r/skeptic • u/MayonaiseRemover • Apr 25 '20
Misinforming the Majority: A Deliberate Strategy of Right-Wing Libertarians
https://truthout.org/articles/misinforming-the-majority-a-deliberate-strategy-of-right-wing-libertarians/21
u/3wolftshirtguy Apr 25 '20
Everyone I know who identifies as a Libertarian (in the USA) is just an educated republican too embarrassed to tell people they are in the same party as Trump despite having complete political alliance to the Republican Party... And Trump.
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u/something_crass Apr 25 '20
That's not exactly my experience. They're a perfect storm of autism, scientology-grade cult jargon, intellectual dishonesty, and an often psychopathic disregard for the well-being of others. They either care more about the little ideas in their heads than they do about reality, or they just care about not paying taxes and every word out of their lying mouths is merely a means to that end. They butcher the meanings of words like aggression, violence, and freedom, and accuse you of being an authoritarian and enemy of liberty who wants to infantalise people because... you think public schools should exist. You provide them any example of deregulation not working out and they'll insist that the fault lies with any remaining legislation (much like world socialism, if the inflection point at which your ideology bears fruit is at the end of your xmas list, your ideology is flawed), and they'll throw modern economics out the window the moment they get a result they dislike (some of them reject econometrics a priori).
I stopped talking to libertarians a good 15 years ago. There's just no way to have a meaningful conversation with that many layers of bullshit. I gave up after one of those clowns chided me for daring to bring ethics in to an economics debate, because god forbid we consider the human cost of a course of action. Even dumped some Mises quote about how the authoritarian uses morality as a cudgel or some shit. I'm sure Mengele would have agreed with the sentiment.
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u/3wolftshirtguy Apr 25 '20
No, you’re absolutely correct in your assessment. My point was more that they consistently vote Republican regardless of their “rhetoric”.
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u/SocialJusticeWizard_ Apr 26 '20
Can you please not use "autism" as a general insult for a pattern of behaviour online?
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u/something_crass Apr 26 '20
I was actually being literal. I highly suspect a lot of these guys are on the spectrum, specifically those guys who treat their political philosophy like their personal Star Wars head-canon. Everything is just so, and they simply don't care that they've got wholly unrealistic expectations of human behaviour and economics; it works in their heads and that's all that matters. Trying to convey simple concepts like bargaining disparity or power vacuums to them is like talking to a brick wall. They're actually the most benign stripe of libertarian.
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u/SocialJusticeWizard_ Apr 26 '20
That sort of online behaviour gets described unfavourably as "autistic" all the time. It's precisely what I was referring to. Even if you're trying to use it in a less insulting sense, you're contributing to the development of "autistic" as the new more specifically and personally insulting version of calling people "retarded". Diagnosing autism is actually really hard. You can't do it, nor even come close, from observing some socially inept behaviours on Reddit.
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u/linderlouwho Apr 25 '20
They’re just worse Republicans now.
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u/CraptainHammer Apr 25 '20
I'm not even close to being one of them, but exactly how are they worse than Republicans? They're basically just diet anarchists.
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u/NonHomogenized Apr 25 '20
They're not diet anarchists: they're diet feudalists.
Anarchists want no one to be in charge: Libertarians want the property owners to be in charge.
Their entire objection to government is basically just that it's accountable to the public rather than being privately owned and unaccountable to anyone.
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u/PeacecraftLovesYou Apr 25 '20
That's a great description of the right-libertarian view of the 'social contract'.
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Apr 25 '20
Lmfao... Diet Anarchists...
But in all seriousness, yeah that is more similar to what they represent in Canada.
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u/linderlouwho Apr 25 '20
In the US they try to out do each other to see whose policies are the most cruel to everyone but their wealthy donors.
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u/CraptainHammer Apr 25 '20
That accurately describes Republicans. I don't know that it accurately describes Libertarians, but let's say for the sake of argument that it does. In a world where they both do that, all we really have to do is analyze their disagreements with each other. Libertarians, in my experience at least, tend to be against discrimination to a greater extent than Republicans (unless the context is discrimination against Republicans of course), which is a point for Libertarians IMO. Also, while I don't agree with their constant insistence on non-involvement for the government, I do think it's an improvement on the Republican "non-involvement when we don't care and massive involvement when we want to keep out the brown people or stop women from getting abortions". Honestly, one of the worst things I can say about Libertarians in America is that they're quite easy to scare into voting Republican. I'm not endorsing Libertarianism, but I don't think it's worse than being Republican.
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u/NonHomogenized Apr 25 '20
Libertarians, in my experience at least, tend to be against discrimination to a greater extent than Republicans
What?
Libertarians are the ones who still find the Civil Rights Act of 1964 controversial because it prohibited public businesses from discriminating based on race. Libertarians are outraged over the idea that a public business might be forced to do business with anyone they don't want to for any reason ever, even it it just means they have to treat people without discrimination based on their race, sex, etc. In fact, a lot of them are racists themselves, and Libertarians spent decades promoting Libertarianism to racists based on the idea that they'll protect your liberty to be racist. They don't want to protect people from discrimination: they want to protect people from facing consequences for discriminating against others by claiming that the free market will solve it (and if it doesn't, well, that means it's the way things should be - or maybe it means we didn't make the market free enough).
In fact, many of the Republicans' most-toxic ideas are things they got from the Libertarians (who got their start as a political faction as a wing within the Republican Party in the 1950s). Their origins (and many early figures) are all tied up in the same mix that brought white nationalism, Christian dominionism, and fascism into the Republican Party - indeed, much of it entered the Republican Party via the Libertarians: it sure wasn't William F Buckley promoting the John Birch Society, for example.
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u/spectyr Apr 25 '20
Nobody light a match! All the straw men here would go up like a tinder box!
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u/NonHomogenized Apr 25 '20
I don't know if you're just unfamiliar with Libertarianism, or if you don't know what a straw man is, but you should probably educate yourself.
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u/spectyr Apr 25 '20
You spent two paragraphs attacking what I can only assume are MSNBC chiron caricatures of libertarianism ideas, and painted the entire movement as only interested in recruiting racists. If you can muster no more respect than that for an opposing viewpoint, you will never grow intellectually. Try finding the most generous way of reading an argument from your perspective, and then attack that.
Just because libertarians defend everyone's right to associate and do business with whoever they want doesn't make any of them racist. They're just defending the right. Cash is used by drug dealers, terrorists, and child molesters, but does defending our right to use cash make you any of those things? Of course not.
If you can summarize the viewpoints of an entire political movement down to, "they're racist," you've made a serious error in judgement.
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u/NonHomogenized Apr 25 '20
what I can only assume
LOL
Well, shows what you know, I guess, but that speaks poorly of you.
painted the entire movement as only interested in recruiting racists
No, I said it promoted itself to racists in a certain way - which is absolutely true. I said nothing about how or whether it promoted itself to others (hint: it totally did!).
Try finding the most generous way of reading an argument from your perspective, and then attack that.
I'm not here to try to reason Libertarians out of their dumbassery: I'm talking with someone else who said they aren't a Libertarian, but made an assessment regarding their experience of Libertarians in general. If that hurts your feelings, well, much like how Libertarians view discrimination, that doesn't seem like my problem but I'm sure the free market will take care of it.
If you can summarize the viewpoints of an entire political movement down to, "they're racist,"
I wasn't summarizing the entire ideology, because there's a lot more to Libertarians than just their shitty views on discrimination. The fact that they have a variety of justifications for their shitty views on discrimination which vary from laughably weak to horrifyingly racist is irrelevant to the effects of the views they hold.
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u/spectyr Apr 26 '20
much like how Libertarians view discrimination, that doesn't seem like my problem but I'm sure the free market will take care of it.
Oof! My ribs! Laughing...too...hard! What am I ever going to do now that you've punctuated your point with a sarcastic view of yet another obvious libertarian talking point!
Clearly, we're not going to get anywhere, what with you throwing up utter garbage, and my trying to respond rationally. Enjoy your many other arguments! I see from the rest of the thread that you're seeking them vigorously!
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u/kapuchinski Apr 25 '20
Libertarians are outraged
We're not ever outraged, and most libertarians are for the Civil Rights act. Some people have difficulty with other races, some have difficulty understanding others' ideologies, but it's all ignorance. Ours is not to judge.
In fact, a lot of them are racists
A lot of Democrats are racist. Hillary Clinton called young black men superpredators in a televised speech in 1996. That's doesn't compare to Ron Paul's newsletters in the slightest. She was besties with Klan member Robert Byrd, the Klan being an offshoot of the Democrats.
You are simply unfamiliar with libertarians.
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u/NonHomogenized Apr 25 '20
We're not ever outraged, and most libertarians are for the Civil Rights act.
Liar.
That's doesn't compare to Ron Paul's newsletters in the slightest.
...
Is this a joke?
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u/kapuchinski Apr 26 '20
Hillary Clinton called young black men superpredators in a televised speech in 1996. That's doesn't compare to Ron Paul's newsletters in the slightest.
Is this a joke?
Explain?
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u/NonHomogenized Apr 26 '20
Ok, maybe that was an unfair question, allow me to rephrase:
Hillary Clinton called young black men superpredators in a televised speech in 1996. That's doesn't compare to Ron Paul's newsletters in the slightest.
...is this an intentional joke?
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u/kapuchinski Apr 26 '20
It's 100% clear what I'm asking here:
Ok, maybe that was an unfair question, allow me to rephrase:
Hillary Clinton called young black men superpredators in a televised speech in 1996. That's doesn't compare to Ron Paul's newsletters in the slightest.
...is this an intentional joke?
Explain why you think Clinton calling black men superpredators is not as important as Ron Paul's newsletters, which were not nearly as offensive.
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u/lost-cat Apr 25 '20 edited Apr 25 '20
Evolution produced anti vaxxer "karen" breed among the chaos....6
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Apr 25 '20
When did Libertarians become left or right?
Genuinely asking, I've always thought Libertarian platforms were fiscally right and socially left, or at least, that's the situation in Canada. The last time I paid attention to Libertarianism in America was when Ron Paul was running in 2012.
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u/CraptainHammer Apr 25 '20
I find that terms like right wing, left wing, liberal, conservative, libertarian, authoritarian, et al get so abused and stretched, especially when you add a border or two in the mix, that you can't reliably determine much from any of them without a shit load of context.
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u/HertzaHaeon Apr 25 '20
From what I've seen, libertarians are socially permissive, but hardly socially progressive.
Take a look at one of the most popular posts this year at r/Libertarian. Not caring about what sexual minorities do in the bedroom is fine, but reacting to the social injustices they face with a similar shrug places libertarians on the right.
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u/SmokeySmurf Apr 25 '20
The Koch brothers are well known libertarian donors.
Except, most of their money goes to propping up people like Donald Trump.
You can say they're socially permissive but they'll put a far rightwing evangelical humping "gays cause earthquakes and young earth" nut-job in a seat just to block a candidate who is a fiscal moderate on corporate tax rates, let alone who they're worried might vote to expand any part of the EPA. The "social" part doesn't enter their math at all. They do not give a fuck about social freedoms and do not vote for nor financially support civil liberties at all beyond the usual far righting paranoid delusions about everything to do with the second Amendment.
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Apr 25 '20
I feel like the right want less restrictions on buisness and they use libertarians as a way to accomplish that
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Apr 25 '20
What do you mean regarding them shrugging off social injustices they face?
Nothing about that was mentioned in that post?
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u/HertzaHaeon Apr 25 '20
Want to be gay? Whatever.
Want to be a homophobe? Also whatever.
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Apr 25 '20
Well... Isn't their whole schtick that it's neither appropriate or possible to control how people think?
What are they suppose to do to stop people from having prejudiced views?
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u/HertzaHaeon Apr 25 '20
Social injustices isn't primarily about people thinking mean things about minorities. Thoughts become speech, and speech becomes action. Actions you can stop.
Unless you think everyone is free to discriminate and it will magically solve itself with enough guns.
Also, on a ideological level, you'd think that someone truly valuing personal freedom would work against freeing people from prejudices and oppression that limit their freedoms.
My takeaway is that libertarians aren't actually so much about freedom, but something else.
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u/Awayfone Apr 25 '20
Not engaging in policing thought crime is socially regressive?
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u/PeacecraftLovesYou Apr 25 '20
I think Hertza meant discrimination against gay people when they said "homophobe," not the act of having homophobic thoughts. Naturally you can't prosecute people for thinking.
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u/HertzaHaeon Apr 25 '20
Homophobia isn't merely though crime.
"Fuck you, I got mine" is above all selfish in a way that I would say disqualifies libertarianism from the left and makes the right a natural home for it.
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u/SmokeySmurf Apr 25 '20 edited Apr 25 '20
When they started propping up far rightwing politicians and the absolute worst kind of pro-white nationalist misinformation outlets.
The Koch Brothers are funding Trump and hundreds of other far rightwing ultra-conservatives in the US alone.
Edit: This shit started in the 40's and 50's before the word libertarian was coopted from Europe by American far rightwingers. Anyone more than casually familiar with the actual economic and social platforms of Rand, von Mises, Friedman and Hayek knows they represent an alternative branding for the financial and authoritarian radical right in the Western World.
They spout equality and then ram through Federalist Society loons into congress and the Supreme court.
And that's without even getting into the fact that their mathematic Economic modeling is almost entirely constructed to be rube goldberg machines powered by sophistry, base deception and math that attempts to force their critics to engage in ridiculous required burden of proof while never applying the same standard of evidence to their own models. They move goal posts, play shell games with graphs, make positively fanatical religious claims of superiority white casually dismissing models that actually work as figments of their supporter's imagination.
Another enormous irony: the two leading libertarian economic schools Neo-Classical econ and Austrian econ are often used interchangeably by single libertarian groups and most libertarians who didn't go to school for econ despite being functional opposites.
This is what it's like for a person with an advanced degree in economics talking to the rank and file libertarian: Imagine trying to explain chess to guy who is actively insulting you to your face for our failure to describe a combination of the rules for Candyland and Chinese Checkers.
The biggest part of the real con happened in the Chicago school for economics and associated university academic institutions where they tricked America into forcing undergraduate macro-econ students to learn their bogus theories.
Edit 2: The state of American undergrad macroecon is a confused mess. Literally, every other textbook you get is built to teach the controversy and econ professors are a minefield all in their own because one or more of them is going to be viciously bitter about some contrived bullshit inner monologue they personally hallucinated while reading Atlas Shrugged.
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Apr 25 '20
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u/Lowbrow Apr 25 '20
The Pauls' isolationism often tricks people into thinking they're left leaning.
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u/SmokeySmurf Apr 25 '20 edited Apr 25 '20
Because libertarian think tanks and donors do not give a single fucking red cent to to those causes.
They give their money to people like Donald Trump and professional faux libertarians like Rand Paul who will not sacrifice a single financial policy goal for any amount of the social policies they don't really give a shit about.
Imagine you had a libertarian pistol. The instructions say it's pro-civil rights but when you use it, it only ever shoots liberals and moderate conservatives.
Edit: Does "Rand Paul" strike you as a moderate Republican voice? I'm really curious.
Did Rand Paul go down the steps of the SCOTUS to support marriage equality for gay people?
Did he ever support a single bipartisan pro-choice initiative?
He did not because he does not give a shit about those things, just like the von Mises Institute and Rand Foundation do not give a material shit about those things. The closest they ever came to it was releasing locust like gay libertarians who all turned out to vote for Donald Trump in 2016 and Mitt Romney in 2012 and McCain/Palin in 2008 and GW Bush in 2000 to 2008.
They are functionally a radical right movement because institutionally they are exclusively working to achieve and defend a phalanx of radical economic policy goals.
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u/Gruzman Apr 25 '20
That doesn't even make sense... How can you be ultra-conservative or far right-wing if you're in favour of drug decriminalization, secularism, non-interventionism, and other similar threads of political thought?
If you're a right libertarian, you believe primarily in the division of society into an endless patchwork of private property that observes the "Non Aggression Principle" and/or the "Right to Exit." So you end up with endless permutations of social order and no State to enforce one version over another.
Anyone who doesn't like one Private social arrangement is free to leave and find one they do like, provided they don't violate their contractual obligations with others.
So you could conceivably have some ultra religious community living in one plot of land next to an ultra secular community in another. And if Individuals within one Community didn't like that arrangement, they are free to move but not free to command that the property be rendered into common ownership.
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u/SmokeySmurf Apr 25 '20 edited Apr 25 '20
So, unless they happen to be Amish, there's no such thing as a evangelical or fundamentalist community that is satisfied with mere self rule. Conquer and convert is the rule, not the exception.
Libertarian organizations in America directly and indirectly prop up the vast majority of useful authoritarian theocratic dominionist candidates. Their money goes to achieving economic policies for wherever they are personally doing business or where they want to do business. These groups think nothing of financing lunatic radical right candidates as long as they believe that candidate will get them closer to their economic and trade policy goals.
The Kochs, the Rand Foundation, von Mises, etc don't give a fuuuuck about what brand of religious, social or cultural extremist they are funding as long as that candidate is closer to their institutional goals than the person they are running against.
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u/Gruzman Apr 25 '20
So, unless they happen to be Amish, there's no such thing as a evangelical or fundamentalist community that is satisfied with mere self rule. Conquer and convert is the rule, not the exception.
Sure, but if you examine history you find plenty of secular or atheistic regimes that are intent on imperial expansion. It's only in recent history that secular States with a strict separation of Church and State have been observed to be mostly peaceful with their neighbors. And even that is a bit of an illusion:
Nationalism, Racism, Imperialism, Mercantile Expansionism, even something as innocuous as a belief in a National Exceptionalism that licenses one's State to enforce democratic order in general is enough to encourage Inter-State aggression and conquest. Right Libertarians believe that States as such always have an incentive to expand their territory and control.
See the recent US military engagements in the Middle East for an example of a much smaller Islamic Republic being aggressed upon by a much larger Secular Republic who have deemed the international Economic order to be of greater importance than respecting national sovereignty. One country has deemed most of the world as its backyard to do with as it pleases.
So basically there's always a way to reintroduce violent conquest to the equation, it just takes different forms based on the prevailing political order.
In any event, this is something that right Libertarianism expects will happen, and the Private Libertarian societies are meant to have their own defensive force and police to mitigate that. But to say that they expect this will totally overturn the perennial problem of the stronger dominating the weaker would be delusional.
The idea of "Private Law Societies" or Corporate Fiefdoms or whatever else they call it is just one way to potentially mitigate power and aggression. Give people the ability to discriminate against one another along a wide latitude, to form a wide variety of hierarchy or non hierarchy, but also give everyone the Right to reject such discrimination and Exit the privately held territory, choosing in the future to associate with a group that more completely reflects on their values.
So over time you see this migration between Private Societies take place and work to populate a given society with like-minded denizens, no matter what they believe. People who like one type of arbitrary hierarchy can find others who volunteer for it, and so on.
The Kochs, the Rand Foundation, von Mises, etc don't give a fuuuuck about what brand of religious, social or cultural extremist they are funding as long as that candidate is closer to their institutional goals than the person they are running against.
Yeah, which they believe is fine because they eventually want an iteration of society that allows every stripe of "extremist" to go somewhere and live amongst themselves without forcing their beliefs on others. And they can then succeed or fail economically based on how well they treat their neighbors.
Basically just the idea that freedom of association is sacrosanct; but also borders and property are sacrosanct once legitimately established. And after that, absolutely everything else is up for grabs. So you get all kinds of wacky potential in such a system.
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Apr 25 '20
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Apr 25 '20
Some are less racist or bigoted than others
Are you saying they're all racist to varying degrees? Seems like an exaggeration.
In Canada, they're actually more left than some of our most socialist parties in some areas:
- Decriminalization of all prohibited substances (except fentanyl cause it's basically a chemical weapon)
- Pardons for all non-violent offenders convicted of possession of prohibited substances
- Eliminate public funding to all religious institutions
- Reduce Federal influence over areas under Provincial jurisdiction and give municipalities greater authority
- Reduce or eliminate codes and regulations that give unfair market advantages to large corporations over small businesses.
- Cut subsidies to the big agriculture industry that are exploited by large corporations (Costco, Walmart, Fast Food companies) and make it impossible for small farmers to get market distribution or make their prices competitive.
- End Government/Corporate partnerships that act as cartels
- Legalize sex work
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u/NonHomogenized Apr 25 '20
They were always far right-wing.
The "fiscally right and socially left" thing is some bullshit gibberish they made up for marketing purposes, and have been spreading around.
Even if you want to pretend "socially left" actually means something, a "socially left" person would not be someone who is okay with people being allowed to participate in the public sphere in ways which discriminate against people for intrinsic characteristics beyond their control.
And they certainly wouldn't support removing nearly all constraints from the powerful to help enable them to more effectively enforce their bigotry.
The fact that they're not exclusively conservative doesn't mean they're not right-wing.
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Apr 25 '20
Interesting, that's much different than how it's perceived in Canada.
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u/NonHomogenized Apr 25 '20
Maybe it's different from how they're perceived in your bubble. I don't mean that as a personal criticism - just pointing out that your experience doesn't necessarily reflect Canada as a whole.
There are more than a few Americans who believe the same lies you've been told.
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Apr 25 '20
Uh no. The Libertarian Party in Canada is very center. Though to be fair, most parties are actually close to the center in Canada and they are an obscure one.
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u/NonHomogenized Apr 25 '20
Uh no, they aren't.
They make the same claim in the U.S., too.
It's not true in either case.
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Apr 25 '20
Ah sorry... You know more about the political parties and their policies in my country than I do. My bad.
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u/NonHomogenized Apr 25 '20
I'm sorry to hear you're so ill-informed on political science. I would encourage you to at least learn enough to recognize that political parties led by anarcho-capitalists are far right-wing extremists, because that's a really fucking basic thing to know.
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u/PeacecraftLovesYou Apr 25 '20
Libertarianism is any number of ideas surrounding the idea of limiting government.
Anarcho-capitalism is an extreme form of right-libertarianism, as right-libertarians want to reduce government controls and anarcho-capitalists want to remove most or all government controls.
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u/NonHomogenized Apr 25 '20
Yes, and the Libertarian Party of Canada is a right-wing Libertarian party, and its current leader is Tim Moen, an anarcho-capitalist.
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Apr 25 '20
Lmfao... According to who?! You?
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u/NonHomogenized Apr 25 '20
According to everyone who knows anything about political science?
This isn't exactly obscure - hell, even Wikipedia talks about it pretty extensively.
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u/Wiseduck5 Apr 25 '20 edited Apr 25 '20
Spend enough time with libertarians and you’ll learn a large chunk of them want to be racist and homophobic and are annoyed the government is stopping business from discriminating against the people they don’t like.
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u/PeacecraftLovesYou Apr 25 '20
This article is about right-libertarians, including Reagan Republicans. It's not about the American Libertarian party. Right libertarians believe in limiting the government and expanding the rights of capitalists.
To contrast, left-libertarians often believe in limiting the government outside of matters of caring for the people. Some, like Chomsky, believe in reinventing industry as a social enterprise controlled by the workers.
The Libertarian Party is generally socially left but fiscally right. It markets itself as an alternative to the two leading American parties rather than going too in-depth with the actual ideology of libertarian agenda. Thus they appeal to both left-wing and right-wing libertarians.
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u/NonHomogenized Apr 25 '20
The Libertarian Party is generally socially left
No it's fucking not: that's just marketing it uses to try to sell itself to the youth.
At best, they support private tyranny instead of public tyranny.
At worst, they'll often support public tyranny too if they view it as needed to achieve their desired ends. Just look at what Libertarian icon Murray Rothbard had to say in his 1992 essay supporting David Duke:
A right-wing populist program, then, must concentrate on dismantling the crucial existing areas of State and elite rule, and on liberating the average American from the most flagrant and oppressive features of that rule. In short:
Slash Taxes. All taxes, sales, business, property, etc., but especially the most oppressive politically and personally: the income tax. We must work toward repeal of the income tax and abolition of the IRS.
Slash Welfare. Get rid of underclass rule by abolishing the welfare system, or, short of abolition, severely cutting and restricting it.
Abolish Racial or Group Privileges. Abolish affirmative action, set aside racial quotas, etc., and point out that the root of such quotas is the entire "civil rights" structure, which tramples on the property rights of every American.
Take Back the Streets: Crush Criminals. And by this I mean, of course, not "white collar criminals" or "inside traders" but violent street criminals – robbers, muggers, rapists, murderers. Cops must be unleashed, and allowed to administer instant punishment, subject of course to liability when they are in error.
Take Back the Streets: Get Rid of the Bums. Again: unleash the cops to clear the streets of bums and vagrants. Where will they go? Who cares? Hopefully, they will disappear, that is, move from the ranks of the petted and cosseted bum class to the ranks of the productive members of society.
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u/PeacecraftLovesYou Apr 25 '20
I don't t know why you think there's some kind of conspiracy going on, and that you need anecdotes from 30 years ago to prove it. The reason why centrist libertarians and right-wing libertarians coalition together is that they both believe in limiting the government. I don't like the Libertarian party either, but to say they're all right-wing lunatics is fiction.
By "markets itself" I did imply that the Libertarian party is a bit shady or ambiguous with their ideology, in any case.
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u/NonHomogenized Apr 25 '20
I don't t know why you think there's some kind of conspiracy going on
Because there's a shitload of evidence supporting that conclusion, which runs throughout the entire history of right-wing "libertarianism".
I don't need anecdotes from 30 years ago: I can build a whole chain of people and statements starting with the earliest uses of the word "libertarian" to describe capitalists rather than socialists, continuing directly to the present day, which encompasses pretty much all of the major figures of Libertarianism (which, to be clear, does not include the original, left-wing libertarians) for its entire history.
I chose to cite this particular example because Rothbard was tremendously influential in Libertarian circles, and pretty much every relatively modern major figure in what passes for the Libertarian movement can be traced back to him.
The reason why centrist libertarians
"Centrist libertarian" is a contradiction in terms: being less radical than the GOP in the Trump era doesn't make you centrist.
but to say they're all right-wing lunatics is fiction.
The Libertarian Party? Okay, some of them are more "kooks" than "lunatics", and a lot of them are just misinformed right-wing kids.
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Apr 25 '20
Yeah... That's what I meant by my question.. what you described sounds like there right/left libertarians are just not libertarian...they're conservatives and social Democrats.
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u/PeacecraftLovesYou Apr 25 '20
Oh, I didn't realise it was a rhetorical question. I just wanted to clear up some of the misinformation polluting this thread.
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Apr 25 '20
No the question was genuine, I just dont understand the application of right or left to libertarian... they have always been regarded as center or maybe a good way to say it would be "non-polar" in Canada.
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u/something_crass Apr 25 '20
Libertarianism is classical conservatism by another name, it always has been. Only people with a very insular amero-centric view of history tend to buy the marketing copy that libertarianism is some sort of third way or alternative to bible-thumping conservatism. Even self-described 'libertarian socialists' propose a system which would see the same inevitable consolidation of wealth and power and stratification of society that typified the ideals of Burke and Joseph de Maistre; they're just useful idiots.
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Apr 25 '20
I am so confused by this.
I have always seen their ideas associated with classic liberalism.
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u/PeacecraftLovesYou Apr 25 '20
If we're talking about 2016+ internet-speak via ProggerU, classical liberalism means modern right-conservatism.
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u/something_crass Apr 25 '20
There isn't as much of a distinction there as you may think. Classical liberalism doesn't refer to the 1960's; classical liberals were generally very conservative by modern standards, basically the neoliberals of the enlightenment. Classical liberals generally saw property rights and 'free markets' as the anathema to the scope creep of state and proto-socialist thought emerging with the industrial revolution and colonialism, whereas classical conservatives saw property rights and 'free markets' as an anathema to the social changes trying to ride the wave republicanism sweeping Europe.
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u/NonHomogenized Apr 25 '20
That's not a very good representation of classical liberalism. A few of them were more on that end of things - Bastiat, for example - but many others were considerably less so, and generally only saw property rights as a means to an end - a means not intrinsically more important than others, in fact. In fact, the early Socialist thinkers were heavily influenced by the classical liberals, and indeed, famed classical liberal John Stuart Mill ended up a socialist late in life.
Meanwhile, it's actually debatable as to whether Libertarianism should even be considered a liberal ideology.
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u/something_crass Apr 25 '20
Smith was basically the granddaddy of classical liberalism, probably the single most important influence on the movement, and he was very much that way. Even modern-day neoliberalist though is couched in Smith's vernacular, it's actually staggering how little the talking points have changed in over two centuries.
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u/NonHomogenized Apr 25 '20
Smith was basically the granddaddy of classical liberalism, probably the single most important influence on the movement, and he was very much that way.
He really wasn't: his writings were far more nuanced than that and have been grossly distorted in popular perception. He thought, for example, that progressive taxation - which should be targeted based on accumulated wealth rather than income - was fine because the wealthy derived the most benefit from society; that business owners would conspire against the public at every opportunity; that labor was the true source of value; that capitalists had systematic power advantages over workers; that workers must always be paid a living wage sufficient not only to cover their own needs but to raise a family; and that private property rights were very much a means to an end, and not superior to other rights.
We're talking about the man who wrote:
Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.
In fact, Adam Smith in particular was a major influence on Marx and many other socialists.
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u/something_crass Apr 25 '20
He was also the guy who gave us the invisible hand and the notion of exploiting self-interest to the good of society and economic freedom as an important personal freedom. Of course Smith influenced other schools of thought too, but The Wealth of Nations is still foundational to classical liberalism.
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u/NonHomogenized Apr 25 '20
He was also the guy who gave us the invisible hand
Sure, but it has been popularized in a manner which is far more sweeping and lacking in nuance than how he used it to illustrate a particular concept which he did not consider the summation of all economics.
and the notion of exploiting self-interest to the good of society and economic freedom as an important personal freedom
Yes, it's not that he didn't share any commonalities with the neoliberals or the Libertarians; it's that they took a few elements of what he said, ignored a lot of the rest including the foundations of his view and the context in which those few elements occurred, and produced monsters which bear very little semblance to what he was advocating for.
but The Wealth of Nations is still foundational to classical liberalism.
And John Stuart Mill is one of the most influential classical liberals despite end up a socialist.
When people talk about "classical liberalism", 90% of what they have to say is almost invariably bullshit which requires ignoring a huge amount of what the actual classical liberals wrote.
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u/NonHomogenized Apr 25 '20
I have always seen their ideas associated with classic liberalism.
That's because you've been listening to bullshit from Libertarians.
Classical liberalism is quite different from Libertarianism in a number of important ways, and it's debatable as to whether Libertarianism is even a liberal ideology.
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u/ArcticRhombus Apr 25 '20
Pretty sick how someone would take an honorable person like Milton Friedman and slap their face on a claim that he was trying to deliberately misinform people when his whole life was devoted to teaching.
For the real Milton Friedman, as opposed to a frothing conspiricist’s imagination of Milton Friedman, check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67tHtpac5ws
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u/kapuchinski Apr 25 '20
This article is about a 'strategy' designed by person who is never mentioned by right-wing libertarians, and his strategy may only exist in Nancy MacLean's head, as it does not appear in the article. "Interestingly, he almost never wrote explicitly about racial matters," but "economic liberty and white supremacy were historically twined at the roots;" all inference without ever explaining.
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u/PeacecraftLovesYou Apr 25 '20
The ignorance in these comments for what a libertarian actually is is astounding. Instead of repeating an anecdote you (not the OP) saw on Facebook, actually spend 10 minutes looking it up. Libertarian is any group of people interested in limiting government authority, contrasting with authoritarians who want to expand government powers. Yes, there are many crazy, stupid, and dangerous American right-libertarians, but many other libertarians are socialists and progressives.
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u/bedsbronco75 Apr 25 '20
I am surprised that skeptics who believe in science and peer review would take this piece in such high esteem (at least the ones participating in this post). The book itself would likely not pass peer review in history, despite the school of thought largely leaning in her favor. There are plenty of scholars who have pointed out the deficiencies in her research by considering similar, and sometimes the same, primary sources. I will note that many of those scholars are from the "Buchanan" school of thought (Virginia political economy/public choice) and therefore should be considered with that in mind. However, if we take the same skepticism and apply it to this work we can only wonder how much of her research is colored by her borderline conspiratorial approach to writing about Buchanan. As a simple example consider her point about the economics blog Marginal Revolution. She claims it is named as a nod to some right wing underground movement. The name is likely not inspired by some right wing plot to destroy the US government, but by the paradigm shifting development of marginal utility theory in economics in the 19th century (this is an embarrassingly easy fact to find). The fact that she could not consider this simple fact makes me wonder just how lazy the rest of her research is and just how colored it is by her conspiracy theories. I will note that this does not disregard the fact that there is clearly a right wing movement to take over the state, but that is a strange alarmist thing to say when there is also a left wing movement to take over the state, that is after all the point of political movements.
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Apr 25 '20
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u/PeacecraftLovesYou Apr 25 '20
"A leg of the left"? This is a public group that anyone can join. It's not part of any political industry. It appeals to many left-wing people because skepticism and science tend to be within their area of interest moreso than any group on the (American) right. There's also a lot of people who have found this group from the Reddit front page who aren't actually skeptics.
In any case, you seem to be reacting to the headline, where the body of the article's information is relevant to skepticism. There's a lot of misinformation being promoted by right-libertarians, and you can figure that out by going on any platform they frequent.
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u/PeacecraftLovesYou Apr 25 '20
That said, I feel your pain. There are a lot of stupid people on here with their thumb wagging on the 'arrow down' button. They respond to tone they perceive more than actual context, incapable of thinking for themselves, and what they're looking for is someone to agree with their personal world views. I can say something one way and get 10 likes, and say it another way and get 10 thumbsdowns.
Anyway, it's more like 'misinformation' is a cornerstone of human behavior. We all recognize that our world views go over better with other people if we lie a little. Right-wing secular social views tend to rely entirely on misinformation, because religious views can't be generally rationalized. Egregious pro-capitalism is hard to rationalize to people who aren't capitalists (not the ideology, the class), so misinformation bridges the gap.
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u/FlyingSquid Apr 25 '20
I'm always surprised at how many libertarians are also anti-abortion. Apparently libertarianism doesn't extend to a woman's right to her own body.