Quote: (01-13-2017 02:27 PM)Rob Banks Wrote:
If you try to make libertarianism into an all-encompassing life philosophy, you devolve into libertinism and degeneracy.
As you may know, this is sometimes referred to as the difference between "thin" and "thick" libertarianism. Another debate within libertarianism is humanitarianism vs. brutalism, with brutalists leaning more alt-right and Red Pill in their cultural views.
Quote: (01-13-2017 02:27 PM)Rob Banks Wrote:
Also, you can't have a free country if you don't have a country This means that libertarianism can only be applied domestically, and only to citizens of the country. This is why it is so ridiculous to see so-called "libertarians" advocating for open borders and "rights" for illegal immigrants. Even in a libertarian minimal-government system, the government's job is to establish borders and protect the citizens from invaders.
Libertarians have only advocated for "peaceful people," not invaders, to be allowed to cross borders freely. Property rights are involved in immigration, because suppose, for instance, you own a parcel of land on the U.S.-Mexico border and want to invite a Mexican to live or work on your property. If the government tells you that you can't do that, and threatens to send its agents onto your property to enforce its immigration laws, then your property rights are not absolute. (In that situation, you're not violating anyone else's rights, as long as the Mexican is not committing aggression against anyone while he's on your property.)
The Mexican guest on your property need not be given a right to vote for politicians who will infringe others' rights.
Immigration also affects the global fight for liberty, because when the best and brightest flee a tyrannical regime, that regime suffers a "brain drain" and is more susceptible to collapsing and being replaced with a more liberal regime. Those disgruntled emigrants, when they're safely on foreign soil, may also use their freedom of speech to attack the regime they left, as Ayn Rand did after she left Russia.
Quote: (01-17-2017 04:26 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:
Quote: (01-16-2017 09:09 PM)Jean Valjean Wrote:
Replying to various posts at once. Oh, I just realized, the way I did this probably messes up quoting-within-quoting. Oh well:
...
All of those points are good, but my question runs to their relevance in our current situation in Western Civilisation.
Libertarians (I know, I was one) have this awful tendency to argue principles and possibilities that are so far from being politically achievable that you might as well build a political movement based around what kind of arrangement the first Mars colony will be governed under.
What I'm saying is "great, those ideas are nice, now pick up the rope and start pulling in the direction of stable nationalist, nuclear family friendly government and when we're free of the spectre of left wing annihilation THEN let's talk about minarchism vs monarchism.
We don't want to get
too moderate in our proposals, though. Rothbard
wrote of "the excitement and enthusiasm that a logically consistent system can inspire. Who, in contrast, will go to the barricades for a two percent tax reduction? . . . The call for a two percent tax reduction may achieve only the slight moderation of a projected tax
increase; a call for a drastic tax cut may indeed achieve a substantial reduction. And, over the years, it is precisely the strategic role of the 'extremist' to keep pushing the matrix of day-to-day action further and further in his direction."
So while there's a place for short-term goals, we also have to talk about the long-term goals in order to inspire the libertarian base with a vision of a much better world, and to ensure that the short-term goals we're coming up with don't undermine the long-term goals.