“There are people who call themselves libertarians, then procede to judge people in the manner suitable only to collectivist reasoning, that’s true. Be we should be clear on the point, when it comes up, that to judge people based on race is the antithesis of the libertarian position.”
That is a silly statement. Racism may be anti-Objectivist (unless you’re talking about Palestinians), but it is not anti-libertarian. In a libertarian society, people would be free to discriminate based on race or any other generalized characteristic.
Who the hell cares? The real problem here is that the isolationist-racist viewpoint is simply not intellectually compatible with libertarianism. You can pretend that it is for “political purposes” and proclaim that comprimise if possible and desirable loudly over and over, but it still doesn’t make it true. The same goes for abortion issues. It’s extremely unfortunate that the Ron Paul movement and libertarianism in a broader context gets completely fucked over by its contact with the inherently toxic paleo crew.
They might be cute in a Museum of Natural History caveman exhibit sort of way, but when it comes to real politics these folks just can’t be associated with. Sure, the major Republicans get away with pandering to racist sentiments, but they manage to do it in a polite and concealed fashion. If you hope to find yourself among Kum-ba-ya libertarians that will let you bitch about the various crimes of the Semites and their Negro minions and not think any worse of you for it, you shall be very disappointed in life.
“If you hope to find yourself among Kum-ba-ya libertarians that will let you *** about the various crimes of the Semites and their Negro minions and not think any worse of you for it, you shall be very disappointed in life.”
Well that’s the thing: I don’t hope to find myself among Kum-ba-ya libertarians.
Of course people would be free to hold whatever beliefs and act on whatever discriminations they saw fit. That’s the “paradox” of a free society—that some of it’s members will be free to hold beliefs in antithesis to the foundation of the society.
Are you seriously contending that this difference has a biological basis? I rather think it has more to do with nurture (historical and cultural factors) than nature.
Of course do psychological features like temperament and certain preferences have a biological basis. Otherwise they wouldn’t be that consistant over time. Historical factors are not purely based on nurture, but would include heredity as well. Culture is merely a product of human nature and reaffirms the preferences and texture of human thinking within societies. All of what I say was standard knowledge in any older, thorough Anthropology book and is also confirmed by my personal experiences in South Africa and abroad. Place and country may differ, but the patterns remain similar. This knowledge is also very useful, when dealing with people. You see, when you do trade or projects in Africa, it helps to understand the people there. Ones one liberates oneself from egalitarian bias it becomes pretty easy to make a success of such dealings.
To apply it to the American situation. America became what it is, because it was mainly settled by White Christian Protestants. That’s why it functioned as it used to be. If somebody displaces this population with Mestizos and Nigerians, one will get something similar to the situation in those countries where they are historically dominant.
One can certainly be a racist and be a libertarian, or hold any other stripe of less than desirable attitudes towards groups of people. The important thing is that one does not use the state to further ones goals. Say I don’t like Canadians and a bunch of them move into my neighborhood; it would be perfectly libertarian of me to express my disapproval, without resulting to violence of course, or to move out of the area voluntarily. The use of the state in social engineering with the idea of creating a society of love and piece is just as bad as yearning for the Jim Crow laws.
I don’t disagree. But here’s the rub: racists and nationalists ultimately lose in a free market. While you are perfectly free to be as exclusive as you want towards other people, you are essentially shooting yourself in the foot if you take this too far. On a fundamental level, you have natural incentives to not be overly exclusive because you cannot survive or flourish very well as either an isolated hermit (the extreme of exclusion) or as a buisiness without a vibrant and sizable customer base. So I simply don’t believe that the ultimate goals of racists are in accordance with reason or reality at all. Furthermore, I don’t believe that the vast majority of racists truly fit the criteria of not using violence or the state as a means towards their ends.
As far as I can tell, racists desire social uniformity with regaurd to racial relations, and the only way to truly achieve this is through some institutionalized dictation through an institution such as the state. This isn’t to say that there cannot be some degree of sucess for the racist’s goals in a free society, but it ultimately is not sustainable and they are going to have to resort to force to truly implement what they want. But I think that even if they do resort to force, their ultimately goal of total cultural homogeniety is ultimately impossible, moreso as society and technology evolves. So this is the sense in which I gladly proclaim that racism is incompatible with a free society. And I strongly believe that from a long-term social evolutionary standpoint it is unfunctional.
Wow. This is the first time I’ve seen someone, not as a criticism, admit straight up that Hans Hoppe is a racist. Usually such a charge would be denied rather then admited or tumpeted. I have had my suspicions that Hoppe is a racist for quite some time, but I never straight-out accused him of being a racist. What information are you basing this on?
Well, racists have every right to shoot themselves in the foot by engaging in activities that are damaging to their economic well being. It seems that folks who are vocal racists have weighed the economic damage this done in their heads and have come to the conclusion that it’s worth the cost.
About racists and statism; would you call white or black separtists to be necessarily incompatible with libertarianism? I mean if folks voluntarily choose to create a society that excludes other types of people then is that incompatible with libertarianism?
I think I see where we are differing here. You’re using “Libertarian” in a strictly governmental sense. I may be in the wrong here, being a relative “newb” on the subject, but I see libertarianism as an overall philosophy–a philosophy with which any sort of racism or other collective judgment is mutually exclusive.
I wish I could say that it would be inherantly incompatible. I have no love for such idiots, but in truth, in a free society they would have a right to exclude others on their own private property. It would be more dangerous to deny them such a right. I also have the equal right to denounce them and to exclude them from MY property.
No, but I’'m merely saying that in the absence of any institutionalized framework to force their vision onto society, they simply lose in the end. I’m saying that even if such a society is possible to be voluntarily formed, it cannot be voluntarily sustained in the long-term. It will marginally be undermined until their homogeniety is broken up.
You’re not being “newbish” in this regaurd. You’re being a “thick” libertarian, I.E. you’re extending libertarianism beyond political philosophy and into a broader sense of the term. In terms of the overall philosophy of individualism, I cannot help but agree with the sentiment that racism and nationalism is incompatible with it. “Thin” libertarianism confines itself to politics and economics, while “thick” libertarianism extends to cultural and broader philosophical questions.
In the “thin” sense of libertarianism as a political philosophy, you can theoretically hold onto any personal or cultural preferences so long as it’s within a voluntary context. I hold to that position strongly. However, this does not prevent me from simultaneously believing that certain cultural views may be more compatible or less compatible with the functionality of a free society or may more readily or less readily lead to one. And I think that things such as racism, nationalism, and religiosity should be opposed alongside the state in this regaurd. So I’m sort of in the middle of the whole thick/thin dychotomy.