I didn’t say it was externally consistent; I said it was internally consistent.
And your position begs a lot of questions. Do you consider children capable of rational self-rule? How about the mentally retarded? The borderline mentally retarded? The British white underclass? The issue deserves a little more careful treatment than just baldly asserting equal rights.
Negating the doctrine of equal rights is not an internally consistent position, and is hardly libertarian by the way.
That’s the same knee-jerk response. Again, a slave owner who viewed his slaves as mentally incapable of independent living in human society could still be libertarian, just as a parent who uses physical force to restrain his child can still be libertarian. Whether the slave owner’s judgment is objectively correct is not the issue I was addressing.
People who use coercion can’t be considered libertarian regardless of what philosophical position they claim to hold, or worse you claim they hold. Really, what you’re saying is quite close to nonsense.
edit :
You can call it ‘knee-jerk’ response. I call it moral principle.
What is non-libertarian about coercion? If you invade my house, I’ll coerce you right the hell out of it. Likewise, if my child dashes into the street, I’ll promptly grab her by the collar and yank her back, and a million reanimated corpses of Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard won’t stop me.
Again, I’m not contesting the moral principle, and congratulations on your extremely well burnished anti-slavery credentials. I’m just pointing out that if the slaveowner regarded his slaves as sub-humans incapable of rational choice, then he could consistently argue both for slavery and for libertarianism and he would be internally consistent in doing so.
I’m afraid you’re not making any sense, Byzantine.
Frankly, if you have to ask, I don’t think the answer will do you any good.
Yeah, what do you mean, byz? What about initiating coercion?
That’s what makes all the difference - the initiation of it. But I see where he’s going here in terms of internal consistency. A parent, entrusted with the protection of their child, must make decisions to which that child might object - but if that child were rationally capable, it would 1) probably NOT object, and 2) not be a child, but in fact an adult, by virtue of that same rational capacity.
In the 1860s, it was widely believed that negroes did not have the rational capacity of adult whites. Was that right? Hell freaking no. Can we excuse the slave owners by that ignorance? Likewise, no. But we can explain that attitude, and note that while it was, objectively wrong (externally inconsistent), it was, in their ignorance, subjectively right (and therefore, internally consistent).
Before anyone accuses me of trying to condone 19th century chattel slavery, let me point out again that I do not equate a reason for something with an excuse. Ignorance is no excuse. We judge people by the results of their actions - not by their intentions.
But Byzantine’s point that the South was not a “slave society” to the point where they were capable of being largely libertarian is, in that light, rather true - even disregarding the collectivist implications of calling the inhabitants of any geographic area a “__ society” of any kind.
And all this follows the economically inevitable fact that slavery was well on its way out in any case.
You’re just repeating Byzantine’s fallacy. Slave owners are not libertarian. That follows from the definition of libertarianism. And to negate equal rights as he does, is not libertarian at all and is not internally consistent.
Shall I say “give me a break” ?
I hope nobody new to this forum stumbles upon this thread…
Yes, he is - if he acts upon what he believes. Even a state socialist can be internally consistent.
Yeah, go ahead. Did you deliberately quote that out of context to make me sound like a racist, or were you just being careless?
I quoted that because it is not true. A good deal of people in the 19th century believed that all persons have equal rights - except the slave owners of the South, who believed that they had the right to enslave their fellows. Such a belief is, I think, not libertarian, and is not a logically consistent belief. Of course, if the premise is that black people are not human, then it follows that they may be owned. But again, as far as I can tell, libertarianism includes also the premise that “all men are created equal”…
Why not ?
But it IS true. Eugenics, polylogism and other fallacious notions were extremely popular - more popular than the correct views of inherent rights and monologism. What I said is a true statement. The belief to which the statement refers is not.
Lets calm down for a minute.
Denying some persons their rights as self owners is not a flaw limited to slave defending libertarians, John Stuart Mill defended imperial rule over unenlighted races.
Pretty much all of us can agree that one is a self owner when(and because) he demonstrates that he is. However, actually putting those believes into pratice might not be as simple as it seems. How many here would violently prevent their 6 year old daughter from acting as a self owner if she tried? Both the parent and the slave owner are acting out of self interest, but justify it as charitable.
Obviously no one here is defending slavery, and probably no one is a racist, so lets avoid the ‘holier than thou’ language.
Still I don’t think I get the point (and I’m not being ‘holier than thou’). There can be no slavery-defending libertarians. That’s clearly a contradiction.
Thats like saying that only anarchists can be libertarians.
If you believe negros are not capable of self ownership, you are wrong, but you are not self contradicting.
I dunno. The problem with that is I dont think they saw black people as actual people, more like animals to be tamed. If they truly believed all black people were nothing more than animals then they could have still believed in liberty. Just like we dont give dogs, cats, fish, or any other animal freedom then they would have not either.