The readers who still cling to libertarianism have given me hell over my screed against their faith. I’m not without some sympathy for them. The core libertarian impulse to leave people alone in order to be left alone is admirable. If you are a libertarian, trying hard to live the non-aggression principle, it probably seems unfair that a hate thinker from the extreme Right is mocking your thing. I get that and I respect it to a point. That point is when I see something like this from the Pope of Modern Libertarianism.
It should be impossible to be this stupid. I suspect for most of human existence, idiots who said moronic things like this tried to hand feed bears or cuddle with large reptiles, thus eliminating themselves from the the system. There’s no other way to read this than Nick Gillespie believes some minor alterations to the French tax code will ameliorate this.
Now, does Nick Gillespie really think altering tax policy will magically transform low-IQ, inbred Muslims from the Maghreb into patriotic French republicans who work at Parisian software shops? It’s tempting to say it is just another pose, but the evidence is piling up in favor of the argument that Nick Gillespie is a stupid person. Anyone who truly believes altering tax policy will reverse a thousand generations of evolution is an idiot.
That’s the fundamental problem with modern libertarians. They believe this or they simply are incapable of mastering ground floor level biology. The reason the country of Niger is a basket case is that’s the way the people of Niger want it. It is full of Hausa. The reason Paris was Paris was that, up until recently, it was full of Parisians! Now that Paris is filling up with North Africans and Arabs, it is looking like Algeria with better plumbing.
What’s happened to libertarians is a form of what someone calls convergence. It used to be that libertarians accepted the chain of causality. They worked backward in order to arrive, obliquely, at the first cause. If you wanted to have a nation of maximum freedom, you had to have a nation with rational laws and that meant a rational, Anglo-Saxon culture. The result was a libertarianism in one country model.
Then a new breed of libertarian showed up mouthing all the economic arguments of libertarians, often with the zeal of a fanatic, but embracing liberal cultural arguments, re-framing them in terms of personal liberty. The result is libertarians have almost fully converged now with the liberals. They have been assimilated into the Borg. Libertarianism, like most libertarians, is all about someone else paying for their ethic dining habits.
It’s why they are no longer of any use to the Right.
I would agree with Gillespie, and I would think you would too, if he’d not included the word ‘economic’.
I have to take issue with this article, the plumbing in Paris was never that great….
If I may, it helps to distinguish Libertarianism from Libertinism, the former being about Freedom, and the latter being at least as much about Power, that is responsibility for oneself, and avoiding responsibility as much as possible.
Put another way, “Well, I guess we’ve painted ourselves into a corner, and decriminalizing some drugs the our best available option,” and “WOOO HOOO, 4:20, bitches!”
Gillespie is a Libertine; they have a tendency to ignore anything that gets in the way of “do what you will,” failing to notice how easily “do what you will” becomes, “anything you do is cool.”
Libertines – pretty much only found in the West, because their visions of the world are made possible by the ability to free-ride on the West’s prosperity – tend to be more concerned about, say, Christians tut-tutting them than Muslims trying to blow them up.
It should be obvious to Gillespie that no group of Arabs have ever produced a first world country — even Dubai is rotten underneath all the goofy lucre, and that therefore it is more reasonable to say that European Elites are turning Europe into the Third World — the way Arabs like it, and will maintain it.
But, he, like so many other “open-minded” Libertines, is too interested in signaling to the rest of us how opensies and “moderate” he is.
Gillespie is both dumb and self-important, a deadly combination. He is a left-consequentialist, nothing more. Not an avatar of libertarianism or anything else.
That said, I think all western governments are hopelessly beyond redemption– which means one has to be antistate to fight the zeitgeist.
Libertarianism is hounded for being the pet philosophy of white men. Which makes sense, because it’s a set of rules for society and government which asks white men to behave in accord with their genetic predisposition.
The failure, as always, is the lie of Universalism, that a good system of rules has to be good for everyone or no one.
IMO Libertarians are closet liberals who pretend to be fiscally conservative so that they can push for:
the legalization of pot & other drugs,
the sale/trade of anything no matter how reprehensible as long as it does no violate their “NAP”
the desire for cheap stuff usually at great expense to the larger society as long as these side effects don’t reach their gated communities
and their favorite not wanting to pay any taxes while living largely off the taxed income of others
I used to like libertarian theory until I saw their reactions to the Migrant Crisis in Europe and the Illegal immigration problem in the US where they all moved “Hard Left” & sided with the closet Communists & Globalists.
Libertarianism is just like other forms of Utopian Principles ie Socialism, Feminism, Diversity, Multiculturalism, Climate Change Activists, Communism, Revolutionaries, Globalist etc sounds great on paper until it comes face to face with reality at which point the undeniable contradictions rare their ugly heads. But instead of these so called “Libetarian Rationalists” (as they like to refer to themselves) to take a step back and reevaluate the current situation, they chose dogma like Religious Fanatics, Feminazis, Marxists etc and go on to ramble their favorite talking points depending on the issue at hand in the same manner as Religious/Marxist Preachers trying to force you to convert to their religion
Culture screws up the Libertarian concept of any 1 human = 1 economic unit. Obviously, the smart thing to do is simply to ignore it. What’s the worse that could happen?
“There’s no other way to read this than Nick Gillespie believes some minor alterations to the French tax code will ameliorate this.”
While I agree, Gillespie is an idiot, do you really think a Mises libertarian understanding of how the tax code would solve this problem amounts to the “… [belief that] some minor alterations to the French tax code will ameliorate this?”
What would happen if France had an armed libertarian populace without a welfare state? Would they have any Muslims there? How many low-IQ inbred Muslims would self-select to submit themselves to a society where they’d be on the bottom perpetually? Certainly not enough were you’d notice.
So yes, libertarian tax policy would solve the problem, though not by means of changing any individuals attributes apart from their location.
FWIW, I’m extremely libertarian, and extremely right wing. Further right than those parochial egalitarian collectivists who think they’re right wing and edgy, that don’t seem to notice that the single constant principle of all leftist movements is egalitarianism as the highest virtue.
Jim, you are missing a key point about culture, Different cultures and races favor different kinds of government.
Proscribing Libertarian policy as a solution in France is about as useful as proscribing transcendental meditation to a marmoset.
Despite bleats about Liberte’ the French not only would not but could not have Libertarian government . They won’t vote for one and you can’t impose one.
If by some fluke La Pen had won today, France would still be socialist and run by an administrative state because its what French people want and expect.
Thus the Libertarian error is not only in misreading human nature and how it relates to economics but in not understand different people are different .
There are no universally useful ideologies of any kind.
“Proscribing Libertarian policy as a solution in France is about as useful as proscribing transcendental meditation to a marmoset. ”
If you’re referring to my point, it was hypothetical. It may also be hypothetically true that meditation will help a marmoset – I don’t really know.
I’m not sure I really disagree with anything you said. Let me know if you stumble across an actual libertarian society whether it’s Ango-Saxon, French, Chinese or African so I can plan my next move. My Italian and Irish genes would prefer it.
With apologies, its actually prescribing but otherwise my point stands
My suggestion is that while such exercises can be fun if anyone is interested in actual improving government they stay far away from things that never work Marxism and Libertarianism and within the spectrum of things that do
Of the various ideas out there, the only one no one has actually tried at least that I know of is Distributism , it the last maybe that I know of.
I became a Libertarian following the election of G.H.W. Bush. I became a member of the local Libertarian Party even subscribed to its weekly newsletter. After about 6 months I dropped the whole thing because every issue of the newsletter and almost every article was about legalizing drugs. I am all for the federal government getting out of the drug criminalization business, but I also realized that there were much more important issues than decriminalizing drugs. So I became a libertarian (lowercase “l”). It seems whenever people form themselves into a group they all become victims of “group think”; they give up independent, individual thinking and tend to go along with the latest idea the group leaders come with. They put on blinders and fail to see that following the leader often takes them down the wrong path. One such issue is immigration and open borders. Nice Libertarian ideas. But what it ignores is the reality that most of the people flooding into the country have very non-libertarian beliefs and cultures and when they dominate the national culture and national politics, libertarian (and Libertarian) ideals will be DOA.
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I believe this cross-cultural type of libertarianism has eerie parallels to Trotskyism classic and the inverted Trotskyism of the neocons. Exporting ideologies is impossible, but that won’t stop the fanatics.
Libertarianism is just an insane form of positivism. The analogy that there is a kind of person who would turn left when their cellphone said to turn left (even when there is a cliff or a brick wall to the left) has been crafted for other comparisons, but is perfect for this crop of libertarians. It’s sort of the opposite of the “interpretation gymnastics” you see among progressives, who are certain that Thomas Jefferson wanted gay men to marry because that’s what is in the Constitution if you think hard enough about it. Progressives understand their system is about convenience, and using and abusing existing systems and codes to get their way with some kind of moral cover; that makes them reprehensible. Libertarians are true believers, which makes them insane. But madness is not an intrinsic evil, as long as you don’t hurt the windmill while you’re tilting at it.
The Obama version: The problem with America is too many Americans!
Two great libertarian SF novels, (Moon is a harsh mistress and Freehold) were not populated by meek-turn-the-other-cheek Libertarians. I suspect that, away from academia, many of those that don’t want handouts, and to be left alone, can be quite…quite firm, in their rejection of the heavy hand of the socialist, the state-ist, and especially the Democrat.
How’s this for a slogan, “Leave me ALONE! Damnit!”.
Libertarians used to tough minded individualists. Now they are mostly useless homosexuals.
The only tolerable Libertarian I spent much time around was an avid pothead , given he is in Colorado, probably very happy and more stoned than usual now
The rest I new seemed like bottom feeders and the sort of people who though they were being held back by the man because they couldn’t sell human organs or work 12 year olds to death with a couple of very smart, very weird exceptions
Having read the crap Libertarians and Objectivists and the rest put out, I came to the conclusion that far too many were basically grifters and high functioning sociopaths like Rand People who basically don’t understand how society and people work or how it remains healthy and stable
Its not the worst philosophy, that belongs to the various strains of Marxism but its up there top five.
Its why I threw it away along and went Social Conservative/Economic Nationalist (which is the true “conservative” economic system) with SC/Distributive as a back up
The former I know can work and the later at least is logical .
If you’ve not read him, I believe you’d find Wilhelm Ropke’s A Humane Economy of interest.
Grand slam zman, but trying to explain biology to libertarians is like me showing my dog quadratic equations and expecting her to understand.
People like you have no understanding of biology. What you have an ‘understanding’ of is pseudoscience babble you picked up from assorted blogs which has as much relevance to the real world as the Ptolemic model of the universe.
There is no evidence of significant biological differences between the races as pertains to mental function. None. There’s really no significant genetic differences either.
I’ve argued with this guy at Reason. He doesn’t believe racial IQ differences exist at all.
This “Toxic” person is so convinced of being superior, he/she/it doesn’t even know how to spell PtolemAic.
Try “There aren’t really any significant genetic differences either”, oh master of science, but not of the English language.
Keep telling yourself that. The politicians pushing this “Magic Dirt” theory sure do.
This is what I mean by impenetrable. All opposing ideas bounce of their deflector shields.
That one in the blue burka is hot.
The new breed of “libertarian” are in fact “left>/i> libertarians”, with the operative term being “left”.
Most “-isms” work at the micro level and fail at the macro. The traditional family is essentially a socialistic unit, as are significant elements of a small community. As pointed out in earlier comments, libertarianism can work great at the small community level as well, if the population of that community has homogeneity in important ways.
If all of these “-isms” work at the small level but fail miserably at the large level, why should our ideal of a free-market Western republic be any different? Because unlike socialism, fascism, communism, and liberalism, which strip you of your self-identity and much or all of your wealth as the price of being in the same room with them, our Western ideal is an invitation to join, not a shakedown.
When one understands clearly that our free-market Western republic stands in opposition to all of this other stuff, and can tolerate some elements of it only at the micro level, then a few things become clear. All of these other “-isms” seek to plunder us, and accommodating them in our midst will never work. One needs to drop the socialist (and worse) baggage at the door as a price of admission to our culture. The white western Christian model is the appropriate one for our culture as we hope to see it, no matter how others paint it as sexist, racist, and whatever-phobic. And, finally for this thread, libertarianism, as it is currently practiced, is hopeless because it tries to live side-by-side with all of what wants to plunder and kill us. A choice must be made, and libertarians try to have it both ways. It is one thing to not engage with a liberal blowhard at a social event. It is another thing entirely to completely structure your life and belief system in such a way that you, the sheep, lies down daily with the wolf, and yet you still expect to wake up in the morning.
“They believe this or they simply are incapable of mastering ground floor level biology. ”
I love being lectured about biology by some blog idiot whose entire ‘education’ on the matter is a bunch of racialist pseudo-science.
I’m a microbiologist. I know more about the subject matter (and pretty much everything else) than you ever will. And there is still no evidence that more Arabs will make any country worse off.
Blind as a bat living in a box.
I dunno, Cytotoxic, look at any Arab country for evidence that Arabs aren’t going to be improving any country with a Western culture and economy. They have hosed themselves mightily for centuries, so it’s likely they will hose anyplace else where they show up in significant numbers.
Dubai says otherwise.
BTW if the author wants to separate himself and fellow racist sacks of sh*t from libertarianism, please do. And fast.
Dubai disproves the dysfunction of the overwhelming majority of the remaimder of the Arab countries and population?
Dubai (and Singapore and others) prove that institutions matter far more than anything else. They’re arguably all there is, at least when they are strong and working correctly.
It also proves you know nothing about Dubai or Singapore.
Oh please do enlighten us Oh Lord of the Social Untouchables.
Dubai and Singapore? I don’t think those words mean what you think they do. Dubai is a shopping center masquerading as a city-state. Built and run by foreigners, the actual Arab citizens are less than 20% of the population. They take their cut of the rent from the comfort of their flats in Kensington. When the bubble burst it was the petrodollars of neighboring Abu Dhabi that kept it all from unraveling, not their institutions.
Singapore is an even better counterexample. A city-state founded on race, for the Chinese, by the Chinese, in their divorce from the Muslim Malay majority of Malaysia. To this day they forbid their small Malay minority from serving in their military and are highly circumspect of immigration, particularly Muslim. Its success would appear to have more to do with ethny and race than its institutions. The Chinese community in Malaysia has done quite well for itself as well, despite the legal and cultural restrictions on its freedoms imposed by the Malay majority. Mere coincidence, I am sure.
How on earth, then, are these two city-states meant to exemplify the power of institions over anything else? I think the answer is more microbiological than institutional.
You don’t know WTF you’re talking about (SHOCKING). Dubai is an extremely important finance center that is only growing in importance and wealth. It’s that way because of Common Law and other institutions mandated by the nation’s rulers. Arabness didn’t stand in the way one bit.
Singapore similarly is very important because of its institutions and laws see also ‘Hong Kong’. Also you are completely ignorant of Singapore’s actual immigration policy. They have historically had very open immigration which is a big reason they are so prosperous. The ‘China-ness’ of these places does not matter; if it did China would be as rich as these places. It’s not. I see no evidence it’s ‘by Chinese for Chinese’.
Your ineptitude is only further highlighted by the fact that Malaysia, while not as well off as HK or Singapore, is actually doing pretty well. It’s becoming something of a modern country.
Whoa, slow down there fella. Anonymity is a fact of life of blog commenting, obviously an impediment to understanding who your interlocutor is and what exactly their particular domain of knowledge may be.
To the point, however. Good Institutions are like Good Schools: they have a stubborn habit of reflecting the people that inhabit them. That Dubai’s (or Abu Dhabi’s or Qatar’s) absolute monarchs recognize this is clear enough. They imported a legal framework for their foundation and the personnel to man them as well. Their wisdom was to ensure their tiny populations would profit from the rents and stay safely out of the way. Lee Kuan Yew, another autocrat, ensured that Singapore would remain stubbornly Chinese, and the legal proscriptions on muslim immigration and intermarriage remain in place even today. Lee Kuan Yew’s views on immigration and race are no secret. It would be magical thinking to believe that the development strategies of a handful of strategically located city states could be viable for the great backwaters of earth’s benighted.
Dubai isn’t a slave state?
I’m a Level 20 White Paladin so I’m immune to your Prog magic. Try another weapon.
You’re also immune to logic, facts, and women.
I, OTOH, am a Master of Science.
Your turn is over. My turn to roll the dice.
Where is that scale showing countries by percent of Muslims, and the result-
Yes, like you knew Donald Trump would never be elected president.
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=cytotoxic+site:reason.com/blog&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
You are a known idiot, even at Reason. Go away.
I was gonna tell ya all that Cytoxic is not a libertarian, despite his earnest claims.
I’m an Objectivist, and as far as I’m concerned that falls under the umbrella of libertarianism.
The fact that the poster above thinks ‘but Turmp!’ is some kind of comeback is further proof that the “people” here are a few brain cells short of being not retarded.
I have a moonbat friend like Cytotoxic. He thinks he is a libertarian too. The fact that it is so easy to confuse the two is the problem.
He’s crazy as an outhouse rat. But that’s what happens when your primary social interaction is online. You act in ways you’d never do in person.
You become convinced that anything that doesn’t echo your views is stupid evil and wrong.
This guy is a one man argument against Reason, Objectivism, and Libertarianism. What a gift.
Best comment in this discussion. When all you can do is offend people without convincing them of anything you certainly aren’t worth much to yourself or others that hold your same beliefs. Might as well ingest something highly cytotoxic.
Heh!
I guess, then, that “worse” is so subjective as to be utterly meaningless, then?
I agree. Various caveats notwithstanding, Zman is knocking down a straw man in this post.
I assume that Gillespie said something like “voters in France are angry about a poor economy and unemployment; this is not the fault of immigrants”. This is an obviously true statement. This is not to say that immigration is problem free nor that an open borders policy is right or wise. We obviously cannot ignore, for example, the surge in rape crime that countries like Sweden have seen, and it would be very foolish to deny that if you important a third world population then you would in short order become a third world country.
Where I would part with mainstream libertarians is that they do not seem to grasp the fact (or agree with) that the public space is actually a private space. When immigrants arrive they benefit from the roads (most obviously) but also public services and the use of our institutions. Not just the law courts but also intangible stuff like a society based on trust, and respect for the principles underlying the Bill of Rights. Unfortunately there is a tragedy of the commons in effect and immigrants do in many cases, in particular if they come from places that do not have these things (which is quite likely as otherwise why do they want to emigrate), degrade the quality of the very things that they came for. Politicians of all stripes have shown very little appreciation for this, probably because they are usually wealthy individuals who are affected very little by immigration personally. This explains why they are so unpopular.
Being a libertarian myself I agree that it is a problem that we are far too intelligent for our own good. Perhaps more to the point we tend to think in the third person and in abstractions. I obviously think this is the right way to think, but the vast majority of people think in first person and be emotive, so our ideas will never have traction – at least outside the Anglosphere, where to an extent libertarian ideas, self reliance and so on, are part of the cultural identity.
Why would you believe he said “voters in France are angry about a poor economy and unemployment; this is not the fault of immigrants” when we have his actual written words? I get the desire to give him the benefit of the doubt, but pretending he said things he didn’t and ignoring the things he did write is no way to do it. I’ll also note that the Cato people were out making the same brain dead argument yesterday.
“…there is still no evidence that more Arabs will make any country worse off.”
Unless you’re willing to ignore the overwhelming preference for the psychological and sociological rot of “being devotedly Muslim” and/or “clinging resolutely to 12th-to-14th Century folkways” amongst Arabs of all varieties, this is obvious and utterly-insane bull-cookies. One simple proof-in-point is immediately available – you need only look at England.
If, by chance, you are in fact some sort of biologist, you are either (at once) incredibly arrogant and irremediably dense, or you have near-zero comprehension of what was actually stated – and elaborated-upon – in the blog-post above…or, perhaps, both.
Best to go back, and try to “read for meaning” this time…
Super smart, slightly autistic, impenetrable, describes the libertarians I know. Gillespie doesn’t fit that mold. He’s had his fifteen minutes.
It may very well be that Nick Gillespie isn’t stupid.
It may just be that he’s been bought.
However, is one sure it was the tax code and stuff Gillespie had in mind? Just remove the word “economic” from this tweet (or, more broadly, replace “economic policies instituted” with “philosophy embraced”) and the statement becomes 100% sound. Indeed, would one even have needed to consider, let alone solve, the current Western (including French among the gravest cases) problems with population replacement etc. in a society whose leaders had a mindset of the 19th century Western elite (eg. like the ones who convened the Berlin Congress of 1879)? After the first couple of “refugee” ships sunk by the nearest available coastguard and the smugglers shot on the spot in the Mediterranean, the whole asylum racket would have been over. Most people would not have even noticed that something of the sort had been in the making. And those few Africans and Asians who somehow made it over the sea would not as much as dare mention the teachings of their revered mullahs or demand gibs on the Western soil.
Instead, already in the early 20th century, the “finest schools” were releasing into the world their load of hypermoralistic assholes who eventually took over the reins. Of course the current crisis is all our own creation, the invaders only doing what they are allowed or encouraged, by the local elite!
Even if one had stuck with the word “economic” in the original tweet, we all know how the welfare state invites migration, so that, with a bit of good will, the actual statement could have been be interpreted pretty reasonably as well.
Punchline: if one really wants to fend off the 3d world invasion, all one needs to do is punch the liberals, and hard. Libertarians can be easily left to thier own devices in the process, they are neither useful nor harmful to the purpose, and do not really deserve special commenting.
Mr. Gillespie needs to have it pointed out that the massive influx of unassimilable Middle Eastern immigrants is an economic policy which is the proudest boast of those “graduates of France’s finest schools”.
The reason the country of Niger is a basket case is that’s the way the people of Niger want it.
Let’s not be too harsh on them. Derb says that “Country x is the way it is because the people that live there made it that way.” They may not want a basket-case for a country, but the way they want things and the way they live their lives make that the inevitable result. Maybe I’m picking nits, but I think that’s part of the realist’s outlook.
Somalis live in a Third World country because of economic policies instituted by the graduates of its finest schools, not Somalis….
Works for me. It’s all about Good Schools. Migration is merely a school voucher program writ large.
To describe Gillespie as a Libertarian is insane.
He’s a Libertine
Spot on. I was surprised to see the exact same shit with French classical liberals / libertarians.
All is perfect and fine until you speak immigration or race.
Classical liberalism is still liberalism. No matter whether you start with 18th century liberalism or the 21st century version, they inevitably wind up becoming a celebration of degeneracy and parasitism. No one yet has been able to provide and example where that hasn’t been the case. Liberalism needs to be eradicated in all of it’s forms. Merely blaming the modern flavor does not answer. Classical liberalism, in every case I’m aware of, has degenerated into modern variety, without exception.
No smoking folks. There are too many straw men here. Leave the “better nature” and the pilgrims at the NAP altar to their madness. Libertarians have work-arounds for most – or all – of the fair critiques here in the peanut gallery. It’s all about the market, you see…privatize it all, security forces, roads; hell, the air that you breathe! Who needs borders when Agglomerated Security Services Intl. mans your 4 meter high walls with night-view cameras and razor wire? There is no happiness or security that money cannot buy today’s anarcho-libertarian.
Until the men manning your ramparts realize that they are the ones with the guns, and that the grass, well, it always just looks so much greener on your side of the wall. I’m sure Gillespie has a work-around for that, er, eventuality, too.
I was a regular reader and commenter at Reason for years. Last year there was z major exodus for Reason.com because of the kind of stupid shit like Gillespie’s tweet.
Before the exodus, that kind of stupidity would have been mocked brutally in the comments. The 2016 election cost them at least half their readers (site hits are down more than that). We often debated if Gillespie believed his own bullshit or if it was an act to keep getting invited to talk shows and DC parties.
Glibertarians.com was set up by the former Reason readers. It’s much more fun. The contributors and commenters are generally small government libertarians without the ideological purity / stupidity of a Nick Gillespie.
More fun, perhaps, but still very much attached to equalitarian dogma, universalism and the proposition that nirvana will be achieved if only you have small enough government and property rights. And still no acknowledgement that there are fundamental differences in population groups that make a form of government which might be appropriate for one group a disaster if applied to a different group.
Libertarianism remains the same shit sandwich we’ve been getting served for the last 70 years with a slightly different choice of sides.
Yeah not so much. I still go to reason, but spend more time at glibertarians. The community is very supportive of 2A, and tends to include those of us more skeptical of open borders than the reason staff.
Also, my head swelled a little with everyone here calling us libertarians higher than average IQ types *blushes*
“Before the exodus, that kind of stupidity would have been mocked brutally in the comments.”
Followed by jacket jokes and Robby’s hair jokes. Balko was an open SJW and he’s the most popular writer in the dozen years I’ve occasionally trolled the place. Ed Krayewski really believes good boy who dindu nuffin stories. There’s a writer dedicated to covering dildos and whores. They’re both popular with the commenters. In the one Reason podcast I’ve listened to Matt Welch acknowledged that the US never accepted many refugees, then got triggered talking about how his French friends in Brooklyn no longer perceive the US as a place that will admit lots of refugees. Shikha is actually a scholar at the foundation. Think on that for a minute. Whatever caused the exodus, it wasn’t shitlibbery.
” The contributors and commenters are generally small government libertarians without the ideological purity / stupidity of a Nick Gillespie.”
The most recent post of substance there is a piece by Derpotologist claiming the main problem with Somalia is poverty. It’s every bit as stupid as that tweet. The only push back in the comments is someone gently pointing out that “no government” doesn’t mean the same thing in Belgium as Somalia.
Jordan Peterson explains this type of thinking to people who are ideologically possessed.
“It should be impossible to be this stupid.”
Z, I know you’ve been to Canada, come on man.
If you wanted to have a nation of maximum freedom, you had to have a nation with rational laws and that meant a rational, Anglo-Saxon culture. The result was a libertarianism in one country model.
This is the great irony of libertarianism: namely, that the arguably best and only practical way to get as close as possible to a libertarian state is through something like the alt-right approach, for only a homogenous nation of relatively high-IQ and like minded people could ever form a society where libertarian ideals could largely take root and stay strong. Thus, for the libertarian who actually wants to achieve something close to his ideal in this life–rather than just talking about stuff and achieving nothing–the best course of action is to support the nationalist / alt-right program internationally, while then being libertarian within a nationalistic group that is actually capable of sustaining these ideals. That, in my view, is the only way the libertarian can be anything but a utopian dreamer on par with a Marxist, just at the other extreme.
Cheers,
Damian Michael
http://www.damianmichael.com
Libertarians who aren’t fallen away progressives (neolibs) – already know this.
Bionic Mosquito wrote a column about this exact thing recently:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/05/bionic-mosquito/liberty-flourish-best-nation/
“Liberaltarians”?
Every political arrangement is a product of the economics and culture of its time (its base and superstructure, the Marxists used to say). Everyone knows this, because it’s the first thing every prof says in every Humanities 101 course. Of course, then they went on to say “and that’s why everything bad is Whitey’s fault and communism is great,” but whatever, point is, they’re still right about the first thing, and everyone knows it. For a Libertarian society to work, you’d need a society of Libertarians — higher-than-average IQs, kinda spergy, live by (most) Christian values because they’ve internalized them so deeply they don’t even realize they’re Christian values, etc. Without the one, you can’t have the other… and you certainly can’t devote yourself entirely to wiping out the one, then complaining about not getting the other. That’s just silly — “Educated past his hat size” applies to every single Libertarian I’ve ever met, as well as it does to every progtard.
What happens to us when the memory of Christian values is no longer there? I have always maintained (and I am a not so devout Catholic) that, while individuals can be good without God, it is death for societies. I’m stunned at the number of HS kids who have no, even general, conception of Christian belief or values. In 50 years it’ll be way worse. I’ll be dead, but some of you be around to deal with the wreckage.
I feel like the last paragraph can be expounded upon in a follow-on article, especially about liberal cultural arguments. I’ll be honest that my only real exposure to libertarian thought is mainly through Lew Rockwell, and I dont always agree with the writers on his site (e.g., Walter Block and Gary North). They seem to draw strange conclusions and have a visceral hatred for the US state. I’m not saying were perfect, but we also aren’t going to survive long as a nation and/or a people if we turn all our swords into plowshares and view every human interaction as a contractual affair. I’m glad your voice has been added to the milieu, Mr. Z! How long until we see you on Stefan Molyneux?
I have been reading Gary North for years.
I’m not sure how you came to the conclusion that he HATES the US state. If anything North is a defender of the US culture as it was – and where it came from. He’s a historian – and points out that the US state as instituted by the Constitution – was not necessarily one that had the best interests of the people here in mind, but rather the ruling class (some things never change).
The US State (federal government) and the nation that is (or was) – are not the same thing.
All alt-righties who scream incessantly that it’s a culture problem – should know this stuff.
Origins of the US Constitution: Conspiracy in Philadelphia
http://www.garynorth.com/philadelphia.pdf
Nick Gillespie may indeed be as stupid as box of rocks, but in a perfect libertarian world, he would die naturally (and hopefully at an early age) as a direct result of his stupidity. Good for the gene pool.
Most grassroots libertarians are not, by nature, followers. Consequently, opinion leaders in that movement are small voices and have little real impact. Frankly, I think his arrogance outstrips his stupidity, but I would add one mollifying insight.
None of us get to pick our parents or our genes; and in life, you must play the hand you’ve been dealt. If you are born with a low IQ, you must still try to make the best of things with what you’ve got.
Good point. In a libertarian world the dumb people would have perfect liberty to die of the results of their stupidity. And since I’ve busted my ass to try and learn how to NOT die by the hand of my own stupidity – I shouldn’t be forced by the hand of government to ALSO support all the stupid people.
If somebody has a better solution – that doesn’t involve government coercion – government – which inevitably attracts evil and stupid people and gives them power over you – I’d like to hear what it is.
There isn’t one. 80% of the population is too stupid to function without coercion. The best we can hope for is to return to the Constitutional principles our founders gave us, since they already knew this and created a system where stupids were dealt with locally by the people they most affected.
Libertarians believe in the Kool-Aid that everyone is the same, “on the inside”. They do not want to be perceived as a low IQ, low income, mouth breather. Only problem is, they rely on the ones that dispensed the Kool-Aid to define what a low IQ, low income, mouth breather is. That and the fact they want to get laid.
There actually is some differentiation between someone with libertarian leanings and being a member of the Libertarian Party. Libertarianism was born from some good ideas. Unfortunately, they are now utterly useless. Until you understand the biological component of society you will never get the point and you can be diverted to chase social chimeras rather than accept reality.
Again – not sure where you guys are getting this stuff. That whole “same on the inside” crap – sounds like progressivism 101.
All of the libertarian leaning stuff I’ve ever read basically boiled down to:
People can suck. Stop FORCING me to pay for the sucky people.
There’s a significant amount of libertarians that believe open borders are equivalent to free markets. That requires a belief that humans are basically equivalent economic units. I’ve even heard the argument multiple times that the European Islamic terrorism issues cannot happen here because America is better at assimilating immigrants.
I’ve never been under that understanding – and as stated previously – I’ve been reading libertarian stuff for a good 15-20 years now. It seems like all you guys who are buying the assertion of those types of libertarians might be the same type of people who bought the line from the neo-cons that they were “conservative”.
Maybe you’re all correct – people are too stupid to understand libertarianism. Or maybe that saying I’ve heard before : ” The Republicans are the stupid party and the Democrats are the evil party” – is regenerating itself now that the neo-cons seem to be on the wane and libertarian thought seems to be on the upswing. Except this time around all the righties are swapping their stupidity over from believing that neo-cons are “conservative” to believing some of these guys who call themselves libertarians – actually believe in liberty.
I’ve read several of your comments now, and I’ve reached the conclusion that you stink at being a Libertarian, and don’t really understand it as the ideology that it is TODAY. You don’t even know what/who Nick Gillespie and Reason Magazine is, so either get better informed or quit trolling us.
I’ve heard that argument many times. It may even be a little bit true- that is to say a larger % of immigrants from 3rd world hellholes assimilate here than in Europe. Don’t care though, too many don’t. I’d also add that the welfare state makes people less assimilate-able. Original thought, I know.
I see you’re talking about Libertarian, Inc. again.
Note how the (smallcase-letter) camps- conservative, libertarian, liberal- were originally cries for self-determination.
Now it seems they are identified by their type of globalism.
Conservative: Corporate/Military- Empire
Liberal: the Brown Party or Horde
Libertarian: Magic Dirt
Tenth Amendment libertarians yearn for 1912, when the main source of Federal revenues was the alcohol excise tax.
Strong tariffs depend on strong borders (and a functional immigration Department.)
Addendum: and govermentnaturally contsrained, limited by its source of income.
libertarians are also big pussies (like conservatives), but will talk tough. but talk is all they are. a retired usmc captain once told me “shit in one hand, and talk in the other, see which fills up first”. i pass on that advice to mr gillespie.
One of the benefits of the death of Conservatism, Inc. is that it was a gateway to libertarianism. Instead of working themselves through years of constitutional conservatism and libertarian economics only to realize that these things are hollow facsimiles of race and culture, a young man today can skip the long slog and go straight to white western civilization for his politics.
For a while after reading a pile of libertarian literature I came across during decades in the conservative movement I considered myself to be a libertarian of sorts. A couple of turn offs were the internal contradictions and the type of people who dominate the movement, like Gillespie. His marked overconfidence, and the agressive application of the “NAP” to cultural conservatives reminds me of this monk: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.theonion.com/article/monk-gloats-over-yoga-championship-20224&ved=0ahUKEwid0sbB19vTAhWD34MKHaz1AjYQFggcMAA&usg=AFQjCNHYdmYZbktuGfxOoyJbmLu71UdbMQ&sig2=5OXeU885GbZfe9hwfBeYnA.
The NAP is basically the golden rule of Christianity. As always, when a religious belief is pushed absent the religion itself it takes on the menace of any other heresy. Putting something forward without the context that makes it relevant mandates its misapplication. The golden rule is not a suicide pact. The NAP is because it tries to apply a personal religious principle into a legislative one that crosses political boundaries.
here’s the thing about the NAP; humans are aggressive. so build a society and culture around that. put a libertarian in the middle of a race riot and watch his education in real time. and that’s the problem with libertarianism; it appeals to weirdo loners but those people get picked off first because they are all on their own.
If the NAP is a Christian principle – and the NAP is one of the core tenets of libertarianism – and what you assert is true – then exactly what “western culture” are we going to restore?
It seems what you are doing is making an argument for why Islam is winning – because it seems to me that they make no such restrictions on human aggression – in fact they count on it.
All of this would mean that the alt-right effort to “restore” Western Civilization – might be an exercise in futility.
What you don’t understand about Libertarian-ism is that for it to work this must exist: 1 economic unit = 1 human(any). The concept that one group is in some way inferior or superior to another destroys that equation and Libertarian-ism.
Gillespie, the Rich Lowry of the mouthbreathers, but with a worse haircut.
it’s that big block shaped skull of gillespie’s that makes the haircut look so bad.
In that case he needs a trepanation with a power drill stat.
Spot on as usual Zman. We should thank that “underwear guy ” at the Libertarian convention for stripping down to his tighty whities and single handedly cast Gary Johnson to the abyss…
I’m for extremely limited government but yes, libertarians who ignore IQ and culture are too stupid to have an opinion on some things. Not a one has proven to me that some ‘turd world’ person has a damn clue about the non aggression principle, rule of law (like contracts), or limited government. One of the reasons why I’ve not bothered with them for a long time. I still like Ron Paul, though he to is a bit blind on the immigration issue in some ways.
“I’m for extremely limited government ” And so say we all but, sadly, that won’t be happening until after “Global Thermonuclear War.”
yes, that term is no longer operational.
Remember that the blast does not travel at the speed of light but the light from the blast does.
Ah! Farnam’s Freehold.
I agree, but I still believe he was, is and will be the greatest man to run for President in my lifetime.
I really don’t remember Ron Paul being blind to the immigration issue.
He attacked the core of the problem in coming right out and saying that birthright citizenship should be gotten rid of – and he was adamantly against providing ANY sort of welfare or government benefits to immigrants – or even citizens for matter.
These two things strike right to the core of the problem IMHO because if they were both gone and gone completely – we *might* still have immigration, but any that came in would have to WORK – or die on the streets. As the progressive claim that people used to back in the 19th century before they came up with all of their lovely social programs.
It’s not a coincidence that all the western socialist democracies are overrun by immigrants. It’s a math problem. You can’t keep the machine going when all the natives think they can live off the dole – somebody has to actually do the work.
I heard that argument from Ron Paul and his disciples: ”get rid of welfare and immigration won’t be a problem” but there are two issues with that:
1. Not gonna happen. it’s a political non-starter.
2. As Vox Day put it in a comment to this post:
https://voxday.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-end-of-libertarianism.html?showComment=1494102505261#c423499356988723332
”Irrelevant. With or without welfare, it’s [Europe/UK/US] a better place to be. More to steal, for one thing.”
IOW, the grass IS greener on the other side of the fence. If you’re selling drugs or prostitutes, those are more lucrative markets for them. Even if all you do is hawk geegaws on the street, those are a better market than ”back home”.
As a bitter-clinger-thumper, with some libertarian leanings, might I suggest most libertarians are simply too intelligent for their own good.
Trying to appeal to peoples better nature doesn’t work when they cannot fathom what liberty really means, or how it could improve their lives.
Or their “nature” is not really better, just alien and different.
Look, I’d love to live in a world governed by 18th century classical liberalism, but that’s never happening, so we have to do something else.
True; most libertarians act as though everyone can understand and appreciate their dogma.
Probably half of our own people couldn’t, let alone the barbs at the gates.
True, we can’t walk that herd of cats back.
How do we maintain pensions without globalism? That seems the biggest question.
you cannot preserve pensions and SS with ignorant savages that cannot read the instruction manual. You think maids and baristas working illegally for cash can pay enough into the system?
You are looking at catastrophic calamity of a miscalculation coming to fruition
“Preserving pensions” is not a culture problem.
It’s a math problem.
Consider that it just might be both.
The thought that public figures should have guaranteed pensions is a concept alien to the ORIGINAL culture of this country. It’s a concept that was brought over by big government types and socialists – from a “culture” that the people who settled this country wanted to escape from. Exactly what part of “culture” are you going to fix to enable all those government workers to keep their pensions while the rest of us in the private sector work our asses off to pay for it all?
And what would that be exactly?
I’ve reading some of your anti-libertarian rants lately. And the phrase that comes to mind is:
“show me on the doll where the mean libertarian touched you”.
Seriously – pretty much every person you’ve ascribed libertarian leanings to in your recent columns – with the exception of Charles Murray – is somebody I have NEVER heard of before , and I’ve been reading libertarian literature and columnists for a good 15-20 years now.
I’m starting to think this whole ascribing “libertarian” leanings to a bunch is another episode of that long running mini-series: “Look at me – I’m a conservative and I don’t know what the &%$! conservatism is”.
Previous seasons have given us a bunch of conservatives who filled up the Republican party with Neo-conservatives.
Apparently nobody went to look up what “neo” means.
Looks like we might be playing the same game again – except this time we’ve got a bunch of liberals calling themselves libertarians. Apparently because the words begin with “lib” everybody stopped thinking it out and thinks they’re one and the same.
You’ve never heard of Reason magazine and Nick Gillespie? C’mon, man.
If you’ve never heard of Nick Gillespie and his “Fonzie” leather jacket, then you’re not a functioning Libertarian, or you’re a liar.
It’s not that they’re too intelligent for their own good, it’s that they don’t understand that other people *can’t* be that intelligent, and even if they wanted to really don’t want to put out the effort.
I tend to consider myself a libertarian leaner. But one of the liberties I most cherish is the right to use a gun to kill any bastard who tries to rob me of my other liberties.
Libertarianism should not be devoid of common sense and realism.
I’m not sure what made you come to the conclusion that being a “libertarian” prevents you from drilling somebody a new eyesocket in their forehead when they try to deprive you of your life, your liberty or your property.
My understanding of libertarianism tells me that it’s one of the only political/social philosophies that tells you very clearly that you CAN.
I used to be like you.
That’s not telling me much.
I definitely don’t think libertarians are too intelligent for their own good.