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ThatDamnedPanda -> RE: A Question To All Conservatives and "Libertarians" (5/22/2010 11:02:49 PM)
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ORIGINAL: AnimusRex
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ORIGINAL: realcoolhand
I used to be a Libertarian (even anarcho-libertarian?) because I hate, hate, hate the idea of any coercive authority. Then I realized that the only rational alternative to coercive power is reasoned consensus on an arrangement that everyone can accept, regardless of where the fall in the social order.
Only a stable society can be "free," and only a rational society, committed to procedural fairness and the rights of every individual citizen, can be stable. That's why I'm now a liberal.
This is pretty much my story as well. I used to be a staunch Reagan conservative, until I realized that the stable civil society that religious conservatives desire is destroyed by the laissez-faire free market that the economic conservatives desire.
The only society in the world that can honestly be called "libertarian" is Somalia. No taxes, no government, no environmental laws, no discrimination laws....just pure, unadulterated freedom to do as one pleases.
What libertarians miss is that the ability to pursue property rights- for instance, the ability to own property, start a business, and build wealth- depends on government. Government to establish roads, harbors, airports sewers and storm drains. Government to keep order, and maintain civil and criminal courts.
Without the stabilizing effect of the socail safety net, society would degenerate into violence and anarchy- there just isn't any way to keep order unless the overwhelming majority of society feel enfranchised, feel that they are secure and part of the whole.
Put bluntly, the New Deal and the Great Society did more to ensure the survival of capitalism than anything Ayn Rand ever wrote.
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ORIGINAL: Aynne88
Libertarians are an ugly stain on humanity anyway. I see them as blocks of concrete, one middling size, the other rather small. Light cannot penetrate to the interior. Libertarianism is just codified greed, written in the language of philosophy. Libertarians are like guards at a stockade with women and children inside, refusing to take their turns on the ramparts ... See Morebecause they believe they have a right to sleep as long as they want.
Libertarians believe that they should be free to keep and use whatever they have earned (or inherited) and that The Government should not be able to limit their freedom in any way. They forget that their enterprise would be impossible without a tranquil and reasonably just society. The more successful they are, the more they benefit from this society--and the greater their obligation, I believe, to maintain and improve it.
It is an argument between two groups of people. The first says, "What's mine is mine." The second says, "We are our brothers' keepers." I do not know how it is possible both to retain your self-respect and to belong to the first group. You can't.
You guys all do a good job of articulating much of what troubles me about people who identify primarily as "libertarians." I've always maintained that die-hard libertarians are nothing more than anarchists who lack the courage of their convictions. They want everything about government destroyed except for the aspects of government that personally benefit them. And they don't even want to pay for that.
Libertarianism is best served as a condiment, not an entree. As a personal philosophy, it's a perfectly valid and even admirable guidepost; but its only real value is to inform one's socio-political orientation, not define it. You just can't jam every political issue into the same "get government out of my life" box.
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