I don’t see what you seek to gain by using a definition of “libertarian” entirely unique to yourself and redefining it to exclude anyone who isn’t a natural-rights based anarchist. The values, intellectual forebears and precepts of Nozick and Friedman have vastly more in common, “political DNA” wise with Rothbard than do those of Obama. If Nozick and Friedman aren’t libertarians, what are they? Communists? Nazis? Anti-dissestablishmentarians?
It’s this kind of absolutist, binary thinking in politics that scares me off identifying myself firmly with any particular label.
If a libertarian violates the NAP by shoplifting a candy bar, how much time must pass before he can call himself a libertarian again? If he is still a libertarian after shoplifting, then adherence to the NAP doesn’t decide what makes a libertarian. If shoplifting is ok, then why is support for minimal government not?
Someone can spend his whole life as a natural law-abiding person (a libertarian in practice), but he’ll be remembered as a murderer if he kills just one person.
It’s possible to forgive a crime like shoplifting, but that doesn’t mean it’s ok. Maybe it’s conceivably possible to forgive much worse crimes than petty theft.
But you can’t forgive someone if they won’t admit or can’t figure out how they went wrong.
By the “vast majority”, I mean people like the 14-something % of Americans who identify their political views as “libertarian”. Or the Cato/Reason people. Or most Ron Paul supporters and LP members, I’d wager."
They should be. Following the NAP to its logical conclusion results in evolving into an anarchist. That is the greatest inconsistency of “minarchists,” the arbitrary stopping of NAP before it reaches its greatest transgressor.
“If a libertarian violates the NAP by shoplifting a candy bar, how much time must pass before he can call himself a libertarian again? If he is still a libertarian after shoplifting, then adherence to the NAP doesn’t decide what makes a libertarian. If shoplifting is ok, then why is support for minimal government not?”
Until justice is served. If the individual is principled then he/she would seek restitution through some manner. If they steal the candy bar and are unphased by the activity then one would have to ask how devout they were in their beliefs of NAP.
Wow, ok. I mean, I respect your opinion on this, but basically anyone claiming to be a libertarian who has ever commited fraud, theft, assault, etc. and never fessed up is not a true libertarian.
It’s a waste of time arguing over political labels and engaging in line-drawing. I tend to think of libertarians as minarchists + anarchists. There’s obviously a marked difference between somebody like George Bush and Gary Johnson. Bush is very statist, Johnson much less so. If you look at it like a continuum, Gary Johnson may as well count as a “libertarian.”
We wouldn’t need to have ethics if people were incapable of doing evil. It would be a physical science if that were the case. It would simply be how people, as objects, behave in all situations rather than how they think they should behave as subjects with free will. The cliche is that no one is perfect.
But this isn’t about a “libertarian” doing things in private that contradict his stated views, although that does make him a hypocrite. It’s about his stated views. It’s not about a person denying the fact that he stole something, it’s about a person admitting it and trying to justify it, and then still claiming that he believes in property rights as his universal, pre-eminent ethical basis. It’s a bit trying, really. All the lies; not least to one’s self.
Nevertheless, the word “libertarian” is not this sacred cow. You’re using it as a synonym for law-abiding, but strictly-speaking it is actions which are right or wrong. Calling a person ‘good’ or ‘bad’ just means that you subjectively associate them primarily with good or bad actions. Of course no one is really good or bad in an absolute or objective sense. Only actions.
Political labels are dangerous and misleading. They’re really meant to describe policies, i.e. actions - not the actors themselves, yet they’re constantly applied directly to actors. You either accept libertarian conclusions as true or untrue - i.e., you are being a philosoper, and it is your actions and conclusions which are libertarian or not. You don’t really ‘become’ libertarian by accepting libertarian conclusions, except in a colloquial sense.
'Wow, ok. I mean, I respect your opinion on this, but basically anyone claiming to be a libertarian who has ever commited fraud, theft, assault, etc. and never fessed up is not a true libertarian.
I bet there isn’t one libertarian on the planet."
Welcome to the world of principles. If you say you follow the NAP, then follow it.
While it is true - as acknowledged by Nozick in his introduction to ASU - that Rothbard influenced Nozick in constructing the argument and engaging with libertarian anarchism, it doesn’t mean that Rothbard was the philosophical father, depending on what you mean by philosophical. Ideological father; sure. But saying ‘we should not engage into violance’ and citing a few natural rights theorists isn’t a fundamental defense of liberty.
Rothbard’s framework is pretty much irrelevant. His ‘natural law’ defense of libertarianism relates to the philosophical foundation of libertarianism as Hazlitt’s ‘economics in one lesson’ relates to the philosophical foundation of (Austrian) economics. It’s not bad per se as far as it goes, but you can hardly call it foundational or in depth. (I’m not saying it’s wrong. Economics in one lesson isn’t wrong. But you don’t get all the in’s and out’s of AE out of Economics in one lesson.)
It’s also weird to call Nozick the philosophical father; very few - if any - libertarians call themselves ‘Nozickean’. Very few, if any, are libertarians because of Nozick. Hayek/Rothbard/Mises/Friedman (M&D) are far more influential in ‘creating’ libertarians. Nozick is rarely, if ever, cited by ‘other’ libertarians. The only real engagement with Nozick I’m aware of in ‘academic philosophy’ is by Cohen. (Whose book is really interesting, if you care about philosophical arguments against libertarianism. A lot of Cohen’s argument can also be levied against the Rothbardian framework.)
I’m not sure if there is ‘a’ philosophical father in libertarianism. We have Lockeans, Aristotelians, Humeans, Kantians and probably some more I’m forgetting.
“While it is true - as acknowledged by Nozick in his introduction to ASU - that Rothbard influenced Nozick in constructing the argument and engaging with libertarian anarchism, it doesn’t mean that Rothbard was the philosophical father, depending on what you mean by philosophical.”
Given what I said & your agreement. Rothbard > claim than Nozick for the label of “philosophical father of modern libertarianism”.
Game, set, match clearly. And if you think someone has a greater claim than Rothbard for that title, I’d love to hear it. Not that I particularly care, my original point was simply to point out the absurdity of labeling Nozick as such. If you however, ignore the Mises Institute and the Ron Paul movement - and pretty much the entire history of the movement, by all means you could reach that conclusion.
And in the cases where it isn’t clear (or at least is contested among libertarians) whether or not something constitutes a violation of the NAP? If libertarian A says spanking your child is aggression, and libertarian B says the child is your property you can do as you please, then one of them must not be a libertarian. And before Kinsella came on the scene, libertarians who supported IP were supporting a violation of the NAP. They must have not been libertarians either. Maybe someone will come along and point out how something you support right now is actually a violation of the NAP.
The point is they are trying to apply the NAP. Same goes with abortion & immigration. They aren’t ‘deal killers’ that get you kicked out of the ‘movement’.
War - when not applying the NAP at all, and that pre-emptive war is justified - does however…
“I’m not sure if there is ‘a’ philosophical father in libertarianism. We have Lockeans, Aristotelians, Humeans, Kantians and probably some more I’m forgetting.”
Libertarian anarcho-capitalists, some but not all, go out of their way to deride minarchists like Friedman more than socialists, and why? because he happens to have a different opinion on the use of the state vis-a-vis the three main duties.
I don’t see why anyone on this forum has to deride a minarchist who thinks that government ought to maintain law and order … I think things would be more effecient in the free-market - but I wouldn’t scoff and call him an anti-libertarian.
It’s also true that there was a libertarian movement before Rothbard and the Mises institute. If anyone is ‘the father’ of modern libertarianism, it would be someone like Hazlitt, Mises or Leonard Reed, i.e. the people who made the first libertarian think tank in the USA (the FEE).
Rothbard didn’t come to the scene after people like Read, Hazlitt, Harper, Mises and Friedman were big. It doesn’t make sense to call him ‘the father’ of either libertarianism in general or philosophical libertarianism in particular. This doesn’t mean he didn’t have a big influence, but that’s far from calling him the father, which implies (imo) something like ‘originator’.
I’m not sure, but isn’t Hazlitt’s ‘foundation of morality’ the first book that both counts as (1) modern and (2) a philosophical foundation of libertarianism? Anyone’s got a time line on that? (I’ll look it up myself.)
Nozick is often regarded as the father of modern libertarianism by non-libertarians. I know of no actual Libertarian that considers him so. Narveson sums it up nicely:
“Nozick is regarded by all other philosophers who aren’t libertarians as the bible of libertarianism, they don’t know anything else.”
