I think that the concept of a “libertarian paradise” exists only in the minds of delusional statists as a really bad strawman argument against libertarianism. Libertarians are NOT utopianists. Real libertarianism is the only rational, objective philosophy, based in the fact that men are inherently good and laws that sacrifice the few to benefit the many do not benefit good people, but only benefit the bad people.
Most hip hop groups talk about topics relevant to libertarians in the sense that libertarians are against police brutality, racism, the War on Drugs, warmongering, in favor of individualism, thinking for yourself (which you clearly do not practice, judging from your post), individual liberty, the pursuit of happiness without infringing upon the rights of others, the non-aggression principle, limiting government to prevent corruption (which is caused by expansion of government, statism and collectivism).
There are actually a lot of libertarian themes in punk rock, too, although you have to account for the unfortunate overlap between anarchism and libertarianism, and it should be stated that libertarians generally are not for getting rid of government.
It’s amazing that this forum is supposedly dedicated to “fighting ignorance”, but this thread is largely pro-ignorance due to many posters’ ignorant, anti-libertarian status. Opposing libertarianism is the sign of ignorance, for the opposite of libertarianism is authoritarianism. You can’t be anti-ignorance if you’re anti-libertarian.
As a liberal democrat, I agree with all of those things, aside from the last two. It’s the stuff that libertarianism doesn’t support that makes me view it as a abhorrent philosophy that places greed above basic human decency.
This is why Libertarianism fails. People are not inherently good. People are inherently selfish, distrustful and predjudical. It is only the collective interdependancy of society that forces us to play nice with each other on a continual basis to get what we need to survive.
Every instance of societial norms collapsing goes very, very bad for all involved.
I’ll assume that by “men” you mean “mankind” (i.e., people) and not just males. If people are inherently good, then laws that benefit the many will, by definition, benefit good people. Since they’re inherently good, after all. Of course, laws that benefit the few will also benefit the good, since people are inherently good.
I guess what I’m saying is I don’t buy your premise.
That word, “selfish”. It does not mean what you think it means. (To paraphrase The Princess Bride).
You believe that selfishness means stomping over other people to get what you want. That is not what it means. “Selfishness” means acting in your own self-interest, which means DON’T stomp over other people, because you don’t want them to stomp over you. The opposite of selfishness is the lack of self. A selfless person is a person with no identity, does nothing of his own, bases all of his opinions on what others think of him, and ultimately destroys others and himself. Helping others is a selfish act, because it takes personal satisfaction to do something good for someone else because it pleases yourself. Doing things because others tell you to just makes you a robot.
People are NOT inherently bad. This claim has no rational justification and is directly contradicted by evidence that people are good - do you think that people hold food drives because they want to poison others? That Steve Jobs did things to destroy, rather than to create? Your statement shows a complete and utter disregard for yourself and humanity when you regard humanity as evil because some human beings do bad things. It is utterly irrational and based on no logic, but confusion and ignorance.
Death of Rats, your worldview is the same as the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis.
The only things that libertarianism doesn’t support is things that infringe upon the rights of other people. You believe that libertarianism is abhorrent because it is against using coercion to take things from other people and give it to those that did not earn it? You believe that libertarianism is abhorrent because we’re against initiating war?
I’m afraid you don’t understand libertarianism at all, and your statement is based on an inherently illogical premise.
I’m not entirely sure how you got a pro-war sentiment out of my post. I’m very much against starting wars. I’m also very much in favor in ensuring that every human being has access to a basic level of food, shelter, education, and medical care. I think making sure people aren’t starving or dying in the streets of the plague are more important concerns than the non-coercion principle. Which is, itself, a ridiculously simplistic and unworkable philosophy in a modern, industrialized society.
A fully realized libertarian government would result in a drastic reduction in the standard of living and general well being of virtually all members of society, excluding a very select (and wealthy) core of elites. Minor advances like more relaxed drug laws would be swamped in a sea of polluted water, contaminated food, unbreathable air, widespread disease, massive poverty, rigid class structures, and systematic oppression of non-majority groups. Not because libertarians support those things (although a disconcertingly large number of them do), but because you would dismantle all of the social apparatus we’ve created to prevent them, and offered absolutely nothing to replace them other than shockingly naive misconceptions about the basic nature of humanity.
HorndogIsaac: What is the moral justification for libertarianism? What ethical concept must be understood and accepted, in order to support libertarianism?
And what is the moral justification for individualism? What ethical concept must be understood and accepted, in order to support individualism?
You know who else said people’s worldviews were the same as the Nazis, right?
Co-opting the work of others and claiming it supports your worldview is bad enough, but I suppose it’s to be expected of Libertarianism given how it co-opted Ayn Rand’s philosophy and claimed it with no sense of irony as their own (she was in fact entirely opposed to Libertarianism). Straw-manning left and right is even worse, but Godwinizing? It just doesn’t get any more intellectually lazy and dishonest than that.
Clearly, the qualifications to be a moderator on this board have slipped.
What a crock of nonsense. “Fully realized libertarian government” would result in “rigid class structures”? What, exactly, would keep them rigid? Allowing free individuals to engage in consensual transactions without external coercion results in “rigid class structures?”
God, this board has gone downhill. Sam, bless you for still burning the calories required to tap the keys from time to time.
Dude, I’ve read Ayn Rand. I’ve read The Wealth of Nations, and the SEcond Treatise on Government, and big chunks of Anarchy, State, and Utopia, and many different libertarian manifestos.
When I say that Libertarianism is a noxious cesspool of a philosophy, I’m not speaking from ignorance here.
You say that humans are inherently good in the same breath that you call Libertarianism “objective.” To which I say, cite? What is your evidence that humans are inherently good? Are you familiar with the State of Nature argument? Are you familiar with the homicide rates among prehistoric groups of people and among modern nonstate groups of people?
I’ve read the seminal documents of your philosophy. I’ll point you to two books to consider:
The Crooked Timber of Humanity, a robust defense of modern political liberalism, grounded in an historical study of the enlightenment and the counter-enlightenment movement of romanticism; and
The Better ANgels of Our Nature, an examination of our species’s history of violence and its constant decline, proposing that this decline is due to several factors, some of which are compatible with libertarianism and some of which aren’t.
They did worse than co-opting her philosophy, they co-opted the mistakes she made while ignoring everything she got right. I don’t blame her for denouncing them.
I now have the mental image of Rand Paul being advised by his handlers that he needs to appeal more to the 18-24 demographic, and his response is to wear his baseball cap sideways and insisting that “Libertarianism is the shizzle.”