British-Conservatism

Libertarians need to be asked some hard questions. What if a free society needed to draft its citizens in order to remain free? What if it needed to limit oil imports to protect the economic freedom of its citizens from unfriendly foreigners? What if it needed to force its citizens to become sufficiently educated to sustain a free society? What if it needed to deprive landowners of the freedom to refuse to sell their property as a precondition for giving everyone freedom of movement on highways? What if it needed to deprive citizens of the freedom to import cheap foreign labor in order to keep out poor foreigners who would vote for socialistic wealth redistribution?

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British-Conservatism

Libertarianism’s abstract and absolutist view of freedom leads to bizarre conclusions. Like slavery, libertarianism would have to allow one to sell oneself into it. (It has been possible at certain times in history to do just that by assuming debts one could not repay.) And libertarianism degenerates into outright idiocy when confronted with the problem of children, whom it treats like adults, supporting the abolition of compulsory education and all child-specific laws, like those against child labor and child sex. It likewise cannot handle the insane and the senile.

Libertarians argue that radical permissiveness, like legalizing drugs, would not shred a libertarian society because drug users who caused trouble would be disciplined by the threat of losing their jobs or homes if current laws that make it difficult to fire or evict people were abolished. They claim a “natural order” of reasonable behavior would emerge. But there is no actual empirical proof that this would happen. Furthermore, this means libertarianism is an all-or-nothing proposition: if society continues to protect people from the consequences of their actions in any way, libertarianism regarding specific freedoms is illegitimate. And since society does so protect people, libertarianism is an illegitimate moral position until the Great Libertarian Revolution has occurred.

And is society really wrong to protect people against the negative consequences of some of their free choices? While it is obviously fair to let people enjoy the benefits of their wise choices and suffer the costs of their stupid ones, decent societies set limits on both these outcomes. People are allowed to become millionaires, but they are taxed. They are allowed to go broke, but they are not then forced to starve. They are deprived of the most extreme benefits of freedom in order to spare us the most extreme costs. The libertopian alternative would be perhaps a more glittering society, but also a crueler one.

Empirically, most people don’t actually want absolute freedom, which is why democracies don’t elect libertarian governments. Irony of ironies, people don’t choose absolute freedom. But this refutes libertarianism by its own premise, as libertarianism defines the good as the freely chosen, yet people do not choose it. Paradoxically, people exercise their freedom not to be libertarians.

The political corollary of this is that since no electorate will support libertarianism, a libertarian government could never be achieved democratically but would have to be imposed by some kind of authoritarian state, which rather puts the lie to libertarians’ claim that under any other philosophy, busybodies who claim to know what’s best for other people impose their values on the rest of us. Libertarianism itself is based on the conviction that it is the one true political philosophy and all others are false. It entails imposing a certain kind of society, with all its attendant pluses and minuses, which the inhabitants thereof will not be free to opt out of except by leaving.

And if libertarians ever do acquire power, we may expect a farrago of bizarre policies. Many support abolition of government-issued money in favor of that minted by private banks. But this has already been tried, in various epochs, and doesn’t lead to any wonderful paradise of freedom but only to an explosion of fraud and currency debasement followed by the concentration of financial power in those few banks that survive the inevitable shaking-out. Many other libertarian schemes similarly founder on the empirical record.

A major reason for this is that libertarianism has a naïve view of economics that seems to have stopped paying attention to the actual history of capitalism around 1880. There is not the space here to refute simplistic laissez faire, but note for now that the second-richest nation in the world, Japan, has one of the most regulated economies, while nations in which government has essentially lost control over economic life, like Russia, are hardly economic paradises. Legitimate criticism of over-regulation does not entail going to the opposite extreme.

Libertarian naïveté extends to politics. They often confuse the absence of government impingement upon freedom with freedom as such. But without a sufficiently strong state, individual freedom falls prey to other more powerful individuals. A weak state and a freedom-respecting state are not the same thing, as shown by many a chaotic Third-World tyranny.

Libertarians are also naïve about the range and perversity of human desires they propose to unleash. They can imagine nothing more threatening than a bit of Sunday-afternoon sadomasochism, followed by some recreational drug use and work on Monday. They assume that if people are given freedom, they will gravitate towards essentially bourgeois lives, but this takes for granted things like the deferral of gratification that were pounded into them as children without their being free to refuse. They forget that for much of the population, preaching maximum freedom merely results in drunkenness, drugs, failure to hold a job, and pregnancy out of wedlock. Society is dependent upon inculcated self-restraint if it is not to slide into barbarism, and libertarians attack this self-restraint. Ironically, this often results in internal restraints being replaced by the external restraints of police and prison, resulting in less freedom, not more.

This contempt for self-restraint is emblematic of a deeper problem: libertarianism has a lot to say about freedom but little about learning to handle it. Freedom without judgment is dangerous at best, useless at worst. Yet libertarianism is philosophically incapable of evolving a theory of how to use freedom well because of its root dogma that all free choices are equal, which it cannot abandon except at the cost of admitting that there are other goods than freedom. Conservatives should know better

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Hunter

Good points raised. However, what puzzles me about Libertarianism is the diliema a leading a Party that doesn't believe leaders are necessary. How can one govern or lead a group that believes they will be able to control their own environments?

The Bear

I believe you look for simple black / white solutions and situations when in fact there are very few true black / white things in our world.

The essence of libertarianism is the objective of obtaining the best practical options that can be had. Note the word “practical”.

Then there is the absolute belief that everyone owns his own life and his own property, and has the right to make their own choices, provided that in so doing they take account that so do others.

Some Pagans have a saying, “And it harm non, do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”.

(The Great Beast went on to ask “And what is Law” before answering his own question with “Law is love, love under the law”. I’ve always wondered just what “certain substances” he obviously spent so much time “on!)

That does not mean that you just sit back and let someone come in and kick you around because it is what THEY want as in so doing they are breaking The Law.

What it means is that so long as you don’t screw with me then I won’t screw with you, but if you DO screw with me to further your position at a cost to me, then it’s my right to look after my own up to the point that I’m not costing you for my unfair advantage.

That being so the reply to your not hard but actually rather facile questions become clear.

What if a free society needed to draft its citizens in order to remain free?

Then it must happen as to not do so and comply with the requirement would harm other Libertarians who subscribe to the beliefs.

What if it needed to limit oil imports to protect the economic freedom of its citizens from unfriendly foreigners?

Similar to the answer above. If by not doing would cause harm on people living in a libertarian society then is would be a thing that as a supporter of Libertarianism you would want to do.

What if it needed to force its citizens to become sufficiently educated to sustain a free society?

See above.

What if it needed to deprive landowners of the freedom to refuse to sell their property as a precondition for giving everyone freedom of movement on highways?

See above.

What if it needed to deprive citizens of the freedom to import cheap foreign labor in order to keep out poor foreigners who would vote for socialistic wealth redistribution?

See above.

In reality true dyed in the wool Libertarianism, like any undiluted political ideology, would be a crock. Nothing would happen or there would be wall to wall fascism.

Where the going gets good is where libertarianism is adopted as a dimension to be included to the extent that it is practical within the many dimensions that make up any political bloc.

The trick is getting the best mix for the most people!

tito

1) Draft armies aren't very effective anyway, and if not enough people are willing to fight then it is tough. I would shoot my commanding officer before fighting by compulsion. Not that it would be necessary, because I would volunteer in a crisis. How can you defend freedom if you actively take it away?

2) Frankly, the West was too soft on the middle east a long time ago when they nationalised the oil that was ours by contractual right. But thats in the past; we should from now on be more assertive when protecting our contracts abroad. We should also tell the greens to **** off, and let the USA drill their alaskan oil.

3) That is impossible, if you force people to be educated (can't be done anyway) then you aren't a free society at all. In any case, why would education fall? Socialist education is the worst imaginable, always has been, always will be.

4) Tough; the state shouldn't be building highways anyway. I trust you would take the same attitude if the state decided it wanted to tear down your family home to build a road, against your will? Ah well, one for the team? Get a spine!

In such cases where there is no thoroughfare at all, and people can't get to their property, then compulsory purchasing by local authorities could be used with caution.

5) Socialism should be illegal, unconstitutional. It is a blatant violation of rights. In any case, all of your scenarios have come with a socialist fix; you are the socialist threat, not foreigners!

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tito

Also, as you will note from my signature, I am an Objectivist, not a Libertarian. If you are truly a Conservative we will have much common ground.

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British-Conservatism

First time ive been called Socialist.

2) Frankly, the West was too soft on the middle east a long time ago when they nationalised the oil that was ours by contractual right. But thats in the past; we should from now on be more assertive when protecting our contracts abroad. We should also tell the greens to **** off, and let the USA drill their alaskan oil.

So you would be going to war with a lot of the countries in the Middle East,Russia and South America to protect Britains oil supply?

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British-Conservatism

5) Socialism should be illegal, unconstitutional. It is a blatant violation of rights. In any case, all of your scenarios have come with a socialist fix; you are the socialist threat, not foreigners!

Not very Libertarian of you.
I have always thought Libertarianism and Democracy are incompatible the only way a Libertarian society could survive is through a dictatorship.

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British-Conservatism

My Conservatism is the Conservatism of Disraeli, Chamberlain, Baldwin and Bonar Law.
Real Conservatism not the Libertarianism of Thatcher or the Liberalism of Cameron.

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The Bear

May I just point out that we are now in the twenty first century and what may have been good for that load of shysters in their day most certainly isn't good for todays world.