Ok then, they have more libertarian like views than liberals do.
No, they don’t. I find most of them to be highly authoritarian and statist.
Conservatism’s core ideas are in direct conflict because they hold Statism as legitamite, not to mention as the ultimate authority (or “Country”, “uncle same”, etc.).
The same is for Liberalism, classical liberals included; either by ignorance or incompetance, Liberals view it justified (in some cases, such as the control of guns despite evidence of guns providing the ability to defend one’s self, as ‘necessary evils’) to ultilize coercion to provide for citizens of their country.
Actually, as I type this, they are starting to sound the same, again. Nevermind :).
Minarchists ‘believes statism to be legitamate’ so I guess they are just as far away from libertarianism as socialists.
Judging that some take the label “libertarian socialist” (Chomsky) seriously, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone eating word soup called themselves a “minarchist socialist” with a straight face. I have nothing to back up such an assumption, however ;).
But yes, using a nail filer on a claw does not take away the claw’s power.
As for “de-clawing”, I’d prefer to strike at the root, as it were.
I’ll leave the vulgar libertarians (who may be minarchist) to be an example of being as far away from libertarianism as socialists (considering apologist, corporatist, & utilitarian tendencies).
In principle, though, they do both support the concept of Statism; I’m just not a fan of flavor ice, I guess.
I was at freerepublic.com for years, and left after 9/11 altered the conservative movement beyond repair. The Old Right has been completely marginalized by the Jewish lobby and their Protestant Christian enablers. Anybody who doesn’t sign up for the Global Glorious War On Terror is a yellow-bellied coward who wants to let the mighty Iranian army cross the Atlantic and turn the Lincoln Memorial into a mosque. And since you won’t defend Israel in the coming Armageddon as it says right there in the book of Revelations, then you’ve probably got Zyklon-B stockpiled in your garage and a portrait of the Fuhrer above your mantle.
These sites are places to rant and explore ideas.
Some thoughts on the liberal/conservative debate above:
Generally speaking, liberals want government to act as a positive agent of redistributive justice in order to enforce equality of outcomes. Conservatives just want government to act negatively, as a protector of property rights. “Neo-conservatives” are actually liberals.
Now, there is a very broad wing of libertarian thought that really likes this idea of redistributive justice. They accept completely the Marxist mantra that equality of inputs will yield equality of outcomes, and insist that it is the State and its co-dependent institutions that must be skewing the results. Of course, the reality is that humans are not equal nor are they born tabula rasa. Human society is naturally social and hierarchical. Even in the absence of the State, there will be leaders, followers, wealthy, poor, dead-weight, the pathological, the theist, the atheist, etc. And as soon as organic society orders itself accordingly, this wing of libertarianism will cry “Statism!” and call for its dismantling.
Thus, these anarchists join their Marxist cousins in the goal of permanently levelling organic society.
Conservatives are less likely to see the creation of political power as the salvation for mankind. They wield power in order to protect their own interests and enrich themselves when possible. That makes them more likely to be attracted to libertarianism than a hardcore socialist, but the basic social-liberal is more like the conservative than the socialist on that aspect, he just has interests different from the right.
I think we are using words that are untenable and useless to catagorize modern political thought. Conservative, from my knowledge, dates back to the advent of modern democracy, it was applied to the thinkers who wished to keep the monarchs in power, and to prevent the rise of democracy. Liberalism’s root, Liberty, has nothing to do with modern liberalism, the words have been so utterly distored and changed to such a degree that to talk about “Conservatives” and “Liberals” seems utterly pointless. There are many individuals of completely different ideological motivations who fall under both catagories. You have Southerners who would probably reform the Confederacy if given the chance, who fly the rebel flag, who advocate the shooting of Illegals on sight, are they our Nation-worshiping conservatives? They also probably don’t have much respect for the “Nanny State” and regulations on risky behaviors (Smoking drinking etc.) Yet they are more likely to be in favor of Economic Regulation than the average conservative. The list of sub-catagories could go on forever, and this is the problem in and of itself, that the words, Liberalism, and Conservatism, are only significant in context, their meanings change with the times. It would be better to simply divide individuals into actual traits instead of group catagorizations? Example: Nationalistic individuals have to be approached from X direction to be convenced that Liberty is the correct end to the benefit of nation, or, individuals concerned with Equality need to be approached from X?
Another example are the “Rich Welfare Queen” conservatives, who although are against welfare for the poor, would gladly take advantage of State funds for their own personal gain. The big farmers would be an example of this, they are most likely against economic regulation (Not in our sense), yet insist that the government subsidize certian industires, namely theirs. the list of mutations of this archtype are endless. You can have poor traditional conservatives, who favor enforced morality, economic regulation, “traditional lifestyles”, and have a strongly belergent view on foriegn policy.
Oh, and don’t forget Log Cabin Republicans[:D]
From the Mises.org FAQ:
Aren’t you just preaching to the choir?
This would not be such a bad thing if the “choir” was brilliant and forever expanding. It does no good to speak only to people who are not in the “choir” and thus have no knowledge of the theory and history of the Austro-libertarian intellectual apparatus. There is no development if you only repeat the fundamentals. In truth, we make every effort to reach out without giving up principle. In any case, with the web, this criticism concerning internal development has become patently absurd. The reach of the site, conferences, books, and journals is global and stretches to all ages and classes. One of the reasons for this is that we have a good product to offer the world — a direct result of having spent so many years on internal development.
This is a myth that wrongly accepts the contemporary left-right spectrum. Not only do conservatives not support property rights in any consistant way, they support forced redistribution themselves, only towards different interest groups. They tend to support interventionism at a minimum and a mixed economic system along the lines of the fascist system. One thing that the conservatives will always clamor for more funding for is the military, police and surveillance or intelligence. Conservatives may often favor protectionism, corporate welfare, limited social welfare, prohibitions and loads of social controls. At best, which isn’t that great at all in the grand scheme of things, they merely want to transfer many of the bad government functions and interventions to the states. This should be blatanly obvious and I don’t understand why libertarians would delude themselves into thinking that this isn’t the case.
In my experience, paleoconservatives aren’t much of an improvement and are often worse than the neocons on specific issues.
This is a straw man. Noone here accepts Marxism. In fact, just yesterday I spent a lot of time debating against a Marxist. It is also blatantly ignorant to act as if the state’s intervention doesn’t skew the results of the economy. That should be blatantly obvious. Noone here insists on absolute equality in outcomes. The point is that the state’s intervention skews the outcomes to concentrate wealth and power into certain hands and all-over fuck the average person. Of course, if we accept the mythological worldview that says that state intervention is inherently pro-worker and anti-buisiness, I can easily see how you’ve been deluded into thinking that state intervention somehow does the opposite, as if the main victims are big buisiness and the rich. But one must buy into a lot of contemporary political bullshit to think that, when quite clearly the people who have the keys to the jeep of the state (a euphamism for patronage and overall access to the institution in any real sense) are a select elite of mostly rich and big buisiness interests.
I don’t disagree with these statements at face value and I don’t think you’ll find any left-libertarian here who does either.
Not really. The problem is that you and other conservatives fail to distinguish between what you call “natural order” and what actually is an artificially created increase in heirarchy and inequality that inevitably results from state intervention. Hence, “natural order” becomes an apologetic device. This is what all conservatives do. They assume that the existing order is natural and then defend it while ignoring any of the external influences of power interests that created or distorted that order. Everything unequal can be brushed off as nature while nurture is completely ignored. While the marxists may make the opposite mistake in overemphasizing nurture, it hardly suffices to emphasize nature at the expense of any institutional analysis of the effects of the state, culture and economic power. Both must be taken into account and I believe that conservatives fail to take the nurture side of the equation into account.
Nice red-baiting, crunchy con. Once again, the problem is that you conflate “organic society” with the effects of state intervention. It is disingenuous to argue as if whatever currently exists is purely “organic” and therefore legitimate. That can be used to justify whatever the status quo is, hence the problem with conservatism as a social and historical view.
And this is a good thing from what libertarian perspective? It seems to me that the only distinction we’ve really drawn here is that liberals want to wield power at least for the stated purpose of enriching others and helping others while conservatives do it for their own gain. Both wish to wield power and I would think that the libertarian is critical of and hesistant about power wielding people. I fail to see what’s laudable about people wanting to wield political power to enrich themselves at everyone else’s expense from any libertarian perspective - left, right, or purple.
Okay, here we start to introduce a bit more honesty into the discussion: the differences are mostly over which special interests they want to use power on the behalf of.
The goal of the site is to maintain ideological purity and expand the knowledge of libertarians - especially young ones. I’d think sites like Rockwell’s are better suited at spreading messages and converting others. That said, I am also more likely to get along with a conservative - especially one who does not want the state to enforce their morality on others. They’re more likely to respond to economic reason.
-Jon
I’m not sure what “Human society is naturally social” is supposed to mean. But with respect to the idea that there will always be ‘leaders’ and followers and ‘hierarchy’, I beg to disagree. I think libertarianism can exist only if people accept individual responsibility. And accepting individual responsibility is the opposite of following a ‘leader’(or fuehrer?).
Well that would seem to depend on how one defines heirarchy and of course the means by which leaders function. I think what Byzantine means is that there will always be people with higher positions within an overall organization and perhaps more wealth than others, as constrasted with an egalitarian ideal in which every single person within an overall organization is entirely equal in their position or wealth. I think that diversity is a better word than heirarchy to explain this. Heirarchy usually implies some kind of imposition or immobility, a sort off fixed inequality such as a caste system or a fuedal system. But a free society is dynamic and hence contains mobility. It is not a fixed heirarchy.
And there’s also a question of degree. I don’t think that ridiculously extreme “gaps” between a small few and the multitude are inevitable and I largely see them as a consequence of the state and centralization. I would think that the consequences of the free flow of wealth would be a mixed bag, and a constantly changing one. I fail to see how or why the natural outcome of a free market would or should be a multitude of relatively unprosperous people and a small few of extremely prosperous people. While individual merits can definitely vary in many ways, most definitely not to the extent of creating a rigid or perfect pyramid. Both a pure pyramidical structure and a purely egalitarian structure are not “natural” in my view.
* boinks the Purple Leftists! *
I find liberals easier to change than conservatives. Certain issues can be brought up in conversations with liberals than interweave personal and economic problems. Drugs are one thing, which liberals tend to favor deregulation of, but only then say " tax the hell out of it to pay for health care." But two issues that can turn a liberal point of view into libertarian is that of prostitution and abortion.
Prostitution is the exchange of sex for money. If you tax that trade, this implies that the gov’t owns your body and what you do with it. Liberals hate the idea of the government owning your body. And since prostitution is not a modern economic arrangement like stock markets, and other market hierarchies, the liberals idea that you “owe” society because they made it possible for that arrangement is shot to pieces. Labor is used internally in prostitution, so outside of you is nothing, no bosses, wages, retirement ect. Liberals would not conclude that the government can tax your internal bodily actions. This can get them thinking about labor and property.
Abortion is based on the idea of self ownership. Once again liberals would contest that fact that government can be in your body. But most liberals I know would not have government fund abortion because then that is imposing moral values upon people, something conservatives do. I argue sarcastically that if government should be out of abortion, then they should tax the fetus, for imposing unwanted costs on “society” and increasing the population, thus depleting resources. Liberals think this is absurd because it again means that government is in the confines of your body and owns your actions. So then the conclusion is that government does not own your body, nor anyones. Gov’t certainly do not chose how your body operates, so anything you do with it is completely yours. So where does the income tax come from? Especially the self-employment tax? The liberal hopefully may ponder on how this is and come to the conclusion that government is a form of slavery.
You can’t change conservatives views because they tend to view the state as the reason that they are not being murdered by people. Because the state protects my body, it should have say over the protection and health of others. But because gov’t owns my body in some sort, this is as far as it should go. It should be involved in nothing else.
Liberals hold the opposite view that the state does not “allow” for me to live. Most people are good hearted and would not be criminals. But the State should shape society. Liberals allow for the state to be everywhere except for the body or control bodily actions.
Because liberals tend to favor absolute self ownership above security, they have libertarianism rooted in their soul. Once they learn about economics, the door is open. But conservatives favor security above absolute self ownership, they have statism rooted in their soul. You can not rationalize emotional attachment away like you can numbers and research.
The liberals are rational people and the conservatives are the bleeding hearts when you get down to it.
For anyone to believe libertarianism, they must first realize that mankind is inherently peaceful and is not the Hobbesian savage
LMAO. Purple.