An Honest Libertarian Discussion Thread

[Call_me_Ishmael]

The OP depends on the "government" of this forum to protect his posts from being eliminated by those who oppose his opinion.

What childish nonsense. It's the kind of utopian nonsense I once believed as a teenager.

[Canadianeye]

The OP depends on the "government" of this forum to protect his posts from being eliminated by those who oppose his opinion.

What childish nonsense. It's the kind of utopian nonsense I once believed as a teenager.

Occasionally I will go re-watch Karl Hess videos or re-read some of his stuff. He kind of lived at high ends of the political spectrum - he went from writing for Goldwater (possibly Reagen IIRC), all the way to the far left...and ended up as a personal choice, individually based libertarian. The Libertarian Party dragged him into the Party, but not without pulling out their hair at the roots I think.

They are about Party of course, and he was a pretty solid individualist libertarian.

Interesting man.

[Call_me_Ishmael]

The reference to John Locke in the OP is amusing. Was it to add credibility or a sense of reason to the post?

One can develop a recipe for ham sandwiches from Locke's work. Or... as the French philosopher Helvétius did develop.... a political imperative to control men's thoughts.

The writings of the same John Locke were used as the starting point for Helvétius, as he developed his political position that state control of what men saw and heard - control of everything taken in by a man's senses - would be essential and desirable to controlling what they thought and did. And thus it was a means of creating the the most virtuous humans. So there was Locke... and then there were those who interpreted what Locke wrote. If citing John Locke is sufficient to legitimize Anarcho-Capitalism, I shudder to think of how the following alternate development of Locke's works will be used in our current system. Or more likely I believe that the attempt at Anarcho-Capitalism will fail and blame will be on the imperfect "man", who then must be made virtuous paradoxically by complete control of his mind. It's not at all an incongruous conclusion when you consider that communism - which purports to give total ownership to 'the people' - requires a totalitarian strong central government to ensure that happens.

This is from Richard Pipes' chapter on The Intelligentsia in his 1990 book The Russian Revolution. ISBN: 978-0-307-78857-3

For several decades after its appearance, the influence of Locke’s Essay was confined to academic circles. It was the French philosophe Claude Helvétius who, in his anonymously published De l’Esprit (1758), first drew political consequences from Locke’s theory of knowledge, with results that have never been adequately recognized. It is known that Helvétius studied intensely the philosophical writings of Locke and was deeply affected by them. He accepted as proven Locke’s contention that all ideas were the product of sensations and all knowledge the result of man’s ability, through reflection on sensory data, to grasp the differences and similarities that are the basis of thought. He denied as categorically as did Locke man’s ability to direct thinking or the actions resulting from it: for Helvétius, his biographer says, “a philosophical treatise on liberty [was] a treatise on effects without a cause.” Moral notions derived exclusively from man’s experience with the sensations of pain and pleasure. People thus were neither “good” nor “bad”: they merely acted, involuntarily and mechanically, in their self-interest, which dictated the avoidance of pain and the enhancement of pleasure. Up to this point Helvétius said nothing that had not been said previously by Locke and his French followers. But then he made a startling leap from philosophy into politics. From the premise that all knowledge and all values were by-products of sensory experience he drew the inference that by controlling the data that the senses fed to the mind—that is, by appropriately shaping man’s environment—it was possible to determine what he thought and how he behaved. Since, according to Locke, the formulation of ideas was wholly involuntary and entirely shaped by physical sensations, it followed that if man were subjected to impressions that made for virtue, he could be made virtuous through no act of his own will.

This idea provides the key to the creation of perfectly virtuous human beings—required are only appropriate external influences. Helvétius called the process of molding men “education,” by which he meant much more than formal schooling. When he wrote “l’éducation peut tout”—“education can do anything”—he meant by education everything that surrounds man and affects his thinking, everything which furnishes his mind with sensations and generates ideas. First and foremost, it meant legislation: “It is … only by good laws that we can form virtuous men.”

From which it followed that morality and legislation were “one and the same science." In the concluding chapter of L’Esprit, Helvétius spoke of the desirability of reforming society through legislation for the purpose of making men “virtuous.”

This is how childish pie-in-the-sky utopias turn into hell on earth

[Trinnity]

I just can’t take libertarians seriously, way too many of them believe in open borders.

I don't. It's against the Constitution.

This is another reason I walked away from any association with the Virginia LP decades ago. The whole thing was a tiny unorganized joke. Nice people. Good intentions. 0 chance of success; the timing was 100% bad and going nowhere. Libertarians were laughed at.

Since then I have come to see Libertarians as all over the place and it's embarrassing to them and to anyone who says they're a libertarian.

I'm a Constitutionalist.

That's why serious libertarians are a wing of the Republican Party.

Agreed.

I told the VLP decades ago after they had some inspirational speaker ( I still remember it to this day) ....our two party system is like the Mississippi - you're not going to change its course as a third Party. It's best to join the Republicans and push them back to the Constitution.

I don't know if it landed on gray matter. I drifted away eventually... it was a waste of time.

I guess in theory, one could have open borders

Theory is bullshit. It won't work. Want proof? Look at the current problem with the southern border.

The OP depends on the "government" of this forum to protect his posts

I read it twice and missed that. Shit

[Trinnity]

@TedintheShed can you send me links for your quotes?

[patrickt]

Libertarians vary from state to state but I've never met one who advocated a country with no borders.

[TedintheShed]

@TedintheShed can you send me links for your quotes?

They come from books, attributed to the authors I stated. The exception is the Mises quote, which is public domain.

I am responding on my phone now as my internet is down, but if you want the books and the Mises link I'll provide them when I get it back.

[Quark]

I'm old school small L libertarian, but I don't belong to the Party. Last year I heard they went socialist. Now I hear the Mises people took over. I'm not even sure if that's good or bad. Anyway I no longer call myself a conservative either because it's like ice cream....there a bunch of different kinds.

I'm a constitutionalist and that's enough. I am a constitutionalist and therefore you know exactly where I stand.

I kinda think Scalia was murdered.

As a member of Mises Institute Mises is a Austrian Economic Think Tank attached to the University of Auburn. Mises tends towards libertarianism but I would not call Mises a full blown Libertarian Think Tank.

[Quark]

I think it is an option, if it was attempted to be introduced in a full wipe or clean political slate situation.

Until then, it is an unworkable model. It currently doesn't exist fully operationally anywhere on earth.

A full wipe situation, could conceivably happen, by design, without a catastrophic economic/societal/judicial melt down...but that is a high risk political maneuver, with enormous amounts of coordination, from many peoples of usually entrenched ideological political positions.

I've casually mentioned the methodology/tactics regarding this previously, however, not with Libertarianism filling the vacuum.

There are two types of libertarians, anarchists and classical liberals. Classical liberalism is what out country was originally founded on. The Anarchist Libertarians want no government, no state and that probably won't work because even tribes have some type of government. As a Libertarian I'm of the Classical Liberal/Anarcho-capitalist/Night Watchmen State type.

[Quark]

The OP depends on the "government" of this forum to protect his posts from being eliminated by those who oppose his opinion.

What childish nonsense. It's the kind of utopian nonsense I once believed as a teenager.

Huh?