I think I'm turning libertarian

[DuFresne]

Someone please convince me it's bullshit.

[AChimp]

There's a reason why no one ever votes for libertarians.

It's because they're stupid.

[Colonel Flagg]

:lol

[Jeanette X]

The government that governs least governs best.

Which is why Iraq is doing so well.

-Stephen Colbert (paraphrased)

[Zbu Manowar]

Never trust a political stance that says 'let me control the government that I have no faith in working.'

[El Blanco]

Someone please convince me it's bullshit.

Get off the internet and go get laid.

[MattJack]

you should try the same thing Blanco

[Fat_Hippo]

Shouldn't we all?

[Tadao]

I did that this weekend, and now my girlfriend threatened suicide and broke up with me because she is jealous. Yay for real life!

[MattJack]

Well somebody decided to have a different viewpoint than Blanco and he decides to respond by telling the person to get laid, but he probably hasn't got laid in a little minute.

I think he's dumb.

[Big Papa Goat]

Why do you want to be a libertarian?

[DuFresne]

The philosophy is making more sense to me than I ever thought it would. This pisses me off because all the libertarians I've ever seen (OAO) or had the misfortune to actually know have been some of the most annoying assholes on the political spectrum next to religious fundamentalists, and finding myself sgreeing with them makes me nauseous. PLEASE HELP ME, MY SOCIALIST FRIENDS, IN MY TIME OF NEED.

[Sethomas]

Okay.

There are two respectable reasons for becoming Libertarian, neither of which are actually coherent.

The first reason would be that ad hoc socio-economic conditions would allow for a LIbertarian governance and would theoretically accelerate the cogs of the invisible hand and thus spur Adam Smith's notion of "universal opulence".

The second reason would be the result of a kind of reductio ad absurdam, whereby they demonstrate that any alternative to Libertarianism is inchoate and thus we must espouse Libertarianism itself. Once one establishes that the logical framework of anything non-Libertarian is compromised, we are obliged to disavow all forms and all degrees of collectivism.

Since the first reason is absolutely batshit insane right now--a Libertarian government in 2009 onwards would fuck up the global economy like a car crash--I'll just talk about the second.

The problem with the second reason is that it invests all of its strength on an absolute: any collectivism defiles human liberty and so must be avoided at all costs. To make this argument, you would have to ignore virtually every thinker of economics that doesn't align himself with Vienna or Chicago. You'd have to basically disprove every line of Durkheim's Division of Labor in Society, which rationalizes that collectivist behavior is essential to the mechanizations of society at large. The question, "does the government have the right to tax, and for what?" is absolutely risible in this context as the taxation process itself is an extrapolation of the public will. The argument that taxation for the res publica is stealing from the individual is absolutely asinine because wealth cannot be produced ex nihilo by an individual, unless maybe he's a counterfeiter.

Thus, collectivism has logical grounding such that for it to be enacted at any of varying degrees does not violate any sense of philosophical integrity either in regards the fiscal nature of society or the classically liberal notions of self-determination. Libertarianism is therefore vacuous.

So, take it from the kid that lived in the same building as Milton Friedman once had: Libertarians are stupid.

[El Blanco]

you should try the same thing Blanco


No problem. When is your mom back in town?

Basically, any hard core -ism is retarded. In order to live totally by an -ism, everyone has to play by the same rules and there can be no unforeseen situations.

Government does have a responsibility to its people. It needs to provide occasionally. Libertarians have told me that the government should not have sent help to the Gulf Coast after Katrina. Apparently, the total break down of society (turning into the ultimate do eat dog scenario) would have been beneficial to the free market.

Government does have a place in business. Don't think we need an FDA? Read The Jungle. There has to be some sort of regulation because you have people running everything.

This internet thing we are using. Its a government funded project conducted in the basement of the Pentagon by private contractors. In its early stages, there would have been no reason for private companies to foster it along because there would have been no payoff in the foreseeable future.

While I'm not advocating socialism, I do think we need government to supplement and regulate business.

[MattJack]

LOL SHE WILL BE BACK IN NY TOMORROW BOY U SURE R LUCKY LOL

[Preechr]

Wasn't OAO an anarcho-capitalist... or some other made up thing that wasn't libertarian?

Libertarianism is not a counterweight to liberalism or conservatism. Libertarianism is just the opposite of authoritarianism. Being a liberal means you believe in living however the hell you choose; while being a conservative means you believe some freedoms should be curtailed to some degree or another for reasons of the public good.

The question is how you choose to act on your beliefs.

You can be an authoritarian liberal who, in the extreme, would try to use the power of government to equate all lifestyles and choices; or you could be an extreme libertarian liberal that tolerates all lifestyles and choices in the hope that some cracked out, pus-dripping, trans-gender, serial child-raping master car-thief might stumble across the key to unlimited, universal human happiness and save the world.

Alternately you could be the extreme authoritarian conservative that so limits personal and economic freedoms that we all become freaked-out robots, or you could espouse extreme libertarian conservatism which is ultimately practicing what one preaches while living in a church till Jesus comes back to pat one on the head.

Libertarianism is the belief that the consequences of your individual choices, when made freely and sanely, will ultimately lead you to make better choices and make you a happier person.

Authoritarianism is the belief that free people are ultimately insane, and the only path to happiness is through being forced to believe as someone else does, regardless of the consequences.

That being said, I tend to agree with Seth on at least one thing: The Libertarian Party's stance on isolating America from the rest of the world economically and militarily is a quick and dirty path to global chaos... let me explain why...

I gave you degrees of difference in my definitions of conservatism and liberalism by illuminating the ridiculous extremes of both. As a real person, you can feel conservatively on some issues and liberal on others. The relative strengths of those topical feelings you have, when added all together, set your place on that line. You could be the gay, hippie, tree hugging shit eater that so believes any abortion or even contraception is murder that you only rank as a mild conservative, for instance.

I did not, however, allow for degrees of difference on Libertarianism vs. Authoritarianism. That's because the moment you decide to use authoritarian means to force others to bow to your beliefs you have left the door open for other infringements upon personal freedoms. One day that fudge packing, drug dealing tree hugger votes for a guy that promises to ban rubbers, and the next day shit eating is made illegal and he's sad.

There are people that run countries in this world who, for some reason, still believe that free people are ultimately insane, and the only path to happiness is through being forced to believe as they do, regardless of the consequences... and that includes our own country, though at least here they are allowed to argue about it and we are allowed to vote on who gets to argue about it.

While I would love for our country to be a libertarian one, that simply can't be reality until all people of the world are as at least as free and arguing about things as we are. The opposite of arguing about things is murdering people for their beliefs, and as long as that's happening, we're all pretty much fucked.

For a long time we believed we could ignore people from other countries being murdered for their beliefs by their governments or their non-governmental sect-leaders or whatever... Now we know that ignoring them only eventually leads to the murder of otherwise uninvolved people on airplanes and in other public places.

Sad to say, it seems the only way for libertarianism to exist is by the extermination of authoritarianism altogether. I say it's sad because to eliminate authoritarianism we're gonna have to kill off some authoritarians... not all, mind you... just some...

We only have to kill the ones that are willing to commit murder to achieve their goals. The up side is you probably don't know any of those kind of people, so it's all good. In fact, the only people that will miss those guys are people just like them, which we should also kill.

When we are done, everybody is going to understand that arguing about things is ultimately a positive thing, while murdering people because they argue with you is just not acceptable behavior anymore.

So, back to Seth's comment, were we to follow the Libertarian Party's isolationist path and withdraw from the War on Terror, the world would eventually succumb to authoritarianism... so we can't.

Live free or die.

There. Did I convince you to not be a libertarian?

[BlackHexen]

I'm European so i'm also libertarian. It's good thing. Conservatists are only slaves to bible and other people who beliefes it. Thinking critically and being master to myself are good things. Conservatists are cowards who don't want to take responsibility from their doings and lifes.

[El Blanco]

I think something has been lost in translation.

[executioneer]

i'm a libertarian too

gotta stack them books

[Dr. Boogie]

Willie, I didn't know you were European!

[executioneer]

i'm always peein'

[Jeanette X]

I'm European so i'm also libertarian. It's good thing. Conservatists are only slaves to bible and other people who beliefes it. Thinking critically and being master to myself are good things. Conservatists are cowards who don't want to take responsibility from their doings and lifes.

Wild generalizations about political stances that you happen to disagree with are so much fun! :)

[Tadao]

Conservatists are cowards who don't want to take responsibility from their doings and lifes.

I don't want to take responsibility from my doings in life.
But I'm called a hippie drug addict.

[Big Papa Goat]

I'm European so i'm also libertarian. It's good thing. Conservatists are only slaves to bible and other people who beliefes it. Thinking critically and being master to myself are good things. Conservatists are cowards who don't want to take responsibility from their doings and lifes.

Better than my finnish I guess =/

But seriously, Europeans aren't libertarians in general, they're welfare liberals, they believe in high taxes and unsustainable welfare systems. I suppose you're probably a young person, so you can probably look forward to a life of being taxed through the nose to support an aging society of seniors addicted to ridiculously generous social security benefits. By the way Finlander, I know you probably weren't going to anyway, but try not to have kids. If history has taught us anything, it's that you Euro-Nordic folk are basically the most evil things that have ever blighted the human race, (Nazis, Soviets, English, French, most of histories most evil imperial powers.)

So bibles are bad right? Is that because they were written by ignorant tribal Semites and not noble, Enlightened, cosmopolitan Europeans?

I'm drunk. I don't like Europe. I don't like libertarians. I'm conservative. I'm probably being too hard on this poor Finnish person, so I'm sorry. :(

[Big Papa Goat]

But seriously folks, I think I might have said this before, but I'll say it again: Libertarianism is probably the best ideological position you can take, but it's still a silly position to take because taking an ideological position is silly.

[Fat_Hippo]

Hey, guess what!? Yep, I'm european! Half-swiss, half-danish to be exact. I'm not drunk, I like America (well, mostly), I don't like conservatives, and I don't like you!
And interestingly enough, Nordic countries have lower poverty and unemployment rates than America! Did I pull those facts out of my ass? YES! But that doesn't mean they aren't true.
Oh, and guess what: America is coming closer and closer to being one of the aforementioned evil empires, so watch your fucking mouth you racist pig.