Sheesh…okay, I’ll start from the top.
Jimbojr, libertarianism is certainly rooted in classical liberalism, but most of its competitors within the world of political philosophy are also rooted in liberalism. The contractualist movement which has probably played the biggest role in recent academic discussion was set into motion by John Rawls, who was unquestionably a liberal himself. Even egalitarianism and socialism find their roots in the liberal tradition; they just come down in different places on certain issues. What’s important to see is that liberalism is about freedom. Socialists and egalitarians believe that freedom is fostered by certain institutions and patterns which prevent unjust inequality, exploitation, wage slavery, and alienation. Contractualist liberals also believe that freedom is critically important, but believe that certain limits on freedom make sense and are just in the name of fostering a society that’s better than the state of nature. Libertarians focus on freedom as well, but tend to feel like less limitation is more desirable, either because of people’s natural right to not be interfered with when they aren’t harming anyone, or because a very broad freedom would bring about the best kind of society.
Questions facing libertarians span over a wide range of issues, including abortion and children’s rights, the justice of doing what is necessary to survive, the proper reaction to conflict and rights infringements, the nature and stringency of property rights, justice in appropriation and dispossession, the nature of the right to self defense, the justice of paternalistic restraint, the justification (if any) for a state or state-like entity, whether there is really no just way to provide for those in critical need through coercion of any form, whether a social order with no state-like governance would produce better results, the rights of future generations, the rights of dead people, the justice of harming animals, etc. (The list surely goes much longer, but you get the point). I don’t mean to suggest that libertarians can’t provide answers to these questions, but I will say that those answers aren’t generally decisive, and people who disagree often have good reasons for their views.
Grant, I don’t pretend that social changes can be orchestrated by academics. The role of the professional philosopher is to explore the ideas that people are relying on, in order to see what kinds of implications they have, and whether there are other views which are equally or more plausible. The average libertarian certainly won’t read everything that academics write about the things that matter to her. But I think it’s important that as people start looking for a new way to organize society, there should be an attempt to understand the nature of the ideas that underpin the changes. If there are serious problems, or areas in need of work, it’s likely that philosophers would be among the best suited for untangling them coherently (just look at the messy and ad hoc evolution of the common law in comparison to the course of philosophical discourse).
You make an interesting point when you say that libertarianism might be aided by its vagueness. But I think that’s true from a rhetorical standpoint only. The “sustainable” movement also relies on vague foundations, and that has helped it survive through changes in message, direction, and focus. But just like people who advocate “sustainable practices” don’t actually understand the nature of what they’re talking about (because they’re not actually talking about anything in particular), it’s not very comforting to think that libertarians are relying on vague half-notions rather than a coherent philosophical paradigm. Maybe that’s just the academic in me talking, but if libertarianism can’t actually be spelled out without destroying it, then I don’t want to be a libertarian.
Geoffery, at no point did I, in this entire thread, say that the state should run education. I said that the fact that my education was paid for in part by the government doesn’t entail that it is of low quality, and in fact, state funding could potentially have made it a lot better than it would have otherwise been. The former is a normative statement, while the latter is a positive one. I really don’t see what’s so difficult about the distinction. Take this illustration: America’s air force has some really great fighter jets. In the absence of public funding, there probably wouldn’t be as many fighter jets of the level of sophistication as those currently populating USAF hangers around the world. So if you wanted to fly a really great fighter jet, and the Air Force was willing to let you fly one of theirs, you’d probably get to fly a better fighter jet than you ever would have been able to in the absence of government funding. And it’s probably also true that more people would get to fly fighter jets given Air Force subsidization than would ever have been able to otherwise. That doesn’t mean that it’s a good thing that the Air Force has a whole lot of fighter jets, or that it steals money from people to pay for them. It just means that if you wanted to fly a really great fighter jet, government subsidy wouldn’t likely result in you flying a worse fighter jet. Okay?
As for the rest of your post, I’m really not sure how to respond. I was referring to Locke, Mill, and Nozick as being the most basic proponents of libertarian ideas, who almost everyone has read and studied. I’m not sure exactly who these more “sterling” proponents are, but I really hope you don’t say Mises, Rothbard, Hayek, Block, Hoppe, etc. It would really hurt me inside.
Juan, if you honestly think that Austrian economics is limited to people from Austria, then I’m really just not sure what to say to you. And if you really believe that classical liberalism was aimed at disputing the justice of government in general, then you’d better get back to those books.
As for the posts you referenced in support of your assertion that I’ve been defending government provision of education… Compare the first quotation to the following statement: “Sure, Army-trained Green Berets are good killers. Perhaps a private company could have trained them more cheaply, but the soldiers themselves still perform the job that’s asked of them pretty well.” Compare the second quotation to the following statement: “I’m not sure that regular army training produces very good soldiers; it seems like other methods could produce much better results. However, I do think that the Green Berets are very well trained.” Compare the third quotation to the following statement: “The statement that Green Berets are well trained doesn’t imply that we ought to be training Green Berets, or that the state ought to be paying for it.” Compare the fourth quotation to the following statement: “The fact that the army offers funding for Green Beret training and employment probably leads a lot more people to decide to become Green Berets than there would have otherwise been, and once they’re trained, state funding of jobs for Green Berets as soldiers likely brings about the consequence that Green Beret-caliber soldiers are concentrated in certain places, rather than spread out more evenly among security companies and the like. Accordingly, it might be possible that there are individual squads of soldiers that are better in a state-funded scenario than there would be anywhere in a purely private scenario.” How does any of that reflect me holding an opinion that Green Berets should be trained by the state, and that it’s perfectly acceptable that the state tax people to do that?
Libertarian, the state doesn’t hire individual professors. Universities and philosophy departments do. If you’re going to talk about what would happen if the government didn’t interfere, I’d suggest that you look into what does happen now that the government does. I assure you that it results in a lot more philosophers being employed, and much higher wages than would prevail if the same number of philosophers were competing for purely private funds.