and general free market approach to government that Thatcher's governments installed. No major political party in the UK, at present, is committed to reversing the Thatcher government's reforms of the economy. Although in the aftermath of the Great Recession from 2007 to 2012, the then Labour Party leader, Ed Miliband, had indicated he would support stricter financial regulation[56] and industry focused policy,[57] in a move to a more mixed economy. In 2011, Miliband declared his support for Thatcher's reductions in income tax on top earners, her legislation to change the rules on the closed shop and strikes before ballots, as well as her introduction of Right to Buy, claiming Labour had been wrong to oppose these reforms at the time.[58]

Moreover, the UK's comparative macroeconomic performance has improved since the implementation of Thatcherite economic policies. Since Thatcher resigned as British prime minister in 1990, UK economic growth was on average higher than the other large EU economies (i.e. Germany, France and Italy). Additionally, since the beginning of the 2000s, the UK has also possessed lower unemployment, by comparison with the other big EU economies. Such an enhancement in relative macroeconomic performance is perhaps another reason for the apparent "Blatcherite" economic consensus, which has been present in modern UK politics for a number of years.[citation needed]

Tony Blair wrote in his 2010 autobiography A Journey that "Britain needed the industrial and economic reforms of the Thatcher period". He described Thatcher's efforts as "ideological, sometimes unnecessarily so" while also stating that "much of what she wanted to do in the 1980s was inevitable, a consequence not of ideology but of social and economic change."[59]

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Thatcher's 1979 election victory, BBC conducted a survey of opinions which opened with the following comments:[60]

To her supporters, she was a revolutionary figure who transformed Britain's stagnant economy, tamed the unions and re-established the country as a world power. Together with US presidents Reagan and Bush, she helped bring about the end of the Cold War. But her 11-year premiership was also marked by social unrest, industrial strife and high unemployment. Her critics claim British society is still feeling the effect of her divisive economic policies and the culture of greed and selfishness they allegedly promoted.

The dictionary definition of Thatcherism at Wiktionary

See the original post:

Thatcherism - Wikipedia

Local column: Libertarianism gone hog wild Post Register We all want liberty, but taking it to a point where our safety is constantly threatened goes too far, writes Jim Delmore. Why does the Idaho Legislature persist in giving people the right to infringe upon the freedoms of others? Let me give some examples.

Visit link:

Local column: Libertarianism gone hog wild - Post Register

These days, libertarianism tends to be quite discredited. It is now associated with the goofy candidature of Gary Johnson, having a rather narrow range of issueslegalize weed! less taxes!, cucking ones way to politics through sweeping all the embarrassing problems under the carpet, then surrendering to liberal virtue-signaling and endorsing anti-white diversity.

Now, everyone on the Alt-Right, manosphere und so wieser is laughing at those whose adhesion to a bunch of abstract premises leads to endorse globalist capital, and now that Trump officially heads the State, wed be better off if some private companies were nationalized than let to shadowy overlords.

To Americans, libertarianism has been a constant background presence. Its main icons, be them Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard or Friedrich Hayek, were always read and discussed here and there, and never fell into oblivion although they barely had media attention. The academic and political standing of libertarianism may be marginal, it has always been granted small platforms and resurrected from time to time in the public landscape, one of the most conspicuous examples of it being the Tea Party demonstrations.

To a frog like yours trulyKek being now praised by thousands of well-meaning memers, I can embrace the frog moniker gladlylibertarianism does not have the same standing at all. In French universities, libertarian thinkers are barely discussed, even in classes that are supposed to tackle economics: for one hour spent talking about Hayek, Keynes easily enjoys ten, and the same goes on when comparing the attention given to, respectively, Adam Smith and Karl Marx.

On a wider perspective, a lot of the contemporary French identity is built on Jacobinism, i.e. on crushing underfoot organic regional sociability in the name of a bureaucratized and Masonic republic. The artificial construction of France is exactly the kind of endeavour libertarianism loathes. No matter why the public choices school, for example, is barely studied here: pompous leftist teachers and mediocre fonctionnaires are too busy gushing about themselves, sometimes hiding the emptiness of their life behind a ridiculous epic narrative that turns social achievements into heroic feats, to give a fair hearing to pertinent criticism.

When I found out about libertarianism, I was already sick of the dominant fifty shades of leftism political culture. The gloomy mediocrity of small bureaucrats, including most school teachers, combined with their petty political righteousness, always repelled me. Thus, the discovery oflaissez-faire advocates felt like stumbling on an entirely new scene of thoughtand my initial feeling was vindicated when I found about the naturalism often associated with it, something refreshing and intuitively more satisfying than the mainstream culture-obsessed, biology-denying view.

Libertarianism looked like it could solve everything. More entrepreneurship, more rights to those who actually create wealth and live through the good values of personal responsibility and work ethic, less parasitesbe they bureaucrats or immigrants, no more repressive speech laws. Coincidentally, a new translation of Ayn Rands Atlas Shrugged was published at this time: I devoured it, loving the sense of life, the heroism, the epic, the generally great and achieving ethos contained in it. Arent John Galt and Hank Rearden more appealing than any corrupt politician or beta bureaucrat that pretends to be altruistic while backstabbing his own colleagues and parasitizing the country?

Now, although I still support small-scale entrepreneurship wholeheartedly, I would never defend naked libertarianism, and here is why.

Part of the Rothschild family, where nepotism and consanguinity keep the money in

Unity makes strength, and trust is much easier to cultivate in a small group where everyone truly belongs than in an anonymous great society. Some ethnic groups, especially whites, tend to be instinctively individualistic, with a lot of people favouring personal liberty over belonging, while others, especially Jews, tend to favor extended family business and nepotism.

On a short-term basis, mobile individuals can do better than those who are bound to many social obligations. On the long run, however, extended families manage to create an environment of trust and concentrate capital. And whereas individuals may start cheating each other or scattering their wealth away, thanks to having no proper economic network, families and tribes will be able to invest heavily in some of their members and keep their wealth inside. This has been true for Jewish families, wherever their members work as moneylenders or diamond dealers, for Asians investing in new restaurants or any other business project of their own, and for North Africans taking over pubs and small shops in France.

The latter example is especially telling. White bartenders, butchers, grocers and the like have been chased off French suburbs by daily North African and black violence. No one helped them, everyone being afraid of getting harassed as well and busy with their own business. (Yep, just like what happened and still happens in Rotheram.) As a result, these isolated, unprotected shop-owners sold their outlet for a cheap price and fled. North Africans always covered each others violence and replied in groups against any hurdle, whereas whites lowered their heads and hoped not to be next on the list.

Atlas Shrugged was wrong. Loners get wrecked by groups. Packs of hyenas corner and eat the lone dog.

Libertarianism is not good for individuals on the long runit turns them into asocial weaklings, soon to be legally enslaved by global companies or beaten by groups, be they made of nepotistic family members or thugs.

How the middle classes end up after jobs have been sent overseas and wages lowered

People often believe, thanks to Leftist media and cuckservative posturing, that libertarians are big bosses. This is mostly, if not entirely, false. Most libertarians are middle class guys who want more opportunities, less taxation, and believe that libertarianism will help them to turn into successful entrepreneurs. They may be right in very specific circumstances: during the 2000s, small companies overturned the market of electronics, thus benefiting both to their independent founders and to society as a whole; but ultimately, they got bought by giants like Apple and Google, who are much better off when backed by a corrupt State than on a truly free market.

Libertarianism is a fake alternative, just as impossible to realize as communism: far from putting everyone at its place, it lets ample room to mafias, monopolies, unemployment caused by mechanization and global competition. If one wants the middle classes to survive, one must protect the employment and relative independence of its membersbankers and billionaires be damned.

Spontaneous order helped by a weak government. I hope they at least smoke weed.

A good feature of libertarianism is that it usually goes along with a positive stance on biology and human nature, in contrast with the everything is cultural and ought to be deconstructed left. However, this stance often leads to an exaggerated optimism about human nature. In a society of laissez-faire, the libertarians say, people flourish and the order appears spontaneously.

Well, this is plainly false. As all of the great religions say, after what Christians call the Fall, man is a sinner. If you let children flourish without moral standards and role models, they become spoiled, entitled, manipulative, emotionally fragile and deprived of self-control. If you let women flourish without suspicion, you let free rein to their propensities to hypergamy, hysteria, self-entitlement and everything we can witness in them today. If you let men do as they please, you let them become greedy, envious, and turning into bullies. As a Muslim proverb says, people must be flogged to enter into paradiseand as Aristotle put forth, virtues are trained dispositions, no matter the magnitude of innate talents and propensities.

Michelle The Man Obama and Lying Crooked at a Democrat meeting

When the laissez-faire rules, some will succeed on the market more than others, due to differences in investment, work, and natural abilities. Some will succeed enough to be able to buy someone elses business: this is the natural consequence of differences in wealth and of greed. When corrupt politicians enter the game, things become worse, as they will usually help some large business owners to shield their position against competitorsat the expense of most people, who then lose their independence and live off a wage.

At the end, what we get is a handful of very wealthy individuals who have managed to concentrate most capital and power levers into their hands and a big crowd of low-wage employees ready to cut each others throat for a small promotion, and females waiting in line to get notched by the one per cent while finding the other ninety-nine per cent boring.

Censorship by massive social pressure, monopoly over the institutions and crybullying is perfectly legal. What could go wrong?

On the surface, libertarianism looks good here, because it protects the individuals rights against left-hailing Statism and cuts off the welfare programs that have attracted dozens of millions of immigrants. Beneath, however, things are quite dire. Libertarianism enshrines the leftists right to free speech they abuse from, allows the pressure tactics used by radicals, and lets freethinking individuals getting singled out by SJWs as long as these do not resort to overt stealing or overt physical violence. As for the immigrants, libertarianism tends to oppose the very notion of non-private boundaries, thus letting the local cultures and identities defenseless against both greedy capitalists and subproletarian masses.

Supporting an ideology that allows the leftists to destroy society more or less legally equates to cucking, plain and simple. Desiring an ephemeral cohabitation with rabid ideological warriors is stupid. We should aim at a lasting victory, not at pretending to constrain them through useless means.

Am I the only one to find that Gary Johnson looks like a snail (Spongebob notwithstanding)?

In 2013, one of the rare French libertarians academic teachers, Jean-Louis Caccomo, was forced into a mental ward at the request of his university president. He then spent more than a year getting drugged. Mr. Caccomo had no real psychological problem: his confinement was part of a vicious strategy of pathologization and career-destruction that was already used by the Soviets. French libertarians could have wide denounced the abuse. Nonetheless, most of them freaked out, and almost no one dared to actually defend him publicly.

Why should rational egoists team up and risk their careers to defend one of themselves after all? They would rather posture at confidential social events, rail at organic solidarity and protectionism, or trolling the shit out of individuals of their own social milieu because Ive got the right to mock X, its my right to free speech! The few libertarian people I knew firsthand, the few events I have witnessed in that small milieu, were enough to give me serious doubts about libertarianism: how can a good political ideology breed such an unhealthy mindset?

Political ideologies are tools. They are not ends in themselves. All forms of government arent fit for any people or any era. Political actors must know at least the most important ones to get some inspiration, but ultimately, said actors win on the ground, not in philosophical debates.

Individualism, mindless consumerism, careerism, hedonism are part of the problem. Individual rights granted regardless of ones abilities, situation, and identity are a disaster. Time has come to overcome modernity, not stall in one of its false alternatives. The merchant caste must be regulated, though neither micromanaged or hampered by a parasitic bureaucracy nor denied its members right for small-scale independence. Individual rights must be conditional, boundaries must be restored, minority identities based on anti-white male resentment must be crushed so they cannot devour sociability from the inside again, and the pater familias must assert himself anew.

Long live the State and protectionism as long as they defend the backbone of society and healthy relationships between the sexes, and no quarter for those who think they have a right to wage grievance-mongering against us, no matter if they want to use the State or private companies. At the end, the socialism-libertarianism dichotomy is quite secondary.

Read Next: Sugar Baby Culture In The US Is Creating A Marketplace for Prostitution

Dec 1, 2016Andr du Ple

Read the original here:

6 Reasons Why I Gave Up On Libertarianism

CANTON -- St. Lawrence University will host economist Deirdre McCloskey at 7:30 p.m. on March 15, in Hepburn Hall, room 218.

The event is part of the Department of Economics Visiting Speaker Series in Political Economy and is funded by the Charles Koch Foundation.

McCloskeys lecture, Humane Libertarianism: A New American Liberalism, is free and open to the public.

An economist, historian and rhetorician, McCloskey the author of more than 400 peer-reviewed academic articles and 17 books, including "Economical Writing: A Memoir and most recently Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World, the third volume in the trilogy The Bourgeois Era."

McCloskey earned a bachelors degree and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and taught at the University of Chicago, the University of Iowa, and the University of Illinois at Chicago, from where she retired as the distinguished professor of economics, history, English and communications at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

For more information, contact the Department of Economics at 315-229-5430 or visit http://www.stlawu.edu/economics.

Go here to see the original:

Humane Libertarianism: A New American Liberalism, a lecture hosted by SLU slated for March 15 - North Country Now

Follyswaddling Healthcare or How to Abandon Libertarianism in One Intemperate Moment of Political Insecurity The Libertarian Republic I'm going to remind libertarians of many thing they already know, but generally forget they know when it comes to the idiotic national conversation we've had about healthcare in the last decade. First, rights are not what the government gives out to ...

See the original post:

Follyswaddling Healthcare or How to Abandon Libertarianism in One Intemperate Moment of Political Insecurity - The Libertarian Republic

The libertarian believes that the best and most wonderful social outcomes are not those planned, structured, and anticipated, but rather the opposite. (Conservative Tribune)

By Jeffrey Tucker

Well, Hillary Clinton has gone and done it.

To the cheers of alt-righters everywhere, those angry lords of the green frog meme who hurl edgy un-PC insults at everyone to their left, the Democratic nominee has put them on the map at long last. Specifically, she accused Donald Trump of encouraging and giving voice to their dark and dangerous worldview.

Lets leave aside the question of whether we are talking about an emergent brown-shirted takeover of American political culture, or perhaps merely a few thousand sock-puppet social media accounts adept at mischievous trolling on Twitter. The key issue is that more than a few alt-rightists claim some relationship to libertarianism, at least at their intellectual dawning until they begin to shed their libertarianism later on.

What are the differences in outlook between alt-right ideology and libertarianism?

1. The Driving Force of History

Every ideology has a theory of history, some sense of a driving theme that causes episodic movements from one stage to another. Such a theory helps us make sense of the past, present, and future. The libertarian theme of history is beautifully articulated by Murray Rothbard:

My own basic perspective on the history of manis to place central importance on the great conflict which is eternally waged between Liberty and Power I see the liberty of the individual not only as a great moral good in itself (or, with Lord Acton, as the highest political good), but also as the necessary condition for the flowering of all the other goods that mankind cherishes: moral virtue, civilization, the arts and sciences, economic prosperity. Out of liberty, then, stem the glories of civilized life.

There it is: liberty vs. power. Liberty unleashes human energy and builds civilization. Anything that interferes with the progress of liberty impedes the progress of humanity. One crowds out the other. The political (or anti-political) goal is clear: diminish power (which means reducing unjust violence) and enhance liberty.

What is the alt-right theory of history? The movement inherits a long and dreary tradition of thought from Friedrich Hegel to Thomas Carlyle to Oswald Spengler to Madison Grant to Othmar Spann to Giovanni Gentile to Carl Schmitt to Trumps speeches. This tradition sees something else going on in history: not liberty vs. power, but something like a more meta struggle that concerns impersonal collectives of tribe, race, community, great men, and so on.

Whereas libertarianism speaks of individual choice, alt-right theory draws attention to collectives on the move. It imagines that despite appearances, we all default in our thinking back to some more fundamental instinct about our identity as a people, which is either being shored up by a more intense consciousness or eroded by a deracination and dispossession from what defines us. To criticize this as racist is often true but superficial. Whats really going on here is the depersonalization of history itself: the principle that we are all being buffeted about by Olympian historical forces beyond our control as mere individuals. Each of us only matters when our uniqueness is submerged to a group. This grop in turn calls forth a leader. It takes something mighty and ominous like a great leader, an embodiment of one of these great forces, to make a dent in historys narrative.

2. Harmony vs. Conflict

A related issue concerns our capacity to get along with each other. Frdric Bastiat described the free society as characterized by a harmony of interests. In order to overcome the state of nature, we gradually discover the capacity to find value in each other. The division of labor is the great fact of human community: the labor of each of us becomes more productive in cooperation with others, and this is even, or rather especially, true given the unequal distribution of talents, intelligence, and skills, and differences over religion, belief systems, race, language, and so on.

And truly, this is a beautiful thing to discover. The libertarian marvels at the cooperation we see in a construction project, an office building, a restaurant, a factory, a shopping mall, to say nothing of a city, a country, or a planet. The harmony of interests doesnt mean that everyone gets along perfectly, but rather that we inhabit institutions that incentivize progress through ever more cooperative behavior. As the liberals of old say, we believe that the brotherhood of man is possible.

The libertarian believes that the best and most wonderful social outcomes are not those planned, structured, and anticipated, but rather the opposite.

To the alt-right mind, this all seems ridiculous. Sure, shopping is fine. But what actually characterizes human association is deep-rooted conflict. The races are secretly at war, intellectually and genetically. There is an ongoing and perpetual conflict between the sexes. People of different religions must fight and always will, until one wins. Nations fight for a reason: the struggle is real.

Some argue that war is what defines us and even gives life meaning, and, in that sense, is glorious and celebratory. For this reason, all nations must aspire toward homogeneity in stock, religion, and so on, and, as for the sexes, there must be dominance, because cooperation is an illusion.

Maybe you notice a certain commonality with the left here. In the 19th century, the Marxists whipped themselves up in a frenzy about the allegedly inherent conflict between labor and capital. Their successors fret incessantly about race, ethnicity, ability, gender, and so on, pushing Marxian conflict theory into ever more exotic realms. Ludwig von Mises captured this parallel brilliantly when he wrote, Nationalist ideology divides society vertically; the socialist ideology divides society horizontally. Here, as with many other areas, the far right and far left are strangely aligned.

3. Designed vs. Spontaneous Order

The libertarian believes that the best and most wonderful social outcomes are not those planned, structured, and anticipated, but rather the opposite. Society is the result of millions and billions of small acts of rational self interest that are channelled into an undesigned, unplanned, and unanticipated order that cannot be conceived by a single mind. The knowledge that is required to put together a functioning social order is conveyed through institutions: prices, manners, mores, habits, and traditions that no one can consciously will into existence. There must be a process in place, and stable rules governing that process, that permit such institutions to evolve, always in deference to the immutable laws of economics.

Again, the alt-right mind finds all of this uninspired and uninspiring. Society in their conception is built by the will of great thinkers and great leaders with unconstrained visions of what can be. What we see out there operating in society is a result of someones intentional and conscious planning from the top down.

If we cannot find the source, or if the source is somehow hiding, we imagine that it must be some shadowy group out there that is manipulating outcomes and hence the alt-rights obsession with conspiracy theory. The course of history is designed by someone, so we might as well engage in the great struggle to seize the controls and hence the alt-right obsession with politics as a contact sport.

Oh, and, by the way, economics is a dismal science.

4. Trade and Migration

The libertarian celebrates the profound changes in the world from the late Middle Ages to the age of laissez faire, because we observed how commercial society broke down the barriers of class, race, and social isolation, bringing rights and dignity to ever more people.

Of course the classical liberals fought for free trade and free migration of peoples, seeing national borders as arbitrary lines on a map that mercifully restrain the power of the state but otherwise inhibit the progress of prosperity and civilization. To think globally is not a bad thing, but a sign of enlightenment. Protectionism is nothing but a tax on consumers that inhibits industrial productivity and sets nations at odds with each other. The market process is a worldwide phenomenon that indicates an expansion of the division of labor, which means a progressive capacity of people to enhance their standard of living and ennoble their lives.

The alt-right is universally opposed to free trade and free migration. You can always tell a writer is dabbling in alt-right thought (or neoreactionary or Dark Enlightenment or outright fascism) if he or she has an intense focus on international trade as inherently bad or fraudulent or regrettable in some sense. To them, a nation must be strong enough to thrive as an independent unit, an economic sovereignty unto itself.

Today, the alt-right has a particular beef with trade deals, not because they are unnecessarily complex or bureaucratic (which are good reasons to doubt their merit) but because of their meritorious capacity to facilitate international cooperation. And it is the same with immigration. Beginning at some point in the late 19th century, migration came to be seen as a profound threat to national identity, which invariably means racial identity.

5. Emancipation and Progress

The libertarian celebrates the profound changes in the world from the late Middle Ages to the age of laissez faire, because we observed how commercial society broke down the barriers of class, race, and social isolation, bringing rights and dignity to ever more people. Slavery was ended. Women were emancipated, as marriage evolved from conquest and dominance into a free relationship of partnership and consent. This is all a wonderful thing, because rights are universal, which is to say, they rightly belong to everyone equally. Anything that interferes with peoples choices holds them back and hobbles the progress of prosperity, peace, and human flourishing. This perspective necessarily makes the libertarian optimistic about humanitys potential.

The alt-right mind cant bear this point of view, and regards it all as naive. What appears to be progress is actually loss: loss of culture, identity, and mission. They look back to what they imagine to be a golden age when elites ruled and peons obeyed. And thus we see the source of their romantic attachment to authority as the source of order, and the longing for authoritarian political rule. As for universal rights, forget it. Rights are granted by political communities and are completely contingent on culture. The ancients universally believed that some were born to serve and some to rule, and the alt-right embraces this perspective. Here again, identity is everything and the loss of identity is the greatest crime against self anyone can imagine.

Conclusion

The alt-right knows exactly who its enemies are, and the libertarians are among them.

To be sure, as many commentators have pointed out, both libertarians and alt-rightist are deeply suspicious of democracy. This was not always the case. In the 19th century, the classical liberals generally had a favorable view of democracy, believing it to be the political analogy to choice in the marketplace. But here they imagined states that were local, rules that were fixed and clear, and democracy as a check on power. As states became huge, as power became total, and as rules became subject to pressure-group politics, the libertarian attitude toward democracy shifted.

In contrast, the alt-rights opposition to democracy traces to its loathing of the masses generally and its overarching suspicion of anything that smacks of equality. In other words, they tend to hate democracy for all the wrong reasons. This similarity is historically contingent and largely superficial given the vast differences that separate the two worldviews.Does society contain within itself the capacity for self management or not? That is the question.

None of this will stop the mainstream media from lumping us all together, given that we share a dread of what has become of the left in politics today.

But make no mistake: the alt-right knows exactly who its enemies are, and the libertarians are among them.

Jeffrey Tucker is Director of Content for the Foundation for Economic Education. He is alsoChief Liberty Officer and founder ofLiberty.me, Distinguished Honorary Member of Mises Brazil, research fellow at theActon Institute, policy adviser of theHeartland Institute, founder of the CryptoCurrency Conference, member of the editorial board of theMolinari Review, an advisor to the blockchainapplication builderFactom, and author of five books. He has written 150 introductions to books and many thousands of articles appearing in the scholarly and popular press. This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxfRNgRajjM&feature=youtu.be Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute has been a formidable opponent of ObamaCare; so formidable, in fact, that he has been described by the New Republic as ObamaCare's "single most relentless antagonist." Along with Case Western Reserve Law School professor Jonathan Adler, he has provided the legal foundation for the Supreme Court case King v. Burwell, which questioned the legality of subsidies administered under the auspices of a federally run health insurance exchanges. In 2015, the court by a 6-3 decision, upheld ObamaCare. In this interview, Cannon discusses the inherent problems with ObamaCare, explains his role in encouraging states to refuse to set up their own exchanges, and discusses the failure of Vermont's single payer healthcare scheme. Read More: The Perpetual Failure of ObamaCare and Single Payer Healthcare Read More: Why Trump Shouldn't Immediately Repeal ObamaCare He voices concerns regarding the Republicans current Repeal/Replace plans, which many have feared will result in "ObamaCare lite," and takes aim at the Democrats for the disingenuous manner in which they implemented such provisions as the "Millennial Mandate" which obligates health insurers to cover children under their parents' policies until the age of 26. Cannon also shares his thoughts on the now-infamous words of ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber, who generated a firestorm of controversy by referencing a "lack of transparency" and lampooning the "stupidity of the American voter" in relation to ObamaCare passage. Libertarians and conservatives are presented with a blueprint for addressing the problems with ObamaCare, single payer healthcare, and socialized medicine. googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1459522593195-0'); }); Ultimately, he concludes that ObamaCare, in fact, offers less choice and less competition to American consumers, while obligating many Americans to buy expensive healthcare plans that they neither want nor need. Cannon suggests that a Balanced Budget Amendment is the key to taking money and power out of the hands of politicians, and returning it to the American citizens and taxpayers.

Go here to read the rest:

Don't Confuse the Alt-Right with Libertarianism. Here's How They're Different - PanAm Post

"Are we a chosen marginalized group that is going to be forever hanging around together? Is this just our social gang?," asks Jeffrey Tucker, director of content for the Foundation of Economic Education (FEE). "I think that is a problem."

When FEE was first founded in 1946 by Leonard Read, libertarianism was a little known concept. Thanks to regularly featured works by noted scholars like Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman, Henry Hazlitt, and George Stigler, the ideas of human liberty and freedom became more accessible and familiar to a larger audience.

The growing distaste for the current two-party system (both major party candidates set historic records for negative ratings in 2016) has increased the appeal of the libertarian perspective and the ideology has grown into a movement with real political momentum. Gallup Poll's 2015 Politcal Governance survey found that 27 percent of respondents could be ideologically classified as libertarianthe highest number recorded to date.

But Tucker warns that the growing popularity of libertarianism presents new challenges: "Because we have become a movement... it does give rise toI thinkcertain temptations to speak in our own vernacular or our own really high liturgical language with each other. Then normal people can't understand."

Tucker states he has looked to the past as inspiration for revitalizing FEE's current mission.

"There weren't a lot of what we call libertarians around at the time," Tucker explains. "They had to speak in a way to everybody or to anyone who would listen. And I think that affected the way they thought and the way they wrote. Every piece had to make sense for anybody who happened to pick it up."

To reach a larger audience, Tucker has expanded FEE's editorial scope by including entertainment reviews of popular shows like HBO's The Young Pope and Netflix's The Crown in addition to policy and political coverage.

Reason's Nick Gillespie sat down with Tucker at the International Students for Liberty Conference to discuss the history of FEE and how popular culture can be used by libertarians to spread their ideas to a mainstream audience.

Edited by Alexis Garcia. Cameras by Mark McDaniel and Todd Krainin. Music by Podington Bear.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Like us on Facebook.

Follow us on Twitter.

Subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.

See the original post here:

Changing the Way We Talk About Libertarianism - Reason.com - Reason

'Moonlight'I had already prepared myself for the disappointment of La La Land beating out Moonlight for the Academy Award for best movie. I saw both movies and thought Moonlight was superior in all the ways that matter to mestrong characters, powerful storytelling, and emotional impact. But Hollywood loves itself above all things, and I was prepared for another Crash versus Brokeback Mountain train wreck.

When La La Land was initially declared the winner, I simply shrugged and started shutting everything down for the night. It was only by circumstance that I powered down my computer first and still had the television on when the mistake was revealed. It was a happy surprise to me that Moonlight won, and I just wanted to take a moment to recommend anybody who identifies as a libertarian to go so the movie if they haven't yet.

If I were to describe a movie as being about a young gay black man coming of age in an extremely poor Miami neighborhood surrounded by drug culture, violence, and bullies, it may be a natural inclination to expect something very preachy and full of "Something must be done about this!" messages.

That's not Moonlight. What makes Moonlight work is that it's almost the exact opposite. It throws the viewer into the life of young protagonist Chiron and has the confidence to let us come to terms with the combination of awfulness and hopefulness of his experiences. It's a deeply personal story informed by the real world experiences of the two men behind it.

What does this have to do with libertarianism? Government institutions are shown as failing Chiron, and there's no effort to present these systems as part of the solution. School does nothing to protect him. And when he finally acts out in frustration when the violent bullying becomes too much, he finds the criminal justice system ready to come crashing down on him.

There is no lecturing about this institutional failure. It's presented as a lived-in experience. The story of Moonlight trusts the viewer to understand its deeper meaning. It's not complicated, but it is subtle. That the time jump between teen Chiron and adult Chiron includes a prison stint is handled almost like an aside.

But the movie is far from hopeless, and it's not a tragedy. This is not Brokeback Mountain recast in an urban setting during the crack epidemic. It's challenging and at times very difficult to watch play out (particularly if you were, for disclosure's sake, a gay man who also grew up dirt poor in Florida and had a mother with drug issues), but Chiron does find a path that suggests a way toward personal happiness even as it embeds him further into a life operating through some shadowy options (I'm trying not to spoil too much).

Consider Moonlight to be the film equivalent of the personal stories Reason shares about those who have been granted mercy from harsh mandatory minimum sentences. When we look at the cruelty of the drug war, the use of police in schools, and the failures of prohibition and their disparate impact on minorities, it's easy to want throw out data and just hope that makes an impression. Moonlight attaches it all to a story and invites the audience to live through the consequences of this harsh dynamic partly created by government officials (at the demand of their constituencies) without judging them and putting them on the defensive. The movie illustrates a fight for self-determination and personal happiness in a harsh environment where authority is stacked against the protagonistsomething every libertarian should be able to identify with.

See the rest here:

Libertarians Should Go See Moonlight - Reason (blog)

Photo Credit: Fibonacci Blue / Flickr

I once had a conversation with a libertarian friend who insisted that freedom was the answer to everything, ironic since he was getting married the following week.

Freedom to have sex with others while married? I asked.

Of course not, he said.

Freedom for your children to do whatever they want?

No, thats different, he said.

Freedom for everyone to have a nuclear bomb?

No, that wouldnt be good.

Freedom for people to steal?

No, that has to be controlled.

You dont really think that freedom is the answer to everything, I said. The real question is what to constrain and what to let go free. The question in social engineering is the question in all engineering. Its a question of tolerances: What to constrain with tight tolerances and what to let run free with loose tolerances. That question is built right into the paradoxical declarations that we should all, be intolerant of all intolerance, or tolerate all intolerance.

Sorry, thats not my question, he said.

But why? I asked.

Because its hard and I dont want to bother with it.

I applauded his honesty. If you want to know why its not obvious to everyone by now that the question is what to tolerate and not tolerate, its simply this. The question is difficult.

Its so much easier to be a hypocrite, to claim that total freedom or total constraint are the only possibilities and that you favor one and oppose the other. Its easier to pretend that youre crusading for absolute freedom against absolute control or vice versa than it is to deal with the messy complexity of trying to sort out what to free and what to constrain.

Hypocrisy is the alternative to praying for the wisdom to know the difference between what to constrain and what to let run free. Just pretend that you already have theperfect wisdom to know the obvious difference. Pretend that theres no question, control is always bad, freedom is always good. Or vice versa.

And with hypocrisy, you can even have it both ways depending on your momentary needs and whims. You can claim that you always favor one as you can switch back and forth.

I dont like that this constrains me. We should all be free always.

Always?!

Yes, judgment is always bad. People should never be judgmental.

But isnt should a judgment?

No. And why do you always have to disagree with me?

I dont always and anyway, didnt you just say that people should be free always? Doesnt that apply to me too? Shouldnt I be free to disagree with you?

No. People should always do the right thing. People should always be controlled by the moral principles I know and espouse.

Butbutyou just said

Theres a difference between being and feeling consistent. To be consistent you have to tame the tendency to extrapolate to universal principles from whatever youre feeling in the moment. You have to be able to notice your inconsistencies.

Since thats difficult and self-compromising, its easier to just feel consistent. For that you need only hold one idea constant. Just always chant, Im consistent. I have integrity. Im not like all of the other people around me. Other people are inconsistent hypocrisy. Im not.

If you hold that one thought with all your heart then you dont have to pay attention to your flip-flopping. You can have all your cakes and eat them too.

You wont live by your inconsistent standards, but if youre insistent enough, youll be able to convince yourself that you do, and maybe youll be able to convince others too. There are lots of hypocrisy cults you can join, mutual admiration societies that claim some absolute truth, thereby liberating themselves to follow their whims, confident that theyre consistent.

These days, libertarianism is one such cult, growing in popularity, in large part through sponsorship by the Koch brothers network of donors, spending billions through private charities to achieve a cabal of about 400 billionaires ultimate aim, to be unconstrained in everything they do. The cabal was inspired by a self-serving misreading of the Soviet Union. Fred Koch, the Koch brothers father was a key provider to Stalin as he built the Soviet Unions oil industry. When Fred saw the devastation wrought by his client Stalin he wrote that, What I saw in Russia convinced me of the utterly evil nature of communism. What I saw there convinced me that communism was the most evil force the world has ever seen and I must do everything in my power to fight it, whichI have done since that time.

Rather than bite Stalins hand that fed him he conveniently focused on the rationalization that Stalin employed to justify his dictatorship. Fred went on to say in 1938 that "Although nobody agrees with me, I am of the opinion that the only sound countries in the world are Germany, Italy, and Japan, simply because they are all working and working hard." He loved fascism; he hated communism.

Thus was born the hypocritical Koch campaign, control for freedom; constrain for liberty, dictate anarchy. It was easy to get other wealthy donors enthusiastic about the movement, donors like our new education secretary Betsy Devos, a self-declared libertarian who donated over $200 million to hypocritical campaigns for state-imposed religious education in the name of libertarianism. And its been easy to find politicians who will mouth and defend the hypocrisy for the money.

Thats what happened to what once was the Republican party. The Republicans who embraced American traditions bent to the Kochs will or were chased out by Koch-funded candidates from the Tea Party. If youre wondering whatever happened to our country, what explains the weird jack-knifing lurch toward libertarianism, the Koch brothers are a good place to find answers. The Tea Party wouldnt have lasted any longer than the Occupy movement if it werent orchestrated and funded by the Kochs.

Do I sound like a conspiracy theorist? If the alternative to conspiracy theory is the assumption that there are never any conspiracies, were in real trouble. There are conspiracies. The difference between conspiracy theorists and people who reveal real conspiracies is in whether the eagerness to find oneor the evidence leads one to the conclusion that there is one. If you read the facts on the Koch brothers, I think youll find that the evidence stacks up pretty conclusively.

But no matter how much money you pour into selling something, it wont sell if theres no latent appetite. With libertarianism as a rationalization, theres plenty of appetite, the appetite for some alternative to having to think about whats worth and not worth constraining.

Libertarians have bought themselves the ultimate freedom, paid in full with a commitment to hypocrisy, the freedom to never have to wonder about or learn from anything ever again, the freedom to feel consistent without having to trouble themselves with the hard question that shows up everywhere since sometimes freedom turns out well and sometimes it turns out badly:

In engineering:There are bolts and there are ball bearings. We bolt some things down and we let other things run free.

Computer engineering:Algorithms are constraints that enable you to input a free range of variables and get reliably constrained results.

Social engineering:We want people to have freedom to do what they want so long as it doesnt cause more damage than their freedom is worth. Laws, at their best, are constraints that maximize freedom.

Liberty and justice for all:Justice constrains us, liberty frees us. Justice is security. Government at its best seeks the best mix.

Freedom and responsibility:Youre free on the dance floor, but unless youre special (P.S., youre not) your freedom comes with responsibility for not constraining other peoples freedom. You dont get to crowd everyone into the corner by dancing wildly with your eyes shut shouting I believe in freedom!

Social movements:The best and worst movements in human history have all had the same rallying cry, a proud "We demand more!" That's the cry of those crowded out but also those who already have more than their fair share. It's the cry of the women's and civil rights movement but alsoof the Nazi's. So what's the difference between the good and bad versions of that rallying cry? Hypocrisy, demand for more dancefloor when you're already taking up plenty of it.

Player vs. married:A player is free to date whomever but the freedom comes with a loss of security, no reliable partner to come home to. A married person is more constrained but in the bargain gains some security.

Freelance vs. salaried:Salaried workers are more constrained than freelancers, but in exchange, they get a bit more security.

Evolution:Life is a trial and error process and we are the trials. This makes us ambivalent, rooting for ourselves as trials and rooting for the trial and error process. In our hearts, we cry let the best man win and it damned well better be me!

Sore losers:Sore losers smash the game board if they lose. Libertarians are like that. They think that if they dont win, the game is rigged against them and must be destroyed so that they always win.

Free willvs. determinism:We claim that free will as better than determinism but actually were ambivalent. What wed really like is the freedom to advance and the determinism that locks in the advances weve already made. What we really want is a ratchet, freedom to climb, constraint against falling.

We can have that ratchet if we shut our eyes, dance impulsively and shout freedom is the only answer! while crowding everyone else into the corners by meaning only our personal freedom, the hell with theirs.

Jeremy Sherman is an evolutionary epistemologist studying the natural history and practical realities of decision making. Read his work at Psychology Today.

View original post here:

Self-Indulgent Libertarian Hypocrisy Knows No Bounds - AlterNet

"Free movement of people and goods across borders are incredibly important things. And Trump is not into either of those things"Katherine Mangu-Ward.

At the 10th annual International Students for Liberty Conference, Reason magazine Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward, former editor and longtime head of the Institute for Humane Studies Marty Zupan, and I discussed the history and future of Reason and libertarianism in President Donald Trump's America.

We each talked about the signature issues of the decades we were at the magazine's helm (the 1980s for Zupan, the '00s for me, and currently for Mangu-Ward) and whether libertarianism is waxing or waning.

This podcast was recorded live on Friday, February 17. Now finishing up its first decade, SFL reported that about 1,700 guests from all over the world attended this year's conference.

Produced by Mark McDaniel.

Subscribe to the Reason podcast at iTunes or click below to listen right now!

Don't miss a single Reason podcast! Subscribe, rate, and review!

Follow us at Soundcloud.

Subscribe to our video channel at iTunes.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Like us on Facebook.

Follow us on Twitter.

Subscribe to the print edition for just $15 a year!

See original here:

Reason and Libertarianism in the Trump Era [Reason Podcast] - Reason (blog)

Jeff Malet Photography/NewscomOn Saturday, alt-right leader Richard Spencer crashed the 10th annual International Students for Liberty Conference at a hotel in Washington, D.C. After quarreling with conference attendees, he left the premises.

Spencer, a self-declared white nationalist who believes the U.S. is losing its white identity, had no business attending a gathering of libertarian students, and conference organizers had every right to eject him. Indeed, their decision to do so was a valid exercise of libertarian principles in action.

I attended the conference, along with several other Reason staffers. The Reason Foundation is a co-sponsor of ISFLC, and hosted several events during the conference. One of those events, a panel discussion about sex trafficking featuring Reason Associate Editor Elizabeth Nolan Brown and Director of Criminal Justice Reform Lauren Krisai, unfolded at roughly the same time as Spencer's unsolicited visit. I was in the audience at that event, and did not cross paths with Spencer.

But it's clear from video footage that Spencer set himself up in the bar of the hotelthe Marriott Wardman in Woodley Parkand attempted to host an unscheduled and unwanted conversation about his despicable views. To be absolutely clear: Spencer was not welcome at the hotel and had not been invited to participate in ISFLC.

"We did not invite Mr. Spencer," said SFL CEO Wolf von Laer in a statement. "We reject his hateful message and we wholeheartedly oppose his obsolete ideology."

Eventually, Jeffrey Tuckeran influential libertarian thinkerconfronted Spencer and made clear to the alt-right provocateur that he "did not belong" at ISFLC. Some shouting ensued, and hotel staff intervened. Shortly thereafter, Spencer left.

It's not completely clear whether Spencer departed of his own accord: he seems to think he was forced to leave, while others say he asked security to see him out safely, even though he was in no danger. But it hardly matters: the Marriott Wardman hotel is private property, and should enjoy the absolute right to evict irksome and unwelcome guests from its premises.

Spencer has attempted to wring as much publicity from the incident as possiblehe tweeted about it no fewer than 40 times, by my count. In his mind, libertarians are "lolbertarians" who need to "accept the reality of race" and get serious about "white replacement." To the extent that his only goal in life is to garner more attention for his fringe worldview, I suppose the stunt was a successhere I am writing about it. Congrats to you, guy who thinks "the United States is a European country."

In any case, the incident should make abundantly clear that the alt-right's racism is incompatible with the principles of a free society. Libertarianism is an individualist philosophy that considers all people deserving of equal rights. In contrast, Spencer is a tribalist and collectivist whose personal commitment to identity politics vastly exceeds the left's.

Spencer is entitled to broadcast his vile opinions, and to make equal use of public resources. He should not be attacked on the street, or anywhere else. But no private actor is required to give him a platformotherwise, property rights would cease to matter.

ISFLC, an organization that works tirelessly to support the cause of liberty all over the worldnot just for white American college studentshandled the matter correctly, in my view.

Disclaimer: I am a friend of Students for Liberty, and won the organization's 2016 Alumni of the Year Award.

Read the rest here:

Alt-Right Leader Richard Spencer Crashed a Student Libertarian Conference and Was Shunned - Reason (blog)

In the past decade, America has experienced an increase in identity politics, centered on race, gender, sexual orientation, and class status. This, combined with a two-party system, has resulted in very divided far Left and far Right ideologies. Identity has become a cornerstone of American politics.

This mindset only serves to further drive the wedge between the Left and the Right, observed through the recent riots at UC Berkeley, where a Left-wing fascist group, ironically calling themselves Antifa (short for Anti-Fascists), deemed violence an appropriate method to silence those whose opinions they disagree with. This collectivist mindset has swept across politics recently, and is now commonplace in the Left-wing progressive movement.

These are people who pretend to be protecting the rights of minority groups, like gays and blacks, but who are quick to label anyone from these minority groups as traitors, coons, and Uncle Toms if they fail to fall in line and preach their message. They fail to see how these people are not part of a group mindset, but are actually individuals with their own opinions and ability to think for themselves. This failure has led to Orwellian ideas like wrongthink, the idea that someones thoughts or expressed opinions can somehow be dangerous and must be met with violence to defend oneself from being assaulted. This of course is a ridiculous and draconian mindset to have.

Of course, as one may expect, the rise of identity politics on the Left has begun to seep into the Right as well, though it is not quite mainstream enough to be able to point to any solid examples. One can easily point to the Left and find numerous examples of identity politics run amok, but the Right has far fewer instances where this is plainly seen. Even the Alt-Right, which also often resorts to name calling and ridicule of anyone who disagrees with them, is more inclusive than far-Left groups.

Libertarianism has no place for identity politics; each person, despite his race, class, gender, or sexual orientation is seen to be an individual and is judged as such. This is why it can be difficult to find two libertarians who agree with one another on many issues outside of the ideologys core principles of property rights, individual freedoms, and so on.

The Libertarian Party is quickly becoming the bastion of individualism, a place for all people to come together and express their ideas without fear of reprisal or violence simply because their ideas do not conform to the collectivist mindset of the Left.

The group mindset is failing, and when the disenfranchised have realized that neither major party supports all of their personal ideals, they will begin to search for something new. The Libertarian Party stands to gain much traction from this shift away from collectivist group-think towards individualist ideology.

When identity politics divides the country into small groups who hate one another, individualism suddenly becomes a uniting force. As such, libertarianism outdoes any other political ideology.

So, to the women, minorities, members of the LGBT community, and anyone else who feels that these characteristics are arbitrary and do not actually define who they are and what they should believe, as the far-Left expects they should, the Libertarian Party is here and we welcome you.

Lets try freedom for a change.

* Christopher Lee McKitrick is a 29 year old New Hampshire native, a US Army veteran, and beer enthusiast. In his free time he enjoys hiking, writing, and reading.

The main BeingLibertarian.com account, used for editorials and guest author submissions. The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions. Contact the Editor at editor@beinglibertarian.email

Like Loading...

Continued here:

Identity Politics and Libertarianism - Being Libertarian

February 10, 2017 Filed under Op/Ed, Opinions

Back in October, I wrote an editorial urging the Loyola community to check out Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson. The successful entrepreneur turned two-term governor of New Mexico garnered nearly 10 percent of the vote in his home state and 3.3 percent nationally, the most a third party presidential candidate has received since independent Ross Perot 20 years earlier.

OK, Johnson still didnt win and never had a chancewhats your point, Ricardo?

Im so glad you asked.

In 2008, the Libertarian candidate got 523,715 votes or 0.40 percent of the popular vote. In 2012, Gary Johnsons first run for the presidency saw 1,275,971 votes or one percent of the popular vote. And this past election cycle, 4,488,931 American voters thought a Libertarian was a better choice than the Democrat under F.B.I. investigation and the Republican who was a reality TV star Cheeto.

One of the main reasons Johnson didnt have a fair chance was because he, along with Green Party candidate Jill Stein, was excluded from the nationally televised presidential debates. The official reason is that he and Stein didnt have the polling numbers to be admitted.

But the bar gets raised higher and higher. Third party candidates are virtually always excluded.

The debate commission calls itself non-partisan and yet the way it operates benefits the two major parties to the detriment of the American people who deserve to hear another voiceone that might actually reflect what they think and feel.

Many voters are afraid to vote for a third party candidate because of whats called the spoiler effect. They fear that by voting for a less popular candidate who actually represents a majority of their views, they are taking away votes from a more popular candidate who doesnt represent a lot of what they want but is better than another major party candidate who is the polar opposite.

Ralph Nader, who ran as a Green in 2000, is often criticized as stealing the election from Al Gore and enabling George H.W. Bush to win, despite evidence to the contrary.

The takeaway message: research the philosophy of libertarianism, see if you agree and when youre ready to fight the two-party system and promote policies of freedom, register to vote as a Libertarian.

Our national platform states that Libertarians stand for the political freedom of everyone, including our ideological opponents.

For more information, visit the College Libertarians at Loyola University New Orleans Facebook page.

Go here to see the original:

In my opinion: Ditch the two major parties register Libertarian ... - Maroon

by Ian Tartt

You may have heard the term libertarianism, but what does it mean? Simply put, libertarianism is the philosophy that says you have the right to do anything you like as long as you dont violate anyone elses rights or cause unjust harm to another person.

This definition comes from the fact thatwe all own ourselves, a concept which cant be logically denied because any attempt to deny self-ownership would involve using the mouth, the body, and the brain; thus, to attempt to argue against self-ownership requires the use of self-ownership, making any arguments against it self-defeating. Because we own ourselves, we have the right to do with ourselves what we like. As such, libertarians oppose laws prohibiting behavior which may hurt the individual engaging in such behavior but does not hurt anybodyelse (i.e. the War on Drugs).

Now, sincewe own ourselves and must make use of the natural world to live, we also have the right to own property. We can come to own property through homesteading (mixing our labor with un-owned resources) or by trading with the legitimate owner of a piece of property. Thus, other essential components of libertarianism include respect for both property rights and the free exchange of property between individuals.

The above are examples of conclusions drawn from deontological, or natural rights, libertarianism. The other main type of libertarianism is utilitarian, or consequentialist, in nature. Rather than focusing on rights, the utilitarian libertarian opposes overreaching laws and supports free exchange because he believes it will lead to the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. Because the conclusions reached by both deontological and utilitarian libertarians are generally the same, the two are normally happy to work with each other to advance freedom.

Unlike many other ideologies, libertarianism focuses more in individuals than on groups. One reason for this is the fact that groups are merely two or more individuals coming together. There can be individuals without groups, but there cant be groups without individuals. Also, respecting the rights of every individual would lead to the same type of equality before the law that most people want to achieve but go about by trying to help groups rather than individuals. For these reasons, libertarianism is a philosophy based on individuals.

While libertarians are mostly in agreement about the justifications for liberty (whether deontological or utilitarian), they often disagree about how to get to a free society. Some use political action (voting, fundraising for candidates, running for office, etc) while others oppose it. Many, whether they affirm or reject political action, will write articles or books and create videos in which they express their ideas. There are frequent clashes over the best strategy to attaina free society; these clashes usually result in setting back the liberty movement rather than advancing it, and thus making it that much harder to recover freedom.

Another point of disagreement, common to libertarians, is over the proper amount of government, or whether there should be a government at all. There are many different types of libertarians, each with their own thoughts on the subject. Some libertarians want the government to return to its Constitutional limits; others want to see it provide nothing more than courts, police, and national defense; and still others want to see all of the useful functions of government handled insteadby private enterprise. Regardless of their ultimate views on government, all libertarians want to see much more freedom than currently exists, and thus would benefit from working together instead of fighting over their differences.

This has been a basic introduction to libertarianism. While the philosophy is simple to explain and understand, one article is wholly insufficient to cover all the views, arguments, subjects, and people that have been part of the liberty movement over its hundreds of years in existence. For those interested in learning about some of the different types of libertarians, heres an article and a video that explain the major differences between them. Julie Borowski has a lot of funny YouTube videos that cover economics, foreign policy, current events, and numerous other subjects. A few prominent libertarian institutions include the Mises Institute, the Cato Institute, and the Reason Foundation. An article containing many links to books, TV ads, speeches, and radio shows from the amazing Harry Browne can be found here.For the bookworms, some great reads include the works of Ron Paul, Harry Browne, Ayn Rand, and Murray Rothbard. These are a few of the many great resources available for learning more about libertarianism and should be more than sufficient to give anyone interested a better understanding of the philosophy of liberty.

libertarianismLibertynatural rightsphilosophyutilitarianism

Read the original:

What is Libertarianism? An Examination of it and Some Resources for Further Research - The Libertarian Republic

The Liberty Conservative

A Donald Trump Presidency Indicates The Necessity Of Alt-Right Libertarianism The Liberty Conservative The exit of the TPP should be seen as a welcome sign for libertarians who see the danger in entangling alliances and how the TPP would erode national sovereignty. This bizarre alliance of Neoconservatives, Obama supporters, and Beltway libertarians for ...

Originally posted here:

A Donald Trump Presidency Indicates The Necessity Of Alt-Right Libertarianism - The Liberty Conservative

GuardianThe Guardian has pulled together five pieces from conservatives and libertarians who are critical of President Donald Trump's authoritarian tendencies and policies. I'm happy to be represented in the mix (for my commentary about Trump's awful, inhumane, and idiotic ban on refugees and travelers from seven countries tied to terrorism). It's a good mix of people, including some conservative critics (The New York Time's Ross Douthat, National Review's David French, Commentary's Noah Rothman) and Steve Horwitz of Bleeding Heart Libertarians along with yours truly. Here's a snippet from my piece:

That's certainly the case with Trump and his orders on sanctuary cities and on immigration and refugee policy. The laws were not just poorly phrased and timed, they clearly will not work to address the basic issues they ostensibly are meant to ameliorate. As Anthony Fisher noted here earlier today, the US embassy in Iraq has said that Trump's action is a recruitment tool for jihadists, as pro-American Middle Easterners realize they're being hung out to dry. As for keeping America safe from terrorists entering the country as refugees, the fact is the country has an incredibly safe record.

Read the whole collection of pieces here.

Because no good deed or kind word can go unpunished, I'd like to add a bit of nuance to the way the writer, Jason Wilson, encapsulates his piece. Here's the headline and subhed:

Burst your bubble: five conservative articles to read as Trump riles libertarians

Some libertarians are reacting with alarm to Donald Trump's discriminatory executive orders, his authoritarian tendencies and international sabre-rattling

I think it's accurate to call Douthat, French, and Rothman conservatives, but it's clear that neither Horwitz or I have nothing to do with conservatism.

Yet the confusion is right there in headline: The "conservative articles" are the product of Trump "ril[ing] libertarians"? Wuh?

I just don't get the slowness with which people are fully grokking that libertarianism is as distinct from conservativism as it is from progressivism or leftism. I'm not trying to be pedantic or coy here, but there's a reason why libertarians (certainly those at Reason) were intensely critical of George W. Bush's executive branch overreach and Barack Obama's too, while conservatives and liberals generally stayed silent when their guy was doing the power grabbing. And so it makes total sense that libertarians are leading the attacks on Trump's attempts to be a one-man (or at least one-branch) government. Libertarianism is nothing if not the antithesis of authoritarianism. Always has been, always will be. Be sure to check out Reason's attitude toward whoever eventually replaces Trump. The minute he (or she) starts down an authoritarian road, we'll be on the case.

Read more:

*Of Course* Libertarians Are Leading the Charge Against Trump's Authoritarianism - Reason (blog)

The key concepts of libertarianism have developed over many centuries. The first inklings of them can be found in ancient China, Greece, and Israel; they began to be developed into something resembling modern libertarian philosophy in the work of such seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thinkers as John Locke, David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine.

Individualism. Libertarians see the individual as the basic unit of social analysis. Only individuals make choices and are responsible for their actions. Libertarian thought emphasizes the dignity of each individual, which entails both rights and responsibility. The progressive extension of dignity to more people to women, to people of different religions and different races is one of the great libertarian triumphs of the Western world.

Individual Rights. Because individuals are moral agents, they have a right to be secure in their life, liberty, and property. These rights are not granted by government or by society; they are inherent in the nature of human beings. It is intuitively right that individuals enjoy the security of such rights; the burden of explanation should lie with those who would take rights away.

Spontaneous Order. A great degree of order in society is necessary for individuals to survive and flourish. Its easy to assume that order must be imposed by a central authority, the way we impose order on a stamp collection or a football team. The great insight of libertarian social analysis is that order in society arises spontaneously, out of the actions of thousands or millions of individuals who coordinate their actions with those of others in order to achieve their purposes. Over human history, we have gradually opted for more freedom and yet managed to develop a complex society with intricate organization. The most important institutions in human society language, law, money, and markets all developed spontaneously, without central direction. Civil society the complex network of associations and connections among people is another example of spontaneous order; the associations within civil society are formed for a purpose, but civil society itself is not an organization and does not have a purpose of its own.

The Rule of Law. Libertarianism is not libertinism or hedonism. It is not a claim that people can do anything they want to, and nobody else can say anything. Rather, libertarianism proposes a society of liberty under law, in which individuals are free to pursue their own lives so long as they respect the equal rights of others. The rule of law means that individuals are governed by generally applicable and spontaneously developed legal rules, not by arbitrary commands; and that those rules should protect the freedom of individuals to pursue happiness in their own ways, not aim at any particular result or outcome.

Limited Government. To protect rights, individuals form governments. But government is a dangerous institution. Libertarians have a great antipathy to concentrated power, for as Lord Acton said, Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Thus they want to divide and limit power, and that means especially to limit government, generally through a written constitution enumerating and limiting the powers that the people delegate to government. Limited government is the basic political implication of libertarianism, and libertarians point to the historical fact that it was the dispersion of power in Europe more than other parts of the world that led to individual liberty and sustained economic growth.

Free Markets. To survive and to flourish, individuals need to engage in economic activity. The right to property entails the right to exchange property by mutual agreement. Free markets are the economic system of free individuals, and they are necessary to create wealth. Libertarians believe that people will be both freer and more prosperous if government intervention in peoples economic choices is minimized.

The Virtue of Production. Much of the impetus for libertarianism in the seventeenth century was a reaction against monarchs and aristocrats who lived off the productive labor of other people. Libertarians defended the right of people to keep the fruits of their labor. This effort developed into a respect for the dignity of work and production and especially for the growing middle class, who were looked down upon by aristocrats. Libertarians developed a pre-Marxist class analysis that divided society into two basic classes: those who produced wealth and those who took it by force from others. Thomas Paine, for instance, wrote, There are two distinct classes of men in the nation, those who pay taxes, and those who receive and live upon the taxes. Similarly, Jefferson wrote in 1824, We have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. Modern libertarians defend the right of productive people to keep what they earn, against a new class of politicians and bureaucrats who would seize their earnings to transfer them to nonproducers.

Natural Harmony of Interests. Libertarians believe that there is a natural harmony of interests among peaceful, productive people in a just society. One persons individual plans which may involve getting a job, starting a business, buying a house, and so on may conflict with the plans of others, so the market makes many of us change our plans. But we all prosper from the operation of the free market, and there are no necessary conflicts between farmers and merchants, manufacturers and importers. Only when government begins to hand out rewards on the basis of political pressure do we find ourselves involved in group conflict, pushed to organize and contend with other groups for a piece of political power.

Peace. Libertarians have always battled the age-old scourge of war. They understood that war brought death and destruction on a grand scale, disrupted family and economic life, and put more power in the hands of the ruling class which might explain why the rulers did not always share the popular sentiment for peace. Free men and women, of course, have often had to defend their own societies against foreign threats; but throughout history, war has usually been the common enemy of peaceful, productive people on all sides of the conflict.

It may be appropriate to acknowledge at this point the readers likely suspicion that libertarianism seems to be just the standard framework of modern thought individualism, private property, capitalism, equality under the law. Indeed, after centuries of intellectual, political, and sometimes violent struggle, these core libertarian principles have become the basic structure of modern political thought and of modern government, at least in the West and increasingly in other parts of the world.

However, three additional points need to be made: first, libertarianism is not just these broad liberal principles. Libertarianism applies these principles fully and consistently, far more so than most modern thinkers and certainly more so than any modern government. Second, while our society remains generally based on equal rights and capitalism, every day new exceptions to those principles are carved out in Washington and in Albany, Sacramento, and Austin (not to mention London, Bonn, Tokyo, and elsewhere). Each new government directive takes a little bit of our freedom, and we should think carefully before giving up any liberty. Third, liberal society is resilient; it can withstand many burdens and continue to flourish; but it is not infinitely resilient. Those who claim to believe in liberal principles but advocate more and more confiscation of the wealth created by productive people, more and more restrictions on voluntary interaction, more and more exceptions to property rights and the rule of law, more and more transfer of power from society to state, are unwittingly engaged in the ultimately deadly undermining of civilization.

From Chapter 1, The Coming Libertarian Age, Libertarianism: A Primer, by David Boaz (New York: The Free Press, 1998). See also http://www.libertarianism.org.

See the article here:

Key Concepts of Libertarianism | Cato Institute

Jason Brennan opens the second chapter of Libertarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know with the question: How do libertarians define liberty? He answers his question by distinguishing between two major kinds of liberty: negative liberty and positive liberty. Negative liberty, Brennan explains, signifies an absence of obstacles, impediments, or constraints. Positive liberty, in contrast,

is the power or capacity to do as one chooses. For instance, when we talk about being free as a bird, we mean that the bird has the power or ability to fly. We do not mean that people rarely interfere with birds.

Negative liberty is the absence of obstacles; positive liberty is the presence of powers or abilities.

Brennans bird does not serve his purpose; it is a poor example. When we speak of being free as a bird, we dont usually mean what Brennan claims we mean. To be free as a bird suggests more than the power or ability to fly. It also suggests that the exercise of that ability is not hindered by external constraints. The fantasy of being free as a bird is linked to the desire to be free from external constraintsor, as Brennan puts it in his account of negative liberty, to act in the absence of obstacles.

The connection between the ability to fly and negative freedom is expressed in these famous lyrics from The Prisoners Song:

Now, if I had the wings of an angel, Over these prison walls I would fly.

When we speak of a bird as being free to fly, we assume that the bird in question has not been confined in a cage. We would not normally speak, for example, of a caged canary as being free to fly. This way of speaking suggests that a bird can exercise its ability to fly without external constraints, such as by being locked in a cage. The notion of negative freedom is, at the very least, an implicit presupposition of all such examples.

Of course, a caged bird may be free to fly around inside his cage to some extent, just as a human prisoner in solitary confinement may be free to walk within the confines of his tiny cell. Such cases illustrate the fact that negative freedom, or liberty (the terms are normally used interchangeably), may exist in varying degrees. But to say that a prisoner possesses the positive freedom to walk merely because he possesses the power or ability to walk (as Brennans bird is said to be free to fly in virtue of its ability to fly) is to use the word freedom in a peculiar way.

According to the positive conception of freedom (as summarized by Brennan), the fact of imprisonment would not even diminish a prisoners freedom to walk, so long as he remains able to walk. Even a prisoner bound tightly in chains would still be free to walk in the positive sense, provided he retained the ability to walk. When we say that a chained prisoner is not free to walk, we mean that he is constrained and therefore lacks the negative freedom to walk as he chooses, not that he lacks the power or ability to walk per se.

I may seem to be nitpicking here, and so I might be if not for Brennans attempt to incorporate positive liberty into libertarian theory. As he puts it (p. 27):

Until recently, most libertarians tended to argue that the only real kind of liberty is negative liberty. The believed the concept of positive liberty was confused. For a long time, the status quo was that libertarians and classical liberals advocated a negative conception of liberty, while left-liberals, socialists, and Marxists advocated a positive conception of liberty.

Brennan assures us that the status quo has begun to change: Recently, though, many libertarians have begun to accept both negative and positive liberty.

When contemporary libertarians say they want a free society, they mean that they want both (1) a society in which people do not interfere with each other and (2) a society in which most people have the means and ability to achieve their goals.

I confess to being unclear about the identity of the many libertarians who embrace positive liberty; but judging by Brennans subsequent mention of a book he co-authored with David Schmidtz, he appears to mean neoclassical liberals. In his recommended readings at the end of his book, Brennan lists four authors (including himself) under the heading Neoclassical Liberalism.

Now, there are probably a few more neoclassical liberals roaming the halls of academe, and I wont quibble over how many libertarians it takes to qualify as many libertarians. But when Brennan moves from many libertarians to his much broader statement about what contemporary libertarians supposedly believe about positive liberty, I must question his sense of proportion.

Consider Brennans next statement: Until recently, most libertarians rejected the concept of positive liberty. Until recently? Admittedly, I am not as active in the libertarian movement as I once was, but I doubt if I missed a sea change in regard to what most libertarians (including conventional classical liberals) think about the notion of positive liberty.

Brennan is again exaggerating the influence of his band of neoclassical liberals. A handful of academic philosophers does not a movement make.

Lets proceed to the more substantive problems in Brennans account. Why was the notion of positive liberty traditionally rejected by libertarians? According to Brennan, libertarians thought that if positive libertyunderstood as the power to achieve ones endscounted as a form of liberty, this would automatically license socialism and a heavy welfare state. Since they opposed socialism and a heavy welfare state, they rejected the concept of positive liberty.

This explanation is neither accurate nor fair; traditional libertarian objections to positive liberty were far more sophisticated than Brennan would have us believe. I will cover some of those objections in my next essay. For now, we should try to understand what the point of all this is. Why, for instance, do we find Brennan (p. 28) asking this loaded question: Why do many libertarians now accept positive liberty? Brennan explains:

Contemporary libertarians tend to embrace positive liberty. They agree that the power to achieve ones goals really is a form of liberty. They agree with Marxists and socialists that this form of liberty is valuable, and that negative liberty without positive liberty is often of little value.

Permit me to be blunt: contemporary libertarians, on the whole, tend to embrace no such thing. They do not agree with Marxists and socialists on this matter. On the contrary, they tend to argue that positive liberty is not a form of liberty at all, if by form we mean to suggest that positive and negative liberty are two species of the same genus. Rather, as Murray Rothbard wrote in Power and Market (p. 221), freedom pertains to interference by other persons. The word, in a social context, refers to absence of molestation by other persons; it is purely an interpersonal problem.

I see no evidence to indicate that the mainstream of libertarian thinking has changed substantially from this description of liberty given in 1773 by the American clergyman Simeon Howard:

Though this word [liberty] is used in various senses, I mean by it here, only that liberty which is opposed to external force and constraint and to such force and constraint only, as we may suffer from men. Under the term liberty, taken in this sense, may naturally be comprehended all those advantages which are liable to be destroyed by the art or power of men; everything that is opposed to temporal slavery.

According to this approach, negative liberty (the absence of coercive interference by others) is itself the fundamental means by which individuals are enabled to pursue their own values as they see fit. Brennan doesnt disagree with this assertion, as we see in his remark (p. 29) that protecting negative liberties is the most important and effective way of promoting positive liberty.

Thus, a commitment to positive liberty does not license socialism; it forbids it. Marxists say that positive liberty is the only real liberty. This real liberty is found in market societies, and almost nowhere else.

Brennan obviously wishes to turn the notion of positive liberty against socialists and other advocates of expansive governmental powers; whether his efforts are successful is a problem I shall take up at a later time. For now I wish only to point out that everything Brennan wants to say could easily be said without dragging in the notion of positive liberty at all. What we have here, in my judgment, is a type of political correctness run amok.

Will socialists, seduced by Brennans endorsement of positive liberty, see the light and agree that free markets are the best means to attain their cherished goal of positive liberty for everyone? As the old saying goes, there are two chances of this happening: fat and slim. By needlessly incorporating positive liberty into libertarian theory and, even worse, by claiming that negative liberty without positive liberty often has no value, Brennan has opened the barn door so wide as to admit all manner of anti-libertarian proposals.

Brennan appeals to historical fact to support his claim that free markets are the best way to achieve positive liberty. He would have gotten no objection from me if he had simply said, as Murray Rothbard put it in Power and Market (pp. 221-22), that it is precisely voluntary exchange and free capitalism that have led to an enormous improvement in living standards. Capitalist production is the only method by which poverty can be wiped out. But this straightforward claim wasnt good enough for Brennan, who succumbed to the desire to put old wine in a new libertarian bottle labeled positive liberty.

In short, Brennans attempt to incorporate positive liberty into libertarian theory accomplishes nothing more than to transform a strong argument for free markets into an argument that is perilously weak.

Anyone concerned with historical fact needs to understand why the notion of positive liberty proved so destructive to the negative liberty defended by classical liberals and libertarians. This will be the subject of my next essay.

Here is the original post:

Negative and Positive Liberty | Libertarianism.org

Since several of my previous essays have been linked to Rands moral condemnation of Immanuel Kant (1724-1802), especially her infamous remark that Kant was the most evil man in mankinds history (The Objectivist, Sept. 1971), I thought I would write a conciliatory essay or two about the moral and political theory of this villainous character whose evil supposedly exceeded that of the most murderous dictators in history. (The source of direct quotations from Kant are indicated by initials. See the conclusion of this essay for bibliographic details.)

My intention is not to defend Kants moral theory (I have serious disagreements) but to summarize some of its important features in a sympathetic manner. By this I mean that even though I reject a deontological (duty-centered) approach to ethics, I find Kants moral theory at once fascinating and highly suggestive, containing ideas that can be modified and then incorporated into a teleological (goal-directed) approach to ethics.

Kants first two major works on moral theoryGroundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785) and Critique of Practical Reason (1788)might be described today as treatments of metaethics rather than of moral theory as many people understand that label. They are metaethical in the sense that they are largely devoted to the meanings of moral terms, such as duty or obligation, an explanation of why we may say that ethical principles are rationally justifiable, and the proper methodology of moral reasoning. If these works offer little in the way of practical maxims, this is because they focus a good deal on Kants Categorical Imperative, which is a purely formal principle without any specific material content. The Categorical Imperative per se does not prescribe particular goals that people should or should not pursue. Rather, it mandates that moral maxims and general principles must be universally applicable to every rational being before they can qualify as authentically moral in character. As Kant wrote:

The categorical imperative, which as such only expresses what obligation is, reads: act according to a maxim which can, at the same time, be valid as a universal law.You must, therefore begin by looking at the subjective principle of your action. But to know whether this principle is also objectively valid, your reason must subject it to the test of conceiving yourself as giving universal law through this principle. If your maxim qualifies for a giving of universal law, then it qualifies as objectively valid. (DV, p. 14.)

In other words, the Categorical Imperative is a formal principle of universalizability, a fundamental test that normative maxims and principles must first pass before they can qualify as rationally justifiable. (When Kant spoke of a moral law, he was drawing an analogy between the Categorical Imperative and the physical laws of nature. Just as there are no exceptions to the physical laws of nature, so there should be no exceptions to this fundamental law of morality.) Here is how Robert J. Sullivan explained the point of the Categorical Imperative in his excellent book Immanuel Kants Moral Theory (Cambridge, 1989, p. 165):

Kant calls this formula the supreme principle of morality because it obligates us to recognize and respect the right and obligation of every other person to choose and to act autonomously. Since moral rules have the characteristic of universality, what is morally forbidden to one is forbidden to all, what is morally permissible for one is equally permissible for all, and what is morally obligatory for one is equally obligatory for all. We may not claim to be exempt from obligations to which we hold others, nor may we claims permissions we are unwilling to extend to everyone else.

In Causality Versus Duty (reprinted in Philosophy Who Needs It) Ayn Rand launched an all-out assault on the concept of duty, calling it one of the most destructive anti-concepts in the history of moral philosophy. She objected to the common practice of using duty and obligation interchangeably, explaining what she regarded as significant differences and making some excellent points along the way. It should be understood, however, that Kant did not draw this distinction. For him duty and moral obligation are synonymous terms, so if the term duty jars you while reading Kant, simply substitute moral obligation and you will understand his meaning.

I regard Causality Versus Duty as an excellent essay overall (philosophically considered), but, predictably, Rand drags in Kant as the premier philosopher of duty and then distorts his ideas.

Now, if one is going to use another philosopher as a target, one should at least make an honest and reasonable effort to depict the ideas of that philosopher accurately. But Rand shows no indication of having done this. According to Rand, for example, The meaning of the term duty is: the moral necessity to perform certain actions for no reason other than obedience to some higher authority, without regard to any personal goal, motive, desire, or interest. The problem with Rands definition of duty is not simply that it does not apply to Kants conception of duty but that it directly contradicts it. Even a cursory reading of Kants works on moral theory will reveal the central role that autonomy played in his approach. By autonomy Kant meant the self-legislating will of every rational agent; and by this he meant, in effect, that we must judge every moral principle with our own reason and never accept the moral judgments of others, not even God, without rational justification. Rands claim that duty, according to Kant, means obedience to some higher authority is not only wrong; it is fundamentally antithetical to Kants conception of ethics. This is clear in the opening paragraph of what is probably Kants best-known essay, An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

Enlightenment is mans emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use ones understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!that is the motto of the enlightenment. (WE, p. 41.)

Some of Rands statements about Kant are largely accurate, as we see in this passage:

Duty, he holds, is the only standard of virtue; but virtue is not its own reward: if a reward is involved, it is no longer virtue. The only motivation, he holds, is devotion to duty for dutys sake; only an action motivated exclusively by such devotion is a moral action (i.e., performed without any concern for inclination [desire] or self-interest.

Kant believed that moral virtue will make one worthy of happiness and thereby foster a sense of what Kant called self-esteem. Curiously perhaps, in Galts Speech Rand used the same phrase (worthy of happiness) in relation to self-esteem. But Rand was correct insofar as Kant denied that these and other possible consequences should constitute the motive of ones actions. Kant held that we should follow the dictates of duty unconditionally, that is, without regard for the consequences of our actions, whether for ourselves or others.

A major problem with Rands treatment of Kant in Causality Versus Duty is she harps on his defense of moral duty without ever mentioning the Categorical Imperative, which is the centerpiece of Kants moral philosophy. As we have seen, the Categorical Imperative is not some nefarious demand that we obey the dictates of God, society, or government. Rather, it is a purely formal requirement that all moral principles must be universalizable. The Categorical Imperative is a dictate of reason that our moral principles be consistent, in the sense that what is right or wrong for me must also be right or wrong for everyone else in similar circumstances. Kant is often credited with three basic formulations of the Categorical Imperative, but he framed the principle differently in different works, and one Kantian scholar has estimated that we find as many as twenty different formulations in his collected writings. There are many such problems in Kants writings, and these have led to somewhat different interpretations of the Categorical Imperative, as we find in hundreds of critical commentaries written about Kant. Although I am familiar with all of Kants major writings on ethics, I do not qualify as a Kantian scholar, so I do not feel competent to take a stand on which particular interpretation is correct. But his basic point is clear enough, and it was nothing less than philosophical malpractice for Ayn Rand to jump all over Kants defense of duty (or moral obligation) without explaining his Categorical Imperative. Indeed, to my knowledge Rand mentioned the Categorical Imperative only once in her published writings. In For the New Intellectual, she claimed that Kants Categorical Imperative makes itself known by means of a feeling, as a special sense of duty. This is absolutely false, a claim that Kant protested against explicitly. He insisted that the duty to follow the Categorical Imperativei.e., our moral obligation to apply moral judgments universally and consistentlyis a logical implication of our practical reason, not a feeling at all.

I shall go into greater detail about Kants Categorical Imperative (especially its political implications) in my next essay, but before drawing this essay to a close I wish to make a few brief observations about Kants attitude toward happiness. From reading Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff, or some other Objectivist philosophers on Kant, one can easily come away with the notion that Kant was a champion of selflessness, altruism, or perhaps something even worse. This misleading interpretation is based on Kants argument that moral actions should not be motivated by a desire for happiness, whether for ourselves or for others. The following passage by Kant is typical:

The maxim of self-love (prudence) merely advises; the law of morality commands. Now there is a great difference between that which are advised to do and that which we are obligated to do. (CPR, pp. 37-8.)..A command that everyone should seek to make himself happy would be foolish, for no one commands another to do what he already invariably wishes to do.But to command morality under the name of duty is very reasonable, for its precept will not, for one thing, be willingly obeyed by everyone when it is in conflict with his inclinations. (CPR, 38.)

Kants opposition to happiness as a specifically moral motive was based on his rather technical conception of ethics, and on his distinction between moral principles and prudential maxims. He believed that the maxims that will lead to happiness vary so dramatically from person to person that they cannot be universalized and so do not qualify as general moral principles. The actions that will make me happy will not necessarily make you or anyone else happy. For this and other reasons, Kant argued that happiness cannot provide a stable moral motive for actions but must depend on the prudential wisdom of particular moral agents. Egoists like Ayn Rand will obviously object to Kants views on this matter, and, in my judgment, there are good reasons for doing so. But it would be a serious error to suppose that Kant was somehow anti-happiness. On the contrary, Kant repeatedly asserted that personal happiness is an essential component of the good life. According to Kant, reason allows us to seek our advantage in every way possible to us, and it can even promise, on the testimony of experience, that we shall probably find it in our interest, on the whole, to follow its commands rather than transgress them, especially if we add prudence to our practice of morality. (DV, p. 13.) To assure ones own happiness is a duty (at least indirectly).(GMM, p. 64.) But happiness will not serve as a motive or standard of moral value because men cannot form under the name of happiness any determinate and assured conception.

Nevertheless, the highest good possible in the world consists neither of virtue nor happiness alone, but of the union and harmony of the two. (TP, p. 64.) Kant made a number of similar statements in various works, as when he wrote that the pursuit of the moral law when pursued harmoniously with the happiness of rational beings is the highest good in the world. (CJ, p. 279.)

Kants highly individualistic notion of the pursuit of happinessthe very fact that disqualified it as a universalizable moral motivewas a major factor in his defense of a free society in which every person should be able to pursue happiness in his own way, so long as he respects the equal rights of others to do the same. Jean H. Faurot (The Philosopher and the State: From Hooker to Popper, 1971, p. 196) put it this way.

[Kant] thought of society as composed of autonomous, self-possessed individuals, each of whom is endowed with inalienable rights, including the right to pursue happiness in his own way. There is, according to Kant, only one true natural (inborn) rightthe right of freedom.

As Jeffrie G. Murphy explained in Kant: The Philosophy of Right (1970, p. 93):

[Kants] ideal moral world is not one in which everyone would have the same purpose. Rather his view is that the ideal moral world would be one in which each man would have the liberty to realize all of his purposes in so far as these principles are compatible with the like liberty for all.

According to Kant, the first consideration of a legal system should be to insure that each person remains at liberty to seek his happiness in any way he thinks best so long as he does not violate the rights of other fellow subjects. (TP, p. 78.) And again:

No one can compel meto be happy after his fashion; instead, every person may seek happiness in the way that seems best to him, if only he does not violate the freedom of others to strive toward such similar ends as are compatible with everyones freedom under a possible universal law (i.e., this right of others). (TP, p. 72.)

Kant was resolutely opposed to paternalistic governments. A government that views subjects as a father views his children, as immature beings who are incompetent to decide for themselves what is good or bad for them and dictates instead how they ought to be happy is the worst despotism we can think of. Paternalism subverts all the freedom of the subjects, who would have no freedom whatsoever. (TP, p. 73.) The sovereign who wants to make people happy in accord with his own concept of happinessbecomes a despot. (TP, p. 81.)

Needless to say, these and similar remarks scarcely fit the stereotypical Objectivist image of Kant as a villainous character who wished to subvert reason, morality, and the quest for personal happiness. Kant, whatever his errors, made a serious effort to probe the nature of ethics and moral obligation to their foundations, and to justify a theory of ethics by reason alone. A regard for the dignity and moral autonomy of every individual, regardless of his or her station in life, runs deep in the writings of Kant. But more needs to be said about Kants political theory, so that shall be the main topic of my next essay.

The following are the sources for the quotations from Kant used in this essay.

CJ: Critique of Judgement, trans. James Creed Meredith, rev. Nicholas Walker (Oxford University Press, 2007).

CPR: Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis White Beck (Bobbs-Merrill, 1956).

DV: The Doctrine of Virtue: Part II of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. Mary J. Gregor (Harper, 1964).

GMM: Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, translated and analyzed by H.J. Paton, in The Moral Law (Hutchinson, 1972).

TP: On the Proverb: That May be True in Theory, But Is Of No Practical Use, in Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, trans. Ted Humphrey (Hackett, 1983).

WE: An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? in Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, trans. Ted Humphrey (Hackett, 1983).

See more here:

A Few Kind Words about the Most Evil ... - libertarianism.org