Privacy would seem to be an essential building block of Liberty. But famous Libertarians such as Ron Paul and Andrew Napolitano are opposed to privacy rights. They claim that the Constitution does not explicitly spell out this right. But why? Liberals cite privacy rights found in the famous “penumbra” of our law.
I believe that they care not a whit about “liberty” - they just want to impose their moral view on others.
The famous case ‘Lawrence vs. Texas’ changed my mind forever about so called “libertarians” - they are statists of another stripe - that is all.
In order to be consistent, they would have to argue that privacy is a property, a commodity that one can buy and sell, just as fire protection, medical care, and other services are.
So, in Libertopia, there would be privacy providers, just like medical providers. If you don’t have a privacy provider, then anyone is able to take up your personal information as their own property, and sell it to whomever is in the market.
Absurd, but, there you have it: it follows from the libertarian calculus. Everything is based on private property and consensual contracts. Woe betide you if you don’t have a contract for medical care or fire protection, and too darned bad if you didn’t arrange to protect your privacy.
Yes, I agree. Privacy is merely a commercial construct to Libertarians. The people do not deserve protection from government intrusion (see Scalia and Thomas on Lawrence vs Texas).
This is the fatal flaw in Libertarian cults - they cannot extricate themselves from government power meant to enslave us mere rationalists.
I’ve noticed that too. IME (and forgive me for trying to nail libertarian jello to the wall), the logic seems to go something like this:
Liberty is harmed by big government.
B) The federal government is bigger than state government.
III) Therefore the federal government telling a state what to do is anti-liberty.
This applies even when the federal government actively stops states from violating the liberties of their citizens (citizens like John Lawrence and Tyron Gardner, Norma McCorvey, Oliver Brown, Mildred and Richard Loving, and the Barnette family). The federal government (big = less freedom) stopped a state (small = more freedom), therefore it was anti-liberty.
If you take the view that any federal actions not explicitly written into the constitution using kindergarten language are an expansion of the federal government into areas where it doesn’t belong, then you might very well think that there is no federal right to privacy binding on the states. And if you think big government is necessarily more antithetical to liberty than smaller government, you might very well think that the federal government stopping a state government from actively harming you is worse than the state harming you.
It’s a little like saying that a roof is anti-dryness because it’s bigger than an umbrella, but that really is how I think some people think.
I will say this for the now-departed Liberal - he was consistent in his anti-government opinions. He opposed government at all levels: national, state, and local. He wasn’t somebody who wanted the federal government weakened just so the state governments could step into the power vacuum that created.
The OP may be confusing libertarianism with strict constructionism - a mistake that even a lot of self-proclaimed libertarians make. Libertarianism, in it’s most basic form holds that individual liberty is the basic moral principle of society. A pure libertarian would, in fact be an advocate of privacy and be opposed to anti-sodomy laws. The unfortunate dichotomy in libertarianism is that libertarians tend to value property above even personal liberty. And property of course is the basis of power. Hence, in Libertopia, you are just as free as you can afford to be. An individual without property may have rights in theory, but has no power or means to exercise those rights.
Strict constructionism, on the other hand, is best described by the Constitution Party’s mission statement:
In other words; If it isn’t specifically spelled out in the constitution (or some other governing document like the christian Bible), it doesn’t exist. A libertarian would hesitate before promoting a law that limits personal initiative, a strict constructionist would have no problem with passing a “moral” law as long as they were not specifically forbidden to do so by their primary legal code.
SS
OP: the people you are referring to are not libertarians. They may call themselves that, but they don’t seem to have the foggiest notion of what that term means.
The basis of libertarian philosophy is that individual rights* are primary, and the existence of government should only be in the service of protecting those rights. Hence the need for police, criminal courts and that whole structure, and a military force to protect the rights of the citizenry, on the theory that other countries would probably want to violate those rights in some way.
In this context, the only reason I can think of when anyone’s privacy could legitimately be invaded without consent would be by a government with a warrant that is investigating a crime. The warrant would need to be backed by evidence of probable cause. Consensual sodomy, to use an example already mentioned, would not be a crime in a libertarian society.
Beyond that, if I want to protect my personal privacy from other individuals, I have the option of taking whatever non-invasive steps I choose, from paying for everything in cash to wearing a burqa-type garment. Or no steps at all; identity theft would certainly be a crime, since it is a form of fraud. Someone spying on my private actions would probably be guilty of some property infraction like trespassing, which would be actionable. If technology makes spying more sophisticated, I would expect technology to also make it possible to foil that spying.
*This gets into the whole debate about what constitutes individual “rights”. I don’t want to get into that debate here, but I will say that nothing can be a right for me if it requires you to give me something.
A side comment: I don’t really understand the urge to bash the libertarian philosophy, unless it is because it is apparently difficult to find in popular media any cogent spokespeople, so that the philosophy itself is not understood. I believe that this is not because such spokespeople don’t exist, but because they have difficulty getting any airtime.
Roddy
You are confused. A person can be both a libertarian and a believer that the constitution should be read as closely as possible with the original intent of the writers in mind. So, a person may believe both (i) that the best way to construct a society is for people to have an explicit right to privacy and (ii) the U.S. Constitution does not grant a right to privacy. And those two things are in no way contradicatory at all.
Let me make it even simpler for you. A person can have a philosophy saying that it is better for government to do X. They can then read the founding documents of a government and determine that those founding documents say that the government is forbidden from doing x. And believing those things is not contradictory and does not show that they don’t really think it’s better for a government to do x.
I fight for the most Liberty possible while statists like Ron Paul and Andrew Napolitano want to impose their regulations to prevent my free choice in privacy.
Religionists pose the greatest danger to freedom. Every priest is a slavemaster and Scalia/Thomas/Alito/Roberts are their enablers.
Let me make it as simple as possible for you. Let’s assume that a person believes that bills of attainder are just really awesome, and any government that isn’t allowed to issue bills of attainder is a worthless creation and shouldn’t exist. They then read the U.S. Constitution, and see the part where it says that the U.S. federal government cannot issue bills of attainder. Someone wants the U.S. federal government to issue a bill of attainder and asks this person’s opinion, and this person says “I believe the U.S. federal government is not allowed to issue a bill of attainder.”
You apparently believe that person is acting in a contradictory manner. But they aren’t, not one bit.
The point is that there’s a difference between (i) what a person believes the best possible government should be allowed to do or not do and (ii) what that person believes any particular government is allowed to do or not do.