*First, and OT, the next Clanker Song “Blood On Ice” has dropped. Again, not happy with the video, but I have ideas for improving it. (Likely easier when the antibiotic isn’t trying to kill me, yes?) Anyway, here’s the new song:
Note that it helps immensely if you like and comment on the videos. It tricks the algorithm into showing it to more people. And the comments can be just “I like this” or whatever. If you have no idea what this is all aoubt, the rest of it is here. Now for the real post. -SAH)
Some days ago I got — of all things — in an argument on libertarianism on X.
I said pure libertarianism is a utopian ideal that — because it is utopian — can never be achieved. Someone got very upset at me and told me that someone whose name I don’t know (or if I know, I don’t remember, because my mind is made of taffy right now) said that libertarianism is not utopian. So, I was wrong. Which I have to tell you is the most libertarian argument yet. Because libertarians are people of philosophy and often argue in screamed quotations.
So, am I abjuring libertarianism? Oh, please! I retain a high value for the philosophy. It is important for any number of reasons, but mostly because it stands in direct contradiction to most other philosophies of government. Even if it were completely insane, (it’s not) it would be desperately needed in today’s world.
First, let’s make it absolutely clear that EVERY political position, taken to its ideal is absolutely impossible. Yes, even monarchism at the twitter-monarchists view it, where the King is appointed by G-d and either very good or supposed to be a scourge the people deserve. In fact monarchy with rare intervals ends up like any given family business where the guy who takes over does so by nepotism and not competence: slowly grinding downfall, but taking an entire country along for the ride. And it’s peculiarly brittle around rapid change, be it social or technological.
In the same way I don’t need to outline the failure of communism to anyone. Marxism is a theory built on air, with no connection to real economics. (Any theory that misunderstands distribution as waste has serious issues.) It appeals to minds broken by envy, but anyone else can see what it does it cut off the economic signals of individual consumption from the producers, leaving people to decide what’s needed by fiat from above, from people who — by the nature of it — are misinformed or not informed at all. The result is a rapid devolution into “rule by a king” by any other name. And, stripped of upbringing meant to make them think they owe the people something, the ruler tends to rapidly fall into the “mad king” category. (Looks North-Korea, or for that matter Cuba-ward.) What it doesn’t do is become a utopian stateless society where everyone automagically gets what he/she needs.
Socialism is Communism on the installment plan, having surrendered the idea that they’ll eventually get to that magical state withering away and instead believing it’s possible to stay suspended in that place where everyone gets what he needs and everyone contributes what she can. Like communism, in its most functional form, it is an oligarchy, nepotistic and brittle in the face of any new technology. For its failure mode, see the sh*tshow of Europe these days. Or the way we were headed two years ago. Eventually the nepo oligarchy becomes an open kakistocracy that can stay in power only by brutal repression. Next verse, same as the first, welcome to the end stage of various dictatorships as the velvet glove comes off and the steel clad boot comes down.
And then there is us. Are we a libertarian country? Meh. Somewhat. It scares the pee out of the rest of the world, to the extent we are, actually.
What we are is the result of founders who had the foresight to say “Government should be as small as possible, and central government smaller than local government, and the individual should have the most power of all.” Did it work? Are humans involved?
As someone pointed out in some comment, we started betraying our own constitution when the ink was barely dry.
And yet– And yet, what remains and our absolute certainty that this is how things are SUPPOSED to work is enough to make us the powerhouse of civilization and prosperity for the world.
But is constitutionalism and an unwavering devotion to minarchism (not the i not o) libertarianism.
I don’t know. Do you?
Part of what we’ve run into is “who defines Libertarianism?” or if you prefer “The individualists are still arguing over it.”
As I first encountered Libertarianism, I’m no longer a libertarian. Why? Open borders. Open borders are absolutely an utopian idea, predicated on the idea that cultures somehow stopped existing, or that people won’t have greater loyalty to their cousins than to complete strangers. For a soft failure, look at the H1B visas and various companies being wholly taken over by foreign ethnic groups for whom nepotism is a POSITIVE value, much more important than competence. For the hard failure, the open borders under autopen and oh, Venezuelan gangs. (Though the Mexican gangs are enough to do for us, honestly.)
I hate to say this, but humans aren’t interchangeable, and even without a welfare state open borders would be dangerous. Because if you dilute the culture to the point that people don’t understand their neighbors social signals, the failure mode isn’t “we fall apart” it’s “multiple warring ethnic and cultural groups.”
What I don’t understand is how I came to forget that in the nineties, when I’d seen it among exchange students, with people clinging to their nationality, the next closest nationality, and vaguely related cultures after that. Except me, because I’m broken or something. BUT all the same. It’s a human thing that makes open borders suicidal.
And I’m not sure about legalized drugs. Look, I’m divided on this. Because the war on drugs has caused enough trouble. BUT on the other hand, there are foreign cartels who view pushing drugs everywhere, including on those too young to know better, as an excellent business opportunity. And a lot of the newest stuff are “take it once and destroy yourself” (Okay, it’s a Russian roulette, but). And also I saw the results of legalization in places like Portugal.
It’s hard to know what part is the drugs, and what part the reaction to the drugs, and what part well, fraud around, under and between all the drug dealing. For instance, how much of the mess in Portugal is just “Portugal.” And how much of the fact that legalizing pot destroyed Colorado is real? How much of it was JUST fraud masquerading under the new influx?
How much, in fact, of the havoc I’ve seen legalization wreak is the drugs, and how much of it is stuff like no enforcing laws against petty theft, camping in public spaces, homelessness, etc. etc. etc.?
I don’t know. Hence “I’m not sure” and not a hard coming-out against it. Because I don’t have all the data and can’t therefore decide. What I’m sure about is that legalization destroys neo-liberal states in which letting drugs eating your mind is proof you’re a victim and need to be given everything.
Other things: still sure you should be able to do whatever you want sexually, provided no force or coercion (or inability to consent) is involved, and you don’t do it on my front lawn and scare my cats.
Still think taxation is theft. (No, hear me out, how about a lottery to finance the few functions that are actually constitutional to the Federal government. Because we don’t need the rampant theft and grift going on at all levels of government. Less money would make it less attractive.)
Still sure “public education” is an oxymoron, and we would be better off with “charity schools.”
I still think the Libertarian Party as an entity is over its skis and has been for a long time. Their last chance at redemption was the election in 16 when they decided to nominate… a democrat.
I still think that the socialist libertarians are as L. Neil Smith put it “something smelly clinging to our shoes.” And to prove it, I’m going to quote Ayn Rand, because of course I am.
And I guess that makes me a libertarian, since I’m arguing in loud quotations. :D
On the serious side, I’m exactly what I’ve always been, the same person who wrote A Few Good Men. I believe in our Constitution. I believe the government should wear it as a girdle cinched tight enough that it can’t escape. I believe in the quotient of individual versus government the individual should now and always have primacy.
To my view that’s libertarian enough, without accruing the utopian and evangelistic view of open borders that requires libertarianism all over the WORLD. The world is not our concern. Let’s start here and make this a shiny city on the hill.
I am in truth an OWL — Older, Wiser Libertarian — who has learned some things sound great in the abstract but are in fact impossible in this our fallen world.
And in the end, I think that’s the greatest value of Libertarian, small government and individualistic philosophy. A grand implementation of it is at its complete best, absent small colonies away from Earth (eh) is utopian and impossible.
But just by existing, by being loud (and sometimes shouty in quotations (eh)), by keeping emphasizing that power always comes from the individual in ultimate instance, we provide much needed leavening to a world that is sure of the opposite, and in which the solution of all problems is assume to be “get a man” (Or these days often woman) “with a bigger stick.”
In that sense, I’m perfectly happy to be lumped in with the liberty lovers, the trouble makers, the goats refusing to be herded, the rebels who refuse to fall into line.
Because we’re the ones who keep humanity from rushing forward, as one…. and fall off the cliff.
According To Hoyt 
“twitter-monarchists”?
Oh yes, those sorts. I “ran into” one of those critters and to make it worse he loved the idea of a “Christian” king with absolute power.
And he had worse faults than that. [Frown]
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Oh, yeah. Those are LIKELY to have other faults. They eat their own boogers at industrial quantities.
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Keep in mind that a steady diet of paste and window licking palls after a while.
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Even if you add an occasional doorknob lick for variety, you are quite short of sufficient protein for adequate brain function.
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I rather suspect those lots are ones who saw the sort of fantasy monarchy set up in the Lord of the Rings and think “that’s a great idea!” and absolutely a.) never looked at real world history, and b.) didn’t even look at the fictional Middle Earth history (including things directly mentioned in the trilogy) that pointed out an awful lot of bad kings. Also they ignore the whole “Aragorn is a fictional character who was deliberately written to be a perfect king who ushered in a new golden age” part.
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The sad thing is that Tolkien had written that after Aragorn, Middle Earth would go down hill.
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Well sure, Aragorn is a Christ figure, Christ reigning as the righteous king. I’d be happy to have Christ here as my king. It really is an accept no substitutions situation though.
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Or like the Isaac Azimov theory that everyone who thinks it would be great to live in ancient Athens assumes that they would be upper crust Athenians and not slaves in the Athenian silver mines.
The Magna Carta was a massive step forward in human rights history. But, even so, we had to fight a war to free ourselves from the tyranny that still remained.
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Nothing so romantic. In my experience online monarchists tend to be “neoreactionary” types who think the Stuarts (the ones who got deposed twice in the 17th century) were the ideal monarchs and the Glorious Revolution a grave mistake. Only their knowledge of that history doesn’t run very deep.
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To be fair, he was more or less raised by (A) an elf king who had been there, done that, and seen it all and (B) an actual angel. If nothing else, it would have drilled into him that he was *not* the biggest kid on the playground.
That gave Strider a bit of a leg up, I think.
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Those people who believe that a monarchy is God’s preferred form of Government really need to read 1 Samuel Chapter 8. To paraphrase:
Israel: We want a king!
God (via Samuel): No, you don’t want a king. A king is going to force your sons and daughters to serve him, take the best of everything you have, and basically make you into slaves.
Israel: Yes, yes, we want a king.
God: Okay, fine. I’ll give you a king. But you’re going to be sorry. And don’t come whining to me when it turns out that the king is every bit as bad as I warned you it would be.
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My favorite moment in season 2 House of David is when it comes out that David’s father Jesse is a libertarian Israelite who thinks Israel was better off under the Judges. :D (I mean, I like the character anyway because he talks exactly like Don Alejandro De La Vega, Zorro’s Dad, in Guy Williams Zorro, but the libertarian moment was a favorite).
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As has been shown all too often, adding priestly authority to a ruler ends even worse.
https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_macdonough.htm
We forgot that lesson, and we’re paying the price for it daily.
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If that’s supposed to be a knock on the Judges (whose time ended in part because Samuel’s sons were power-tripping scumbags), their regime is described as “every man doing what was right in his own eyes,”
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Sorry, that came out grumpy. I am generally in agreement with Kipling on this point.
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From Judges to Islam, the path is JUST as Kipling described it.
And he explained why here:
PS: WPDE sometimes pastes plain text processed by Notepad with line feeds…. and sometimes doesn’t……
https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_disciple.htm
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I more or less agree with Kipling’s discussion of the corruptibility of human institutions in general terms,, but when it comes to equating Samuel, or even his sons, to Omar Abdel-Rahman, my answer is yeah no. Israel under the Judges gives much more of the vibes of Saga-era Iceland: a moderately lawless society only united (and that only partially) in warfare, with religiously sanctioned law-reciters conducting somewhat ineffectual private arbitration sessions that end badly.
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If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and the next place, oblige it to control itself. — James Madison
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Name me one socialist/fascist/communist ruler (lumping them all together because they are so hard to tell apart) that didn’t become a ‘mad king’. Including Turd-o in Canuckistan, Merkel in Germany and Starmer in (formerly) Great Britain.
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Hm… you know…..
Look at those in terms of how quick they eat resources without resupplying them– King types have to keep folks from killing the farmers to get enough support, because of all the layers, but Marx could kill off the farmers and all the layers. So, fails faster.
Now apply that to making it folks’ best interest to do The Right Thing, even if they’re a bad guy.
This feels like it might connect to CrossoverQueen’s post on good guys who do the good thing for the wrong reason.
:spends way too long stopping WP(DE) from inserting post rather than linking:
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RAH himself said (through Lazarus Long) that the most effective form of government is a well-run tyranny.
Three problems: (1) How do you ensure that it is well-run, (2) who decides, and (3) how do you select a worthy successor for the Benevolent Tyrant? Because history shows that the 3rd Tyrant is likely to be either an idiot or a psychopath. (Or both. Could be both.)
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There’s also a fourth issue: the longer you leave one guy in charge as an absolute ruler, the worse he gets. General personality changes as a man grows older, coupled with growing sycophancy over time are two of the reasons why. Deng Xioping recognized this under Mao, and specifically changed up the CCP’s constitution with term limits to block another Mao (and applied those changes to himself, though he apparently shifted to a “power behind the throne” position when his was up).
Unfortunately for China, Xi removed those limits.
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I am not a libertarian, because I don’t have unrealistic views of how the US should be run (into the ground). Plus I don’t smoke pot.
I am a USAian if I am anything. I’m one of those grouchy old men who just wants to be left the hell alone.
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This is much more sensible than pretty much any political ideologue of any stripe, Left to Right to Committed Middle. Thanks for putting it in print.
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Idealism is to an extent an attempt to convert an idealized model into reality.
The inherent devil in the details is how one sorts priorities, and what the specific person in question stops at, rather than autistically screeching as they have a melt down at the literal closed form not being realized.
The same ideas might have different results for a natural bloody-minded fanatic of the ‘do it at all costs’ variety, versus someone who gives up at the first sign of difficulty. But the selection of ideas also does matter.
The mind a person has before the ideas, and the ideas they latch onto, can be related.
Libertarianism may correlate less strongly with malign ignoramuses than communism, but it can be a model that might not have been realized.
Realizing an unrealized model can correlate to bloody-minded fools who might destroy everything in a quixotic quest.
Preserving a realized system, on the other hand, can be a) small c conservative b) attract a different sort of personality. Preserving a bad system can also correlate to bad personality traits. Good and bad in a system relate to realized systems, not imaginary systems, and we best evaluate unrealized systems close to currently extant and functioning ones.
(Failing or non-functioning systems in human behavior have a ton of routing around that is off-model to more official models.)
Anyway, there are mental phenomena that are shared between many cases. My own mistakes, actual facism, actual communism, and actual libertarianism. At least perhaps.
I’m having a sort (1) of day, and do not have the spoons to really nail quite a lot of things down.
(1) good, productive, tiring
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The longer and deeper you get into the founding documents and their original intent, you realized they knew from the start that Humans are fallible and tend over time to corruption. But just like an aircraft carrier takes a long ways to turn, so does our bloated government. And the pigs feeding at it’s myriad tits squeal like the swine they are when you try and save the bloated sow.
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If it took a hundred years of communist corruption for our government to get this bad, we can hardly be surprised if it takes a hundred years to correct.
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Fight will never be over. Freedom isn’t free. There will always be classes of people who think they know better what everyone else should do. I mean, I do. Just I don’t believe in forcing my way on everyone else.
But our current situation? There are solutions to clean it up. Make it better. SAVE act is one. Elimination and prosecution (follow the money) of fraud. Tighter controls and audits to prevent future fraud. To name a couple.
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At this point, they’re no longer piglets or pigs. They are vampire-leeches.
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I believe power should lean toward individual freedom as much as practical. In America most of us seem to honor the ideal if not the practice, which is, at least, a step in the right direction.
I actually became a registered Libertarian in the early 70’s. That’s because of a fit many of us threw over a little tyrant, Fu Manchu (actually March Fong Eu) who was Secretary of State at the time, meaning she was in charge of elections. Now the California Constitution lists two ways for a political party to be recognized in the state. First is to have over 0.33% of the registered voters register under that party designation. Second is for a candidate from that party have a vote total exceeding 2% of a statewide election. Sometime in the 70’s the Libertarian candidate for Governor got some 6% of the vote, bu Fu Manchu ruled that section of the Constitution did not apply because he hadn’t been listed on the ballot as Libertarian. Since her own rules prevented that from being the case because the party hadn’t been recognized as official before the election, she created a nifty Catch-22. In a fit of pique, I and enough others went out the next day and registered Libertarian to put the party over the other threshold.
I have never voted for a big L Libertarian, and soon thereafter reregistered as a Republican, but we made our point.
When i was young, I voted for a lot of bad things, because I was naive (another reason to re-raise the voting age to 21 even though I was 21 when I first got the vote along with a horde of 18-21 year olds). I’m ashamed to admit to voting for the Coastal Commission (Prop 20), something that turned out to be a very bad idea. I’m proud to admit that I voted for the limit on reassessment of property values for taxation purposes (Prop 13), but even that has had deleterious consequences. It eventually shifted the funding of public schools from the local level to the state level. Definitely a very bad thing. Sigh.
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The main bad thing from all the good Prop 13 did is the “reallocation” mechanism that the state bureaucracy built into its implementation – it’s clearly unfair that county X is wealthy and spends its property tax wealth to make its schools great, so Sacramento reallocates property tax revenues from those counties to the counties with crap schools, with the result that the schools are still crap, but with much higher administrative pay.
Capping the property tax rates without the Sacramento central planning aspects would have been better, but overall it’s still a plus. And plus, the decades of loud complaining from local governments is entertaining to this day.
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I am similar, I like the ideals of liberty, but find actual libertarianism to be too utopian.
I do have an ancap YouTuber I like, and after watching one video he had about logical fallacies of collectivism, I had the realization that the fallacy of extreme individualism is to deny the power of collective action. Basically, by accepting the assumption that collective action means government they miss that there are many ways for people to voluntarily work together, and that teamwork is a.powerful tool.
Also, I have realized that I conceptualize the non-aggression principle differently than many libertarians.
One way is to realize that government is a technological tool of violence. This is no different than any other weapon that can be used to protect or to rob. This means that a government expanding its power can be good if it is doing so to restrict other governments from infringement of liberty.
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Mind you, you can still get me to shout incoherently in individualist. :D
But yeah. Part of coming to terms was realizing that things like “abolish the welfare state” are probably beyond my reach in this time, much less anything else.
Brother, we need us a man like Miley. But for now, I’ll take Trump. Better than the other side.
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Yeah, I have a friend who is a hard core Randian objectivist, and it had taken me a while to really articulate what felt off to me about the whole “altruism is evil” that he buys into (but does not actually follow).
I am reminded of a blog I read the other day by a tech entrepreneur who was comparing his experience in Silicon Valley vs. growing up in India. In India people see knowledge as zero sum, and only share if they get something in return. In Silicon Valley they see sharing tips and wisdom with other entrepreneurs as what you do, and it helps all of them improve and do better and have a flourishing ecosystem that produces huge amounts of wealth for all of them.
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Altruism is not evil if you believe in it and practice it on your own. Forcing other people to fund your altruism is as wrong as any other form of robbery.
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Indeed. I think that what tends to trip people up is understanding the difference between what is moral to do, vs. what is moral to force everyone to do. So people like my friend see that altruism is used as an excuse to justify forcing people to do stuff, and then think it is the altruism that is the problem instead of the force.
I was also thinking along the same lines with regards to pacifism, and how it can be morally good to be a pacifist, but forcing others to be pacifists is not good even so.
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The problem with pacifism is the burden it places on others. If you won’t defend yourself, somebody else has to. A nation of pacifists will only last until some non-pacifists decide to indulge in that old tradition of rape, loot, pillage and burn.
It takes two to make peace. Only takes one to make war.
If one would have peace, one must be eternally ready for war.
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Oh, bugger. I got moderated. Sarah coordinate! 😁
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That was what I got out of Atlas Shrugged. What she calls “selfishness” is “acting in accordance with your own interests and values”, and what she calls “altruism” is “letting other people use your values to enslave you”. At least how I read it.
You can help others as much as you want, as long as it’s on your own terms. Which lines up neatly with the Christian idea that charity should be given freely, not coerced. Also with C.S. Lewis’ point in The Great Divorce that the righteous should not be held hostage by their love/sympathy for the wicked. (And with a few scenes in Man of Steel that boil down to “Being Superman is a burden that must be taken on freely.”)
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Silicon Valley is actually a fairly small pool of people. You keep running into the same folks over and over as you do your rides on the Tech jobs rollercoaster, so you really never know which random acquaintance will be the next VC lottery winner whom you can catch your the next ride with, so it is in one’s self interest to share such tips and keep your amicable networking alive.
That’s not to say there are not infamous grudges, but generally it’s seen as smart to keep things friendly.
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Apparently, however, while the Indians in Silicon Valley may have given up the “zero sum knowledge” tradition, they haven’t given up the “hiring more Indians improves my social status” tradition.
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Yeah, but it’s fun to observe the angst when subcontinental managers have to lay off subcontinental individual contributors, or their much greater angst when they RIF subcontinental H-1b indentured individual contributors, forcing them to go back home.
After all their thumb-on-the-scales hiring efforts, there’s only so many U.S.-born employees around to lay off first. Eventually they have to start in on the“somebody’s cousin” pool, and you can tell they are racking up real in-culture social opprobrium in so doing.
Anyone know the Hindi for “schadenfreude”?
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The antonym of izzat?
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Under the “Never let a crisis go to waste” rule, this whole massive fraud in every welfare program imaginable thing seems like the ideal time to just shut them all down until we can figure out what’s going on.
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I would be a libertarian if I believed it to be possible. What annoys me is the “die heretic!” that the true believers come out with when you try to discuss the thing.
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An Individualist orthodoxy is kind of ironic.
But I suppose it follows that some schools of libertarianism read more theory than the Marxists.
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For proximate examples of libertarian “no drug laws, dude” in real world application, at least basically no drug use enforcement plus free needles and free money for voter fraud, see The City and County of San Francisco, though the worm just possibly may have started to turn there, and the City of Los Angeles under it’s current Cuban administrative oversight. Where on the libertarian free drug spectra does “camp on the street, shoot up in doorways, and poop on the sidewalk” go?
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Where on the libertarian free drug spectra does “camp on the street, shoot up in doorways, and poop on the sidewalk” go?
Same place as “drive drunk and cause an accident” goes when it comes to alcohol–it ain’t there. Libertarianism holds people responsible for the consequences of their actions, even if the actions themselves are legal.
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Yep.
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It’s the enforcement.
Notably all three of those, which I saw a couple of years ago with these my own eyes when I last visited the streets of SF, are individually illegal – public use of illegal drugs, public defecation, and camping on streets each violating actual on-the-books laws.
The lawlessness by those individuals violating those laws continues because those responsible for enforcing the laws decided to skip that bit to pander to a political constituency. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, and for that matter as late as just prior to the accession of Gavin the Dim as mayor, the SFPD had a reputation as a bit of a hard nosed agency, and would have run sweeps to deal with these occurring in any neighborhood other than The Tenderloin.
So the current state of affairs in SF (as noted there may be changes afoot there, too early to tell for certain yet) and LA are really more public officials choosing lawless libertinism as performative “compassion” than anything libertarian.
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Case in point, if tents show up on the street where Nancy Pelosi’s in-town residence sits, the address which qualifies her for her seat in Congress rather than where she really lives up in the wine country, those tents mysteriously get cleaned out pretty quickly indeed.
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Funny how Nantucket and other eastern coastal enclaves yelled for (N)ICE when Desantos and other republican governors assisted illegal border crossers further north by bus.
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Canada. Seriously, a judge in Ontario has ruled that government [tax payers] can’t evict homeless druggies from an encampment unless the government (tax payers) provide housing that the homeless approve of (have to be able to shoot up, smoke, fool around, be loud), because they have a right to housing {free to them} that matches their right to be antisocial in all sorts of ways.
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It’s not mandatory, but the billboard opposite the Flyover County JC gets my neck hairs to raise a bit. I have to paraphrase, but it’s on the order of “Make sure you have Narcan on hand for your friends.”
Um, you want to have your drug use enabled by making sure your group of friends will save your ass when you do something stupid. Is that what you want? Mind if I say “Think of it as Evolution in Action”?
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Blink.
Think this might be the correct interpretation, or (and) could be “have Narcan on hands for your friends”, to save them; or strangers. Latter you can’t control, unless a hermit. Former? Have different friends.
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My argument for having narcan on hand is that it works on a dog that gets a nose-full.
Known cartel way to kill off dogs.
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My wife and I put it this way:
Ideologically, we’re libertarian and (therefore) pragmatically we’re mostly conservative except where the conservatives start getting bossy.
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I like “non-bossy conservative” as a label.
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This is pretty close to where I’m at. Considered myself a liberal for a fair while, and compared to the conservatism of where I grew up, I was quite liberal; center-left, you might say; but prolonged close exposure to a bunch of people who were SJWs before we had that term for it began to cure me of it. After seeing them in action, I knew for sure that going Full Progressive was not good for anybody.
And then, a few years after that, I started reevaluating what both ends of the political spectrum say about themselves vs. what their actions and policies do, and at the same time was thinking about what my fundamental beliefs and principles are. Not focused on theory much at all: how well does this actually work, and what’s the principle behind it was what I wanted to know.
End result, after finding that libertarianism was the political philosophy that most closely matched my principles, was realizing that the pure philosophy utterly fails the “does it actually work” test. It’s like communism in that only angels could make it function as the theory envisions — and unfortunately, we don’t have any of those on hand.
So that’s why I caucus with conservatives. They may get judgy about some of the places where we differ, but the vast majority won’t try to coerce or unperson me for disagreeing. And until we figure out how to change human nature itself, the closest thing we’re ever going to get to a libertarian utopia is embedded in the principles, guiding documents, and vision behind the founding of the United States of America. Libertarian-minded folks will probably always be a minority (see: human nature), but we can do a valuable service by reminding the majority that LIBERTY is the ultimate thing we all need to preserve against the leftist onslaught.
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Any ‘right’ that has to be supplied by somebody else is not a right. 😡
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I’m a libertarian–registered Libertarian and Trump’s the only non-Libertarian I’ve ever voted for–but I don’t consider open borders to be a valid libertarian position, even as a philosophical ideal. Don’t have time right now to go into my reasoning, but I’ll do so later if anyone’s interested.
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I don’t want open borders for the same reason I don’t leave the front door of my house open all day and night. 😛
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I consider myself…um…it’s complicated? And probably doesn’t translate into US political ideas well. I would say I’m more a minarchist than a libertarian, and that what little government should be is meant to fill the gaps between individual moral compasses. The closest semi-coherent ideology I’ve ever found to where I land is what the Euros call “Christian Democracy” and even that is far from a perfect fit. So, darned if I know.
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Subsidierist works. “The lowest, smallest level of government that can do it should do it. If they can’t then it goes up one tier.”
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That’s a Catholic teaching, right?
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My response to the assumption that I’m a moderate is “no, I’m extreme in all directions.”
They assume I’m joking, but it’s truer than a lot of descriptions.
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oh, heck no. Christian Democracy is socialism. Just not atheist.
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Yeah, I did say a far from perfect fit, just the closest resemblance. I long ago accepted that I’m probably just ideologically incoherent.
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And for those who think Christian Socialism can work I refer you to the Book of Acts, in particular Chapter 5, as well as 2nd Thessalonians Chapter 3. I have a principle that if the saints (and Saints) of the early church couldn’t make it work aint no one making socialism work, and I stand by it.
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European Political Party ID Rule: If is does not get called “far right” in the yoorupeen press, it’s Marxist, either hard or soft-serve.
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EVEN when it’s called far right, TBH.
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I agree with you on the drug thing. Colorado was also one of the first states to legalize pot, which drew in a less than productive wave of immigrants.
One of the things that bothered me, right from the start, was both smelling pot on the street all the time and the people that complained about it. It is not legal to smoke it in public. That has _nothing_ to do with legalizing pot. It has everything to do with not enforcing laws already on the books.
I was a fairly hard-core libertarian in my youth. I’m not so much, now. I do believe in minimal laws, which is somewhat libertarian.
I also believe that if a law exists, it should be enforced or repealed.
I’m going to have fun with that in fiction. Our intrepid heroes want to farm a dungeon. To farm it, you have to feed it. I believe it was a RAH (or maybe Clarke) story that had almost every crime warrant the death penalty so organ harvesting could keep up with demand. This will be similar. No one objects when you toss murderers and rapists naked into the dungeon. When it gets to j-walking, people start to get upset. Plenty of story fodder there.
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That was a Larry Niven story.
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I know someone who is anaphylaxis-allergic to pot. (She buys Epi-pens on the open market, since there isn’t a blood test for cannabis, so to get the 100% certain that it’s pot test, she would have to go to a hospital and do deliberate exposure.) You can’t contain pot smoke like you can, say, peanuts, so public pot-smoking is a direct health hazard for her.
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As Drak noted, that was Larry Niven, from his short story “The Jigsaw Man”, set earlier in the timeline of his “Known Space” universe.
He continued with it in his “Gil the ARM” series, focusing on a UN agent policing organlegging (illegal organ trade, primarily used by criminals).
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Epoch Times reports the Chinese government is basically doing Niven’s thing. They can get you a transplant organ pretty quick, just don’t ask where it’s from. Uighurs and Fulan Gong practitioners, mostly.
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Niven’s “The Jigsaw Man” was published in 1967, the same year Laumer’s “The Day Before Forever.” Both stories were about organlegging.
It’s hard to tell who actually wrote their story first – and there was a lot of cross-pollination between SF writers back then – but Niven carried organlegging on as an integral part of his Known Space series, and Laumer’s story was just a one-shot.
“The Day Before Forever” is usually bundled together with “Thunderhead” when reprinted, as they were both odd-sized novellas in their day. Both are worthwhile, but “The Day Before Forever” really deserved more attention than it got.
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And Niven’s The Gift From Earth is what happens when New tech from Earth lands on a colony planet where organlegging of the proletariat has become the upper classses privilege.
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Believe it or not, I just read that for the first time
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See also: mid Victorian England, when there were several hundred various capital crimes.
Though they did have transportation to Australia as an alternate.
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See also: “Fate worse than death.” 8-)
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It should be noted that the Oz thing was the Imperial fallback – prior to the American Revolution, convict transport to the American colonies was much cheaper.
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Having spent time in GA, the whole “penal colony” is a good explanation…..
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See also: mid Victorian England, when there were several hundred various capital crimes.
Though they did have transportation to Australia as an alternate.
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One of our neighbors (not sure who) smokes pot habitually. It’s very annoying in the summer, Mom likes to have the windows open for the canyon breeze, and the smell of pot is so unpleasant.
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Skunkweed 😁
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You and I are Owls. Hoot.
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The reason long-lasting monarchies (Romanov, Habsburg – Austrian version) seem to have hung in there is that there was a limited amount they could actually do. They were not all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-meddling.
Since the empire really was a family business, at least for the Habsburgs, there was also an obligation to keep it intact or grow it through marriage and investment as well as conquest. Oddly, the Habsburgs had a habit of throwing “that crazy Archduke” who was actually listened to when he did local reforms. Not every generation had one, and over time entropy won.
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Yeah, the Habsburg inspired Empire in one of my series has an Emperor who’s chosen by a group of electors that including upper nobility, upper clergy, and some commoners chosen from the Assembly to represent them. He can ratify or veto laws generated by the Assembly and he can appoint the highest tier of military officers, subject to Assembly approval. The character who’s elected as Emperor towards the end of the series has a stated policy of vetoing any law that reaches his desk on general principle, and wonders if the large ceremonial seal that goes with his job would make a good bludgeoning weapon. (His friend the Prime Minister approves, and was the one pushing for him as Emperor for some reason.)
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The Romanovs also ruled over a territory larger than all of Europe, and much of it ran autonomously due to communications lag. Its sheer size confounded normal military operations, and even if one of the various attempts had managed to take the current capitol, it wouldn’t have been the kind of coup d’etat that taking Paris or London would have been. European countries are so centralized on their capitols that was a blind spot for their military planners.
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I’m an accidentalist. The point is not the form of the government, but to what extent it does its job of protecting people from force and fraud without harming them in other ways. An absolute monarchy that does a better job than a republic is more legitimate.
Also, history shows that governments must be fitted to times and circumstances.
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I have no desire to replace our current form of government. But, that is likely true for most people at most times – experience shows a government has to be very dysfunctional to be overthrown – see the Declaration of Independence language on tolerate while they may.
Pray for wise people, that those in government would have less difficulties in governing, and be more likely to be wise themselves, drawn from a society that encourages wisdom.
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I do want to see our current form of government replaced — with the one the Founders intended. I want to see an end to the corrupt self-dealing political-bureaucratic Deep State that squanders tax money robbed from us on their corrupt cronies.
Washington D.C. needs an enema. 😡
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No. It needs the Augean stables treatment.
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Wasn’t that just a really big enema? 🤣
You’re right, though, I didn’t complete the sentence correctly. Washington D.C. needs an enema with a fire hose. 😛
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And here’s the hose…..
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Hose, chainsaw – whatever works.
it’s when the job needs C4 that a cleanout gets problematic.
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Yeah we are moving from Hercules and the Augean stables to nuke it from orbit just to be sure.
And I will note whether you’re redirecting two rivers into stables that haven’t been cleaned for 30 years or performing an enema the output is likely the same a whole bunch of effluent, it is merely a matter of scale…
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Frederic Bastiat is quoted as having said that any form of government was acceptable, as long as it could not steal from its citizens.
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The thing about “legalizing drugs” is that without that, we have cartels making mega-billions and killing everybody in their path. Al Capone and Lucky Luciano would be weeping with envy to see our modern drug cartels.
The medieval church tolerated whorehouses, not out of hypocrisy but out of a doctrine of “harm reduction.” Their take was that all men (yes, even you and I) are fallen, and all men will sin. Sinlessness is not an option. So they figured that allowing sin some licit outlets was better than trying to stamp sin out completely.
And another thing—which drugs are we talking about? Pot is not opiates is not hallucinogens is not uppers is not downers… I will stipulate freely that some people and some drugs are a bad, bad combination. But I could say the same thing about alcohol. I know quite a few people who’re OK when they’re sober but put a few drinks down them and it’s Katy-bar-the-door. The temperance/prohibition people started out with a good idea—the amount people drank as a matter of routine in Colonial times boggled my mind when I found out about it. But they took it way too far, and now the whole idea’s discredited.
The “drug exemption” to the freedoms granted to us in the Constitution also concerns me. In the names of the Drug War and the Holy War On Racism, they’ve made much of the Constitution and Bill of Rights dead letters. They haven’t tried quartering soldiers on us yet, but give them time. I’d rather deal with giggling druggies on every corner than that.
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–
There is a reason why Europe, early pioneer America, and even now outside of US and Canada, that alcohol based drinks are the drink of choice. Often the only safe option for those of us traveling from Canada and US. Suppose to be watered down alcohol. But still contains alcohol.
Drinking water flat out not guarantied to be safe. Can’t always boil the water either. But one can always add drinkable alcohol to an unsuspecting contaminated water source.
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Alcohol consumption increased as agriculture became more productive and transportation improved. And this occurred as power-driven machinery became more widespread and people became more concentrated around it. (A drunk farmer endangered himself and his family. A drunk driver in a city endangered hundreds of strangers.)
Something would eventually have to be done or the gutters would run with blood. But the decision to ban alcohol was like the decision to ban guns: blame the thing, not the person.
Does this apply to high-power opiods and to hallucinogens? Start from first principles and balance responsibility, harm to others, unmanagable danger, harm to one’s ability to be a responsible citizen … .
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They’re not quartering soldiers; they’re quartering ‘homeless’ and illegal aliens.
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I sometimes think it’s a pity that the words “drawing and” immediately prior to “quartering” are missing from your comment.
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Why do you think they call them “The Salvation Army”?
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“Take over a once respected institution, kill it, skin it, wear it as a skin suit, etc., etc.”
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As I pointed out I am not saying it should be illegal. I’m saying as it is right now, it’s…. Also in CO the illegal drug trade flourishes more than ever, because the government taxes legal out the wazoo.
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Sarah, they already proved “couldn’t organize a boink in a brothel” at the Mustang Ranch…… 8-)
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Same in the Formerly Golden State – the state taxes and regulation on legal pot growers and retailers, as well as the obstacles to getting bank loans and insurance, make the illegal growing and selling activities financially viable, especially with no limits on possession so demand is higher.
And the tax revenue windfall remains the square root of minus one.
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Same in Oregon. In addition, banking is danged near impossible.
All the old time growers went legit as grow consultants. Now newcomers have come in, and they are batching chemical drugs too.
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Except they factually don’t.
That requires enabling structures. Which is why California has a very big drug-dealer death issue, and Iowa doesn’t. Because Iowa doesn’t turn folks right back out when they’re snagged, and actively prevent enforcement of the laws on international terror groups that happen to sell drugs.
When various states legalized pot, what actually happened was that the cartels– who were already sheltered via failure to enforce existing laws– rolled in to the legal grows and informed them they would be working for the cartels.
Source: I know, personally, 4 “legal grow” owners. Three of them got this deal and got out because of that, cartel gets you dead. Silver or lead.
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I’ve seen too much to think that there are really too many “victimless” crimes. I’ve seen enough families ruined by drugs to think that addicts are only hurting themselves. And, yes, I know, alcohol does much the same thing, we tried prohibition with that, and it didn’t work—but that strikes me as an excellent reason not to let another drug get embedded in our culture to the point where we can’t get rid of it.
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The case for Prohibition is stronger than many credit it: alcohol consumption and related ills fell and remained low for two generations after the end of Prohibition.
I don’t think that’s enough to salvage it as a good idea. But “not worth the trade-offs” is subtler than “doesn’t work”Pharmacopeia
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It seems to me that there are two impulses to libertarianism. One is toward individual responsibility; the other is toward licence or licentiousness. And I’m not convinced that either occurs in pure form, though if either does, the latter seems more likely.
There may also be a willingness to accept some degree of the latter in order to get the former.
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and vice versa…..
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I’m one of the victims.
The “war on drugs” hurts because of folks blocking “hey, these bad things are bad.”
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A king is humans choosing a substitute for God.
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“It scares the pee out of the rest of the world”
The Anti-American propaganda is getting pretty ridiculous on social media, especially Instagram.
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But it all makes it easier to tell who our cultural friend group is.
Hiya, Japan! Ohayo gozaimas!
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…promo post?
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I forgot. It will happen, but apparently only on sunday. I’m so sorry. I really was NOT doing well yesterday, so I just finished the started post.
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My only quibble with the article is that I would substitute “limited government” for “small government”. I don’t want a small government which does nothing but regulate my toilet. I’m OK with a big government that does nothing but protect my borders from invasion. Perhaps a pedantic quibble, but one nonetheless.
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The current Federal government authorized by the Constitution of 1789 has many limits. Unfortunately they feel free to ignore the parts they don’t like.
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That’s because they’ve figured out the weakness:
“Don’t like what I’m doing? Well, until you’re willing to shoot me, I’LL KEEP DOING IT.”
And now we’re watching leftist judges continue this in real time.
I support everything Donald Trump has done….. and I hope he puts down the current slow motion coup hard.
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Slow motion coup:
https://pjmedia.com/tim-o-brien/2026/05/18/comeys-message-to-the-deep-state-on-meet-the-press-run-out-the-clock-on-trump-n4953000
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So I have not now or ever have been a member of the Libertarian Party. They are NOT serious (apologies to registered Libertarians) , they run candidates at the top of the ticket who don’t even hold libertarian standards (i.e. Johnson/weld who BOTH supported the New London side of New London vs Kelo with their state governments when they were governors). They have no concerted effort to take state offices, particularly the legislatures, where ultimate control for the electoral votes comes from. Don Quixote jousting with windmills has more effect.
That said I am a Constitutionalist with a minarchist libertarian bent. I believe government is not wholly useless (like an anarchist libertarian might) but that it should be limited to a small set of actions. I think the US constitution as originally framed AND as interpreted through a moderately tight originalist exigesis. I believe the 16th and 17th ammendments were mistakes, the 17th was a misguided attempt to deal with corruption in appointing Senators. It basically changed the Senate into the House with slightly longer timelines breaking much of the original design of the Connecticut Compromise which was to give the states a direct leash on the Federal Government. The direct taxation of income created a power in the legislative branch that perhaps was not intentionally intended. Interpretations in the 30’s particularly around using the commerce clause to justify everything have made a hash of where power lies.
How do we get out of this mess? Beats the heck out of me. It is clear internal spending needs major control, and we really need to focus on clearing out any old super liberal judges, We’re stuck for a while with the Obama and Biden Appointees (as well as the squish Bush II appointees) Most of Clinton and Bush I appointees ought to be aging out. And the bureaucrats need probably a 50% purge (and likely more in some parts).
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Funnily enough, Trump 2.0 seems to be tackling things in the right order. Deport the illegals, uncover the fraud, slash the bureaucracy, etc. There’s a lot of mess to clean up, but that also means it’s a target-rich environment. TBD if we can pivot to a saner government once things get cleaned up, but doing things in the opposite order wouldn’t have worked because moves like reducing the power of the Presidency or limiting the ICE/BP budget would just let the existing rot fester.
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The thing that kept trying to take over my mind as I read this, and thus distracted me throughout, is that scale is the enemy of libertarianism. Liberty scales down well. Up, not so much. You simply cannot have a small government over a large geography. Doesn’t work. At least, I can’t think of a single example of it working. I’d say the early US is the closest anyone has ever gotten, but the Articles of Confederation is not coming back for its beer.
The thing that tried to take over my mind as I neared the end of the piece was this: at least libertarianism is consistent about open borders. There seems to be some disagreement among the other major political-economic models as to whether it is people who should move about freely or goods that should amble unencumbered, but nobody seems to think it should be both. Not that we have a true case of either in any system, but I’m hard pressed to find another ideology that favors both. And a quick sidebar, what we now call economics used to be called political-economy. And for that matter, what we now call politics used to be called political-economy. Maybe we should retvrn.
I got a good public education. Or maybe I just got good genes or good parents, but I repeat myself. It’s not all bad. But I look around and see that a lot of it is bad. I bet if my parents didn’t have to give up so much income to taxes, they would’ve put me in a modest private school.
On taxes, I’m against most but where any libertarian will probably fight me is property/asset tax. I think it is one of the better, more stable forms of taxation. Notice I didn’t say it was perfect. But it’s better than an income tax, which disincentivizes work. And it’s better than a sales tax, which is truly regressive and has the same suppressive effects as income tax.
What am I? I don’t know. Is there a philosophical name for realpolitik? A realpolitikker? Sounds like a heart condition.
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