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About Libertarianism
We’ve seen recently here on Ricochet lots of threads trying to parse libertarianism, or qualify libertarianism, or trying to understand libertarianism. How about, rather do all that, let’s just say that libertarianism means one thing:
People should be free to do as they please so long as they don’t aggress against other people.
For some people, that’s building enormous buildings. For some people it’s writing poetry. For some people it’s taking Ecstasy at a concert. For some people it’s making art. For some people it’s sitting in a basement, sniffing glue and watching vintage pornography. For some people it’s writing obscure monographs. For some people it’s traveling the world. For some people it’s laying in a field while tripping on LSD. For some people it’s cooking meals for friends. For some people it’s opening a small business. For some people it’s drinking beer and watching football. For some people it’s living in a monastery and spending 12 hours every day in silent meditation.
Different people have different values and libertarianism is the acceptance that maybe there isn’t one right answer to every question and that people should be free to peruse their own values peacefully in whatever way they see fit.
It’s also the acceptance that using laws and police and courts to force what you see as the one best thing onto everyone else not only fails every time, but is morally wrong.
Please stop trying to parse libertarianism. Please stop trying to qualify libertarianism. Please stop trying to understand libertarianism. Whenever you see or encounter the word, just replace it with “freedom to peacefully do things.” Because that’s what it means.
And yeah, sometimes it means the freedom to end up in a gutter with your dirty heroin needle stuck in your arm, and sometimes it means Klan rallies, and sometimes it means hosting symposia on Holocaust denial.
But by and large, and history shows this over and over, that when people are free of government restrictions in their deeds and thoughts, the overall effect is a more peaceful and more productive society.
Published in General
Mr. Cole’s definition seems to have some resonance with others, and it has been useful to me, as it helps to make even clearer why I am not a libertarian.
This construction does not acknowledge any duty beyond not physically harming others.
Including the duty to take care of one’s children.
Disregard.
Regards,
10
Since the Supreme Court rules on law and law has metastasized throughout government because we, the elected majority you trust, have elected legislators to put laws into areas of our lives the Founders never dreamed of, Scotus’s power is also greater. But Congress and the executive branch share equal blame with the courts. All of the Fed needs to be whittled down.
I think Fred’s point was well put.
Severely Ltd.-the majority is often wrong. I definitely do not agree with the majority of Americans about everything. I support rule by an electoral majority not because the results will always be perfect, but because I prefer rule by the majority to rule by the minority. For lots of reasons, one of them being, in cases where mistakes are made and bad laws are passed, I suspect that it is much easier to convince a majority of Americans that they made a mistake than it is to convince Supreme Court justices that they made a mistake. The American electorate shifts and changes it’s mind all the time, whereas the Supreme Court seem to think that they are Moses revealing the word of God to us. Fred is very well spoken, but I still don’t get it: I don’t understand why people who love freedom, as libertarians obviously do, would place so much power in the hands of a very small group of elites. Libertarians may win a few battles by doing that, but ultimately, they will lose the war. I am just inclined to believe that in the long run, putting that much power in the hands of a few people will never make anyone more free.
There has to someone to make the ultimate call on legal matters and the Founders wisely didn’t allow the president or the legislator’s themselves to make the call. Splitting the power up was pretty smart.
You still seem to be smarting over the judicial activism thing. I think comment # 127 (page seven) summed it up pretty well. Did you read it?
Hello again, Severely Ltd. :) Yes, I did read Midget Faded Rattlesnake’s comment, and I read it again just now. The Founders created the Supreme Court for a reason, but they are usurping power with the consent of just about everybody, including libertarians. Majestyk said something on his thread that rings very true for me: the process is more important than the outcome, and if we get the process right, the outcome will generally be right too, but the process is more important.
I am very much against abortion, but if the Supreme Court ruled tomorrow to outlaw all abortions, I would vehemently object, even though I believe that abortion should be outlawed: that decision belongs to the states, as do so many other decisions that our justices have taken it upon themselves to rule on: it is not their place to inform us of what we are and are not allowed to do.
One of the founders said, “I may disagree with what a man says, but I will defend to the death his right to say it”; I feel the same way about majority rule. I may disagree with what the majority does, but I recognize their right to be in charge. I will never recognize the right of nine un elected judges to be in charge
I’m not as big a fan of Jefferson as many but on this point I believe he was spot on;
“The first principle of republicanism is that the lex majoris partis is the fundamental law of every society of individuals of equal rights; to consider the will of the society enounced by the majority of a single vote as sacred as if unanimous is the first of all lessons in importance, yet the last which is thoroughly learnt. This law once disregarded, no other remains but that of force, which ends necessarily in military despotism.”
If the public could be convinced of the need to constrain judicial overreach, again by (I know, broken record) adopting a very narrow interpretation of harm, a president and Congress reflecting that would be elected and they in turn would nominate and approve like-minded judges to the Supreme Court. Short of a revolution that’s how it would have to go, right?
I agree with your focus on state’s rights, but the problem is deeper than that. Our acceptance of the colossal role of government in our lives is wrong on every level.
Yes, that is how it would have to go. :) If there is to be any hope of convincing the public to be more restrained, then we must practice restraint ourselves. Otherwise, we are all just sending lawyers out to try to curry favor with our judicial betters. Let liberals be the ones who go running to the courts whenever an election doesn’t go their way: conservatives and libertarians should be above that.
People have a right to be wrong. :) I don’t want to sound too righteous here, because if I lived in a place where a majority of people believed in things like forcing women to wear a burka and stoning them for letting the veil slip, then I would probably run to the arms of the nearest seemingly benevolent dictator, but in terms of America, I have great hope: many libertarians seem to have given up on the American people. I haven’t.
But why do you think that decision belongs to the states? Because of the 10th amendment? But then don’t you think Roe v Wade is unconstitutional and should be overturned, and, more generally speaking, that other unconstitutional Supreme Court decisions should be overturned? That a more traditional, plain-spoken (less convoluted and silly) interpretation 0f Constitutional law is worth fighting for?
Yes, because of the 10th amendment. Of course Roe v Wade is unconstitutional, and of course it should be overturned, but if the court sought to make abortion illegal, that would also be unconstitutional. The court should say, “This is not our remit, it is not for us to say whether abortion should be legal or not, it is for the voters in the respective states to make that decision.” A more traditional interpretation of Constitutional law is definitely worth fighting for; I don’t see libertarians fighting for it, and SSM is a prime example of that. I am afraid lightning might strike me for mentioning SSM: I don’t care much about it, but am just using it as an example. :)
Doh, Double post.
I’m sorry, I don’t understand, what exactly did I say that is backwards?
Lawmakers are elected by the people, and generally share their ideas about virtue. Those ideas may well be wrong, but the lawmaker’s version of virtue is almost always the same version as the the people who elected him.
Check out the Institute for Justice, “The nation’s only libertarian, civil liberties, public interest law firm.” IJ does tremendous work advocating against bad Supreme Court decisions like Kelo, for example. They focus on business and property matters, and as far as I know, keep away from SSM and abortion. But the work they do advocating for a traditional legal understanding of economic freedom is tremendous.
The Cato Institute, the well-known libertarian think-tank, also has an extensive law and civil liberties presence. Much of their mission is devoted to restoring the traditional notion of, for example, the burden of proof. (Regulatory agencies have a tendency to treat people as guilty-until-proven-innocent, to not give people the benefit of reasonable doubt – to the point where people who had no knowledge of a wrongful act can be punished for it, and it becomes the norm for innocent people to cop a plea rather than fall victim to prosecutorial overreach.)
But lawmakers do not share the same incentives as the people who elect them. Lawmakers feel incentives that put them at odds with taxpayers – and respond to those incentives.
Thank you for the links, MFR :) My only real experience of libertarians comes from Ricochet, and most of the libertarians here don’t seem much concerned with judicial restraint, but it is good to know that some are.
Here’s what I took you to be saying: “The current level of government is fine and I have confidence that the American voter will put the right people in office and they’ll fix the current mess. No major structural changes are necessary, we just need the right people in charge.”
Did I misunderstand?
Severely Ltd.-I am not sure if you misunderstood :) The current level of government is definitely not fine, and MFR makes a good point: lawmakers do not necessarily always share the goals of their electorates. For instance, in Massachusetts, state legislators actually passed a law which would increase the gas tax automatically every year, without any action on their part. Somebody collected enough signatures to put the question directly to voters, and they repealed the automatic increases. It is much easier to do things like that on a local level.
I am not sure what you mean by structural changes. What kind of structural changes do you want, and how would you bring them about? I am definitely not suggesting that everything is honky dory, but I have hope that over time, most people will usually see the light.
I agree that sweeping changes are needed, but the only way to establish real and lasting change is to win elections; I may be misunderstanding, but many libertarians sound to me like they are taking a very dismissive attitude toward the majority of people. I believe that is a mistake.
So, I wanted to respond to this comment. First, the principle I espoused has caveats when it applies to children. If you slap a child’s hand to stop them from touching a hot stove, I don’t consider that aggression.
On the subject of duty, I personally don’t go in for the word “duty.” Duty is unchosen obligation, and on a moral level, I have no truck with it. But, that doesn’t apply. When one has children, the obligation to take care of them freely chosen. Another example would be my marriage. I have no duty to my wife, because duty is unchosen obligation. I have plenty of obligations to her, but those are ones all freely chosen when I married her.
I also want to say that I consider abuse and neglect (not taking care of one’s children) to be a form of aggression against them. To intentionally abusing one’s child or neglecting them, would be cause for action.
But let’s turn it around. Are you saying that it’s okay to use force (men with guns) to make a person, who couldn’t be otherwise bothered, take care of their children? You might be able to force them, at gunpoint, to provide shelter, food, etc., but you can’t force them to be a parent. There are some things that cannot be achieved through force, changing a man’s heart is one of them.
I wouldn’t necessarily say duty is only unchosen obligations, but that’s more a semantic argument. Otherwise, I agree with wholeheartedly with what you wrote, Fred.
Interestingly enough, the latter part of your post indicates how child support might be forcibly withheld, even in a libertarian state. This is an example of how non-libertarians rather intentionally misinterpret libertarian arguments. Libertarianism is not synonymous with anarchy. The state can be quite zealous in enforcing that one fulfill the obligations one has taken on. It is merely hostile to the idea that the state can enforce obligations one has not volunteered for. For instance, this is why a libertarian society might be harder on false advertising than our current, statist one. It is why a libertarian can oppose conscription and support punishment for desertion.
That’s actually very interesting. Ayn Rand’s heir (intellectually and property heir) Leonard Peikoff had a weekly podcast where he answers Dr. Laura type questions, except, obviously from an Objectivist point of view.
Before I got married, I wanted to soak up as much possible wisdom on the subject as I could. So I sent in a question what duty I owe my wife as her husband.
Peikoff answered the question, but he starts by defining duty as I did above: unchosen obligation. When I took time to think about his definition, I could not find fault with it.
Language being a fluid thing, I don’t have such an absolutist definition of the word “duty” as that. But I do agree with you on the categorization between chosen and unchosen obligations.
If one chooses to use the word “duty” to mean “unchosen obligations”, there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. It simply behooves one to be clear about definitions, especially given the tendency of non-libertarians to elide the differences between chosen and nonchosen obligations and claim libertarians don’t support meeting either.
As in many things in life, I tend to align myself with Robert Heinlein, and I believe Heinlein used the word “duty” to refer to chosen obligations. I would have to check (and don’t have time now), but suffice to say, I merely point out that the particular definition of duty you use may not be universal.
I agree. That’s why I phrased my initial comments the way I did.
I apologize that I threw out an argument and haven’t followed up on the thoughtful responses. I do think there is a meaty topic here that is worth chewing through, and I do think it gets at the heart of the libertarian/social conservative divide. I do believe that there are moral unchosen obligations beyond the active harm principle. With more time I would like to argue that you do, too.
But my life just now got busier and I don’t have the time to offer the thoughtful responses everyone’s comments deserve. When I can get back to this, I am sure that the thread will be cold. In another topic, at a later date, perhaps?
Again, I apologize.