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A libertarian utopia
Aeon Magazine ^ | 4-28-14 | Livia Gershon

Posted on 05/09/2014 6:19:54 PM PDT by RKBA Democrat

For a country where the national flag flies from front porches and convenience stores and where children recite the Pledge of Allegiance each morning at school, we’re remarkably resistant to the notion of being governed. In the fall of 2013, the Pew Research Center found that only three in ten Americans trust the federal government to do what’s right ‘most of the time’. The self-conception of most Americans, with their visions of pioneers and plucky underdogs fighting for independence, is all about freedom. The flip side of that vision, however, is all about distrusting government.

And ‘government’, in US political discourse, is ideological. The right claims that excessive government hampers the ability of companies to create jobs; the left that it protects the public from the worst excesses of businesses. The divide is patently artificial: the vast majority of government economic policy draws no fire from conservatives. Still, by setting up ‘government’ as a dirty word in their anti-Democrat campaigns, the Republicans can claim freedom as their brand.

But if you really want to talk about what it means to oppose the government, the place to start isn’t with Republicans. It’s with the one group in the US political landscape that absolutely promises to take our rhetoric about freedom seriously: libertarians. Libertarians really do believe that government is the problem, as Ronald Reagan said back in 1981, and they’ve decided to get rid of it, or at least shrink it dramatically.

Enter Liberty Forum – an annual conference organised by the Free State Project, a group of activists who are trying to get 20,000 libertarians to move to the state of New Hampshire, where I live. These are people who gladly pit themselves not just against the welfare state or the regulation of business, but against military spending, state-funded schools, federal highways and government-issued money.

The Free State Project began life in 2001 with a call-to-arms by Jason Sorens, then a political science PhD student at Yale. Sorens suggested that a few thousand activists could radically change the political balance in the small state. ‘Once we’ve taken over the state government, we can slash state and local budgets, which make up a sizeable proportion of the tax and regulatory burden we face every day,’ he wrote. ‘Furthermore, we can eliminate substantial federal interference by refusing to take highway funds and the strings attached to them.’

Sorens’ views — which focus on problems with taxes and regulations and don’t dispute the government’s role in protecting commerce and conducting foreign policy – suggest a more-Republican-than-the-Republicans sort of outlook. But some people who’ve responded to his call subscribe to an entirely different ideology: an anarchism that sees government as a tool of wealthy capitalists. The rest fall somewhere in between. Free Staters say that what brings them together is a common belief that government is the opposite of freedom.

The crowd that gathered in February for Liberty Forum 2014 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Nashua was a pretty good reflection of the US libertarian movement: mainly male, and overwhelmingly white. A few people openly carried guns, which is thoroughly legal in New Hampshire.

One of the first speakers, Aaron Day, a Republican activist and member of the Free State Project board, railed against government plans to expand Medicaid. His PowerPoint flashed images comparing President Barack Obama’s health insurance reforms to the Soviet famine of the 1930s, when Stalin shipped away Ukraine’s wheat, leaving its people to starve. Day announced he’d be running for state Republican Party chair and called for everyone in the audience to seek local office. If I was looking for the embodiment of right-wing libertarianism, here he was, a true believer in cutting the government down to size from within – starting with programmes that benefit the poor.

I meet conservatives who’ve moved towards a live-and-let-live attitude that calls for government to stay out of issues such as sex and drugs

Johnna and Cory Bartholomew, a couple from California who sat among the crowd watching Day, plan to join the influx to New Hampshire soon. Even at a glance, it’s not hard to recognise the Bartholomews as a military couple, despite the pink streaks in Johnna’s hair. Cory wears a crew cut, and both of them radiate a friendliness rooted in bedrock self-confidence. For their 20th anniversary, they visited Hawai’i. This year, for their 30th, they flew east for Liberty Forum, as a sort of final test before moving to the state.

The Bartholomews met as Mormon students at Brigham Young University in Utah. Over the years, their conservatism on social issues dropped away and they left the Church. Cory doesn’t like to call himself an atheist. As an Air Force pilot whose job revolves around technology, he prefers ‘scientist’ – a believer in the empirically provable. ‘I’m not a person of faith,’ he says, ‘I’m a person of “show me”.’ I end up hearing many such stories at Liberty Forum: conservatives who say they’ve slowly drifted from a focus on social issues towards a live-and-let-live attitude that calls for government to stay out of issues such as sex and drugs. But if Aaron Day comes across as essentially right-wing, the Bartholomews seem different. For one thing, they talk more about free speech than taxes.

‘Our kids grew up hearing us talk about politics,’ Cory told me. When they were small, he and Johnna had their three children memorise the preamble to the US Constitution, with its promise to ‘secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity’. Now in their 20s, two of their boys have taken up political activism against government overreach. They’ll protest against police cameras that photograph drivers’ licences at traffic lights, or they’ll hold up signs warning drivers about a drunk-driving checkpoint ahead.

One day in 2011, the brothers donned the Guy Fawkes masks made famous by Anonymous and held up a huge sign bearing the message ‘Taxes=Theft’ on a highway overpass. They got arrested after refusing to show their IDs to the cops. Eventually, two charges against them, relating to posting a sign on government property and wearing masks while committing a crime, were dropped. They ended up sentenced to probation for ‘delaying an officer’. To Johnna, the conviction was typical of a justice system that, despite its rhetoric, has little real respect for free speech: ‘We think “I have this little box of treasure called my rights,” but the moment you bring one of those out and try to exercise it, people are afraid.’

Their sons had already signed on for the Free State Project when the Bartholomews decided to follow their lead. Johnna says that her upbringing in the Mormon Church, founded by families who crossed a continent for their faith, inspires them and makes leaving their daughter and Johnna’s mother behind seem more manageable. ‘If you really believe in something and want to be part of something, then you leave; you leave what you’re used to and you may go somewhere you’re not so comfortable.’ This is, of course, what the Free State Project depends on – people willing to adopt a frontiering mentality so that they’ll leap cross-country to get beyond the current political landscape.

The Free State Project draws recruits with a mishmash of different philosophies, which isn’t surprising given libertarianism’s history. By some accounts, the first thinker to describe himself as libertarian was Joseph Déjacque, a mid-19th-century French anarcho-communist writer. Déjacque’s beef wasn’t just with government, but with capitalist bosses and religious hierarchies. Any kind of authority was an assault on individual autonomy. He even opposed families, with their elevation of husband above wife and parents above children. For about a century, this is what people meant when they said “libertarianism”: a far-left vision of autonomous individuals working as equals.

Then, beginning in the 1950s, a new definition of ‘libertarianism’ emerged in America, defining its love of freedom in ways that directly contradicted Déjacque. The new philosophy drew on the classical liberalism of Thomas Jefferson, filtered through an economic lens that made property rights central. This was the libertarianism of the Cato Institute think tank, formed in 1977 by economist Murray Rothbard, corporate right-wing superstar Charles Koch, and Edward Crane, a leader of the then-fledgling Libertarian Party. Here, the government was faulted not for standing with capital against the people but for getting in the way of progress by promoting socialist welfare systems.

To get a better handle on what sort of libertarianism was at play at Liberty Forum, I asked attendees what their ideal society would look like. The answer, for the most part, was that it would be completely different from the world we know. Drugs and prostitution would be legal. Education and medical care would be market commodities or gifts. In the absence of government support, individuals would be forced to help each other. Without liability protection or the ability to lobby for favours from the state, corporations as we know them would disappear in favour of smaller, more dynamic companies. The vision is so distant and theoretical that even Déjacque-style anarchists and Cato-esque reformers can work side by side in the same movement.

A good thing about working with libertarians is that no one expects to coerce you into participating in something you don’t approve of

James Davis, who plans to move his family to New Hampshire this fall, believes in a libertarianism that looks a bit like Déjacque’s: he wants to free regular people from oppressive institutions. When his first child was born, Davis and his wife got interested in parenting theories that advocate giving children as much freedom as possible. ‘We came upon these ideas of philosophical libertarianism,’ he said. ‘If people don’t trust adults, how can they trust children?’ The couple took over the management of a foundering summer camp in upstate New York and applied their ideas about freedom to it, giving campers as much leeway as possible to make their own choices. It’s the sort of vision that progressives have promoted for decades through democratic schools such as Summerhill, in Suffolk, England, and also one that many Free Staters embrace by home schooling their children and letting them help organise their own educations.

Philosophically, Davis doesn’t believe in government-funded benefits for the poor – drawn from taxation and backed up by prisons and guns. Having worked in non-profit organisations, he’s convinced that in a post-government society people will come through to help the needy without prodding. But he believes that society is a long way off. For now, he’s moving to New Hampshire to be among a community of people who want to improve the world through voluntary action. ‘I suspect it’ll be much like living anywhere,’ he said, ‘but around people who inspire me to be better.’ Davis doesn’t necessarily expect to encounter like minds everywhere, but says that a good thing about working with libertarians is that no one expects to coerce you into participating in something you don’t approve of.

The Bartholomews share Davis’s notion of building a better world outside government mechanisms. As a member of a local school board in California, Johnna recalls being faced with the question of whether to borrow money to pay for desperately needed repairs on a school. ‘I said, definitely, this school needs help, but we haven’t asked one business, we haven’t asked one person, to voluntarily give us one dollar.’

To long-time New Hampshire libertarian Jack Shimek, that focus on voluntary methods is the key to libertarianism. Shimek got interested in politics as a college student in Texas around 1969, a time when young US men worried less that the government would tax them too much than that it would ship them off to a jungle battlefield where they would die. A friend introduced him to Ayn Rand’s philosophy of radical, selfish individualism. Within a few years, he had moved to New York City and into Déjacque’s branch of libertarianism, to argue that the authoritarianism of capitalist bosses is inextricably connected to government tyranny.

Ayn Rand’s Objectivism contained a ‘fatal flaw’, says Shimek. She confused capitalism, a system that gives wealthy owners control over workers, with free markets, which depend on individual autonomy. ‘Capitalists are always in favour of keeping their piece of the pie through political power,’ Shimek told me. ‘When General Motors screws up, it has enough power to convince the government to bail it out.’ Another thing corporations can do, he says, is flood libertarian think tanks and magazines with money: ‘The libertarian movement, originally radical, was invaded by conservative reformers.’ Behind that, says Shimek, are corporate funders with an agenda: ‘They [just] want it to decrease regulation on them, they want it to lower taxes on them.’

Shimek was already living in New Hampshire when Jason Sorens’s idea of a Free State Project took hold. He was thrilled with the influx of people into the tiny libertarian community, but not with the focus on running for office and voting. ‘I said, wait a minute, we’re libertarians, we don’t believe in government.’

For libertarians, Bitcoin is a technology with the potential to circumvent a lot of what’s wrong with the world

At Liberty Forum, Shimek runs Alt Expo, an unofficial series of alternative programmes, with topics such as organic farming and local currencies. The idea is not to confront the government but to live outside it as much as possible. If the power of the state comes from coercion, creating alternatives uses a different kind of power, based in example and persuasion. Though this year’s Alt Expo was sparsely attended, Shimek said it had been a success anyway, because the official programming is now full of these kinds of ideas.

Plenty of people at Liberty Forum think electoral politics is a drag. Carla Gericke, president of the Free State Project, told me she finds politics ‘soul-numbing’. Sessions on farming and gardening – concrete methods of evading government-subsidised industrial agriculture – drew bigger audiences than the ones about lobbying or running for office. Ditto for presentations about technology, which expand the vision of voluntary action beyond government to a global scale. One session is run by two cousins with a start-up who envision a post-industrial economy where individuals trade goods, services and labour online, through portals such as Uber and Airbnb. Everyone is talking about Bitcoin. In the mainstream, the cyber currency comes up mostly as a curiosity, but at Liberty Forum it’s a technology with potential to circumvent a lot of what’s wrong with the world. At one session, panelists wax poetic about paying friends for rides, patronising local businesses, and buying clothes from Australia without taxes, credit card fees, or any contact with the global web of government and private banks.

At another tech sessions, Jeffrey Tucker draws huge crowds. He wears a suit, bow tie, and a mischievous expression, and is prone to phrases such as ‘outrunning troglodyte systems of power’. Tucker points to his smartphone as the symbol of a new society, one with frictionless information exchange, free online education and peer-to-peer lending. To Tucker’s mind, technology is transforming both corporate structures and banking, and politics simply doesn’t much matter. The goal is simply to circumvent dull and lumbering government bureaucrats. ‘We’re going to displace all the institutions of the state,’ he promises gleefully.

By the second-to-last night of the forum, Cory Bartholomew has snapped selfies with a handful of people he calls his ‘liberty heroes’. People such as Cody Wilson, who helped invent the first plastic guns that can be produced on 3D printers, and Thomas Drake and Jesselyn Radack, former government employees who became whistle-blowers, exposing domestic government surveillance and the illegal interrogation of terror suspects. Their stories make Cory wonder if he was naive about the military earlier in his career.

Other delegates flock to an unofficial party at the Quill, a private club and meeting space inside an unmarked storefront in Manchester, New Hampshire. Downstairs, dance music plays and colourful lights throb between the old ceiling beams. Antigone Darling, a slight, 20-something podcaster who’s the host of the party, hands out sex toys to anyone in her audience who yells loud enough: one to Amanda Billyrock, an anarchist who became a libertarian star after she met allegations of drunk driving with counter-allegations of police misconduct; another to ‘Objectivist Girl’, who wears dramatic eye make-up and makes videos explaining the philosophy of Ayn Rand.

Upstairs, a late-night dinner is for sale: grass-fed beef burger with grass-fed bacon and broccoli slaw salad – technically illegal since the cook refuses to get a food service permit. A group of young men stand in a circle talking about their tech start-up, a company that facilitates the use of Bitcoin.

J J Schlessinger, the Quill’s manager, explains a plan to distribute blankets to homeless people who live near the club. He’s also interested in discouraging vandals, not by calling the cops but by keeping an eye on them, maybe asking if their mothers would approve of what they’re doing. Schlessinger uses the word love a lot. He runs the Quill out of love, and wants to help his neighbours with love. The important thing, he says, is for people to reach out to each other in person, not delegate the job to government.

It’s easy to see the Free State Project as a sort of outsize version of the government-hating right. There are issues that libertarians and the left oppose together – high defence spending, corporate subsidies – but they are hard to get at: mostly legislated at the federal level and protected by wealthy interests. It’s much easier to get elected to the local school board and slash local budgets, or to lobby the state legislature against the expansion of health benefits. Republican Party-style libertarians are thus much more visible, and they spend a lot of time trying to cut taxes and reduce spending, invoking the revolutionary spirit of 1776 as they go.

But, looking at the party at the Quill, there’s the suggestion of another American myth: the one about pioneers, often bearing wildly idealistic notions, who come together to build new institutions. Anyone with a passing knowledge of US history knows how fraught with missteps and malice the realities of that process have been, but the myth is a powerful one: if we distrust the government, then we have to trust each other. It’s a notion around which anarchists, Republicans and almost anyone else can find common ground, given sufficient optimism about building a new society.

As Liberty Forum winds down, Johnna and Cory Bartholomew are excited about moving. Johnna’s just seen a panel of volunteers who started charitable organisations to encourage self-sufficiency, and she thinks it’s something she’d like to do. This is the thing, ultimately, that seems to bring people to the Free State Project. They become libertarians because they hate taxes, or fear a police state, or distrust collusion between the state and corporate power. But they move to New Hampshire because they want, more than any of these things, to build something new together.


TOPICS: Chit/Chat
KEYWORDS: freestateproject; libertarian; liberty; libertyforum; nh
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To: RKBA Democrat

Libertarianism is pro-abortion, and of course that is the position of the vast majority of the individual libertarians, it is one of the many issues that makes them oppose conservatism.

What we see on FR, since abortion is taboo, is libbers continually trying to convince the audience that libertarianism is pro-life, an incredible lie, that leaves no doubt about those who will keep trying to spread it among GOP supporters and conservatives.


161 posted on 05/10/2014 10:08:28 AM PDT by ansel12 ((Ted Cruz and Mike Lee-both of whom sit on the Senate Judiciary Comm as Ginsberg's importance fades)
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To: Jagdgewehr

Social liberalism makes economic conservatism, impossible.

Libertarianism makes limited government, and conservative economics, impossible, and the incredible cultural gains by libertarians and leftists in the last 50 years proves that.

Libertarians forget that people vote to make law, and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, will vote for more government programs and welfare, and redistribution of wealth, they won’t be voting conservative.

Libertarians, “”give me full term abortion, gay marriage, crack and hookers, weak nation defense, and open borders today, and I will gladly pay you small government and a return to traditional America on Tuesday.””


162 posted on 05/10/2014 10:15:50 AM PDT by ansel12 ((Ted Cruz and Mike Lee-both of whom sit on the Senate Judiciary Comm as Ginsberg's importance fades)
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To: ansel12

Libertarians are pretty evenly split on abortion. I know plenty.


163 posted on 05/10/2014 10:23:38 AM PDT by all the best (sat`~!)
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To: ansel12

The vast majority of libertarians are not in any way affiliated with or associated with the LP. Fact.


164 posted on 05/10/2014 10:24:51 AM PDT by all the best (sat`~!)
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To: ansel12

“cults are famous for changing the message for different audiences, and that is a staple of libertarianism:

Libertarianism is not the monolith that you so ignorantly believe. Just like Christians. Bible believing Christians (not talking about apostates an d heretics)can’t even agree on much even though they adhere to the same source.


165 posted on 05/10/2014 10:27:21 AM PDT by all the best (sat`~!)
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To: Bikkuri; Ladysforest

That libertarian didn’t last long at FR.

It is why they are so cagey about their politics, while arguing against conservatism.


166 posted on 05/10/2014 10:27:31 AM PDT by ansel12 ((Ted Cruz and Mike Lee-both of whom sit on the Senate Judiciary Comm as Ginsberg's importance fades)
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To: ansel12

sounds exactly like what the pubs under bohner are pushing...

the difference, you ask???

the capital L libertarians will say this to you to your face...

the pubs will lie right to your face, and then blame you when the crap passes...

who you gonna support, the people who tell you the truth about what they are, and then you can possibly work to change it??

or the people that will lie to your face, and then blame you for all the problems they face???

if you support the pubs, then you, sir, are a fool....


167 posted on 05/10/2014 10:31:56 AM PDT by joe fonebone (a socialist is just a juvenile communist)
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To: all the best

I’m obviously not ignorant about libertarianism, but it is clear that either you know next to noting about it, or you are a even worse liar than you so far appear to be.

You are making up all kinds of silly untruths about the movement.

The libertarian movement and it’s political goals, are not some vast, endlessly diverse, unknowable movement, it is a little group of white guys who bicker very little and that is why it never changes, for instance it is still pro-abortion, it is fundamentally libertarian.

Abortion is why Ayn Rand so despised the conservative Ronald Reagan.


168 posted on 05/10/2014 10:36:54 AM PDT by ansel12 ((Ted Cruz and Mike Lee-both of whom sit on the Senate Judiciary Comm as Ginsberg's importance fades)
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To: joe fonebone

I think you need some coffee, that didn’t make sense.

I won’t support pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage politics and politicians, and especially not because they campaign openly for them, that doesn’t make sense.


169 posted on 05/10/2014 10:39:37 AM PDT by ansel12 ((Ted Cruz and Mike Lee-both of whom sit on the Senate Judiciary Comm as Ginsberg's importance fades)
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To: all the best
Libertarians are pretty evenly split on abortion. I know plenty

That is a blatant lie, even if 50/50 acceptance of abortion was acceptable for the anti-conservative politics that you are promoting here, it isn't close to being true.

Either you don't know what you are promoting, or else you are deliberately making up these ridiculous claims.

part of being libertarian, is supporting abortion, and of course the gay agenda, and all the other liberalism that makes them anti-conservative.

Quit trying to pretend that libertarianism is just a new word for conservative.

170 posted on 05/10/2014 10:49:47 AM PDT by ansel12 ((Ted Cruz and Mike Lee-both of whom sit on the Senate Judiciary Comm as Ginsberg's importance fades)
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To: RKBA Democrat

‘All kinds of people today call themselves “libertarians,” especially something calling itself the New Right, which consists of hippies, except that they’re anarchists instead of collectivists. But of course, anarchists are collectivists. Capitalism is the one system that requires absolute objective law, yet they want to combine capitalism and anarchism. That is worse than anything the New Left has proposed. It’s a mockery of philosophy and ideology. They sling slogans and try to ride on two bandwagons. They want to be hippies, but don’t want to preach collectivism, because those jobs are already taken. But anarchism is a logical outgrowth of the anti-intellectual side of collectivism. I could deal with a Marxist with a greater chance of reaching some kind of understanding, and with much greater respect. The anarchist is the scum of the intellectual world of the left, which has given them up. So the right picks up another leftist discard. That’s the Libertarian movement.’

Some interesting points in there.


171 posted on 05/10/2014 11:00:36 AM PDT by cdcdawg (Be seeing you...)
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To: ansel12

nonaggression principle PERIOD you can define libertarianism any way you want but it is NAP
lewrockwell.com is the number one lib site and it is solidly prolife and has no respect for the homo agenda. I have no more to say as you insist on your total ignorance.


172 posted on 05/10/2014 11:04:34 AM PDT by all the best (sat`~!)
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To: greene66; Zeneta; All
greene66 weeps: I have zero faith in government. Been consistent in that view for more than two decades. But now, in the past handful of years, witnessing the ease of American cultural decline and embrace of deviancy, courtesy its media masters, I frankly have absolutely zero faith in the American populace, as well.

Because you have been the media masters' dupe.

Have more faith in your fellow Americans and in Christian goodness. An America where Christians were free to live and prosper as Christians, would revive both freedom and morality. The only thing that prevents Christians from living as Christians is government, namely Federal government overruling the states.

MOST people would reject open homosexuality -- why do you think laws are needed to punish people who tell open homosexuals to take a hike, in the name of gay "rights"? Because without the force of government behind it, the gay agenda would wither.

MOST states outlawed abortion before Roe v Wade. Government has since made outlaws out of States who seek to live as Christians, outlawing abortion in the name of Christian decency, in exactly the same way that Christian decency ALONE was responsible for slavery being outlawed in the civilized Western World.

MOST Americans hate the idea of the leeches who live on welfare. Charity is a Christian duty, a moral obligation. When government presumes to usurp the moral responsibility of Christian charity, said charity ceases to be charity and is instead a forced amoral act and its receivers consider it an entitlement. Said "charity" is twisted into nourishment for sloth and promiscuity, taken by force from people who would otherwise deal with poverty in a Christian way for better results.

In the media and in election fraud that pushes the balance in key races to the likes of Franken, Reid, Pelosi, Obama, liberals and leftists dominate. But on the ground, in real America -- and all you have to do to confirm it is to look around, read comments, explore -- very nearly two in three Americans who would be legitimate voters, pretty much feel about politics and government the way that we do, or at least closer to it than they do to the liberal mindset that dominates the media.

I have faith in my fellow Americans, and know that many of them are small-l libertarians who have very good reason to reject the label "Republican." We need a 2nd Party, and small-l libertarianism will be its common denominator.

173 posted on 05/10/2014 11:05:39 AM PDT by Finny (Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. -- Psalm 119:105)
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To: all the best

LOL, if you are going to come out of the blue, and suddenly try to portray libertarians m as social conservatism, pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, anti-gay equality, and such, you really have your work cut out for you, not to mention that if that happened, libertarianism would die out.


174 posted on 05/10/2014 11:12:51 AM PDT by ansel12 ((Ted Cruz and Mike Lee-both of whom sit on the Senate Judiciary Comm as Ginsberg's importance fades)
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To: ansel12

NEVER EVER SAID LIBERTARIAN IS JUST A NEW WORD FOR CONSERVATIVE. You just make things up.
by Lawrence VanceI am a libertarian. I am not Democrat or Republican. I am not liberal or conservative. I am not left or right. I am not moderate or progressive. I am not a Libertarian. I am not a fusionist. I am not a constitutionalist.

I am a libertarian. I am not thin or thick. I am not brutalist or humanitarian. I am not holist or solipsist. I am not moralist or consequentialist. I am not open or closed. I am not a modal, cosmopolitan, cultural, regime, sophisticated, or Beltway libertarian. I do not have a bleeding heart. I am not a neo, second wave, or millennial libertarian. I am a plain old libertarian, one who needs no labels, issues no caveats, and makes no apologies.

I am a libertarian. Libertarianism is a political philosophy concerned with the permissible use of force or violence. It is not a political philosophy that says limited government is the best kind of government. It is not a political philosophy that is socially liberal and economically conservative. It is not a political philosophy that says government is less efficient than the private sector. It is not a political philosophy that says freedom can be achieved by promoting some government policies over others. It is not a political philosophy that is low-tax liberalism. Libertarianism is not the absence of racism, sexism, homophobism, xenophobism, nationalism, nativism, classism, authoritarianism, patriarchy, inequality, or hierarchy. Libertarianism is not diversity or activism. Libertarianism is not egalitarianism. Libertarianism is not toleration or respect. Libertarianism is not a social attitude, lifestyle, or aesthetic sensibility.

I am a libertarian. I subscribe to the non-aggression principle that says, in the words of Murray Rothbard: “The only proper role of violence is to defend person and property against violence, that any use of violence that goes beyond such just defense is itself aggressive, unjust, and criminal. Libertarianism, therefore, is a theory which states that everyone should be free of violent invasion, should be free to do as he sees fit except invade the person or property of another.” I am concerned with actions; I am not concerned with thoughts: I am concerned only with the negative consequences of thoughts. I believe that the non-aggression principle extends to government. Libertarians should therefore oppose or otherwise seek to limit the domestic and foreign meddling and intervention of governments, which are the greatest violators of the non-aggression principle.

I am a libertarian. I believe in the golden rule. I believe in live and let live. I believe that a person should be free to do anything he wants, as long as his conduct is peaceful. I believe that vices are not crimes.

I am a libertarian. Our enemy is the state. Our enemy is not religion, corporations, institutions, foundations, or organizations. These only have power to do us harm because of their connection with the state. And since war is the health of the state, the state’s military, wars, and foreign interventions must be opposed root and branch.

I am a libertarian. I believe in laissez faire. Anyone should be free to engage in any economic activity without license, permission, prohibition, or interference from the state. The government should not intervene in the economy in any way. Free trade agreements, educational vouchers, privatizing Social Security, etc., are not the least bit libertarian ideas.

I am a libertarian. The best government is no government. That government that governs least is the next best government. Government, as Voltaire said, at its best state is a necessary evil and at its worst state is an intolerable one. The best thing any government could do would be to simply leave us alone.

I am a libertarian. Taxation is government theft. The government doesn’t have a claim to a certain percentage of one’s income. The tax code doesn’t need to be simplified, shortened, fairer, or less intrusive. The tax rates don’t need to be made lower, flatter, fairer, equal, or less progressive. The income tax doesn’t need more or larger deductions, loopholes, shelters, credits, or exemptions. The whole rotten system needs to be abolished. People have the right to keep what they earn and decide for themselves what to do with their money: spend it, waste it, squander it, donate it, bequeath it, hoard it, invest it, burn it, gamble it.

I am a libertarian. I am not a libertine. I am not a hedonist. I am not a moral relativist. I am not a devotee of some alternative lifestyle. I am not a revolutionary. I am not a nihilist. I neither wish to associate nor aggress against those who are. I believe in the absolute freedom of association and discrimination.

I am a libertarian.


175 posted on 05/10/2014 11:13:16 AM PDT by all the best (sat`~!)
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To: Finny

If you support Christ, then vote to prevent Sodom and Gomorrah, not for it.

For instance let’s support a presidential candidate who supports outlawing gay marriage for the federal government, and abortion for federal jurisdiction, and gays in the military.


176 posted on 05/10/2014 11:16:29 AM PDT by ansel12 ((Ted Cruz and Mike Lee-both of whom sit on the Senate Judiciary Comm as Ginsberg's importance fades)
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To: ansel12

posted by Lew Rockwell on his site last week. educate yourself.

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Marxists were notorious for infighting over the most trivial differences. One group would secede from another, reverse the word order of the group it had seceded from, and declare itself the new and pure group. The first group, the new group would declare to the world, was part of the fascist conspiracy to suppress the coming workers’ triumph, even though the differences between the two groups were completely undetectable even to an expert.

An informal debate taking place among libertarians these days, regarding whether people ought to be “thick” or “thin” libertarians, is of a different character. It strikes at the very heart of what libertarianism is.

The “thin” libertarian believes in the nonaggression principle, that one may not initiate physical force against anyone else. The thin libertarian thinks of himself simply as a libertarian, without labels. Most “thick” libertarians likewise believe in the nonaggression principle, but they believe that for the struggle for liberty to be coherent, libertarians must be committed to a slate of other views as well.

Before I proceed, let me anticipate an objection. Shouldn’t I spend my time attacking the state instead of criticizing other libertarians?

For one thing, look around at this website: it’s a veritable treasure trove of articles on every subject under the sun. Over the years at LRC we have left no stone unturned in exposing the evils and lies of the state, and building up the libertarian alternative. As a matter of fact, I have a new book on the verge of release that continues in that tradition: Against the State: An Anarcho-Capitalist Manifesto.

Secondly, there’s nothing wrong with what some people disparage as “infighting.” A respectful exchange of ideas is how a school of thought develops. And I agree with Tom Woods: it is not true, as many allege, that libertarians are uniquely prone to arguments among themselves. Just observe the Democrats, the Republicans, your homeowners’ association, Catholics, Protestants, Muslims – or, for that matter, just about anyone.

Proponents of a “thick” libertarianism suggest that libertarians are bound to defend something more than the nonaggression principle, and that libertarianism involves commitments beyond just this. One such proponent recently said, “I continue to have trouble believing that the libertarian philosophy is concerned only with the proper and improper uses of force.” But no matter how difficult it may be for that person to believe, that is precisely what libertarianism is, and that is all it is.

As Murray Rothbard, Mr. Libertarian himself, once explained:

There are libertarians who are indeed hedonists and devotees of alternative lifestyles, and that there are also libertarians who are firm adherents of “bourgeois” conventional or religious morality. There are libertarian libertines and there are libertarians who cleave firmly to the disciplines of natural or religious law. There are other libertarians who have no moral theory at all apart from the imperative of non-violation of rights. That is because libertarianism per se has no general or personal moral theory.

Libertarianism does not offer a way of life; it offers liberty, so that each person is free to adopt and act upon his own values and moral principles. Libertarians agree with Lord Acton that “liberty is the highest political end” – not necessarily the highest end on everyone’s personal scale of values.

We have been told by some libertarians in recent months that yes, yes, libertarianism is about nonaggression and private property and all that, but that it is really part of a larger project opposed to all forms of oppression, whether state-imposed or not. This has two implications for the thick libertarian. First, opposing the state is not enough; a real libertarian must oppose various other forms of oppression, even though none of them involve physical aggression. Second, libertarianism should be supported because the reduction or abolition of the state will yield the other kinds of outcomes many thick libertarians support: smaller firms, more worker cooperatives, more economic equality, etc.

Let’s evaluate these implications one at a time.

To claim that it is not enough for the libertarian to oppose aggression is to fall into the trap that destroyed classical liberalism the first time, and transformed it into modern liberalism. How, after all, did the classical liberalism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries become the state-obsessed liberalism of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? How did the once-venerable word liberalism become perverted in the first place? Precisely because of thickism. Sure, twentieth-century liberals said, we favor liberty, but since mere negative liberty – that is, restrictions on the state – doesn’t appear to yield a sufficiently egalitarian result, we need more than that. In addition to restrictions on some state activity, we need the expansion of other forms of state activity.

After all, the new liberals said, state oppression isn’t the only form of oppression in the world. There’s poverty, which limits people’s ability to make life choices. There’s private property, whose restrictions limit people’s ability to express themselves. There’s discrimination, which limits people’s opportunities. There’s name-calling, which makes people feel bad. To focus entirely on the state is to miss these very real forms of harm, the new liberals said.

Sound familiar? Is this not precisely what many thick libertarians are now saying? Attacking the state is not enough, we hear. We must attack “patriarchy,” hierarchy, inequality, and so on. Thick libertarians may disagree among themselves as to what additional commitments libertarianism entails, but they are all agreed that libertarianism cannot simply be dedicated to eradicating the initiation of physical force.

If some libertarians wish to hope for or work toward a society that conforms to their ideological preferences, they are of course free to do so. But it is wrong for them – especially given their insistence on a big tent within libertarianism – to impose on other libertarians whatever idiosyncratic spin they happen to have placed on our venerable tradition, to imply that people who do not share these other ideologies can’t be real libertarians, or to suggest that it would be “highly unlikely” that anyone who fails to hold them could really be a libertarian. That these are the same people who complain about “intolerance” is only the most glaring of the ironies.

Thus the danger of thick libertarianism is not simply that vast chunks of the American population will fail to pass its entrance requirements, not keeping up every ten minutes with what MSNBC informs us is acceptable to believe and say. The danger is that thick libertarianism will import its other concerns, which by their own admission do not involve the initiation of physical force, into libertarianism itself, thereby transforming it into something quite different from the straightforward and elegant moral and social system we have been defending for generations.

Now for the second implication, that opposition to the state should be favored because it will yield egalitarian outcomes. (Of course, the abolition of the state will necessarily increase the level of egalitarianism from the point of view of status; the inequality of status between state officials on the one hand, who today may carry out all kinds of moral outrages with the legitimacy of the state to support them, and ordinary people, who are constrained by the traditional moral rules against theft and aggression, on the other, will no longer exist when the state disappears.) But what if it doesn’t? The claim that firms will tend to be smaller on the free market, and that government policy encourages bigness in business, is far too sweeping a statement about far too complex a phenomenon. What if the absence of the state leads to no change in firm size, or in the employer-employee relationship, or in wealth inequality?

At that point, the question would become: to which principle are thick libertarians more committed, nonaggression or egalitarianism? What if they had to choose?

Lew RockwellLikewise, the hatred of some classical liberals for the Church motivated them to confiscate Church property and impose restrictions of various kinds on Church activity. When it came down to a choice between their belief in liberty and their personal hatred for the Church, their personal hatred won the day, and their supposedly principled opposition to violence was temporarily suspended.

How people arrive at libertarianism is also immaterial. There are various schools of thought that culminate in the principle of nonaggression. Once there, we may of course debate what precisely constitutes aggression in particular cases, and other foundational questions within the general framework of the impermissibility of aggression. But if the school of thought you belong to takes you only partly toward nonaggression, it is not the case that you have discovered a new or better form of libertarianism. Such a case would mean only that you are partly a libertarian, not a different kind of libertarian.

Whether it’s the claim that self-defense laws are “racist,” that Bitcoin is “racist,” or that libertarians ought to throw off “white privilege” – all of which have been advanced by libertarians claiming to have moved beyond our alleged fixation with the nonaggression principle – the various forms of thick libertarianism are confusing the core teaching of what we believe. None of these concerns have the slightest bit to do with libertarianism.

All of these additional claims are a distraction from the central principle: if you oppose the initiation of physical force, you are a libertarian. Period. Now how hard was that?


177 posted on 05/10/2014 11:18:00 AM PDT by all the best (sat`~!)
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To: all the best

So you are a Lew Rockwell cultist, great.

Just make your own arguments for gay marriage.


178 posted on 05/10/2014 11:21:14 AM PDT by ansel12 ((Ted Cruz and Mike Lee-both of whom sit on the Senate Judiciary Comm as Ginsberg's importance fades)
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To: ansel12

then i guess you stand for the gun grabbin, open borders, amnesty grantin, welfare supportin’, refuse to repeal fubocare, tramplin on your rights crowd (republicans)...

if that is indeed the case, then you, sir, are indeed an enemy of the republic, and a non supporter of the constitution...

what you have to say means nothing to me..


179 posted on 05/10/2014 11:34:51 AM PDT by joe fonebone (a socialist is just a juvenile communist)
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To: joe fonebone

You are just rambling nonsense, there isn’t anything rational or relevant in that post.


180 posted on 05/10/2014 11:40:58 AM PDT by ansel12 ((Ted Cruz and Mike Lee-both of whom sit on the Senate Judiciary Comm as Ginsberg's importance fades)
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