printOver the pixelated pages of Barely A Blog and IlanaMercer.com, I’ve devoted time and effort to elucidating where libertarianism has gone wrong. The sexy, rah-rah, fist-in-the air aura of anarchism has attracted the worst to the movement. My own readers are constantly seduced and pulled back, on BAB, from the brink of errant thinking—as when they fall into pacifism or social determinism.
Then there are the dumbing-down forces that have taken their toll on the Zeitgeist in general. In America, and elsewhere, we are in the throes of an era that elevates and celebrates the worst of humanity, man and woman; intellect and ethics. To get an exaggerated sense of what the consequences of such a persistent upheaval in the natural order, I recommend my all-time favorite social commentary, “Idiocracy.” Comedic reductio ad absurdum is better than the kind of social science-cum-social engineering produced these days by the likes of Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam.
After that prelude, please take a look at what goes for gritty libertarian thought on the website of The Examiner: “Is cannibalism really wrong or just taboo?”
An intellectual pygmy and shock jock gets a forum. An even stupider editor believes musing about cannibalism is edgy and exciting. Your main deduction here as far as libertarianism goes must not involve libertarian legal theory. For the act of cannibalism should go unpunished only in extremis—where the individual would not survive unless he indulges.
Otherwise, a society that is reduced to the skeletal essence of the non-aggression axiom is not a civil society, but an “Idiocracy.” (Bless Mike Judge for that stroke of genius.)
I certainly agree that the concept of “my cop is Lucky Luciano while your cop is Dutch Shultz” competing anarchies makes little sense. Nevertheless, what is one supposed to make of the modern Obamian-Bushian Welfare-Warfare government that simultaneously declares that Pedro the Trespasser is “illegal” but that you must pay money (called taxes) to pay for his medical benefits and “in-state” tuition while American “citizens” (or should we be called “subjects”?) pay full tuition and their own medical bills?
What does one say about a government that does not even remotely obey its own rules – such as, for example, the Constitution? Are we really ruled by a Constitutional government or by a bipartisan cabal of greedy power-hungry thugs POSING as a Constitutional government? It is tragic to have to pose questions such as this but: (1) when was the last time an act passed Congress that corresponded to Article 1 Section 8? and (2) how many decisions even rely on Congressional authorization rather than complete executive usurpation such as using the TARP money to bail out Chrysler, etc.? Remember that even Kim-Jong-Il calls his personal gulag a “Democratic People’s Republic”. Just some food for thought.
[As my mother would say, what has all this got to do with the price of eggs (namely the post).]
“My own readers are constantly seduced and pulled back, on BAB, from the brink of errant thinking—as when they fall into pacifism or social determinism.”
Thanks mom. [“Pulled back” not only by “mom,” but by you guys.]
“The sexy, rah-rah, fist-in-the air aura of anarchism has attracted the worst to the movement.”
So true. In my humble opinion anarchist nonsense continues to poison libertarian political (and Austrian economic) thinking. Devotees of anarchism are invariably arrogant and close-minded.
When one believes that government is immoral and illegitimate, it is a small leap to conclude that anything government does is immoral and illegitimate. Hence, taxation becomes theft, war becomes murder and state-enforced borders become mere lines on maps.
Anarchist political theory is fraught with error and contradiction but, as you say, it is too sexy to allow for serious debate.
(I’m still waiting for any libertarian anarchist to explain to me how a cooperative anarchist society (!) can be comprised of sovereign individuals.)
Left/anarcho libertarians are master navel-gazers, and that article about cannibalism is a good example of it.