Category Archives: Libertarianism

"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

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Thatcherism - Wikipedia

How Has Liberalism Impacted Libertarianism? Being Libertarian Throughout modern politics, liberalism and conservatism have dominated and overshadowed other philosophies. However, the dynamic of libertarianism and liberalism is rarely discussed. Despite common misconceptions, these two ideologies are not similar ...

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How Has Liberalism Impacted Libertarianism? - Being Libertarian

Hannah Grover , hgrover@daily-times.com Published 4:30 p.m. MT May 26, 2017 | Updated 10:00 a.m. MT May 29, 2017

San Juan County(Photo: The Daily Times stock image)

FARMINGTON For the first time in nearly a decade, the Libertarian Party of New Mexico has a San Juan County chapter.

The chapter was organized earlier this month andwill meet weekly. Meeting information will be posted on its Facebook page.

"We're trying to create some growth," chapter chairwoman Ranota Banks said. "We experienced quite a bit during the Johnson-Weld campaign."

The Libertarian Party has traditionally been the largest of the third parties in the state. Elizabeth Hanes, the chairwoman of the Libertarian Party of New Mexico, said the western ethos of working hard and minding your own business contributes to the success of the Libertarian Party in New Mexico.

"That's very much what Libertarianism is about," she said.

Hanes said the Libertarian Party hopes to run about half a dozen candidates in state and federal races in 2018. Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson's campaign in 2016 led to an increase in registered Libertarian voters.

Johnson received about 9 percent of the votes in New Mexico, or more than 74,000 votes. The number of registered voters and the percentage who voted for Johnson qualified the party to hold primary elections during 2018.There are approximately 6,000 Libertarians registered to vote statewide. Hanes said there are about 400 registered Libertarians in San Juan County.

"This past general election, we had a lot of people switch their affiliation to the Libertarian Party," Banks said.

Hanes said some Republicans identify with the Libertarian stance regarding smaller government. She said the party also aligns with Democratic views on social issues and civil rights, such as same-sex marriage.

Drew Degner, chairman of San Juan County's Republican Party, said there may be some voters who switch affiliation because of the similar stance on smaller government. He said he has seen frustration on both sides nationwide.

Degner said he wishes the Libertarians luck in their endeavor.

"If it is able to gain traction, it might be a good thing for everybody," Degner said.

While the Libertarian Party supports social issues and civil rights, it does not believe in government-funded charities, such as Planned Parenthood.

"We believe that personal giving is preferable to government giving," Hanes said.

She said the Libertarian Party believes in slashing taxes, which would give people more money to donate to charitable organizations.

While San Juan County Democratic Party chairwoman MP Schildmeyer said she wishes the Libertarian Party well, she said she does not agree with the party's stance regarding cutting back Social Security.

"To me, the Libertarian Party is a dangerous party," she said.

Banks said while the party does not believe in forced charity, it does believe in "people taking care of people."

Banks said twice a month the San Juan County chapter will have picnics or trash cleanups.

Hannah Grover covers government for The Daily Times. She can be reached at 505-564-4652.

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Libertarian Party forms San Juan County chapter - Farmington Daily Times

Welcome to another edition of The Lowdown on Liberty, where each week we take questions submitted from our readers as we attempt to clarify the inner-workings of libertarian principles. This week, we cover a universal basic income, the non-aggression principle, non-interventionism, and the infamous Antifa!

To answer the first part of your question Lucas, while people have always had a fear of automation rendering human labor obsolete, that type of scenario has yet to happen, and most likely never will. Automation doesnt actually destroy jobs, it displaces them usually the lowest skilled jobs. A popular example is: If we imagine the job market as a ladder with jobs being the rungs, and the lowest skilled being at the bottom, moving up in skill as we climb, then automation simply kicks out the bottom rung of the ladder and places a new, higher-skilled rung near the top.

As technology advances, the least skilled jobs, often repetitive, menial tasks are automated first. Causing the immediate job loss for a person in that position, but creating a more skilled position somewhere else. Whether its building the robot that does their previous job, installing it, maintaining it, programming it, or improving its design, these are all new, more skilled jobs that are added to the market in exchange for the less skilled job being automated. Weve seen this over time as first-world nations either automate or outsource low-skilled jobs and acquire more high-skilled, technical ones. People have always speculated that jobs would run out once automation began, but population has only grown and even though automation has become more prevalent, there are more jobs today than ever. We may theorize that automation will eventually get to a point where human labor is no longer useful, but its much more likely that higher-skilled labor that doesnt yet exist will continue to enter the market, as people continue improving and inventing. Half the skilled jobs being done today didnt exist 100 years ago, and there is no reason to think the next 100 will be any different.

Now, the second part of your question is a bit easier to predict. Universal basic income has been a hot topic lately, with people such as Mark Zuckerberg coming out clearly in support of it. However, libertarianisms core value of non-aggression is incompatible with the idea. A program that implicitly states that each person should receive according to their need, while others pay into it according to their ability (which is what it boils down to), sounds like the antithesis of libertarianism, and more in line with what a communist would endorse. Seeing as automation is unlikely to render us all suddenly unemployed, we should stick to fighting the welfare state, not endorsing it.

Great question, Scott. This example points out the obvious need for pre-determined rules in these situations. In current cases regarding these matters, most cities have laws telling citizens when excessive noise can be punishable as a citable offense. As Murray Rothbard noted, we should have clearly defined and enforceable property rights because we all partake in activities with unavoidable consequences that affect more than just our own property (smells, light and sound pollution, etc.). In a privatized society, we may resolve these with contracts voluntarily signed between neighbors, by-laws within a homeowners association, or a myriad of other ways to ensure that rules are agreed upon beforehand to ensure peaceful resolutions.

The ideas of non-intervention and keeping terror out go hand-in-hand. Our recent history in the Middle East has shown quite convincingly that there is no resolution to be had from nation-building and constant foreign occupation. While you could make the argument that simply pulling out of there would not solve all our current issues with terrorism, its important to point out the Dave Smith argument, which is: when you murder peoples children, they tend to fucking hate you. Our current strategy, Operation Enduring Freedom, is now the longest conflict in US history, outlasting the Civil War, WWI, and WWII combined. And its clearly failing, so there is no harm in trying non-intervention, because at least it would be a change, and the worst-case scenario would only be a return to the status quo. Although, there is quite a case to be made that it is our decades-long intervention and attempts at regime change that have resulted in our current predicament more than anything else. Why is it that we see swarms of terrorist groups in countries around Africa, yet the US and Europe experience almost no problems from them compared to the attacks coming from the Middle East? Non-intervention may not guarantee the total end of terrorism, but ongoing foreign intervention and attempts at nation building will certainly guarantee its persistence.

The Antifa movement seems to be bad joke that simply wont go away. The idea that you could fight fascism by forcibly shutting down the free speech of those you disagree with is so repugnant that its hard to take them seriously. Yet, we see from their actions that they are quite serious in their approach.

This is troublesome for libertarians for two reasons.

First, the ideas they represent fly directly in the face of libertarian ideals. Our strict adherence to property rights and non-aggression are the two foundations Antifa fights most adamantly against.

Second, they are providing the media with the opportunity to damage our image. For those who may not know, true anarchists, those who identify as anarcho-capitalist, fall under the larger umbrella of libertarianism. However, the media, as well as Antifa themselves, call themselves anarchists too. Now, we in the liberty movement can distinguish their anarcho-communism from what actual anarchy is, but most average Americans cannot. To the uninformed, these people fall into the category relating to anyone who is anti-government; thats us. With that in mind, we must fight the ideas of Antifa at every point possible if we hope to distinguish ourselves from them. They are truly a hypocritical scourge in our society, but if we arent careful, they may cause serious damage to our image and our credibility.

Alright, thats it for this week. Thank you to everyone who wrote in, and make sure you submit your questions each week on our The Lowdown on Liberty post, and the top questions will be answered the following week!

Featured image: BasicIncome.org

This post was written by Thomas J. Eckert.

The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions.

Thomas J. Eckert is college grad with an interest in politics. He studies economics and history and writes in his spare time on political and economic current events.

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Can Libertarians Advocate for Universal Basic Income? The Lowdown On Liberty - Being Libertarian

With the recent release of BackWordz debut album and its success, it dawned on me that a part of libertarianism that was missing is just now beginning to bud into something. That something is taking our ideas and putting them into pop culture.

The ideals of libertarians have been stuck for decades in the academic realm because of the influences of economists, philosophers and historians. While this is great for defending those ideas with other intellectuals, it makes the literature and discourse explaining them and very dry and less accessible.

Frankly, its hard work to learn about free markets, non-aggression, and individualism because these are not widely expressed in popular media. This doesnt mean principle must be sacrificed to spread the ideology, but it might be time for libertarians to leave the lecture hall in favor of the concert venue or movie theater.

What makes the ideologies of the major parties (and even the more left leaning third parties) so rampant, is that their views have had their own music, movies and other pop culture influences for even longer. The 1960s saw the rise of music protesting the government and preaching the need for Civil Rights.

Country Joe Mcdonald wrote I-Feel-Like-Im-Fixin-To-Die-Rag and Creedence Clearwater Revival released Fortunate Son in 1969, both in protest of the Vietnam War.

Art was more geared towards drug use and sexual experimentation. An article from History Now describes the culture as youth counterculture, it carved out new spaces for experimentation and alternative views about what constituted a good society. While a new left, made up of civil rights and anti-war activists, developed as the war in Vietnam dragged out and became increasingly bloody, confounding, and ultimately unpopular.

Patriotic songs like Ballad of the Green Berets by Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler and Merle Haggards Okie from Muskogee also did well as songs supporting the war. Vietnam was the first time that the nations music clearly reflected a division of political views in the country. The tradition of political music has expanded and continued since this era.

The lovers of liberty who would eventually become the Libertarian Party were just beginning to form in response to the war and the Nixon administrations lifting of the gold standard, so supporters of the major parties had way more time than the would-be libertarians to focus on music and art to express their views.

Today, the major parties also have more high profile celebrities, from Leonardo DiCaprio giving a speech on the environment while accepting his Oscar, to Arnold Schwarzenegger becoming Governor of California. Thebiggest libertarian celebrities, outside of economists and philosophers, include Drew Carey, Vince Vaughn and Clint Eastwood, who are not necessarily current A-listers.

Conservatives and liberals also have popular TV shows that support their narratives. Duck Dynasty, and 19 Kids and Counting come to mind when one thinks of conservative shows, while the left has shows like Dear White People, and Modern Family. The closest thing to a libertarian TV show is the greatness (personal opinion) of Ron Swanson in Parks & Recreation.

Libertarianism is just beginning to make its own pop culture and its spearheaded by music groups like BackWordz, and Freenauts, as well as websites like Anarchyball.

Clothing that contains messages of individual and economic freedom are becoming easier to acquire thanks to sites like Libertarian Country, and Threads of Liberty, and sites like Etsy and Zazzle that allow independent producers to sell their products.

This is just the beginning.

In the future, there could be libertarian music festivals, film festivals, art galleries and clothing outlets. What I hope to see is libertarian ideas to begin seeping into more and more pop culture until the values of individualism and non-aggression have become mainstream and more easily able to be adopted.

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Pop Culture is the Next Step for Libertarians - Being Libertarian

Being Libertarian

Alright, So We Elected Libertarians, Now What? The Lowdown On Liberty Being Libertarian Welcome to another edition of The Lowdown On Liberty, where each week we take questions submitted from our readers as we attempt to clarify the inner-workings of libertarian principles. This week, we cover the infamous 'who will build the roads,' as ...

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Alright, So We Elected Libertarians, Now What? The Lowdown On Liberty - Being Libertarian

Being Libertarian

Volunteerism over Coercion Back to the Basics Being Libertarian A lot of libertarians and non-libertarians alike have the misunderstanding that libertarians are against collectivism, socialism, redistribution and social justice. Additionally, liberty, freedom and rights are some of the most ambiguous concepts ...

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Volunteerism over Coercion Back to the Basics - Being Libertarian

Individualism is the fabric of which libertarianism is made. Rather than being a substantive tenetper se, instead it permeates all of libertarianisms overt principles, from the non-aggression principle to argumentation ethics to private property. Indeed, each of those principles are framed in an individualistic way and can only be applied individually.

This does not mean you have to conceive of life as atomistic individuals operating in isolation from one another. On the contrary, one can be very communalistic while appreciating the individualistic essence of libertarianism and the individualistic imperative of public policy. The phrase popularized byTheThree Musketeerssums up the possibility of this quite aptly: All for one, and one for all.

It is often asserted that some cultures do not share the Western conception of property rights or individual liberty, which is correct. However, those who assert this often conclude that that means private property doesnt vest, or there is no entitlement to individual liberty. Perversely, those same individuals then assert that those cultures should be governed according to their culture. Its a classic case of liberty for me, but not for thee, in essence declaring that individuals who happen to have been born in the West are somehow endowed with a natural right to freedom, but those who had the misfortune of being born elsewhere should suck it up and assimilate.

While I have come to accept property rights as the base right, i.e. the precondition for any kind of freedom, what initially brought me to libertarianism was its distinctively individualist bent. That is why I find it concerning that many libertarians have become shockingly selective in their outrage.

It has become common for us to (rightly) criticize modern feminists for being more upset with the apparent oppression of women in the West (hint: women in the West are most assuredly not oppressed), however, we are unable to see that we are making the exact same mistake. When tragedy strikes Europe or North America, the average libertarians Facebook feed will light up with outrage. However, dozens or even hundreds of individuals killed by state actors in the rest of the world are shrugged off, and, sometimes, even accompanied by the Sad, but they should fix their country!Articles about starving Zimbabweans or Venezuelans if they do not have a substantial amount of laughing reacts on Facebook have people commenting only about how We should learn from this and not elect the Democrats! This is profoundly different from the reaction to, for example, the result of the French election, where American libertarians who were in favor of Marine Le Pen apparently wept for France. Nobody weeps for the Central African Republic.

I am bound to be called a left-wing social justice infiltrator in the movement for calling this out (even though my credentials would neuter any such claim), which is perhaps part of the problem I am trying to draw attention to: sincere concern for non-Westerners is somehow now an act of selling out, as if libertarian principles are only supposed to apply to the West. But such eminent thinkers such as Murray Rothbard would once have agreed with me (in fact, not me, but still what I consider to be proper libertarian theory) about the borderless individualism of the philosophy, even though Rothbard might have changed his mind in his later years.

As Rothbard writes in The Ethics of Liberty, here referencing Edwin W. Patterson:

If, then, the natural law is discovered by reason from the basic inclinations of human nature absolute, immutable, and of universal validity for all times and places, it follows that the natural law provides an objective set of ethical norms by which to gauge human actions at any time or place.

He continues, writing:

At this point, we need only stress that the very existence of a natural law discoverable by reason is a potentially powerful threat to the status quo and a standing reproach to the reign of blindly traditional custom or the arbitrary will of the State apparatus.

On natural rights, Rothbard continues:

It was the Lockean individualist tradition that profoundly influenced the later American revolutionaries and the dominant tradition of libertarian political thought in the revolutionary new nation. It is this tradition of natural-rights libertarianism upon which the present volume attempts to build.

And:

If, as we have seen, natural law is essentially a revolutionary theory, then so a fortiori is its individualist, natural-rights branch.

Indeed, if it comes to pass, as is increasingly appearing to happen, that libertarianism is no longer the philosophy of individual freedom, but rather the philosophy of freedom on this side of the [American/European] border and fuck everyone else, I will have no reason to consider myself a libertarian anymore.

Make no mistake, however, my views will not change. If that time comes when I can no longer call myself a libertarian, it would be because the movement, and not I, has abandoned its principles. The floodgates of philosophical inconsistency will be opened when we try to define individual liberty as applying only to some (which always conveniently includes us, as individuals) but not others. Indeed, it will violate the universalization principle and be intellectually dishonest.

I am optimistic, however. Libertarianism, by its nature, is individualistic, and it takes a lot of time and effort to change the very nature of a legal-political philosophy. Thankfully, most libertarians appear to continue to appreciate and recognize the individualism of libertarianism, and are not swayed by that tempting little bit of satisfying collectivism always waiting at the gates.

This post was written by Martin van Staden.

The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions.

Martin van Staden is the Editor in Chief of Being Libertarian, the Legal Researcher at the Free Market Foundation, a co-founder of the RationalStandard.com, and the Southern African Academic Programs Director at Students For Liberty. The views expressed in his articles are his own and do not represent any of the aforementioned organizations.

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The Chief's Thoughts: No Libertarianism Without Individualism - Being Libertarian

Libertarianism (we are told) opposes plunder and violence.

No. Libertarianism opposes any exercise of state power. Thats what its about. It is, like all heretical impulses, the exaltation of a couple of Catholic ideas (the dignity of personal responsibility, the goodness of property, and the hostility to state exercises of lawless tyranny) swollen to madness and used as weapons against the rest of the Churchs teaching on the common good and the responsibility of the state to maintain justice.

Libertarianism is the religious superstition that individualists dont need the help of society, that the state only does evil, and that your average FOX brainwashing victim on a fixed income will be fine because the 1% totally care about him and certainly will defend him when the Party of Trump robs him of Social Security and Medicaid.

Libertarianism is frequently alloyed with the other vital message of FOX: Keep your eye on that brown guy, not us, cuz he wants to rape your woman, take your job, and blow you up.

Above all, Libertarianism is the belief that plucky individuals can destroy Hitlers Europe, create the internet, build and maintain the interstate, wipe out polio and defeat ebola and that health care can be adequately provided by busking on GoFundMe.

It is the delusion that if you need to defeat Big Tobacco for giving you cancer, why, you and a couple of law books you perused can easily take on 9000 lawyers and win!

The Libertarian answer to a widow Trump wants to toss into the street so he can grab her land and build a casino is, Youre on your own and that the true tragedy is when a state superior court judge interferes to inflict violence on Trump to prevent him from doing as he pleases.

But yeah, Libertarianism totally opposes plunder.

Libertarianism is Murray Rothbards belief that a child is a parasitic invader with no right to life because it cannot pay its parents for the property and labor it demands in order to be carried to term and raised to adulthood. If they choose to do so, they may. But if they decide to abort it or drive the child to a remote location and abandon it they may do that too. They owe it nothing.

Some Libertarians will give you the No True Libertarian song and dance to deny that Rothbards insane doctrine speaks for Libertarian doctrine. And yes, it is true that there are Libertarians who cannot face up to the logic of their own doctrine and who, being better human beings that Rothbard, are therefore worse Libertarians than he was. But the reality is that any logically consistent Libertarian must come to the same conclusion he did. The proof of this is that the moment they move away from his monstrous conclusions about refusing children a right to life they immediately take up exactly the same insane arguments to deny the sick a right to health care (which is but the corollary of the right to life). They immediately resume the lie that there can be no right to anything that require the labor or property of another personwhich is exactly the basis of Rothbards insane doctrine that children have no right to life.

Libertarians make much of the Non-Aggression Principle. In the final analysis, all it really means is the steadfast belief that the strong may do as they please to the weak and that the state must never interfere to break up the gang rapebecause *that* would be violence.

Libertarianism therefore defines taxation as theft, but not price-gouging. It defines labor law as violence, but not strike-breaking. It defends the rich when he sells the righteous for silver and the need for a pair of sandals, since that is just the invisible hand of the market working its wonders to weed out the unfit. It stands firmly on the side of cruelty to the alien, the orphan, and the widow and defies the very possibility, much less the scriptural duty, of the king judging justly or protecting the least of these from the rapine and theft of the wealthy, sleek, fat, and powerful.

It is, in short, a heresy that limits the effects of the fall to the state and denies they effect the rich and powerful. It is a heresy that absolutizes property rights over the dignity of the human person, especially the poor human person. It is a heresy that says that man was made for the law, especially property law, and not the law for man.

More than that, it is a mania that sees in every state action, no matter how obvious, just and sane, the imminent approach of tyranny. All taxation is theft. All claims of the common good are collectivism. All work for the common good is a deprivation of freedom. It is the kind of mania in which a person can, with a straight face, write the words, It is a liberal fantasy that government provides anything. For something to be given by government, they have to first take it from someone elseon the state-invented and state-provided internet.

Meanwhile, the common sense teaching of the Church is that there is a common good: that we begin (as Rothbard insanely denies), not as adults freely exchanging goods and labor, but as human beings in radical and incalculable and unpayable debt, not only to God, but to our parents, our culture, our country, our civilization, and ultimately to the whole human race that has provided us, free of charge with life, a language, Shakespeare, the Beatles, the Declaration of Independence, the Bible, lullabies, clothes, electricity, Spiderman, E=MC2, and a billion other things we never would have thought of ourselves.

The central and core lie of Libertarianism is its radical ingratitude and its belief in the grotesque fiction of the Self Made Man. You are not your own; you were bought with a price. (1 Co 6:1920). That is why the central and core truth of the Christian revelation is radical gratitude, also known as the Eucharist.

Libertarianism, I repeat, borrows from the Catholic tradition, as all really powerful heresies do. Indeed, what gives all heresy power is the truth it misappropriates. But Libertarianism adds nothing to the Faith. The truths it asserts are all truths the Faith asserts. But the lies it asserts are its own and only damage our relationship with God, our neighbor and our own souls. Choose the whole Faith over the shreds and patches of Libertarianism.

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Libertarianism is incompatible with the Faith - Patheos (blog)

In a recent message by Pope Francis to the Pontifical Academy of Social Science he outlines some moral concerns about a phenomenon he sees as invading (his term) high levels of culture and education in both universities and in schools, namely libertarian individualism.

On the first day of my philosophy classes, the professor admonished us that if we want to have an intelligent discussion or debate, we must begin by defining our terms. Exchanges can become heated and rambunctious but ultimately pointless without observing this first step in clarity.

So lets consider the popes own definition of what he is criticizing. Like the word capitalism, the word libertarian is encrusted with numerous definitions, broad and narrow as well as nuanced and blunt. What, then, is the pope talking about?

When the pope speaks of libertarian individualism, he has in mind something which he says exalts the selfish ideal, whereby it is only the individual who gives values to things and interpersonal relationships and where it is only the individual who decides what is good and what is bad.

This, he says, result is a belief in self-causation, which I take to mean the denial of any givenness in human nature in favor of a radical autonomy in which morality is no longer a question of free adherence to the truth about good and evil but rather simply a matter of whatever I will it to be.

All of this, the pope contends (and I agree), denies the common good. One could add that it also denies the entire tradition of natural law via an exaltation of subjectivity and the detachment of conscience from the truths knowable via faith and reason.

But the most interesting part of Pope Franciss comments arise when he states that libertarian individualism denies the validity of the common good because on the one hand it supposes that the very idea of common implies the constriction of at least some individuals, and the other that the notion of good deprives freedom of its essence. This, then, is anti-social at the root.

At one level, the pope is expressing concern about the type of mindset that denies that there are conditions which enhance human flourishing (which is how the Catholic Church understands the common good) through the acceptance of common constraints (the rule of law being a good example).

He also seems to be critiquing any ethical system that sees freedom, in the sense of absence of constraint, as its own end and finality. For Catholics and other Christians, liberty is more than just negative freedom or the capacity to will X rather than Y.

All this is standard Catholic teaching. The question that remains is whether the pope is offering a fair or accurate definition of libertarianism.

Consider, for example, that there are many schools of libertarianism Lockean libertarians, bleeding heart libertarians, Nozickian libertarians, Hayekian libertarians, Randian libertarians, even Rothbardian anarcho-capitalists, to name just a few.

By no means do they agree about everything. As interesting as it might be to examine the differences between these positions, I think it is more productive to outline some concepts to which I suspect all serious believers could subscribe and see if these can provide an alternative to the specific kind of libertarianism the pope is denouncing but also inoculate us against collectivist alternatives that some might believe the pope could be advocating.

Human beings are not simply individuals, even if we colloquially employ this word to describe people. Certainly, human beings enjoy the kind of legitimate liberty and distinctiveness which some (e.g., Aristotle and Aquinas among others) refer to at times as an expression of individuality.

Even the Vatican IIs Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes speaks of private property as conferring on everyone a sphere wholly necessary for the autonomy of the person and the family, and it should be regarded as an extension of human freedom.

We also know, as a matter of natural reason and natural science, that from the moment of conception, each human being is biologically distinct from his father and mother. Their DNA, for instance, is different. Yet at the same time, that very same individual human being is in relation to his mother and father.

In short, the human person is both individual and social simultaneously. Perhaps in this light it is better to speak of human beings not so much as individuals but as persons.

The social reality of persons to persons is what constitutes a human community. This is a bond one which certainly comes with some constraints, but one which cant be reduced to constraints.

This brings me to the popes concern about bonds and constraints in relation to human freedom. In this regard I have long found the writings of the sociologist Robert Nisbet to be helpful, particularly the distinction he draws between power and authority.

Both power and authority are forms of constraint, Nisbet explains. Power is a form of constraint external to the person. This means that a constraint is forced upon a person without regard to that persons free will, such as an act of violence to conform anothers behavior.

Authority, on the other hand, is a form of constraint interior to the person, some overarching code that the person himself believes in and to which he acquiesces, as begrudgingly as the case may be, such as abstaining from meat on Friday.

Most of us freely submit to all sorts of authority, in Nisbets sense of the word, and rightly resent what Nisbet regards as impositions of power.

Another form of authority long recognized by the Church is, of course, legitimate law and the legitimate acts of sovereign governments. Law and government certainly impose constraints upon people but they also create particular bonds between particular groups of people.

From this standpoint, we start to see that many of the debates engaged in by people of all political persuasions including self-described libertarians concern when a bond has become an illegitimate constraint; or where a constraint, however necessary, is mistaken for a bond.; or when societies are relying too heavily on constraints to do the work of what is normally undertaken by bonds.

Alexis de Tocqueville summed this up in one succinct question when he asked, How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed?

These are the questions which are, and should be, engaged in by societies that seek to take liberty, justice, and the common good seriously. They are also perpetual works in progress.

The irony, however, is that we live in a time when a concern for liberty especially in the specifically Christian sense of the term far from invading our cultures, is under siege.

In some parts of the world, it is threatened by the type of populism that has done so much damage in Pope Franciss Latin America (and is presently destroying Venezuela). In other countries, it is being slowly strangled by the bureaucracies which rule European social democracies.

Then there is the jihadism that is destroying the freedom of many, and literally killing thousands of Christians ever year.

So while the popes warnings against the radical individualism against which the Catholic Church has always cautioned are important, lets hope that his words dont distract attention from some of the profound violations of freedom occurring across the world.

Father Robert A. Sirico is president and co-founder of the Acton Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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Pope Francis's attack on "libertarian individualism" not about ... - Crux: Covering all things Catholic