Libertarian Positions

[mbm30075]

I've been reading a little bit lately about the Libertarian political platform, and a lot of what they have to say makes sense, but I was hoping that some people here could give me a better sense of some of their beliefs:

1. It seems like a lot of Libertarians would agree that taxes = force = theft = wrong. Does this apply (in their opinion) only to income tax or to all taxes? If we give up paying taxes at all, how do we have roads, water, sewer, etc...?

2. I've seen that a lot of people seem to be sort of "live and let live" on the homosexual marriage issue, but what about the following statement?
"Get the government out of sanctioning marriage at all."
I mean, if marriage is a spiritual union (as most people would agree it is), let's let churches deal with it. It seems like legal marriages only exist for governmental control, right?

3. How extreme does the Libertarian agenda get? Are there some non-violent anarchists (for lack of a better term) out there that want literally NO government? Do Libertarians see government as a necessity?

Can someone give me a synopsis of the Libertarian utopia?

Thanks!

[TheMercenary]

Good luck on getting a straight answer. Let Google be your friend and make up your own mind.

[jinx]

Maybe start by reading Ayn Rand? Or there are some interviews with her on youtube if your more into instant gratification....

[TheMercenary]

Many individuals found their support of libertarianism upon ideological elements derived from the philosophy of novelist Ayn Rand, which she called Objectivism.[citation needed] Some libertarians who derive their beliefs from economic reasoning acknowledge various insights of Objectivism, even when not deriving their libertarianism from Objectivism. Many influential figures in the libertarian movement, such as L. Neil Smith, acknowledge a debt to Objectivism. In addition, the fiction of Ayn Rand is popular among even libertarians who do not consider themselves to be Objectivists. Therefore, it is perhaps surprising to some that the compatibility of Objectivism and libertarianism is a hotly contested matter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberta...nd_Objectivism

[Juniper]

Originally Posted by mbm30075

2. I've seen that a lot of people seem to be sort of "live and let live" on the homosexual marriage issue, but what about the following statement?
"Get the government out of sanctioning marriage at all."
I mean, if marriage is a spiritual union (as most people would agree it is), let's let churches deal with it. It seems like legal marriages only exist for governmental control, right?

If this were the case, then only people who belonged to a church of some kind would be able to officially marry. Without some kind of spiritual ritual, which many people do not have, marriage would be meaningless without government sanction; it would simply cease to exist.

The whole point of government sanction of marriage is the application of laws, tax filing status, custody of children and adult guardianship, insurance benefits, estate inheritance, alimony, etc., etc....It's necessary to define what constitutes that arrangement, otherwise anybody could say they were conveniently married when it was of benefit to them.

Otherwise, it wouldn't make any difference to a gay couple whether or not the government sanctioned the marriage. Why would they care? You want to be married, have a little private ceremony and wear a ring - many do just that. But if there is legal stuff involved, there have to be laws that regulate who gets to say they're married.

Personally, I don't care if gays can get married. Doesn't affect me in the least. I don't understand the argument against it. If a hetero couple can get married on a whim in Vegas, who are we to judge a committed gay couple?

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by mbm30075

Can someone give me a synopsis of the Libertarian utopia?

[TheMercenary]

Interesting. From wiki:

Rand was never a member of the libertarian movement. To the contrary, Rand condemned libertarianism as being a greater threat to freedom and capitalism than both liberalism and conservativism[1]. Rand said of libertarians that "They are not defenders of capitalism. They’re a group of publicity seekers... most of them are my enemies... I’ve read nothing by a Libertarian (when I read them, in the early years) that wasn’t my ideas badly mishandled—i.e., had the teeth pulled out of them—with no credit given."[1]

Rothbard (whose brief personal friendship with Rand ended in acrimony), in turn, wrote The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult, which concluded:

The major lesson of the history of the movement to libertarians is that It Can Happen Here, that libertarians, despite explicit devotion to reason and individuality, are not exempt from the mystical and totalitarian cultism that pervades other ideological as well as religious movements. Hopefully, libertarians, once bitten by the virus, may now prove immune.[2]

Psychologist Nathaniel Branden, who for a considerable period was Ayn Rand's lover and one of her closest associates until they had a falling out, has claimed that Rand "...did not realize that the majority of people who called themselves 'libertarians' were advocates not of anarchism but of constitutionally limited government (in essence, the Objectivist model)... In any event, today libertarianism is part of our language and is commonly understood to mean the advocacy of minimal government. Ayn Rand is commonly referred to as 'a libertarian philosopher.' Folks, we are all libertarians now. Might as well get used to it."[3]

[ZenGum]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

.... libertarians, despite explicit devotion to reason and individuality, are not exempt from the mystical and totalitarian cultism that pervades other ideological as well as religious movements.

: scratches head :

nope, can't think of anyone like that....

[Griff]

We have the unfortunate situation of having an apologetic Republican totalitarian on the Libertarian ticket this time. I don't think rewarding his bad behavior on the Patriot and Defense of Marriage Acts with a Libertarian vote is the direction we want to go.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

I would disagree with Griff on that point, because particularly the LP Veep candidate, Wayne Allen Root, agrees with me that one business of the freedom people is going to be liberationism -- he's willing to shoot at ultra-statists. Applying coercion to totalitarians, who are all about the coercion anyway, seems hardly to be sin from the Libertarian viewpoint. Although poster Radar will insist, in his usual disagreeable manner, that it is. He's very uncomfortable with eliminating, or apparently even annoying, tyrants or tyranny. His sympathies and habits of mind seem inclined towards tyranny in any case, as the body of his posts shows. If he is any description of genuine libertarian at all, it is Left-Libertarian, as his recent public swerve to those Socialists, the Democrats, indicates -- not that he'll admit it. But hard leftists do seek to hide their nature.

Too bad the Republicans are better at shooting at the ultra-statists -- too bad from a partisan point of view anyway.

Reason Magazine, the Libertarian monthly, finds three main streams of libertarian thought: Left-libertarian, Right-libertarian, and Anarcho-libertarian, all of which describe the paths by which libertarians arrived at the libertarian persuasion. There are some distinctive favorites of each. Left Libs like small government and have a penchant for pot; Right Libs sound like an amalgamation of Robert A. Heinlein and William F. Buckley and regard Republicans as insufficiently committed to balanced Federal budgets and small government; Anarcho-Libs once were anarchists but gave it up as an unnecessarily despairing view of governance and an overly naive view of a social order, and tend to be great fans of Murray Rothbard's writings. But they still really really think that government is best which governs not merely the least, but least needs to govern.

As a Right-lib myself, I am no longer wholly persuaded that all of power's coercion is necessarily evil. There are coercive functions in society, to perform those things a society thinks are necessary, but which also are not economically profitable. Most of these necessities (and the debate over just which are indeed necessities is perennial and acrimonious) are in aid of protecting those activities which are profitable ones -- that you can make a living at, and which create wealth. The coercive functions are generally in aid of the wealth creationg ones.

At least, they damned well better be.

It isn't always the case. That's where the trouble lurks.

So, with conservatives generally, the right-libs keep the social coercive functions to their barest minimum consonant with orderly wealth-creating and liberality of the social order, as wealth-creation needs things to be orderly enough to reasonably predict a profit.

[Cicero]

Jinxer, I think you are wrong on this one. She was pointing out the flaws of the conservatives because she was a die hard conservative, and much like Pailin, a woman hater.

She was a die hard capitalist, and she wrote a book about that too. She was not a liberitarian, she was a political conservative of the very worst kind, which was why she had so many arguements with that party.

She argued against the changes in her own party.