Libertarians dont care about liberty.

[CrazyModerate]

Libertarians are just hard line capitalists who label themselves as supporting Liberty and opposing government in a way to find common ground with leftists and in a way to try to convince leftists to support capitalist. Most Libertarians would surrender their liberties to support capitalism.

Libertarians also aren't opposed to powerful institutions, as long as that institution is a "private business," or "corporation." The fact is, Libertarians want the institutions that can NEVER be controlled by the citizens of society to have all the power. Libertarians are offended by the idea of poor people having an equal say in society. That is why they believe democratic governments should be "small governments." So that the equal votes everyone gets have little influence on society.

Libertarians don't care about freedom, they care about maintaining aristocracy, elitism, and oppression.

[JKP]

No offense, but that is a pretty shitty and ignorant polemic.

If you hurry, maybe you can sneak in one from here:
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html

This one is of particular highlight:
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/leftlib.html

[Tungsten]

CrazyModerate

Libertarians are just hard line capitalists who label themselves as supporting Liberty and opposing government in a way to find common ground with leftists
Rest assured, finding "common ground" with leftists is the furthest thing from our minds.

and in a way to try to convince leftists to support capitalist.
We don't care whether you support capitalism or not.

Most Libertarians would surrender their liberties to support capitalism.
Except that the support of capitalism doesn't require surrendering liberties. That's the whole point.

Libertarians also aren't opposed to powerful institutions, as long as that institution is a "private business," or "corporation."
Private indivuduals and corporations can be held responsible for their actions. Governments can't to anything like the same degree.

The fact is, Libertarians want the institutions that can NEVER be controlled by the citizens of society to have all the power.
Where did you get that from?

Libertarians are offended by the idea of poor people having an equal say in society.
I'm offended by that unfounded statement.

That is why they believe democratic governments should be "small governments." So that the equal votes everyone gets have little influence on society.
Small in power. The less power it has, it less damage it can do.

Libertarians don't care about freedom, they care about maintaining aristocracy, elitism, and oppression.
Except that nothing you have claimed supports that.

[James]

I think that your opening post is a little bit ignorant. It is without a doubt, a crude generalisation.

Hayek for example, probably one of the most famous libertarians, was opposed to monopoly. Indeed, Hayek's writing is quite easy to understand and he does explain libertarian philosophy rather well in my opinion (although some prefer others as an introduction).

[Publius]

Libertarians are just hard line capitalists who label themselves as supporting Liberty and opposing government in a way to find common ground with leftists and in a way to try to convince leftists to support capitalist.

Not really.

I don't think you have the first clue about libertarian concepts such as 'individual rights' or 'initiation of force'.



Most Libertarians would surrender their liberties to support capitalism.


Most libertarians would say that's contradiction and terms.


Libertarians also aren't opposed to powerful institutions, as long as that institution is a "private business," or "corporation."

'Libertarians' don't all support corporations.

Corporations are a government charter, as you probably don't know.



The fact is, Libertarians want the institutions that can NEVER be controlled by the citizens of society to have all the power.

Eh?

What libertarian viewpoints have you read?



Libertarians are offended by the idea of poor people having an equal say in society.

Which is why they fought the King and monarchy and gave people democracy.

:rolleyes:


That is why they believe democratic governments should be "small governments." So that the equal votes everyone gets have little influence on society.

Whatever.





Libertarians don't care about freedom, they care about maintaining aristocracy, elitism, and oppression.

Eh?

You really are out of you're league, aren't you?

[CrazyModerate]

Originally posted by [email protected] 19 2006, 08:04 AM
No offense, but that is a pretty shitty and ignorant polemic.

If you hurry, maybe you can sneak in one from here:
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html

This one is of particular highlight:
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/leftlib.html
I wasn't criticizing anarchists or left libertarians. I was criticizing capitalist libertarians.

[JKP]

Originally posted by CrazyModerate+Jan 19 2006, 06:32 PM--> (CrazyModerate @ Jan 19 2006, 06:32 PM)
[email protected] 19 2006, 08:04 AM
No offense, but that is a pretty shitty and ignorant polemic.

If you hurry, maybe you can sneak in one from here:
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html

This one is of particular highlight:
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/leftlib.html
I wasn't criticizing anarchists or left libertarians. I was criticizing capitalist libertarians. [/b]
Correct. Which is why I gave you those links.

[Tungsten]

Those links are silly. Most of them either misrepresent libertarianism as anarchism or imply that libertarians are wannabe anarchists. Anarchism is not our goal and if we wanted anarchism, we'd call ourselves anarchists.

[Apka]

Originally posted by [email protected] 19 2006, 03:30 AM
Libertarians don't care about freedom...
Although you're criticism is quite superficial, this statement could be considered to be right, at least to some extent. The libertarian notion of 'freedom' is based on the absence of initiation of force, which has very little to do with real freedom.

[James]

I think alot of the "debate" comes down to Berlin's two concepts of freedom/liberty.

A freedom from (libertarian freedom)
A freedom to (non-libertarian freedom).


Both concepts have their pro's and con's.

[Apka]

It certainly does, and it 's precisely what I said. But I also made the distinction between the fact that freedom to, also includes freedom from, while this is not necessarily true with the libertarian concept of freedom.

[James]

what about my freedom to shoot you? It conflicts with your freedom from being shot!


No i disagree with your attempt to show how "to" is superior to "from". Its just a long list of arguments and counter arguments. Its been argued for years and years. No conclusion!

[LA GUERRA OLVIDADA]

I'd vote for the fascists themselves before I'd vote for some Libertarian scum.

[black magick hustla]

Originally posted by [email protected] 20 2006, 09:17 AM
Those links are silly. Most of them either misrepresent libertarianism as anarchism or imply that libertarians are wannabe anarchists. Anarchism is not our goal and if we wanted anarchism, we'd call ourselves anarchists.
Haha!

Actually, "libertarianism" was a term coined out by 19th century french anarchists in order to disguise their "anarchism" from state persecution. free market worshippers are the ones that actually highjacked the term.

You do the logic chap!

[Tungsten]

Apka

Although you're criticism is quite superficial, this statement could be considered to be right, at least to some extent. The libertarian notion of 'freedom' is based on the absence of initiation of force, which has very little to do with real freedom.
The absense of initiation of force is the only "real" freedom. The only alternative is to allow the presence of the initiation of force i.e. oppression and slavery.
LA GUERRA OLVIDADA

I'd vote for the fascists themselves before I'd vote for some Libertarian scum.
I believe you.
Marmot

Actually, "libertarianism" was a term coined out by 19th century french anarchists in order to disguise their "anarchism" from state persecution. free market worshippers are the ones that actually highjacked the term.
And how can you even have anarchism without a free market? A "restricted market" implies control of some sort- which wouldn't be anarchism.

[JKP]

Originally posted by [email protected] 21 2006, 01:06 AM

And how can you even have anarchism without a free market? A "restricted market" implies control of some sort- which wouldn't be anarchism.
Did you know that anarchists don't advocate markets at all?

[James]

2. The Paradox of Positive Liberty
Many liberals, including Berlin, have suggested that the positive concept of liberty carries with it a danger of authoritarianism. Consider the fate of a permanent and oppressed minority. Because the members of this minority participate in a democratic process characterized by majority rule, they might be said to be free on the grounds that they are members of a society exercising self-control over its own affairs. But they are oppressed, and so are surely unfree. Moreover, it is not necessary to see a society as democratic in order to see it as self-controlled; one might instead adopt an organic conception of society, according to which the collectivity is to be thought of as a living organism, and one might believe that this organism will only act rationally, will only be in control of itself, when its various parts are brought into line with some rational plan devised by its wise governors (who, to extend the metaphor, might be thought of as the organism's brain). In this case, even the majority might be oppressed in the name of liberty.

Such justifications of oppression in the name of liberty are no mere products of the liberal imagination, for there are notorious historical examples of their endorsement by authoritarian political leaders. Berlin, himself a liberal and writing during the cold war, was clearly moved by the way in which the apparently noble ideal of freedom as self-mastery or self-realization had been twisted and distorted by the totalitarian dictators of the twentieth century - most notably those of the Soviet Union - so as to claim that they, rather than the liberal West, were the true champions of freedom. The slippery slope towards this paradoxical conclusion begins, according to Berlin, with the idea of a divided self. To illustrate: the smoker in our story provides a clear example of a divided self, as there is the self that wants to get to the appointment and there is the self that wants to get to the tobacconists. We now add to this that one of the selves - the keeper of appointments - is a ‘higher’ self, and the other - the smoker - is a ‘lower’ self. The higher self is the rational, reflecting self, the self that is capable of moral action and of taking responsibility for what she does. This is the true self, since it is what marks us off from other animals. The lower self, on the other hand, is the self of the passions, of unreflecting desires and irrational impulses. One is free, then, when one's higher, rational self is in control and one is not a slave to one's passions or to one's merely empirical self. The next step down the slippery slope consists in pointing out that some individuals are more rational than others, and can therefore know best what is in their and others' rational interests. This allows them to say that by forcing people less rational than themselves to do the rational thing and thus to realize their true selves, they are in fact liberating them from their merely empirical desires. Occasionally, Berlin says, the defender of positive freedom will take an additional step that consists in conceiving of the self as wider than the individual and as represented by an organic social whole - “a tribe, a race, a church, a state, the great society of the living and the dead and the yet unborn”. The true interests of the individual are to be identified with the interests of this whole, and individuals can and should be coerced into fulfilling these interests, for they would not resist coercion if they were as rational and wise as their coercers. “Once I take this view”, Berlin says, “I am in a position to ignore the actual wishes of men or societies, to bully, oppress, torture in the name, and on behalf, of their ‘real’ selves, in the secure knowledge that whatever is the true goal of man ... must be identical with his freedom” (Berlin 1969, pp. 132-33).

Those in the negative camp try to cut off this line of reasoning at the first step, by denying that there is any necessary relation between one's freedom and one's desires. Since one is free to the extent that one is externally unprevented from doing things, they say, one can be free to do what one does not desire to do. If being free meant being unprevented from realizing one's desires, then one could, again paradoxically, reduce one's unfreedom by coming to desire fewer of the things one is unfree to do. One could become free simply by contenting oneself with one's situation. A perfectly contented slave is perfectly free to realize all of her desires. Nevertheless, we tend to think of slavery as the opposite of freedom. More generally, freedom is not to be confused with happiness, for in logical terms there is nothing to stop a free person from being unhappy or an unfree person from being happy. The happy person might feel free, but whether they are free is another matter. Negative theorists of freedom therefore tend to say not that having freedom means being unprevented from doing as one desires, but that it means being unprevented from doing whatever one might desire to do.

Some theorists of positive freedom bite the bullet and say that the contented slave is indeed free - that in order to be free the individual must learn, not so much to dominate certain merely empirical desires, but to rid herself of them. She must, in other words, remove as many of her desires as possible. As Berlin puts it, if I have a wounded leg ‘there are two methods of freeing myself from pain. One is to heal the wound. But if the cure is too difficult or uncertain, there is another method. I can get rid of the wound by cutting off my leg’ (1969, pp. 135-36). This is the strategy of liberation adopted by ascetics, stoics and Buddhist sages. It involves a ‘retreat into an inner citadel’ - a soul or a purely noumenal self - in which the individual is immune to any outside forces. But this state, even if it can be achieved, is not one that liberals would want to call one of freedom, for it again risks masking important forms of oppression. It is, after all, often in coming to terms with excessive external limitations in society that individuals retreat into themselves, pretending to themselves that they do not really desire the worldly goods or pleasures they have been denied. Moreover, the removal of desires may also be an effect of outside forces, such as brainwashing, which we should hardly want to call a realization of freedom.

Because the concept of negative freedom concentrates on the external sphere in which individuals interact, it seems to provide a better guarantee against the dangers of paternalism and authoritarianism perceived by Berlin. To promote negative freedom is to promote the existence of a sphere of action within which the individual is sovereign, and within which she can pursue her own projects subject only to the constraint that she respect the spheres of others. Humboldt and Mill, both defenders of the negative concept of freedom, compared the development of an individual to that of a plant: individuals, like plants, must be allowed to grow, in the sense of developing their own faculties to the full and according to their own inner logic. Personal growth is something that cannot be imposed from without, but must come from within the individual



http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-...ive-negative/#2 (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/#2)

[Apka]

Originally posted by James+--> (James)what about my freedom to shoot you? It conflicts with your freedom from being shot![/b]
Which is why any form of freedom should be restricted to some extent.


No i disagree with your attempt to show how "to" is superior to "from". Its just a long list of arguments and counter arguments. Its been argued for years and years. No conclusion!
What I'm saying is that negative liberty has very little practical value if it is held separate from positive liberty.


Tungsten
The only alternative is to allow the presence of the initiation of force.
Why is initiation of force morally wrong?

[Publius]

What about my freedom to being shot?

I don't know. Maybe it went for a vacation with your 'freedom to be grammatical'.



What I'm saying is that negative liberty has very little practical value if it is held separate from positive liberty.

There's no such thing as 'postive liberty'. 'Positive liberty' for one person is 'negative liberty' for another.

In some cases, it could be justified, but its always morally questionable at best.



Why is initiation of force morally wrong?

Why is killing someone wrong? Why is raping someone wrong?

This is obvious.

[Apka]

I don't know. Maybe it went for a vacation with your 'freedom to be grammatical'.
Sorry about the language.


There's no such thing as 'postive liberty'. 'Positive liberty' for one person is 'negative liberty' for another.

Elaborate


This is obvious.
Then try explaining it.

[Publius]

Sorry about the language.

I really had no idea what you were trying to say.



Elaborate

An example of 'positive liberty' say, the freedom TO government health care removes, for someone else, the freedrom FROM taxation.

Every dollar you 'gain' someone else 'loses'.

Now, do you think its wrong to steal/extort to fund things like this?

I say at the very least, it should be avoided on principal whenever possible.



Then try explaining it.

Because killing you violates your individual rights. Ditto for rape.

Without socially construced rights and laws, you have nihilism.

[Columbia]

Libertarians don't care about freedom, they care about maintaining aristocracy, elitism, and oppression.

Fair to say I'm not a Libertarian and don't speak for them. But any reading of their apologists' works demonstrates the exact opposite.

Libertarians have at their foundation the greatest respect for the concept of habeus corpus, that is, what the state can do with your body. Because, to a Libertarian, freedom of action IS the basis for free association and action.

Any Libertarian society will produce a group of have nots, but in fairness to them, it would probably be a smaller group than we have in America because people would not be able to get any help from a government support system and false inability to work would be seen for what it was, and the true number of people who cannot genuinely fend for themselves would be revealed, and it would be astoundingly low, because our vast majority CAN work to some extent.

But this have not part of society is not the goal of the L's, merely the byproduct of any Darwinian model.

Freedom of body movement and minimal intrusion by the state defines them, and therefore your statement is rediculous.

[Apka]

Originally posted by Publius

I really had no idea what you were trying to say.
I guess I'm having problems translating it to english..... sorry.



An example of 'positive liberty' say, the freedom TO government health care removes, for someone else, the freedrom FROM taxation.
The terms are still valid.


Now, do you think its wrong to steal/extort to fund things like this?

I think it's reasonable and just.



Because killing you violates your individual rights. Ditto for rape.

What individual rights?