in light of this can you see why it might not be a good idea for two given people to live in the same community and collectivize (to some extent) their decision processes?
@Malachi not really, even though i disagree with hoppe, i don’t think i need to expell him from the united states to keep from contaminating my fellow citizens. if there are groups of people that are simply so bigoted they can’t stand to live next to people that are different from them, then i could see how they might want to live together in some small-minded covenant-based community. of course, that isn’t what hoppe is saying. he is talkig about all of us living in our own covenants where we MUST discriminate people that disagree with us to maintain order. if you live in a covenant-based community that values property rights, hoppe explicitly says you can’t allow democrats to live with you. if they somehow wind up in your midst, they must be expelled.
i honestly don’t see how any libertarian would be on board with this. there is no central government ruling all the covenants, but the covenants sound more oppressive than any government i’ve lived under.
Hoppe has conditioned his rhetoric for a different audience. How much of it he personally believes and how much of it was intended for conversion, I do not know, nor does it really bother me.
@Jon I think this goes beyond just Hoppe marketing libertarianism to bigots (which i don’t see how that is better but okay). he is explicitly saying that “a libertarian order” can’t be maintained unless we are all bigots. if someone disputes the goals of the covenant community, they must be dispelled. how is that type of collectivist clap trap not morally questionable?
like i said before, it is one thing to say that people have that right to discriminate against others on their own property. it is a totally different ball game to say we MUST discriminate against others to maintain order. you say there is nothing wrong with that from a libertarian perspective, but i don’t see how. the covenant community sounds like another word for a fascist informal government.
if this is the only quote we are going off of, let’s make the “nouns” irrelevant, and turn them to widgets - and look at this as a theory of social/antisocial behaviour and inclusion/exclusion dichotomies.
@vive, i think you’re right that part of what hoppe is doing is articulating a thoery of how society operates. but like i said before, his theory seems factually incorrect to me. i mean i think most of us on this board live in the u.s. or canada or england. so we all live in societies that accomodate people we disagree with AND maintain order.
if hoppe’s world of covenant-based communities can’t handle that, i think that sounds like an argument in favor of the world we currently live in. like i keep saying, i don’t know how libertarians could be on board with it.
Hopefully that will clarify my position on the matter, though if Student would rather discuss Hoppe’s position another time, that is fine, and we can get back to the main theme in the OP, which isn’t Hoppe’s ideological predispositions.
@Jon. Agreed. My stated goal all along was not to get into this type of conversation because it never EVER changes people’s minds. the best you can do is post some information (like a link to a particuarly disturbing quote) and hope people figure things out for themselves.
all i have done is accidently derail the thread i apologize to the OP.
