Similar Politics, Different Worldview
Recent events have only confirmed for me something I noticed a while ago: There are plenty of people who share my political outlook–even some who say they are fans of my writing–who nonetheless have utterly different worldviews.
I am a libertarian anarchist in the tradition of Rothbard because I take moral and legal rules seriously, and don’t think they can be tossed aside just because people think awful consequences would ensue if we don’t violate them systematically. So for example, if theft, kidnapping, and mass murder are flat-out wrong, then how can someone support institutionalized taxation, military conscription (or jury duty), and modern war?
On the other hand, there are plenty of libertarians today who are attracted to the philosophy because they don’t want anybody–whether a politician or a priest–telling them what to do.
I understand full well that many American Christians have done a lot to sully the reputation of the faith in the eyes of neutral onlookers, but at the same time the past month has made me realize how little many libertarians would care if the U.S. government seriously cracked down on religious freedom. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying they would endorse it. But I’m saying they would certainly not lose sleep over it.
Do you take the Federal Register seriously? What is it these days, 50,000 pages, or 100,000? You read those carefully, right, and then check the cross references and go over the tricky bits with a lawyer.
I mean that is the law of the land.
By the way, I just got back from jury duty. After sitting there half the day tapping out emails apologizing for all the things I’m supposed to be getting done, they decided to send everyone home because some legal argument changed tack, got into a long winded discussion, and my panel were voided or something like that. I couldn’t help thinking that there probably are easier ways, but since the imposition on my time is a “duty” there isn’t a whole lot of incentive to improve the process. About 50 other people ended up in the same boat… wasting a day to sit around and then go home.
I’d *like* to take legal rules seriously. I think it would be great to live in a place where I could take legal rules seriously… but the current legal establishment makes that impossible, unfortunately.
Tel, I’m distinguishing between law and legislation.
“…the the past month has made me realize how little many libertarians would care if the U.S. government seriously cracked down on religious freedom.”
I am not excusing them by explaining what I think is the main reason, but I think I think the main reason is that to support religious freedom in the particular context I suspect you’re referring to, is setting oneself up to be “name shamed” as a homophobic bigot, when most of those libertarians are pro-umm…sexual freedom? Not sure of the term there.
I think if you ask most libertarians point blank: “Do you support private property owners deciding who they trade and not trade with?”, they would say yes, of course.
Not many libertarians are willing to defend, PUBLICLY, racists, sexists, and homophones choosing to abstain from trading with people because of those prejudices.
We unfortunately live in a time where psychos utter death threats, destroy your store, and social media name shaming you to who knows what crazy people out there.
I don’t think it is so much ” We do not care if the government cracks down on religious expression in the form of bigotry”, even though part of it might very well be that, I think it is more “We are afraid to publicly state out beliefs because of the risk of threats of violence.”
That bakery that refused to sell a cake to the Lesbian couple? They got sued, and now they have to pay over $100k in “damages”.
We live on a police state Murphy. Many anti-Nazi Germans during the 1930s and early 1940s were silent because of fear.
Is this tragic? Yes. Should we instead fight for individual liberty regardless of the costs to ourselves? VERY few libertarians, who tend to be against the doctrine of self-sacrifice for the sake of the greater good, for obvious reasons, would risk their personal safety, their careers and their life’s savings, for the sake of racist religious homophobes.
I hate that. Mencken said it best that to defend liberty, we have to be willing to defend the scoundrels. But most of us were raised to be obedient and “tolerant” of intolerance.
That’s the thing that says this is about power, and not about equality nor about tolerance. But central government is always going to deliver centralized solutions which must be one lifestyle for everyone, no exceptions, no room for diversity. Conformity is the heart of socialism, which is why it’s so sad that many minority “fringe lifestyle” groups see socialists as their saviours.
I was thinking, would there be a way to make an online marketplace where bakers/photographers/wedding-planners register in the system but customers put up their requirements and then businesses make bids on the jobs. If you are a Christian you don’t need to announce that, just make bids on jobs that seem pretty reasonable to you.
If someone asks for a Nazi cake, probably not many people will bid on it, maybe no one will bid. Then the requester can’t blame anyone in particular for refusing (because everyone refused).
If someone wants a gay cake, almost certainly they will get a decent number of bids, and there’s no way the system allows them to demand any particular baker will bid on that… if you see where I’m going. They can’t bitch because they do get the cake done, but the guy who didn’t want to do it doesn’t have to.
I could code this, if anyone thinks it would fly.
There’s a few commercial details you have to deal with like how to channel the payments, probably a bunch of food laws that depend on jurisdiction, no doubt a lot of fiddly details getting it right. I’m up for suggestions.
“Not many libertarians are willing to defend, PUBLICLY, racists, sexists, and homophones ..” I don’t think they have a problem with people who’s names sound the same, even if they have a different spelling.
But, joking aside, perhaps some of them do not defend them even privately – maybe they are not as libertarian as they think.
Most of the accusations against the bakers who refused to bake the gay wedding cake have been over the top and simply unsupported by facts.
There are two aspects to the discussion. One is opinion and the other is facts. The fact portion is what exactly went down in the bakery at the time the gay couple asked them to bake a wedding cake. The other portion is what you think morally or otherwise about what happened. The fact portion has generally been exaggerated beyond belief. To claim, as numerous people do on social media, especially twitter, that the couple is hateful or promoting hate or whatever is simply unsupported by anything we know. there is no indication that they hate gay people, only that they refused to bake a specific type of cake for them.
That is the first problem, one of accuracy, and in the realm of facts, most of those opposed to what the bakers did do not accurately portray the bakers’ position, nor do they care, and yet they still claim to hold some sort of ‘high moral ground.’
In addition, the response is not really consistent with what most people claim to believe in, that is ‘live and let live.’ And it’s not consistent with how people act in many other situations. If you go to a butcher shop and he refuses to produce halal or kosher meat for you, would anyone say the same thing? Or if you go to a Muslim or Jewish butcher shop, would you expect them to kill an animal without ‘blessing’ it?
So the problem is really one of ‘bad’ intentions, for those who believe in morality. The argumentation on this subject is not one of just one opinion vs another, but actual dishonesty.
I’m not naming names, but for example, there are some popular libertarians of the younger cool kids variety who aren’t sure whether they would support removing churches’ tax exempt status, because they are balancing “not favoring religion” with “taxes are bad.” I’m not putting words in their mouths, some have said it out loud and I privately asked another.
I understand such a view, I’m just explaining that this isn’t merely *about* the recent stuff, even though it all came up *because* of the recent stuff.
The federalist has a good article explaining why, given the structure of the 501(c)3 tax exemption, practically speaking it would be nearly impossible to remove churches’ tax exempt status.
http://thefederalist.com/2015/07/02/axing-charitable-tax-exemptions-will-hurt-the-left/
There ought to be no “freedom of religion” rather you have right to act in certain way of your own that doesn’t harm or violate the rights of others. There’s no right for religion to be a law unto itself.
The libertarians who scare me the most are precisely the ones who do not want anyone telling them what to do; that is the attitude that drove the worst mass murderers in the 20th century – Mao, Stalin, Hitler, and so on. Not taking orders/instructions from anyone includes not submitting, in humility, to God. Not a good picture. (Nor am I particularly impressed by “moral” atheists. Maybe for first generation atheists but…)
@khodge Quoting John McEnroe, “You cannot be serious!”
“The libertarians who scare me the most are precisely the ones who do not want anyone telling them what to do; that is the attitude that drove the worst mass murderers in the 20th century – Mao, Stalin, Hitler, and so on.”
Comparing libertarians to Mao, Stalin, and Hitler is facially ridiculous. You should be ashamed of yourself for saying something so absurd. Really. Just a shamefully stupid statement.
What do you think, 2 hours in the timeout corner? 3?
Two hours in timeout with it being doubled to four next time. And no Xbox One until this weekend.
Off to the Laogai, Gulags, and Auschwitz for you, Murphy.
Facially ridiculous? I don’t feel like doing a search but your average trolling libertarian goes out of his way to stifle opposition. One of the known reasons that libertarians do not get much traction (besides, of course, a large number do simply want to be left alone) is they are so busy attacking other libertarians in “no true Scotsman” style. They would be more than happy to support a dictator who believed exactly like themselves. Unfortunately, for them, there are no two people on this earth who agree that closely, much less enough of them to form a government.
I don’t think you know what anarchism is in either theory or practice. Bob, and I, are anarchists (the variety for the purposes of addressing your statement is not relevant). I disagree with Bob on religion – he is very well aware of that fact. You do not need to be an atheist to be an anarchist. Equating those whose position is an absolute abolition of the state with those whose position is in favor of the absolute authority of the state is in my mind facially ridiculous. That’s what you did. You equated libertarians who are opposed to the state with the most well-known exemplars of totalitarian state dictatorships. That is, I’m sorry, a shamefully stupid thing to say and you know it. I won’t speak for Bob but I don’t support any state therefore I would be opposed to a dictator in any form. It would be an impossibility for a dictator to actually hold my views.
khodge’s Biggest Fears:
Libertarians (e.g., Mao, Stalin, Hitler, and so on)
Slave Owners (e.g., Tubman, Parks, King, and so on)
Keynesians (e.g., Hayek, Rothbard, Murphy, and so on)
Insects (e.g., Brontosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops, and so on)
Atheists (e.g., Jesus, God, Santa Claus, and so on)
Reading this, I am inclined to believe that the Branch Davidians were interventions and the ATF were made up of crazy libertarians.
*interventionists*
I first noticed around 1974 that libertarians generally do not like and do not feel the urge to reach out to religious and/or socially conservative people. Even now, 41 years later, how is it possible that evangelicals do not know that under AnCap they could have their own neighborhoods and religious schools and completely separate their lives from the “progressive” heathens they claim to despise? There is nothing “socially liberal” about AnCap per se.
I suppose you can do whatever you want under AnCap, including being charged much higher insurance rates due to your lifestyle. But it’s not hip to mention that.
I wonder what better examples there are for kidnapping besides military conscription (does not exist at the moment) and jury duty. How about those imprisoned for their vices and not crimes and have done no damage to any person or property?
Compulsory government “school” is probably the most egregious current example of kidnapping. It is quite like prison, only the crime the inmates are guilty of is choosing to exist while being between the ages of 6 and 17.
Some very recently, for multiple life-times.
khodge,
You are opposed to those died who trying to take a stand against Hitler, Moa, Stalin, etc? I’m sure they were all libertarians anyway, so….
Also, let me fix this for you:
“your average trolling libertarian goes out of his way to stifle opposition”
should be
“your average trolling human goes out of his way to stifle opposition”
But Bob, theft is not always “flat-out wrong.” This is because for a Christian the right to private property is not based on Rothbardian “self-ownership” but on the dignity bestowed upon the self by a God who is ontologically superior and the absolute owner of every self. The principle of private property, therefore, must be logically subordinated to other more important principles derived from that God-given dignity, among which is the right to life. This is why in extreme situations in which death due to hunger is imminent, a Christian can logically prove that the right to private property can be violated without it constituting theft. And if you follow the rabbit hole of rejecting Rothbard’s mistaken view of self-ownership, you cannot prove the absolute illegitimacy of every form of territorial monopoly of power.
You do not speak for God.
The Bible does.
In the Bible, one of the ten commandments says “Thou shalt not covet.”
You are advocating for coveting thy neighbor’s bread.
The “right” to take by force, and if the owner defends his property, the right to kill, what another has produced or traded for, is certainly not “a principle derived from the dignity” that is “bestowed” on us by God. You just made that up.
And too bad, because what you just made up is an internal contradiction. First you said private property is derived from such “dignity”, but then you say violations of private property are derived from such “dignity”.
What you are in effect saying then, is that the concept of “dignity”, which is bestowed on us by God, is whatever you say it is, and the concept of “private property” is whatever you say it is. That if you are starving to death, the definition of private property suddenly means something totally opposite to what it meant before you were starving to death. That my bread is my private property as long as you have bread, but as soon as you no longer have bread, that definition goes out the window, and you trying to take my bread is just you physically attempting to possess what is suddenly yours.
But exactly when does my bread become yours? When exactly do you go from nutritionally satisfied to starving?
Suppose you just ate bread and drank water, and you are sitting beside me and I have bread and water in my grocery bag. Suppose for whatever reason we don’t get up. That the hours and days go by. Exactly when does the bread and water in my grocery bag change from my property to your property? And why does your life trump mine?
You aren’t deriving the legitimacy of theft from God. You’re deriving it from your own Egoism that you are calling God.
“This is because for a Christian the right to private property is not based on Rothbardian “self-ownership” but on the dignity bestowed upon the self by a God who is ontologically superior and the absolute owner of every self.”
This is imprecise and a false dichotomy.
It is because God created everything that he owns everything and your rights derive from him. That’s precisely what follows from Rothbardian self-ownership.
Also, God created us as autonomous beings – in the sense that we have the capacity to make our own decisions (keep your pants on, Calvinists).
As such, barring any qualifying instructions from God, the fruits of your own labor belong to you because the opportunity costs of your actions are directly born solely by you, and no one has a natural right to force you to expend your labor on them.
The principle of private property is not subordinated to principles derived from God-given dignity, but is what justifies it.
If I own a piece of property, I get to set the conditions of entry and use. God created everything, so he gets to set the same conditions. Same principle at work.
As to the right of private property being violated and it not constituting theft, the Bible specifically says otherwise.
Listen, Rothbard may have been a good economist but he was a lousy philosopher who advocated a decidedly anti-Christian ideology, regardless of how much we may like his capitalist and anti-state views. It is not complicated: from the concept of God-given human dignity we derive that God created nature so that men could use its resources for their own development as persons; therefore, it is necessary to establish the best method to administer those resources which await their transformation through work so that they can meet the needs of men. The system that makes those resources most plentiful for the enjoyment of the greatest number of persons is private property. This is strictly an utilitarian view of private property and is perfectly compatible with the Misesian impossibility of socialist calculation, despite its anti-Rothbardian implications. It follows that every person has the obligation to respect the private property of the other because that property is directly or indirectly indispensable for the life of other human beings and for the good of society. Theft violates that right. Unlike Mises, however, Christians must argue for the concept of private property within the confines of natural law, so that in situations in which death is imminent, the right to private property is not absolute, is subservient to the right to life and therefore, it can be violated without it constituting theft. This has nothing to do with coveting someone’s private property. Reliance on the wrong-headed concept of absolute self-ownership is what leads Rothbardians to subordinate the right to life to the right to private property, the reason why they must logically defend abortion, child and elderly abandonment, voluntary slavery contracts, market for babies and body parts, homesteading of children, gay unions, drugs, etc., and the reason why they deny that some positive moral duties must exist and the reason why they cannot conceive of any rational ethic that establishes enforceable moral duties on others that go beyond the nonaggression principle, for example, duties such as caring or love.
Edgardo:
Oh so your whole initial diatribe was only meant as a psychological fix to satisfy your hostility and anger towards what he wrote.
“Listen, Rothbard may have been a good economist but he was a lousy philosopher who advocated a decidedly anti-Christian ideology, regardless of how much we may like his capitalist and anti-state views.”
Rothbard was an exceptional philosopher, much greater than you, Mr. Tenreiro. He wrote a 4 volume philosophical treatise on the history of economic thought which if you have read it is more philosophy than economics. He had an incedible ability to identify how a particular philosophical thought would lead to another thought as it pertained to the philosophy of ethics.
He was incredibly well read.
He was Dean of the Austrian school, which most economists, and myself, consider to be a school of philosophy no less than economics.
Lousy? Puhlease. Say you disagree. Say you don’t like what he wrote. Say he made a mistake or two here or there in his deductions. But saying he was lousy is obviously a pathetic plea of extremism as a means to cover up the absence of subtlety and sophistication in your “critique”, and I hesitate to even call it that.
“It is not complicated:”
Anytime anyone prefaces what they wrote with this holier than thou condescension, it is almost always a result of one’s own simple mindedness, rather than an actual accurate description of the subject matter at hand. And oh look, that applies to what you wrote.
“from the concept of God-given human dignity we derive that God created nature so that men could use its resources for their own development as persons; therefore, it is necessary to establish the best method to administer those resources which await their transformation through work so that they can meet the needs of men.”
No, that is again just your own made up definition of “dignity”. You don’t speak for God. What you call “dignity” is a supercilious appeal to your own “I have a right to steal from you if I want” thirst for aggression, covered under a veil of humanitarianism and altruism.
“The system that makes those resources most plentiful for the enjoyment of the greatest number of persons is private property.”
No that is utilitarianism, not private property.
Private property is the ethic that the producer or buyer of a scarce resource is the (Earthly) ultimate arbiter and judge of the disposition of said resource.
Privwte property is individualist, not collectivist.
“This is strictly an utilitarian view of private property and is perfectly compatible with the Misesian impossibility of socialist calculation, despite its anti-Rothbardian implications.”
Strict utilitarianism IS INCOMPATIBLE with private property. Wait, is that why you want to convince others (yourself?) That Rothbard was a “lousy philosopher”? Because he wrote an essay “Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature”? That is betrays your sensitivity and proclivity to wanting theft to reduce the wellbeing of the filthy rich so that those who are poor and intended by God to die from starvation (see what I did there?)?
“It follows that every person has the obligation to respect the private property of the other because that property is directly or indirectly indispensable for the life of other human beings and for the good of society.”
No, that is the collectivist view of property, not necessarily God’s.
What you say “follows” is following a false belief itself derived from a flawed assumption.
“Theft violates that right. Unlike Mises, however, Christians must argue for the concept of private property within the confines of natural law, so that in situations in which death is imminent, the right to private property is not absolute, is subservient to the right to life and therefore, it can be violated without it constituting theft.”
Private property in the Christian ideology IS natural law. Natural law does not supercede it, nor does it constrain it from what would be A refusing to give his bread to B such that B dies from starvation.
” This has nothing to do with coveting someone’s private property.”
Sure it does. To want poor people to be given a pass and be free to violate the commandment though shalt not covet.
A starving person who steals the bread of another is very much coveting the bread.
You want their covetedness to be given free reign.
“Reliance on the wrong-headed concept of absolute self-ownership is what leads Rothbardians to subordinate the right to life to the right to private property”
You have not shown how it is wrong.
“…the reason why they must logically defend abortion, child and elderly abandonment, voluntary slavery contracts, market for babies and body parts, homesteading of children, gay unions, drugs, etc.”
Which the logically consistent Christians DO defend, thank you very much.
“and the reason why they deny that some positive moral duties must exist and the reason why they cannot conceive of any rational ethic that establishes enforceable moral duties on others that go beyond the nonaggression principle, for example, duties such as caring or love.”
Meaningless platitude devoid of concrete meaning.
“A starving person who steals the bread of another is very much coveting the bread.”
And just to remove this as a sticking point for Edgardo, the hero of this starving person would be the greedy capitalist, if the government doesn’t get in the way:
He walks up to a filthy rich greedy capitalist and underbids his competitors. “I’ll mow your lawn for 5 loaves of bread if I can eat the first one now, since I’m starving.”
In fact, surround this starving person with such greedy people, and after word gets out about how cheap he works, he can get them to bid against each other.
That’s *IF* the government stays out of the way.
Problem solved.
“… therefore, it is necessary to establish the best method to administer those resources which await their transformation through work so that they can meet the needs of men.”
Edgardo, maybe this perspective will help.
Nothing is a resource until someone believes it can be used as a means to satisfy his preferences.
Whatever God made possible in the creation of different kinds of materials, no one cares about a just way of distributing them until they’re seen as useful.
So, scarcity of resources are a function of demand relative to supply; There might be some kind of material that’s incredibly rare, but if nobody wants it, then no one concerns themselves with the distribution of it.
Subjective values are what give materials the quality of “resource”, so there’s no a priori way to justly distribute them.
And for many kinds of resources, you actually would prefer to not go through the trouble of acquiring them in their raw form. It would be better for you, even if it made the other guy filthy rich, to trade with him at an opportunity cost that is less than what you would incur if you were to get and process the raw materials, yourself.
Maybe this video by Tom Woods would be helpful, too:
Critics Say, “You Libertarians Are Soulless Materialists”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZGtcNcyyTI
There is no logical way for a Christian to argue in favor of Misesian economics from a Rothbardian absolute self-ownership perspective not only because such a view logically leads to a defense of abortion, a market for babies and baby parts, homesteading of children, child abandonment, voluntary slavery contracts, etc., but because the arguments in favor of a Rothbardian absolute self-ownership position are themselves very bad arguments.
To my knowledge, neither Woods nor Murphy have addressed this fundamental issue in detail. Others have, like Edward Feser and Gene Callahan, and as a result, like me, have moved away from the extreme Rothbardian positions in ethics and politics.
Read for example http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2009/08/rothbard-revisited.html and http://gene-callahan.blogspot.com/2011/05/new-logical-category.html
I look forward to Murphy addressing this topic in the future.
There is no logical way to hold on to a Christian ethic and at the same time favor a Rothbardian absolute self-ownership foundation of Misesian economics. This is not just because absolute self-ownership logically leads to a support for abortion, market for babies and baby parts, child abandonment, elderly abandonment, voluntary slavery contracts, etc,, as Walter Block and Rothbard himself have correctly pointed out, but because the philosophical arguments in favor of Rothbardian absolute self-ownership are very bad.
To my knowledge, neither Woods nor Murphy have addressed this fundamental issue. Others like Gene Callahan and Edward Feser have, and as a result, have moved away from the most radical positions in ethics and politics advanced by Rothbard. For example see here http://gene-callahan.blogspot.com/2011/05/new-logical-category.html and here http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2009/08/rothbard-revisited.html
“This is not just because absolute self-ownership logically leads to a support for abortion, market for babies and baby parts, child abandonment, elderly abandonment, voluntary slavery contracts, etc,, as Walter Block and Rothbard himself have correctly pointed out …”
It’s not that self-ownership necessarily leads to support for these things; Rather, it means that no human has the authority over another human such that he has a right to prevent another from doing these things.
(In the case of abortion, as Ron Paul has pointed out, the regulations that would be required to prevent those murders would violate property rights, and so are unjustified.)
So, apart from God, himself, running a country – which he doesn’t do anymore because there are no more theocracies – contracts between men will have to be based on consent. Which means if someone else isn’t violating your property rights, then you don’t have a right to prevent them from acting.
If God specifically spoke to you (which he can, but generally doesn’t), then you’d have to prove that.