Here at The Rattler, we mostly deal with ignorant Bush-backing neocons. But there is another kind of mutant lurking on PalTalk, and if you spend any amount of time online, you've probably met...an objectivist.
These disciples of Ayn Rand, also called minarchists, or sometimes libertarians, are obsessed with the idea that government should get out of everyone's lives, and allow everyone to have what they call "freedom."
Here in Mainstream, our resident Randroid is Roxanna Armozel (nee Lady Attis). To give you an idea of how this person argues, consider this: He rages on the mic about morality being based on pure logic, and that moral considerations are as simple as 2+2=4. Now, most people in PT, and in real life are smart enough to know that morality is based on values and sentiments, neither of which lead to easy answers to all moral questions in all situations. But for Roxanna, since he THINKS he has the inside track on morality, anything Rand says after that, even the batshit insane ideas about selfishness being the highest good, MUST be true, because it follows from impregnable logic.
Golks, I've heard this before, when I spent a few months in Scientology. The only difference is who the nutty author was.
As a reference for further study, consider
this, from Seth Finkelstein writing in
The Ethical Spectacle. I'm excerpting a lot of this, and I highly recommend you read all of their essays on Libertarianism:
To start off, Libertarianism is highly axiomatic. Note how the above quote touts its logically consistent approach. There's a set of rules to be applied to evaluate what is proper, and the outcome given is the answer which is correct in terms of the moral principle of the theory. Are the religious thinking connections starting to become evident? This doesn't mean there can't be religious-type schisms in applying the axioms (for example, there's one regarding abortion). But in practice, the rules are simple and tight enough to produce surprisingly uniform positions compared to common political philosophies. Libertarian proselytizers will preach some warm-and-fuzzy story such as
We believe that respect for individual rights is the essential precondition for a free and prosperous world, that force and fraud must be banished from human relationships, and that only through freedom can peace and prosperity be realized.
Now, how many ideologies have you ever heard state anything like
We believe that disrespect for individual rights is the essential precondition for a free and prosperous world, that force and fraud are good things in human relationships, and that only through slavery can peace and prosperity be realized.
Libertarians are for "individual rights", and against "force" and "fraud" - just as THEY define it. Their use of these words, however, when examined in detail, is not likely to accord with the common meanings of these terms. What person would proclaim themselves in favor of "force and fraud"? One of the little tricks Libertarians use in debate is to confuse the ordinary sense of these words with the meaning as "terms of art" in Libertarian axioms. They try to set up a situation where if you say you're against "force and fraud", then obviously you must agree with Libertarian ideology, since those are the definitions. If you are in favor of "force and fraud", well, isn't that highly immoral? So you're either one of them, or some sort of degenerate (note the cultish aspect again), one who doesn't think "force and fraud must be banished from human relationships".
In a phrase I'll probably find myself repeating "I am not making this up". It's important to realized that what might sound like hyperbole or overstatement really, truly, will be found when dealing with Libertarian arguments.
Just to pick an example from one public exchange (directed to me)
Too complicated. All you need is one proposition:
No person should initiate the use of force against another person.
All libertarian thought flows logically from this. For instance, taxation is undesirable since it is backed by the coercive force of the state. Naturally the key word is "initiate."
So, the question is, does Seth agree with this proposition or not? Of course he will say there have to be certain exceptions. This is the difference between him and a libertarian. Libertarians (like free speech advocated!) prefer not to make exceptions.
Note that this is the only political movement, so far as I know, rooted in one simple ethical statement about human rights. This alone biases me in its favor.
My reply to this point was to ask if he agreed "No person should do anything evil". I get to define evil, "evil" is taken according to "Sethism". The response:
Seth, you have not answered the question. Do you agree, or do you disagree, that it is always wrong for one person to initiate force against another? If you disagree, then you disagree with the fundamental concept of libertarianism, ...
On the other hand, if you agree with the proposition, yet you still don't like the conclusions that libertarians draw from it, then we can refocus our attention on the chain of logic that leads to those conclusions and find where you feel the weak link is.
Observe the aspects pointed out above. It's a "agree or disagree" where implicitly "initiate force" is taken to be that of the Libertarian ideology. And it's justified by the axioms, the "chain of logic".
Note the rhetoric is made further meaningless by the "initiate force" concept. When Libertarians think using force is justified, they just call it retaliatory force. It's a bit like "war of aggression" versus "war of defense". Rare is the country in history which has ever claimed to be initiating a "war of aggression", they're always retaliating in a "war of defense".
The idea that Libertarians don't believe in the initiation of force is pure propaganda. They believe in using force as much as anyone else, if they think the application is morally correct. "initiation of force" is Libertarian term of art, meaning essentially "do something improper according to Libertarian ideology". It isn't even connected much to the actions we normally think of as "force". The question being asked above was really agree or disagree, that it is always wrong for one person to do something improper according to Libertarian ideology. It was just phrased in their preaching way.
While you might be told Libertarianism is about individual rights and freedom, fundamentally, it's about business. The words "individual rights", in a civil-society context, are often Libertarian-ese for "business". That's what what they derive as the inevitable meaning of rights and freedom, as a statement of principles:
Since governments, when instituted, must not violate individual rights, we oppose all interference by government in the areas of voluntary and contractual relations among individuals
The whole idea of a contract is that government enforces relations among individuals. The above sentence is a nonsensical, it's conceptually that they oppose all interference by government in the areas of government enforcing relations among individuals".
The key to understanding this, and to understanding Libertarianism itself, is to realize that their concept of individual freedom is the "whopper" of "right to have the State back up business". That's a wild definition of freedom. If you voluntarily contract to sell all your future income for $1, they then oppose all government "interference" with your "right" to do this. It's a completely twisted, utterly inverted, perfectly Orwellian statement, almost exactly "Freedom is Slavery".
This is not at all obvious or what people tend to think when they're told the song and dance about rights and freedoms. This point about contract and Libertarianism needs to be stressed. Often, the "chain of logic" used by a Libertarian will be a fairly valid set of deductions. But along the way, there will be very subtle assumptions slipped in, such as "contract" (meaning business) as a fundamental right. It can be quite difficult to spot, such as a redefinition of terms, or a whopper like the above. But again, it's very "logical", very "axiomatic".
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One of the seamiest and ugliest aspects of Libertarianism is its support of turning back the civil-rights clock to pre-1964 legal situation for businesses. "I am not making this up". They're very explicit about it:
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.
That's "rights" according to Libertarianism. Whites-only lunch counters, "No Jews or dogs" hotels, "we don't serve your kind here", "No Irish need apply", "This is man's job", etc. All this is a "right of association" in Libertarian theology.
Such a weird position is not just the purview of some position-writers in a corner, but a surprisingly common trait of Libertarians. It's one of the surest way of identifying one, if they justify such a reactionary position from abstract considerations.
It must be stressed that a) Libertarians ARE NOT racists, sexists, etc. and b) The above is not meant to comment either way on the much more controversial affirmative-action debate. Libertarians can go to town whenever they're called racist, sexist, and so on for the above (gee, how could anyone ever get that idea?), proclaiming their great personal but private commitment to equality. Of course, they never have to do anything much in this regard since events have passed them by. But they want make sure you know they fully support the ideals, even if they think the all the past decades legal effort should be repealed as immoral and unprincipled. They also love to switch the debate the affirmative action, because that's far more contentious than anti-discrimination. But the position's very plain. Drinking from the wrong water fountain would presumably be "initiation of force", allowing relation of force to eject the malefactor.
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The fanatical opposition of Libertarians to anti-discrimination laws also illuminates a crucial aspects of the stupid-making effects of the philosophy. They can never admit even one instance of government intervention doing good overall for society as opposed to the effects of the market. This isn't a matter of preference, it's absolutely crucial to the function of the ideology. If they ever do that, then it's an admission that social engineering can work, the market can fail, and it's just a matter of figuring out what is the proper mixture to have the best society.
This is what sets it apart from Liberalism, Conservatism, and so on. One outcome against prediction will not send those intellectual foundations crashing down, because they aren't based so heavily on absolute rules applications. Libertarianism, by contrast, if it ever concedes a market failure fixed by a government law, is in deep trouble.
So this in turn leads Libertarians into amazing flights of fancy, for example, to deny the success of civil-rights laws. They must say institutional segregation was somehow all the government's fault, or it would have gone away anyway, or something like that. Rather than racism, it's being made stupid by ideology-poisoning.
Libertarian logic is an axiomatic system that bears very little resemblance to standard deductive thought - which is in part why it's so debilitating to people. It's a little like one of those non-Euclidean geometries, internally valid results can be derived from the postulates, but they sound extremely weird when applied to the real world.
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What Libertarians have the luxury of doing is sitting back and saying "All the problems will be solved if we just let Jesus, err, property into our hearts, err, politics". What they do tactically is to focus on incidents area where the political process is at its worst, and peddle their snake-oil theory, contrasting the gritty reality with their pristine fantasy. Of course the fantasy looks better then!
The reason they get away with this is partly that there is no Libertopia, so we don't have a constant series of rile-'em-up stories to point out where Libertopia is an atrocity. Sometimes I think of writing a fictitious "Dispatches from Libertopia" for this sort of stuff. Such as:
"Today, Judge Rand ruled that the so-called "child-slavery" provision of the standard employment contract between MegaCorp and all employees was valid. As parents have the control of their children until eighteen, the signing-over of their labor until age 18 to MegaCorp was ruled a valid exercise of parental authority. Judge Rand, in his opinion, stated "The government is not to interfere with economic arrangements, absent a showing of fraud or force, as per the Fundamental Law of Libertopia. All parties with the legal right to contract consented, and that is the sole standard of evaluation. The fact that MegaCorp said it would fire any worker who did not agree to this provision is of no consequence, as that is entirely the right of MegaCorp."
"The separate individual child contracts were also ruled to be valid. Although the children were told if they did not sign, Mommy and Daddy would lose their jobs and the whole family might starve, this was regarded as simply the employer's right to hire and fire as he or she sees fit. No force, coercion, or fraud within the meaning of Libertopia Law was applied." Junior Warbucks, a MegaCorp spokesman, said "Do you make your children do chores? What's the difference?"
But of course this can be attacked in various ways, because Libertopia is pure fantasy, and the real-world rarely stacks up well to a fantasy, especially a political one.
A Libertarian can blithely argue that all problems would be solved by private charity, by people of goodwill, or if government would just get out of the way. It's a common tactic:
If there's a problem, our first question is not, "How can government solve this problem," but "What government program must be eliminated to improve this situation?"
Since there's no Libertopia, they never have to admit being in error and to what will happen under their proposed regime. That's a great debating advantage.
Don't argue with a Libertarian. You just get dirty and the Libertarian enjoys it. OR something.
JC
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