A few selections from : Myth and Truth About Libertarianism by _Murray N. Rothbard_ (http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard-lib.html)
1979 ...the state is the only institution which can use the revenue from...orga nized theft to presume to control and regulate people's lives and property. Hence, the institution of the state establishes a socially legitimatized and sanctified channel for bad people to do bad things, to commit regularized theft and to wield dictatorial power. Statism therefore encourages the bad, or at least the criminal elements of human nature. Liberty and the free market discourage aggression and compulsion, and encourage the harmony and mutual benefit of voluntary interpersonal exchanges, economic, social, and cultural. ...[ since ] men are actually a mixture of good and evil, a regime of liberty serves to encourage the good and discourage the bad, at least in the sense that the voluntary and mutually beneficial are good and the criminal is bad ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------- Observations : Factually false in so many cases that anti-statist assertions like the preceding are ridiculous. Then there is demonization of the Government on principle, with no allowance for counter examples, which happen to exist in abundance. This kind of rant is an insult to, among others, George Washington, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and other exemplary presidents, insulting to dedicated fire fighters and police officers, park rangers, border patrol agents, librarians, school teachers, FBI agents, sanitation workers, US Geological Survey people, census bureau workers, and on and on, a list that could be taken to great lengths. Are there bad people in government ? Of course. But there sure in heck are bad people in business, too, and which sets of bad people, per capita, are more numerous ? Anyone's guess, if you are honest. As for the assertion that liberty does the most to make people good, while I do not disagree, what about the anarchists ? You can almost define them as a criminal class. And there are street gangs and other forms of organized crime, much of this very big time. Such criminal groups assume freedom to do exactly as they please and, ideologically, are little different than libertarians. Market worship is also ludicrous insofar as this kind of deference to Wall Street is generally unwilling to be even minimally critical of the cabal of thieves and crooks which have come to dominate the finance capital sector. But is business necessarily non-coercive ? It can be, no argument about that, however... Entire market systems have existed in pre-regulation eras that were very coercive, just think of various mercantilist states with their monopolies, sweatshops, child labor practices, forced labor in mines with permission of authorities, and much else. Not even counting thousands of company towns in the USA in the 19th century and first decades of the 20th, which were de facto petty dictatorships. Which, of course, libertarians never seem to criticize because, you see, the market always works for the best. Which is pure horse manure. Primarily only thanks to the state did such abuses end. And, hate to bring this up, but I'm not the first to do so, slavery was a free market invention. By libertarian logic the South should have won the Civil War. Which is not simple metaphor, a good number of libertarians are pro-Confederacy. These days since slavery is so unpopular, no libertarians will admit to favoring slavery, and I have no reason to think that any actually have such sentiments, but by the logic of their position , well, slavery is market efficient --for slave owners-- and works well in a market economy, therefore... Markets do work remarkably well, but ONLY when capitalists are moral, yet libertarianism discourages any kind of morality except some meager minimum, while discouraging religious morality, and in some schools, actively encouraging selfishness, absence of conscience, and greed. Libertarian "anti-statism," which seems to always be taken to extremes, is also, slight detail, antithetical to the US Constitution . BR comment -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
