Reason magazine asked a group of libertarian legal scholars who they admire on the federal courts, who they think should be nominated to replace O'Connor and a couple other questions. Here's the stunning part to me - they actually list Larry Klayman as a libertarian legal expert! Larry Klayman? A libertarian? The man who says you can't withdraw life support from a patient even if you know what their wishes are ahead of time? Sorry, no. Klayman is neither a libertarian nor a legal expert. He is a carnival barker on the legal midway, seeking little but his own self-aggrandizement.
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Libertarians have been deifying businessmen and demonizing liberals (commies, Stalinists, evil collectivists, etc.), so mindlessly and for so long that they've completely ignored who the real enemies of their precious liberties really are. I wonder how much longer they can keep bending over for the GOP before they even start to suspect that the GOP STILL doesn't respect them in the morning.
Ah, more of that "libertarians do X" spoken to libertarians who don't do X at all.
Just to echo Ed a bit. As a libertarian I don't recall doing much deification of anyone, and many so called "liberals" are commies, or at least socialist/statists, who aren't much better than the theo-fascist/statists on the "other side".
Ed, don't you do some of the same generalizing when you talk about "the left" and "the right", that you so despise when done to libertarians, though?
Matthew wrote:
Probably to some extent. But "right" and "left" are far more amorphous philosophies than libertarianism and hence those labels are inevitably going to cover a lot more territory than libertarian. We can't avoid the use of labels entirely, but I also do recognize that many people within those labels don't take the position I'm attacking and I think I'm usually quite careful to see the distinctions that can exist under the same label. For instance, while most of the world simply categorizes Scalia, Thomas and Rehnquist as conservatives on the court (and I've used that phrase for them when it distinguishes them from the more liberal members of the court), I also have written pretty extensively about the differences between their judicial philosophies.
On a larger level, Raging Bee's claim was simply false. Libertarians do not "deify" businessmen, nor do libertarians support anything that might be good for business - especially big business. It's libertarians who are most strongly opposed to the Kelo decision because it put the interests of business above the interests of the individual property owner. It's libertarians who are adamantly opposed to the massive transfer of our tax dollars to the coffers of big business through the various forms of corporate welfare in the budget.
There's a reason why the Libertarian Party gets little support from the corporate community, because big business doesn't like free markets much. Big business prefers to limit competition, secure government subsidy and the fixed price. And they know that under a true libertarian system, those things would be a lot more difficult to do. And libertarians recognize that the enemies of liberty are found on both the left and the right.
But "right" and "left" are far more amorphous philosophies than libertarianism
Um, OK, but several years ago I was dishing with Justin Raimondo (yes, of anti-war.com fame) on a message board who claimed to be a Murray Rothbard libertarian and that the Libertarian Party was a "left" libertarian. Murray Rothbard libertarians, according to him were somewhat more "right" libertarians. The "right" libertarians were "natural law" libertarians. Of course, "natural law" (in that sense) is a crock.
This was on the old message board run by IndeGayForum. It has since been taken down.
The point is, there is no such thing as libertarianism. There are people who proclaim themselves to be libertarians. But there is no centralizing feature around which someone can proclaim "libertarian"! The discussion with Raimondo was hilarious, since his "Murray Rothbard" brand of libertarianism was nothing like any of the other discussants recognized as libertarianism.
raj-
There are different forms of libertarianism, just as there are with practically any other large idea. That doesn't mean there's "no such thing" as libertarianism any more than one could reasonably claim that there's "no such thing" as Christianity or "no such thing" as Islam. Such labels, while always covering more than one possible position on something specific, are still necessary. You just can't be too wedded to them and have to recognize that it's not a complete description.
Ed, I understand what you're saying, but I fundamentally disagree. There are a variety of philosophies that are vying for the rubric of "libertarian." Left (Lib Party) Libertarian? Right (Murray Rothbard) Libertarian? At some point it gets to be a bit silly. We went round and round about this on the old IndeGayForum, and message board, and I'll eschew reproducing the discussion here.
Your comparison with Christianity and Islam says nothing more than the fact the various sects of Christianity and Islam (and Judaism, by the way) is correct,but I believe it a bit misplaced. Libertarianism is a political philosophy, not a religious one. If purported Libertarians want to get candidates elected to office, they need to have a coherent policy. They don't. That has been the problem facing the Democrats at the national level--the lack of a coherent policy.