Note: Don't confuse this with some 'anti-liberties' rant! Individual liberties are great! This is a rant against the blind ideology of modern *L*ibertarianism...
Lemme jump right in - I'm not one for introductions.
My background in economic methodologies and legal thought processes often leads me to thinking about the best way to make systems work: Mulling over economic systems - and the legal systems upon which they are based - tends to monopolize my brain.
Yeah, my mind kinda whirls around, 24/7... thankfully there are meds for this affliction. ;)
Anyhow.
Self-proclaimed "libertarians" seem to have been popping out of the woodwork quite a bit lately. Having identified as one "libertarian" for a short while (between the time I woke up from my staid, Reaganesque, neoconservative haze and became... whatever it is that I am now... I keep learning and morphing), I guess I can say that I've experienced it.
It's a ruse.
Read this article called What's wrong with libertarianism over at Zompist.com -- if for nothing else, it's a good resource for when you get stuck in internet combat with the Ayn Rand loons.
So, how about a quick sampling of the things wrong with modern Libertarian ideology, as pointed out in the article?
Regarding labor rights:
Thomas DiLorenzo on worker activism: "[L]abor unions [pursue] policies which impede the very institutions of capitalism that are the cause of their own prosperity." Or Ludwig von Mises: "What is today euphemistically called the right to strike is in fact the right of striking workers, by recourse to violence, to prevent people who want to work from working." (Employer violence is apparently acceptable.) The Libertarian Party platform explains that workers have no right to protest drug tests, and supports the return of child labor.
Regarding imbalanced anti-government stances:
The Constitution is above all a definition of a strengthened government, and the Federalist Papers are an extended argument for it. The Founders negotiated a balance between a government that was arbitrary and coercive (their experience as British colonial subjects) and one that was powerless and divided (the failed Articles of Confederation).
Regarding utopian ideals:
There's a deeper lesson here, and it's part of why I don't buy libertarian portraits of the future utopia. Movements out of power are always anti-authoritarian; it's no guarantee that they'll stay that way. Communists before 1917 promised the withering away of the state. Fascists out of power sounded something like socialists. The Republicans were big on term limits when they could be used to unseat Democrats; they say nothing about them today. If you don't think it can happen to you, you're not being honest about human nature and human history.
Regarding stunning hypocrisy:
The libertarian philosopher always starts with property rights. Libertarianism arose in opposition to the New Deal, not to Prohibition. The libertarian voter is chiefly exercised over taxes, regulation, and social programs; the libertarian wing of the Republican party has, for forty years, gone along with the war on drugs, corporate welfare, establishment of dictatorships abroad, and an alliance with theocrats. Christian libertarians like Ron Paul want God in the public schools and are happy to have the government forbid abortion and gay marriage. I never saw the libertarians objecting to Bush Sr. mocking the protection of civil rights, or to Ken Starr's government inquiry into politicians' sex lives. On the Cato Institute's list of recent books, I count 1 of 19 dealing with an issue on which libertarians and liberals tend to agree, and that was on foreign policy (specifically, the Iraq war).
Regarding over-simplistic thinking:
Despite the intelligence of many of its supporters, libertarianism is an instance of the simplest (and therefore silliest) type of politics: the single-villain ideology. Everything is blamed on the government. (One libertarian, for instance, reading my list of the evils of laissez-faire above, ignored everything but "gunboats". It's like Gary Larson's cartoon of "What dogs understand", with the dog's name replaced with "government".)
Regarding unrestrained markets:
Markets are very good at some things, like deciding what to produce and distributing it. But unrestricted markets don't produce general prosperity, and lawless business can and will abuse its power. Examples can be multiplied ad nauseam: read some history-- or the newspaper.
Regarding... um... blatant stupidity:
Americans enjoy the fruits of public scientific research, a well-educated job force, highways and airports, clean food, honest labelling, Social Security, unemployment insurance, trustworthy banks, national parks. Libertarianism has encouraged the peculiarly American delusion that these things come for free. It makes a philosophy out of biting the hand that feeds you.
Regarding social myopia:
It's hard to read libertarians without concluding that they've never been out of the country-- perhaps never out of the suburbs. They don't know what Latin American rule by the elite looks like; they don't know any way of running an industrial economy but that of the US; they don't know what an actually oppressive government looks like; they've never experienced a depression; they've never lived in a slum or experienced racial discrimination. At the same time, they have a very American sense of entitlement: a gut feeling that they've earned the prosperity they were born into, that they owe the community nothing, that they deserve to have whatever they want, that no one should stand in their way.
...
I don't really know why I felt the need to post this tonight; maybe I'm just worried that some of you fence-sitters might get suckered into their ideological crap before the November elections. Maybe I really care? Nah. lol
Just check it out, will ya? It's an easy read.
p.s. I'm not much for epilogues, either; I guess I just storm in and storm out.