http://www.delinetciler.com

“The greatest hope for a more rapid and complete spread of libertarian ideas is the internet, and forums such as this one. Not only does the internet provide an excellent way to teach each other and learn from each other, I see it also as the death knell for the concept that we all need someone to tell us what is best for us and force us to do it by law.”

Indeed. And how sweet the irony that the state couldn’t stop itself from launching what the market, had the state not siphoned off so many of its resources, would no doubt have launched long before:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET

Sincerely,

Your fellow Person of the Year

I am close to 70 and have been a libertarian since college days. I do not believe that the libertarian philosophy is, or ever will be, suited to gaining a mass following. It is a philosophy which will gain individual adherents only one by one if it gains them at all.

The greatest hope for a more rapid and complete spread of libertarian ideas is the internet, and forums such as this one. Not only does the internet provide an excellent way to teach each other and learn from each other, I see it also as the death knell for the concept that we all need someone to tell us what is best for us and force us to do it by law. The more we can seek truth on our own, the less inclined we are to follow our political leaders blindly.

Keep up the good work, everyone.

You speak of illusions but there is none greater than imagining the state to be a listening, caring, intellectually curious entity that weighs all points of view and acts on the most persuasive one.

What Lew is speaking of instead is applying social, intellectual, and culture pressure against the regime through education at all levels of society. Mises himself wrote at great length on the need for this, and I’ve seen it happen. In the early 1980s, libertarian radicalism was close to near extinction, while Misesian theory in economics had only the smallest intellectual presence. That has dramatically changed, not only in the US but around the world. This kind of intellectual change is the precondition for regime change.

I’ve checked your past postings and you have a habit of using words such as “stupidly,” “ridiculous,” and “nonsense.”

It is true that when people cooperate with one another, they are working together; but it does not necessarily follow that people who must work together will cooperate.

“I’ve never been very appreciative of those who make it their life’s mission to order other people about; however, when two or more people attempt to work together, live together, or even play together, a certain amount of cooperation is necessary.”

What nonsense is this? “Cooperation” literally means “working together.” Of course folks need to work together in order to work together. That much is stupidly redundant. But folks ordering other folks about has nothing to do with “cooperation.”

As I approached my “prospects,” I found that my reception was lukewarm, but two simple words…”less government”…generated a great deal of interest. By the end of the conversation, rather than having to offer people my clipboard to collect their signatures, they were reaching for it.

People really are looking for a new direction. Unfortunately, they know only of “left” and “right.” We have to show them that there’s another way.

As for those who don’t like the idea of a political party, I agree with your point of view. But most Libertarian Party candidates will tell you that they don’t expect to win…only that they see it as an opportunity to present basic libertarian principles to people who are looking for fresh faces and new ideas.

“By the time that they realized their error and started a serious effort in education… it was too late.”

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…well, education & enlightenment of the American populace is our only possible tool; however, a century’s worth of ‘repeated’ effort (…very limited “activism”) has not worked (…what’s that popular definition of ‘insanity’ ?).
Optimism is important, but so are real world lessons-learned with what does NOT work.

The state stranglehold on the education-system is spectacularly successful in mis-educating the populace — until that yoke is broken, no private ‘education’ efforts will sway the masses nor improve the political realities.

Some new tactical method is necessary to defeat the influence of the government public-school/educational system — it’s the core of state power.

Perhaps some grass-roots legal approach — a judo like tactic using your opponent’s own strength against him. For example, compulsory school attendance laws are totally illegal under all American state constitutions, yet nobody challenges them in local courts, nor says a word publicly against them.

Expanding the scope of “activism” with added tactics seems worthwhile.

You said:

Is there something mature about asserting that you have the right to tell other people what to do? Do we pass into true maturity when we realize that random other human beings should order us around just because they claim they know better?

I’ve never been very appreciative of those who make it their life’s mission to order other people about; however, when two or more people attempt to work together, live together, or even play together, a certain amount of cooperation is necessary.

When a woman stays at home, she frequently loses the right to participate in financial decisions. Contributing to the family finances helps to ensure that the woman retains those rights.

Unfortunately, your viewpoint has been understandable yet a little cringeworthy. Indeed for a society to embrace the concept of No State there still has to be sort agreement of values lest it become one of ‘anything goes’. Hence at the LewRockell site the Libertarian embrace (or seem to) strict traditional Catholicism. Yet religion has been just as bad converting people into ‘them’ versus ‘us’. Indeed the War on Drugs derives its starting philosophy from the opposition to witchcraft.

Perhaps Reactionary please tell us silly wittle agnostics and atheists how such religious values do not descend into a Theocracy?

I personally went with Deism, a choice which eschews all doctrines and does not pretend to know about God/god/goddess or whatever. My choice of Deism was a priori to my becoming a libertarian, for whatever that is worth.

As for rights. They evolve ultimately from ourselves. When we became self aware, we gained ownership of our bodies and ourselves. Our rights emanate from our own self awareness and our inviolable.

Nisbet argued in The Quest for Community (in 1953!) that one of the reasons for the decline of the family was that the state usurped its role; families aren’t simply together to be together, they have to have a functional task as well.

If the family is to be re-built up again, then, I guess Christianity could help in providing such a functional task here. But even watching some of my most religious friends have the strongest families, as a nonreligious person I have a hard time accepting the argument that the family can’t be a proper family without a religious conviction.

>> I am certain that anyone who believes that only through some affiliation of Orthodox Christians can Utopia be structured, and the State dissolve, is the foundation for its own tyranical State.<<

Actually, in traditional, orthodox Christianity it is a grave heresy to try and create Heaven on Earth. Recall Eric Voegelin’s admonition not to immanentize the eschaton.

Can you provide me with any a priori reason to respect other people’s property in a godless universe?

Any rational individual will see that associations with others have a positive effect on their lives, as long as they are voluntarily grouped, ultimately entered into and exited from freely. I am an atheist, while other libertarians are not. Is it too much to ponder that I see that libertarianism can brook sectors of religiosity or secularism, while your view point seems to indicate that there is no room for the secular? Just as the free-market would allow some to form sub-collectivist unions if they so choose while collectivists don’t brook free-market subsets.

Libertarianism is about not forcing anyone with whom you are disinterested from doing as they otherwise would, as long as life and property are not at risk, clearly and presently. Under such an umbrella many ideals and philosphies can exist. Sloughing it off as the product of juvenile minds not willing to accept a narrowing set of ideals is to not understand it at all. And if the argument keeps up any longer, I just might have to point out that perhaps a degree of juvenility exists in needing a Godhead to derive a sense of security to operate in. Yet, I allow anyone their constructs and fantasies that get them through their life, as long as they don’t find them so wonderful as to force me to exist under its tenets. I am certain that anyone who believes that only through some affiliation of Orthodox Christians can Utopia be structured, and the State dissolve, is the foundation for its own tyranical State.

The point to be taken from this is that people who can govern themselves do not need a bureaucratic government. As a friend puts it, a traditional and stable three-generation family hardly needs a government for anything, while a secular, licentious culture generates nursing homes, pensions, daycare centers, single moms, working moms, etc., all of which generate a democratic pressure for government services. Logical positivism does not build stable and traditional families. Quite the opposite in fact, since logical positivism leads quickly to the conclusion that the individual and his present being are all there is.

That is why I say the most radical and subversive act any self-styled libertarian can take is to raise a child in orthodox Christianity. But since the traditional institutions of Church, family and the common law involve that libertarian bete noir–the authority figure telling somebody what to do–then the libertarians happily join forces with the Marxists as permanent levellers of organic society.

In short, there is no contracting or exchange or intercourse taking place between us that gives rise for me to make any stipulations as to what you do. I am disinterested. That is the basic element lost to interventionists, when there is an inherent interest or disinterest. All the varioius Statist mentalities originate from the inability to control their Utopian projections and create an “interest” out of thin air. Libertarians know when to be disinterested.

At the firing range, do you bristle at the rangemaster and insist that you have your own M.O. for firearms safety and he can’t tell you what to do?

When your dad told you to wash the dishes, did you stomp your feet and insist that nobody had the right to tell you what to do?

When your employer imposes a deadline, do you proceed to lecture him or her on why it’s immature to tell other people what to do?

This very site instructs me to post only intelligent and civil comments. Oh the stifling oppression! I can hardly breathe!