Difference between revisions of "What Is Libertarianism?"
From Critiques Of Libertarianism
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== A Catspaw For Corporations == | == A Catspaw For Corporations == | ||
A great deal of libertarian literature is written by corporate hirelings. Sure they can throw in the occasional socially liberal complaint about warmongering to genuflect towards the purported ideology, but they do NOT bite the corporate hand that feeds them. Otherwise they'd be pointing out that corporations are government creations of special privilege, and asking that they be abolished the way they ask that public schools be abolished. | A great deal of libertarian literature is written by corporate hirelings. Sure they can throw in the occasional socially liberal complaint about warmongering to genuflect towards the purported ideology, but they do NOT bite the corporate hand that feeds them. Otherwise they'd be pointing out that corporations are government creations of special privilege, and asking that they be abolished the way they ask that public schools be abolished. | ||
| − | == | + | == Philosophical Fairytales == |
There are three dominant libertarian fairytales. They are natural rights, Nozickian night-watchman state, and Objectivism. All three are non-positivist: they are not founded on observable facts and just plain make stuff up that contradicts what's known of reality. Each has produced large, complicated apologetics that attempt to explain away their myriad failings. Like science, they create models, but unlike science their models cannot be validated because they presume the unobservable. | There are three dominant libertarian fairytales. They are natural rights, Nozickian night-watchman state, and Objectivism. All three are non-positivist: they are not founded on observable facts and just plain make stuff up that contradicts what's known of reality. Each has produced large, complicated apologetics that attempt to explain away their myriad failings. Like science, they create models, but unlike science their models cannot be validated because they presume the unobservable. | ||
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== A Justification of Personal Righteousness == | == A Justification of Personal Righteousness == | ||
hich emphasizes the notion of virtue in selfishness and has as its historical genesis the exceptional American experience. As such, it appeals mostly to white American males who are moderately above-average in intelligence, economically secure, independently-minded, and prefer simplistic theoretical constructs for making political and moral decisions. It validates their own affluence/privilege not by group affiliation, but by inherent individual merit; and it likewise superficially validates the poverty and lack of privilege of others not on the basis of group affiliation, but inherent fault. In this it mimics a meritocratic view, which allows the libertarian to congratulate himself on his lack of bigotry; but, in fact, it is a facade behind which his true bigotry hides. [http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2009/08/what-is-libertarianism/#comment-1644385 Keith M Ellis] | hich emphasizes the notion of virtue in selfishness and has as its historical genesis the exceptional American experience. As such, it appeals mostly to white American males who are moderately above-average in intelligence, economically secure, independently-minded, and prefer simplistic theoretical constructs for making political and moral decisions. It validates their own affluence/privilege not by group affiliation, but by inherent individual merit; and it likewise superficially validates the poverty and lack of privilege of others not on the basis of group affiliation, but inherent fault. In this it mimics a meritocratic view, which allows the libertarian to congratulate himself on his lack of bigotry; but, in fact, it is a facade behind which his true bigotry hides. [http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2009/08/what-is-libertarianism/#comment-1644385 Keith M Ellis] | ||
== Snarky Definitions == | == Snarky Definitions == | ||
