Dean's World

When you have to resort to examples of weaving one's own hair into a cardigan sweater, I'm of the opinion you need to rethink what you're talking about.

While all the fancy talk to me is rubbish, the general gist appears to be that a person has the liberty to expect caviar and filet mignon for dinner and that he should be provided it because, well, it's "liberty" man. What a load of hogwash.

Orwell described it pretty well: the ability to hold to contradictory ideas in one's mind at the same time.

Libertarianism is going the way of liberalism as a term that's particularly useful for describing anything. One might think that libertarians (or liberals for that matter) would be people who would view the liberty interest as the preeminent good. No longer. Eric, above, has described the current state of things pretty succinctly.

For example, in the current Social Security discussion libertarians appear to have taken the position that compulsory individual savings is better than the current system. To my eye from a libertarian viewpoint there is no advantage either way. Compulsory individual savings advances no liberty interest.

So now the libertarians aren't libertarian, the liberals aren't liberal, the conservatives aren't conservative, and the progressives are striving with all their might to prevent progress. Are you getting confused? I am.

I dunno about the fellow who wrote the article, but I do think you can be a left-libertarian in practice:

1. Socially: live and let live (pro-choice, gay rights, no evangelical stuff, pro-school vouchers, low taxes)

2. Foriegn affairs: non-interventionist, war as a truly last resort for self-defense and not much else.

That's kinda where I am, I reckon

My response to the notion of left-libertarianism would be all but identical to that of Robb Allen, who has penned an excellent answer and thereby saved me the time to respond to other and worthier posts.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Good find. I always wondered about those leftist libertarians.

Left 'libertarians' appear to think (and I'm not sure I should use that word) that ideas should be as evenly distributed as money. Any other arrangement just wouldn't be fair, would it? And of course the ideas of a teenage ignoramus should not be considered inferior to those of a sixty-year-old scholar and writer. I enjoyed Palmer's demolition of the concept. Now I understand more clearly why Ayn Rand declared that she was not and could never be a libertarian. A philosophy that can be extended to Otsuka's nonsense and not look obviously absurd is useless and harmful.

I agree with Arnold Harris, of course. Any one post of his is worth more than that entire book or a whole library of such books. Robert Speirs is right. Ayn Rand and her successors such as Leonard Peikoff and Peter Schwartz warned us of what libertarianism was degenerating into under the influence of Murray Rothbard, Lew Rockwell, Justin Raimondo, and others like them.

Today, we have "libertarians" who wish the South had won the Civil War, who argue that the Holocaust never happened, who argue that American "imperialism" was to blame for the Cold War and for 9/11 -- in short, who, in the name of fighting government, side with every government, no matter how totalitarian, that is an enemy of the United States government, which is the freest government in history. These "libertarians" are indistinguishable from Pat Buchanan or Noam Chomsky, who calls himself an anarchist but defends every form of totalitarianism.

Liberty without inequality, or liberty with equality, is an oxymoron. Liberty, or freedom, and equality, are opposites. Liberty, by definition, means individuality, diversity, difference, inequality. Equality means sameness, uniformity, conformity. Free men and women are not equal, and equal men and women are not free.

Nor is liberty possible without property, which is the material form of individuality. How can you have, e.g., the right to privacy in your own home unless you have the right to own, and to defend, your own home? Property, including property in the means of self-defense, is what enables all the other freedoms.

As to pot and taxes: I don't smoke pot, though it neither breaks my bones nor picks my pocket if you wish to do so on your own property at your own expense. I willingly pay my taxes to support legitimate functions of government such as police, courts, fire-fighters, and the military, which exist to protect my rights to life, liberty, and property.

That book Tom G. Palmer (who is on my blogroll) reviewed and skewered sounds like a bow full of mush, an object lesson how not to write. By contrast, I just finished reading one of the most lucide presentations of a political spectrum that I have yet seen, "Maximum Liberty: An Introduction to the Scope and Form of Government". In it, the author describes a spectrum from total government (totalitarianism) on the far Left to no government (anarchy) on the far Right, with limited Constitutional government in between. He also discusses the religious and moral foundations of liberty and limited government. Individual liberty presupposes individual responsibility.

.left wing libertarians want to smoke pot, and right wing libertarians don't want to pay taxes.

Most libertarians I know fall under both of these things. I think this is a broad generalisation that does not hold water. Are you suggesting that who want pot (drugs legalised...) want to pay high taxes?

Libertarians just want to be left along to do what they wilt. As little as government as possible is a good thing.

"Yes, it's a curtailment of liberty. It's just less of one than we're doing now."

Couldn't have said it better. I don't really like anything compulsory, but given the choice between a system where I do not have any choice and a system where I have some options, I'll take the one with options. Though I want a completely optional system, it's not likely to happen, so I'll pick the system that gives people the most liberty. Progress towards liberty is still progress, and slow progress is better than none. I think the problem with a number of my fellow libertarians is that they don't realize that - society doesn't like instant changes, they panic when the status quo changes very fast, so you have to work over time for your goals in order to get them accomplished.

Here is Tom G. Palmer's blog.

Here is Maximum Liberty: An Introduction to the Scope and Form of Government. Extremely interesting spectrum and _style_.

Here is yet another extremely interesting spectrum. Dr. Ross writes:

"The names for the four temperaments are unrelated to the humors, but go back to Nietzsche's use of Apollonian and Dionysian and to a similar appropriation from Greek mythology, Promethean ("Forethought") and Epimethean ("Afterthought"). The Epimethean does seem to be the most conservative of the temperaments. While Nietzsche would see the Apollonian as the most aesthetic, its possible asceticism now contrasts with a hedonistic or a rationalistic aestheticism with the Dionysian or the Promethean, respectively. Again, the details of this may be found in the Keirsey &Bates' book.

"With four temperaments, another system of four types comes to mind, the political differentiation found in the Nolan Chart . The different sets of fours may, indeed, match up no better than dog people and Evlis people, and in practice they may vary independently; but some similiarities warrant a comparison, perhaps just in the way of a thought experiment. The Epimethean has already been noted as the most Conservative, and the Promethean as a matter of fact seems to prevail among Libertarians. Matching Apollonian with Authoritarian may raise a question, but I do not think it is an accident that Camille Paglia often speaks of an Apollonian sensibility as "fascistic," based on the hard, aesthetic, and ascetic surfaces of things. Kiersey is now calling this temperament "Idealistic," and one might not ordinarily think of idealists as authoritarian; but there can easily be in idealists, like Mahâtmâ Gandhi , a certain detachment from the limitations of reality that can become an intolerance and ruthlessness. One sees flashes of this in Gandhi, rather more in many of his followers, and then extremes in "idealists" like Lenin and Mao, for whom the limitations of reality could be erased by mass murder. In the thought experiment, then, I will pursue this connection.

"Authoritarians, of course, want everyone to deny and sacrifice themselves for something else, whether religion, politics, or, strangely enough, art. The Dionysiac is a different kind of artist, perhaps just as self-destructive, but through self-indulgence rather than ascetic self-denial. The Dionysiac, like many political Liberals, and unlike either Libertarians, Conservatives, or Authoritarians, wants no constraints on behavior, certainly no moral or religious ones, or any that follow from conventional authority. In behavior, a Dionysiac is unlikely to respect the property rights of others, since such things are seen as artificial conventions limiting the human spirit, and so voting for those who attack property and wealth, with promises of "redistribution," seems reasonable enough. While Libertarians are often thought of as libertines, such a Libertarian could only expect to indulge himself on the basis of his own efforts and earnings, which naturally limits how far the self-indulgence can go, while Liberals expect to indulge themselves at the expense of others ("welfare rights"), without any effort or earning on their own part, which means that the sky is the limit once the means are found through politics or litigation to soak others of their substance.

"While Nietzsche himself has the classic Dionysiac vision, his own personal life was nevertheless Apollonian, and he ironically appeals to the kind of pinched academics and humorless political activists who are also themselves, not just Apollonian (in some arty or idealistic sense), but truly Authoritarian, and who repeat all the sins that Nietzsche himself described in the envious asceticism of Christianity. This folie à deux between Dionysian and Apollonian, a variety of moralistic relativism , strikes me as an important result of the typological thought experiment. It is a phenomenon that manifests itself in many ways, for instance in the deliberate rhetoric of freedom that is often used by Authoritarians, who thus sound like Liberals, but who then proceed in true Authoritarian fashion once they have the means of power. Thus, freedom from "sexual harassment" was sold as Liberalism (restrictions on business and property), but the limitations on innocent speech and behavior (restrictions on free speech and freedom of association) imposed in its name are truly Authoritarian (indeed, Totalitarian) -- as noted in a recent episode about the issue on the adult cable television cartoon show South Park (one of the most popular episodes ever), when a child asks an adult about the lack of free speech in sexual harrassment law, "Isn't that Fascism?" and the adult answers, "It isn't because we don't call it that." The true Apollonian response -- a false surface concealing the iron fist."

Here is Jeanine Ring's spectrum. Extremely interesting.

Sounds like a socialist.