Posted on 10/09/2009 8:18:11 PM PDT by rabscuttle385
Political analysts frequently consider what it means to be a libertarian. In fact, in 1997, Charles Murray published a short book entitled "What It Means to Be a Libertarian" that does an excellent job of presenting the core principles of libertarian political philosophy. But almost no one ever discusses what it feels like to be a libertarian. How does it actually feel to be someone who holds the principles described in Murray’s book?
I’ll tell you. It feels bad. Being a libertarian means living with an almost unendurable level of frustration. It means being subject to unending scorn and derision despite being inevitably proven correct by events. How does it feel to be a libertarian? Imagine what the internal life of Cassandra must have been and you will have a pretty good idea.
Imagine spending two decades warning that government policy is leading to a major economic collapse, and then, when the collapse comes, watching the world conclude that markets do not work.
Imagine continually explaining that markets function because they have a built in corrective mechanism; that periodic contractions are necessary to weed out unproductive ventures; that continually loosening credit to avoid such corrections just puts off the day of reckoning and inevitably leads to a larger recession; that this is precisely what the government did during the 1920's that led to the great depression; and then, when the recession hits, seeing it offered as proof of the failure of laissez-faire capitalism.
Imagine spending years decrying federal intervention in the home mortgage market; pointing out the dangers associated with legislation such as the Community Reinvestment Act that forces lenders to make more risky loans than they otherwise would; testifying before Congress on the lack of oversight and inevitable insolvency of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to legislators who angrily respond either that one is "exaggerat[ing] a threat of safety and soundness . . . which I do not see" (Barney Frank) or "[I[f it ain’t broke, why do you want to fix it? Have the GSEs [government-sponsored enterprises] ever missed their housing goals" (Maxine Waters) or "[T[he problem that we have and that we are faced with is maybe some individuals who wanted to do away with GSEs in the first place" (Gregory Meeks) or that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are "one of the great success stories of all time" (Christopher Dodd); and arguing that the moral hazard created by the implicit federal backing of such privately-owned government-sponsored enterprises is likely to set off a wave of unjustifiably risky investments, and then, when the housing market implodes under the weight of bad loans, watching the collapse get blamed on the greed and rapaciousness of "Wall Street."
I remember attending a lecture at Georgetown in the mid-1990s given by a member of the libertarian Cato Institute in which he predicted that, unless changed, government policy would trigger an economic crisis by 2006. That prediction was obviously ideologically-motivated alarmism. After all, the crisis did not occur until 2008.
Libertarians spend their lives accurately predicting the future effects of government policy. Their predictions are accurate because they are derived from Hayek’s insights into the limitations of human knowledge, from the recognition that the people who comprise the government respond to incentives just like anyone else and are not magically transformed to selfless agents of the good merely by accepting government employment, from the awareness that for government to provide a benefit to some, it must first take it from others, and from the knowledge that politicians cannot repeal the laws of economics. For the same reason, their predictions are usually negative and utterly inconsistent with the utopian wishful-thinking that lies at the heart of virtually all contemporary political advocacy. And because no one likes to hear that he cannot have his cake and eat it too or be told that his good intentions cannot be translated into reality either by waving a magic wand or by passing legislation, these predictions are greeted not merely with disbelief, but with derision.
It is human nature to want to shoot the messenger bearing unwelcome tidings. And so, for the sin of continually pointing out that the emperor has no clothes, libertarians are attacked as heartless bastards devoid of compassion for the less fortunate, despicable flacks for the rich or for business interests, unthinking dogmatists who place blind faith in the free market, or, at best, members of the lunatic fringe.
Cassandra’s curse was to always tell the truth about the future, but never be believed. If you add to that curse that she would be ridiculed, derided, and shunned for making her predictions, you have a pretty fair approximation of what it feels like to be a libertarian.
If you’d like a taste of what it feels like to be a libertarian, try telling people that the incoming Obama Administration is advocating precisely those aspects of FDR’s New Deal that prolonged the great depression for a decade; that propping up failed and failing ventures with government money in order to save jobs in the present merely shifts resources from relatively more to relatively less productive uses, impedes the corrective process, undermines the economic growth necessary for recovery, and increases unemployment in the long term; and that any "economic" stimulus package will inexorably be made to serve political rather than economic ends, and see what kind of reaction you get. And trust me, it won’t feel any better five or ten years from now when everything you have just said has been proven true and Obama, like FDR, is nonetheless revered as the savior of the country.
“If drugs were legalized, it would force current criminals to find something else to do. Given that most people involved in the drug trade are uneducated, common street thugs and *not* criminal mastermind kingpins, if minimum wage laws didn’t exist, they would most likely go into low-skilled labor.”
My goodness, you are naive!
As I wrote earlier, there are already laws against child molestation on the books in many jurisdictions. Is there some problem with the enforcement of said laws?
Oops, I guess some people disagree with you (or is abduction and forceable rape not “violent” enough for you?).
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Journal/editorial.aspx?id=614150
Put down the bong libertarians, it makes you think much more clearly.
Aren't there already laws against abduction and rape on the books? Why do we need more?
If libertarians get their way, we’ll need more laws:
1 Timothy, Chapter 1
We know that the law is good, provided that one uses it as law,
with the understanding that law is meant not for a righteous person but for the lawless and unruly, the godless and sinful, the unholy and profane, those who kill their fathers or mothers, murderers,
the unchaste, sodomites, kidnapers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is opposed to sound teaching,
according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God
Bottom line—social conservatives like big government. Neoconservatives like big government. Hell, maybe economic conservatives do to. We are so screwed. If our side can’t comprehend state sovereignty, a national government of limited purpose—we are SCREWED.
You think libertarians have cornered the market on corruption? Don't make me laugh. What has taken place in the financial markets has been fraud and crime, and both parties are in on it. Wake up.
That's true. So you're counting on the federal government to enforce morality?? That's the funniest idea I've heard in a while.
Huh?
Considering that libertarians are for repealing laws inconsistent with the Constitution, I fail to see how the repeal of laws would lead to an increase in laws.
We know that the law is good, provided that one uses it as law...
If the Founders had meant to establish a theocracy, they would have skipped writing a Constitution with amendments like this one:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." —Amendment 1, United States Constitution
Clearly, the Declaration and the Constitution are the basis for Federal law, not The Bible.
Now, I don't really like using such language, but you are truly beginning to irritate me. If you want to discuss religion and moral codes, go over to the religion forum. Otherwise, newbie, quit thumping your Bible at me.
I also don't want federal laws based on Islamic sharia law, which is one of the many terrifying and hideous possibilities opened up by introducing religion as a basis for secular law.
What is funny is you would write that. I didn't say it. Didn't imply it either. My only point was libertarians fail to see or care not to see that morality and culture, not law or the lack of law, is what determines if a society is successful or not.
In many ways libertarianism is the Jacobinism of which the Federalists warned. It has the same conceit Thomas Paine and French revolutionaires held: "reason" can pefect man and society. Marxists believe this too. Libertarianism can, like Emma Goldman's anarchism, clear they way for the bolsheviks to march in. In a society dependent upon either coercion by the state or contractual obligations devoid of true moral content (libertarianism) the strong will overpower the weak and adherents will get exactly the opposite of what they claim to seek.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." —Amendment 1, United States Constitution
Fisher Ames drafted that wording to protect established state religions. His state had one. Protestant churches, Congregational and Unitarian, were funded by taxes. Same was true in other states. The constitution would not have been ratified without that protection.
But Massachusetts, Connecticut and others states were not "theocracies". That died out with Abraham Pierson, the founder of Yale, in the early 1700s. Separation of church and state, the idea of two spheres,the ecclesiastical and the secular, each sovereign in its own realm, is a basic tenet of the faith. Gregory the Great codified it in the 6th century AD. It comes from Matthew 22:21. There have been episodes of Christian theocracy--the Puritans, rulers such as James I of England and Louis XIV of France--but they were anomalies and of short duration. The threat of a Christian"theocracy" is Norman Lear/Charles Schumer agitprop (a case of projection in my opinion as their faith does not separate church and state).
As far as this goes, I agree. The Ayn Rand utopianism. The people who say "the market always corrects itself." As a matter of government, though, morality rightly lies outside its' jurisdiction. I agree with you that immoral people get what's coming to them. But government can't fix that, since government is an instrument of those same people.
I have been thinking about the whole question of "legislating morality" lately, and wondering if it doesn't encourage immorality, the same way welfare encourages out of wedlock child-rearing. Moral atrophy.
I guess my question to you is what is the tension, in practice, between truly limited governemnt, and morality?
Utter crap. The only difference is that a libertarian would never use government force to enforce God's laws. We'd leave that up to God.
Which Commandment was it that stated Christians must use the force of the government sword to enforce Jehova's edicts? I must have missed that one...
The federal ban on partial birth abortion is a good example of how difficult this is. The democrats were the first to get the federal government (courts) to impose their will on us with Roe vs Wade. And the federal ban here on partial birth abortion was great politics. But it is also a way of approving even federal control of our lives, that was not meant to be.(Abortion should be a state issue constitutionally.)
I think Ron Paul has a valid point on being against federal Tort laws regulating state courts. But he is swimming upstream. As evident every presidental election, the voters prompted by the media expect the feds to fix everything. This is what scares me about another republican president.
What the hell are you talking about? Does this phrase actually make sense to you?
You didn’t post a study, you posted somebody’s opinion with not much in the way of empirical data to back it up. Is pornography wrong? Yes. Am I going to say things that I can’t back up just to create a justification of using the power of the state to attempt to ban it? Shall we do evil that good may come? God forbid.
Yes, lying is evil, even when lying about pornography. I’m not defending pornography, I’m just defending the truth and the truth isn’t partisan. The link between porn and violent crime is a myth, created out of fudged statistics, no different from claims that rock and roll or comic books or Beavis and Butthead lead to violent crime and drug use. If anything, the popularity of such things as porn and ultra-violent gore films and obscene music and the like are a *result*, not a cause, of the obscenity of the culture itself. Porn is a symptom, not a cause, of a disease in society. Attempting to get rid of the symptom is like picking at scabs, it doesn’t work. It wastes resources that could otherwise go into fighting murder, rape, robbery, kidnapping, assault, etc.
The problem with some people is that they think if you don’t believe in their particular policy prescriptions for certain problems, then you either don’t care about the problem or are actually taking part in it.
That’s about the Mosaic Law, not Earthly, governmental laws. Two totally different things. That is about salvation, and justification. We’re talking about political policy.
Yep. The federalization of everything is anti-American.
Notice how republicans are terrified to admit that health care reform is a state issue. It’s the states that make up all the rules that make it so expensive and setup the monopolies. It’s the state voters that demand all sorts of expensive ‘coverage’ .
The media helps those that say the federal government should be involved with everything. This is why we need Obama to ‘fail’, as Rush says. GWB did us a huge dis-service in this area, but it got he re-elected.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.