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U.S. Constitution Title: Key Concepts of Libertarianism Individual Rights. Because individuals are moral agents, they have a right to be secure in their life, liberty, and property. These rights are not granted by government or by society; they are inherent in the nature of human beings. It is intuitively right that individuals enjoy the security of such rights; the burden of explanation should lie with those who would take rights away. Spontaneous Order. A great degree of order in society is necessary for individuals to survive and flourish. Its easy to assume that order must be imposed by a central authority, the way we impose order on a stamp collection or a football team. The great insight of libertarian social analysis is that order in society arises spontaneously, out of the actions of thousands or millions of individuals who coordinate their actions with those of others in order to achieve their purposes. Over human history, we have gradually opted for more freedom and yet managed to develop a complex society with intricate organization. The most important institutions in human society language, law, money, and markets all developed spontaneously, without central direction. Civil society the complex network of associations and connections among people is another example of spontaneous order; the associations within civil society are formed for a purpose, but civil society itself is not an organization and does not have a purpose of its own. The Rule of Law. Libertarianism is not libertinism or hedonism. It is not a claim that people can do anything they want to, and nobody else can say anything. Rather, libertarianism proposes a society of liberty under law, in which individuals are free to pursue their own lives so long as they respect the equal rights of others. The rule of law means that individuals are governed by generally applicable and spontaneously developed legal rules, not by arbitrary commands; and that those rules should protect the freedom of individuals to pursue happiness in their own ways, not aim at any particular result or outcome. Limited Government. To protect rights, individuals form governments. But government is a dangerous institution. Libertarians have a great antipathy to concentrated power, for as Lord Acton said, Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Thus they want to divide and limit power, and that means especially to limit government, generally through a written constitution enumerating and limiting the powers that the people delegate to government. Limited government is the basic political implication of libertarianism, and libertarians point to the historical fact that it was the dispersion of power in Europe more than other parts of the world that led to individual liberty and sustained economic growth. Free Markets. To survive and to flourish, individuals need to engage in economic activity. The right to property entails the right to exchange property by mutual agreement. Free markets are the economic system of free individuals, and they are necessary to create wealth. Libertarians believe that people will be both freer and more prosperous if government intervention in peoples economic choices is minimized. The Virtue of Production. Much of the impetus for libertarianism in the seventeenth century was a reaction against monarchs and aristocrats who lived off the productive labor of other people. Libertarians defended the right of people to keep the fruits of their labor. This effort developed into a respect for the dignity of work and production and especially for the growing middle class, who were looked down upon by aristocrats. Libertarians developed a pre-Marxist class analysis that divided society into two basic classes: those who produced wealth and those who took it by force from others. Thomas Paine, for instance, wrote, There are two distinct classes of men in the nation, those who pay taxes, and those who receive and live upon the taxes. Similarly, Jefferson wrote in 1824, We have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. Modern libertarians defend the right of productive people to keep what they earn, against a new class of politicians and bureaucrats who would seize their earnings to transfer them to nonproducers. Natural Harmony of Interests. Libertarians believe that there is a natural harmony of interests among peaceful, productive people in a just society. One persons individual plans which may involve getting a job, starting a business, buying a house, and so on may conflict with the plans of others, so the market makes many of us change our plans. But we all prosper from the operation of the free market, and there are no necessary conflicts between farmers and merchants, manufacturers and importers. Only when government begins to hand out rewards on the basis of political pressure do we find ourselves involved in group conflict, pushed to organize and contend with other groups for a piece of political power. Peace. Libertarians have always battled the age-old scourge of war. They understood that war brought death and destruction on a grand scale, disrupted family and economic life, and put more power in the hands of the ruling class which might explain why the rulers did not always share the popular sentiment for peace. Free men and women, of course, have often had to defend their own societies against foreign threats; but throughout history, war has usually been the common enemy of peaceful, productive people on all sides of the conflict.
It may be appropriate to acknowledge at this point the readers likely suspicion that libertarianism seems to be just the standard framework of modern thought individualism, private property, capitalism, equality under the law. Indeed, after centuries of intellectual, political, and sometimes violent struggle, these core libertarian principles have become the basic structure of modern political thought and of modern government, at least in the West and increasingly in other parts of the world. However, three additional points need to be made: first, libertarianism is not just these broad liberal principles. Libertarianism applies these principles fully and consistently, far more so than most modern thinkers and certainly more so than any modern government. Second, while our society remains generally based on equal rights and capitalism, every day new exceptions to those principles are carved out in Washington and in Albany, Sacramento, and Austin (not to mention London, Bonn, Tokyo, and elsewhere). Each new government directive takes a little bit of our freedom, and we should think carefully before giving up any liberty. Third, liberal society is resilient; it can withstand many burdens and continue to flourish; but it is not infinitely resilient. Those who claim to believe in liberal principles but advocate more and more confiscation of the wealth created by productive people, more and more restrictions on voluntary interaction, more and more exceptions to property rights and the rule of law, more and more transfer of power from society to state, are unwittingly engaged in the ultimately deadly undermining of civilization. From Chapter 1, The Coming Libertarian Age, Libertarianism: A Primer, by David Boaz (New York: The Free Press, 1998). See also www.libertarianism.org. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top Page Up Full Thread Page Down Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 3.
#3. To: buckeroo (#0)
Lets take only one of those eighteenth-century thinkers to look closely at. Hmmm ... Hmmm ... Okay, lets take Thomas Jefferson and look at Thomas Jefferson vs. your Libertarian Mysticism. A peculiar trait found among a majority of libertarians is the desire to elevate Thomas Jefferson to the heroic status of intellectual forebear of their ideology. While I argue vehemently that such mythologizing is ultimately self-defeating for a movement that desires to fundamentally weaken the hold of statism, a more glaring flaw is that such a narrative is factually unfounded. From states rights and secession, to individual freedoms, peace, and the role of central government, Jefferson talked the talk, but never walked the walk. Far from an ideologue or proto- libertarian (lol), Jefferson was simply a successful politician, a well-read master of rhetoric and propaganda
And a statist. A casual google search will net anyone an immense cache of Jeffersonian revisionism. I decided to argue my points against one of the top cardinals of this particular church: all quotes here are taken from a 2006 Thomas J. DiLorenzo article The Latest Defamation of Jefferson [link]. Yes, go ahead and chalk me up on the defamer/heretic side. Jefferson was against protectionism, central banking, and internal improvements subsidies
He was a strict constructionist. The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 ended the legality of the transatlantic slave trade. This in effect moved foreign competition to the black (pun!) market, and allowed domestic slave owners to charge higher rates for their American-Made goods. I may not be a historian, but online dictionaries and an amateur understanding of economics support my claim that this measure was Protectionism. The Louisiana Purchase stands out as one of Americas greatest internal improvement subsidies, with a number of foreign and domestic interests receiving their share of the wealth of the U.S. citizenry. In fact, part of the deal included the U.S. assuming $3.75 million in debt owed to private U.S. citizens by the French government. Paying it to ourselves, indeed. As a side note: Many people are also unaware of the private banking interests in both England and the Netherlands that were involved in financing this deal. For all of his writings against the monied aristocracy [link], Jefferson was more than willing to work through the wealthy bankers to achieve his goals. [link] One must finally ask: where was Jeffersons strict Constitutionalism when he pushed the Louisiana Purchase Act through Congress without amendment? Jefferson was the apostle of states rights
Jefferson authored Americas Declaration of Secession from the British empire, known as the Declaration of Independence. Lincolns overriding purpose in his war was to destroy the secessionist and states rights principles of the Declaration (while using slick rhetoric designed to pretend that he revered the document). What of Aaron Burrs conspiracy to secede? Wasnt Burrs alleged activities well within Jeffersons pro-secessionist principles? History does not support this claim, with the government under Jeffersons response being arrests, trials of treason, and government confiscation of property [link]. Though Jefferson came out of his presidencys secession crisis with a lower body count, both him and Lincoln were more than willing to use force and slick rhetoric to preserve the union and their perceived Constitutional bona fides, respectively. Jefferson was adamantly opposed to interfering in foreign wars for any reason. I am for free commerce with all nations, political connection with none, and little or no diplomatic establishment, he wrote to Elbridge Gerry in 1799. And I am not for linking ourselves by new treaties with the quarrels of Europe, entering that field of slaughter to preserve their balance
' This defense of Jefferson stands out to me as DiLorenzos most glaringly bad, especially considering this was written by a supporter of the Austrian school. One needs only read over the Embargo Acts of Jeffersons late presidency to see how poorly his actions correspond to his writings on both free commerce with all nations and interference in foreign wars. Not only did Jefferson interfere with the European conflict and reveal his political neutrality as hypocrisy, he added to the ever-growing apparatus and precedent of the American States interference in private trade and commerce. [link] Commentary Source: Buckeroo, despite the best efforts of the you depraved libertarian mystics, no amount of quote-mining, cherry-picking articles or moral spin will ever change Thomas Jeffersons actions. Such revisionist agendas to create an imaginary hero succeeds in doing absolutely noting to promote libertarianism. Face it....libertarianism is a dying philosophy.
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