The COVID Cult

The Covidian Cult | Off-Guardian - CJ Hopkins:

October 13, 2020 - "One of the hallmarks of totalitarianism is mass conformity to a psychotic official narrative ... that has little or no connection to reality and that is contradicted by a preponderance of facts. Nazism and Stalinism are the classic examples, but the phenomenon is better observed in cults.... What many people fail to understand is that to those who fall prey to them (whether individual cult members or entire totalitarian societies) such narratives do not register as psychotic. On the contrary, they feel entirely normal. Everything in their social 'reality' reifies and reaffirms the narrative, and anything that challenges or contradicts it is perceived as an existential threat.

"These narratives are invariably paranoid, portraying the cult as threatened or persecuted by an evil enemy or antagonistic force which only unquestioning conformity to the cult’s ideology can save its members from.... The point is not the identity of the enem. The point is the atmosphere of paranoia and hysteria the official narrative generates, which keeps the cult members (or the society) compliant.... In addition to being paranoid, these narratives are often internally inconsistent [and] illogical.... This ... forces their adherents to attempt to reconcile their inconsistency and irrationality ... in order to remain in good standing with the cult. Such reconciliation is of course impossible, and causes the cult members’ minds to short circuit and abandon any semblance of critical thinking, which is precisely what the cult leader wants. Moreover, cult leaders will often radically change these narratives for no apparent reason, forcing their cult members to abruptly forswear (and often even denounce as 'heresy') the beliefs they had previously been forced to profess, and behave as if they had never believed them, which causes their minds to further short circuit, until they eventually give up even trying to think rationally, and just mindlessly parrot whatever nonsensical gibberish the cult leader fills their heads with....

"If all this sounds familiar, good. Because the same techniques that most cult leaders use to control the minds of the members of their cults are used by totalitarian systems to control the minds of entire societies: Milieu Control, Loaded Language, Sacred Science, Demand for Purity, and other standard mind-control techniques. It can happen to pretty much any society, just as anyone can fall prey to a cult, given the right set of circumstances. It is happening to most of our societies right now. An official narrative is being implemented. A totalitarian official narrative. A totally psychotic official narrative, no less delusional than that of the Nazis, or the Manson family, or any other cult. Most people cannot see that it is happening, for the simple reason that it is happening to them....

"And this is why so many people — people who are able to easily recognize totalitarianism in cults and foreign countries — cannot perceive the totalitarianism that is taking shape now, right in front of their faces (or, rather, right inside their minds). Nor can they perceive the delusional nature of the official “Covid-19” narrative, no more than those in Nazi Germany were able to perceive how completely delusional their official 'master race' narrative was. Such people are neither ignorant nor stupid. They have been successfully initiated into a cult, which is essentially what totalitarianism is, albeit on a societal scale.

"Their initiation into the Covidian Cult began in January, when the medical authorities and corporate media turned on The Fear with projections of hundreds of millions of deaths and fake photos of people dropping dead in the streets. The psychological conditioning has continued for months. The global masses have been subjected to a constant stream of propaganda, manufactured hysteria, wild speculation, conflicting directives, exaggerations, lies, and tawdry theatrical effects. Lockdowns. Emergency field hospitals and morgues. The singing-dancing NHS staff. Death trucks. Overflowing ICUs. Dead Covid babies. Manipulated statistics. Goon squads. Masks. And all the rest of it.

"Eight months later, here we are. The Head of the Health Emergencies Program at the WHO [World Health Organization] has basically confirmed an IFR [infection fatality rate] of 0.14%, approximately the same as the seasonal flu.... The 'science' argument is officially over. An increasing number of doctors and medical experts are breaking ranks and explaining how the current mass hysteria over 'cases' (which now includes perfectly healthy people) is essentially meaningless propaganda, for example, in this segment on ARD, one of the big mainstream German TV channels. And then there is the existence of Sweden, and other countries which are not playing ball with the official Covid-19 narrative, which makes a mockery of the ongoing hysteria. 

"The point is, the facts are all available.... From mainstream outlets and medical experts. From the Center for F*cking Disease Control. Which does not matter in the least, not to the members of the Covidian Cult. Facts do not matter to totalitarians and cult members. What matters is loyalty to the cult or the party. Which means we have a serious problem, those of us to whom facts still matter, and who have been trying to use them to convince the Covidian cultists that they are wrong about the virus … for going on eight months at this point.

"While it is crucial to continue reporting the facts and sharing them with as many people as possible — which is becoming increasingly difficult due to the censorship of alternative and social media — it is important to accept what we are up against. What we are up against is not a misunderstanding or a rational argument over scientific facts. It is a fanatical ideological movement.... Instead of the cult existing as an island within the dominant culture, the cult has become the dominant culture, and those of us who have not joined the cult have become the isolated islands within it."

Read more: https://off-guardian.org/2020/10/13/the-covidian-cult/

Lockdowns and libertarianism (2): Crisis and ideology

by George J. Dance

As regular blog readers have no doubt noticed, since April I have given increasing space to the COVID-19 pandemic and the unprecedented government interventions (the lockdowns and business shutdowns) that accompanied it. I hope readers have enjoyed that because, whether you have or not, I expect it to continue. As I see it, we are living through another one of those pivotal crises  – like the two World Wars, the Depression, and the War on Terrorism  – that have defined modern history.

As a libertarian, I bring my ideological bias to the table. In this case, I have been informed by the work of economist Robert Higgs, whose masterwork Crisis and Leviathan documented well how governments (1) have a systemic bias towards increasing power; (2) use crises to vastly expand their power; and (3) retain much of their new power after a crisis is past. (Dr. Higgs explains his thesis at greater length in the accompanying video.) My bias obviously affects what material I forward, and I cannot pretend that it is non-existent. What I can and will do is admit that my bias can be wrong, and let it be challenged by empirical evidence.

At the same time, I can evaluate others' ideological biases the same way. In the mainstream media, I continually encounter a statist or pro-government bias: that "When public safety is threatened, whether by war or disease, our dependence on government becomes immediately and viscerally obvious"; that ""government has the power and resources to internalize the externalities of contagion and coordinate a rational response;" and that in March "a large and activist government was all that stood between us and mass privation and suffering on a mind-boggling scale" (as a Niskanen Center article recently summed up).

In early March, when no one knew much about the novel coronavirus, it was easy to believe that millions of us were going to die, and that only unprecedented, massive government intervention could save us from untold death and suffering. It was a mass panic reaction, but panic in a crisis is understandable and excusable. However, governance should not be informed by panic alone. Not only libertarian ideological biases, but the prevailing statist ones as well, should be challengeable by the evidence.

How dangerous the virus is, is an empirical question, one that depends on objective facts about the attack rate (how many people in a population are at risk) and the infection fatality rate (how many people who catch it will die). We had no way of knowing either in March, but there has been a surfeit of data in the succeeding three months. There is good reason to think that the "millions of deaths" claim was hyperbole. Nor can we rely on models that simply assume that lethality: we need at least a reasonable, fact-based estimate of the worst possible case, of how many people could possibly have been in danger.

Whether government interventions averted this mass death, or any death (on net), is also an empirical claim. It requires accurate death counts, and comparing them to the policies in place. It also requires causally linking specific deaths to specific interventions. (For instance, did stay-at-home orders increase infections within households more or less than they lowered them in the workplace?)

Finally, we need to measure the effects of voluntary social distancing. Hitherto, government's scientific advisers have often assumed the effect of voluntary social distancing to be zero. However, some of those advisers have begun noticing the phenomenon, if only to blame it for the recession that followed the lockdown.

I would like to discover that voluntary social distancing (combined with a use of government's police power consistent with libertarian principles) would have been enough to reduce most of the disease's harm, while avoiding the long-term harms that the government interventions have caused. That is my null hypothesis, which I think is supportable iff it cannot be overthrown. Hence my preoccupation with the subject in future months. While conclusions reached may be too late for this pandemic, I cling to the hope that what we learn this time will inform our response to the next one.

Also read: Lockdowns and libertarianism (1)

Iowa, New Hampshire, and soft libertarians

by George J. Dance

As a political junkie, I eagerly turned to the news this morning to see the New Hampshire primary results. Not for the winners: I expected Trump and Sanders to win. (They both had won the earlier  Iowa caucuses.) I was looking further down, to see how the 'soft libertarian' candidates in the major parties would perform.

What is a 'soft libertarian'?, I hear you ask. I can best explain that term by pointing to the Nolan Chart [pictured at right], that classifies voters into four quadrants: liberal (or progressive), conservative, libertarian, and statist (authoritarian or, at the very bottom point, totalitarian). A 'hard' voter is totally committed to one of those four ideologies; a 'hard libertarian,' for example, is someone whose political beliefs put them up at the top point of the diamond. A 'soft libertarian' would be anyone else, whose political beliefs are less extreme (or less consistent, or more independent) but still land them inside the libertarian quadrant.

Depending on how they are measured, soft libertarians make up as much as 25% of voters. Traditionally the Republican Party has owned that vote: since the 1970s at least, soft libertarians have been voting GOP, by margins as high as 75%. However, Ross Perot's candidacies cracked that party's hold on many of those voters; and while George W. Bush brought them back, he didn't hold them long. A large number of soft libertarians voted Democratic in 2006 - I don't know the number, but it was a big factor in the Dems taking both houses of Congress that year. Obama's two terms, and the Tea Party movement, brought many back to the GOP, but whether they'll stay with it this time is frankly questionable.

In 2012 and 2016, the only candidate appealing to soft libertarians was Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson. And, to the extent he was heard, they responded. Johnson got the LP its two highest vote totals, over 1 million in 2012 and over 4 million in 2016. After that, one would think, the larger parties would have tried to capture those voters by offering them something. Instead, both parties have tacked toward one or another variety of statism: Democrats have flirted with socialism, the Sanders wins being enough said. Meanwhile, the GOP is shedding its libertarianism, replacing the Reaganist ideology of fusionism (which specifically included and appealed to libertarians) with corporatism, or as some call it, "economic nationalism".

As this month's featured post (from the London School of Economics' US Centre) explains, soft libertarians could be kingmakers this year. However, rather than attract soft libertarians, both Democrats and Republicans seem intent on driving them away. 

Hence the importance of the New Hampshire results, as the first test of where the soft libertarian vote would go. Because of the Free State Project, that state has an outsize proportion of libertarians both hard and soft. New Hampshire also has an open primary, where anyone - Democrat, Republican, other party, independent, or even a habitual non-voter - can vote in either the Democratic or the GOP primary.

There was a soft libertarian, Bill Weld and Tulsi Gabbard, running in either party. Both are strong opponents of interventionism, the surveillance state, the drug war, and the imperial presidency; while both also have held non-libertarian positions, most notably on gun control. Both were counting on soft libertarian support in New Hampshire. So how did they do?

Gabbard's campaign, with its strong opposition to an interventist foreign policy, was endorsed by libertarians from Ron Paul to Gary Johnson. She ended up with under 4% of the vote, nowhere enough to make her a contender. She will be gone from the race in a month, and with her will go most of her party's appeal to soft libertarians.

Weld's campaign is more problematic. He beat expectations, but fell short of the 10% he was hoping for. (He received 9%.) He is wealthy enough to fund his own limited campaign, so he will stay in and hope for a breakthrough somewhere else. But, so far, his campaign is not resonating with soft libertarian voters, either.

That leaves a better-than-ever opportunity for the Libertarian Party, if they cared to reach out to those voters with another 'soft libertarian' campaign like the Johnson ones. However, many LP members seem determined to run anything but. Libertarians didn't vote in New Hampshire yesterday; but based on last weekend's Iowa caucus vote, a plurality just shy of a majority is backing Jacob Hornberger, a thinktank founder and director, who wants to run to 'educate' Americans with a hard libertarian message.

To repeat, the soft libertarian vote could be key to deciding this election. If faced with the alternatives of statism (either the more progressive variety of socialism or the more conservative variety of corporatism) versus hard libertarianism, where will they turn?
   

GOP's new non-libertarian conservative ideology

GOLDBERG: Conservative divide pits anti-left against anti-state | Toronto Sun  - Jonah Goldberg:

January 25, 2020 - "For most Americans, conservatism basically means the stuff Republicans are for.... I don’t mean this as a criticism.... One of the great things about America is that politics – never mind political philosophy – isn’t a big part of most people’s lives. Associating a body of ideas with the institutions (political parties) that are directly charged with putting ideas into action is a pragmatic way to cut to the chase. Paying attention to what the eggheads and theorists of the left and right want the parties to do is only worthwhile if you’re especially interested in politics.

"The challenge for conservatives these days is that the Republican Party really doesn’t know what it’s for, beyond defending President Trump and opposing Democrats and socialism. While the fight over impeachment sucks up all of the oxygen in public, there’s a robust battle behind the scenes about what it means to be a conservative.

"Some of it has spilled out into public view, usually centering on nationalism – what it means, what it requires in terms of policy, how it differs from traditional conservatism or whether it differs at all. Sens. Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio, for example, have offered thoughtful versions of 'economic nationalism,' pitting it against libertarianism (both real and imagined) ... a common theme is the idea that government should be more interventionist in the economy: Policymakers should be more willing to overrule the marketplace on everything from big tech to child care to trade....

"Trump has now given more aid to farmers than Obama ever gave Detroit, and if an elected Republican has complained about it, I missed it. In fairness, the farmer bailouts were necessitated by the president’s trade wars. But that just demonstrates Republicans’ willingness to substitute their judgment for the market’s....

"There’s a cultural version of the nationalist project as well. Some conservative intellectuals – mostly, but not exclusively, Catholic – believe the state has a role in imposing its judgment in the marketplace of ideas....

"[T]here are those who are anti-left and those who are anti-state. For ... illustration, some people are opposed to public schools because they don’t think education is a proper task for the state. (Milton Friedman called them 'government schools.') Others on the right think public schools are fine; they just object to how progressives operate them....

"Another fault line revolves around the question, 'Which state are we talking about?'.... I’m very libertarian at the national level, mostly libertarian at the state level and pretty communitarian at the local level. Letting people live the way they want to live where they actually live, so long as basic civil rights are respected, has always struck me as the best way to maximize happiness and democratic accountability.

"This raises a final question: Can the state actually do what you want it to do? At the core of the conservative critique of the left has always been a basic skepticism that top-down planning from Washington can work. It used to be that the champions of such planning were mostly on the left. That’s not true any longer. And it remains to be seen whether top-down planning from the right works any better than it does from the left."

Read more: https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/goldberg-conservative-divide-pits-anti-left-against-anti-state
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Now Tyler Cowan takes a run at libertarianism

Not Losing Sight of the Classical Liberal Ideal – Richard M. Ebeling (01/07/2020) – WallStreetWindow.com:

January 7, 2020 - "Today, the media and ... public policy publications are awash in articles and essays insisting that the postwar 'neoliberal' era has finally and inescapably come to an end.... Most of these criticisms and challenges have come from 'progressives,' the new 'democratic' socialists, and a growing number in the Democratic Party.... But criticisms and rejection of domestic and international liberalism have also come from conservatives, who have called for a 'new nationalism,' that would require a more “activist” state to serve national interests and identity....

"Now another voice has offered his view on whether or not classical liberalism and libertarianism can survive in their historical forms of defending individual liberty, free markets, and a government primarily limited to the protecting of people’s individual rights to life, liberty and honestly acquired property without interventionist regulation and compulsory redistribution. And his answer, too, is, 'No.'

"Tyler Cowen is a prominent professor of economics at George Mason University in Virginia. He has written a number of insightful books devoted to aspects of the economics and culture of a free society, and has written regular columns for both The New York Times and Bloomberg News. He also co-authors the provocative and widely read blogsite, 'Marginal Revolution'....

"The gist of his argument is that classical liberalism and libertarianism are out-of-date and passé political philosophies that had their relevance and significance in the 19th century for advancing the cause of personal liberty and freer markets, and during the first half of the 20th century as an argument against radical socialist central planning. But society and its problems have moved on and what people want from their government has become more expansive....  That’s just the way it is, Professor Cowen asserts. Live with it and give up the classical liberal and libertarian idea of prosperity and a highly limited government. With prosperity will come bigger government, he asserts.

"The 'inevitability' implied in this is, in fact, nothing of the sort. It could be just as reasonably argued that as the members of the society grow in wealth and improved standards of living, they will need and desire less government dependency and support. Rising standards of living enable more people to financially support themselves, as well as providing the means for those gaining in material comfort and ease to have the monetary means to demonstrate more willingness and generosity to assist some who may still be less well off than themselves through avenues of private charity and philanthropy; plus, having the greater leisure time to participate in such endeavors through the institutions of civil society.

"Why any such spirit of private giving and benevolence has diminished in fairly wealthy countries in Europe and in various circles in the United States may be taken as the consequences resulting from governmental redistributive largess and an ideology that has weakened the belief in or the goodness of 'self-reliance' and personal responsibility.... Ten years ago, the German news magazine “Der Spiegel,” reported that in a survey of leading businessmen in Germany, the vast majority said that private giving was not their responsibility; it was the job of government....  Where did that come from, other than an ideological and intellectual culture that presumes and persuades too many in society that political paternalism is superior to personal responsibility and the voluntary private sector....

"Why do so many people accept the notion that imposing and raising legal minimum wages are good for people at the lower income levels? Do they have some inexplicable “propensity” to demand higher wages for others through government mandate as their own economic circumstances improve? I think the more reasonable explanation is a failure to understand and appreciate all the implications of the logic and reality of supply and demand in labor markets. That is, it is the result of wrong and faulty ideas that are sometimes easier to impress upon people than the often abstract and indirect chains of causation through which market processes operate, including in the demand for labor.

"So, if we observe that as wealth and material betterment have improved in our society, people at the same time have been supporting increases in redistributive welfare programs, the more rational explanation is an educational, cultural and intellectual setting in which academics and opinion makers and writers have been successful in influencing the climate of ideas in socialist and welfare statist directions through their ability to interpret the past and the present through the prism of their collectivist ideas."

Read more: https://wallstreetwindow.com/2020/01/not-losing-sight-of-the-classical-liberal-ideal-richard-m-ebeling-01-07-2020/
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'Post-liberal' conservatives reject libertarianism

Conservative Divide: Libertarians, Moralists, and the Danger of Schism | National Review - Jonah Goldberg:

June 12, 2019 - "The idea holding together the conservative movement since the 1960s was called 'fusionism.' The concept ... was that freedom and virtue were inextricably linked..... Frank Meyer, the foremost architect of fusionism, put it: 'Truth withers when freedom dies, however righteous the authority that kills it; and free individualism uninformed by moral value rots at its core and soon brings about conditions that pave the way for surrender to tyranny.' This idea may have passed its sell-by date.

"The intellectual Right ... has always had ... internal fault lines.... These cracks were mostly paved over by opposition to Communism throughout the Cold War, but they started to reemerge once the Berlin Wall fell. Pat Buchanan’s 1992 call to revive the 'Old Right' vision of economic protectionism and socially conservative statism was more of a harbinger of the unfusing of fusionism than was widely appreciated at the time.

"Today, conservative forces concerned with freedom and virtue are pulling apart. The catalyst is a sprawling coalition of self-described nationalists, Catholic integralists, protectionists, economic planners, and others who are increasingly rallying around something called 'post-liberal' conservativism. By 'liberal,' ... they mean classical liberalism, the Enlightenment worldview held by the Founding Fathers.... They seek a federal government that cares more about pursuing the 'highest good' than protecting the 'libertarian' (their word) system of individual rights and free markets.

"On the other side are more familiar conservatives who, like George Will in his brilliant new book, The Conservative Sensibility, still rally to the banner of classical liberalism and its philosophy of natural rights and equality under the law. 'American conservatism has a clear mission: It is to conserve, by articulating and demonstrating the continuing pertinence of, the Founders’ thinking,' Will writes....

"The post-liberals think that Enlightenment-based liberalism is the disease afflicting society because it has no answer for how people should live. They have a point: It is not a religion or moral philosophy. But it wasn’t meant to be. Instead, as National Review’s Charles Cooke rightly put it, classical liberalism was a system designed to keep people of different religions from killing each other.

"This framing, however, obscures the path to reconciliation not just among the battling conservatives but in America generally. The liberalism of the Founders focused on freedom for individuals — but also encompassed institutions and communities. In the early days of the republic, for instance, some states had established churches and others didn’t. What the Founders opposed was a one-size-fits-all approach from the top.

"As far as I can tell, the so-called post-liberals now want Washington to dictate how we should all pursue happiness, just so long as it’s from the right. In a country of nearly 330 million people, however, it is impossible to define the “highest good” for everybody....

"What America needs is less talk of national unity — from the left or the right — and more freedom to let people live the way they want to live, not just as individuals, but as members of local communities. We don’t need to move past liberalism, we need to return to it."

Read more: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/conservative-divide-libertarians-moralists/
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How American socialism has changed

The Two Socialisms | Liberty Unbound - Wayland Hunter:

March 11, 2019 - "When I was in college, the selling point of socialism, communism, revolutionary activism, all of that, was something called 'participatory democracy'.... The idea, endlessly reiterated, was that 'decisions must be made by the people affected by those decisions'.... The idea was that centralized 'state capitalism' was wrong, not primarily because it was inefficient, or even inequitable in its effects, but because its decisions were not 'democratic.' They had not been made by the people affected by them. If it was inequitable or “slow' (i.e., inefficient), that was why.

"Now we are witnessing an immense revival of 'socialism,' led by Democratic Party opportunists and hacks. And it is all about laws ... to increase the power of the centralized state. It is about giving professional politicians sole power over healthcare, housing, education, transportation, employment, qualifications for voting, and the possibility of self-defense — and all this without the tiniest hint that anyone except the Philosopher Kings who compose the Democratic Majority in the House of Representatives should be consulted....

"I have to be honest. I am a foe of 'participatory democracy.' I do not believe it is optimal, in any sense, to give power over the individual’s existence to whoever happens to be a coworker, a fellow student, or just a guy who happens to turn up at a meeting....

"But I think it’s worthy of notice that American 'socialism' has shifted, in our time, from a [democratic] and 'participatory' style to a rule-from-the-top dogmatism, constantly twisting in response to the whims of the politicians but always determined to enforce those whims.

"I wonder whether any of the socialists have noticed this. Perhaps they are as ignorant of their own traditions as they are of economics or sociology, or respect for anyone except themselves."

Read more: http://www.libertyunbound.com/node/1964
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Conservatism vs. classical liberalism

Conservatism and Classical Liberalism Don’t Share the Same Values - James Peron, The Radical Centre:

November 3, 2018 - "Too many sympathizers to libertarian ideas think the core of liberalism is free markets and thus they fall for the delusion that conservatives are some variant of 'classical liberal,' because they claim to support markets.

"But, a classical liberal holds to individual rights as his core value, not markets. Markets are derivatives of rights theory ... intertwined with the liberal theory of rights. Conservatives tend to oppose individual rights for collectivist concepts. The 'common good' comes before individual rights to them.... It is no different with the illiberal Left, who make similar arguments.

"Individual rights means individualism  —  something for which conservatives don’t care. They are advocates of the herd, they preach social conformity in the name of tradition. They are happy for you to be free regarding which toothpaste to buy, just not thrilled if you assert the right to pick which person to marry....

"Economics, while individualistic at its core, is also very herd oriented.... Human economic needs are global, pervasive, and common to all ... what Abraham Maslow called lower order needs....

"Economic needs are not particularly individualistic. Thus conservatives don’t immediately oppose this freedom in the short term. I do think they oppose it in the long term, and there were plenty of times in history when conservatives opposed it in the short term as well.... Conservatives have not been friends of free markets overall. Economic rights just aren’t seen as automatically threatening to the conservative herd identity.

"What really gets the conservative’s back up is social freedom [or] freedom in the ... non-market realm. It is linked to markets but it is heavily about individualistic wants and needs, or what Maslow called self-actualization needs. Lower order needs tend to be relatively similar for all. Higher order needs are strongly individualized.

"The conservative is happy with freedom for the herd  —  that is in those areas where everyone has roughly similar needs — just not freedom for the individual  —  where needs and wants are unique, individualistic, perhaps even idiosyncratic or eccentric....

"The smaller the minority the more likely, I suggest, the conservative is to attack it. The closer it gets to the unique individual, the further it drifts from the herd, and conservative values are ultimately herd values. Theirs were values fit for a world where food was scarce and life was primitive....

"For the conservative mind it is easy to be 'liberal' when it comes to property rights, difficult when it comes to gender identity, same-sex marriage, religious skepticism, etc.... Given the consensus in favor of markets — impure ones perhaps, but still markets — it is much more telling to discover how much social freedom one is willing to grant. Where they stand on rights for LGBT people, or 'illegal' drugs, or censorship of erotica, is more indicative as to whether they are a classical liberal than their position on price controls or lower taxes."

Read more: https://medium.com/the-radical-center/conservatism-and-classical-liberalism-dont-share-the-same-values-25d80dd8b902
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Niskanen Center abandons libertarian label

The libertarian think tank Niskanen Center is abandoning libertarianism — Quartz - Michael J. Coren:

October 31, 2018 - "For millions of people, ideology is the lighthouse in a dark sea of politics. An uncompromising vision of how the world is supposed to work, and how to fix it, is just too alluring for partisans to ignore. Political parties’ most frenzied supporters are demanding ideological purity from their candidates as they push out moderates [and] ever fewer temperate souls are left to hold the middle ground in politics.

"Yet the libertarian think tank Niskanen Center in Washington, DC, argues the moderate middle is the future. Niskanen president Jerry Taylor wrote in an Oct. 29 essay that he is dropping the libertarian banner.... In a 3,595-word farewell to the libertarian world, he says libertarianism, and ideology itself, is a dead end. 'I have abandoned that libertarian project…because I have come to abandon ideology,' writes Taylor.... The future of American politics, he argues, is principled compromise....

"Trump’s authoritarian takeover of the Republican Party was Taylor’s breaking point ('I would have thought libertarians would have been on the ramparts, and they are not,' he said), but his disillusionment began years ago after working as a paid climate skeptic for the Cato Institute. He eventually came to see opposing action on climate change as both scientifically misguided, and wrong. After failing to get his libertarian colleagues to even engage with the argument, he slowly began to see how ideological fervor had engulfed a range of political issues, no matter what evidence pointed to the contrary.

"Taylor argues Americans need to give up on perfection in politics, the logical endpoint of which is fanaticism. As the head of a think tank aimed at lawmakers, not the US public, Taylor’s move is a politically opportunistic bet as much as a principled stand in defense of a pluralistic society.....

"The libertarian vision of 'night-watchman state' with a society dominated by the market is as distant a dream as ever. But a few libertarian causes have flourished in national politics of late.

"From legalizing marijuana to deregulating telecom to striking down sodomy laws, libertarian policy wins have come after being co-opted by the major political parties (and even by winning a few local elections). Taylor’s rejection of the libertarian label may be a gift to his (former) fellow travelers. Libertarians’ greatest impact may be felt most when they aren’t espousing an ideology at all."

Read more: https://qz.com/1443787/a-libertarian-think-tank-just-gave-up-on-libertarianism/
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One great idea and two bad ones

Nationalism and Socialism Are Very Bad Ideas - Reason.com - Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, Reason:

February 2017 - "Between the Great Lisbon Earthquake [1755] and the revolutionary year of 1848 the European chattering classes had three big ideas. One was very, very good. The other two were very, very bad. We're still paying.

"The good one, flowing from the pens of such members of the clerisy as Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, and above all the Blessed Adam Smith, is what Smith described in 1776 as the shocking idea of 'allowing every man [or woman, dear] to pursue his own interest in his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality, liberty, and justice'....

"The boldness of commoners pursuing their own interests resulted in a Great Enrichment — a rise in Europe and the Anglosphere of real, inflation-corrected incomes per head, from 1800 to the present, by a factor, conservatively measured, of about 30. That is, class, about 3,000 percent.... And now, despite the best efforts of governments and international agencies to bungle the job, liberalism is spreading to the world, from Hong Kong to Botswana....

"The two bad ideas of 1755–1848 were nationalism and socialism.... Nationalism, when first theorized in the early 19th century, was entwined with the Romantic movement, though of course in England it was already hundreds of years old.

"What is bad about nationalism, aside from its intrinsic collective coercion, is that it inspires conflict. The 800 U.S. military bases around the world keep the peace by waging endless war, bombing civilians to protect Americans from non-threats on the other side of the world. In July 2016, we of the Anglosphere 'celebrated,' if that is quite the word, the centenary of the Battle of the Somme, a fruit of nationalism, which by its conclusion three and a half months later had cost the Allies and the Central Powers combined over a million casualties, most of them dismembered by artillery....

"The other bad idea of the era was socialism, which can also be linked to Romanticism, and to a secularized Christianity.... What's bad about socialism, aside from its own intrinsic collective coercion, is that it leads to poverty. Even in its purest forms — within the confines of a sweet family, say — it kills initiative and encourages free riding.... The not-so-sweet forms of socialism, especially those paired with nationalism, are a lot worse. Thus North Korea, Cuba, and other workers' paradises. As the joke goes, 'Under capitalism man exploits man; under socialism it's the other way around.'

"What to do? Revive liberalism, as the astonishing successes of China and India have. Take back the word from our friends on the American left. They can keep progressive, if they don't mind being associated with the Progressive movement of the early 20th century, and its eugenic enthusiasms for forced sterilization and for using the minimum wage to drive immigrants, blacks, and women out of the labor force.....

"Read Adam Smith, slowly — not just the prudential Wealth of Nations, but its temperate sister The Theory of Moral Sentiments. And return in spirit to the dawn of 1776, when the radical idea was not nationalism or socialism or national socialism, but 'the obvious and simple system of natural liberty' that allows all men and women to pursue their interests in their own ways."

Read more: http://reason.com/archives/2017/01/26/three-big-ideas
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Fascists and progressives

by George J. Dance

Alt.right author James Miller believes that "Fascism has an undeserved bad reputation." In his view: "Regardless of this reputation, Fascism is a very sensible economic and social ideology." He goes on to offer the following definition:

Fascism is an economic system in which a nation’s government plays a central role in monitoring all banking, trade, production, and labor activity which takes place within the nation. Such monitoring is done for the sole purpose of safeguarding and advancing the nation and its people. Under Fascism, the government will not approve of any business activity unless that business has a positive impact on the nation as a whole and the people of the nation — this is the axiom which determines everything under Fascism.[1]

Interestingly, this definition of fascism (which looks correct) also looks like a correct definition of progressivism, the economic philosophy of the Roosevelts, Woodrow Wilson, and every Democratic president since (save perhaps Truman and Clinton), and some Republican presidents as well (Gerald Ford, G.H.W. Bush).

Like socialism, fascism and progressivism are variants of statism: the belief that state control of society and the economy is necessary to bring about and maintain a good society. But while socialists try to achieve that control directly, through government ownership and increased government spending, progressives and fascists try to achieve it indirectly through regulation, oversight, and management of nominally private businesses and workers.

As the historical record shows, the fascist regimes of Germany and Italy, and the progressive regime of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, were composed of mutual admirers, who followed a similar politico-economic agenda. As David Gordon of the Mises Institue has documented:

• The Nazi Party newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter, "stressed 'Roosevelt's adoption of National Socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies,' praising the president's style of leadership as being compatible with Hitler's own dictatorial Führerprinzip" (p. 190).
• Nor was Hitler himself lacking in praise for his American counterpart. He "told American ambassador William Dodd that he was 'in accord with the President in the view that the virtue of duty, readiness for sacrifice, and discipline should dominate the entire people. These moral demands which the President places before every individual citizen of the United States are also the quintessence of the German state philosophy, which finds its expression in the slogan "The Public Weal Transcends the Interest of the Individual"'" (pp. 19-20)....
• Mussolini, who did not allow his work as dictator to interrupt his prolific journalism, wrote a glowing review of Roosevelt's Looking Forward. He found "reminiscent of fascism … the principle that the state no longer leaves the economy to its own devices"(pp. 23-24)....
• Roosevelt never had much use for Hitler, but Mussolini was another matter. "'I don't mind telling you in confidence,' FDR remarked to a White House correspondent, 'that I am keeping in fairly close touch with that admirable Italian gentleman'" (p. 31). Rexford Tugwell, a leading adviser to the president, had difficulty containing his enthusiasm for Mussolini's program to modernize Italy: "It's the cleanest … most efficiently operating piece of social machinery I've ever seen. It makes me envious" (p. 32)[2]

Because (unlike socialism), fascism and progressivism do not directly challenge a country's economic status quo, they can appeal to the conservative as well as the totalitarian biases that I have argued exist in modern political societies.[3] However, like socialism, fascism and progressivism imply a radical restructuring of society, with state power vastly increased at the expense of individual rights and liberties.

This ideological symmetry can lead to tactical symmetries: for instance, historical fascism relied on tactics of political violence copied from those on the radical left (the anarchists and Bolsheviks).[4] Progressives, on the other hand, initially rejected those methods; one fundamental difference between progressives and fascists. That was because radical leftism and fascism were populist, bottom-up movements, while progressivism began as a thoroughly top-down, establishment movement. However, the mass-based, bottom-up progressivism that began in North America in the 1960s has increasingly also adopted political violence tactics from the radical left, further blurring the difference between the fascist and progressive ideologies.

Notes

[1] James Miller, "What is Fascism," Kevin Alfred Strong blog, August 13, 2012.  http://www.kevinalfredstrom.com/2012/08/what-is-fascism/

[2] David Gordon, "Three New Deals: Why the Nazis and Fascists Loved FDR" (review of Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany, 1933-1939. Metropolitan Books, 2006). Mises Daily, September 22, 2006, Ludwig von Mises Institute. https://mises.org/library/three-new-deals-why-nazis-and-fascists-loved-fdr

[3] George J. Dance, "Why are there no libertarian countries?", Nolan Chart, April 29, 2017.
https://www.nolanchart.com/why-are-there-no-libertarian-countries

[4] Ludwig von Mises, "The Argument of Fascism," Liberalism: In the Classical Tradition (translated by Ralph Raico). Foundation for Economic Education, 1985, 29. Books / Digital Texts, Ludwig von Mises Institute. https://mises.org/library/liberalism-classical-tradition/html/p/29 

Libertarians, conservatives, and progressives

The case for libertarianism in American politics | TheHill - David D'Amato:

June 8, 2017 - "Libertarianism is not conservatism, nor is it an offshoot of conservatism, a subset, or even a relative of common extraction ... because libertarian political philosophy is best understood as a radicalization of traditional liberalism.... The radical, going as she does to the root, hopes to provoke change at the deepest sub strata of society, motivated by the conviction that the political and economic status quo is fundamentally unjust.

"Libertarians believe that the best is yet to come, that history has been the bloodstained story of unscrupulous ruling thugs and their many misdeeds, their constant crimes against law, order, and justice....

"Historian Larry Siedentop goes so far as to argue that ... many of the concepts and modes of argument long credited to socialism were in fact 'introduced by liberal thinkers'.... For example, libertarians have been quick to call attention to the fact that early French liberals developed a pre-socialist (or perhaps proto-socialist) class theory, embedded in which was an argument for radical laissez-faire....

"In America, individualist anarchists like Benjamin Tucker explicitly identified themselves as socialists even as they advocated 'a perfectly free market,' in which only force or fraud would be out of bounds.... The capitalist, for Tucker, was 'guilty of criminal invasion,' of violating the central libertarian law against the use of aggression against the non-invasive individual. He worried that many of those employing what seemed libertarian-sounding language had actually become the mouthpieces of 'the capitalistic class.' That class had achieved wealth and power not by competing for consumers’ hard-earned dollars, but 'by abolishing the free market,' by using the coercive power of the state to artificially limit the range of competition.

"Throughout the 20th century, some stalwart proponents of the peaceful, cosmopolitan order produced by free trade and respect for private property rights have continued to identify as liberals.... Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, with whom modern libertarianism is so often associated, were such committed liberals, dependably opposed to conservatism and, in Hayek’s works, its 'propensity to reject well-substantiated new knowledge.'.... As a philosophy of universal individual rights, libertarian[ism] contemplates a deep break with centuries-old orders of power and privilege, in which a handful of political and ecclesiastical authorities made the rules and reaped the rewards....

"Because the dominance of today’s corporate powerhouses rests largely on government privilege, and thus violence — not voluntary, mutually beneficial trade — the anti-corporate rhetoric of progressives rings hollow; they emphasize wealth inequality and economic justice, yet they would expand the very power on which corporate abuses now rest. American political history finds self-described progressives among the most reliable guardians of corporate welfare.

"Libertarianism is a principled alternative to conservatism and progressivism, both of which, at base, represent authority against liberty."

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/national-party-news/336992-the-case-for-libertarianism-in-american-politics
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The non-ideological Trump presidency

Trump Isn’t a Pragmatist. He Doesn’t Understand Ideology - Jonathan Chait, New York magazine:

May 3, 2017 - "Amid a flurry of strange statements by President Trump, an especially peculiar one he made recently largely passed by unnoticed. Asked about his chief strategist, Steve Bannon, Trump told Bloomberg News, 'Bannon’s more of a libertarian than anything else, if you want to know the truth.'

"That is a bizarre description. While certain libertarian-friendly notions — lower taxes, spending, regulation — serve as baseline-level beliefs shared by every Republican, Bannon might be the least libertarian member of the party of any stature. The ideas that excite Bannon the most are opposition to immigration and trade, on which he is pushing positions diametrically opposed to libertarianism. He has excitedly proposed a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. He has publicly criticized the party for its fealty to libertarianism. ('The Republicans, it’s all this theoretical Cato Institute, Austrian economics, limited government — which just doesn’t have any depth to it. They’re not living in the real world,' he told Robert Draper recently.) And libertarians generally distrust Bannon in return.

"Trump has no clear motive to miscategorize his chief strategist. Several more attractive, and also more plausible, terms are available: conservative, populist, nationalist. Trump simply does not grasp either Bannon’s thinking or libertarianism.....

"Trump — whose political profile over the decades has vacillated from liberal to conservative to moderate to populist, and supported and opposed abortion rights, higher taxes on the rich, and universal health care — does not care very much about political ideas.... The president also does not know very much about political ideas.... He does not understand which kinds of ideas imply support for which kinds of policies, nor why political figures tend to believe what they do, nor why they agree or disagree with one another. He is capable of forming strongly held beliefs about people in politics, but he does so in entirely personal terms....

"Many Americans share Trump’s lack of ideological sophistication. High-information voters tend to clump at the ends of the political spectrum. They may not have sophisticated beliefs, but their identification with one of the party coalitions is a tool they use to make sense of individual issues. Low-information voters tend to have a weak understanding of what the political parties stand for and how those positions relate to each other. These voters can be roughly categorized as 'centrist' because they don’t line up neatly with one party platform or the other. But, rather than a consistently moderate outlook, they share a mishmash of extreme and frequently uninformed beliefs. Because they don’t understand the philosophical basis for disagreements, they assume the two parties ought to naturally cooperate, and tend to see partisan bickering as a failure and an indication of personal fault by politicians.

"Trump thinks about politics like a low-information voter, which enabled him to speak their language naturally. His stated belief during the campaign that he could expertly craft a series of popular deals — 'it’s going to be so easy' — appealed to low-information voters because it earnestly described the political world as they see it....

"Politics is a strange institution that forces committed professionals who have coherent philosophical beliefs to persuade voters who mostly do not.... Trump accomplishes it in lowbrow style, by literally not understanding the source of the disagreement."

Read more: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/05/trump-isnt-a-pragmatist-he-doesnt-understand-ideology.html
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Alt.right or SJW? No.

No One Wins in the Alt-Right vs. SJW Conflict - Being Libertarian - Remso W. Martinez:

January 29, 2017 - "We often fall into the trap of binary thinking which forces us to make a decision as to who we side with, buying into something wholesale for the sake of avoiding being excluded. Trump or Clinton? Nationalist or Globalist (two very undefined terms even the people throwing them around can’t properly define)? Social Justice Warriors or Alt-Right? This rationalization takes away individualism from people and stirs up antipathy with communities that otherwise could have a proper discussion.

"The Alt-Right is an ill-tempered movement of people that feel victimized, ignored, abused, and are fighting for attention. Their tactics include shaming, bullying, and ruthlessness that they justify with a sense of moral righteousness.

"Social Justice Warriors are an ill-tempered movement of people that feel victimized, ignored, abused, and are fighting for attention. Their tactics include shaming, bullying, and ruthlessness that they justify with a sense of moral righteousness.

"Do you see a difference in either description? If you did, go back and read it over and over again. There is no moral relativist claim to make though; both side’s arguments aren’t null. Just because I criticize one more than the other doesn’t mean the other is less problematic or occupies the moral high ground....

"Everyone spends so much time combating each other, no one spends time on anything substantial. Milo Yiannopoulis is popular because he brings up controversy, and sometimes controversy is necessary to bring attention to things no one talks about, but there is a fine line between trying to be a reformer and being a jerk just for the sake of it. Yeah, Milo never punched anyone, but his behavior has caused more polarization than anything.

"The Alt-Right and the SJW’s want you to pick sides, and I for one pick neither because both are full of crap. They both want you to conform to their thoughts and feelings and if you don’t they will slander, attack, and villainize you for the crime of being an individual. This isn’t a binary option; you can be a reformer without being a fire thrower or internet troll.

"Violence breeds violence, agitation brings out the worst in everyone, and in this cultural conflict there is no winner as long as everyone just wants to roll over each other."

Read more: https://beinglibertarian.com/no-one-wins-alt-right-vs-sjw-conflict/
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Cult, mainstream visions of libertarianism collide at Presidential debate

Libertarian Party Presidential Debate: Gary Johnson is From a Different World - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Brian Doherty:

May 29, 2016 - "The final presidential debate at the Libertarian Party National Convention happened last night (aired live on C-SPAN), featuring what most media treated as the "likely three"—former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, antivirus software innovator John McAfee, and libertarian movement mover and shaker Austin Petersen—plus anarchist firebrand Darryl Perry and surprisingly amusing wildcard Marc Feldman, selected via token ballots cast by Libertarian delegates.

"The debate lasted a punishing two hours. I was unable tonight to learn who wrote the questions, which were delivered by radio host and libertarian fellow traveler Larry Elder....

"Whoever wrote the questions did the Party, in my judgment, a great disservice. A C-SPAN audience did not need to see the five candidate pondering out loud whether drivers licences are legitimate. (Among other challenging questions that could serve no other purpose but to embarrass the Party and its candidates in the eyes of any random cable viewer were such pressing, burning 2016 presidential campaign questions ... as: would you have fought World War I? II? Apologized for bombing Hiroshima? Voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act? Do you think drivers need to be licensed? Should it be a crime to sell heroin to 5-year-olds? I'm enough of a movement veteran that these things just flowed by me at the time, but in retrospect they seem the worst sort of hectoring irrelevances designed to make the Party's candidates seem like eccentric loons.)

"A lot was said in two hours. Feldman, [whom] I'd previously ignored in my convention coverage, delivered a standard middle-ground Libertarian activist set of opinions, but expressed in often funny jokes, ending in his closing statements in a barn-burning rap in which he referenced every type of Libertarian activist and all his presidential opponents.

"Darryl Perry delivered straight-up passionate anarchism, with the state always the wrong answer to every problem. In talking to a couple of handfuls of delegates after the debate, it seems likely Perry will probably do better on the first presidential ballot than many might have guessed. He seemed a favorite freak-flag-fly choice for delegates who don't expect him to survive that many ballots or be the nominee. Feldman's good humor and solid Libertarianism will earn him a fair number of first ballot votes as well.

"Even among people who don't love Gary Johnson, I found few people who swore they'd never vote for him.... But the most interesting story coming out of the debate is the degree to which Gary Johnson was simultaneously the most strongly disliked, or disapproved of, candidate while still seeming the favorite of more than any other single candidate. No one got more, and more sustained, boos than Johnson did, for various departures from movement orthodoxy....

"Johnson's description of the core of libertarianism as 'fiscally conservative, socially liberal' seems to weary the serious convention crowd. That a core part of his quick discussion of immigration involves the idea that an immigrant should 'pay taxes' doesn't seem to thrill everyone either. Johnson said he first was satisfied with a 'get government out of marriage' solution to gay or plural marriage debates, but decided that the concept of marriage was so tied in to so many laws that it was better to just take a 'government shouldn't discriminate' solution. He boldly and simply stated that he would have voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which drew boos, as did his heretical opinion that drivers licenses might be a legitimate state function.

"Johnson garnered lots of boos by claiming that the free market is killing coal ... a large part of the crowd seemed ... annoyed at the idea that anything other than regulations were keeping coal down. Saying he imagined replacing the income and corporate taxes he hopes to eliminate with a FairTax style consumption tax annoyed a crowd more primed to just hear that 'taxation is theft' — though Johnson has learned enough about dealing with Libertarian crowds to use that phrase too.

"His favored technique was linking any question to some actual experience as governor of New Mexico, to remind delegates that this executive thing was natural to him. It isn't always clear most Libertarian delegates want to hear about real world experience as opposed to a passionate or smart expression of core libertarian philosophy. He did win cheers for openly calling for legalizing all drugs, but boos for admitting that some provision would need to remain in the law against supplying drugs to children.

"In his closing statements, Johnson dealt quietly with the question of whether he was libertarian enough for the Libertarians. He admitted openly that he likely was not the most libertarian candidate they could pick, but that he believed he was the one this year who could get them the most attention and votes."

Read more: http://reason.com/blog/2016/05/29/libertarian-party-presidential-debate-ga
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Libertarian ideology

by George J. Dance 

It has become increasingly popular in recent years for libertarian intellectuals to try to define the "libertarian ideology." An "ideology" is the fundamental beliefs about man and society that determine and justify the goals of a political group. For example, religion and tradition are components of conservative ideology, humanism and progress of the liberal, collectivism and dialectical materialism of the communist, and so on.

Is there then a distinct libertarian ideology? Many libertarians are convinced there is. Quite a few libertarian thinkers and publications believe that they express this ideology. Some even go so far as to set themselves up as "plumblines" of libertarian thought and use that position to denounce "deviations" from and "betrayals" of this ideology.

This trend is understandable, as modern libertarianism did develop, as a popular movement, as a political application of a particular philosophy – in short, as an ideology. This trend is also useful insofar as it has dissociated libertarian principles from conservative ideology, with which they are too often exclusively identified. But this trend is also intellectually and politically dangerous.

Dangerous because it restricts libertarianism's universal appeal by making it the handmaiden of non-political views. Dangerous because, by making these other views logically prior to liberty, it confuses the basic libertarian message. Dangerous becaue each non-political addition to basic libertarianism narrows our base of support, and alienates even hitherto committed libertarians.

These dangers would be necessary, if belief in a libertarian ideology were correct. But it is not correct.

Libertarianism is not an ideology. It is a method, a process – a principle, if you like – for settling disputes between adherents of competing ideologies. It is then, it has to be, compatible with all and identified with none. It is indifferent to conflicts over altruism vs. egoism, materialism vs. idealism, natural law vs. utilitarianism, religion vs. atheism; it can only establish rules for resolving such conflicts. Belief in non-initiation of force not only can stand independently of any of the above concepts – indeed, it is cheapened by any suggestion of dependence on them.

The reason democracy has swept the world (as an idea, anyway) was precisely that it was such a method of resolving differences. In Hayek's terminology, it is an agreement on means, not ends. And, as Hayek points out, widespread agreement is possible only on means, and only because it is not known which ends will be promoted.

We know that, as an attempt to resolve disputes peacefully, democracy has not always been successful. Unsuccessful because inconsistent: it allows the use of force for the promotion of the dominant ideology, asserting only that force should play no part in determining which ideology should become dominant. Hence liberty, a more consistent set of rules for social peace, unalterably opposed to no ideologies but to the messianic element in all.

Should there then be no libertarian ideology? On the contrary: there should be hundreds. Thinking persons are bound to have their own, individualized, beliefs about society, man, and nature – this is a point on which we all can agree. We can also agree that there will not be unanimity on the entire gamut of these beliefs. (Try disagreeing with that belief.) If we deduce libertarian methods as a means of resolving our differences, we are libertarians; if statist methods, we are statists. But if we try to pretend that such differences do not exist, we are either fools or liars.

~~
from Principle 8:4 (September/October 1981), 14.

What is the libertarian way of riding a bicycle?

This Catholic Magazine Thinks There's a Libertarian Way to Ride a Bicycle. What? | Cato Institute - David Boaz:

September 15, 2015 - "Alan Wolfe is writing about libertarianism again. In June he complained that libertarianism was 'rigid' and obsessed with 'purity,' under the ridiculous headline 'Why libertarianism is closer to Stalinism than you think.' Now he’s claiming that 'libertarianism embodies Max Weber’s nightmare of an iron cage,' whatever that means. The article is obsessed with ideological infighting, and this time he actually does manage to accuse Ayn Rand of a 'Stalinesque purge' of Nathaniel Branden, her former lover and ideological partner. Thing is, she didn’t have Branden killed, which is pretty much the essence of Stalinesque purges....

"But let me look at what I take to be the main point of the article:

Libertarianism, however, is not just a set of policy prescriptions, but an ideology. It is, moreover, a total ideology, one that addresses every aspect of how people live. There is a libertarian way of riding a bicycle, of taking your medicine, finding a spouse, giving blood, and even calling a cab (can you say, “Uber?”).

"Is he kidding? In a world that has experienced Catholicism, fundamentalism, communism, national socialism, Islamic fundamentalism, and political correctness, he calls libertarianism 'a total ideology, one that addresses every aspect of how people live?' How does such nonsense get published?

"Let me just say that I’ve written books on libertarianism, and I’ve never used Uber, nor do I have any idea what the libertarian way of 'riding a bicycle, of taking your medicine,' or of 'finding a spouse' is supposed to be.

"There are of course philosophies that are totalist or address 'every aspect of how people live,' from peaceful but prescriptive religions to theocracies to 20th-century totalitarianisms.... A philosophy of 'do what you want to do, so long as you respect the equal rights of others' is something very different. But Wolfe just can’t see that. He also claims:

Indeed, the libertarian conception of human nature seems curiously, even paradoxically, machine-like. Seemingly free to make our own decisions, in the libertarian utopia we would in fact be little more than slaves of rules that conform our choices to the rigidities of marketplace rationality.... At a personal level, emotions such as envy, guilt, and sympathy would be forbidden us. Human nature, libertarians insist, is one thing and one thing only: the capacity to make choices based on the rational calculation of self-interest.

"That’s a striking distortion of Ayn Rand’s philosophy. It has, as far as I can see, no relationship at all to non-Randian libertarianism. I suppose it’s true that libertarians discourage envy as a guide to action. But guilt and sympathy 'forbidden ... at a personal level?' The point of libertarianism is to respect each person as an end, not just a means; to allow persons to think and act as they please, so long as they respect the rights of others; and thereby to encourage human flourishing. You won’t find much scope in that agenda for forbidding personal emotions.

"This is all very sad. You can tell that Alan Wolfe has read a lot of libertarian writings. Yet with all his reading, he has not got understanding; apparently his aversion to free-market economics blinds him to what libertarians are actually saying."

Read more: http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/catholic-magazine-thinks-theres-libertarian-way-ride-bicycle-what
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