WIKIA
A
Libertarian in the American term, is an individual with
right-wing economic beliefs and
left-wing social belief. Some ultra-conservatives, such as talk radio host
Neil Boortz,
pretend
they are libertarians so that they can trick liberals into listening to
them for few minutes in hope of converting them to conservatism.
Libertarians are kind of like liberals, except they think they're living
in the
18th Century or in the first part of the
20th Century when
Ayn Rand lived.
[1]
General Overview of Beliefs
Stereotyping the libertarians would be unwise. Different people who see themselves as libertarians disagree with each other as to which
freedoms they feel should be allowed and which should be restricted. Libertarians in a general sense agree with the following concepts.
- Support for Civil Liberties
- Opposition to Coercive Force (defined their way)18
- Small Government
- Low Taxes
- Emphasis on Private Property
- Non-Interventionist Foreign Policy
Does Libertarianism give real freedom?
Libertarianism allows for freedom in consensual
sex and relationships; it also provides freedom to use self-destructive
drugs and the like. In fact, two famous libertarians,
Penn and Teller have advocated legalizing
prostitution, illegal drugs,
gay marriage and
polyamory, and they have advocated abolishing the
FCC. Libertarianism gives freedom in areas that don’t challenge anyone's power, including the power of corporations.
Pitfalls of Libertarianism
Libertarians tend to be supporters of unchecked corporate power,
depending on just how deep into it they are. That means businesses may
force whatever they like onto their employees and those who buy their
products. If workers are too weak to fight back against a bullying boss,
that's just too bad.
The top 1% of the population has an overwhelming advantage in securing top-level jobs, because their mommy and daddy were
rich and paid them through
school while networking with their corporate friends. Think of it as a
lose-win situation, where a few win and many lose out.
Libertarians are squeamish towards those in the lower class
reaching their full potential. To them, it would be unethical to provide
others in society with the same opportunities the wealthy elite
receive. If you're born into
poverty
and your parents are unable to provide a decent upbringing, sad day for
you.
Libertarians want to restrict or abolish government protection for those
who are struggling financially. Ironically, this restricts freedom for
the majority.
- Workers can become totally dependent on employers who can be corrupted by power and become tyrants.
- Alternatively, family members become totally dependent on the economic provider/providers in the family. Those who are economically powerful in the family can become tyrants.
Note: People who genuinely believe in freedom sometimes get tricked
into supporting libertarianism. In some cases, libertarians genuinely
don't realise that they are aiding the wealthy elite in suppressing the
majority such as themselves.
Libertarian Logic
Libertarianism is a logically consistent approach to politics based
on the moral principle of self-ownership. Each individual has the right
to control his or her own body, action, speach, and property.
Government's only role is to help individuals defend themselves from
force and fraud.
Libertarians are open-minded people who want to end the Federal Reserve
and legalize marijuana.
In order to understand how one gets from the "moral principles"
above to the sort of fanatical proselytizing found in chat rooms and
blogs everywhere, it is important understand how the ideology works from
theory to practice.
Libertarianism is axiomatic. Note how the above quote touts its
“logically consistent approach.” There's a set of rules to be applied to
evaluate what is proper, and the outcome given is the answer that is
correct in terms of the “moral principle” of the theory. Are the
religious thinking connections starting to become evident? The rules are
simple and tight enough to produce surprisingly uniform positions
compared to common political philosophies.
Libertarians are for "individual rights", and against "force" and
"fraud" - just as THEY define it. Their use of these words, however,
when examined in detail, is not likely to accord with the common
meanings of these terms. What person would proclaim themselves in favor
of "force and fraud"? One of the little tricks Libertarians use in
debate is to confuse the ordinary sense of these words with the meaning
as "terms of art" in Libertarian axioms. They try to set up a situation
where if you say you're against "force and fraud", then obviously you
must agree with Libertarian ideology, since those are the definitions.
If you are in favor of "force and fraud", well, isn't that highly
immoral? So you're either one of them, or some sort of degenerate (note
the
cultist aspect again), one who doesn't think "force and fraud must be banished from human relationships".
Example 1
- no person should initiate the use of force against another person.
Taxation is undesirable since the coercive force of the state backs it.
Do you agree, or do you disagree, that it is always wrong for one person
to initiate force against another? If you disagree, then you disagree
with the fundamental concept of libertarianism.
On the other hand, if you agree with the proposition, yet you still
don't like the conclusions that libertarians draw from it, then we can
refocus our attention on the chain of logic that leads to those
conclusions and find where you feel the weak link is.
From looking at the example above you could say it's an "agree or
disagree" where "initiate force" is implied to be the Libertarian
definition. And it's justified by the axioms (chain of logic).
The idea that Libertarians don't believe in the initiation of force is
pure propaganda. They believe in using force as much as anyone else, if
they think the application is “morally correct.” Most ordinary people
who aren't libertarians understand when rich corporations force
relatively weak employees to accept bad working conditions of face
Unemployment
this amounts to coercion and that's just one example of libertarian use
of force. “Initiation of force" is Libertarian term meaning
essentially "do something improper according to Libertarian ideology".
It isn't even connected much to the actions we normally think of as
"force". The question being asked above was really agree or disagree,
that it is always wrong for one person to do something improper
according to the libertarian ideology.
Of course, we can only make you think this through our own insistence,
because as you may notice we don't even support this claim. So a
libertarian would not consider this an objection at all. This is the
same reason libertarians often ignore other liberal ideas.
Liberals approve of some of the above but vehemently oppose other aspects.
Example 2
While you might be told Libertarianism is about individual rights and
freedom, fundamentally, it's about business. The words "individual
rights", in the context of the libertarian ideology means
business.
Since governments, when instituted, must not violate
individual rights, we oppose all interference by government in the areas
of "voluntary"
and contractual relations among individuals.
That gives powerful corporations the chance to force unfavorable
contracts onto weaker parties and the weaker parties don't agree to
those contracts voluntarily.
The whole idea of a contract is that government enforces
relations among individuals. The sentence about governments no
interfering in so-called voluntary contracts doesn’t make sense. It's
conceptually that they oppose all interference by government in the
areas of government enforcing relations among individuals.
The key to understanding this, and to understanding
Libertarianism itself, is to realize that their concept of individual
freedom is the right to have the state protect the business. Freedom is
greatly reduced for ordinary people, the state should protect the
business instead of the state protecting the person.
Personal liberty
Libertarians claim they are for freedom. In practice this means
freedom for the strong to oppress the weak. For example labor protection
legislation protects ordinary workers against exploitation and
arbitrary dismissal. Ordinary people have more freedom when the
government protects them against richer and stronger people. Real
Liberals aim to give freedom to the majority, not just to a rich minority.
Hypocritically libertarians pretend their
philosophy
is, "If I want to do something it's okay, as long as I don't harm you."
In reality their philosophy is about rich people being free to exploit
and harm ordinary people.
Libertarianism and Conservatism compared
Libertarians are radical in some ways and Conservative in other
respects. Libertarianism is about protecting those who are already rich
and powerful as is Conservatism.
Similarities
- Libertarians and Conservatives support each other over trying to reduce taxation for rich people who can afford to pay.
- Libertarians and Conservatives try and deny protection to the poor, weak and powerless as this article has claimed.
- Libertarians and Conservatives want to prevent the state from handing medical care to sick people if they can't afford to pay for it.
- Libertarians and Conservatives both try to prevent the state protecting those who have been unfortunate for reasons like economic depression and unemployment.
There have been attempts to combine Libertarianism and Social
Conservatism. Llewellyn H. Rockwell argued that Libertarians should drop
their wish for freedoms that are conventionally restricted and join the
conservatives. Notably he opposed artistic epression that is
conventionally restricted. Basically he was saying, "Become like us and
join us." See
Paleolibertarianism.
Differences
Libertarians value freedom. All too often that means freedom for the
strong to oppress the weak. Libertarians value some real freedoms as
well. Many Liberatarians support the "freedom" of individuals to do some
things which Christian Conservatives believe are contrary to
God's law.
Christian Conservatives can't easily accept that.
- Christian Conservatives want to restrict the sexual freedom individuals have. The only acceptable sexual outlet for them is heterosexual intercourse between married couples.
Libertarians want to give individuals far more freedom to determine
what they do to their own bodies or what they allow other people to do
to their bodies. This applies to sex and other areas. Extreme
Libertarians want people to have complete control over their own bodies
even if they do silly or destructive things.
- Christian Conservatives want to restrict access to intoxicants like alcohol, cannabis
etc. Libertarians want to give individuals far more freedom to do
destructive things to themselves and may overlook the harm intoxicants
do, for example to other people, the families of alcoholics and drug
addicts can and generally do suffer terribly for example. Strict
libertarian philosophy allows individual freedom to be restricted when
individuals harm others.
Conclusion
Libertarians are cult members who worship business under the false
pretence of loving freedom. Some who call themselves Libertarians are
nothing but conservatives who are too embarrassed to say that they're
conservative because it sounds old fashioned. Others support radical
ideas which Conservatives oppose. The philosophy of libertarianism might
be summarized by "If rich people want to do something it's okay, but if
you want to oppose rich people, it's not."
- ↑ Liberals
of the past" were against the inheritance of power; in one particular
area at least: the absolute monarchies of kings. Libertarian Plutocrats ignore even that.
See also
External links
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