When the Tea Party movement started, I thought it was really cool. A bunch of people demanding lower taxes: pure Awesome! Very free market, very libertarian. Fast forward 3 years, and the movement seemed to have filled it self with nutters. "Tea Baggers" seemed an apt label for what seemed to be the average organiser.
This past (couple of?) week, I've been watching the Memes forum get filled with a bunch of constitutionalist, right wing nutter nonsense. One of the things that attracted me to the label "Libertarian" was its sense of right-is-right, and natural law. Am I the only one that feels that the "Tea Baggers" have found libertarianism?
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The Many Roads to Liberty
http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/the-many-roads-to-liberty
Alex Salter wrote:
Libertarianism at its best, as +Steve Horwitz rightly argues, is a cosmopolitan philosophy of human flourishing. That one can reach libertarian conclusions with so many different premises makes it that much more plausible, not less. There are many ways to understand flourishing, many conceptions of the good society. They are often at odds with each other, but even the most dogmatic libertarian would admit that other points of view have something going for them, even as he vehemently insists they are deficient in important ways.
When one looks at a problem from many different angles, and nonetheless reaches the same conclusion, it is evidence for that conclusion’s robustness. Libertarianism is no different. The many different roads to libertarianism, each with something to commend it, suggest that the best way to promote human flourishing is to embrace the system of natural liberty. Internal differences of opinion are not something to be ferreted out and crushed, but nourished and celebrated. Let libertarian pluralism reign.
h/t +Foundation for Economic Education
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The Inhumanity of Politics
http://www.libertarianism.org/blog/inhumanity-politics
+Aaron Ross Powell of +The Cato Institute writes for +Libertarianism.org: As human beings, we have the capacity for reason. With it comes the capacity to engage with others reasonably. If you want to change my mind about something, the best, most humane way to do it is via peaceful persuasion. Raise arguments. Question mine. Try to show me the error of my ways. That’s what good people do when they disagree.
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We should all abhor this drift towards inhumanity. We should all strive to be better than politics encourages us to be. We should all refuse to resort to violence to get our way.
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We can be better than this. In fact, we have a moral duty to be better than this. But, just as important, we should want to be better than this, because we should want to live up to the enormous potential we have as human beings. Using politics–using the distant violence of the state–to get our way represents a retreat from that potential. Our relationships with others should one of reason, respect, compassion, and kindness–not pettiness, threats, and violence.
We should embrace truly civil society, and do everything in our power to leave the inhumanity of politics behind.
Another post I saw refers to the term Liberal meaning something quite different today than it did 200 years ago, requiring the introduction of a new term "libertarian".
Just a general frustration rant, and perhaps a warning/request that people understand the labels they are using before adopting them. I would rather not have the posts removed by moderators. If that is what the modern "libertarian" believes, then so be it. If the meaning of the word changes, I would rather know so I can distance myself from the term if necessary.
+Rick Bauer That's fair, I won't rephrase at this point though.
see: Classical Liberalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism
As for the Tea Party, you may want to take a look at the +FreedomWorks page.
http://www.solon.org/Constitutions/Canada/English/ca_1982.html
Understood. Trying to change the consensus on the meaning of words is doomed to failure unless you control most of the media--and even then, the effort may not succeed.
I understand and agree with what you're saying, but the left makes no such distinctions. Whey they say "Tea Baggers," they mean the TEA Party in its entirety--including libertarians.
That's one reason I'm a market anarchist. But many libertarians are minarchists, and the government specified by the US Constitution is a reasonable attempt at a minarchy. The fact it didn't stay one is the problem.
If we are concerned with Natural Rights, it is irrelevant that they are written into a constitution or not. If the constitution is wrong, we are free to throw it out and write a new one that is more in line with Natural Rights.
My initial attraction to Libertarianism was due to its focus on Natural Rights. The debates and forums dismissed constitutional arguments as frivolous: whatever was written in any given constitution, or law of any kind, did not make it ethical. Any law that was not in accordance with Natural Law should be scrapped, constitutions included.
This is the change I have seen in the last year or so, and am disappointed to see.
The Many Roads to Liberty
http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/the-many-roads-to-liberty
also see:
Libertarianism and Virtue
http://www.libertarianism.org/blog/libertarianism-virtue
+Aaron Ross Powell of +The Cato Institute wrote at +Libertarianism.org: Let’s start with the biggest difference between virtue ethics and other schools of moral philosophy. Typically, the key question of morality is “What’s the right action?” For consequentialists, the answer is whichever choice produces the best results. They’ll differ on what “results” means, though typically they’ll say it has to do with “the most happiness” or “the least pain.”
Deontologists hold that the right action is whichever conforms to proper rules or duties. While the content of those duties varies among deontologists, most libertarians align them with natural rights. Thus the morally right action is the one that doesn’t violate another person’s rights. Any action violating rights constitutes a moral wrong.