MOAR TOPICAL DISCOMFORT: libertarian poop-chute.

[navkat]

Okay, I feel the need to make this clear: there are packs of feral retards in this country, going around, calling themselves "Libertarians," or even worse: "Constitutionalists." It's become a real epidemic and I must say: I'm *this close* to buying some of that self-expanding insulation foam, adding glitter and purple food dye and jamming a fistful of that goo into the holes that make the bad sounds come out for every one of these imposters I encounter.

I am a libertarian...lowercase "l." This means I don't want anyone telling me (or anyone else, for that matter) what to do and what not to do unless it becomes absolutely necessary. This means I value the individual's right to choose over someone else making his choices...even if he's stupid...so long as stupid doesn't fuck with anyone else's shit.

I do not believe corporations are persons entitled to individual "liberties."
I do not support any form of enslavement. Period.
I believe inadequate free and public education is a form of enslavement.
I believe the free exchange of ideas-large and small-is a necessary component of adequate education.
I believe any religion whose beliefs, dogmas or practices include making any of its beliefs, dogmas or practices compulsory or imposed is also a form of intended enslavement.
I do not support any entity--whether public or private--who holds the power, tools or potential to usurp that of The People.
I believe large quantities of money, land, oil or other necessary resources is power. To ignore this is beyond naive, it is willfully ignorant.
I believe willful ignorance is a form of sociopathic behaviour.
I believe reasonable access to basic medical and dental services is on-par with education and resources. This is not the dark ages, penicillin is cheap. Let's demystify this, shall we?
I think it's fucked up that I grew up in an age where a 5MB hardrive was once a luxury and in 15 years, we've advanced to the point where I can buy an 8GB flash drive for under 15 bucks but penicillin (which has been out for almost 100 years) and an albuterol treatment for a person who waited so long to see a doctor, he ended up with pneumonia in the hospital will cost him roughly a quarter-year's pay for a 6-hour visit, 4 of which were likely spent in a waiting room. There's some enslavement going on inside that hot mess as well.

Look around you. Look at the people at your job, in your daily life, the people who hand you your receipt. These are The People. The Free and Naturally Ordained People. Each of them, and you, Kings...of nothing more than your own lives. You get to govern yourself...you also need to take responsibility if you turn out to be a poor governor.

Now, look at stuff: Starbuck's is not a People. The guys who control the flow of oil, bandwidth, information, numbers or little scraps of green paper are not The People. And they are certainly not oppressed. They do not need your help. They are not in need of defense. They operate under the sole, expressed, unabashed purpose of keeping you stupid and jacking your shit...of making you work more and get less. Of enslaving you.

Please, stop calling yourself a "libertarian" if you are in any way rooting for your captors, overseers, dealers, traders or owners.
Please, don't associate yourself with my code if you think your beliefs about private matters (ie: marriage, birth control, anything one puts into or removes from his own body, or religion) should have any bit of legislation making them compulsory in any direction.
Please don't hijack my nomenclature if you think healthcare, education, due process, decency, science, accuracy in reporting, truth or proactive enablement for the free exchange of ideas are luxuries and control and profiteering over agriculture or scientific discovery are protected entitlements.

Please don't.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I am a libertarian...lowercase "l."

I am a person.  Uppercase "Asshat".  How DO you do?

Funny thing:  When terms change, you may as well order the tide to go out.  How about "individualist", instead?  I mean, if I said "I am a liberal", nobody is going to be thinking "Oh, like Ben Franklin"...No, they'll be asking me why I like Michael Fatass Moore.  Likewise, when you say "libertarian", they aren't thinking "Oh, like Lysander Spooner", they're asking you why you want corporations be allowed to furnish their executive lounges with infants as throw pillows.

It is what it is.

[navkat]

Which is why I go on regular rampages with a backpack full of lollipops, beads, blinky things and Hello Kitty stickers. I find a box of ordinary crayons can really fuck the bastards up if you know how to weild them.

[East Coast Hustle]

So, you're a libertarian except for the part where you're diametrically opposed to several of the basic tenets of libertarianism?

[navkat]

I've had both sides of the rest of this argument with myself. 

I've come to the conclusion that there is a logical line where total absence of structure becomes oppressive, not because Government is doing it, but because we, as a people are failing to recognize and act on other forms of coercion.

[East Coast Hustle]

so, in other words, you're not a libertarian.

Or is this somehow different (other than the difference of I like you so I'm pointing this out to you in a fairly polite manner) from that new belgian asstard who has decided that he loves homeopathy even though his homeopathy is completely different from the defined meaning of the term?

I mean, you don't NEED some bullshit political label to attach to yourself to signify that you are an essentially decent person who doesn't want to be unnecessarily fucked with. Especially when that label doesn't even mean that.

[Phox]

I mean, you don't NEED some bullshit political label to attach to yourself to signify that you are an essentially decent person who doesn't want to be unnecessarily fucked with. Especially when that label doesn't even mean that.

What ECH said. "You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think means." So stop using it. Stop apologizing for being something you aren't.

[Placid Dingo]

In one of the blogs Cain quoted, te history of the term and ideology of libertarian is charted from the left wing starting point to the modern right wing manifestation.

Unless there's some way you're able to subvert the current understanding en masse, I tend to think it's easier to pick a term that doesn't cause you so many headaches.

[Telarus]

I think, as Roger said, that Nav is using Lysander Spooner's definition of "libertarianism" (small-l), and not in the sense of the current Libertarianism Dogma (the current use, as has been pointed out, has changed since Spooner).


But, Nav uses it because the people who at the time were writing about her listed concerns in a way that appeals to her used the term "libertarian" to describe their philosophy.

So, was Lysander Spooner using the term Wrongly? No, he fucking wasn't.

Good advice about picking better a better label for your position, tho. The one you've used has unfortunately been co-opted in our current culture.

[Phox]

I think, as Roger said, that Nav is using Lysander Spooner's definition of "libertarianism" (small-l), and not in the sense of the current Libertarianism Dogma (the current use, as has been pointed out, has changed since Spooner).


But, Nav uses it because the people who at the time were writing about her listed concerns in a way that appeals to her used the term "libertarian" to describe their philosophy.

So, was Lysander Spooner using the term Wrongly? No, he fucking wasn't.

Good advice about picking better a better label for your position, tho. The one you've used has unfortunately been co-opted in our current culture.

The meaning has, unfortunately, changed. As has come up a surprising number of times recently, the specific, agreed-upon definition of a word is important. If she called herself a conservative, would you think first of Edmund Burke or Rush Limbaugh? More to the point, which would the average person she meets on the street think of?

[navkat]

I'm interested in seeing that blog. Cain usually knows his shizz.

Okay, yes, I'm operating from at least some amount of non-puritannical, assumed mutual understanding sense here. I've met a good number of people who take it too far but is the "edumacayshun an' the CDC are too much infringement on mah rahts" camp really close enough to where the epicentre of that culturally assumed understanding lies that I'm wrong?

If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. I'll step down and the the nuts can have their word back. I'll go streaking down Canal, eat my fedora and we'll all have a good laugh at Molly's afterward but it seems to me that:

1. In the purest sense of the word, it also means no waste removal services, dead bodies lie where they fall, police of any sort are illegal (even if this service is privatized, its choice is forced on someone, right?) and that (for supposition's sake and tell me if this is apples-to-oranges unreasonable) the ultimate consequence of say, a single entity having controlling interest of 95% of the food supply and then being at liberty to jack up the prices to the point of popular enslavement is preferrable to not infringing upon the entity's right to do so.

2. I believe the outcome is as important as the journey and that life is not always filled with simple choices that net straightforward results. To me, "libertarian" means someone who consistently makes choices to preserve the most amount of individual liberty for the greatest number of people with the intent of preservation of that free will indefinitely. Someone who recognizes he can't get his way allll the time if for no other reason than because it means down the line, the greater good of the cause will be comprimised. It is a known and accepted sacred tradition in this country (as I understand it) that the path of illiteracy leads surely to slavery.

3. If the "judeo-christian values" herd is the norm, they too are subverting the word. "Jesus at the helm" and "Leading from the book" are not preserving the free will of those who would choose to be free from such. This is certainly not even accepted by the Cato Institute who have been known to indulge even the silliest suppositions for the sake of argument.

4. Randian Objectivism is an intellectual experiment, not meant to be applied literally and works on the supposition that all corporations will make the honest choices (that will ultimately be for the greatest good anyway) and weild their power to build, do, create and achieve Great Things with honor, courage, competence and integrity. While I believe in the ultimate good will of people (when not under duress, most people are goodhearted and will make honest choices) we know that the corporate structure does not allow for that human level of leadership. The consequence of letting Great Men with Great Power to achieve Great Things be at liberty to (even mistakingly) do bad things is surely an impact on the free will of The People...all Godwinning aside.

I'm a little bit of a hipocrite here, yes. I'm pushing my "this is a game of chess where you have to think several moves ahead" connotation and at the same time, screaming "I'm taking back that word, motherfucker!" from the other side of my mouth. If you wanna naaaaail it down, yeah. Call me an uninsightful sociopath but I'm a little shocked that we live in such a state of awareness that this isn't a no-brainer.

If someone has all the beans and can make you do whatever they want, you are being governed...by a tyrant. Doesn't matter if it says ".com" or ".gov" after their name.

That's where I'm coming from.

[East Coast Hustle]

Okay, yes, I'm operating from at least some amount of non-puritannical, assumed mutual understanding sense here. I've met a good number of people who take it too far but is the "edumacayshun an' the CDC are too much infringement on mah rahts" camp really close enough to where the epicentre of that culturally assumed understanding lies that I'm wrong?

In a word, yes.

To me, "libertarian" means someone who consistently makes choices to preserve the most amount of individual liberty for the greatest number of people with the intent of preservation of that free will indefinitely. Someone who recognizes he can't get his way allll the time if for no other reason than because it means down the line, the greater good of the cause will be comprimised. It is a known and accepted sacred tradition in this country (as I understand it) that the path of illiteracy leads surely to slavery.

To me, "banana" means a large vehicle that stops at predetermined points and carries people around a city. Fuck what it means to anyone else, amirite?

Randian Objectivism is an intellectual experiment, not meant to be applied literally

Somebody should probably let the Randian Objectivists know about that.

While I believe in the ultimate good will of people (when not under duress, most people are goodhearted and will make honest choices)

I have identified the problem. You live in a completely different solar system. Here on our planet (which we call "earth") that is sadly not the case as our dominant tool-using species is a primate and thus subject to the appalling personal greed and lack of altruism displayed by most of the higher-order primates.

[navkat]

I can't tell if I'm laughing or crying anymore. Can you tell me what is the the word the collective uses for the giggles that make you hide in a corner with wet stuff coming out of your eye-holes?

[Cain]

"Horrormirth".

Also, I believe the thread Placid Dingo was referencing was the "Interview with a Vamp-uh, Libertarian" thread in this very forum.

The problem is, as everyone else has pointed out in this thread, while libertarian had its roots amongst the anarchist-socialist/mutualist/syndicalist working class movements of the 19th century, in the late 20th/21st century it essentially applies to middle class white dudes who don't want to pay taxes and smoke pot.*

Which is perfectly fine.  I have many friends who are middle class white dudes who smoke pot, and not one of them has so far argued he wants to pay more taxes.

But it's hardly a philosophy devised to articulating human freedom and potential and the means whereby society can exist with minimal coercion while mitigating negative outcomes.

In fact, Libertarian rhetoric, advocates and policies have been used to advance the interests of a powerful, monied elite against pretty much everyone else for the past thirty plus years.  The Koch brothers are the archetypal example here, despite their supervillain status amongst certain excitable liberal types.  And that's not just a modern trend either, the Chicago Boys of the 1970s were, of course, highly influential in the Pinochet junta and the setting of economic policy in that country.

There is also an irony in that libertarian, constitutionalism etc all want a return to the pure, unsullied state which...led directly to the militarized hyperpower that the United States is now.  You know that old saying about insanity being doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?  Directly applicable here.  It is amusing that how, for all libertarian rhetoric, when you look at it, it seeks to reduce government to its most coercive activities (the monopoly on the use of violence...oh, in ensuring "contracts" are not violated), which serves to actually reify the state as a super-special and necessary instrument and tool of governance...thus giving the whole game away.

In short, libertarianism is something cosseted white Americans do in order to flirt with radicalism in such a way it will not affect their future careers, thus setting them up with the inevitable moral handwringing they will perform before they eventually side with Power.  This evident in the way it fetishizes yet disavows political power emanating from the coercive state, yet has remarkably little to say on other forms of coercive power (cultural forms, for example.  A lot of libertarians are hostile to feminism for what amounts to cultural reasons: ie that most libertarians are white dudes affiliated with conservative movements). 

As for the question of what people who are actually interested in human liberty and prosperity should call themselves?  I refer you to the statement above by ECH, or in the equally pithy words of former libertarian IOZ: "why must you call yourselves anything at all?"

*Also nutbar Republican atheists with a technology fetish. 

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Nav, I feel your frustration.

I started out with no political views (cause, you know, Jehovah was gonna destroy them all as tools of Satan). Then when I started studying politics, I made the terrible mistake of beginning with the historical research. Historically, classic liberalism and libertarianism and even anarchism are strong political philosophies that I find very compelling. However, as I learned (with some help from this forum) those words no longer carry that philosophy. Our modern society has co-opted every political philosophy. Libertarians argue for corporate masters, Anarchists protest when the state removes funding for their college library (yes, I saw that personally), Liberals think that telling McDonalds it cant have Happy Meal toys is liberal (rather than authoritarian). Conservatives go to war in other countries, increase government and chip away at civil liberties.

The whole experience has led me to think that modern America has no political philosophy, just labels that people can grab for the Us vs Them fight that is US politics today.