And my response to anti war libertarians · Liberty Politics Discussion

And my response to anti war libertarians

I saved this for a separate post because I happen to share a lot of libertarian values, but my god I cannot stand libertarians. At least, not American libertarians.

I believe in maximal personal liberty. I believe in minimal economic interference by government. I believe in minimal taxes, and I'm open to the idea that all taxation is theft. I am a gun rights absolutist and a free speech absolutist. I am not an open borders advocate, but I'll save that for another time. The short version is that even Galt's Gulch needed to have border controls to avoid being taken over by people who did not share the values on which they were building their community.

But where I differ from libertarians, apart from my belief in national sovereignty and border control, is that I am a firm interventionist. And here is why.

Let's start with the fact that in order for property rights and contracts to be enforced, we have to have some enforcement mechanism. Some people might suggest we have essentially anarchy and every person should be left to enforce their own contracts. To such people, I say, we cannot have a discussion unless you acknowledge what reality is like. Such a system is never going to work for the same reason communism cannot work: it only works if every single person voluntarily commits to following it. In reality, humans will always try to twist things to their own advantage. So on some level we need police, or some similar enforcement mechanism.

Now, the next question is, who should get the protection of that enforcement mechanism? And while I do believe in borders, my ultimate answer is that everyone should get that enforcement mechanism to protect their personal liberty and economic liberty. Everyone that we can practically provide it for.

After all, why should I care, if I am a libertarian, if my neighbor's property rights are violated by a robber? They aren't me. That isn't 'my problem.' Why should my resources go to police who are going to catch that robber and return the property? When Rand Paul was assaulted in his home, why should my tax dollars go to provide police who catch the assaulter? Yet almost all libertarians think that we should, for some reason, care. That my tax dollars should in fact go to paying to protect Rand Paul (and let me say of all the people in the US, he's lowest on the list of people I care about protecting, after how he has talked about Iran).

So where do we draw the line? Should I be liable for helping protect the person next door? The person a mile down the road?

Any 'libertarian' argument for why we should not care about helping Iranian people be free can be turned around and made into an argument for why I should not care about helping Thomas Massie be free. And any argument that I should help my neighbor with his property rights because it helps me indirectly, well, that argument also shows why we should help the Iranians with their rights.

The only reason that I, as someone who prioritizes liberty, do not actively want us to invade North Korea and the CCP, is because I am not sure we could win, at least not without such widespread death and destruction that it may not be worth it to do it. Also because I am not sure the people there would actually act on their own behalf. And sometimes, what needs to happen is not letting them govern themselves. After WWII, we essentially told the Germans and Japanese that they were getting a time out from running their own governments, and we were going to do it for them, until we were sure they would respect human rights (and now Germany continues to deny free speech so we see how that went). Oh, and if they bring up Venezuela, I would note that the US government was just enforcing the contracts that the Venezuelans broke with US companies so even by libertarian standards that was completely justified.

Iran is different. Iran has shown they want freedom. The occupying regime of pseudofascist religious extremists is weak, and the best they can do is to act as terrorists, and they aren't even good at it. The people are dying for freedom. Of all the people in the world whose freedom I want to support, the Iranians top the list. Certainly not Massie or Paul, whose total lack of concern for the freedom of others has made me want to see them taxed by Elizabeth Warren.

It is for this reason that I utterly reject the libertarian party, even though I hold to many of their principles. And it is for this reason that I am generally highly pro war.

7 comments