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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)