Showing posts with label Paleolibertarianism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paleolibertarianism. Show all posts

Saturday, December 2, 2017

Libertarians should campaign to take the center

Libertarians' Only Chance At Success Is Winning From The Center, Not The Extremes - The Jack News:

November 7, 2017 - "Libertarians have many ways to describe their political philosophy to those unfamiliar with the term. David F. Nolan, one of the primary co-founders of the Libertarian Party, used a method that has become a familiar sight ...[a] simple 10 by 10 grid, ... oriented as a diamond.

"On one axis, is a category labeled 'economic freedom,' and on the other 'personal freedom.' The familiar left-liberals and right-conservatives are shown in opposite corners. The libertarian quadrant occupies the top of the chart, at the center. Beneath it, falls the category variously labeled as populists or authoritarians [or totalitarian - gd], and in between fall centrists.

"This concept is familiar to political scientists, and ... reflects the broad idea that libertarians tend to agree with the right more on free markets and economic policy, and more with the left on personal freedoms, social issues, and civil liberties....

"Critics are quick to point out that it’s an imperfect visualization of more complex alignments and disagreements among different political ideologies.'Fiscally conservative and socially liberal' is an incomplete description at best. But it can also convey the broad strokes of how libertarians compare to typical Republicans and Democrats.....

"Even for those who push for a more radical branding, an important part of the message is that libertarianism is equidistant from both the left and right, or that it is distinct and apart from both..... The traditional target for Libertarian campaigns aren’t the hardcore base of Republicans or Democrats, but instead among Libertarians, among independents, and among voters disaffected from either of the two major parties....

"[T]here are some within the liberty movement – those who go by the paleolibertarian label – who would like to see libertarianism move in a more populist direction.... In this way, they might hope to become a part of and influence to movement conservatism, the GOP, and whatever the party will look like after Donald Trump comes out the other end.... You can already see this tilt in Sen. Rand Paul. His strategy has always appeared to be one of working within the mainstream of the Republican Party. Recently, he has downplayed or even mov[ed] to the right on social issues such as immigration and gay marriage.

"But Sen. Paul isn’t alt-right, sticking instead to a more mainstream sort of conservative-libertarian fusionism. This contrasts with the more extreme strain of the paleolibertarian movement includ[ing] such figures as Hans Herman-Hoppe, Lew Rockwell, and others associated with the Mises Institute..... The paleolibertarian alignment ... is a strategy to influence and remake the populist far right. That can include supporting so-called anti-establishment candidates, like Pat Buchanan, Klansman David Duke, and Roy Moore. It includes not just downplaying or watering down libertarian positions on social issues, but radically reversing them and embracing cultural and social conservatism. In turn, this leads to backlash and disputes with more mainstreams libertarian institutions....

"But at a time when both major parties are clearly fleeing the center, and partisan bipolarization is at record highs, there is an opportunity in selling libertarianism as the governing strategy of the only grown-ups in the room.... [T]he liberty movement can build an electoral coalition from the center outward.... There is something in it for everybody, and there’s a coherent guiding principle that ties it all together."

Read more: https://www.thejacknews.com/politics/libertarians-chance-success-winning-from-center-not-extreme-far-right-left/
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Friday, October 13, 2017

Hoppe: unleash police to beat, crush anti-fascists

Hans-Hermann Hoppe: Libertarians Must "Crush The Anti-Fascist Mob" | The Liberty Conservative - Shane Trejo:

October 12, 2017 - "Austrian economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s ‘Libertarian and the Alt-Right’ speech that he delivered for his 12th annual Property and Freedom Society conference that took place last month in Bodrum, Turkey ... was finally released for the public yesterday.... Hoppe delivered a brutal excoriation of social justice warriors, saying that it is incumbent upon libertarians to 'crush the anti-fascist mob.'

"'Public anger must be aroused, and there must be clamoring far and wide for the police to be unleashed and this mob beaten into submission,' Hoppe said, mincing no words....

"After sharing this controversial sentiment, Hoppe rushed to address obvious concerns that more left-leaning libertarians would have regarding compulsory government policing being used to crush leftists.

"'Do you also object … that the police arrest murderers or rapists?' Hoppe asked his critics. 'Aren’t these legitimate tasks performed also in a libertarian order by private police? And if the police are not allowed to do anything about this mob, isn’t it ok then that the target of these attacks – namely the so-called racist right – should take the task upon itself of giving the social justice warriors a bloody nose?'...

"Hoppe listed many pillars on which a realistic libertarian movement can be built, and derided Jeffrey Tucker, a former ally, and the Students for Liberty for embracing leftism and political correctness.

"'We must speak out whenever and wherever … against anyone affronting us with the – by now only all too familiar – politically correct drivel and left egalitarian balderdash,' Hoppe said."

Read more: http://www.thelibertyconservative.com/hans-hermann-hoppe-libertarians-must-crush-the-anti-fascist-mob/
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Saturday, August 19, 2017

Paleolibertarianism's appeal to the alt.right

The Rhetoric of Libertarians and the Unfortunate Appeal to the Alt-Right - Bleeding Heart Libertarians - Steve Horwitz:

August 4, 2017 - "The paleo-libertarian seed that Ron Paul, Murray Rothbard, and Lew Rockwell planted in the 1990s has come to bear some really ugly fruit in the last couple of years as elements of the alt-right have made appearances in various libertarian organizations and venues. Back in February, alt-right hero Richard Spencer stirred up a fuss at the International Students for Liberty Conference in DC after being invited to hang out by a group of students calling themselves the “Hoppe Caucus.” Hans-Hermann Hoppe, long associated with the Ludwig von Mises Institute as well as a panoply of racists and anti-Semites, is perhaps the most popular gateway drug for the alt-right incursion into libertarianism.

"And within the last couple of weeks, Jeff Deist, president of the Mises Institute delivered a talk to students at Mises University entitled “For a New Libertarian.” In that talk, he knocks down an extended strawman of what he thinks constitutes the libertarianism he wants them to reject – what many might call “left-libertarianism'.... Most controversially, Deist, after continuing to argue that family, faith, and the like are the cultural glue that humans need and that libertarians should focus on, decided to end with:
In other words, blood and soil and God and nation still matter to people. Libertarians ignore this at the risk of irrelevance.
"For those who know something about the history of the 20th century, the invocation of 'blood and soil' as something that libertarians should recognize as a valid concern and should appeal to should be chilling. That phrase, which has a history going back at least to the 19th century, was central to the Nazi movement and was at the core of their justification for eliminating those people who did not have connections to the German homeland. It remains a watchword of the nastiest elements on the right, as a quick visit to bloodandsoil.org will demonstrate....

"Perhaps Deist didn’t know all of that. If so, one would expect a decent person to immediately apologize for using that phrase that way in that context. To my knowledge, no such apology has appeared. On the assumption that he is not, in fact, a Nazi, the explanation left standing is that he and his defenders have no problem using rhetoric that will attract those sympathetic to Nazi-like views about nativism and Jews. It’s that lack of concern about engaging in that sort of rhetoric, if not a positive willingness to do so, that is so troubling here, and it is eating away at the liberal roots of libertarianism.....

As I pointed out with the Paul newsletters, all of this appeal to nativism, racism, and anti-Semitism and the like is in deep conflict with libertarianism’s liberalism. It’s particularly in conflict with the liberal cosmopolitanism of someone like Mises. And the use of Nazi language is especially galling as it was the very 'blood and soil' crowd who drove the Jewish Mises out of Vienna....

"Our history is one of liberal tolerance, universalism, and cosmopolitanism, putting the freedom and harmony of all people ahead of the supposed interests of any parochial sub-group, and especially ones defined by the artificial boundaries of nation-states and their subsets. Libertarians ignore this at the risk of irrelevance."

Read more: http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2017/08/rhetoric-libertarians-unfortunate-appeal-alt-right/
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Sunday, June 11, 2017

When Worlds Collude: Hoppe, Bruenig, and their shared vision of the libertarian future (II)

When Worlds Collude: Hoppe, Bruenig, and their shared vision of the libertarian future (II) - George J. Dance, Nolan Chart:

June 10, 2017 - "Paleolibertarian economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and  progressive lawyer and internet troll Matt Bruenig, would appear to have little in common; yet they both have the same idea of what a libertarian world would look like.

"In this two-part article  (Part I is here), I argue that (1) the very idea of libertarianism that Bruenig claims libertarians should be following (2) is not only compatible with, but looks like it would result in, Hoppe’s theorized libertarian society of  the future; furthermore, while (3) Hoppe’s account of that society suffers from serious flaws and errors, (4) Bruenig’s account of that future society, being almost identical to Hoppe’s, has the same flaws and errors.

(3) Where Hoppe goes wrong

"Hoppe’s vision of what a libertarian world of proprietary communities would look like seems riddled with false assumptions. Let us examine a few:

"(1) 'the restoration of private property rights and laissez-faire economics implies a sharp and drastic increase in social ‘discrimination’ and will swiftly eliminate most if not all of the multi-cultural-egalitarian life style experiments.'

"No; there is no reason discrimination would increase sharply or drastically. Some property owners might discriminate on this or that grounds, but there is no reason to think that everyone would: no reason to think that any original community would stop people of different races, religions, or sexual orientations, from living together in it. Nor is there any reason for a community to prohibit “life style experiments,” from same-sex marriage to rock ‘n roll or hip-hop to marijuana use. Proprietary communities would be established for one reason only – to protect the residents’ property rights, and with it the division of labor – not for this other stuff.

"If there were enough people who wished to discriminate, they would be free to sell their homes, leave with their money, buy new land and set up their own new communities. However, for every one of those set up, discrimination would actually decrease in the communities those people left.

"(2) 'towns and villages could and would do what they did as a matter of course until well into the nineteenth century in Europe and the United States: to post signs regarding entrance requirements to the town, and once in town for entering specific pieces of property (no beggars, bums, or homeless, but also no Moslems, Hindus, Jews, Catholics, etc.); to expel as trespassers those who do not fulfill these requirements.'

"Yes, they could; but no, they probably would not. Why would any town or village in 21st-century America do, or even care about, what towns and villages did in 19th-century Europe? In today’s America, Moslems, Hindus, Jews (both Sephardic and Ashkenazi), and Catholics (Hispanic, Italian, Irish, and more) live and own property in existing small towns and villages all over the country. Why in the world would they agree to a community covenant whereby they immediately had their real property seized and were expelled 'as trespassers'?

"If Hoppe wanted to live in a community with such rules, he would be free to join with other grumpy old white men, leave, and found his own community somewhere; but he would have no freedom or power to take over and ethnically cleanse any existing community."

Read more: https://www.nolanchart.com/when-worlds-collude-hoppe-bruenig-and-their-shared-vision-of-the-libertarian-future-ii
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Saturday, June 10, 2017

When Worlds Collude: Hoppe, Bruenig, and their shared vision of the libertarian future (I)

When Worlds Collude: Hoppe, Bruenig, and their shared vision of the libertarian future (I) - George J. Dance, Nolan Chart:

June 9, 2017 - "Progressive lawyer, online pundit, and internet troll Matt Bruenig has a question for libertarians: 'My first question for Cato and libertarians more generally is this: What is up with Hans-Hermann Hoppe?'

"I wish I could respond, 'Who?' Alas, I am well aware of Hoppe. Many libertarians and other readers, though, may have just that response. Fortunately, Bruenig has provided an introduction:
For the unacquainted, Hoppe is a very prominent libertarian academic, certainly well known within intellectual libertarian circles. He ironically works at the University of Nevada as an economics professor, making him a public employee. He publishes frequently in libertarian academic journals, is a Distinguished Fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, founded the Property & Freedom Society, is frequently referenced by other libertarians as one of them, and [authored a] 2001 book Democracy: The God That Failed. It is a tad on the long side, but it’s really good, the [following] quotes especially.”
"We will look at Bruenig’s quotes later. For now it is enough to say that, while Hoppe and some of his admirers self-identify as libertarians, many if not most libertarians who know of him want nothing to do with him.

"Here is an assessment of Hoppe that I suspect many libertarians who have read him or his admirers would accept:
The errors of Hans-Hermann Hoppe are regrettable for two reasons: Firstly, Hoppe is a highly intelligent and well-educated economist who – for whatever reasons – fails to notice when he does damage to the values of freedom and property, which he claims to support. This is the tragic personal side of Hans-Hermann Hoppe. But it is also tragic for academic discussions: At a time when we are surrounded by ever growing welfare states we badly need thinkers like Hoppe to show us how to tackle today’s problems. But instead of doing that, Hoppe prefers to take refuge in his pipe dreams of a so-called ‘natural order’, which rather resembles the abyss of a variation of right-wing totalitarianism. For all these reasons, for all his errors and mistakes and for his wrong-headed methodology we may expect Hoppe’s ideas to remain a footnote in the history of political thought. And it may well be better this way. An effective strategy of liberation would look very different. If Hoppe continues to use the terms ‘liberalism’ and ‘freedom’ for his authoritarian and pseudo-liberal agenda, it is time for the true liberals to claim back these terms from him.
"It is only necessary to add that (1) the very idea of libertarianism that Bruenig claims libertarians should be following (2) is not only compatible with, but looks like it would result in, Hoppe’s theorized future libertarian society; furthermore, while (3) Hoppe’s account of that society suffers from serious flaws and errors, (4) Bruenig’s account of that future society, being based on his reading of Hoppe, has the same flaws and errors. Making those four points is easy enough, but demonstrating them requires a bit more work."

Read more: https://www.nolanchart.com/when-world-collude-hoppe-bruenig-and-their-shared-vision-of-the-libertarian-future-i
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Sunday, November 15, 2015

Meet the "brutalists" (I): Hans-Hermann Hoppe

A Realistic Libertarianism - LewRockwellLewRockwell.com - Hans-Hermann Hoppe:

September 30, 2014 - "Psychologically or sociologically, the attraction of non-discrimination policies to libertarians can be explained by the fact that an over-proportionally large number of libertarians are misfits or simply odd – or to use Rothbard’s description,  'hedonists, libertines, immoralists, militant enemies of religion …., moochers, scamsters, and petty crooks and racketeers' – who became attracted to libertarianism because of its alleged ‘tolerance’ toward misfits and outliers, and who now want to use it as a vehicle to free themselves from all discrimination typically, in everyday life, dished out to their likes....

""From that vantage point, the ‘victim’ groups and their ‘victimizers’ are easily identified. As it turns out, ‘victims’ make up the vast majority of mankind. Everyone and every conceivable group is a ‘victim,’ except that small part of mankind composed of white (including northern Asian) heterosexual males, living traditional, bourgeois family lives....

"While this view of human history strikes one as bizarre in light of the amazing civilizational achievements originating from precisely this minority group of ‘victimizers,’ it coincides almost completely with the victimology also propagated by cultural Marxists....

"You, you small group of ‘victimizers,’ must always be especially ‘nice,’ forgiving, and inclusive vis-a-vis all members of the vast majority of ‘victims,’ i.e., the long and familiar list of everyone except white, heterosexual males! And as for enforcement: All ‘victimizers’ not demonstrating proper respect to some victim-class member, i.e., victimizers who are ‘nasty,’ unforgiving or exclusive or who say ‘nasty’ or disrespectful things about them, must be publicly shunned, humiliated, and shamed into obedience!

"Why should anyone be particularly nice to anyone else – apart from respecting ones’ respective private property rights in certain specified physical means (goods)? To be nice is a deliberate action and takes an effort, like all actions do. There are opportunity costs.... Time devoted to ‘niceness to others’ is time lost to do other, possibly more worthwhile things ... in rewarding the vast majority of ‘victims’ with extra love, care and attention, one accomplishes precisely this: less time and effort is devoted to exhibiting nasty behavior toward those actually most deserving of it. The power of the State will not be weakened by universal ‘niceness,’ then, but strengthened.

"And why is it in particular the small minority of white, heterosexual males, and especially its most successful members that owes some extra-kindness to the vast majority of all other people? Why not the other way around? After all, most if not all technical inventions, machines, tools and gadgets in current use everywhere and anywhere, on which our current living standards and comforts largely and decisively depend, originated with them. All other people, by and large, only imitated what they had invented and constructed first. All others inherited the knowledge embodied in the inventors’ products for free. And isn’t it the typical white hierarchical family household of father, mother, their common children and prospective heirs, and their ‘bourgeois’ conduct and lifestyle – i.e., everything the Left disparages and maligns – that is the economically most successful model of social organization the world has ever seen, with the greatest accumulation of capital goods (wealth) and the highest average standards of living? And isn’t it only on account of the great economic achievements of this minority of ‘victimizers’ that a steadily increasing number of ‘victims’ could be integrated and partake in the advantages of a worldwide network of the division of labor? And isn’t it only on account of the success of the traditional white, bourgeois family model also that so-called ‘alternative lifestyles’ could at all emerge and be sustained over time? Do not most of today’s ‘victims,’ then, literally owe their lives and their current living to the achievements of their alleged ‘victimizers?’

"Why not the ‘victims’ giving special respect to their ‘victimizers’? Why not bestow special honor to economic achievement and success instead of failure, and why not give special praise to traditional, ‘normal’ lifestyles and conduct rather than any abnormal alternative that requires, as a necessary condition of its own continued existence, a pre-existing dominant surrounding society of ‘normal’ people with ‘normal’ lifestyles?...

"In effect, by outlawing all discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation, age, race, religion, national origin, etc., etc., a vast number of people are declared State-certified ‘victims.’ Anti-discrimination laws, then, are an official call upon all ‘victims’ to find fault and complain to the State about their own ‘favorite’ ‘oppressors,’ and especially the more wealthy ones among them, and their ‘oppressive’ machinations, i.e., their ‘sexism,’ ‘homophobia,’ ‘chauvinism,’ ‘nativism,’ ‘racism,’ ‘xenophobia,’ or whatever, and for the State to respond to such complaints by cutting the ‘oppressors’ down to size, i.e., in successively dispossessing them of their property and authority and correspondingly expanding and strengthening its own monopolistic power vis-a-vis an increasingly weakened, fragmented, fractionalized and de-homogenized society.

"Ironically, then, and contrary to their self-proclaimed goal of wanting to shrink or even eliminate the State, the left-libertarians with their peculiar, egalitarian victimology become accomplices to the State and effectively contribute to the aggrandizement of its power. Indeed, the left-libertarian vision of a discrimination-free multicultural society is, to use Peter Brimelow’s phrase, Viagra to the State."

Read more: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/09/hans-hermann-hoppe/smack-down/
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The above text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (CC BY 3.0) license

Sunday, November 8, 2015

I wanted to print a defense of 'libertarian brutalism', but ...

Yesterday I excerpted, and linked to, an article by Jeffrey Tucker contrasting two types of libertarians. The first holds culturally 'liberal' or 'cosmopolitan' views: "human co-operation," "the rights of all", "allow[ing] human associations of all sorts to flourish," and "getting along rather than tearing each other apart." The second holds culturally 'conservative,' 'reactionary' or 'tribalist' views: wanting to "form homogeneous tribes" "work out their biases," "ostracize others based on 'politically incorrect standards," and "hate to their hearts content" in their own set-apart space.

The above is a conflict over ends, not means: both types are libertarian insofar as they see liberty as the way to their ends, and state power as an impediment to them. However, Tucker sees inescapable conflict when these two come together. And even the terms he adopts for them - "humanitarians" vs. "brutalists" - show his bias.

That's a bias I share, by the way. But that is not what the blog is for; it's meant to present the "Big Tent", libertarianism in all its facets. So, while I printed Tucker's article, I didn't want to leave it at that, giving only one side of the issue.

Today, then, I went looking for a defense of 'brutalism': a response to Tucker that would either explain why 'brutalism' is fine, or, at minimum, show how 'brutalists' and 'humanitarians' can work together. But ...  I could find nothing on the web. There were a lot of responses to Tucker's article; but none that met his argument directly. Instead, they decided to talk about a different issue.

Christoper Cantwell, for instance, describes Tucker's article thusly: "In the ongoing conflict between leftist infiltrators who want to redefine libertarianism, and purists who wish to stay on message, yet another high profile libertarian has ditched principle for popularity, and condemned principled action as racist, and misogynist." Huh? How are promoting tribalism, ostracism, and hatred "staying on message?" When did promoting those values become "principled action"?

They didn't, of course, and Cantwell does not even try to pretend they did. Instead (while accusing Tucker of attacking a strawman), he attacks a strawman of his own, the idea of "thick libertarianism": "According to Jeffrey Tucker, the people Tom Woods referred to as 'thick libertarians' are the 'humanitarians' who love all that is beautiful about liberty."

"Thick libertarianism" is the idea that liberal, and even progressive, end-values are or should be somehow part of the libertarian message. "Thin libertarianism," on the other hand, is the idea that libertarianism, per se, is end-value-neutral. That does not mean, as Objectivists like Peter Schwartz would have it, that libertarians espouse no end-values: it means that each libertarian espouses his or her own end-values, and advocates liberty as a means to those.

Holding to a "thin" libertarianism indeed means staying on message: if something doesn't affect liberty, the movement and party should leave it up to the individual. So it's not surprising that Cantwell tried this dodge. What is surprising is that virtually everyone else writing against Tucker's article did, too.

For instance, TJ at The Anarchist Notebook responded: "Once more there is an attempt to define libertarianism as something more than simply being against the initiation of violence or aggression against an innocent person or their property." Matthew Muncel, at Divine Anarchy, wrote an "Intro to Brutalism" explaining that was the whole point:  "Jeffery Tucker joined ranks among the Thick libertarians and wrote an entire article in which he labeled himself and all those like him as 'humanitarian' and the 'thin libertarians' as Brutalists."  Daniel Phillips of The Intellectual Conservative chimed in that "I certainly side with the 'thin' 'brutalists' associated with the Ludwig von Mises Institute and LewRockwell.com."

Even those who tried to see both sides did the same, like Henry Moore at The Libertarian Liquidationist: "As someone who respects individuals and ideas in both camps, I can sympathize with each. My alliance with certain humanitarians (roughly left/center thick libertarians) is more pragmatic, and my identification as a brutalist (roughly right/center thin libertarians) is more principled."

And that was it for the day: No attempts to deal with Tucker and his thesis; nothing but attacks on a "thick libertarian" strawman, perhaps in the hopes that the resulting pile of straw would succeed in hiding the issue. Perhaps I'll try again tomorrow.

Saturday, November 7, 2015

2 types of libertarians: 'humanitarians' vs. 'brutalists'

Against Libertarian Brutalism | Foundation for Economic Education: Jeffrey A. Tucker, The Freeman:

March 12, 2014 - "Why should we favor human liberty over a social order ruled by power? In providing the answer, I would suggest that libertarians can generally be divided into two camps: humanitarians and brutalists.

"The humanitarians are drawn to reasons such as the following. Liberty allows peaceful human cooperation. It inspires the creative service of others. It keeps violence at bay. It allows for capital formation and prosperity. It protects human rights of all against invasion. It allows human associations of all sorts to flourish on their own terms. It socializes people with rewards toward getting along rather than tearing each other apart, and leads to a world in which people are valued as ends in themselves rather than fodder in the central plan.

"But they are not the only reasons that people support liberty. There is a segment of the population of self-described libertarians — described here as brutalists — who find all the above rather boring, broad, and excessively humanitarian. To them, what’s impressive about liberty is that it allows people to assert their individual preferences, to form homogeneous tribes, to work out their biases in action, to ostracize people based on 'politically incorrect' standards, to hate to their heart’s content so long as no violence is used as a means....

"These two impulses are radically different. The first values the social peace that emerges from freedom, while the second values the freedom to reject cooperation in favor of gut-level prejudice. The first wants to reduce the role of power and privilege in the world, while the second wants the freedom to assert power and privilege within the strict confines of private property rights and the freedom to disassociate....

"Humanitarianism ... seeks the well-being of the human person and the flourishing of society in all its complexity. Libertarian humanitarianism sees the best means to achieve this as the self-ordering social system itself, unimpeded by external controls through the violent means of the State. The goal here is essentially benevolent, and the means by which it is achieved put a premium on social peace, free association, mutually beneficial exchange, the organic development of institutions, and the beauty of life itself....

"[B]rutalism is rooted in the pure theory of the rights of individuals to live their values whatever they may be. The core truth is there and indisputable, but the application is made raw to push a point. Thus do the brutalists assert the right to be racist, the right to be a misogynist, the right to hate Jews or foreigners, the right to ignore civil standards of social engagement, the right to be uncivilized, to be rude and crude....

"Further, the brutalist believes that he already knows the results of human liberty, and they often conform to the throne-and-altar impulses of times past. After all, in their view, liberty means the unleashing of all the basest impulses of human nature that they believe the modern state has suppressed: the desire to abide in racial and religious homogeneity, the moral permanency of patriarchy, the revulsion against homosexuality, and so on. What most people regard as modernity’s advances against prejudice, the brutalists regard as imposed exceptions from the long history of humanity’s tribalist and religiously based instincts.

"Of course the brutalist as I’ve described him is an ideal type, probably not fully personified in any particular thinker. But the brutalist impulse is everywhere in evidence, especially on social media. It is a tendency of thought with predictable positions and biases. It is a main source for racist, sexist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic strains within the libertarian world — at once denying that this sentence is true while asserting with equal passion the rights of individuals to hold and act on such views....

"It all comes down to the fundamental motivation behind the support of liberty itself. What is its overarching purpose? What is its dominant historical contribution? What is its future? Here the humanitarians are fundamentally at odds with brutalism."

Read more: http://fee.org/freeman/against-libertarian-brutalism/
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