Comments for Why Liberals are Not Libertarians at http://atlanticfreepress.com , comment 1 to 1 out of 1 comments http://atlanticfreepress.com Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:41:26 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/6248-why-liberals-are-not-libertarians.html#comment-7052 Hello, I think this article has insufficient focus, because it lumps libertarians with Ayn Rand, without taking sufficient note of their differences. Maybe this sort of lumping different people together comes naturally to a collectivist who only sees people as vague lumps called groups, but this sort of lumping leads to inaccurate statements. It is true that many, if not most, libertarians are against there being any government, and they imagine voluntary associations can take over all of the functions currently provided by government. It is also right to observe that this cannot work out in practice, because when it comes to issues that involve the use of force, when you have private agencies protecting their respective gangs, you ultimately end up with either gang warfare, or some gang being stronger than the others and taking over, thus establishing de facto government of the type libertarians were trying to escape. However, it is worth noting that the formulation that no inidvidual, group, or society may initiate the use of force against any individual, often used by libertarians, was lifted out of context from Ayn Rand's philosophical formulation, and applied as a dogma by theorists who did not bother to consider all the ramifications. This is why Ayn Rand repudiated libertarianism. Contrary to what many libertarians advocate, Ayn Rand saw the absolute necessity of government, but not just any government. Government is a monopoly on the use of force, and if we are to avoid the kind of society in which "might is right," morality must come before force. In other words, we must first be clear about what moral principles are to govern a society, and rationally validate these principles, before we talk about or proceed to implement laws. If we believe that individuals are fair game to "sacrifice" for the alleged "public benefit" morally, then we end up providing moral justification for every dictatorship that has ever come along. If we believe that individuals are ends in themselves, and governments are established to protect their rights, then it may be "inconvenient" for people who are trigger happy with passing laws to deal with every perceived problem but in exchange for this "inconvenience" we have the kind of government that upholds the rights of the individual as an absolute, and the exact opposite of the kind of government that tends to drift over time into a dictatorship despite "good intentions." Also, it is worth noting that it is not possible to mix opposite moral premises, and expect the result to be stable. We must either uphold the primacy of the rights of every individual, or we must uphold the "prerogative of the leaders to do what is good for everybody." Any attempt to hedge on this issue and claim to uphold both equally, amounts to a sugar coated version of advocating for the latter, which is ultimately paving the road for a dictatorship, however loud the advocate protests the opposite. Also, for the record, Ayn Rand was not against laws which dealt with issues which could not be dealt with on a case by case basis, provided there was *objective* grounds for their necessity. Presumably the scientific rigor needed to establish the overwhelming objective validity of a claim is too much work to bother with, when it is easier to just "pass a law to be on the safe side" which is often heard on the side of those who apparently do not take the individual's rights seriously and are willing to flush it down the toilet over every flimsy whim. This kind of mentality brings to mind the saying "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." I would add the word "allegedly" before the "good intentions. At root, we have to decide if the rights of the individual are paramount morally, or if every alleged "good of all" has moral primacy. Depending on the answer, you ultimately get a prosperous free society, or a dictatorship. Brushing this issue aside or obfuscating it by referring to clueless libertarians to feel better is just burying one's head in the sand. For anyone interested in exploring these ideas further on their own, I highly recommend Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff. EricT - EricT Thu, 27 Nov 2008 22:43:00 +0100