Category Archives: Libertarianism

'A classical liberal': Senator David Leyonhjelm. Photo: James Alcock

Only one official libertarian sits in the federal Parliament, though there are many closet libertarians hidden inside the tax-and-spend big government of Tony Abbott. This week that libertarian, Senator David Leyonhjelm of the Liberal Democratic Party, had a lesson in the treacheries of politics delivered to him personally by The Australian newspaper.

Leyonhjelm had intended to announce on Thursday that he had appointed Helen Dale, born Helen Darville, also known by the literary pseudonym Helen Demidenko, to his staff as a senior adviser.

But a reporter at The Australian, David Crowe, got what the paper called an "exclusive" by simply ignoring the senator's embargo, much to the senator's chagrin, then delivering a cartoon about "a hoaxer" being appointed to the senator's staff. As the headline inThe Australian put it: "Literary hoaxer signed up by LDP."

The woman portrayed as "a hoaxer" is a 42-year-old policy scholar who has left behind a legal career in Edinburgh because she believes in what Leyonhjelm is doing. And what Leyonhjelm is doing, as a cross-bencher in a deadlocked Senate, is trying to slow what he sees as the decline of individual freedom and economic health under the growing weight of government.

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I first met Dale and Leyonhjelm at a libertarian conference in Sydney earlier this year where both were delivering papers. Dale's presentation focused on social changes caused by technology, not expensive social engineering. Among many examples was a correlation between the removal of lead from petrol, paint and cosmetics and a decline in crime. Practising law, she saw government regulation and compulsion as frequently having both adverse and unintended consequences.

"I noticed the extent to which government regulations often had a malicious effect," she said.

"Unlike many lawyers, I do not think the solution to every problem is 'pass a law'. Law has limits."

She arrived at this belief via a circuitous path, having become famous at age 20, as Helen Demidenko, for a novel written when she was 19, The Hand that Signed the Paper. It won the Miles Franklin Award in 1995.

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David Leyonhjelm calls on the colourful Helen Dale to help fight for libertarianism

Senator Sanders: Concerns About Libertarianism
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) shares his concerns about Libertarianism. If you liked this clip of The Thom Hartmann Program, please do us a big favor and share it with your friends......

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Battling Nancy Pelosi: Candidate John Dennis on Why Libertarianism is the GOP #39;s Only Hope
"We are the bridge on all those sorts of issues where the Republicans have no other bridges, so maybe we should put up a toll road and make them pay to come ...

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Battling Nancy Pelosi: Candidate John Dennis on Why Libertarianism is the GOP's Only Hope - Video

Few movements in the United States today harbor stranger political ideas than the self-proclaimed libertarians. The Rand Paul school of libertarianism is at least as far outside the mainstream on the right as, say, a rather doctrinaire old-school form of Marxism/Leninism is on the left. The difference is this: The mainstream media isnt telling us that were in the middle of a Marxist/Leninist moment. Leninist politicians arent being touted as serious presidential contenders. And all the media chatter were hearing about a Libertarian moment ignores the very harsh, extreme and sometimes downright ugly ideas that are being disseminated under that banner.

Its great to have allies like Rand Paul working alongside other Americans to defend our right to privacy, restrain the NSA and reduce the military/industrial complexs grip on foreign policy. Its possible to admire their political courage in these areas while at the same time recognize that we may not care for the environment they inhabit.

Theres another reason to challenge libertarians on the extreme nature of their ideology: A number of them seem determined to drive competing ideas out of the free market for ideaswhich isnt very libertarian of them. There has been a concerted effort to marginalize mainstream values and ideas about everything from workers rights to the role of government in national life. So by all means, lets have an open debate. Lets make sure that all ideas, no matter how unusual they may seem, are welcome for debate and consideration. But lets not allow any political movement to become a Trojan horse, one which is allowed to have a moment without ever telling us what it really represents.

Obviously, not every self-proclaimed libertarian believes these ideas, but libertarianism is a space which nurtures them. Can the Republican Party really succeed by embracing this space? Why does the mainstream media treat libertarian ideas as somehow more legitimate than, say, the social welfare principles which guide Great Britain or Sweden?

Here are seven of modern libertarianisms strangest and most extreme notions.

1. Parents should be allowed to let their children starve to death.Were not making this up. From progressive writerMatt Bruenig(viaSean McElweeat Salon) comes this excerpt from libertarian economist Murray Rothbard:

a parent does not have the right to aggress against his children,but also should not have alegal obligationto feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights. The parent therefore may not murder or mutilate his child, and the law properly outlaws a parent from doing so.But the parent should have the legal rightnotto feed the child, i.e., to allow it to die.

Note the repetitive use of the word it to describe the child. This linguistic dehumanization of helpless individuals is surprisingly common in libertarian literature. (See Ayn Rand and the young Alan Greenspan for further examples.)

Rothbard is a member of the so-called Austrian School of economics, cofounded the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and is widely admired among libertarians. He continues:

The law, therefore, may not properly compel the parent to feed a child or to keep it alive.(Again, whether or not a parent has amoralrather than a legally enforceable obligation to keep his child alive is a completely separate question.) This rule allows us to solve such vexing questions as: should a parent have the right to allow a deformed baby to die (e.g., by not feeding it)?The answer is of course yes, followinga fortiorifrom the larger right to allowanybaby, whether deformed or not, to die. (Though, as we shall see below, in a libertarian society the existence of a free baby market will bring such neglect down to a minimum.)

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The 7 strangest libertarian ideas

Earlier this month the New York Times wondered aloud if the libertarian moment had arrived. A good question, to be sure.

To answer it, though, Times reporter Robert Draper sought out not quite the top libertarian thinkers in the world, but instead those people most easily reached within a ten-minute walk from the Capitol or the Empire State Building.

Draper begins with an ex-MTV personality and proceeds from there. None of the people whose work and writing have shaped the libertarian movement, and who have converted so many people to our point of view, make an appearance. Ask the hordes of young kids who are devouring libertarian classics how many of them were introduced to libertarianism, or even slightly influenced, by the figures on whom the Times chooses to rely. You already know the answer.

The movements major thinkers have rather more intellectual heft behind them, which I suspect is why the Times would prefer to keep them from you. Far better for libertarianism to seem like an ill-focused, adolescent rebellion against authority per se, instead of a serious, intellectually exciting school of thought that challenges every last platitude about the State we were taught in its ubiquitous schools.

Economist and historian Bob Higgs shared my impression of the Times article:

Of course, its easy to ridicule libertarians if you focus exclusively on the lifestyle camp. Easy, too, to accuse them of inconsistency, because in truth these particular libertarians are inconsistent. Easy, too, to minimize their impact by concentrating heavily on conventional electoral politics, as if no other form of societal change were conceivable. Easy, too, to ignore completely the only ones the anarchists who cannot be accused of inconsistency or ridiculed for their impotence as players in the conventional political game, a game for which they have only contempt. Finally, its easy, too and a great deal more interesting for general, clueless readers to focus on the hip libertarians.

As Bob points out, the Time reporter says he finds inconsistency among libertarians, because some want to cut only this much, or abolish only those things. But this is what he gets for focusing on the political class and the Beltway brand of libertarianism. Libertarianism is about as consistent a philosophy as a Times reader is likely to encounter. We oppose aggression, period. That means we oppose the State, which amounts to institutionalized aggression.

We have zero interest in public policy, a term that begs every important moral question. To ask what kind of public policy ought to exist in such-and-such area implicitly assumes (1) that private property is subject to majority vote; (2) that people can be expropriated by the State to whatever degree the State considers necessary in order to carry out the public policy in question; (3) that there exists an institution with moral legitimacy that may direct our physical resources and even our lives in particular ways against our wills, even when we are causing no particular harm to anyone.

Still, I note in passing, political consultants are doing their best to make a quick buck on the rising tide of libertarianism. A fundraising email I receive from time to time urges people to get involved in the political process, since simply educating people (contemptuous, condescending quotation marks in original) isnt enough. Instead, theyre told, its more important to spend their time supporting political candidates who occasionally give a decent speech but who otherwise deny libertarian principles on a routine basis, in the spurious hope that once in office, these candidates will throw off their conventional exteriors and announce themselves as libertarians.

The Times, too, thinks primarily about politics, of all things, when assessing whether the libertarian moment has arrived. The article is fixated on the political class. But why conceive of the question so narrowly? Why should we assess the growth and significance of libertarianism on the basis of political metrics alone?

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Is This the Libertarian Moment?

Libertarianism, morality, relationships

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Libertarianism, morality, & relationships - Video

What Is Libertarianism What Does the Libertarian Party Stand For Ron Paul YouTube clip4

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Libertarianism through Thick and Thin
Written by Charles Johnson Read by Stephanie Murphy Edited by Nick Ford Online article: http://radgeek.com/gt/2011/10/Markets-Not-Capitalism-2011-Chartier-an...

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