X-Message-Number: 23192
From: randy <>
Subject: Really the Last Word on Libertarianism
Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 08:15:18 -0600
References: <>

Libertarianism in One Lesson 
Part of the "Critiques of Libertarianism" site. 
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html 


Introduction 

One of the most attractive features of libertarianism is that it is
basically a very simple ideology. Maybe even simpler than Marxism,
since you don't have to learn foreign words like "proletariat". 

This brief outline will give you most of the tools you need to hit the
ground running as a freshly indoctrinated libertarian ideologue. Go
forth and proselytize! 


Philosophy 
In the beginning, man dwelt in a state of Nature, until the serpent
Government tempted man into Initial Coercion. 
Government is the Great Satan. All Evil comes from Government, and all
Good from the Market, according to the Ayatollah Rand. 
We must worship the Horatio Alger fantasy that the meritorious few
will just happen to have the lucky breaks that make them rich.
Libertarians happen to be the meritorious few by ideological
correctness. The rest can go hang. 
Government cannot own things because only individuals can own things.
Except for corporations, partnerships, joint ownership, marriage, and
anything else we except but government. 
Parrot these arguments, and you too will be a singular, creative,
reasoning individualist. 
Parents cannot choose a government for their children any more than
they can choose language, residence, school, or religion. 
Taxation is theft because we have a right to squat in the US and
benefit from defense, infrastructure, police, courts, etc. without
obligation. 
Magic incantations can overturn society and bring about libertopia.
Sovereign citizenry! The 16th Amendment is invalid! States rights! 
Objectivist/Neo-Tech Advantage #69i : The true measure of fully
integrated honesty is whether the sucker has opened his wallet. Thus
sayeth the Profit Wallace. Zonpower Rules Nerdspace! 
The great Zen riddle of libertarianism: minimal government is
necessary and unnecessary. The answer is only to be found by
individuals. 

Government 
Libertarians invented outrage over government waste, bureaucracy,
injustice, etc. Nobody else thinks they are bad, knows they exist, or
works to stop them. 
Enlightenment comes only through repetition of the sacred mantra
"Government does not work" according to Guru Browne. 
Only government is force, no matter how many Indians were killed by
settlers to acquire their property, no matter how many blacks were
enslaved and sold by private companies, no matter how many heads of
union members are broken by private police. 
Money that government touches spontaneously combusts, destroying the
economy. Money retained by individuals grows the economy, even if
literally burnt. 
Private education works, public education doesn't. The publicly
educated masses that have grown the modern economies of the past 150
years are an illusion. 
Market failures, trusts, and oligopolies are lies spread by the evil
economists serving the government as described in the "Protocols of
the Elders of Statism". 
Central planning cannot work. Which is why all businesses internally
are run like little markets, with no centralized leadership. 
Paternalism is the worst thing that can be inflicted upon people, as
everyone knows that fathers are the most hated and reviled figures in
the world. 
Government is like fire, a dangerous servant and a fearsome master.
Therefore, we should avoid it entirely, as we do all forms of
combustion. 

Regulation 
The FDA is solely responsible for any death or sickness where it might
have prevented treatment by the latest unproven fad. 
Children, criminals, death cultists, and you all have the same
inalienable right to own any weaponry: conventional, chemical,
biological, or nuclear. 
All food, drugs, and medical treatments should be entirely
unregulated: every industry should be able to kill 300,000 per year in
the US like the tobacco industry. 
If you don't have a gun, you are not a libertarian. If you do have a
gun, why don't you have even more powerful armament? 
Better to abolish all regulations, consider everything as property,
and solve all controversy by civil lawsuit over damages. The US
doesn't have enough lawyers, and people who can't afford to invest
many thousands of dollars in lawsuits should shut up. 

Libertarian Party 
The Libertarian Party is well on its way to dominating the political
landscape, judging from its power base of 100+ elected dogcatchers and
other important officials after 25 years of effort. 
The "Party of Oxymoron": "Individualists unite!" 
Flip answers are more powerful than the best reasoned arguments, which
is why so many libertarians are in important government positions. 
It's time the new pro-freedom libertarian platform was implemented;
child labor, orphanages, sweatshops, poorhouses, company towns,
monopolies, trusts, cartels, blacklists, private goons, slumlords,
etc. 
Libertarianism "rules" Internet political debate the same way US
Communism "ruled" pamphleteering. 
No compromise from the "Party of Principle". Justice, happiness,
liberty, guns, and other good stuff come only from rigidly adhering to
inflexible dogmas. 
Minimal government is whatever we say it is, and we don't agree. 
Government is "moving steadily in a libertarian direction" with every
change libertarians approve of; no matter if it takes one step forward
and two steps backwards. 
Yes, the symbol of the Libertarian Party is a Big Government Statue.
It's not supposed to be funny or ironic! 

Political Debate Strategy 
Count only the benefits of libertarianism, count only the costs of
government. 
Five of a factoid beats a full argument. 
All historical examples are tainted by statism, except when they favor
libertarian claims. 
Spiritually baptize the deceased as libertarians because they cannot
protest the anachronism: Locke, Smith, Paine, Jefferson, Spooner, etc.
The most heavily armed libertarian has the biggest dick and thus the
best argument. 
The best multi-party democratic republics should be equated to the
worst dictatorships for the purposes of denouncing statism. It's only
a matter of degree. 
Inviolate private property is the only true measure of freedom. Those
without property have the freedom to try to acquire it. If they can't,
let them find somebody else's property to complain on. 
Private ownership is the cure for all problems, despite the historical
record of privately owned states such as Nazi Germany, Czarist and
Stalinist Russia, and Maoist China. 
Require perfection as the only applicable standard to judge
government: libertarianism, being imaginary, cannot be fairly judged
to have flaws. 
Only libertarian economists' Nobel Prizes count: the other economists
and Nobel Prize Committee are mistaken. 
Any exceptional case of private production proves that government
ought not to be involved. 
 



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