Paul Kienitz nails the Libertarian scam

[feargach]

Great little essay. "I'm Still Not a Libertarian (so I guess that means I'm opposed to personal freedom)"

http://world.std.com/~mhuben/pk-is-against-liberty.html

He says:

"The first fallacy is one I call the Fallacy of Revolution. It can be found in any movement that seeks to radically revise the underpinnings of society, whether by abolishing money, imposing a theocracy, eliminating undesirable ethnic groups, repealing all law, organizing everyone's diet according to principles of macrobiotics, or whatever other secret of a perfect society any group comes up with. In particular, it comes up in exactly equal form among communists seeking to eliminate private property and anarcho-libertarians trying to do the opposite. The fallacy can be expressed more or less as follows:

By making these radical changes, we are removing the root cause of all the failures and evils of society as it presently stands. This will eliminate all of the existing problems, and since we have no knowledge of what new problems might arise, we can assume there will be none. Everything will work right, because there are no foreseeable things that can go wrong."

Further, he says:

The second fallacy is one that I personally refer to as the Libertarian Fallacy, since unlike the Revolutionary Fallacy it is specific to this branch of philosophy. It is popular with several subtypes of conservatives and most anarchists, as well as with Libertarians. It can be expressed as the idea that freedom is measured by absence of laws.

Another say of stating it is that only the government can restrict your rights. ...

To me, the question is how much power others have over you and how constrained your choice of actions is, not whether the constraint is by public action rather than private action. In the viewpoint of those who hold this fallacy, what matters is how free you are on paper, not how free you are in what choices are actually open to you right now in real life. According to this view, a destitute person with no public support is more free than one who gets some kind of pension or welfare, despite the fact that the latter is the one who can do many things that are closed off to the former.

Well worth reading the whole thing. Even better will be watching the contortions of the Libertarians trying to argue against it.

[Cael]

With regards to Communism, this joker is setting up a strawman. Communists doent say that abolishing private landed property will get rid of all social problems - but that it will get rid of the source of the great bulk of them.

[cd27]

abolishing money, socialism anyone!

[Hazlitt]

It will wreck feargachs head when he discovers that neither Mises nor Hayek were Anarchist or Libertarian

[lapsedmethodist]

Ron Paul !

[TommyO'Brien]

Ron Paul !

Who? Oh yes, some minor US Congressman humiliated in the primaries for the GOP primaries.

[CookieMonster]

It will wreck feargachs head when he discovers that neither Mises nor Hayek were Anarchist or Libertarian

I wasn't going to say anything.

[20000miles]

According to this view, a destitute person with no public support is more free than one who gets some kind of pension or welfare, despite the fact that the latter is the one who can do many things that are closed off to the former.

It might take some time to sink in, but the tired cliche of being "free to starve" rests on a confusion between "freedom" and "infinte abundance".

I wonder if Mr. Kienitz thinks that slaves were better off in slavery than as free men?*

(See, I can misprepresent the arguments of my opponents too)

[tompatrick]

at last proof Libertas was a scam

[Jethro]

Walter Lippman once wrote:

In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.

Is that a better approximation of what we are arguing about?