How Come the Different Flavors of Libertarianism All Taste the Same?

"As a philosophy, their libertarianism doesn't extent much beyond not wanting to pay taxes, being paid in gold and being able to keep all the guns they want. Many are survivalists at heart and would be perfectly content to live in complete isolation on a mountain somewhere, neither taking anything from society nor giving anything"

A small quibble. Most "libertarians" in the hinterlands don't really dislike government benefits, they're just pissed off someone other than them is getting the benefits in question. The real hard-core "survivalists" I've met over the years nine time out of ten are drawing their government disability or VA check and pissed that it isn't higher or that they were denied at some point while the drug addict down the street gets his.

The libertarian dislike of taxes is not a philosophical principle in itself, it's just a symptom of basic selfishness, and a pathological failure to acknowledge the benefits and obligations of living in a society.

As for their fondness for gold and guns, libertarians are only trying to live out fantasies of self-reliance, probably based on pirate movies or some other fictional ideal.

The libertarian think tanks are mostly funded by a small group of extremely wealthy families: Koch brothers, Scaife, Coors, Mars, Walton, etc.

The amount that they contribute dwarfs funding for progressive organizations. They are all capitalists who are gaming the system for their own personal benefit. The think tanks provide an aura of intellectual coherence that makes the underlying greed sound plausible. Those who work for them are either useful idiots or shills.

People refuse to believe that political discourse can be guide by less than 100 families, especially liberals think it is an honest battle of ideas. The libertarian movement hardly exists elsewhere because it doesn't get the same sort of life support as in the US, and it doesn't get it because there isn't the same concentration of plutocratic power and wealth in the more equitable societies.

Bruce Bartlett is a beneficiary of this libertarian money, check out his ties to Koch, Scaife and others via Source Watch:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bruce_Bartlett

I'd say he is trying to earn his keep by softening the discredited image of the movement. He who pays the piper, calls the tune. Jump, Bruce.

Libertarianism? Pfffft! There ought to be crime of intellectual dishonesty in the public square, and then they'd be together in their own private Idaho (maximum security detention).

As "robertfeinman" observes, they are the illegitimate spawn of some of the most radical conservative families and foundations in the world. I'm sure that being paid to be a prostitute is sure better for them than having to do it out of something free (like committment, rationality and desire to achieve - rather than desire to be clever and dissembling in preventing worthwhile change).

"Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else." — Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)

Isn't self-reliance also a fiction, through which the greedy ignore the fact of their living at the expense of others?

My understanding is that libertarianism derives from the theories of (or was given a theoretical basis by) Herbert Spencer, known, somewhat inaccurately, as the father of Social Darwinism.

Spencer was more accurately a Lamarkian evolutionist. Like many in the nineteenth century he viewed society as analogous to an organism that was in the process of evolving through the inheritance of acquired characteristics -- acquired, that is by sheer superior willpower. Spencer viewed the State (to simplify) as an artificial hinderance to that process.

Spencer saw evolution as proceeding in a positive and benevolent direction, if everyone would just leave it alone. Eventually, he foresaw the withering away of the State, anarchist fashion, with no laws, etc., because people would have willed themselves to be so superior that they wouldn't need it.

Spencer and his followers were called by J.W. Gough (author of The Social Contract: A Critical Study of Its Development, 1936) proponents of the "Police State" theory of the Social Contract, in which the purpose of the civil society was envisioned as limited to providing an army and police force, because men would have become so civilized through Lamarkian evolution that they wouldn't need laws and other civil institutions.

I think later in life Spencer may have modified his theories. Of course, businessmen loved them.

Libertarians tend to side more with Democrats on foreign policy and social policy, while not really agreeing with any recent Republicans on fiscal or general economic policy.

For me, it is the most moderate position of all. Not all libertarians are extreme, no government types. Those people are called, I believe, anarchists. However, Mr. Klein and most liberal or conservative anger mongers routinely select the most extreme position to denounce, since that is easier (despite being pointless.)

I believe there is a need for a third party that supports that third way, because both the Democrats and the Republicans are proven to be fiscally irresponsible, irresponsible with interventionist foreign policy, and irresponsible with personal freedom. We need a cheapskate in charge, who will dole out allowances to the various interests only up to the amount of money we actually have. We need to admit that there are things we can't do, things that cost too much. We can't fix the whole world. We need to admit that we don't know what the best way to live is, so we're not going to legislate who sleeps with whom, what school you have to go to...

There's another type of libertarian out there you may have missed: the ones honest enough to acknowledge that the corporate structure is an invention of government, and that, contrary to the interpretation of the Cato types, much of economic intervention is for the benefit of concentrated wealth. These types wouldn't be caught dead in D.C.

Left-libertarian. Look it up.

BTW: He11 will freeze over before powerful interests subsidize the Center for a Stateless Society. Try to look beyond the beltway lovefest once in awhile.

robertdfeinman:

"The libertarian think tanks are mostly funded by a small group of extremely wealthy families: Koch brothers, Scaife, Coors, Mars, Walton, etc.

The amount that they contribute dwarfs funding for progressive organizations."

Disclosure: I work at Cato and have definitely benefited from Koch money in particular.

But this just false. First, Cato is mostly funded by a very large group of small donors. Second, it's easy to just go and look and try to verify your claim. Combine the budgets of Cato, AEI, Heritage, (not that these place should be logically lumped together) etc. and then compare the sum to the combined budgets of Brookings, CAP, Urban, EPI, etc., and you'll quickly see far how off you are.

Ezra,

Did you hang out at the Cato Events page for a few minutes before you commented? One of the upcoming events is in fact titled "Pakistan and the Future of U.S. Policy."

If you're going to claim the libertarian think tanks don't work on an issue, you might do well not to directly link to something that contradicts your point.

harold3,

In fact, the American libertarian tradition draws very little from Herbert Spencer. If you're interested in the history, I highly recommend Brian Doherty's "Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement."

That said, Spencer is a terribly misunderstood figure and a profoundly interesting liberal thinker. His lasting influence would be an excellent thing. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry is an excellent scholarly overview of Spencer's actual thought. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spencer/

Ezra says, "There's very little libertarian foreign policy out there." This is a strange claim. To stick with the example of Cato, Cato's foreign policy shop is at least as active and visible as it's other areas. Check out the foreign policy page and you'll see the latest Cato study, by Malou Innocent, is specifically on what to do about Pakistan. http://www.cato.org/subtopic_display_new.php?topic_id=25&ra_id=13 And these scholars aren't exactly invisible either. Here's Malou talking about Pakistan on Fox News: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jluuZQFlOUk Cato's foreign policy views are generally pretty close to many progressive liberals' views. It would be nice if progressives gave them more recognition and support.

According to Radicals for Capitalism, p.246: libertarian Murray Rothbard called Herbert Spencer's Social Statistics "the greatest single work of libertarian political philosophy ever written."

It would not surprise me if Koch and Coors didn't pay to have lies posted on this forum.

"Expedience in pursuit of selfishness" seems to be their motto.

We see how that has gone.