Why do libertarians support Republicans?

Fogdog

Fogdog

Well-Known Member
Dryxi said:
The Libertarian Party's focus on property rights is rooted in the belief that it is the foundation for preserving individual freedom and autonomy. However, this does not mean that human rights are neglected or overlooked. Libertarians believe that individual rights, including the right to be free from coercion and to seek legal recourse if such behavior occurs, must be protected. In the context of employment, an employer demanding sexual favors as a condition for employment is a clear violation of voluntary trade and individual freedom.

But, you caught me. My expertise may not be thoroughly enough Libertarian to fully engage in defending them with you as an authority on the subject. I haven't read the mises institute publications at all. Does it state some where that sexual coercion is allowable in the workplace? Guess I'm not Libertarian enough... but it's not required for me to point out obvious places where your bias is showing or your attempt to misrepresent an entire political party. No need to call you a liar, just possibly an exaggerator of the truth?
Click to expand...
Its a false belief that allows all sorts of interpretations.

It is centered upon property rights. Our country began with these words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men,

contrast that with:

Libertarians believe that the only proper role of government in the economic realm is to protect property rights, adjudicate disputes, and provide a legal framework in which voluntary trade is protected.

Fuck the idea that property rights come first above all others. I'll take a government that is instituted to protect my right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Property rights come second or third in that order, the right to life among equals comes first.

Hence, civil rights come first, not property rights. Libertarian ideals are unamerican.
 
Roger A. Shrubber

Roger A. Shrubber

Well-Known Member
Dryxi said:
The Libertarian Party's focus on property rights is rooted in the belief that it is the foundation for preserving individual freedom and autonomy. However, this does not mean that human rights are neglected or overlooked. Libertarians believe that individual rights, including the right to be free from coercion and to seek legal recourse if such behavior occurs, must be protected. In the context of employment, an employer demanding sexual favors as a condition for employment is a clear violation of voluntary trade and individual freedom.

But, you caught me. My expertise may not be thoroughly enough Libertarian to fully engage in defending them with you as an authority on the subject. I haven't read the mises institute publications at all. Does it state some where that sexual coercion is allowable in the workplace? Guess I'm not Libertarian enough... but it's not required for me to point out obvious places where your bias is showing or your attempt to misrepresent an entire political party. No need to call you a liar, just possibly an exaggerator of the truth?
Click to expand...
Look, you can defend libertarians all you want, but their system has never been viable, and never will be, because it trusts people to act in not only their own best interests, but in everyone elses too...And to expect people to do that is both the depths of insanity and the heights of stupidity.
There have been billions if not trillions of cases where people have not acted in anyone's bests interests, even their own. Until people evolve quite a ways past where we have gotten to at the present, trusting ANYONE to do the right thing on their own is just moronic.
And that is irrefutable proof that libertarianism will never work in our lifetimes, or the lifetimes of our ten times great grandchildren.
You can continue to make any arguments you'd like, as a matter of fact, I will be shocked if you don't, but this proves you wrong, no matter what argument you make in support of libertarianism.
 
Last edited:
Herb & Suds

Herb & Suds

Well-Known Member
Dryxi said:
And yet most libertarians would probably agree that rules and protections are still important. The source is needed to establish creditability to the individuals views that you speak of. Is he the only one with those views? If I say, "I met a Democrat once, they told me the privilege of owning property is one of white privilege and it must be taken away", the creditability of that individual means it should be assumed they speak for the majority of democrats?

You need a source on that. The lack of one shows we are simply speaking from a biased perspective with the goal of throwing mud. Typical.
Click to expand...
You met a democrat once ?
You must not be the neighborly type
We have a Trump libertarian on my road
He thinks everyone in the neighborhood is a Trumper
We all have a good laugh when he isn’t around
 
cannabineer

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
Roger A. Shrubber said:
Look, you can defend libertarians all you want, but their system has never been viable, and never will be, because it trusts people to act in not only their own best interests, but in everyone elses too...And to expect people to do that is both the depths of insanity and the heights of stupidity.
There have been billions if not trillions of cases where people have not acted in anyone's bests interests, even their own. Until people evolve quite a ways past where we have gotten to at the present, trusting ANYONE to do the right thing on their own is just moronic.
And that is irrefutable proof that libertarianism will never work in out lifetimes, or the lifetimes of our ten times great grandchildren.
You can continue to make any arguments you'd like, as a matter of fact, I will be shocked if you don't, but this proves you wrong, no matter what argument you make in support of libertarianism.
Click to expand...
that is the defining feature of all utopian ideologies, one not rooted in the actual behavior of the human animal, individually or in groups.

It is the feature directly responsible for the rapid collapse of an attempted utopian state (cf. Bolshevism —> Lenin’s fascist state) into a self-stabilizing authoritarian regime.

It is little wonder that aspiring nobility like the Kochs underwrite libertarian politics.
 
Roger A. Shrubber

Roger A. Shrubber

Well-Known Member
cannabineer said:
that is the defining feature of all utopian ideologies, one not rooted in the actual behavior of the human animal, individually or in groups.

It is the feature directly responsible for the rapid collapse of an attempted utopian state (cf. Bolshevism —> Lenin’s fascist state) into a self-stabilizing authoritarian regime.

It is little wonder that aspiring nobility like the Kochs underwrite libertarian politics.
Click to expand...
Why does it seem like only the ignoble aspire to nobility?
Never mind, the question answers itself...
 
cannabineer

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
Fogdog said:
Its a false belief that allows all sorts of interpretations.

It is centered upon property rights. Our country began with these words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men,

contrast that with:

Libertarians believe that the only proper role of government in the economic realm is to protect property rights, adjudicate disputes, and provide a legal framework in which voluntary trade is protected.

Fuck the idea that property rights come first above all others. I'll take a government that is instituted to protect my right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Property rights come second or third in that order, the right to life among equals comes first.

Hence, civil rights come first, not property rights. Libertarian ideals are unamerican.
Click to expand...
An interesting read

newrepublic.com

The Sneaky Politics of “Natural Law”

The State Department wants to present its new human rights project as empirical and historical. But "natural law" is as political as anything else.
newrepublic.com newrepublic.com
 
HGCC

HGCC

Well-Known Member
cannabineer said:
It is little wonder that aspiring nobility like the Kochs underwrite libertarian politics.
Click to expand...
That's something important, look at who funds think tanks and pushes ideologies, and what do they stand to gain. How does/could it harm others?

*debt ceiling/limit is another one, along with inflation. Why would an interest group push one idea over another, what is their interest in the matter.
 
cannabineer

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
Roger A. Shrubber said:
sounds like a lot of rationalization of shitty behavior...
Click to expand...
I see more. Many theorists and philosophers were honest in their inquiries, but were not necessarily aware of a bias toward wanting reality to be
-an ordered and orderly place
-with the order simple enough that a good mind proceeding rationally could detect and map it (and then use it as a recipe for virtuous living).

That is something that people, even exceptionally smart ones, tend to want badly enough that it introduces a self-reinforcing bias.
A very similar phenomenon besets theology.

That is why imo there is so much convergence between theology (notably Aquinas) and a doctrine of natural law. A universe operated by a benign God, or a human mind whose underlying mechanism is rational, is guaranteed to make sense, even if that sense is beyond us i.e. a mystery.

It is the visceral attractiveness of the concept, the ego-feeding effect of believing to have figured out a core principle that can be reduced to practice, that makes me really distrust it.

And without it, the structure of libertarian ideas loses an important, possibly indispensable load-bearing member.
 
Last edited:
GenericEnigma

GenericEnigma

Well-Known Member
Libertarianism, like anarchism and communism, would probably function well once the selfishly apathetic/ignorant aspect of humanity is removed. As long as people act on such impulses in a relatively unregulated environment, there will be monopolies and strongman militias. Like electing Trump, trying it out will not make it work (quite the opposite). Humanity needs a state to compel itself to not feed the bears - or everything falls apart.

Utopia is aptly named.
 
Roger A. Shrubber

Roger A. Shrubber

Well-Known Member
cannabineer said:
I see more. Many theorists and philosophers were honest in their inquiries, but were not necessarily aware of a bias toward wanting reality to be
-an ordered and orderly place
-with the order simple enough that a good mind proceeding rationally could detect and map it (and then use it as a recipe for virtuous living).

That is something that people, even exceptionally smart ones, tend to want badly enough that it introduces a self-reinforcing bias.
A very similar phenomenon besets theology.

That is why imo there is so much convergence between theology (notably Aquinas) and a doctrine of natural law. A universe operated by a benign God, or a human mind whose underlying mechanism is rational, is guaranteed to make sense, even if that sense is beyond us i.e. a mystery.

It is the visceral attractiveness of the concept, the ego-feeding effect of believing to have figured out a core principle that can be reduced to practice, that makes me really distrust it.

And without it, the structure of libertarian ideas loses an important, possibly indispensable load-bearing member.
Click to expand...
I can see the attraction, for people who believe in an arbitrary deity, that there is some kind of natural order that makes sense of their nonsensical belief system.
I tend to think that the only order is that which we impose upon the chaos around us, and we impose that order by living in an impeccably correct way...The closer you get to that correctness, that impeccability, the more ordered your existence becomes.
There is no "Natural Order"...nature descends into chaos quickly, which is it's natural state. to deny that is to deny understanding of your environment, and your existence within it.
 
Fogdog

Fogdog

Well-Known Member
Unicorns and libertarians. It was a compelling image because most I've met have no idea what they are talking about

I googled: unicorns and libertarians are real

And got this:


In which there is this passage that seems to confirm the idea that libertarians for the most part are just pansy sniffing double rainbow guys who just believe it will all be good once everybody just starts believing and acting according to whatever crackpot idea is put forth and called libertarian.

But as Canabineer points out, there are some radical authoritarians pushing the idea too.

Brown: When I listen to libertarians talk about policies that they want to adopt that will help the poor and ideas for dealing with persistent, seemingly intractable problems, there is a policy response and then the idea is ‘Once we have achieved that policy response, we clean our hands, we walk away, and that’s it.’ We’re done, and now a thousand flowers will bloom. And that seems to be problematic for a number of reasons, but how do you view that idea that there are specific changes that need to take place, and once those changes properly respect people’s rights, once people are not improperly incentivized by the government, the job is done?

Horwitz: Well, I think there are a couple kinds of things you could say about that. Certainly one is that libertarians have to be careful not to fall victim to the same sort of fantasy that Mike Munger calls “unicorn governance,” right? To just imagine even if it’s us developing these policies, that they’re automatically going to play out and that we get a thousand flowers rather than a thousand weeds or a mix thereof. So I think that’s one part of that. I also think, though, too, that libertarians in the past have been hesitant to talk about issues of culture and so on, so just changing policies may not be enough. Certainly we want to think about the institutional level. How do we prevent, you know, the bad policies from coming back again, but how do we make sure that people understand why these policy changes we might want to make are good and why they will help the people we want to help. I mean, I think that if you don’t do that, you run the risk of just reverting right back as soon as you libertarians or whatever make the kinds of changes we might want to make.

Comegna: Yeah, there’s a sort of rush among libertarians generally when they encounter an issue to say that whatever an individual does—as long as it’s a freely made choice—is fine and consistent with libertarianism, but I think...we need a better, clearer, sharper focus on promoting virtuous behavior as opposed to simply or merely free behavior.

This is not unlike the evolution of Marxist-Leninist Bolshevism, which believed that the victory of socialism initially could only develop in a single country, which is not yet economically developed enough – such as Russia – provided that the head of the revolutionary movement will be a disciplined avant–garde*. Of course, Lenin believed he should lead that avant-garde.

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolshevism

There is much more in that panel discussion I linked to and to me, a worthy read. What is clear from the excerpts that I posted is the thought leaders of libertarian ideology are as hardcore authoritarian as some here say.
 
cannabineer

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
Fogdog said:
Unicorns and libertarians. It was a compelling image because most I've met have no idea what they are talking about

I googled: unicorns and libertarians are real

And got this:


In which there is this passage that seems to confirm the idea that libertarians for the most part are just pansy sniffing double rainbow guys who just believe it will all be good once everybody just starts believing and acting according to whatever crackpot idea is put forth and called libertarian.

But as Canabineer points out, there are some radical authoritarians pushing the idea too.

Brown: When I listen to libertarians talk about policies that they want to adopt that will help the poor and ideas for dealing with persistent, seemingly intractable problems, there is a policy response and then the idea is ‘Once we have achieved that policy response, we clean our hands, we walk away, and that’s it.’ We’re done, and now a thousand flowers will bloom. And that seems to be problematic for a number of reasons, but how do you view that idea that there are specific changes that need to take place, and once those changes properly respect people’s rights, once people are not improperly incentivized by the government, the job is done?

Horwitz: Well, I think there are a couple kinds of things you could say about that. Certainly one is that libertarians have to be careful not to fall victim to the same sort of fantasy that Mike Munger calls “unicorn governance,” right? To just imagine even if it’s us developing these policies, that they’re automatically going to play out and that we get a thousand flowers rather than a thousand weeds or a mix thereof. So I think that’s one part of that. I also think, though, too, that libertarians in the past have been hesitant to talk about issues of culture and so on, so just changing policies may not be enough. Certainly we want to think about the institutional level. How do we prevent, you know, the bad policies from coming back again, but how do we make sure that people understand why these policy changes we might want to make are good and why they will help the people we want to help. I mean, I think that if you don’t do that, you run the risk of just reverting right back as soon as you libertarians or whatever make the kinds of changes we might want to make.

Comegna: Yeah, there’s a sort of rush among libertarians generally when they encounter an issue to say that whatever an individual does—as long as it’s a freely made choice—is fine and consistent with libertarianism, but I think...we need a better, clearer, sharper focus on promoting virtuous behavior as opposed to simply or merely free behavior.

This is not unlike the evolution of Marxist-Leninist Bolshevism, which believed that the victory of socialism initially could only develop in a single country, which is not yet economically developed enough – such as Russia – provided that the head of the revolutionary movement will be a disciplined avant–garde*. Of course, Lenin believed he should lead that avant-garde.

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolshevism

There is much more in that panel discussion I linked to and to me, a worthy read. What is clear from the excerpts that I posted is the thought leaders of libertarian ideology are as hardcore authoritarian as some here say.
Click to expand...
I’m only partway through, but this caught my eye. It was intended as a joke, but I believe it exposes the fact that economic libertarianism has no mechanism for dissuading monopoly. (Not counting our local bigfoot’s claim that competing providers are a bulwark against monopoly.) And monopoly is the economic dimension of total authoritarian governance.

Horwitz: Several things I would say. One, as an economist I’m all in favor of limiting the supply of future economists…

Comegna: [laughter]
 
Roger A. Shrubber

Roger A. Shrubber

Well-Known Member
Fogdog said:
Unicorns and libertarians. It was a compelling image because most I've met have no idea what they are talking about

I googled: unicorns and libertarians are real

And got this:


In which there is this passage that seems to confirm the idea that libertarians for the most part are just pansy sniffing double rainbow guys who just believe it will all be good once everybody just starts believing and acting according to whatever crackpot idea is put forth and called libertarian.

But as Canabineer points out, there are some radical authoritarians pushing the idea too.

Brown: When I listen to libertarians talk about policies that they want to adopt that will help the poor and ideas for dealing with persistent, seemingly intractable problems, there is a policy response and then the idea is ‘Once we have achieved that policy response, we clean our hands, we walk away, and that’s it.’ We’re done, and now a thousand flowers will bloom. And that seems to be problematic for a number of reasons, but how do you view that idea that there are specific changes that need to take place, and once those changes properly respect people’s rights, once people are not improperly incentivized by the government, the job is done?

Horwitz: Well, I think there are a couple kinds of things you could say about that. Certainly one is that libertarians have to be careful not to fall victim to the same sort of fantasy that Mike Munger calls “unicorn governance,” right? To just imagine even if it’s us developing these policies, that they’re automatically going to play out and that we get a thousand flowers rather than a thousand weeds or a mix thereof. So I think that’s one part of that. I also think, though, too, that libertarians in the past have been hesitant to talk about issues of culture and so on, so just changing policies may not be enough. Certainly we want to think about the institutional level. How do we prevent, you know, the bad policies from coming back again, but how do we make sure that people understand why these policy changes we might want to make are good and why they will help the people we want to help. I mean, I think that if you don’t do that, you run the risk of just reverting right back as soon as you libertarians or whatever make the kinds of changes we might want to make.

Comegna: Yeah, there’s a sort of rush among libertarians generally when they encounter an issue to say that whatever an individual does—as long as it’s a freely made choice—is fine and consistent with libertarianism, but I think...we need a better, clearer, sharper focus on promoting virtuous behavior as opposed to simply or merely free behavior.

This is not unlike the evolution of Marxist-Leninist Bolshevism, which believed that the victory of socialism initially could only develop in a single country, which is not yet economically developed enough – such as Russia – provided that the head of the revolutionary movement will be a disciplined avant–garde*. Of course, Lenin believed he should lead that avant-garde.

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolshevism

There is much more in that panel discussion I linked to and to me, a worthy read. What is clear from the excerpts that I posted is the thought leaders of libertarian ideology are as hardcore authoritarian as some here say.
Click to expand...
"we need a better, clearer, sharper focus on promoting virtuous behavior as opposed to simply or merely free behavior."
I'm very curious what their methodology might be to achieve this goal? How does one change the nature of a beast that has resisted change for thousands of years? resisted some pretty compelling force, at that?
I'll start considering libertarianism as potentially viable when they can answer that question, and their answer doesn't involve the modified ludovico procedure..
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top