Feb 28th, 2008, 01:57 AM
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?
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