Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

http://libertarianstandard.com/2014/03/26/against-the-libertarian-cold-war/VIOLENCE IS A VIRTUE NOT A VICE – ANOTHER CRITICISM OF FREE-RIDING LIBERTARIANISM AND MISCHARACTERIZED ARGUMENTS.

Anthony,

As much as I respect some of your opinions I’m going to jump all over this one.

—“….hardened their rhetorical loyalties.”—

This is the point precisely: do we base liberty on rules independent of consequences, or consequentialist ethics that account for consequences? Immature minds require virtue ethics as a means of imitation in the absence of the ability to reason, mediocre minds rule based ethics to compensate for their lack of knowledge, and consequentialist ethics require we have a considerable knowledge at our disposal. So no, these arguments are not matters of loyalty but of ability to comprehend and use increasingly complex ethical arguments.

—“We might learn something from looking back at the 20th century. During the Cold War, most western critics of state power erred too far in one direction or the other. There were some whose opposition to U.S. wars led them to soften their assessment of communist aggression. Free-market and leftist lovers of peace both made this mistake. At the same time, many who favored economic and political liberty often let their anti-communism translate into support for American militarism and the security state. This confusion pervaded Americans across the spectrum.”—

Again, this conflict is over the immaturity of rule based rather than more mature consequentialist ethics.

—“Meanwhile, many libertarians and almost all conservatives ditched their supposed attachment to skepticism of government power and signed onto the U.S. Cold War effort.”——

Conservatives never ditched their skepticism of government, they conducted a multi front war both outside and inside. I was part of the movement that developed the strategy to bankrupt the state. We saw the cold war military build up as parallel to the great society effort, and thought that by spending in both directions we could bankrupt, and delegitimize the Keynesian state. We could bankrupt the state internationally by bankrupting the communist movement, and we could bankrupt the european and american social democratic movements. The only people who were clueless were the libertarians. Except for immigration, data suggests the strategy would have worked. So yet again, libertarians were wrong. Immigration of peoples who do not depend not the absolute nuclear family for their moral and social order are always and everywhere a net negative for liberty.

—“This American project included dozens of coups and interventions, the instruction of foreign secret police in unspeakable torture techniques, murderous carpet bombings that killed hundreds of thousands of peasants, and wars that indirectly brought about the Khmer Rouge and the rise of Islamist fundamentalism, both of which also became directly funded in the name of anti-communism.”—

When has liberty not required the organized application of violence? When and where? Liberty was always and everywhere created by the organized exercise of violence by a property-demanding minority over the objections of totalitarian and communal social orders that dominate all of world history. Liberty seekers are outliers. Always have been and always will be.

—“Today’s polarization is all the more frustrating given that the bulk of American libertarians seem to agree on two major points: (1) the U.S. should not intervene in Eastern Europe and (2) Putin’s various power grabs are indefensible. Thus, most libertarians are not truly as divided as well-meaning Americans were in the Cold War.”—

I disagree that we should not intervene in Eastern Europe, but then I suspect my brand of libertarianism requires that I defend all property rights of anyone who desires to have them and defend them too. But unlike conservatives, libertarians refuse to pay the cost of liberty for others, and plead that they get liberty for free themselves. And libertarians wonder why we fail – everywhere and always to enfranchise all but the most idiosyncratic. Arguments in favor of “Rights” are appeals by the weak to obtain what they are unwilling or unable to pay for. You never see conservatives making arguments that ridiculous.

—“I easily identify four factions, not two: (A) There are people who outright defend Putin’s aggression in Ukraine and Crimea, and who otherwise downplay his autocratic tendencies; (B) There are those who agree that Putin is worth condemning, but who think it’s more important to emphasize the evils of U.S. interventionism; (C) There are those who agree that U.S. intervention is unwise and maybe even unethical, but who think it’s most important right now to emphasize Putin’s despotism; (D) There are those who outright favor U.S. and western intervention to stop Putin.”—

Mischaracterization. The point is not to stop Putin. It is that other people desire liberty, and if liberty lovers do not fight for one another’s liberty then libertarians are all talk and nothing more. All that talk is to obtain liberty at a discount. I cannot refuse help to those who demand it, in pursuit of freedom. The only moral use of violence is the provision of liberty.

(You do realize that you’re just arguing through a statist lens, rather than a moral one?)

—“A principled opponent of state power is tempted to say that in fact B and C are on one side, despite differences in emphasis, and A and D are two extremes flirting with nationalist statism. This is my position, although I will say that I have friends—good friends—who flirt with being in camp A as well as in camp D. It happens. And to make the point again, during the Cold War, any libertarian activist would have probably had some friends who advocated nuclear strikes against the USSR, and others who supported Soviet control of the Eastern Bloc. Both of these positions would have been completely immoral and disgusting—far worse than anything said by anyone in Camp A or Camp D today. Yet today’s Cold War replay is leading people to defriend each other in the name of Manichean struggle. The tendency of people to break ties with others over this will only increase the polarization and erode mutual understanding.”—

This is a mischaracterization. As a member of camp “D” I don’t, and we don’t, oppose state power in the advancement of liberty, I advocate liberty at all times. I see libertarians who will not act to advance liberty as free-riders (thieves). I oppose monopoly bureaucracy and democracy. A powerful private government using organized violence to militantly defend and extend liberty to all those who ask for it, is something desirable. That’s what Aristocratic Egalitarianism means: voluntary enfranchisement. It is the only possible origin of property rights. Belief isn’t action.

—“In both cases, the problem appears to be nationalism”—

Mischaracterization. It is the corrupt anti-propertarianism of the Russians against the citizens of a small poor country desperate to obtain freedom and participation in the market. Yes, the Russian east is allied with Russia but it is for economic reasons: membership in Europe means an end to the marketability of eastern Ukrainian manufactured goods – most of which are supplied to the Russian war machine.

This small country had THOUSANDS of tactical nuclear weapons and THOUSANDS of warheads, and gave them up in exchange for promises of defense. Had they kept those weapons, they could easily keep Russia out of Ukraine. So Americans promised and lied. It’s that simple. Americans broke a deal. A deal that means possible economic enslavement,conquest and continued corruption under Russian imperialism.

What is more moral than fulfilling your contract? Or is that conveniently not part of your argument?

—“The arguments over Russia have brought the Cold War back to the movement. They have fractured those primarily committed to anti-interventionism and those primarily concerned with liberty for all worldwide, when in fact these values are two sides of the same coin. The primary libertarian reason to oppose U.S. wars, of course, is that they kill foreigners, that they divide people into tribes based on nationality, that they are acts of nationalist aggression.”——

Mischaracterization. Russia has brought back to life the war against militarily expansionist empires whose economic policies are a threat to liberty and prosperity. Russia cannot complete economically but it can militarily. That’s its advantage.

—“Discursively, refighting the Cold War within libertarianism will only harden people’s hearts, polarize their loyalties, and ultimately compromise their principles and clarity of thought. I plead young libertarians to refuse to be a proxy belligerent in this Cold War when for the most part it’s probably not really about Russia or Crimea at all; it’s about major factions within the movement with more fundamental disagreements using this as an opportunity to fight. If you actually seek to understand everyone’s positions, you’ll be surprised how heterogeneous attitudes are, despite the attempt to turn this current affairs disagreement into a grander sectarian dispute.”——

Actually, no. Rekindling the war against totalitarianism and anti-propertarianism will assist us in reforming libertarianism from an immoral parasitic cult-philosophy argued in conflated obscurantist, continental pseudoscience, and to return it to aristocratic egalitarianism we call the protestant ethic.

I want this fight to continue to help reform libertarianism because we’ve failed. The pseudoscientific libertarian movement of the 20th century has been by all measures a catastrophic failure. We have not made a dent. The newest generation is more libertarian, but that is not because of our success – quite the contrary. It’s because of the failure of the left and right majorities. So this fight over Russian aggression is part of the necessary reformation of liberty, and the restoration of liberty to its martial origins. The source of liberty is the constant application of violence for the suppression of free riding in all its forms. Everyone else is a free rider. A thief. A fraud.

—“So what should we think? “—

We should think that the organized application of violence in support of people who desire liberty is a moral obligation, because it is that reciprocity that makes liberty possible for any and all.

—“It is hard to maintain the right level of nuance and principle.”—

Only if you mischaracterize the problem. 🙂 It’s quite simple really. Most moral and ethical problems are simple if you don’t mischaracterize them.

—“unifying enemy is aggression”—

Exactly. But one is not aggressing in response to an act of aggression.

—“Allies… Trolls…”

Actually Anthony, it tells us who makes cogent arguments despite personal cost, and those who make selfish arguments justifying their free riding and who mischaracterize the conflict as one over rules rather than one over consequences.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev.