The foolishness of American libertarianism
Bodhisattvacat
good and evil: Individual good, government bad. The libertarian
sees government as essentially the source of all evil and wants
it to be eviscerated in order that the individual initiative and
effort may make a country that has no rulers and functions by an
invisible hand.
The libertarian's calculations fail at a major point. He fails to
recognize what should be obvious - that the governments are made
up of people, and people, both in government and outside of
government, are capable of doing wrong. Foolishly seeing the
government as main source of wrong in the world - projecting
egoistically his most immediate source of frustration onto the
rest of the universe - the libertarian fails to realize that
there are other ways to do harm than through central government,
and that people, when left to their own devices, are capable of
being as nasty as the government and hurting others just as badly
if not worse. Wrongly seeing his propensities as all-good and
foolishly externalizing upon the rest of humanity his misplaced
faith in himself, he fails to recognize the capacity for evil
that dwells in each human heart, government or no, and sets the
stage for emergence of still greater evil.
Indeed, when the government under consideration is the American
government - a government that is based on noble principles; that
places itself under a rigorous system of checks-and-balances to
prevent it from tyrannizing people; that over the last decade
made itself as efficient and user-friendly as any private sector
organization - a government that makes rigorous effort to protect
and safeguard individual liberties - the libertarian's tenet is
absolutely untenable. In place of the American government, a
government that subjects itself to rigorous self-examination and
self-control, come inferior usurpers who have none of the
American government's founding principles - who are thugs and
bullies - who grossly mistreat people they have at their mercy
and deprive them of basic rights and dignities. Shorn of American
government's constitutional protection for life and liberty, the
people in the communities run by the usurpers live in a state of
fear and anxiety; in a state of constant threat and menace, with
the unofficial usurpers and bullies robbing the people at their
mercy of their basic human rights.
An example of what I am talking about is the pattern of incest
in American South and Midwest. More than half of all women I know
from these two areas of the country - the areas that clamor most
loudly to represent family values and most loudly malign
American federal government - have been violated sexually by
their fathers, brothers or uncles. The women were under coercion
to keep silent - their mothers were either too disenfranchised to
take up their cause or protected the perpetrators, eager to keep
up the false image of their societies as bastions of virtue and
morality and escape the shame of acknowledging that their
families did not work. These are the people who want to be free
of federal government - who want to be free, that is, to rape and
batter the people who are at their mercy. It is American
government's duty to defend the rights of the victims of such
usurpers, and removing American government leaves them
defenseless before the people who harm them and violate their
basic rights.
This is not an improvement upon America. This is a degradation
upon America. This is taking away, under pretense of liberty, of
the basic conditions of liberty - a life free from fear, violence
and violation; a life in which there are well-defined and well-
defended rights, both for the people who claim to speak for
society and for people they hold at their mercy. A strong central
government is a necessary guarantor of liberty - ensuring that
in all of America, whatever the social fads and whatever the
ideological whimsies of one or another region, human rights and
liberties are protected unconditionally. A strong central
government that pursues noble principles and checks-and-balances
and protects people's rights is the most benign, most noble, most
wise organ of power in America - far superior in its principles
and its treatment of population to any of the inferior usurpers,
whether they call themselves Christian Right or academic feminists
or Bloods and Crips. Human rights and human liberties are protected,
not destroyed, by American government. As such a true believer in
liberty supports the federal government of America and works with
it against the usurpers and bullies to protect people's rights and
provide for them a dignified, fear-free existence.
Glenn Knickerbocker
> To criticise libertarianism, you must first put oneself on the same
> level
That of the Lord of the Flies, apparently, where infants may freely
decide the same as anyone else whether they wish to be free from rape,
have public roads, or pay taxes.
ŹR
Glenn Knickerbocker
>References: <cf8emj$8...@odak26.prod.google.com>
This is a slight improvement, allowing someone unclear on the context to
review it, but it still doesn't tell a program anything about the
organization of the messages unless you can get it in *before* the first
non-header line.
>Glenn Knickerbocker wrote:
>> That of the Lord of the Flies, apparently, where infants may freely
>> decide the same as anyone else whether they wish to be free from rape,
>> have public roads, or pay taxes.
>Yes, absolutely. This is man's primal condition.
Do you have anything to say about how infants are supposed to be able to
make and express these choices before they have any understanding of what
rape, public roads, and taxes are? You can even skip over that awkward
year or two before they acquire language.
¬R | Anybody who disagrees with Mike is
http://users.bestweb.net/~notr | practically a Nazi. Cool. --LisaB
rone
Libertarianism: all the freedom, none of the responsibility. You fascist!
rone
one friend calls these people "lipstick libertarians".
my brother prefers "LOLbertarian".
--
Here comes the tired statesman,
Heavy-lidded, bearded, nowhere left to land
He makes the jigsaw fit
With a hammer in his hand
Mark Hill
> If not, consider the opposite: where do the rules come from? God?
> Buddha? A giant taco in the sky?
Kibo. Where do you think you're posting?
Aldo Pignotti
> The libertarian's worldview consists of a separation between
> good and evil:
I thought this was going to be one of Don Saklad's rants about the
Boston Public Library.
Dr. Otto Bahn
> > The libertarian's worldview consists of a separation between
> > good and evil:
>
> I thought this was going to be one of Don Saklad's rants about the
> Boston Public Library.
I thought it would be about the Boston Mafia,
but then again they might be related.
I just learned that you can go into about any
large library, and they'll teach you how to make
big bombs or even a nuke. Wild stuff. I did
not know that. I could get a B in Princeton's
physics class!
--Tedward