I ran across a letter to the editor written in response to a libertarian’s letter. (I have a screenshot in case this letter goes away.)
This raving statist’s letter was a treat to behold. Rarely have I witnessed this much dishonesty in such a small space. Kudos to him!
Now I’ll address just a few of the lies promulgated therein.
[R]egulations (and taxes) exist for the public good, and protect the public from bad actors…
That’s simply not true. You can’t rob the “public” for its own good. It’s not possible.
There are only two kinds of regulations- the useless and the harmful. You don’t need regulations (or “laws”) against things such as murder, robbery, kidnapping, etc. to make it OK for people to defend themselves and others from those acts. And “laws” against victimless acts are harmful to society because they harm individuals. You can’t harm all your body’s useful cells and claim it’s beneficial to your body. Well, you can, but you’d be lying.
The worst of the bad actors are those who seek positions of political power, from which they can rob and molest people (mostly) without consequence– because it is “legal”, and people like the author seem to believe that’s good enough.
Libertarians believe there is no such thing as ‘the public interest’ and deny that altruism exists.
More lies.
It can not be in the “public interest” to systematically enslave the individuals who make up the public. This is the reality government extremists such as the author seek to sweep under the statist rug.
Altruism exists. No libertarian denies that it does. I have performed altruistic acts of my own free will, and I have benefitted from the altruistic acts of others– just very recently in fact. It would have cheapened the act if someone such as the author (or his hired thugs– government employees) had stuck a gun in the face of those he felt should “help” to convince them to be “altruistic”. If you have no choice, due to “laws”, it’s NOT generosity. It is not altruistic to rob people and claim it isn’t robbery because you call it “taxation”. It’s not altruistic to give “the less fortunate” money or other property which is not yours to give away. That is the opposite of altruistic.
Everything is seen through a lens of naked self-interest.
Nope. He’s lying again! How many lies can he squeeze into this one screed? LOL!
…they believe all politicians and all bureaucrats are simply out for themselves, and have no other motive than grasping self-interest.
I don’t care about their motives, I care about what they actually do. Their acts harm innocent people, and even when they see the harm they do, they “do it harder”. That’s wrong.
Therefore, every regulation, and every tax, is a coercive measure of oppression intended to deny libertarians their “freedom.”
I care about your “freedom” as much as I care about my own. Otherwise I wouldn’t be a libertarian. All those acts of statism the author supports deny him his own freedom (and liberty), too. And I care even if he doesn’t. I don’t want to see someone robbed and raped, even if they’re OK with it. But even more than that, I don’t want people like him making the decision that others have to be OK with it just because he sees nothing wrong with it. That’s just evil.
Of course, the same daily “coercion” experienced by most people in the corporate world goes unremarked, because employment is voluntary, and you can always quit.
Another lie. This guy’s going for a new world record!
Corporations are an instrument of government, which only exist by crawling in bed with government, and which get government favors out of the deal. They are just as wrong when they initiate force or violate property rights as government.
It’s not about government, after all; it is about not having the right to attack others or take their stuff, no matter who you are or what your excuse. Yes, you can usually quit a job without being forced to move away like you’re forced to do if you want to quit a particular government. That doesn’t excuse the aggression or property violations committed by government’s bosom buddies, the corporations.
Libertarians believe that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of motives, will somehow work for the benefit of us all.
Haha!! No, you’ve just stated your own side and blamed it on libertarians. That may be the most dishonest thing you’ve said here, but it’s a close contest.
Bruce, I hope for your sake no one ever characterizes you and your position half as dishonestly as you’ve just characterized the libertarian position. If they do, you’ll probably fang yourself in frustration. You should really get a bit more informed about a topic before you dive in and put your foot so deeply into your mouth.
Kent, you might as well Howl at the Moon as to use REASON on or with Statists or Collectivists. It is the impossible “battle” of REASON vs BELIEF
How do I know?
I have tried since the late 1960’s and YES I am that “old” 🙂
They are the product of teachers( and/or parents) who did not teach REASON (Deductive and Analytical) and respect for Empirical Evidence
I was one of the “lucky” ones and thus is my son ( one of the”lucky” ones)
Keep up the good work
Mostly I respond to things of that sort to help myself. It helps me distill the thoughts in my own head- plus I can always hope it will reach a fence-sitting bystander who hasn’t been challenged to consider the idea.
Incredible when you look in the comments section of Bruce Currie’s hit piece. Very sad. NH is rapidly falling prey to the Marxist disease permeating the entire northeast.
I only glanced at the comments when I first read the piece and never looked again. I can only handle so much eye-rolling before it gives me a headache.
Sorry, Kent. Nothing has been said of any substance there, either. Don’t bother.
[…] sure that’s comforting to “certain people“. Hey, whatever makes people feel better about themselves, right? […]
Mr. Currie, A bunch of people get together and hire someone to say magic special words at a religious ceremony and write on paper what everyone in a geographic area is supposed to do, pay and be and think, then hire an army in funny clothes with weapons to make everyone in the area do what the paper says or be stolen from some more, be caged assaulted sexually molested or even murdered for disobedience. That is exactly what government is, and it qualifies as a violent religious cult, terrorist organization, or criminal organization., by definition. It’s just a big… Read more »
You’ve put together a string of assertions in attempting to rebut my letter that you take as givens, without bringing in a single real world example or fact from economic history to support your claims. It’s an entire house of card built upon terms that libertarians have uniquely defined, e.g.: taxes = robbery/theft. Almost none of the definitions is accurate or fair; each is at best a broad mischaracterization. Libertarianism isn’t economics or history, it’s dorm room philosophy, built of platitudes and premises rooted in sand. There’s ample evidence from biology, economics, and history to refute each and every claim… Read more »
“It’s an entire house of card [sic] built upon terms that libertarians have uniquely defined, e.g.: taxes = robbery/theft” OK, Bruce, what do you call it when someone takes what doesn’t belong to them, when the actual owner would prefer to keep it? You can lie. You can equivocate. You can say you believe it’s necessary, but you are being exceptionally dishonest if you say it isn’t theft because some thief decided to call it “taxation”. Now, I’ve refuted YOUR claim. Every “argument” against libertarianism is the same. Lies, built upon lies, with lies as seasoning. What are you going… Read more »
I don’t accept your framing of the issue–it’s self-serving nonsense that attempts to justify selfishness as moral. First point: fiat money “belongs” to the government, as the principal issuer of credit, so it isn’t “theft”. The fact the central government only accepts dollars as payment for taxes gives currency its value. 2nd point: By virtue of being a citizen, you have an implicit social obligation–a contract if you like– to pay taxes. It’s the price you pay for civilization. Which again means it isn’t “theft”. 3rd point: Taxes don’t pay for the central government; spending comes before taxes, and public… Read more »
If taxation is the price we pay for civilization, then why is it you support allowing people to get away without paying taxes?
(Of course, everyone should realize by now that “taxation” is NOT
“the price we pay for civilization”, rather civilization is what humans sometimes manage to create in spite of uncivilized acts such as “taxation”.)
Yup, quite.
The real price of civilization: to be responsible in a world where the individual has the explicit right to choose for the fruits of their own labor. Taxation is more than theft or extortion, it is the absolute destruction of civilization.
Kent and Cydramech: Both of you are writing in seeming ignorance of history, specifically how “civilization” arises, what it is, and how it is sustained. Your understanding here is certainly highly selective. And for all that libertarians rail about ‘”coercion” by government, you have no sense of irony in posing with a gun, as if that does not plainly symbolize coercion. “Coercion” is in some sense part of life. James Madison, responding to those fearful that the new Constitution would create too strong a central government, said: “There never was a government without force. What is the meaning of government?… Read more »
1. The only highly-selective understanding here is your own. 2. There is no libertarian issue with coercion or violence. The issue that libertarians have, firstly, is with aggression (that is, the initiation of coercion/violence), and secondly the monopoly of it the state demands for itself. Nice try, though. 3. James Madison was a hypocrite, as was also George Washington. They were monarchs who wanted power, despite their claims to the contrary. Otherwise they wouldn’t have held the Philadelphia convention in secret and they would’ve gone through the same ratification process as the Articles of Confederation. 4. The Articles of Confederation… Read more »
I didn’t answer your question because I never said that, it’s a straw man construct on your part. As for the rest of your response, your history is skewed and self-serving. Washington explicitly rejected being made a monarch. You frame the issues by arbitrarily defining words, and assume that their accuracy and truthfulness is self-evident, when they are neither. You’d have more credibility if you tried creating libertopia on a small scale in some commune or cooperative society first–and good luck to you–before seeking to magically transform society with dorm room philosophizing. For that matter, libertarianism itself owes its sustenance… Read more »
There is no straw-man because I never said that you did say anything about it. All governments are necessarily welfare states, so you cannot get away from supporting a government that isn’t a welfare state. So answer the question. It is claimed that George Washington explicitly rejected being a monarch, but there is no evidence for it. What there is evidence for is he wanted power, as proven by the facts he supported a secretive convention to concentrate federal authority, he was BFF with Alexander Hamilton and allowed Hamilton to create the first national bank, and that he used the… Read more »
Every single government-extremist “argument” [LOL] against libertarianism I’ve ever seen, including those of the lying statist on display here, comes down to something like “I hate stamp collectors because of how they sit in boats baiting hooks all day long!” Off the mark and completely hilariously clueless (or supremely dishonest to the point it looks like cluelessness).
“There’s ample evidence from biology, economics, and history to refute each and every claim libertarians make”
Yet all you do is make false assertions without support. For someone who says “every claim” is amply refuted, you do nothing but proclaim your own hatred and ignorance.
Seriously? Talk about chutzpah. Based upon what I’ve read of your past comments in the CM and Granite Grok, it will be a cold day in Hell before they contain anything other than glibertarian argle-bargle. Spare us the half-baked Austrian syllogisms.