Billy, David raises a good question. What exactly are you trying to accomplish with all these emails, other than annoy potential Radical Centrists with libertarian leanings?
E Sent from my iPhone On Jun 12, 2013, at 19:44, "David R. Block" <[email protected]> wrote: > OK, what's the game? Because I don't have the time to play one. You, > apparently, have the time to look up negative articles on Libertarianism > until the cows come home. I don't have time to even attempt to do the > reverse. > > Nice punch to the face you've got here. > > David > > "There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue > in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as "caring" and > "sensitive" because he wants to expand the government's > charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to try to do good with > other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in > supporting such programs is telling us that he'll do good with his own money > -- if a gun is held to his head."--P. J. O'Rourke > > On 6/12/2013 2:12 AM, [email protected] wrote: >> >> from the site: >> The American Conservative >> >> Marxism of the Right >> >> By Robert Locke • March 14, 2005 >> Free spirits, the ambitious, ex-socialists, drug users, and sexual >> eccentrics often find an attractive political philosophy in libertarianism, >> the idea that individual freedom should be the sole rule of ethics and >> government. Libertarianism offers its believers a clear conscience to do >> things society presently restrains, like make more money, have more sex, or >> take more drugs. It promises a consistent formula for ethics, a >> rigorous framework for policy analysis, a foundation in American history, >> and the application of capitalist efficiencies to the whole of society. But >> while it contains substantial grains of truth, as a whole it is a seductive >> mistake. >> >> There are many varieties of libertarianism, from natural-law libertarianism >> (the least crazy) to anarcho-capitalism (the most), and some varieties avoid >> some of the criticisms below. But many are still subject to most >> of them, and some of the more successful varieties—I recently heard a >> respected pundit insist that classical liberalism is libertarianism—enter a >> gray area where it is not really clear that they are libertarians at all. >> But because 95 percent of the libertarianism one encounters at cocktail >> parties, on editorial pages, and on Capitol Hill is a kind of commonplace >> “street” libertarianism, I decline to allow libertarians the sophistical >> trick of using a vulgar libertarianism to agitate for what they want by >> defending a refined version of their doctrine when challenged >> philosophically. We’ve seen Marxists pull that before. >> >> This is no surprise, as libertarianism is basically the Marxism of the >> Right. If Marxism is the delusion that one can run society purely on >> altruism and collectivism, then libertarianism is the mirror-image delusion >> that one can run it purely on selfishness and individualism. Society in fact >> requires both individualism and collectivism, both selfishness and altruism, >> to function. Like Marxism, libertarianism offers the fraudulent intellectual >> security of a complete a priori account of the political good without the >> effort of empirical investigation. Like Marxism, it aspires, overtly or >> covertly, to reduce social life to economics. And like Marxism, it has its >> historical myths and a genius for making its followers feel like an elect >> unbound by the moral rules of their society. >> >> The most fundamental problem with libertarianism is very simple: freedom, >> though a good thing, is simply not the only good thing in life. Simple >> physical security, which even a prisoner can possess, is not freedom, but >> one cannot live without it. Prosperity is connected to freedom, in that it >> makes us free to consume, but it is not the same thing, in that one can be >> rich but as unfree as a Victorian tycoon’s wife. A family is in fact one of >> the least free things imaginable, as the emotional satisfactions of it >> derive from relations that we are either born into without choice or, once >> they are chosen, entail obligations that we cannot walk away from with ease >> or justice. But security, prosperity, and family are in fact the bulk of >> happiness for most real people and the principal issues that concern >> governments. >> >> Libertarians try to get around this fact that freedom is not the only good >> thing by trying to reduce all other goods to it through the concept of >> choice, claiming that everything that is good is so because we choose to >> partake of it. Therefore freedom, by giving us choice, supposedly embraces >> all other goods. But this violates common sense by denying that anything is >> good by nature, independently of whether we choose it. Nourishing foods are >> good for us by nature, not because we choose to eat them. Taken to its >> logical conclusion, the reduction of the good to the freely chosen means >> there are no inherently good or bad choices at all, but that a man who chose >> to spend his life playing tiddlywinks has lived as worthy a life as a >> Washington or a Churchill. >> >> >> Furthermore, the reduction of all goods to individual choices presupposes >> that all goods are individual. But some, like national security, clean air, >> or a healthy culture, are inherently collective. It may be possible to >> privatize some, but only some, and the efforts can be comically inefficient. >> Do you really want to trace every pollutant in the air back to the factory >> that emitted it and sue? >> >> >> Libertarians rightly concede that one’s freedom must end at the point at >> which it starts to impinge upon another person’s, but they radically >> underestimate how easily this happens. So even if the libertarian principle >> of “an it harm none, do as thou wilt,” is true, it does not license the >> behavior libertarians claim. Consider pornography: libertarians say it >> should be permitted because if someone doesn’t like it, he can >> choose not to view it. But what he can’t do is choose not to live in a >> culture that has been vulgarized by it. >> >> Libertarians in real life rarely live up to their own theory but tend to >> indulge in the pleasant parts while declining to live up to the difficult >> portions. They flout the drug laws but continue to collect government >> benefits they consider illegitimate. This is not just an accidental >> failing of libertarianism’s believers but an intrinsic temptation of the >> doctrine that sets it up to fail whenever tried, just like Marxism. >> Libertarians need to be asked some hard questions. What if a free society >> needed to draft its citizens in order to remain free? What if it needed to >> limit oil imports to protect the economic freedom of its citizens from >> unfriendly foreigners? What if it needed to force its citizens to become >> sufficiently educated to sustain a free society? What if it needed to >> deprive landowners of the freedom to refuse to sell their property as a >> precondition for giving everyone freedom of movement on highways? What if it >> needed to deprive citizens of the freedom to import cheap foreign labor in >> order to keep out poor foreigners who would vote for socialistic wealth >> redistribution? >> >> >> In each of these cases, less freedom today is the price of more tomorrow. >> Total freedom today would just be a way of running down accumulated social >> capital and storing up problems for the future. So even if libertarianism is >> true in some ultimate sense, this does not prove that the libertarian policy >> choice is the right one today on any particular question. >> >> Furthermore, if limiting freedom today may prolong it tomorrow, then >> limiting freedom tomorrow may prolong it the day after and so on, so the >> right amount of freedom may in fact be limited freedom in perpetuity. But if >> limited freedom is the right choice, then libertarianism, which makes >> freedom an absolute, is simply wrong. If all we want is limited >> freedom, then mere liberalism will do, or even better, a Burkean >> conservatism that reveres traditional liberties. There is no need to embrace >> outright libertarianism just because we want a healthy portion of freedom, >> and the alternative to libertarianism is not the USSR, it is >> America’s traditional liberties. >> >> >> Libertarianism’s abstract and absolutist view of freedom leads to bizarre >> conclusions. Like slavery, libertarianism would have to allow >> one to sell oneself into it. (It has been possible at certain times in >> history to do just that by assuming debts one could not repay.) And >> libertarianism degenerates into outright idiocy when confronted with the >> problem of children, whom it treats like adults, supporting the >> abolition of compulsory education and all child-specific laws, like those >> against child labor and child sex. It likewise cannot handle the insane and >> the senile. >> >> Libertarians argue that radical permissiveness, like legalizing drugs, would >> not shred a libertarian society because drug users who caused trouble would >> be disciplined by the threat of losing their jobs or homes if current laws >> that make it difficult to fire or evict people were abolished. >> They claim a “natural order” of reasonable behavior would emerge. But there >> is no actual empirical proof that this would happen. Furthermore, this means >> libertarianism is an all-or-nothing proposition: if society continues to >> protect people from the consequences of their actions in any way, >> libertarianism regarding specific freedoms is illegitimate. And since >> society does so protect people, libertarianism is an illegitimate moral >> position until the Great Libertarian Revolution has occurred. >> >> And is society really wrong to protect people against the negative >> consequences of some of their free choices? While it is obviously fair to >> let people enjoy the benefits of their wise choices and suffer the costs of >> their stupid ones, decent societies set limits on both these outcomes. >> People are allowed to become millionaires, but they are taxed. They are >> allowed to go broke, but they are not then forced to starve. They are >> deprived of the most extreme benefits of freedom in order to spare us the >> most extreme costs. The libertopian alternative would be perhaps a more >> glittering society, but also a crueler one. >> >> Empirically, most people don’t actually want absolute freedom, which is why >> democracies don’t elect libertarian governments. Irony of ironies, people >> don’t choose absolute freedom. But this refutes libertarianism by its own >> premise, as libertarianism defines the good as the freely chosen, yet people >> do not choose it. Paradoxically, people exercise their freedom not to be >> libertarians. >> >> The political corollary of this is that since no electorate will support >> libertarianism, a libertarian government could never be achieved >> democratically but would have to be imposed by some kind of authoritarian >> state, which rather puts the lie to libertarians’ claim that under any other >> philosophy, busybodies who claim to know what’s best for other people impose >> their values on the rest of us. Libertarianism itself is based on the >> conviction that it is the one true political philosophy and all others are >> false. It entails imposing a certain kind of society, with all its attendant >> pluses and minuses, which the inhabitants thereof will not be free to opt >> out of except by leaving. >> >> And if libertarians ever do acquire power, we may expect a farrago of >> bizarre policies. Many support abolition of government-issued money in favor >> of that minted by private banks. But this has already been tried, in various >> epochs, and doesn’t lead to any wonderful paradise of freedom but only to an >> explosion of fraud and currency debasement followed by the concentration of >> financial power in those few banks that survive the inevitable >> shaking-out. Many other libertarian schemes similarly founder on the >> empirical record. >> >> A major reason for this is that libertarianism has a naïve view of economics >> that seems to have stopped paying attention to the actual history of >> capitalism around 1880. There is not the space here to refute simplistic >> laissez faire, but note for now that the second-richest nation in the world, >> Japan, has one of the most regulated economies, while nations in which >> government has essentially lost control over economic life, like Russia, are >> hardly economic paradises. Legitimate criticism of over-regulation does not >> entail going to the opposite extreme. >> >> Libertarian naïveté extends to politics. They often confuse the absence of >> government impingement upon freedom with freedom as such. But without a >> sufficiently strong state, individual freedom falls prey to other more >> powerful individuals. A weak state and a freedom-respecting state are not >> the same thing, as shown by many a chaotic Third-World tyranny. >> >> Libertarians are also naïve about the range and perversity of human desires >> they propose to unleash. They can imagine nothing more threatening than a >> bit of Sunday-afternoon sadomasochism, followed by some recreational drug >> use and work on Monday. They assume that if people are given freedom, they >> will gravitate towards essentially bourgeois lives, but this takes for >> granted things like the deferral of gratification that were pounded into >> them as children without their being free to refuse. They forget that for >> much of the population, preaching maximum freedom merely results in >> drunkenness, drugs, failure to hold a job, and pregnancy out of wedlock. >> Society is dependent upon inculcated self-restraint if it is not to slide >> into barbarism, and libertarians attack this self-restraint. Ironically, >> this often results in internal restraints being replaced by the external >> restraints of police and prison, resulting in less freedom, not more. >> >> This contempt for self-restraint is emblematic of a deeper problem: >> libertarianism has a lot to say about freedom but little about learning to >> handle it. Freedom without judgment is dangerous at best, useless at worst. >> Yet libertarianism is philosophically incapable of evolving a theory of how >> to use freedom well because of its root dogma that all free >> choices are equal, which it cannot abandon except at the cost of admitting >> that there are other goods than freedom. Conservatives should know better. >> >> -- >> -- >> 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 >> >> --- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- > -- > 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 > > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- -- 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 --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. 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