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August 13, 2007
Question of the Day
Megan asks:
Is all of blogland willing to discuss libertarianism/bash or defend libertarians at infinite length? I surely have not reached my fill of the topic, but I remember that before I had a blog, I went 33 years without ever much thinking about them. Is all of blogland so transfixed by them?[...]
Other topics that I've never seen the blogs I read tire of:
Dating strategies
Spanking
Cats
Blogging
What some mainstream pundit said
Libertarians have mattered during exactly two points in my life. Senior year political science, when the class was mainly me and this Libertarian kid Peter yelling at each other, and since I entered the blogosphere, where lots of posts seem to feature me and a libertarian yelling at each other.
My hunch is that libertarians are safe debate partners for liberals. With Republicans, too much appears to be at stake, and partisanship generally overwhelms the policy discussion. The other side must actually be stopped. But libertarians aren't going anywhere politically, so the discussion can largely focus in on interesting questions of political and economic theory. That's intellectually useful, but a bit frivolous, so it tends to mainly happen among people with too much time on their hands and little in the way of responsibilities, like bloggers and high school seniors.
August 13, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
interesting questions of political and economic theory. That's intellectually useful, but a bit frivolous
Out here in the clear-aired Northwest, that's called wanking.
Posted by: JimPortlandOR | Aug 13, 2007 10:50:53 AM
Blogland is just an extension of all internet discussion forums like USENET and listservs where libertarianism would repeatedly come up over and over again as a topic... usually because some libertarian would frequently pop up to tell us all about his beliefs. Combine this with the fact that libertarians are over-represented among the computer-savvy, and it's not too surprising.
I'm curious, though, whether we're still in a place where libertarians are over-represented in online discussion groups or whether their tradition of being over-represented in these groups in an earlier era when only a small subset of the computer-savvy were on the internet has carried over into the modern age so that we just think it's "normal" to discuss libertarianism at length in any online political forum.
Posted by: Tyro | Aug 13, 2007 10:59:11 AM
Libertarians have this fantasy that they can live independently of everyone else. Sounds nice (if you are doing okay at the moment) until the first power outage. Then you realize how much present day living is the result of lots of people doing lots of things cooperatively. And economics is not as strong a glue as libertarians would like to think. Which is where government services (and taxes) come into play. But libertarians are allergic to such notions for the most part.
Posted by: Quiddity | Aug 13, 2007 11:13:23 AM
I am so tempted to write a blog post describing a mainstream pundit's views on the optimal strategy for using your blogging habit to date a libertarian cat-lover who's into spanking. ;)
Posted by: DAS | Aug 13, 2007 11:29:15 AM
My brother the libertarian says it's better to be a libertarian than a Democrat or a Republican or a Socialist because, as he says, and this is a quotation, "At least I'm not hurting anything."
I think he means because libertarians are so ineffective, so powerless, that they can't do any damage? *Because* they don't band together?
But this ignores the part where their refusal to co-operate keeps them from aiding the rest of us -- the aid they could be giving their communities -- something, Ayn Rand pace, one could argue they do owe us.
Posted by: delagar | Aug 13, 2007 11:32:06 AM
In other words, "the politics are so vicious because the stakes are so small"?
Posted by: Deep Thought | Aug 13, 2007 12:16:04 PM
Libertarians don't believe they can live independently of others, and they do band together. There just aren't enough of them to mess things up the way Democrats and Republicans do, even if they believed in messing things up, which they don't. They believe in letting things mess themselves up whenever that's the best way for things to get messed up.
Posted by: Sanpete | Aug 13, 2007 12:19:28 PM
Well, the views of libertarians are always fun to poke at, rather like Zeno's paradoxes.
I guess "frivolous but useful" about gets it.
Posted by: Elvis Elvisberg | Aug 13, 2007 12:57:16 PM
I think the comment of the libertarian brother speaks to the conceit that, by opposing "activist government", right-wing Libertarians don't have to answer for failed or destructive government programs since they propose none.
Posted by: WB Reeves | Aug 13, 2007 1:02:31 PM
I suppose we could agree to ignore them. This would be easier if I didn't have one in my family and two or three others on my faculty.
Posted by: delagar | Aug 13, 2007 1:04:33 PM
As for the question of the relative importance of right-wing Libertarianism. I think it is a mistake to underate the role it has played in providing an ideological cover to what had been the worn out husk of Conservativism in the US. Imagine, if you will, a conservative movement composed of nothing but religious reactionaries and partisans of economic privilege and corporate hegemony.
Without the patina of radical individualism and maximum freedom through laissez faire, its difficult to explain the last 30 years of US political history. Unless we discard the idea that popular sentiment has any effect on our politics.
Posted by: WB Reeves | Aug 13, 2007 1:14:06 PM
As for the question of the relative importance of right-wing Libertarianism. I think it is a mistake to underate the role it has played in providing an ideological cover to what had been the worn out husk of Conservativism in the US. Imagine, if you will, a conservative movement composed of nothing but religious reactionaries and partisans of economic privilege and corporate hegemony.
Without the patina of radical individualism and maximum freedom through laissez faire, its difficult to explain the last 30 years of US political history. Unless we discard the idea that popular sentiment has any effect on our politics.
Posted by: WB Reeves | Aug 13, 2007 1:14:13 PM
"I suppose we could agree to ignore them. This would be easier if I didn't have one in my family and two or three others on my faculty. "
Yes, always a good strategy to ignore annoying, dissenting opinion.
Posted by: hmmm | Aug 13, 2007 1:14:46 PM
"Conservatives" don't actually have an ideology other than increasing their own power, so you can't have much of an intellectual debate with them. Also conservatives tend to be scared to expose themselves to people with contrary viewpoints at the risk of damaging their own purity, so you don't find many of them posting in the comments on liberal blogs. OTOH, libertarians have almost a childlike faith that if they just recite enough Econ 101 or Ayn Rand to us poor deluded lefties, we will realize the errors of our ways and support the gold standard.
Posted by: Ron | Aug 13, 2007 1:24:21 PM
Let's bear in mind that conservativism, as currently practiced, has voided its philosophical underpinnings fairly thoroughly through the current administration. The libertarians are attractive targets because they actually have a systematic philosophy. You can't argue with Republicans in that fashion, because there hasn't been a firm theoretical articulation of its philosophy of big-government, socially-intrusive, low-regulation, zero-tax, xenophobic, imperialistic policies.
Posted by: Anthony Damiani | Aug 13, 2007 1:27:47 PM
I don't see what is so "frivolous" about debating political and economic theories. It's good to challenge your assumptions and biases. Like that every libertarian is a Randroid or gives a shit about the gold standard.
Posted by: Jason | Aug 13, 2007 1:31:51 PM
Also, since the rise of blogs has roughly coincided with the Bush era, it's not too surprising that lots of chatter about a philosophy based on a smaller central government would coincide with the reign of Commander Koo Koo Bananas.
Posted by: Jason | Aug 13, 2007 1:44:01 PM
"Conservatives" don't actually have an ideology other than increasing their own power
Power to do what, and why? Of course they have an ideology, or mix of ideologies, as liberals do. Libertarians are more ideologically consistent than either conservatives or liberals. Which doesn't seem to be a practical advantage.
Also conservatives tend to be scared to expose themselves to people with contrary viewpoints at the risk of damaging their own purity, so you don't find many of them posting in the comments on liberal blogs
Oh, that explains it. It wouldn't be related to abuse and stupidity directed against them at liberal blogs.
its philosophy of big-government, socially-intrusive, low-regulation, zero-tax, xenophobic, imperialistic policies
Why wouldn't conservatives want to post where this is how they're portrayed, for example?
Posted by: Sanpete | Aug 13, 2007 2:08:06 PM
"Jane"'s navel must reach all the way to a deeper understanding.
Why else would she peer into it so endlessly? Why else would Ezra give her the attention she so badly needs?
Posted by: binny | Aug 13, 2007 2:24:46 PM
Think you got the wrong Megan, binny.
Posted by: Jason | Aug 13, 2007 2:37:51 PM
I think late '90s Russia and Carlos Slim's Mexico would like a word with you about how little damage libertarians do.
Posted by: turkey | Aug 13, 2007 2:52:00 PM
So which political party/philosophy is it that hasn't put blood on the ground?
Who hasn't done damage?
And is "not doing damage" really what we're after here?
Posted by: delagar | Aug 13, 2007 3:25:07 PM
I mean that in an ahimsa sense, of course. Not in a breaking eggs sense.
Posted by: delagar | Aug 13, 2007 5:19:18 PM
Libertarians are like agnostics. Agnostics don't have enough balls to admit they are atheists. Libertarians don't have enough balls to follow it to anarchy.
Posted by: HeartlessB | Aug 13, 2007 10:19:56 PM
OTOH, libertarians have almost a childlike faith that if they just recite enough Econ 101 or Ayn Rand to us poor deluded lefties, we will realize the errors of our ways and support the gold standard.
But...but...Murray Rothbard said...!!
Posted by: mop | Aug 13, 2007 10:38:12 PM
