Category Archives: Libertarianism

Pew Poll: Libertarianism Fades In GOP As Adult Reality Ruins Adolescent Fantasy
Pew Poll: Libertarianism Fades In GOP As Adult Reality Ruins Adolescent Fantasy.

By: Prayog Hitesh

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Pew Poll: Libertarianism Fades In GOP As Adult Reality Ruins Adolescent Fantasy - Video

LIBERTARIANISM WANT WORK Tit For Tat Proves that "And Yes I am really that Stupid"
Tit For Tat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat A Good Place for Crazy Ideas form Ray Kurzweil http://www.kurzweilai.net/ Sam Harris http://www.samharris.org/the-moral-landscape Beginning...

By: Mark Hidden

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LIBERTARIANISM WANT WORK Tit For Tat Proves that "And Yes I am really that Stupid" - Video

Why atheists are disproportionately drawn to libertarianism is a question that many liberal atheists have trouble grasping. To believe that markets operate and exist in a state of nature is, in itself, to believe in the supernatural. The very thing atheists have spent their lives fleeing from.

According to the American Values Survey, a mere 7 percent of Americans identify as consistently libertarian. Compared to the general population, libertarians are significantly more likely to be white (94 percent), young (62 percent under 50) and male (68 percent). You know, almost identical to the demographic makeup of atheists white (95 percent), young (65 percent under 50) and male (67 percent). So theres your first clue.

Your second clue is that atheist libertarians are skeptical of government authority in the same way theyre skeptical of religion. In their mind, the state and the pope are interchangeable, which partly explains the libertarian atheists guttural gag reflex to what they perceive as government interference with the natural order of things, especially free markets.

Robert Reich says that one of the most deceptive ideas embraced by the Ayn Rand-inspired libertarian movement is that the free market is natural, and exists outside and beyond government. In other words, the free market is a constructed supernatural myth.

There is much to cover here, but a jumping-off point is the fact that corporations are a government construct, and that fact alone refutes any case for economic libertarianism. Corporations, which are designed to protect shareholders insofar as mitigating risk beyond the amount of their investment, are created and maintained only via government action. Statutes, passed by the government, allow for the creation of corporations, and anyone wishing to form one must fill out the necessary government paperwork and utilize the apparatus of the state in numerous ways. Thus, the corporate entity is by definition a government-created obstruction to the free marketplace, so the entire concept should be appalling to libertarians, says David Niose, an atheist and legal director of the American Humanist Association.

In the 18thcentury, Adam Smith, the granddaddy of American free-market capitalism, wrote his economic tome The Wealth of Nations. But his book has as much relevance to modern mega-corporation hyper-capitalism today as the Old Testament has to morality in the 21stcentury.

Reich says rules that define the playing field of todays capitalism dont exist in nature; they are human creations. Governments dont intrude on free markets; governments organize and maintain them. Markets arent free of rules; the rules define them. In reality, the free market is a bunch of rules about 1) what can be owned and traded (the genome? slaves? nuclear materials? babies? votes?); 2) on what terms (equal access to the Internet? the right to organize unions? corporate monopolies? the length of patent protections?); 3) under what conditions (poisonous drugs? unsafe foods? deceptive Ponzi schemes? uninsured derivatives? dangerous workplaces?); 4) whats private and whats public (police? roads? clean air and clean water? healthcare? good schools? parks and playgrounds?); 5) how to pay for what (taxes, user fees, individual pricing?). And so on.

Atheists are skeptics, but atheist libertarians evidently check their skepticism at the door when it comes to corporate power and the self-regulatory willingness of corporations to act in the interests of the common good. In the mind of an atheist libertarian, both religion and government is bad, but corporations are saintly. On what planet, where? Corporations exist for one purpose only: to derive maximum profit for their shareholders. The corporations legally defined mandate is to pursue, relentlessly and without exception, its own self-interest, regardless of the often harmful consequences it might cause others, writes Joel Bakan, author of The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power.

Corporations pollute, lie, steal, oppress, manipulate and deceive, all in the name of maximizing profit. Corporations have no interest for the common good. You really believe Big Tobacco wouldnt sell cigarettes to 10-year-olds if government didnt prohibit it? Do you really think Big Oil wouldnt discharge more poisons and environmentally harmful waste into the atmosphere if government regulations didnt restrict it? Do you really believe Wal-Mart wouldnt pay its workers less than the current minimum wage if the federal government didnt prohibit it? If you answered yes to any of the above, you may be an atheist libertarian in desperate need of Jesus.

That awkward pause that inevitably follows asking a libertarian how it is that unrestricted corporate power, particularly for Big Oil, helps solve our existential crisis, climate change, is always enjoyable. Corporations will harm you, or even kill you, if it is profitable to do so and they can get away with it recall the infamous case of the Ford Pinto, where in the 1970s the automaker did a cost-benefit analysis and decided not to remedy a defective gas tank design because doing so would be more expensive than simply allowing the inevitable deaths and injuries to occur and then paying the anticipated settlements, warns Niose.

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The atheist libertarian lie: Ayn Rand, income inequality and the fantasy of the free market

Editor's note: Michael Sean Winters is on vacation this week. Filling in for him are various writers from Millennial, a journal featuring the writing of millennial Catholics. Winters will be back next week.

It seems our ongoing religious consideration of the merits of libertarianism has come at precisely the right time. With The New York Times wondering if the "libertarian moment" has come -- and substantially lesser venues hoping that it has -- now is the time for a definitive Christian ethical case to be taken up with regard to libertarianism. Such a case is being mounted with increasing vigor. Yet while Vatican officials disown libertarianism and all Pope Francis' statements on politics militate firmly against it, a loud portion of American Catholics in the political realm seem doggedly committed to it. Why?

One source of libertarian sentiment among Catholics is likely, as argued by Meghan Clark, the popularity of a certain mistaken anthropology. By this, Clark means a story about what type of creature man is and what his purpose is that has been fundamentally divorced from the biblical narrative and tradition by vested political interests. Clark points out that the chief feature of this warped anthropology is its naked individualism and its inability, therefore, to grasp the necessity of solidarity in producing whole and morally upright people. For the radically individualistic libertarian, solidarity is a burden, not a boon. If it is a boon, it is only so insofar as it produces certain desired outcomes for the individual -- but this utilitarian understanding of solidarity is, as Clark demonstrates, a far cry from the real thing.

Clark is right to note the failed anthropology at the heart of libertarianism. But yet another thematic failure animates libertarian philosophy as well: a vital misapprehension of the nature and purpose of property.

One thing to note about libertarianism is that it is first and foremost liberal, in the sense of classical Enlightenment liberals like John Locke. Liberalism arose as a political philosophy at a time when hostility to the Catholic church was well received, and many assumptions that contradict truths held obvious and foundational by the Catholic church remain tied up in liberal, and therefore libertarian, reasoning. Chief among them is the philosophical preference for the primacy of private property rights over all other institutions or conditions, including the common good. Consider Murray Rothbard, arguing that all rights disputes are little more than disputes of private property:

There are other vexed problems which would be quickly cleared up in a libertarian society where all property is private and clearly owned. In the current society for example, there is continuing conflict between the "right" of taxpayers to have access to government-owned streets, as against the desire of residents of a neighborhood to be free of people whom they consider "undesirable" gathering in the streets. ... They are, in brief, complaining about the "human right" of certain people to walk at will on the government streets. But as taxpayers and citizens, these "undesirables" surely have the "right" to walk on the streets, and of course they could gather on the spot, if they so desired, without the attraction of McDonald's. In the libertarian society, however, where the streets would all be privately owned, the entire conflict could be resolved without violating anyone's property rights: for then the owners of the streets would have the right to decide who shall have access to those streets, and they could then keep out "undesirables" if they so wished.

It is a foregone conclusion in Rothbard's ethics that owners of property have the absolute right to exclude people from what they own, be it land or material objects, even in the case of individuals who have nowhere else to go -- as "undesirables" here surely refers to homeless people who congregate in or near fast food restaurants for warmth and shelter. Rothbard flatly does not see the need to argue for such a right on behalf of owners, but smoothly progresses from the problem of "undesirables" to the "cure" of private property ownership: If only land held in common were held privately, he laments, you would presumably never have to see another "undesirable" for any longer than it took you to banish them. That your ownership claim supersedes their right to shelter, warmth, perhaps even food -- is simply assumed.

Libertarian luminary Hans Hermann Hoppe makes this claim explicit, writing:

It becomes apparent that nothing could be further from the truth as soon as one explicitly formulates the norm that would be needed to arrive at the conclusion that the state has to assist in the provision of public goods. The norm required to reach the above conclusion is this: whenever one can somehow prove that the production of a particular good or service has a positive effect on someone else but would not be produced at all or would not be produced in a definite quantity or quality unless certain people participated in its financing, then the use of aggressive violence against these persons is allowed, either directly or indirectly with the help of the state, and these persons may be forced to share in the necessary financial burden.

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Catholicism and libertarianism clash over property and the common good

Richard Epstein Rand Paul ISIS Libertarianism
http://www.hoover.org/research/rand-pauls-fatal-pacifism "FAIR USE NOTICE: The material on this channel is provided for educational, informational, journalis...

By: theback bencher

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Richard Epstein Rand Paul ISIS & Libertarianism - Video

Millenial Latinos Are Shifting To Libertarianism
Younger latinos seem to be shifting into libertarian beliefs, I assume it is referring to general libertarianism and not that of capitalistic libertarianism....

By: Luis Rosales

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Millenial Latinos Are Shifting To Libertarianism - Video

the WHY of my frustration with libertarianism and it #39;s psuedologic.

By: Dawn Bringer

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the WHY of my frustration with libertarianism and it's psuedologic. - Video

A Critique of Libertarianism, Part 2

By: Dylvente

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A Critique of Libertarianism, Part 2 - Video

A Critique of Libertarianism, Part 1

By: Dylvente

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A Critique of Libertarianism, Part 1 - Video

Editor's note: Michael Sean Winters is on vacation this week. Filling in for him are various writers from Millennial, a journal featuring the writing of millennial Catholics. Winters will be back next week.

What does it mean to be a human person? The debate between Catholicism and libertarianism, which took center stage in Catholic circles over the summer, is not primarily about economics or politics. It is about anthropology. Catholicism and libertarianism have incompatible views of the human person. Perhaps the most important divergence between these two worldviews is in this very basic theological claim: I do not create myself, I do not call myself into existence, and I always exist in relationship to other people and to God.

Human freedom is crucial, but it is not reducible to negative liberty. In "Charity in Truth," Pope Benedict XVI explained that true freedom "is not an intoxication with total autonomy, but a response to the call of being, beginning with our own personal being." Freedom to love, freedom for human flourishing, freedom for community, and freedom for God all shape the Catholic understanding of freedom. Far from reducing the importance of freedom, this deeper and broader approach elevates freedom and, with it, our responsibility before God.

This understanding of freedom begins with the recognition that human persons are fundamentally and inescapably relational. On some level, nearly everyone agrees that human beings are social and that we need other people to survive. However, Catholicism doesn't see community and the government as merely necessary for survival or necessary evils to mitigate conflict. Human society is a good that should be valued. Human persons are created in the image of God, and God is Trinity. What does it mean to say that to be made imago dei must be to be made imago trinitatis? It means that we can only live fully human lives together and that we are called to live more fully as the image of God in the world. Thus, we end up where libertarianism cannot: Our humanity, as in the image of God, is not only a matter of creation but also places a claim on us.

For libertarian philosophy, the starting point is that human beings are autonomous individuals who are most human when they are making choices. The only legitimate constraint is the requirement to respect the liberty of others. Autonomy and negative liberty -- the absence of external impediments -- dominate their understanding of freedom. In many ways, their anthropology begins with the idealization of a Robinson Crusoe-like figure and posits a humanity that only enters into relationships, commitments and responsibilities of one's own choosing (completely forgetting that Robinson Crusoe was a fully grown, educated English gentleman when he was stranded). From this anthropology, economic libertarians develop the concept of the rational economic man, which defines rationality based upon self-interested choice. Am I really irrational every time I consider someone else in making a decision? Is selfishness really a virtue, as Ayn Rand argues?

This anthropology lays the foundation for their view of politics. Thus we see libertarians and figures like Ayn Rand argue for the complete separation of state and the market. She genuinely believed (and Alan Greenspan with her) that a community of autonomous individuals pursuing their own self-interests would self-regulate and be harmonious. Friedrich Hayek perceived any attempts at social justice and substantive equality of opportunity as moving toward totalitarianism or fascism. The irreconcilable divergence between libertarianism and Catholicism, which we see in their views of government and social justice, is really a disagreement about what it means to be human.

In a speech at Georgetown, U2 frontman Bono challenged students that "when you truly accept that those in some far off place in the global village have the same value as you in God's eyes or even just in your own eyes, then your life is forever changed, you see something that you cannot unsee." The image of God places a claim upon us that goes well beyond simply not harming or impeding others. We are morally required to promote the flourishing of others. Pope Paul VI explained, "There can be no progress towards the complete development of the human person without the simultaneous development of all humanity in the spirit of solidarity."

To understand what Pope Francis says on poverty, inequality and exclusion, you have to first understand this deep unity of the one human family, of our belonging to each other and our standing together before God. This is the foundation of Pope Francis' key insights. The threat of libertarianism is not primarily political; it is theological. Libertarianism creates a barrier to seeing the other as neighbor, as brother or sister.

St. John XXIII's "Peace on Earth" offers a comprehensive account of what is demanded in terms of upholding human dignity and the flourishing community. It is a basic list of human rights. The concerns are always both personal and structural, as Catholic social thought recognizes that "human freedom is often crippled when a man falls into extreme poverty." Human freedom is crippled by extreme poverty whether arbitrary obstacles exist or not. Freedom is not just about removing obstacles but providing the positive conditions for human flourishing within which true freedom can be exercised.

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Solidarity is our word: My humanity is bound up in yours