Libertarian Smears:
Well, what is so “limited” (?) about injecting and funding government to enforce and insist upon: (1) studies for derogating, in public schools, respect for higher, decent, and assimilating values; (2) promoting “science” as if elite practitioners should be trusted to divine “correct” answers to many interpersonal concerns that fall largely outside of, or beyond, the proper domain of science; (3) financing the breaking of traditional moral compasses and norms for respecting the family as the foundational unit for Western Civilization; and (4) funding the leveling of “gaps” in benefits between traditional family unions versus civil, plural, and alien unions?
I don’t find that kind of governmental taxation, funding, prescription, and intrusion to be “limited.” I find it to be repressive, radical, unsustainably expensive, and unsustainably myopic.
What is the main, driving force to governmental intrusion? I suggest it is the vacuum that is created as traditional assimilating values are demolished. In other words, defending decent and assimilating values is not the cause of big government. It is the destruction of such values that is the cause! In willingness to support vacuums and moral anarchy that lead to the crush of big government, Libertarians may as well be on the side of Progressives, Collectivists, and Islamists.
To my intuition, for each of our perspectives of consciousness, there is a holistic or wave aspect and a separate identity or countable-particle aspect. There is feedback between holistic synchronization and particular expressions of free will. That feedback is in constant flux and need of reconciliation. That necessitates receptivity from each perspective to the still quiet voice of guidance from the whole.
This is a dance. When one partner totally dominates, the dance becomes a tragedy or a travesty. To totally promote God (Islam), State (National Socialism) or Corporatism (oligarchical elitism) over all else is to create absurd, comedic, utter tragedy and despair. On the other hand, to try to promote individuals (Libertarianism) over all else is little better. What is needed is harmony, as in a dance between (1) receptivity to assimilating, civilizing, higher values, (2) individual liberty, and (3) a framework for growing a representative republic. For that, above all others, it is American Conservatives who are patriots in the forefront.
As to whether Conservatism tends to get smeared by Libertarians, Anarchists, Progressives, or Communists: Well, what would you expect?
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It’s a little late to be wondering when the coup will occur. We have been taught that we have a representative republic. We are being taught by the “change” people that we should “move on” and away from that, towards a one world society to be run by those who know best. The change people believe they can apply non-superstitious, non-religious, exclusively scientific reasoning to divine what is best for each and all. The role of the masses, who are not well trained to read in the holy book of science, is only to accept the better reasoning of their superiors and their elite helpers. So the contest at hand is between those who want a representative republic and those who want rule by, and to be ruled by, elites. In other words, the contest is between republic versus oligarchy.
The oligarchy consists of international, billionaire corporatists, funding their elite, Ivy trained seals, who relay “suggestions” to the rest of us. When possible, the suggestions are relayed in dulcet tones by attractive people speaking knowingly to us on the telly and from the lectern. Somehow, those who speak these “suggestions” to us now occupy most of the highest seats among our formal institutions of power – in Congress, courts, media, entertainment, the arts, academia, and professional organizations officials of health and law.
So we have this odd situation: 60 to 70 percent of our populations thinks and prefers that we have a representative republic. But nearly all positions of power in all important institutions are occupied by persons who are trained by, and completely beholden to, their corporate financiers.
In other words, “The Coup” has already largely taken place! We’re closing the barn after the horses have left. Odds are probably against recovering many of the horses. Without faith in higher values and loyalty to one another, we have little chance. For our struggle, are Libertarian and Rino types who eschew higher values of much more than neutral weight? Didn’t they help considerably to get us in this position?
I hardly think cultures should enforce religion. But a message is imparted when a culture ridicules religious sects that seek only to nourish a message of fellow respect based in a higher source. When one message is diminished by force or ridicule, another message will fill the space. That imparted message of ridicule becomes part of the environment, and it is absorbed into the prefrontal cortexes of many children -- including many who live under inadequate guidance and parentage.
Our traditions and metaphors have a real effect on the general consciousness of a society. As do metaphors that, however indirectly or subconsciously, devalue our relationships.
Think beyond raising the consciousness of an individual; think also of raising the consciousness of a society. Do we want a culture that is rationalized and ruled primarily under feelings of meaninglessness, anarchy, hedonism, and tooth and claw? Is there basis behind mere hope that we can do better? Some intuit there is, some do not. There are consequences to beliefs, and not all of them are always congenial. Regardless, I endeavor not to choose to believe anything merely because belief may make me more comfortable. I come to beliefs in respect that alternatives seem to make no sense -- logically, morally, or emotionally.
Aside from individuals: What is the character of societies and nations in which the prevailing view that is inculcated is one of despair or abject submission to ruling representatives of the regime? Isn't that what Marxism and Islam are about? How do those societies fare? How does any society fare, after it has wormed its masses into abject submission to its knowledgeable elites, who "only want what is best?"
Well, now, that entails a faith that there is a "best," does it not? Stated in the alternative, an elite who does not believe there is a "best," but who seeks to convince you to his story about a "best," is a phony and a brigand.
From A.T. (“Witness”) -- @Hitchhiker, Your post is well reasoned, insofar as reason can suffice, apart from history and intuition. It is the integration of emotional drive and reason within a sustainable society that is the problem.
Consider: Does 1 equal 2? No, it does not. But consider a Fallacious Proof:
* Step 1: Let a=b.
* Step 2: Then a^2 = ab,
* Step 3: a^2 + a^2 = a^2 + ab,
* Step 4: 2 a^2 = a^2 + ab,
* Step 5: 2 a^2 - 2 ab = a^2 + ab - 2 ab,
* Step 6: and 2 a^2 - 2 ab = a^2 - ab.
* Step 7: This can be written as 2 (a^2 - a b) = 1 (a^2 - a b),
* Step 8: and cancelling the (a^2 - ab) from both sides gives 1=2.
So where is the fallacy? Well, a^2 –ab equals 0. But it makes no sense to multiply by zero.
Yet, when that simple confusion is hidden in a relatively complex “proof,” filled with impossible, ambiguous, or unclear terms (like for multiplying zero), then all kinds of confusions can be made to seem logically deducible.
So that is one problem with dogmatic philosophies (such as Libertarianism) that are balanced on foundations that begin with ambiguous concepts that seem logical, objective, or even “scientific,” but that are used in overly broad ways.
For example, it makes no sense to speak of pure freedom or pure free will. There is freedom, but only within natural and man made law (or its cousin, social mores). So the very foundation of Libertarianism begins with a word (“freedom”) that is only partly measurable and largely a matter of perspective and relation.
That is not a problem with Conservatism, because Conservatism does not claim to be purely objective. Rather, Conservatism find reconciliation only upon due respect and intuitive appreciation for God, as our socially assimilated values help give us the light to appreciate God. But it certainly is a problem for doctrinaire, objectivist, deductive minded, hood winking Libertarians.
Regarding the confused dogma of Libertarianism:
See http://www.amconmag.com/article/2005/mar/14/00017/: “Libertarianism offers its believers a clear conscience to do things society presently restrains, like make more money, have more sex, or take more drugs.”
“If Marxism is the delusion that one can run society purely on altruism and collectivism, then libertarianism is the mirror-image delusion that one can run it purely on selfishness and individualism.”
“Furthermore, the reduction of all goods to individual choices presupposes that all goods are individual. But some, like national security, clean air, or a healthy culture, are inherently collective.”
“Libertarians rightly concede that one’s freedom must end at the point at which it starts to impinge upon another person’s, but they radically underestimate how easily this happens.”
“…libertarianism has a lot to say about freedom but little about learning to handle it. Freedom without judgment is dangerous at best, useless at worst.”
****
“Libertarians need to be asked some hard questions. What if a free society needed to draft its citizens in order to remain free? What if it needed to limit oil imports to protect the economic freedom of its citizens from unfriendly foreigners? What if it needed to force its citizens to become sufficiently educated to sustain a free society? What if it needed to deprive landowners of the freedom to refuse to sell their property as a precondition for giving everyone freedom of movement on highways? What if it needed to deprive citizens of the freedom to import cheap foreign labor in order to keep out poor foreigners who would vote for socialistic wealth redistribution?”
“Libertarianism’s abstract and absolutist view of freedom leads to bizarre conclusions. Like slavery, libertarianism would have to allow one to sell oneself into it. (It has been possible at certain times in history to do just that by assuming debts one could not repay.) And libertarianism degenerates into outright idiocy when confronted with the problem of children, whom it treats like adults, supporting the abolition of compulsory education and all child-specific laws, like those against child labor and child sex. It likewise cannot handle the insane and the senile. “
“Libertarian naïveté extends to politics. They often confuse the absence of government impingement upon freedom with freedom as such. But without a sufficiently strong state, individual freedom falls prey to other more powerful individuals. A weak state and a freedom-respecting state are not the same thing, as shown by many a chaotic Third-World tyranny.”
Would Randian Libertarian Philosophy (“RLP”) fund the big government that became necessary to house or rehabilitate the children, addicts, prostitutes, and pimps who became unable to sustain themselves against free life, free drugs, free sex, and free association?
Would RLP protect the family as foundational for civilized society?
Would RLP resist the overflow of immigrants from inassimilable cultures?
Would RLP resist using tax revenues or governmental regulations to impose detailed federal definitions and fixes regarding the proper kind and degree of tolerance for otherwise inassimilable alien customs and fetishes (animal fights, foot baths, phobias against guide dogs, genital mutilation, religious objections against medicine for children)?
Would RLP accept a military draft to compel the defense of the country?
Would RLP justify defending ordinary citizens by shaming combinations of business lobbyists against invading the public’s coffers for special favors from the government?
Would RLP resist arms of the law from enforcing contracts?
Would RLP consent to regulate against free trade (such as in militarily advanced technology or in vital resources), when shown harmful to the independence and economic viability of the nation, as a nation?
Would RLP pervert the role of science by enforcing a faith that only logic and empiricism are appropriate for guiding moral choices, and only trained scientists are qualified to settle how such science should be fatwa’d to specific situations?
Would RLP remain blind that “property” necessarily depends for its legitimacy upon the superior title and defense of the country? IOW, that profit makers, to the extent they harm the nation, economy, or environment, whose repair must be made by the taxpayers, are necessarily expropriating a hidden tax against the citizenry? So how is it, then, that they claim their ownership should be beyond regulation, as needed to refund or effect such repairs?
Would Randian libertarian philosophy do anything to soften mob associations of bigots, so that they would not in combinations run roughshod over arbitrarily selected prey or minorities? See http://sethf.com/essays/major/libstupid.php: “Consequently, we oppose any government attempts to regulate private discrimination, including choices and preferences, in employment, housing, and privately owned businesses. The right to trade includes the right not to trade -- for any reasons whatsoever; the right of association includes the right not to associate, for exercise of the right depends upon mutual consent.”
See also http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2009/09/problems-with-libertarianism.html: “… you can’t get any further on the two sides of the political spectrum as leftist anarchists and libertarians, and yet both are major branches of Libertarianism in the broad sense. How’s that for strange bedfellows?”
“All libertarian positions, it seems to me, have the same fundamental problem in common: they do not take human nature seriously.”
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