The Statue of Liberty - A government monument - is the official symbol of the libertarian party -It's a bit
blurry, but that's his middle finger that's up and it's a porn mag in his other hand.The Statue of Liberty - A government monument - is the official symbol of the libertarian party -It's a bit
blurry, but that's his middle finger that's up and it's a porn mag in his other hand.
The "libertarian" party - don't get me started. Okay, I'll start anyway. My main source is the Critiques of Libertarianism - an excellent site.
You may have been fooled by the "world's shortest political quiz" (Actually the world's second-smallest political quiz, formerly the world's shortest political quiz - see my quiz!) Or, take a look at the world's longest political quiz.
Now, see it get debunked, and see some testimonials by those were once fooled.
If you didn't get sucked in by the quiz, you might have been attracted to idolatry by the fiction (I repeat: fiction!) of Ayn Rand...
First of all, I'll let the libertarians speak for themselves.
Secondly, I'll show what their political party is all about.
And some reviews of their books
Finally, I'll give you a peak at their guiding philosophy
Libertarians on law, taxes, and constitution
Libertarians like to be very wordy. Don't be fooled by the fallacy of style over substance
The CATO institute at work
[Discover p67 Feb 1999] "Edward Hudgins, a libertarian from the Cato institute in Washington D.C. is giving a paper on a Martian utopia with no central government [Because the government is back on earth - on wall street!] A woman in the audience has suggested that the autonomous free-trading communities [Like Exxon, Mcdonald's, Disney...] he sees participating in the creation of a new civilization [with the right to molest children] through the emergence of spontaneous order [an order from a corporate dictator] might want to be sure about the safety of the things [and slaves] they trade with one another. Hudguins says that they wouldn't need government for that [natural selection would kill off anyone who doesn't own a radioactivity detector, or anyone who labels radioactive waste as milk will be slaughtered and their children sold into slavery - the point being, you don't need a government when you've got chaos and war to keep things in order] and that the US food and drug administration is a bad thing [for those who want to mix chalk with water and label it as milk]. The woman demurs, on the basis that it saves lives, the Australian makes his trenchant intervention" That being "It's a frontier. People are supposed to die. That's the point." The Australian said very well what the Cato evangelist was to chicken to say outright. "The poignancy of Mars is not just that it is attainable, it is that many people think it should have already been attained [it would have, if the wonderful cold war hadn't ended] The literature of their youth told them so...Feeling let down in government by this, many would-be Martians turn to the private sector...They talk of the breakthroughs that could be made is NASA would just get out of the way [How the heck can government competition "get in the way" Right, Exxon and Mcdonalds had bases on Mars, and even made treaties with the saucer people, before those nasty NASA guys shut them down and did an evil nasty coverup]
"But there are two problems here. One is that no private company will put up the funds to go to Mars without...the promise of real profit [Cato's plan to legalize slavery might make it profitable, however...]...The second...Do you really want to go to marse on a TV show? Sponsored by Tang?...Isn't that...Crass commercialism? Isn't mars better than that? Sacred even?" The article goes on about the debate between those who want "manifest density...lebensraum...(Both loaded terms were used with the cheerful abandon of those who don't fuss with liberal sensibilities...)Manifest destiny was a slogan of nineteenth century genocide and racism...If some remnants of the Martian genesis remain, some have suggested, perhaps planetary engineering should recreate an environment optimized for them, not us. Political correctness [one of the cardinal sins to conservatives] comes the reply...What arrogance, returns the floor By the end of the debate a lot of people are quite cross..." How would libertopia take care of these differences? War, of course.
Do you have a pathological hatred of democracy? If so, vote libertarian.
"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities." -- Ayn Rand
A good explaination of the far-right's dislike of majority rule, known officially as "democracy". (BTW, don't be fooled when loonyterians talk about "minorities": that's their code-word for "the richest 1% of the population". The rich are an "oppressed minority" to quote the libertarian author of the capitalism FAQ.
I might as well also mention that many believers in the Dixieland golden age "remember" the reconstruction, when a black majority in government supposedly oppressed the "white minority", as seen in the early film "birth of a nation". Of course this is totally and completely false, but it gives insight into the far-right and it's supposed care for "minorities".
This time it's a kiddie porn mag, and his chains are for sale - because slavery is only bad when it happens to ME!
Not to say that I'm all that pro-government, but here are some government success stories
Ditto, with Market failures.
The absurdity of "libertarian Christians"
Taking the traditional right's strategy of perverting and bastardizing Christianity, some libertarians have tried to do the same. This article refutes them
Historical revisionism refuted
Libertarians hark back to the golden age, known to the rest of us as "the guilded age" from the end of the civil war to about 1900. This was the era of sweatshops, debtor's prisons, quack doctors, child labor, and deadly meat - for example, in the Spanish-American war bad meat killed more americans than bullets!
Their job is make us forget these horrors.
The other historical lie is that the "golden age" (practically any time in the past) that Americans "remember" was laissez-faire. It never got *that* bad:
"Though the businessman did not always live by his theory of laissez faire, it was all the theory he had" -Garry Wills
It's estimated that American railroads got 48 million free acres from state governments, and 130 million acres from the federal government. [Arthur schesinger jr _the cycles of American history_ 1986 pp. 225-26]
In the early 1900's, New York's government owned the Erie canal, and the federal government owned arms factories (Harper's ferry is a famous example). Georgia's government owned railroads, etc. etc.
"It is difficult to find any thoroughgoing 18th century proponents of laissez-faire, and even harder to find much explicit evidence of legislative acceptance of the theory of economic freedom" E.A.J. Johnson - America was built by what?
"Professor Arthur Schlesinger Jr, review the vast literature on the subject, concluded that the founding fathers "were not proponents of laissez-faire" [Ie, they were creeping socialists!] Their legacy, he reported, "was rather the blend of public and private initiative known in our day as the mixed economy"" [Richard Shenkman _"I love Paul Revere Whether he rode or Not"_ p.54]
"It will be claimed, of course, that eventually Americans did embrace laissez-faire, whether the founders ever did so or not. Taken literally, however, this is nonsense. True laissez-faire has never existed in this country - much to the businessman's immense relief, no doubt. More often than is realized (ie, admitted by those with media power) the government has proven a willing friend to business. When railroads needed land out west to furnish a national transportation system, the government gave them land. When big business need protection from foreign competitor, government have them high tariffs. When businessmen needed help abroad in quelling rebellions that might result in the expropriation on their property, government stepped in to prevent it (in harsher terms, this is called imperialism). When business was faced with strikes, government frequently sent in the troops to help end them." [op. Cit page 57]
"The US developed more slowly during the era of the robber barons than it had before these "creators" arrived on the scene" - Allen Solganick
"[the golden age of laissez faire] proved that businessmen unburdened by red tape can be just as reluctant to innovate as businessmen living under close government scrutiny. Coke smelting...was introduced in 1839...did not become widely used until the 1880's. A fully automated loom was invented in 1888, it did not become widely adopted until the 20th century...ring spinning was invented in 1828...as late as 1900 the old technology...was still being sold. When the westinghouse air brake that is considered essential to modern railroading made its appearance...Vanderbilt derided it as useless. The telephone was regarded first as a toy. [the fax machine was invented around this time as well, yet didn't show up until it became "high-tech in the 1980's] The typewriter was considered so unpromising that the inventor could barely pay off his personal debts with the money he got for the patent ($12,000). [page 70]
"Between 1865 and 1900, Americans suffered through more depressions and panics than at any other time in history, enduring 16 years of economic decline out of the total 35...In 1900 there were more than 2,500 railroad workers killed on the job, another 39,000 were injured" [page 69]
If you think "libertarians" can protect civil liberties, here's some alternatives:
American Civil Liberties Union
The slippery methods of "libertarian" evangelists
An average argument with a highly skilled "libertarian", James A Donald. When I pointed out starvation statistics he craftily denies them:
There's "mass starvation only the one remaining old style communist country, North Korea"
This is a new form of holocaust denial - denying the present one.
He continues: "And essentially no starvation deaths in the most highly capitalist economies."
"We have the right to defend ourselves and our poverty" James A Donald (Slightly edited)
Another interesting (and pointlessly wordy) conservative assumes that no matter how democratic a country is, no matter how popular its leadership and laws are, it's still communist:
"EPA regulations, controlling people and their land from afar at the behest of an elite, are based on the implicit socialist premiss that private property is not really private property"
The EPA assumes that the air people breathe is not private property.
If a nuclear power plant owner wants to vent radiation everywhere unless people pay a massive fee, or voluntarily become slaves, is using his private property in a way perfectly acceptable. If some government tried to stop him, that would be communist oppression. Go figure.
The slimy methods of non-skilled libertarians
If you're going to argue (or, if you're lucky, debate) with libertarians, you should do some training. I recommend trying to explain to a 3-year old why it's good to share. Or to go to bed. Or, for that matter, just try getting a kid toilet trained...But then, perhaps these examples aren't so good - they lack the futility of the real thing.
Is taxation theft?
Property is theft. Since taxation is when a person owes their government property, it is still theft - it's merely a case of dishonor among thieves.
However, there's a difference between taxation in a dictatorship and taxation in a half-democracy (though right-wingers consider all governments to be dictatorships, because the rich cannot buy extra votes - they only get one vote like everyone else, which doesn't account for their super-human status.)
In a dictatorship, taxation can be considered theft even if property isn't. However, in a half-democracy, the people (in theory) have decided that a certain amount of private property should become public property. When the taxman comes, the transaction is already over - the vote has already decided what is property of whom (Again, in theory). When the "man with a gun" comes to force the money out of the taxee, it has already been public property for a long time - therefore it is the withholder of taxes that is the thief (but only in a true democracy).
If a government ordered a parent to buy food (which costs money) for their starving baby, right-wingers would consider this "gunpoint robbery". A righteous parent, says the capitalist, would tell their hungry infant to quit being lazy and start an acting career!
As brackets express, I find this whole argument moot, seeing that property itself is thievery and is incompatible with true democracy - though it's a great example of just how low capitalists are willing to sink.
What is Laissez-fare?
It sounds intelligent because it's in a foreign language. What's its translation? "Lemme lone you cottinpikkin [representative of the people, at least in theory]" Yet business doesn't leave the government alone, and it sure doesn't leave the people alone. Business propagandists call us at dinner, send us literally tons of mail, and control every source of information we have. (Television, newspapers, radio - it all depends for survival upon advertising. It all depends for survival on the successful brainwashing of the people. Just imagine, someday even our senses might be filled with advertising - we might buy brain-helpers that make us think faster and remember more - except that a third of our thoughts will be commercials...)
"Economic freedom" means freedom for those that own economies. Take a look at the example:
HOW ABOUT SOME EXAMPLES OF "ECONOMIC FREEDOM" IN ACTION?
Here's what authoritarians and their "economic freedom" did to New Zealand, from 1985 to 1995:
Among the goodies brought by this "free market revolution":
Was it worth it? Sure, if you like to create human misery to get 9% inflation, corporations that don't pay taxes, and a new class of millionaires - which conservative politicians do! In the words of Cabinet Minister Bill Birch, income disparities "are widening, and they will widen much more. That doesn't worry me."
The whole thing was thought up by a tiny minority (about 15 people!), called the "Wednesday club", made up of government officials, politicians and spokesmen, who spread fear of a "debt wall" and "currency crisis" whatever that's supposed to be. What people needed was a "free market revolution" (should we bring out the molotov cocktails?). Their slogan was "There is no alternative" which was also parroted by the Canadian conservative government under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Watch out Americans - you might see your leaders joining in the chorus sometime soon.
What's especially scary is that Sir Roger Douglas, the finance minister who designed the whole New Zealand catastrophe, now advises for a Canadian provincial (State) government, while other politicians talk about New Zealand's disaster as a good thing (for the rich and/or sadistic, it is). Meanwhile, the Canadian business press use the same strategies as the government that ruined New Zealand - talking about an evil debt and currency crisis and other nasties. The "liberal" mainstream press offered no dissent, questioning nothing.
(This just in: New Zealand Employment Minister Peter McCardle says the decline in the Asian markets has caused the job losses. What he conveniently forgets is that the Asian crisis didn't start in 1984, or that the rich are somehow surviving this "crisis".)
An example of Non-libertarian countries:
Malasia's government designed the "new economic policy", a rigid affirmative action program, (and expensive prime-time advertising by the government) that turned rioting castes of Indians, Chinese, and Malays, into "us" Malasians. ("British colonial rulers, using the pricipal of divide and conquer, fostered rivalries among the races (see "why does racism etc. exist - another example is Rwanda, which had no affirmative action))
With a nationalized oil company, (with the world's tallest building as its headquarters) and "government aid to the underclass" it had the fasted growth rate on earth - "we Asians have now found the formula" Said their prime minister. [Source: National Geographic August 1997 vol 192 p104-121] Well, there was one ingredient that spoiled the whole recipe: capitalism, which among other qualities has the "collapses for no reason whatsoever" feature. (Note that I don't consider Malasia to be utopia - but it disproves absolutely everything loonyterians say.)
Conclusion
If you've been fooled by "libertarians" I hope you've changed your mind. If you haven't, at least read the FAQ for prospective libertarians